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That time, however, still seemed mighty far in the future. So far, in fact, that maybe by the time she could afford decent clothes and makeup again, she wouldn’t have the face or the figure to show off anymore.
But I’m only thirty years old! Out of sheer desperation, she reminded herself of this often. Most of the time she felt much older; the responsibility of the ranch weighed heavily on her shoulders. With no family of her own, distanced from her friends in Wichita by a life that they couldn’t begin to understand, she often felt so alone.
These thoughts were abruptly ended by the unmistakable clomp of cowboy boots on the wide wooden boards of the back porch. A wild glance at the clock confirmed that it was only six-thirty, too early for Frisco and certainly too early for Colt McClure. And Mott Findley usually didn’t swagger onto her porch at this ungodly hour.
She edged a cautious eye around the bravely starched curtain hanging at the window. It wasn’t even properly light outside.
“Ma’am?” Colt McClure peered back at her, and her coffee sloshed over the rim of her mug before she dumped it in the sink with a clatter. She was suddenly mindful that she wore nothing under her old chenille bathrobe but bare skin. Backing away from the window, she clutched the two sides of fabric together. “I told you seven o’clock,” she said sharply.
He cleared his throat. “No offense, ma’am, but I’m here to work. I don’t mind gettin’ an early start.”
“Well,” she said. Her robe had never seemed so skimpy, and she wondered if it revealed anything she didn’t want him to see. A sneaky peek at her reflection in the black plastic door of the microwave oven reassured her. Faded yellow chenille was not exactly titillating stuff.
She flicked off the radio. “Come in,” she said. She kept her back to the door, hitched the belt of her robe even tighter and busied herself pouring him a mug of coffee until he was inside. Well, actually it oozed more than poured—she brewed her coffee strong.
When she turned around, Colt McClure, all six feet and more of him, stood to one side of the kitchen table crushing the brim of his worn black Stetson brushpopper in his enormous hands. He smelled of soap and leather and clean blue denim, and he’d slicked his dark hair back behind his ears. Today he looked much less fierce; he’d shaved the beard stubble to reveal a square, lean jaw. His eyes gleamed above the planes and hollows of his face, and she searched them for a hint of the insolence she’d noticed yesterday. If it was there, he’d concealed it.
He wasn’t drop-dead handsome; far from it. The scar bisecting one cheek took care of that. But he gave off a rugged strength, and he was certainly an imposing figure, with shoulders way out to El Paso, stomach flat as the west Texas plains, and long, long legs. His jeans were well-worn and so soft that they clung all the way down. His thighs—but she had no business thinking about his thighs. Or any of the rest of him.
“Sit down, please,” she said briskly, attempting a brief and impersonal smile. “Sugar? Cream?”
“Black,” he said. He lowered himself onto one of the kitchen chairs, the woven cane seat creaking under his weight. Even sitting, he blocked a good deal of light from the door.
She slid the coffee in front of him and clapped a spoon down on the table beside it. He kept his eyelids lowered, which she found respectful until she realized that he was staring at her bare feet. Her toes curled unwittingly, and she felt a slow heat work its way up from her chest to her neck to her cheeks.
She turned away in embarrassment, so fast that the bottom part of her robe flipped open. In exasperation, she yanked it closed. She’d give anything to be able to stuff the fabric between her knees and clamp it in place with her kneecaps, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to appear undignified.
She’d intended for the new hand to take her seriously, which was perhaps a futile hope at this point. Nevertheless, she tried.
“I believe your ad said that you’ve worked on a ranch before,” she ventured primly as she assembled eggs, flour, milk and bacon on the counter beside the stove.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said in that grating voice of his, rusty as an old door hinge.
If she wanted more information, obviously she’d have to dig.
“What kind of work?”
“Everything.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Ropin’, brandin’, workin’ cattle. Fences, barn repair, cleanin’ out ditches. Balin’ hay, trainin’ horses—”
“Are you good at it?” She slapped cold bacon into the warming skillet.
“At which, ma’am?”
“Breaking horses.”
“I think so.”
“What’s your philosophy about it?” she shot back. She began to cut out biscuits with the top of a jelly glass the way Dita, Frisco’s wife, had showed her years ago when Bethany had arrived at the ranch with no more idea of how to bake biscuits than how to rope or brand or ride fences.
He watched her punching out floury circles of dough, narrowing his eyes as if he suspected a trick question. Which it wasn’t. “Philosophy, ma’am?”
“Please don’t call me ma’am. You can call me Mrs. Burke. Or Bethany, if you prefer.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I asked your philosophy about breaking horses,” she reminded him.
He paused before answering. “I don’t like to think of it as breakin’. I like to think of it as buildin’. I think if you’ve got a horse to train, it’s like bringin’ up a kid. Your future relationship with the horse depends on how well you do it.”
She was surprised at this easy, unexpected flow of words and risked a quick look at him out of the corners of her eyes. “You’ve trained a lot of horses?”
“A fair number. Even some tough ones.”
She turned around and studied him. His deep-set gray eyes were thoughtful and clear, with silvery motes swimming in their depths.
“And how do you go about training a horse that doesn’t cooperate?” She was thinking of Sidewinder, the two-year-old quarter horse who had, of late, appointed himself the bane of her existence. Or so it seemed.
Colt’s eyes, those marvelous eyes, met hers with a crinkle of amusement. There was nothing hard about them now. “You have to train an uncooperative horse like porcupines make love. Very gently, ma’am—Mrs. Burke.”
She whipped back around, not wanting him to see that she was charmed as well as embarrassed. She shoved the biscuits into the oven and slammed the oven door. The noise it made reverberated into an awkward silence. Well, perhaps it was only awkward for her. She didn’t dare look at him.
“Mr. McClure, how many eggs can you eat, and how do you like them cooked?” she blurted.
“You better call me Colt. And I can eat five eggs. Or six. Sunny-side up.”
“I don’t usually cook for the help. From now on, you’ll eat with the ranch foreman at his house.” She was setting boundaries now; she discouraged familiarity with the hands.
“That’s fine.”
She drew a deep stabilizing breath. “Maybe I’d better explain things. Frisco’s my foreman, and he’s been here since my late husband was a boy. Dita’s his wife, a hard worker. She does the work of a man around here. Eddie’s their nineteen-year-old son, and he cooks, handles odd jobs and works in the garden.” She didn’t tell him the rest about Eddie; Colt would figure that out for himself.
“This Dita—you mean to say she’s a regular hand?”
“That’s what I mean to say, all right. She’s in her forties and as strong as an ox. She’s also solid and dependable, which is more than you can say for some.”
“I see,” Colt said, although she knew he was puzzling over a forty-something-year-old woman being employed as a hand. Well, Dita was a blessing, and you had to take help wherever you could get it. Also, Dita and Frisco and Eddie were her family. They weren’t related by blood, but they were all she had now that Justin was gone; her own parents had died when she was a teenager.
“You have any objection to hard work, cowboy?” she asked Colt.
“That’s what I’m looking for,” he said evenly.
“I’d say you’ve found it at the Banner-B.”
“Looks like it, all right. Speakin’ of which, what do you want me to do today?”
“Dig postholes,” she said. “You’ll find the posthole digger in an empty stall in the barn, and my foreman will show you where to start.”
She caught him eyeballing her breasts, but he quickly glanced away when he saw that she noticed. Still, she felt her nipples pucker under the soft robe. And in response to what? A cocky attitude, a penetrating gaze?
Colt McClure wasn’t her type; he was a drifter, no doubt, and there was something hard about him. Something tough. And something dangerous enough to set off wild alarms inside her head.
She’d meant to ask Colt where he’d worked last, and she wanted him to supply references, but her physical response to him was getting way out of line. It embarrassed her and made her feel guilty—she hadn’t even looked at another man since Justin. She’d figured that sex was something she’d never experience again, like wearing suits to work and drawing a regular paycheck.
Fine, but then why was she feeling something breathtakingly akin to lust simmering just below the surface of her skin? Why had her heartbeat gone all aflutter under the chaste folds of her robe?
And the man who was responsible for her turmoil was totally unaware. Colt McClure wolfed down eggs and biscuits as if there were no tomorrow. He had a sensual mouth and big hands, and for an instant she imagined that mouth exploring hers and those hands caressing her breasts.
No!
The man was an unknown quantity with nothing to commend him but the right physique for the job and a willingness to work at the Banner-B. Bethany probably shouldn’t have hired him, but what else was she to do? She’d promised Justin to make the ranch a success, and she couldn’t do it all alone even with Frisco and his family’s help. And maybe she wouldn’t be able to do it at all if cousin Mott succeeded in snatching the place out from under her.
Oh, why had she thought of that? Sudden tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away. If Mott succeeded—but she’d already made up her mind that she wouldn’t allow it, no matter how powerful he was, no matter what his political connections.
“Anything wrong, Mrs. Burke?”
Bethany couldn’t let herself seem vulnerable to this man. Or to anyone else for that matter. Vulnerability was too often seen as weakness. But oh, sometimes she felt her loneliness like a vise around her heart, and sometimes she thought she couldn’t stand the pain of it.
She tossed a spatula into the sink with a distracting clatter and made a blind beeline for the hall stairs. She called out over her shoulder, “Any questions about the job, ask Frisco.”
“I thank you kindly for breakfast,” he called after her. “And do you have any sheets for my bed?”
She pretended that she hadn’t heard, but she wished she’d thought of that. Of course he’d need sheets. And maybe some other things, too.
It was the other things that she didn’t dare to contemplate. Felt guilty for even thinking about. But she was sure that they also had something to do with bed.
CHAPTER TWO
BY ONE O’CLOCK IN THE afternoon, the day was rolling along full blaze ahead. Colt swiped at his forehead with one sleeve of the shirt he’d tied around his waist in an attempt to tan away some of the prison pallor. He hadn’t been out in the sun much for the past three years—inmates were allowed only one hour a day exercise in the pen.
He squinted for a moment at the line of dust rolling toward him from the horizon, then threw himself into the task at hand—digging holes. It wasn’t an interesting job, but it gave him time to think.
Thinking was a pastime he’d cultivated in prison because there hadn’t been a whole lot else to do except explore the prison law library for information that would win him a new trial. New information had surfaced, finally. And he’d been sprung, thank God. The trouble was, he hadn’t thought out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. When you didn’t think you were going to be able to have a real life, you didn’t plan for it. At least, he hadn’t. All his plans went down the drain when the judge handed down that prison sentence.
He moved on to the next spot. Now he could see the dilapidated ranch pickup at the head of all that dust, and he figured it was probably Frisco checking to see if he was working. The old guy didn’t think much of him. Colt had figured that out the first time they set eyes on each other. Or eye, in the case of Frisco, who wore a black patch over his left one.
The pickup jolted over a rise and pulled to a stop just short of where he stood. Colt worked stolidly, knowing he had to prove himself. To his surprise, the person who slid out of the truck wasn’t Frisco but Bethany Burke.
“Greetings, cowboy,” she said. “How’s it going?” She seemed cautious and so solemn. He wondered what it would take to make her bust loose and let go of that cool reserve.
He straightened and leaned on the posthole digger. A runnel of sweat trickled down his back. “It’s going okay,” he said.
“I brought you something to drink.” She looked deceptively delicate as she hauled a large thermos and a mason jar out of the pickup and poured him some iced tea. It was sweetened already, the way he liked it. He thanked her and gulped it down before holding out the jar for more.
Even in this miserable heat, Bethany looked so cool that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth or on any other place, either. She stood close enough for him to inhale the warm sweet fragrance of her skin, and it reminded him of the scent of wildflowers borne on a prairie breeze. Colt’s eyes were inadvertently drawn to her cleavage, or rather to where her cleavage had formerly shown. Today her shirt—big and blousy like yesterday’s—was buttoned higher.
His eyes roamed elsewhere, taking in the paler skin of her inner arm, the glint of sunlight on blond curls, the way she stood with one hip canted to counter the weight of the big thermos. He felt a rush and a stirring somewhere south of his belt and bolted down the second jar of cold tea in an attempt to quench the fire.
He made himself look somewhere, anywhere, which was why he happened to notice that over on the highway, a small light-colored sedan had slowed to armadillo speed. That in itself seemed unusual, since when people hit a lonely stretch of road in isolated parts like these, they tended to floor the accelerator. The car stopped briefly, then sped up. Bethany kept her eye on it the same way he did before turning back to him.
“Did you talk to Frisco about supper?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Colt said. Then he remembered. She didn’t like to be called ma’am. And somehow Mrs. Burke didn’t fit her. He’d call her Bethany, but it seemed overly familiar to call her by her first name. Okay, so from now on he’d call her nothing. Though he did think Bethany was a good name for her—soft and feminine, just like her.
“And did he tell you what time to show up?”
“Six o’clock,” Colt said. Because he didn’t include the ma’am, he thought he sounded too abrupt. “Dinner today was delicious,” he added.
“Eddie cooks at noon. He’s good at it.” She watched him carefully for his reaction, but he wasn’t going to give her one. Sure, he knew about the kid. The signs were unmistakable. Eddie had Down’s syndrome, born with an extra chromosome. Mentally challenged, as some put it. That didn’t bother him. Eddie had been polite, friendly and interested.
“Can’t say I’ve ever had a better meat loaf,” Colt said.
Bethany’s face lit up with a smile. Clearly the kid meant a lot to her. “You’ll eat well at the Neilsons’,” she said.
He nodded, bedazzled by the shimmer of her when she smiled like that.
“I’m going to leave this thermos of tea with you,” she said, setting it on the ground. “There’s salt tablets in the barn, and you’d better take them in this weather. You can keep the thermos. You’ll need something to drink when you’re working far away from the home place in such heat.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it,” he said.
Without saying anything else, she marched back to the pickup and got in. When the engine turned over, she backed and wheeled around, leaving him standing at the edge of a spurt of dust.
Colt watched her go, thinking that a high-class babe like her was wasted ’way out here in no man’s land. Bethany Burke should be someplace where there were palm trees waving in the breeze, balmy nights and a passel of admiring men flitting around her in appreciation of her spectacular beauty.
Come to think of it, he could appreciate it well enough, but he didn’t think she’d like it. She’d made it clear that her relationship with him was to be businesslike.
He wondered about her, wondered how long she’d been struggling to make a go of this place. There was something valiant about Bethany Burke’s refusal to do the obvious with the Banner-B. Many an experienced rancher would have packed it in by this time. But she didn’t seem of much of a mind to give up. She wasn’t a quitter. That was one thing the two of them had in common.
The pickup merged with the horizon where it flattened under the weight of the sky, and Colt put his back into his work and dug another posthole. He thought about his new employer, pictured her reclining under a palm tree in one of those tiny string bikinis, a demure come-hither glint in those remarkable blue eyes.
He might have sworn off nighttime dreaming, but there was no reason why he couldn’t indulge in a few daydreams now and then.
COLT HEARD THE RUCKUS as he was storing the posthole digger in the corrugated equipment shed where he thought it belonged, not in the barn where he’d found it. A horse squealed in panic, the heart-wrenching sound echoing back and forth between the barn and the shed. A horse’s terror was one thing Colt couldn’t stand to think about. He knew what it was like to feel that way—no damn good.
He ran out of the shed and around it. A red roan galloped around the perimeter of the corral behind the barn, bucking every once in a while for good measure. Whatever else was going on wasn’t any clearer than his vision, which was normally 20/20 but presently obscured by the ominous cloud of dust billowing in the air.
Then he saw Bethany Burke clambering up on the fence, displaying the pert curve of her backside in the process. She dragged a leather halter behind her.
“What the—?” he hollered.
“This horse is meaner than cuss,” she hollered over her shoulder. The halter caught on the fence post, and then her foot slipped and she fell back into the corral.
Colt was over the fence in an instant. The roan, a thousand pounds or so of muscle and sinew, was wild-eyed and galloping straight toward Bethany. She realized the danger and rolled over twice to fling herself away from the onslaught of thundering hooves. Colt planted his two feet firmly in the dust between Bethany and the horse and fixed his gaze on the horse’s eyes. Not surprisingly, the horse fled to the other side of the corral and stood panting, sides quivering.
“Get up,” Colt said tersely into the sudden quiet. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the horse.
