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“No. They’re with their grandmother tonight. I didn’t want to overload Tessa with kids. They’ll be disappointed they missed seeing you.”
“I’m disappointed they’re not here,” he said.
His simple statement sounded so sincere, yet she told herself not to take it to heart. There were plenty of guys who pretended they liked kids. Until they were asked if they wanted to be a father, and then they stumbled backward, as if they’d just faced a rattlesnake.
With everyone in the house, the group quickly migrated to a dining room that was beautifully furnished with a carved oak table and chairs, along with a matching sideboard and massive china cabinet. Down the middle of the vast table, vases of orange and gold marigolds mixed with burgundy-colored mums alternated with flickering fat brown candles. Across the room, a row of arched windows revealed a starry night sky competing with the glow of lights illuminating a portion of the ranch yard.
The beauty of the Silver Horn never failed to impress Marcella, but tonight she wasn’t absorbing her surroundings as much as usual. Instead, every cell in her brain was focused on the tall, muscular rancher standing a few steps away.
“Ava and I didn’t bother assigning seats. So everyone just grab a chair,” Lilly announced. “Except for the end seat. That’s for Granddad Bart, of course.”
“You’re wasting your breath, Lilly girl,” Bart boomed out as he took his seat at the head of the table. “Everyone already knows this is my seat. When I’m dead and gone, my son gets it. After that, you grandsons can fight over it.”
Dressed in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks with his thick gray hair brushed neatly back from his rugged features, at eighty-eight, Bart looked as though he was still fit enough to wrestle a bear and ornery enough to try it.
Orin pulled out a chair to his father’s right. “Dad, we’re not going to discuss your passing tonight or any night for that matter. These beautiful women don’t want to hear such morbid talk.”
“Son, I’m eighty-eight years old. What the hell do you think is going to happen? That I’m going to live forever?”
“You’re mean enough to live forever, Granddad,” Bowie spoke up teasingly. “So I say you better not mess around and get nice on us. We might lose you.”
“Bowie! That’s awful,” Ava scolded her young husband.
With a wry shake of his head, Orin looked down the table. “Denver, would you help Marcella into her seat? I’m sure you won’t mind sitting next to our pretty guest tonight.”
“My pleasure,” Denver said.
He stepped over to the table and pulled out the chair nearest to Marcella. As she sank into the padded seat, she felt as though everyone in the room was watching the two of them. And suddenly she wondered if this whole evening had been a setup to throw her and Denver together.
But that was crazy thinking. She hadn’t voiced any interest to Lilly or Ava about the cowboy. Had Denver mentioned something about her to some of the Calhouns? She couldn’t imagine that. He didn’t seem the type to discuss private issues. Even with his friends.
Glancing up at him, she smiled faintly and murmured her thanks. “Sorry. Looks like you’re stuck with me for a dining companion tonight.”
“I’m sure I’ll manage to survive,” he said in a voice only she could hear.
Near the head of the table, Orin said, “Sorry, Colley. You just happened to be on the wrong side of the table tonight.”
“It’s okay, sir,” the horse trainer said. “I don’t think I’ll be getting lonely anytime soon.”
Marcella glanced over at the young man who’d taken a chair next to Bowie. From what Lilly told her a couple months ago, Colley’s wife had divorced him and left town with a man she’d worked with at a financial firm in Carson City. No doubt he was still seeing red whenever he looked at a female.
While the remainder of the group took their seats at the table, Denver had made himself comfortable in the chair next to Marcella, and she found it impossible to keep her attention away from him.
“Lilly told me this was going to be a small group tonight,” she said to him. “I was surprised to see you here—I mean, I’ve never seen you here for dinner before.”
He shrugged, and Marcella’s gaze was drawn to his broad shoulders and the faint movement of muscle beneath the finely woven fabric of his dark gray shirt. A leather bolo tie fashioned with a silver accent set with coral stones was pushed tight against his throat, while matching cuff links fastened the cuffs at his wrist. He looked dark and dangerous and oh so handsome.
“That’s because I don’t visit the big house that often. Rafe twisted my arm to get me here tonight.”
Marcella’s mind began to spin. No way would Lilly and Ava go to this much trouble to throw her and Denver together at the same dinner table. Or would they? For the Calhouns, this gathering was little more than a regular family dinner.
“Oh. Well, Lilly twisted mine. So looks like we’re in the same boat tonight.”
“I’m here to discuss a new feed program with Orin and Rafe. So far that hasn’t happened,” he said. “Why were you invited?”
“To catch Lilly and Ava up on hospital news. So far that hasn’t happened, either,” she added with an impish smile. “But no matter. Getting to eat Greta’s cooking is worth the drive out here.”
“As long as your battery doesn’t die again,” he added jokingly.
She felt her cheeks turning pink. If only he knew how much she’d been thinking of him since that night he’d welcomed her into his home. He’d probably want to have Colley trade chairs with him, she thought.
“I’m happy to say I haven’t had any more car trouble,” she told him.
Before he could make any sort of reply, Bowie caught Denver’s attention, and then Greta appeared with a loaded trolley and began to serve the first course. Marcella glanced down the table to Lilly, and the cunning little smile on her friend’s face left no doubts as to what this dinner party was all about.
The only thing that could save her from this embarrassing situation now, Marcella thought, was if Denver never discovered how the two of them had been pushed at each other.
Chapter Four (#ud6fd0b17-adf7-56c7-91d5-42c7deb71e50)
As usual, the food was mouthwatering, but Denver could have been eating hay and not noticed the difference. Having Marcella, looking like a dream and smelling like a meadow of wildflowers, sitting next to him throughout the long dinner had jangled his senses.
When she’d first appeared on the patio earlier this evening, he’d been shocked. Although on second thought, he shouldn’t have been all that surprised. She was good friends with Lilly and Ava. For all he knew, she might be a regular dinner guest.
However, during the past week, he’d been telling himself he’d never see the beautiful nurse again. Then she’d suddenly been standing in front of him. It was like his daydreams had suddenly come to life.
A few minutes ago he’d watched Marcella leave the room and so far she hadn’t returned. Damn it, why was he noticing her comings and goings, anyway? She was just a pretty friend of the Calhouns and certainly nothing to him.
“Denver, would you like more cake?”
He glanced up to see that Lilly had paused in front of the chair where he was sitting in the family room.
Smiling, he shook his head. “Thanks, Lilly. It was delicious, but I couldn’t hold another bite.”
She gestured toward the opposite end of the room, where a long bar stretched across one corner. At the moment Bowie was playing bartender to Clancy and Rafe. The brothers were joking and laughing and obviously enjoying the evening. Denver was glad to see the men so relaxed. To an outsider, it probably appeared that the Calhouns had an easy life. But Denver knew firsthand how tirelessly Orin and his sons worked to keep the ranch thriving.
“Bowie has been spiking his brothers’ coffee with apricot brandy,” Lilly said with an impish grin. “You might want to join them.”
His senses were already whirling enough, Denver thought. He didn’t need to make them worse. “Thanks, but I think I’ll stretch my legs a bit and walk out by the fire.”
“Great idea,” she said, then added, “If the fire needs more wood, there’s plenty stacked on the end of the patio.”
Denver thanked her, then left the chair and slipped through the glass doors and onto the dark patio.
The night air had turned very chilly, but the fire was still burning, warming the area around the fire pit to a comfortable temperature. Grabbing a chair from the shadows, he started to drag it closer to the fire when he heard a female voice off to his left.
“You must have needed some fresh air.”
He glanced around to see Marcella walking out of the shadows. Where had she come from, he wondered—another part of the house?
“I thought I’d come out and enjoy the fire.” He gestured to the chair. “Have a seat. I’ll drag up another.”
She smiled and thanked him, and while she made herself comfortable, Denver went after another chair. By the time he’d rejoined her in the orange glow of the firelight, he was wondering if he was the luckiest man alive or the most ill-fated. Sitting out here in the dark with a beautiful redhead could be detrimental to his health, mainly his ability to think.
As he took a seat a short distance away from her, she said, “I’ve been upstairs visiting the kids. So I thought I’d come out here and enjoy the fire a bit before I rejoined everybody in the family room.”
“Do you have a fireplace in your home?” he asked.
She grunted with amusement. “Even if I did, I couldn’t afford to buy wood to burn.” She looked over at him. “I noticed you had a fireplace in your living room. Do you use it very often?”
“No. Although there’s plenty of dead wood up in the mountains here on the Horn that I could gather and burn. By the time I get home in the evenings, it’s easier just to let the heating system do its job.” Maybe if he had someone to sit with him and share the warmth of the flames, he’d feel differently, Denver thought. Maybe someone with soft curves, long red hair and lush pink lips that tilted at the corners would make building a fire all worthwhile.
“My grandparents live in Northern California in the countryside out from Redding,” she told him. “When my brother and I were just youngsters, Grandfather would build a campfire for us. We thought it was wonderful.”
He looked over at her and inwardly groaned at the sight of her delicate features bathed in firelight. Just more pleasant memories he’d have to try to erase from his mind, he thought.
“You have a brother?” he asked.
“Yes. He’s four years younger. He was married for a while, but now he’s divorced.”
“You see him often?”
“When he lived in Carson City, I saw him regularly. But he moved back to Redding to be near our grandparents. Which is a good thing. Since they’re getting older, they need help around the farm.” She cast him a curious glance. “What about you? Do you have siblings?”
“A sister. She’s five years younger than me. She lives in Gillette. Our parents live near Moorcroft. That’s a little town not far away.”
“Do your parents still ranch there?”
The fact that she remembered that much about him not only surprised Denver, but it touched him in a way he never expected. Sure, he could find a woman to have a drink with, or even share a bed with. But none of those women cared about the things that were important to him. This one did seem to care, and that made her very different.
It also makes her as dangerous as hell, Denver. Marcella is a family woman. She’s not looking for casual sex. If she ever went to bed with a man, it would be out of love. Not to ease a basic urge. Just keep remembering that when you look into those sky blue eyes of hers.
He cleared his throat while trying to rid himself of the voice of warning going off in his head. “Yes. Thankfully Dad is still in good health and able to handle the daily work. Mom helps, too. She’s pretty good with horses and a rope.”
Marcella smiled at him. “Sounds like you came by ranching naturally.”
“It’s the only life I’ve known,” he admitted. “What about you? Was your mother a nurse?”
She laughed softly. “Not hardly. Mom panics at the sight of blood. My grandmothers weren’t nurses, either. It was just something that called to me when I was about twelve years old. I like helping people—helping to make them feel well and whole again.”
All the nurses and doctors in the world hadn’t been able to help Christa. But Denver didn’t want to think about her or that part of his past. He’d spent the past twelve years trying his best to forget it. Now was hardly the time to let those dismal memories start creeping in. Or maybe it was the perfect time, he argued with himself. Maybe tonight, more than ever, he needed to remember why he couldn’t let himself get interested in a woman like Marcella. And yet just sitting here with her by the fire made him feel like a ton of weight had been lifted from his heart.
“Does your mother work?” he asked. “I mean, an outside job.”
“Yes. She’s a waitress in a downtown restaurant. Believe it or not, she used to have a nice office job as a secretary to a banker. But it was too stressful. She likes being out among people.”
“And your father?”
“He works for a real estate firm over in Sacramento. He never cared for farming like his father up in Redding.”
“So your parents aren’t together anymore?”
She shook her head. “No. They divorced when Spence and I were teenagers. They’re still friendly, though. And neither one of them ever remarried. I think they still love each other, but throw them together for more than two hours and an argument will break out. You’re very lucky, you know, that your parents are still together and work together. I think that’s so nice.”
Lucky. Yes, in so many ways Denver knew he was blessed. But there were plenty of times, like tonight, when he looked at the Calhoun brothers with their devoted wives and growing families, that he felt like a man with a missing limb. He was surviving without any problems. But a part of him longed to feel whole again.
“Yes. My parents are special,” he replied.
She rose from the chair and backed up to the fire. Denver tried not to notice how the firelight silhouetted her curvy shape or the way it turned her auburn hair into a fiery glow around her head.
“You must like your job here on the Silver Horn a lot,” she said.
“Guess it’s obvious.”
She smiled faintly. “You’ve been here a long time. Twelve years, didn’t you say?”
“That’s right. When I first came here, I wasn’t sure I would like it. I’d never worked on a ranch this big before. But the Calhouns are special people. They made it feel like home. And made it clear that I was appreciated. That means a lot.”
Her expression sober, she nodded. “I guess you must have been here when Claudia, Orin’s wife, died.”
In spite of the fire, Denver suddenly felt cold inside. He’d been working here on the ranch for only two years when Claudia had taken that tragic fall down the staircase and fatally injured her head. Seeing Orin lose his wife so soon after Denver had lost Christa had been like being hit by an avalanche. He’d had to dig himself out of the misery all over again.
“Yes,” he said stiffly. “It was tragic for him. For the whole family.”
“I’m glad he’s dating Noreen now,” she commented. “But frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t married her yet.”
“I’m not,” he said bluntly.
Her brows arched slightly, and Denver knew his remark had surprised her.
“Oh. You say that as if you know what’s holding him back.”
“I do. You see, I’m a widower, too.”
She stared at him as everything from shock to empathy flickered across her face. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t say anything wrong. Besides...it happened a long time ago.”
She let out a heavy breath. “Well, I feel awful anyway. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have mentioned anything about Claudia and Orin.”
“Forget it,” he said quietly, then added, “Please.”
She hugged her arms to her and Denver realized she must be getting cold.
He said, “If you’re getting chilly, I can build up the fire.”
“No. I should probably be going back in. I told Ava and Lilly I’d visit the kids for just a few minutes. If I don’t show up soon, they’ll be going upstairs after me.”
He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to sit here with her for hours. Just the two of them alone. He wanted to keep hearing her voice and smelling her flowery scent. He wanted to touch her and feel her touching him.
