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She grinned like the cat that ate the canary. “Don’t rush yourself back. The chicken still has a ways to go.”
Brock turned and headed back out the door he had walked through just a couple of minutes before, cutting through a paddock instead of heading out to the road. The Wilsons had been talking about moving for years, and he knew the place had fallen into disrepair as they got older. Why an old woman would want to take on the job was beyond him.
The walk was quick, and he hurried up the steps to the front porch of the neighboring home, noting the squeak of one of the steps and the white paint that was flaking off the house, showing the wood beneath.
There was plenty to do to make this place like new, if his first impression was any indication, but he knew it was a solid construction with good land. Part of him wished he had been the one to buy this property. Not that he had the money for this place. A middling rodeo cowboy didn’t pull in enough for that kind of down payment. A National Finals cowboy might, though.
And it wasn’t that likely he had even a chance of making it to Vegas if he spent the next two weeks painting and mending porch steps. He hoped the widow didn’t expect him to be working there too often, or he’d be in a bit of a pickle. If Ma was so desperate to have him around, why would she give him a big job that might eat into all the time he had at home?
Brock brushed the question aside and turned his mind to the task at hand. He’d go through a short introduction and make his way back for his hot meal just as quickly as he could, then he’d make a plan as to how he should go about fixing up this place while leaving time to prepare for the next rodeo. He knocked.
After a few seconds, the door opened and any thought of food or rodeos disappeared. He stared, caught off-guard by the lovely woman who stood there, the warm glow of the lit room behind her enveloping her in almost a halo of light.
Her dark brown hair fell around her shoulders in a mass of curls, framing an open, sweet face and lips that promised more than just smiles for the guy lucky enough to get to kiss them. It was impossible to tell if her eyes were more brown or green, and he wanted to get near enough to get a better look. The blood in his veins moved faster just at the notion of being that close to her.
His ma’s designs suddenly became clear: it wasn’t the widow she had wanted him to meet, it was the beautiful lady standing before him. The widow’s daughter, maybe?
He silently thanked his mother for her interfering ways as his eyes slid lower and took in more of the amazing view, noting how her jeans hugged her hips and the tied button-down shirt that accentuated her slim waist, giving just a peek of midriff. The top was unbuttoned low enough to give more than a suggestion of the breasts beneath.
Everything about her set him on fire. She was rather petite but didn’t seem frail in the slightest despite her stature. She gave off an air of feistiness. Brock liked feisty.
Brock realized that he’d stood there without speaking for far too long, and brought his eyes back to hers. He suddenly felt a bit like an awkward teenager, not a grown man of nearly thirty. It took all his effort to arrange his face into a cool, confident smile. “Hello, ma’am,” he said, putting on a slightly thicker drawl than usual. Ladies liked the Southern drawl. “I’m Brock McNeal. My folks live just over the way. They said Mrs. Stanford was in need of some help fixin’ up this place, and I thought it best to come introduce myself.”
A plan was already formulating in Brock’s mind. Make nice to the old lady, get in good with the beautiful mystery woman, then ask her for a date. Easy enough. His only problem was that two weeks in town suddenly didn’t seem near enough time if he could spend it enjoying her company.
The woman standing before him smiled. “Nice to meet you. Call me Cassie. Your mother was so sweet to offer your help. I really don’t know how I would manage all of the work by myself.”
Brock’s mind shifted gears quickly. The widow wasn’t some old woman at all. Which meant that Cassie was here all on her own. But was she mourning a recently lost husband? She didn’t seem to be. Would it be wrong to ask her out?
Before he could come to a conclusion, there were noises behind her and two young boys shot into the doorway behind Cassie, their identical faces peering at him from behind Cassie’s legs.
“Zach, Carter, say hello to Mr. McNeal. He’ll be helping us fix up the place a bit,” Cassie said.
Brock tried his hardest to keep the disappointment off his face, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.
Of course she had kids. There had to be something or his ma would’ve just come out and told him about her sneaky little plan. She knew well enough by now he didn’t plan on having any children, and that meant no dating women with kids, either.
When the boys chirruped quiet hellos, he gave them a little wave before turning his attention back to their too-beautiful mother. “It was nice to meet you, but I better get back for dinner,” he said.
Cassie seemed to sense his suddenly urgent need to leave; she nodded and said, “But I’ll see you tomorrow and we can discuss the repairs?”
The almost desperate look in her eyes was too much. “Sure thing,” he responded before turning away from the door, cursing his own bad luck.
Why did she have to be a mom?
Chapter Two (#u93de4151-37a4-5519-a54d-af0dde0579bd)
Cassie closed the door, trying not to show just how shaky she was feeling. She took in a large gulp of air, as if she hadn’t breathed properly since first opening the door.
She put her hand to her chest, trying to calm the beating heart beneath. As soon as she did it, she realized her fingers were only touching bare skin and she groaned. She’d been unpacking boxes in the warm living room and had answered the door without realizing she was wearing a shirt that showed far more skin than she would have otherwise.
What must he have thought, to see her standing in the doorway showing off her stomach and chest like that?
Her mind went from zero to naughty in an instant, and it took all her effort to bring it back to being appropriately embarrassed.
“He’s got big arms,” Carter commented, oblivious to his mother’s mental gymnastics.
Oh, she had noticed his arms. She had noticed every single inch of him, from the shaggy sun-kissed brown hair under a battered cowboy hat all the way to his scuffed boots. Her eyes had eaten him up like so much candy the moment she had seen him standing on her porch. But she wasn’t planning on telling her four-year-old son that. “Hopefully he’ll be strong enough to do things I can’t do all on my own to get this ranch working,” she said, trying to maintain her concentration on the tasks at hand.
“We’ll help, too,” Zach responded, a look of such sincerity on his young face that her heart—and eyes—welled up at the sight.
“I know you will,” she answered, ruffling the boy’s dark curls, trying to keep the worry out of her voice.
It had seemed like a great idea only a couple of months ago. Purchase a ranch, get out of the city and live the life she’d always wanted. It seemed so simple. But she hadn’t expected everything to cost quite so much, and now here she was with a broken-down ranch that needed to make money, somehow, and she didn’t have the faintest clue how to go about it.
She knew that once she got her small doctor’s office going in the front room of the ranch house, she would be able to make ends meet, but finances would likely be tight for a while, and a running, profitable ranch would help give her a cushion. Instead, she was going to need to pour money into this place before she could hope to get much out of it.
Finding this ranch for sale when she so desperately wanted to leave Minneapolis had seemed like fate, and she’d jumped at the chance. Now, it seemed more like a crazy whim she’d acted on without thinking it through.
Mrs. McNeal’s offer of a helpful son had been a gift from heaven, and she knew she could never turn down the assistance, even if the man on the doorstep made her think nothing but the most sinful of thoughts.
Cassie pictured the way he had been standing there looking her over, and she felt short of breath again. She had tried to behave as professionally as she could, despite the inclination to kiss this complete stranger. She was no longer a whimsical young woman who could give in to an impulse of that sort, no matter how strong.
It was more difficult than she’d like to admit, though. She did not look forward to seeing the man again, and she needed to keep her distance when those urges pushed her to do some very inappropriate things. If she had any choice, she would tell the neighbors she didn’t require any help, after all. But she did, so there was nothing for it.
Cassie turned her thoughts back to her two sons, who were playing amid the boxes piled around the living room. “Time for bed,” she told them, and they hopped up, racing for the bathroom.
Zach won, shutting the door in Carter’s face. While he waited his turn, he went over to his mother and pulled on her arm. “Can you tell us the story about the time Dad saved the baby birds?” he asked, looking up to her with his large green eyes.
Cassie’s heart squeezed tight. The boys idolized their father and always wanted to hear stories about him. He had only been gone for six months, and she couldn’t face tarnishing their perfect image of him, so she had kept telling them the good stories over and over, keeping the not-so-good ones to herself. To them, he was a kind-hearted police officer who had died in an unfortunate car crash. She wanted it to stay that way.
Zach and Carter were by far the biggest reason why she couldn’t bring a man into her life. They weren’t ready. Especially not for someone like this Mr. McNeal, who carried an air of recklessness about him.
If only that recklessness wasn’t so damn enticing.
* * *
“YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR seems nice,” Brock told his ma as he piled mashed potatoes onto his plate, trying to keep any hint of emotion out of his voice.
The old woman was terrible at hiding her exasperation. She had been so interested to hear what had happened that he was surprised she hadn’t been hanging out a window with binoculars and some kind of long-distance microphone like in an old spy movie.
Well, it served her right to be on tenterhooks for a while, after that bit of meddling. Not that she shouldn’t already know exactly how it went. She was well aware of his rule.
A bite of delicious fried chicken later, he felt he had tortured her enough.
“No kids, ma. You know that.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Brock, I can’t understand what you have against children, particularly those two. They’re sweet things. And being around them might do you, and them, some good. Howie, tell him,” she said, swatting her husband on the arm.
The elderly man looked up from his food slowly, clearly unwilling to join the conversation. His gray mustache shifted from side to side as he chewed. After it was clear he was expected to make some sort of contribution, though, he nodded slightly. “Fine boys,” he said.
Sarah looked triumphant, as if that settled everything.
Brock shrugged. “You know how I feel about raising kids. Between the rodeo circuit and the kind of life I live—”
His ma snorted, making her thoughts clear on that score. He plowed on, regardless.
“—I don’t want the responsibility of children hanging over me every time I go rock climbing or hop on my motorcycle.”
He didn’t need to say any more. His adopted parents knew that he would never want to leave children without a father. When his parents had died...well, it wasn’t something he would wish on anyone.
He turned his attention to his food, the air thick with unspoken words.
Still, if there was ever a woman who could make him consider breaking his “no kids” rule, it was this Cassie. Even then, the only type of relationship he was prepared to have with her would need to be something temporary, casual, especially when he’d be on the road again in another couple of weeks, and he doubted she would be okay with something like that. Not a widow with two young children.
It was best not to even start something, no matter how tempting the lady.
His ma shook her head at him. “Why you and your sister can’t be happy with a nice calm life, I’ll never know. With her always thousands of miles away and you doing reckless heaven-knows-what...at least your brothers don’t try me like the two of you.”
Brock bit his tongue, but he was sure Ma knew what he was thinking: what she called “reckless,” he called fun, interesting, exciting.
“Where’s Amy going after her visit?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“She said she needs to write an article about Morocco or something,” Ma said, still glowering. “It’s as if you two have a bet going to see who can make the last of my hairs gray the fastest.”
Brock had to laugh at that. He’d never told Ma about the time the previous winter that he’d nearly snowboarded off a cliff face when a storm blew up around him, or a dozen other adventures he’d had in the last few years, but he could imagine her hair going pure white if she ever found out about it. He wondered if Amy had been keeping similar secrets from their ma.
The older woman harrumphed, but didn’t say anything more on the subject, and for that he was grateful. They’d had the “When are you going to settle down?” conversation so many times that another run-through just sounded exhausting.
After eating, Brock climbed the stairs to his childhood room, too tired from the competition earlier in the day and the long ride home to think about much of anything. Before he went to sleep, however, the image of Cassie floated before his eyes, and he drifted off with a smile on his lips.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING dawned hot and still, the sky quickly turning from soft lavender to a bright, cloudless blue. Cassie was awake but kept her eyes shut, not wanting to let go of the luxurious feeling that had come with whatever dream she had been having. Most of it had slipped away the moment she awoke, but she remembered one part of it with a vivid clarity: strong arms encircling her, holding her close to a warm muscular body.
She sighed and opened her bleary eyes, pulling herself off her bed, which was currently nothing more than a mattress and box spring on the floor. The time for dreaming was over, and that dream in particular had no place in her very busy day. She looked around the bedroom full of cartons, her eyes passing from the unfinished Ikea dresser to the headboard leaning against one wall, waiting to be attached to a bed frame she hadn’t gotten around to putting together. She sighed again and started rummaging in one of the boxes for something to wear.
They had moved into the house two weeks before, but with the delays from the moving company and two raucous boys with no friends in town yet, she had hardly made a dent in the mounds of containers everywhere. Most of her time had simply been spent assessing what needed to be fixed and trying to organize the mass of paperwork the Wilsons left her about the property, none of which helped much.
What had she been thinking, buying this place and moving them all out here to chase some childish dream of hers? The thought had flitted through her mind over and over again since they’d arrived.
Without noticing, she had gotten to the bottom of the box of clothes, and her hand touched something silky. Curious, she pulled out whatever it was she’d found, promptly dropping it in surprise. The lingerie fell to the floor, a small pool of black silk and lace.
She didn’t remember packing it, had even forgotten she’d ever purchased the thing. It was years ago now, when she was trying to keep her marriage afloat. It was a reminder that she had once hoped to have an exciting love life, the sort of thing she was now avoiding.
Cassie shook her head slightly and shoved the thing into the bottom of the box marked “Pajamas,” then went back to picking something practical to wear. She pulled on jeans and a blouse, trying to forget the sexy black teddy, only to have the concerns about her new ranch rush back in on her.
She tried to make those thoughts go away, too. It was too late to second-guess her decision to put an offer on the ranch and sign the mortgage paperwork, so she might as well stop it and just look ahead to what needed to get done so their new home would run smoothly. Now that she’d have someone helping who might know a thing or two about how to do that, she felt hopeful about the progress that would be made.
If she could manage to keep her hands off him, of course.
She walked out of her depressingly cluttered room without looking at it again. That would need to wait until she dealt with more pressing matters, like when she could start seeing patients and figuring out how she could get the ranch to make money.
She let the worry drift to the back of her mind as she entered the living room, where Zach and Carter were using the piles of boxes and some blankets to make a fort. She smiled and crawled through the little doorway they had created using two kitchen chairs and a rug. Before she spent the day trying to be a doctor and a rancher, she could spend an hour being a mom to her two boys. That, at least, wasn’t overwhelming.
They weren’t very far along on their fort, however, when there was a knock on the door that made her heart sink. There was only one person who could be on the other side of that door, and despite how much she needed his help, she wasn’t looking forward to seeing the handsome Mr. McNeal again, especially not after her dream from the night before. Zach jumped up, his head grazing the blanket that made the fort roof. “I’ll get it!” he shouted, diving between the two chairs.
She listened to his quick footsteps and the squeak of the front door. When she heard the deep rumble of Brock McNeal’s voice as he spoke to Zach, her face flushed. She steeled herself for a long day of pretending not to notice how attracted she was to him.
And how attracted he is to you, a little voice inside her added. Her mind drifted back to what hid in the bottom of her box of pajamas. She quelled all that immediately. Sure, she’d seen the way he had looked her over when she’d opened the door the previous night, but she had also seen the way his face fell when Zach and Carter joined her. She knew what that look meant, and it was enough to make her even more sure that she would keep her distance from this man.
If he wasn’t interested in a woman with kids, well, it just made things that much easier. She took a deep breath, glanced down to make sure her shirt was more modest than yesterday and began trying to extricate herself from the tiny fort.
* * *
BROCK FOLLOWED THE young boy into the home formerly owned by his old neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, where he had played dozens of times as a kid. The house had a slightly dilapidated look about it, as if nobody had taken the time to keep it in good working order, but it was still clean and homey, the wallpaper and fixtures exactly as they had been twenty years before, and likely twenty years before that.
Though it was outdated and a little the worse for wear, it was of solid construction, a good home. He imagined there wouldn’t be too much to do to get it up to snuff; hopefully the land was in a similar state and not too far gone to seed.
In the living room, the lovely woman of the evening before was crawling out of what was clearly a makeshift fort, her curly hair a messy tangle that hid half her face, her splendidly curved butt shown off in lovely detail.
How did she manage to make climbing out of a blanket fort sexy?
If he’d been out of sight, he would have smacked himself in the forehead to dislodge these wayward thoughts. It was clear to him that he’d need to help her as quickly as possible, and then keep his distance from this woman from then on out. If she got his heart pumping doing something so innocent, he needed to do everything in his power to protect himself.
She straightened up, looking even more deliciously tousled, and nodded to him with a small smile. “Thank you for coming, Mr. McNeal. I wasn’t expecting you this early. I was just going to make some pancakes for the boys. Would you like some?”
Brock knew he should take the chance to get working while she was busy elsewhere, to ensure that he could concentrate on the manual labor without her nearby, but the thought of missing out on pancakes was disheartening. His ma was happy to make eggs and bacon but had never been one for pancakes—too sweet for a good start to the day, she’d always said. He forced himself to shake his head. “No, thanks, I already ate. I’ll just get started on whatever you need me to do, if you don’t mind.”
Her mouth thinned a little and her cheeks blushed a light shade of pink. He realized that she really hadn’t expected him yet, and she wasn’t sure where he should start. She seemed to be at a loss for a moment.
Not that it was surprising she hadn’t anticipated his early arrival. He’d woken at dawn, itching to get over there—to get started on all the work that needed to be done, he’d told himself. After all, two weeks wasn’t much time, and he didn’t want to leave his new neighbor in the lurch after he’d gone. So he’d headed over right after eating, without noticing exactly how early it was.
Brock decided that just because there was so much to do didn’t mean there wasn’t time for pancakes. “Actually, pancakes sound great. After all, there’s probably enough work around here to burn off four breakfasts, I’m sure. And while you’re at it, I’ll take a look around to see what all there is to do, if that’s all right?”
She nodded, looking relieved, and he immediately felt like he’d made the right choice. Plus, he would get to eat pancakes. That was a win-win.
“I’ll go get them started. Please make yourself at home, Mr. McNeal.”
“Call me Brock,” he answered before she disappeared into the kitchen.
The moment she was gone, he looked around the room and started creating an inventory of everything that would need to be done to get the house in shape. Besides two warped window frames and the very faded wallpaper, the living room at least appeared in decent condition.
“Would you like to come in our fort?” one of the boys asked suddenly, poking his head out between two boxes.
Brock had forgotten he wasn’t alone in the room. He gave the kid a small smile. “No, thanks,” he said, not sure if there was anything else he was supposed to say.
It had been a long while since he’d spoken to anyone under the legal drinking age.
