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“Hey there, buddy.” She lifted the travel kennel up to her face. Ramses’s gaze moved from her to the pasture behind her, then back to her face again, pupils flaring, smooshed-in nose lifting up as if he’d caught a whiff of the pines and freshly cut grass behind her. “You okay?”
As a reply, the cat let out his trademark Persian howl, a cross between stepped-on kitty and wailing banshee. Her gaze darted to Cabe, but he just raised his brows and shook his head.
“Great,” she thought she heard him mutter.
Relax, she told herself. It wasn’t as though she and Ramses would be seeing a lot of the man. He was the proprietor of a guest ranch, one that specialized in people with disabilities. This time of year the ranch catered to a different type of clientele, Alana had told her: big-game hunters. According to Alana it was a booming business. Elk and antelope and a whole host of other animals made their home in the high California desert.
“Got anything else in there I need to know about?” he asked.
“Nope.” She cradled Ramses’s cage in front of her. “This is the last surprise.”
This time, she was certain she heard him grunt. “I hope so.”
She hoped so, too.
* * *
HE COULD FEEL her behind him.
Stubborn, opinionated woman. Why wasn’t he surprised she’d brought along her cat? And what the hell was in the suitcases he lugged up the steps of his home? Damn things weighed as much as a ship anchor.
“Wow. This is pretty, Cabe.”
Hadn’t she been in his home before? He frowned.
Now that he thought about it, she hadn’t. He’d given her a wide berth when she’d visited the ranch last summer.
“How long have you lived here?”
“All my life,” he said, struggling to get the multiple pieces of luggage up the first flight of stairs. It was like carrying bales of hay, and it took everything he had to keep his breathing under control. Damned if he’d let her see him struggle.
“You sure you don’t want help with that?” she asked, almost as if she read his mind.
“Just hold on to your cat.”
“Not my hat?”
He glanced back down at her. She smiled up at him. He decided to ignore her.
She wouldn’t let him. “The house looks really old.”
He paused for a moment, ostensibly so he could respond to her comment, but really so he could catch his breath at the top of the steps. He felt as if his arms had stretched two inches by the time he set her luggage down.
“It was built in 1859,” he all but wheezed.
“No kidding.”
At the bottom of the steps was the family room, the hardwood floor so shiny it reflected the image of a massive stone fireplace that sat kitty-corner from the front door. Claw-footed furniture was arranged around the room, a beige-and-brown cowhide lay in the middle of the floor, matching pillows on the sofa. Across from the family room, still along the front of the house, was a drawing room, and behind that, toward the back, the kitchen overlooked a side pasture that stretched all the way to the main road.
“Our family was one of the first to settle in the area.”
“Neat.”
At the look of approval in her eyes, he picked up the luggage again. Sure, he was normally a lot friendlier to his guests, and sure, he was probably a bit hard on her, but Saedra Robbins annoyed the heck out of him with her I-can-do-anything-you-can-do attitude. That was why he’d be boiled in hoof tar before he let her see how out of breath he was.
One step at a time.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Attic.”
He heard her laugh. “Going to lock me in there?”
Now there was an idea. Granted, Trent and Alana might not approve, but it sure would make his life easier. She rubbed him the wrong way, but he was also man enough to admit that part of his problem was how gorgeous the woman was. Not just mildly pretty. Not even vaguely pretty. She was breathtakingly beautiful with her wide blue eyes, full lips and heart-shaped face that featured a tiny button nose and softly rounded chin.
“Not unless you misbehave.” He was only half-kidding.
Maybe things wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d had a spare cabin for her to stay in, but with the ranch fully booked, it’d made sense to have her stay in his home. Frankly, it’d been the only option. Even the hotels were booked this time of year.
“Hmm.” Her long blond hair fell over one shoulder as she pretended to consider his words. “That sounded like a challenge.”
Was she flirting with him? He drew himself up as best he could considering his burden, arranging his face into a mask of indifference. She would learn he had no interest in women, not even a beautiful one. His damn sexual attraction was just an annoyance—nothing more.
“It was meant as a warning.”
He’d made it to the top of the steps, thank God, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Funny that she could stand beneath him on the steps, smaller by at least a foot, and yet he could still feel the urge to run away.
“Did you hear that, Ramses?” She turned the cage around so she could peer at her cat. She pitched her voice down low and gruff. “We’ve been warned.”
This would be a long couple of weeks, he thought, turning back to the task at hand. At least she was a full floor away. And with life on the ranch as busy as it was, what with livestock management and guests to entertain, he’d see very little of her.
He hoped.
“Here you go.”
He left the luggage outside her room before swinging open a door. The roofline was lower here, but only along the front of the house. It sloped upward, toward the middle of the home, allowing for two dormers, one to the left and one to the right and each with a bench seat and a puffy pillow in front of it. The perfect place to sit and daydream...or write.
He backed away from that thought like a horse spooking at a plastic bag.
“Wow.” She brushed past him, the air she disturbed leaving behind the scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Gently, she set her cat down on the daybed to her right. “This is stunning.”
Blue. His wife’s favorite color. On the walls, billowing down in drapes, echoed in the quilt on the bed.
Why hadn’t he been up here before now? Why had he waited until it was time to show Saedra to her room to make the trek upstairs?
So you could put off facing Kimberly’s hideaway and be reminded of her and all that you lost.
“Enjoy.” He brushed past her.
“Wait!” He heard her take a few steps. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Out the door, to the right.”
He couldn’t get away fast enough.
“But I thought we could go over a few things. You know, for the wedding.”
He should have let her stay in one of the guest bedrooms. He shouldn’t have allowed her up here. And he definitely should have ignored his instincts to keep her far away.
“Can’t,” he shot over his shoulder. Keep walking. “Things to do.”
“Cabe.”
Ignore her. Don’t look back. There’s no need to pretend you like the woman. She’s not a guest.
But years of playing the polite host proved impossible to ignore. He paused near the top step, slowly turned to face her despite the inner warnings to do the exact opposite. The sight of her standing there, sunlight framing her silhouette, blond hair set aglow—it did things to his insides.
So much like Kimberly.
Saedra was taller, of course, but everything else seemed the same, from the length of her hair to the shape of her body, even down to what she wore: the stone-washed jeans and formfitting long-sleeved top. He could just picture Kim standing there, a smile on her face as she chastised him for interrupting her while she’d been in the midst of writing. Usually those interruptions led to something else, something that would quickly change her teasing grin into sighs of pleasure....
“I just want to say thanks again for inviting me to stay in your home.” She rubbed her hands together, as if nervous. “I know you and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye, but I promise to make this as painless as possible.”
It wasn’t her fault he’d never gotten over the death of his wife. Not her fault at all.
Run.
He turned away before he could say something he might regret because although he might not be interested in women, his body didn’t seem to know it. And that presented one tiny little problem.
He was attracted to her.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” she called out after him.
Not if he could help it.
Chapter Two
“This is going to be fun.”
Saedra glanced at the fourteen-year-old girl who sat across from her. Cabe’s daughter, as different from Cabe in personality as sunlight was from darkness, resembled her father with the same brown hair and blue eyes.
“I sure hope so,” Saedra said, eyeing the clock. Two hours until dinnertime. Maybe she’d get lucky and he wouldn’t put in an appearance. “But I’m starting to wonder if I bit off more than I can chew.”
They were in the kitchen, a spacious room that overlooked the front pasture thanks to an octagon window where a bar-height kitchen table sat. Not for the first time Seadra found herself wondering how Cabe could have such a delightful daughter and be such a stink-butt himself.
“What do you need help with?” Rana jiggled in her chair, her brown braids falling over the front of her shoulders. She didn’t wear her cowboy hat, but she’d been wearing one when she’d gotten off the bus at the end of the driveway an hour or so ago. Saedra had watched her walk up the long road from where she and Ramses had settled on one of the pillow cushions next to the window. She’d been writing her to-do list for the wedding, but she liked the young girl. A friendly face. She needed that.
“Everything.” Saedra played with the notepad she’d used. Scrawled in her loopy handwriting was a list a mile long, or so it seemed. She sighed. “I guess the first thing to do is decide where we should have it.”
“Here.”
Saedra tried not to laugh. “Not possible, kiddo. Half the rodeo world will be attending, and you don’t have the room. You should have seen everyone at the finals—they can’t wait to watch Trent get hitched. Frankly, there’s no need to send out invitations because everyone who’s anyone is already planning to attend.”
The girl tapped her fingers on the side of her cheek, sunlight from the nearby windows making her blue eyes appear huge. “We can rent a tent.”
“What if it snows?”
“Then it’ll be a white wedding.”
Oh, if only it were that simple.
“The weight of the snow will collapse the tent.”
“Then we can move the wedding into the horse barn.”
“It’s not big enough.”
“Then I think we’re hosed.”
Hosed? She almost laughed. She hadn’t heard that term in ages. “I think we are, indeed, hosed.”
“No, really, Saedra. We’re in trouble. There’s no place in town where you can have a wedding on such short notice. It’ll be Christmas week. The churches will all be having events. So will any of the other usual places. And we don’t have a big hotel with a big wedding hall. It’s going to have to be here. Plus, I think Alana wants it that way, however we manage to do it.”
The kid had a point.
Saedra wrinkled her nose. “Okay, fine. I’ll call Alana up and ask her for her thoughts.” She made a note in the margin of her list. “What about flowers? Any florists in town?”
“Actually, two.”
Woo-hoo. Such a variety.
“I can do the wedding cake myself if I have to, although I prefer not to,” Saedra muttered. “But I’m a little stuck on the menu. I would offer to barbecue, but once again, the weather—”
“You need to talk to my dad about cooking. He’s really awesome in the kitchen. He had to learn after my mom died.”
The sadness that flitted across the girl’s face was like a wisp of fog, gone before it could fully form, but still there. Saedra’s throat sprouted a lump. Poor thing. She should really cut Cabe some slack. He’d been through a lot.
“Is there a phone book I can use?”
Rana stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language. “Phone book?”
“Yeah. You know. The yellow book with newspaper pages with numbers on them.” She sent the girl a teasing smile.
“No, but there’s Google.”
“Do you have internet?”
“Of course.” Rana gave her a look that clearly said the Jensens weren’t complete rednecks. “But I think you should go into town with my dad. You know, see what you can find. Maybe one of the Lions Club halls would work if it’s not being used.”
