Marry Me, Cowboy

скачать книгу бесплатно


“Depends,” she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts as she studied him. Deciding his offer was worth considering, she motioned for him to follow her. “I was just about to take a break, anyway, so you might as well come inside. We can discuss this over a glass of iced tea.”

Hat in hand, Harley followed her into the house and down the hall to the kitchen, trying to keep his excitement in rein. It wouldn’t do to let on how badly he needed her land. He looked left and right, wondering at the quiet. “Where are the kids?”

“Upstairs. It’s so hot I made them rest in their rooms for a while. Not that they’re resting,” she added dryly. “Jimmy’s probably playing Nintendo and more than likely Stephie’s knee-deep in dolls.”

Nodding, Harley took a seat at the table she gestured to, then watched in silence as she nabbed two glasses from the cupboards and filled them with ice. She set both on the table, then went back to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea.

Taking the chair opposite him, she filled each glass, then picked hers up. She tipped it in a silent toast and took a long drink. Mesmerized, Harley stared at the smooth column of her throat and the slender fingers that held the glass. On a sigh she set it back on the table and leveled her gaze on his. “How much?”

Giving himself a firm mental shake, Harley blew out a slow breath. He’d already given the price a great deal of thought and named one just short of fair.

Her eyebrows shot up at his offer. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

He leaned back, ready to dicker. “Well,” he said lazily, “the land’s in pretty bad shape. I’ll have to do some clearing before I can run any cattle on it. And the fencing will need some work,” he added with a regretful shake of his head. “It’s down in several places.” He offered her a conciliatory smile. “But don’t you worry. I can take care of that,” he offered as if he was doing her a favor.

“At whose expense?” she asked pointedly.

Harley frowned, then replied, “I suppose I can handle that.”

Mary Claire studied him a minute, then named a new price.

This time it was Harley’s eyebrows that shot up. “Why, that’s highway robbery!” he exclaimed.

Mary Claire leaned back in her chair, smiling smugly. She knew nothing about the value of the land, but judging by the surprised look on his face, it seemed she had been right on target when she’d plucked the sum from thin air. She lifted her tea glass and tapped it against her bottom lip as she studied him over its rim. “You said you wanted the land,” she reminded him.

“W-well, I do,” Harley stammered.

“That’s my best offer. If you’re not interested, I’m sure someone else will pay my price.”

Harley shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He knew for a fact that at least one man would be willing to pay her price. Jack Barlow. And he could just see the smug look on Barlow’s face if he managed to lease the land right out from under Harley’s nose.

Harley huffed, then stood, jamming on his hat. “I’ll pay your price,” he growled.

“And you’ll do the repairs needed?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes, I’ll do the damn repairs.” He strode for the back door, then turned. “But I want a five-year lease,” he added, pointing a finger at her nose. “Or no deal.”

“And whose name do I put on the lease?” she asked, obviously not wanting him to have the last word.

“Harley Kerr,” he snapped, then stepped outside and slammed the door behind him.

Two

“Whatcha doin’?”

Harley glanced up, then straightened when he saw the little Reynolds girl standing on the other side of the fence watching him. He lifted his arm to wipe the sweat off his brow, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. She was a cute little thing with a little button nose and wide innocent blue eyes sparking with curiosity. “Mending fences. What are you doing?” he asked in return.

She dug the toe of her tennis shoe in the ground dejectedly. “Nothin’. Just watchin’ you.” She ambled closer, careful to place her hand between the barbs on the wire as she peered up at him. “Mama said I could watch you work as long as I didn’t get in your way. Am I in your way?”

He chuckled, hunkering down on one knee to put himself at eye level with her. “Now how could you be in my way when you’re on that side of the fence and I’m on this one?”

She screwed up her mouth like she had to think about that, then grinned. “So I can watch?”

“You can even help if you want.”

Her eyes brightened. “I can?”

“You betcha.” He stood and stretched his arms over the top wire. “Grab ahold and I’ll haul you over.”

Her arms laced with his and he lifted her clear of the barbed wire, then set her down at his side. He nodded toward a sack of staples on the ground at his feet. “You can hand me staples as I need them.”

He stooped and picked up his hammer. As he squatted down in front of the post again, he held out a hand, palm up. “Staple, please.”

Smiling proudly, she dug in the sack and dropped a staple on his palm, then watched as he positioned it over the wire. He swung the hammer, quickly burying the staple in the post in two strokes.

“Wow!” she said. “You must be pretty strong to do that.”

Harley shot her a wink. “Strength helps, but a careful aim is just as important.”

“Mama doesn’t aim so good,” she confided. “She smashed her finger a while ago.” She giggled and dipped her hand into the sack again. “She said an ugly word.”

Harley couldn’t help chuckling at the idea of Mary Claire letting loose on a cussword. “I’ve said a few myself when my aim wasn’t right. Hurts like hel—heck.”

Obviously unaware of his slip, Stephie sifted through the nails and let out a long sigh. “Mama and Jimmy are fixing that little fence that goes around our house. I wanted to help, but they said I was too little and would just get in the way.”

Harley heard the disappointment in her voice and remembered a time or two when his own daughter had suffered the frustrations of being too little to do things her brother was allowed to do. The memory made a cloud of sadness drift across his heart. “You’re helping me, though,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, I guess.” She crossed her ankles and sank down cross-legged on the ground, pulling the sack to her lap. She dug out another staple and handed it to Harley. “Do you have any little girls?” she asked, squinting up at him.

Harley froze, his fingers fumbling with the staple he’d just pressed to the post. “One, but she’s not so little anymore,” he murmured. “She’s sixteen.”

“Does she baby-sit? Mama was saying just this morning that she was going to need to find a babysitter for us when she starts working.”

Harley had to close his eyes against the pain. Even after ten years, it still hurt to think about his daughter and son and all that he’d missed in their lives. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. She doesn’t live with me. She lives in San Antonio with her mother.”

“You’re divorced?” she asked, cocking her head.

“Yeah. For about ten years now.”

“My mama and daddy are divorced, too. My daddy lives in Houston, but Mama didn’t want us living there anymore because it’s so dangerous.” She leaned back on her elbows and stretched her legs out, pointing the tips of her tennis shoes toward the sky while she balanced the sack of staples on her stomach. “Jimmy got beat up on his way home from school and Mama cried. She said she couldn’t take it anymore, so she moved us here.”

Harley wanted to ask, “What couldn’t she take anymore? Houston? Jimmy getting beat up? Or living in the same city as her ex-husband?” But he decided it wouldn’t be right to press the child for information. “I’d imagine that’d be tough,” he said vaguely.

Stephie sighed again. “Yeah. I heard my mama’s friends talking, and they said guilt is what drove Mama to move.”

“Guilt?” Harley said before he could stop himself.

“Yeah. When Mama and Daddy were married, she didn’t have to work and she could stay at home with us. She told her friends that if she hadn’t divorced Daddy and had been at home like she was before, Jimmy wouldn’t have gotten beat up.”

Though Harley had his own opinions, bitter as they were, about divorce and its ramifications, he only shook his head. “Some things you just can’t prevent.”

Stephie pressed her lips together and nodded her agreement. “That’s what Mama’s friends said. But Mama wouldn’t listen. So she moved us here to Aunt Harriet’s house so we’ll be safe.” She stared off into the distance at the two-story frame house that was now her home. “Jimmy says our house should be condemned, but Mama says it’ll look prettier when we get it all fixed up.”

Harley followed the line of her gaze, taking in the peeling paint, the rotten boards and the choking weeds. “I’m sure it will,” he murmured, but his mind wasn’t on the condition of the house. He was busy replaying that scene in front of the feed store when he’d peeled the child’s mother off his back—and maybe understanding a little better the reason behind Mary Claire Reynolds’s attack.

“Hi, Mama! I’ve been helping Harley mend fences.”

Mary Claire looked up and saw Stephie skipping across the overgrown lawn. She bit back a groan when she saw that Harley followed a few steps behind.

“You have?” she asked, forcing a smile for Stephie’s benefit.

Stephie skipped to a stop in front of her mother. “Yeah, and he said I was the best help he’d ever had.” Stephie beamed a smile at Harley over her shoulder. “Didn’t you, Harley?”

He stopped behind Stephie, laying a hand on her shoulder, and grinned down at her. “Without a doubt.”

He glanced Mary Claire’s way just as she pushed to her feet, and he had to lock his knees to keep from falling over backward. There ought to be a law, he swore silently. A woman shouldn’t be allowed to walk around half-dressed like that. Wearing the same cutoffs she’d worn the day he’d caught her washing windows, she exposed a mile of tanned shapely legs. To make matters worse, instead of the T-shirt she’d had on then, she now wore a little crop top that barely covered her stomach.

Her mane of red hair was pulled up under a baseball cap whose curved bill shaded her eyes, but he could see the distrust in their green depths as she shifted her gaze to the hand he’d rested on Stephie’s shoulder. From what Stephie had told him, he supposed he could understand her wariness, but he wasn’t about to move his hand. He wasn’t a threat to the little girl, and the woman might as well learn that now.

He tore his gaze from hers, finding it a lot easier on his system to look at the fence than confront all that bare flesh. “Looks like you’ve been doing some fence mending of your own.”

Mary Claire glanced at the distance she’d covered. that morning and let out a weary sigh. “Three hours and less than forty feet. At this rate it’ll take me a year to finish,”

Harley chuckled. “Once you develop a rhythm, the work’ll go faster.” He glanced Jimmy’s way. The boy was busy ripping off rotten boards with a crowbar. “Appears you’ve got some pretty good help of your own.”

Mary Claire smiled proudly as she looked at her son, knowing she couldn’t have accomplished half of what she’d done without his assistance. “He’s that all right.”

“Could you use some more muscle?” Harley asked, then wondered where the offer had come from. He certainly had enough chores at his own place without taking on Mary Claire’s.

She looked at him in surprise. “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to take time away from your own work to help us.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.” He gave Stephie’s shoulder a squeeze before he pulled his hammer from the carpenter’s belt strapped low on his hips. “Me and my partner here work pretty cheap.”

Without waiting for a reply, he caught Stephie by the hand, winning a smile from her, and headed down to the next section of fencing. Before Mary Claire could think of an argument, he had Jimmy toting a bundle of new pickets to him and Stephie passing him nails.

Mary Claire knew that inviting Harley to eat lunch with them was the least she could do, considering he had entertained Stephie all morning, then spent another two hours working on her fence. But knowing it and liking it were two entirely different balls of wax. For some reason, the man made her uncomfortable.

With Stephie and Jimmy upstairs washing up, she laid out cold cuts and cheeses on a platter—and kept a watchful eye on Harley as he did his own washing at the kitchen sink.

He stood, one leg cocked, one hip shot higher than the other as he lathered soap between wide tanned hands. She fought back a shudder, remembering all too-well the strength encased in those hands. With his sleeves rolled to his elbows, long ropes of muscles played beneath the healthy smattering of dark hair as he rubbed the lather up one forearm and down the next.

Sunlight gleaming through the window above the sink caught the bubbles that jumped to life from his brisk rubbing and turned them into hundreds of tiny rainbows. Mesmerized by the iridescent bubbles and the sheer manliness of the act, Mary Claire watched in growing fascination as he rotated his arms beneath the water to rinse off the soap. Cupping his hands, he dipped his face low over the sink and splashed water over his face and neck, then growled liked a bear, shaking droplets from his head as he groped blindly for a towel. The feral sound sent a quiver of sensation shooting through Mary Claire’s abdomen.

The cold cuts forgotten, she snagged the towel and pressed it into his hand. The thick terry cloth muffled his thanks as he dragged it down his face, across the back of his neck. He turned, but stilled; his hands locked on the ends of the towel, when he found her watching him.

Something electrical passed between them as their eyes met, something charged with so much force that it shocked every nerve in Harley’s body to life.

Before he could decide whether to stand or run, Mary Claire caught the corner of the towel and wiped at a stray droplet that clung to his mustache, her nervous movements as fleeting as those of a moth at a flame. But the brush of her fingers across his lips did something to his insides, making his heart do a slow somersault while his blood warmed in his veins. It had been a long time since a woman had touched him in such a way. He’d forgotten the tenderness, the comfort rendered in so simple a gesture.

On a sigh, he closed his eyes and caught her wrist in his hand. He held her palm against his cheek, absorbing the softness of her skin against his. Slowly, the thundering of her pulse trapped beneath his fingers registered in his muddled mind. Opening his eyes, his gaze settled on lips slightly parted and eyes filled with... Was it longing? Drawn by that look, he gathered her fingers in his and pressed them to his lips. He watched as her eyes widened, then darkened to a smoldering green, and his lungs burned with the need to pull her into his arms.

“Hey! What’s for lunch!” Stephie called as she skipped into the kitchen.

At the sound of Stephie’s voice, Harley dropped Mary Claire’s hand faster than he would a hot branding iron. He tore his gaze from hers and whirled to face the sink once again, his chest heaving as he grabbed for much-needed air. Mary Claire did her own job of covering up their actions by snatching up the platter of cold cuts. But Harley saw the tremble of her fingers on the plate’s edge and knew she was just as shaken as he by what had just transpired between them.

It seemed like an eternity, but he was sure it was only seconds before Mary Claire turned to greet her daughter, a smile on her face. “We’re having sandwiches, and no complaints,” she warned. “It’s too hot to cook.”

Stephie pulled out a chair and plopped into it. “That’s okay. I like sandwiches.” She patted the seat of the chair next to her. “You can sit by me, Harley,” she said shyly.

Harley wasn’t sure how he did it, but somehow he made it to the chair without his knees buckling beneath him.

“How’s your new neighbor getting along?”

Harley hunched his shoulders to his ears, already regretting the impulse to stop at the End of the Road for a beer. He didn’t want to talk about Mary Claire Reynolds. In fact he’d stopped at the bar hoping to drown her image in beer. “How would I know?” he replied sourly.

Cody bit back a smile. “I thought since you’d leased that land of hers, you might’ve seen her around.”

Harley frowned. In a town the size of Temptation, everyone knew everyone else’s business, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how that bit of news had leaked out so fast. “How’d you know I’d leased the land?”

“June, over at the bank. She said the Reynolds woman made a deposit the other day. A nice fat check written on your account I just put two and two together and figured you’d talked her into that lease.”

Harley twisted his head around just far enough to scowl at Cody. “You’re a genius, Cody. A bona fide genius. It’s no wonder you’re the sheriff.”

Cody laughed good-naturedly and pounded Harley on the back. “Did you hear that, Hank?” he called out to the man behind the bar. “Harley here thinks I’m a genius. I think that calls for a beer.”

“Reason enough for me.” Grinning, Hank stuck a mug under the tap and pulled the lever, then decided, what the hell, and plucked up another to fill. Business was slow in the afternoon, and it was a rare moment when he had the opportunity to share a beer with his two friends. After topping off the mugs, he hooked a finger through both handles and rounded the bar. He slid one in front of Cody before hitching a hip on the nearest stool. He lifted his mug and tapped Cody’s before taking a long drink.

On a satisfied sigh, he set the mug down and leaned around Cody to peer at Harley. “Would you look at that face?” he said to Cody with a woeful shake of his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the man had woman troubles.”

Harley’s scowl deepened and he snatched up his beer. Hank hooted and gave Cody a poke in the ribs with his elbow. “I believe the man does have woman troubles.” Ready to give his friend a hard time, he puckered his forehead thoughtfully and pulled at his chin. “Now let’s see. Who could it be?” he teased. “Widow Brown,” he decided, while he tried his damnedest to keep a straight face. “She’s had her eye on him for years.”

The widow Brown was pushing eighty and only had about four teeth left in her head, but Cody was enjoying watching Harley squirm, so he decided to play along. “Nah,” he argued. “Widow Brown gave up on Harley years ago. I heard she was flirting with Duffy Smith at bingo last Saturday night. But there is that new neighbor of his,” he said, talking as if Harley weren’t even there. “A divorcée by the name of Mary Claire Reynolds.”

Hank let out a low whistle. “Whooee! That is one fine-looking woman. I saw her the other day over at the Mercantile.” He cupped his hands out in front of his chest. “She’s got boobs out to—”

Harley’s mug hit the bar with a thump, sloshing beer across the scarred wood as he bolted to his feet. “If you two don’t have anything better to do than sit around and gossip like a couple of old ladies,” he growled, “I sure as hell do!” He scraped his hat off the bar, jammed it on his head, then dug a couple of dollars from his pocket and tossed them next to his mug. He stomped out, slamming the door behind him.