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Rebecca stood motionless, listening to the sound of his boots against the bare oak floors as he descended the stairs and crossed the hallway, then the squeak and slam of the screen door as he left the house.
“Well.” She dropped onto the edge of the bed, toed off her shoes and stared blankly at the bare wall.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from the owner of the Rand Ranch, but she definitely hadn’t anticipated a man like Jackson Rand.
She’d worked for her mother’s venture capital firm for the last four years, ever since she graduated from college. She’d often been assigned on-site work with various firms, requiring her to travel to the area and remain there for several weeks. This was different. When her mother, Kathleen, the head of Bay Area Investments, had asked her to fill in for a co-worker stricken with a sudden illness, she’d readily agreed. She wasn’t elated to learn that the assignment called for a stay of two months, perhaps longer, on a ranch in eastern Montana, and she was puzzled by her mother’s decision to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars to a rancher. Kathleen’s usual investments were in high-profile business ventures and her specialty was San Francisco real estate. When she’d questioned her mother, Kathleen’s response that the investment was well-researched and wise had left Rebecca debating her mother’s decision-making for the first time.
More important than the puzzle of why her mother had agreed to lend money to Jackson Rand, however, was her reaction to the rancher.
Rebecca recognized the signs of physical attraction—the heat that moved through her veins when he was near, the increased pace of her heartbeat. She’d felt those same things when she’d had a crush at seventeen. The crush had ended badly and the experience had reinforced the bitter lessons hammered home by her stepfather over the years. Harold Wallingford had never let her forget that she was illegitimate, the product of a passionate liaison by her mother before she married him. Harold’s too frequent comments and her unfortunate experience at seventeen had taught Rebecca a valuable lesson—that common sense went out the window when hormones took over. She’d avoided any recurrence of the madness of attraction ever since and she’d been amazingly lucky. She’d even chosen her fiancé, Steven, based on common interests and goals. No passion raged between them, and Rebecca reminded herself that she was glad his kisses generated only mild pleasure with no trace of out-of-control emotions.
She glanced down at her hand and smoothed a fingertip over the diamond solitaire. There was no reason to think that her status as an engaged woman wouldn’t hold the men at the Rand Ranch at arm’s length. Especially Jackson Rand. Because she was determined to control any impulses from her own wildly attracted hormones. Discipline and commitment.
That decided, Rebecca stood, stripping off her black linen suit jacket. She unzipped the pencil-straight matching skirt and padded on stockinged feet to the closet. The wire hangers weren’t the best for the expensive linen, but Rebecca had long since learned to make do while traveling. She pulled the white cotton, short-sleeved shell off over her head and dropped it on the bed before swinging one of the suitcases atop the blanket-covered sheets.
There was no spread on the bed, but the corners of the blankets and sheets were folded and tucked with military preciseness. Rebecca wondered if Jackson had done a stint in the army. He’d certainly learned neatness somewhere. The small glimpses she’d caught of the house plus the appearance of her bedroom all testified that Jackson Rand was a man with a tendency toward sparse, clean, tidy surroundings.
She hoped he was as careful about his financial dealings. It would make her job over the next few months much easier. Clients who had to be reminded to be fiscally cautious were often difficult clients, and she suspected that handling Jackson Rand in any aspect wouldn’t be an easy task.
Accustomed to traveling light, Rebecca unpacked with quick efficiency and tucked her empty suitcases into the back of the small closet. Then she pulled on a green silk tank top and tucked it into the waistband of a gathered cotton skirt, slid her feet into leather sandals, picked up a box of English Breakfast tea bags from the blanket-covered bed and headed back downstairs.
She felt a bit as if she were intruding but, as Jackson’s home would also be her home for the next few months, she ignored the concern and walked down the hall into the kitchen.
The stripped-down tone of the rest of the house was evident in the kitchen, also, but the wide window over the sink and the back door’s square glass let in cheery sunlight. There was something very welcoming and warm about the knotty-pine cupboards with their plain white counters. A square maple table and chairs took up one corner of the room and a white stove and refrigerator faced each other at opposite ends of the cabinets.
The house was nothing like the Knob Hill mansion she’d grown up in, nor the apartment she’d bought after college and where she now lived. The upscale rooms on the twentieth floor of a posh building on Van Ness Avenue, a bustling downtown location, were a planet removed from these. But the differences only made the house more interesting.
“Nothing fancy, but very functional,” Rebecca murmured, her gaze slowly surveying the kitchen. A battered copper teakettle sat on a back burner of the stove. “Ah,” she said with satisfaction.
It took only moments to fill the kettle with cold tap water and set it on the stove to heat. Rebecca opened cupboard doors until she found several mugs. The one she took down had a Montana State Fair and Rodeo emblem on the side. None of the cupboards held good china, although there was a collection of mismatched dishes, glasses, cups and bowls.
While she waited for the kettle to boil, she glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly five o’clock.
Rebecca was hungry. She’d swallowed less than half of the limp chicken and dry rice served as lunch on the plane. Then she’d downed a bottle of water and a candy bar while waiting for her rental car to be processed at the airport, but except for two tall take-out coffees she drank on the drive from Billings to Colson and the bagel she’d eaten at her 6:00 a.m. meeting before leaving for the airport in San Francisco, that was the sum total of her food intake for the day.
She was beyond hungry. She was starved.
The teakettle whistled, startling her and she quickly poured boiling water into her mug.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Rebecca jumped and spun to look at the door. A man stood just outside the screen door in the utility room. He yanked open the door and stepped into the kitchen, and she got a clearer view of him. He wasn’t a tall man; in fact, he was probably an inch or so shorter than her own five feet eight, but his legs were bowed and his back slightly bent, making it difficult to know how tall he might have been when young. His dusty jeans and snap-front western shirt were faded blue and worn white in places, his brown cowboy boots smeared with mud. At least, Rebecca assumed it was mud. She wasn’t sure. A shock of white hair was startlingly pale against the dark, weathered tan of his lined face, and bright blue eyes watched her suspiciously.
“Well?” he demanded.
Rebecca realized that she’d been staring, speechless, at him and hadn’t answered his question.
“I’m just brewing a mug of tea,” she offered. He didn’t relax, his gaze just as suspicious. “I’m the accountant from Bay Area Investments.”
The blue gaze sharpened. “I thought the accountant was a man.”
“He was. Is. He was stricken with a sudden illness, and the company sent me to take his place.”
“Humph,” the old man snorted. “That’s ridiculous. We can’t have a woman on the place.”
“So Mr. Rand said,” Rebecca said dryly, wondering if every man on Rand Ranch would dislike her on sight. “I’m guessing that you must be Hank?”
“That’s right. How’d you know?”
“Mr. Rand mentioned that one of the four men staying here didn’t care for women.”
“That’s right. I don’t. Women are nothin’ but trouble.”
“I promise I’ll do my best not to cause any trouble,” Rebecca assured him gravely.
“Hah. Promise all you want, won’t make any difference. Trouble follows women, regardless of what they say.”
Rebecca could see that the conversation wasn’t getting anywhere.
“I was just making a mug of tea, Mr., um, Hank. Would you like one?”
He gave her a withering glare. “No. Don’t drink tea. That’s a woman’s drink, ’cept for iced tea loaded with sugar in the summertime.”
“Oh.” Rebecca bit the inside of her lip to keep from grinning. Hank reminded her of elderly Mr. Althorpe, her neighbor at her condo in San Francisco. He proclaimed long and loud that he hated women, but he was a soft touch for the double-chocolate brownies she brought him from the bakery on the next block. She wondered briefly if the bakery would give her the recipe so she could try chocolate bribery on Hank.
“Men drink coffee, beer or whiskey,” the old man proclaimed, stomping to the sink. He scrubbed his hands and face, drying them on the towel hung on a rack inside the lower cabinet door.
“Would you like me to make you coffee, then?”
“No.” He shot her a scathing glance. “Women never make it strong enough.”
“Ah, I see.” She collected her tea, tossed the tea bag in the trash, stirred in sugar and retreated to the relative safety of the table.
“If you’re gonna be livin’ here, you’re gonna have to help with chores,” Hank warned.
“Certainly. Is there a schedule?”
“Of sorts. I do most of the cookin’ and everybody else helps out with cleanin’ up in the kitchen and the rest of the house.”
Rebecca didn’t miss the pointed look Hank gave her. Clearly, the kitchen was Hank’s territory.
“Can I help you with dinner tonight?” she offered, expecting him to refuse. To her surprise, he didn’t.
“Since I’m runnin’ late tonight, I suppose you can,” he agreed grumpily.
“What can I do?” She stood.
“You can get five good-sized baking potatoes from the sack in the basement. The door to the cellar is on the back porch.”
“Right.” Rebecca stepped into the utility room. A washer and dryer took up half of one wall, the other half lined with coat hooks and a collection of jackets. Below them, several pairs of rubber or leather boots stood. The far wall had more hooks for jackets and the door to the back step, standing open with the screen door outside closed. To her left, cabinets lined the wall on each side of a door. She pulled open the door, flicked on the switch and carefully descended steep stairs to the cool, concrete-walled basement. Rough plank shelves lined the walls, filled with enough canned goods to feed an army. She found the gunny sack of potatoes leaning against the wall. Juggling an armful, she left the basement for the kitchen and crossed to the sink. Hank shot her a glance when she tumbled the pile into the sink and began to wash them. Without commenting, she scrubbed them clean, deftly stabbed each three times with a knife from the block atop the counter and slipped them into the oven, setting the temperature at four hundred.
“Potatoes are in,” she told Hank. “What else can I do?”
When Jackson opened the back door and stepped into the utility room off the kitchen, it was nearly six-thirty. He was hot, dirty and tired. And he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about Rebecca Wallingford.
He saw her through the screen door to the kitchen the minute he stepped into the utility room. She was standing with her back to him, stirring something in a pan on the stove. Gone was the sophisticated black business suit and heels, replaced by a gathered white skirt that cinched in at her narrow waist and left the smooth, tanned length of legs bare from above her knees. The old radio on the shelf by the back door was tuned to a rock-and-roll station, and her ebony ponytail swung back and forth, brushing her nape as she swayed to the music.
Emotions, basic and primitive, stirred in Jackson. He easily recognized the surge of lust in the mix. Rebecca Wallingford was a beautiful woman; he’d have to be a eunuch not to respond to her. The other reactions were more difficult to analyze. He suspected that it had something to do with coming in from work and finding a beautiful woman cooking dinner in his kitchen. The inferences to hearth and home and a woman of his own were obvious.
Oh, no. I’m not going there.
He stepped inside the kitchen and turned down the volume on the radio. Rebecca spun around, her hand flying to her heart.
“Oh, it’s you. You startled me.”
“Sorry.” For a long moment, he couldn’t look away from wide emerald eyes fringed with thick black lashes. She had a mouth that conjured up erotic fantasies, and the green tank top clung to full breasts that the suit jacket she’d worn earlier had concealed. He realized that he was staring and yanked his gaze away from her chest to glance past her at the stove. “Where’s Hank?”
“He went to the basement to find canned peaches for dessert.”
Behind Jackson, the sound of male voices and laughter grew louder. The back-room door slapped shut, then the inner screen door opened and two men stepped into the kitchen. They halted abruptly just inside the door and stared at Rebecca with identical expressions of surprise and interest.
“Whoa. Who’s this?”
The taller of the two grinned at her, his blue eyes alive with interest on an open, friendly face beneath close-cropped blond hair. The other man was shorter, with dark brown hair and a handsome face. Rebecca instinctively liked the taller man and withheld judgment on the handsome one.
She glanced at Jackson and found him watching her reaction, eyes narrowed.
“This is the accountant. She’ll be staying here for the next couple of months or so. Rebecca Wallingford,” he nodded at the blond man, “this is Gib Thompson…”
“Hello.” The lanky young man grinned and nodded a greeting.
“…and Mick Haworth.”
“Pleased to meet you.” An engaging smile wreathed Mick’s handsome face.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“Where are you from, Rebecca?” Gib asked.
“San Francisco.”
“Yeah? Are you…”
“Out of the way.” Hank’s testy voice interrupted them. He elbowed his way past Mick and Gib and shot them a glare. “If you two want to eat tonight, you’d better get washed up. I ain’t waitin’ dinner on you while you stand here jawin’ with Rebecca.”
The two shot Rebecca apologetic looks and left the room. Their boots sounded on the stairs, the din of their friendly arguing floating behind them down the stairway.
“You, too, boss.”
Jackson left the kitchen without comment. The radio played an old Stones tune as his boots sounded on the stair treads.
By the time Jackson and the other two came back downstairs, faces, hands and arms washed free of dust and grime, Rebecca was folding napkins and tucking them under silverware. The maple table was set with mismatched china, a crockery bowl filled with salad greens and red tomatoes making a bright spot of color against the wooden tabletop. Hank forked steaks onto a platter and set it on the table.
“Well, come on, set down and eat before everything gets cold.”
Chairs scraped against the wooden floor, Mick and Gib jostling each other to pull out Rebecca’s chair. Jackson gave them a steely glare and they retreated to their own seats. Rebecca calmly seated herself and picked up her napkin.
For a few moments, the silence was punctuated only by requests to pass food and the scrape of spoons and forks against bowls and plates.
The quiet was broken by Gib.
“So, Rebecca, you’re an accountant? In San Francisco?”
“Yes.” She picked up her water glass and sipped. “I work for an investment firm downtown.”
“And you do this often?” Mick asked.
Rebecca glanced up. “Do I do what often?”
“Travel to a strange place and live with strangers?”
“I travel a lot,” she conceded. “But I usually stay in a hotel room by myself.”
“And that doesn’t bother you, traveling all the time?” Gib asked, his voice curious.
“No, not at all. I like visiting new places, meeting new people.”
“And you don’t miss being at home?”
Rebecca had a quick mental image of her San Francisco apartment with its few pieces of furniture and the unpacked boxes still shoved into closets after three years. Her busy traveling life left little time to build a nest. “I miss San Francisco,” she admitted. “I love the city. But I rarely get homesick when I’m away. I’m usually too busy working and exploring a new city.”
“So most of your jobs are in the city?” Mick asked, ignoring his half-eaten steak to stare at her.
“Until now, all of my clients have been located in medium to large cities. But that doesn’t mean that our firm never has clients in smaller towns.”
“But you’ve never worked in a small town,” Jackson interjected.
“No,” Rebecca admitted. She lifted an eyebrow, trying to keep annoyance from her voice. “Are you concerned about my ability to deal with a rural-based business rather than an urban corporation?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m concerned with your ability to put up with the isolation of a ranch after living in the city.”
“I have a car,” she pointed out. “And Colson isn’t that far away.”
“True. But Colson isn’t San Francisco, not even close. You’re a long way from gourmet restaurants, Starbucks coffee and the opera.”
“I don’t go to the opera.”
He shrugged. “Then, the ballet. Whatever it is that you like to do in the city, you’re not likely to find here.”
