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Leanna’s heart soared with hope. Family loyalty. She’d sell her soul for it. Oh, how she longed to be a part of a big clan like the Landers’. She crossed her fingers and said a prayer that her announcement wouldn’t test Patrick’s family bonds.
Brooke went up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on Patrick’s flushed cheek. “Well, this is certainly above and beyond the call of duty. Thank you.”
His blush intensified. “No big deal. Caleb would do the same for me.” He ducked out quickly and closed the door.
What was Caleb thinking to hire a kid to baby-sit him?
All right, Patrick admitted as he crossed the yard, maybe his past escapades might lead some to think he needed a watchdog. But a kid? Okay, so Leanna wasn’t exactly a kid, but she was too damned young to have the experience necessary to handle the huge responsibility of hostess on a dude ranch during peak season no matter what she said.
He glanced back over his shoulder and there she stood, framed in the kitchen window. Big hazel eyes. A pouty mouth. Curves a man would need a road map to get around. Attraction was a distraction he didn’t need right now.
It didn’t help that she had a sense of humor. He chuckled. Vacuum. Right. He’d been trying to warn her off and she’d put him in his place.
He made a beeline for the barn to escape the sun baking his hide and spotted a station wagon parked near his truck. Probably hers, judging by the out-of-state tags.
Slowing his steps, he looked through the windows. Had she packed everything she owned into the back of her wagon? You’d think the gal didn’t have a home to return to. He shook his head and shrugged off the questions piling up in his brain. Not his problem. She’d hostess awhile and then haul her load back to California. End of story.
The barn was dark, but still hotter than Hades, and the humidity was thick enough to drown in. The windows to the tack room were open, but that didn’t matter since not even a hint of a breeze stirred the stagnant air. He swiped the sweat from his brow, snatched up the phone and punched in his home number. His father picked up.
“What’re you doing, Pop?”
“Same damned thing I was doing last time you called.”
“Well, take a break and get out of the heat. It’s hotter than the devil’s hearth today.”
“You’d be more likely to know about the devil than most of us, I reckon, but I ain’t got time for lollygag-gin’.”
“And I don’t have time to haul you to the clinic for heat stroke. It’s your turn to fix lunch. Why don’t you head inside and make us a couple of sandwiches and a cold drink. I’m on my way.”
Patrick hung up on his father’s grumbling and hiked toward his pickup.
Stubborn ol’ coot. His father was aging right before his eyes. The workload was too heavy for just the two of them, but his dad was as obstinate as a mule about hiring anyone to help. Said money was too tight to squeeze in another salary. Swore he’d pick up any slack his sons’ marriages had created.
Not without killing himself. Maybe both of them.
Patrick couldn’t refuse his brother’s request to manage the dude ranch while he and Brooke were away, but he sure didn’t know how he’d juggle the family spread and the Double C Dude Ranch and keep his father from working too hard at the same time. But he would. Dammit, he would.
It meant temporarily giving up poker, beer and women until Caleb returned, but he could handle hard work and celibacy for a short spell without going insane. Probably.
He’d call Caleb later and ask him about those college kids he’d turned away. Hiring them would be another bone of contention between him and his father, but what was one more? It seemed these days he and Pop fought about everything.
He jerked to a stop at the sight of a set of prime hind quarters bent over the open hood of the station wagon. Leanna might wear baggy clothes, but nothing could conceal those curves. Not to a man with eyes in his head, anyway. He tamped down his reaction and reminded himself that he had no time for detours.
“Problem?”
She spun around and a shy smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “The engine smelled a little hot when I arrived, but everything looks and sounds okay now.”
He bit down on the urge to flex his muscles and smile back. Something in the way the Double C’s newest employee looked at him made him feel ten feet tall. She was definitely too darn young for him.
So why did one shy glance from her hit him like a sucker punch in the gut?
He stifled the urge to help. This wasn’t his problem, even though damsels in distress were his number-one weakness. Heck, women period were his weakness, but starting today, he was on a woman-free diet.
A quick check of her car’s reservoir told him it held plenty of antifreeze. The engine wasn’t in danger of overheating and it sounded normal. “Pete’s Garage is on the way to the Pink Palace. If you’re worried, get him to take a look.”
“The Pink Palace?”
In the bright sunlight he noticed the dapple of faded freckles on her nose and cheeks and the golden streaks in her light-brown hair. She was cute, in an all-American girl-next-door kind of way. He preferred women with a little more flash and a lot more experience, but heaven help the men on the spread—and him—if she ever slapped on a layer of war paint or squeezed herself into tight blue jeans.
“Penny’s place. It used to be a whor—brothel.”
A blush crawled up her neck and spread to her hairline. That blush was a sure sign she was out of his league. Only virgins blushed like that, and he adhered to a strict no-virgins policy. Virgin hearts broke too easily. Virgins expected a guy to be loyal, but he was his mother’s son. Loyalty wasn’t encoded on his DNA.
Leanna was off-limits. Taboo.
If he repeated the words often enough he might remember ’em.
“I’ll be staying in a whore house?”
Aw, heck, she wasn’t going to get prudish on him, was she? “Used to be one, but the sheriff closed down that side of the business years ago. It’s been a rooming house all my life.”
She slammed the hood and grimaced at her dirty hands.
Patrick pulled his bandanna out of his pocket and offered it to her before he could stop himself. Even good habits were hard to break. “Don’t let Penny put you in room ten.”
Her chin jerked up and suspicion dimmed the gold flecks in her eyes. “Why?”
“It’s haunted.”
Instead of looking at him like he was a couple of bales short of a trailer load, he noted a spark of interest. “You’re teasing me.”
“No, ma’am. Story is that one of the madam’s customers wanted to take her away from her business. He proposed. She refused. He offed her because she loved her, ah…work more than him and he didn’t want to share.”
Her eyes widened, and then she beamed like he’d just handed her a winning lottery ticket. He staggered back a step. That smile of hers nearly blinded him. Leanna Jensen wasn’t just cute, she was damned dazzling. Put a cork in it, Lander. He tried to shake off the unwanted attraction.
She practically danced with excitement. “Get out of here. A ghost? Really?”
He hesitated to tell her the local legend, fearing she’d misread any effort at conversation as sign of interest, but he couldn’t resist the questions in her eyes. “Folks say that if you make love in room ten your partner won’t be the only one with you.”
Ghost stories creeped him out. He’d never had the desire to investigate the madam’s story or any of the others his mother had told him on those long nights when she’d dragged him out of bed, strapped him into the car and circled the Palace time and time again. Whatever it was she thought she’d see, she’d always gone home disappointed, and he’d always crawled into bed and cowered under the covers, waiting for the nightmares her tales conjured up.
“A haunted whore house.” Leanna’s delighted chuckle drew him back from his bitter childhood memories. The sound, combined with the anticipation lighting her up like a neon sign, made him wonder if she might not be a straitlaced stick-in-the-mud after all. His body responded in a way it shouldn’t, considering he had no intention of following where it urged him to go.
“I love ghost stories.” Her smile widened and mischief made the gold flecks in her eyes sparkle. Pink tinted her cheeks as she peeked at him from beneath her gold-tipped lashes. She lowered her voice. “Have you ever tested the tale? You know, to see if there’s an amorous ghost?”
Too cute. Too young. Into ghosts. And testing his temporary vow of celibacy. Just his luck.
“No.” He took a long stride backward, opened his truck door and put it between them.
In the past year, wily women had shanghaied two of his brothers into marriage, and while Leanna didn’t seem to be the wily type, he wasn’t taking any chances. Brand and Caleb were happy enough, but marriage wasn’t for him. His mother hadn’t had a faithful bone in her body, and as far as he could tell, he was just like her. More’n one woman had tried to put a ring around his finger—a noose around his neck, to his way of thinking—but he wasn’t promising forever to anybody. He’d disappointed enough people in his life.
“Penny can probably tell you more about it. Don’t forget to stop by Pete’s. See you tomorrow.” He climbed into the cab and backed out of the space before he did something stupid like ask her to dinner.
Two
Leanna’s Buick roared like an expensive sports car. It wasn’t a good sign since the station wagon wasn’t moving—unless you counted the slight backward roll.
She pursed her lips and pressed the gas pedal once again. Nothing. The gauges gave no indication of distress, but something was definitely wrong with her car. Taking her foot off the brake, she coasted backward off the road and onto the grassy verge and then turned off the engine. Heat immediately filled the interior, forcing her to roll down the windows while she debated her options.
Arch’s chauffeur had walked her though filling the assorted fluid tanks before she’d left Carlsbad, but that was the extent of her knowledge about the inner workings of a car. She pulled the latch and climbed out to take another look beneath the hood, but to her inexperienced eye everything appeared as it should.
Sweat plastered her clothes to her body within minutes. She nibbled a nail. Her car had to be repaired. One of the most important lessons she’d learned growing up was that you had to have a plan B—a way to escape if a situation became ugly. It was the reason she’d saved a portion of her salary—the portion her mother’s treatment didn’t consume—and bought her own car a few months ago.
She stared into the distance at the heat haze wavering on the asphalt. Barbed-wire fencing stretched along either side of the road, marking dry, empty pastures. She hadn’t passed another car on the six-mile stretch of road between here and the Double C Dude Ranch. If Brooke’s directions were correct she was closer to the gas station and rooming house than the ranch.
As much as she loved to read about knights and heroes, she’d learned the hard way that they rarely walked off the pages of a book.
She secured the vehicle and hiked toward help.
Hot, tired, and sweat-soaked from the skin out, Leanna wasn’t in the mood for bad news.
“Transmission’s shot,” Pete said without losing the toothpick stuck between his teeth. The man was every Hollywood cliché she’d ever seen of a small-town garage mechanic. His overalls were stained and the bill of his ball-cap faced backwards. Every third sentence he spit a stream of tobacco into a paper cup.
She daubed the sweat from her brow with Patrick’s bandanna and tried to ignore the way his scent lingered on the fabric. “How much to repair the car?”
“New parts, fifteen hundred. Rebuilt, eleven. It’ll take me about a week either way.”
Her stomach sank. She’d destroyed all of her credit cards after her mother’s last binge, and she’d emptied her bank account paying in advance for three months’ worth of her mother’s rehab at the new and expensive clinic. Arch’s estate had only allowed her two thousand dollars for the entire Texas trip—a portion of which she’d spent on the way here. “Rebuilt.”
“Cash. Up front.”
She tried not to wince, but she wouldn’t receive a paycheck from the dude ranch until the end of the month. If she paid the mechanic now she wouldn’t be able to afford a room at the Pink Palace. She’d barely be able to buy food. At least working at the dude ranch included most meals.
Regret pulled her gaze back to the plate glass window. Down the road, the elegant lines of a large Victorian house with a resident ghost called to her. “Can I pay you half now and half at the end of the month?”
“Don’t extend credit to strangers—especially the ones with out-of-state tags.”
“I’ll be working at the Double C Dude Ranch.”
“Ask Caleb’s missus for an advance on your salary. She’s a Californian, too.” He made it sound like she’d come from another planet not just another state.
She made it a practice never to owe anybody anything, except Arch, and she was here to clear that debt.
Between the time she’d run away at fifteen and when Arch had found her sleeping in one of his classic cars eight months later, she’d hidden in all kinds of places. It looked like she’d have to again tonight.
She took one last wistful glance at the Palace’s twin-turreted structure and vowed that one day she’d own a home with a deep front porch, window boxes and porch swings. Right now she needed a place to sleep. Reluctantly she counted out the money.
“Could you give me a ride to the Double C?”
Patrick found his father hunched over breakfast before sunup. The ashen tone of his skin and the tired slump of his shoulders worried him. “You have trouble sleeping again?”
“No.”
A blatant lie. He’d heard his father pacing the floor because he’d also been awake thinking about the Double C’s new hostess. He couldn’t do her job and his, too, if she didn’t measure up.
He couldn’t afford to be attracted to her.
“Why don’t I run you by the clinic this morning and get the doc to check your blood pressure?”
“I ain’t going to the doctor. Won’t get nothing but a little bottle of pills and a big bill.”
“You can’t put a price on your health, Pop.”
“Tell that to those bandits.”
The muscles in Patrick’s neck knotted. They’d had this argument a dozen times. Nothing short of an ambulance would get Jack Lander to the clinic. “How about taking it easy today? The heat index is going to be up there.”
“You take it easy if you want. I got work to do.”
“Caleb gave me the name of a couple of college kids. I hired them to help here while I’m managing the dude ranch.”
His father scowled. “Can’t afford it.”
“Caleb’s paying me enough to cover both salaries.”
“You hired your brother’s rejects?”
He gritted his teeth, counted to ten and wondered if he should have his own blood pressure checked. “The kids are majoring in animal science at Tech, and they need on-the-job experience. Helping them helps us.”
“Well, I ain’t interested in baby-sitting greenhorns.”
Talking was a waste of breath when his father was this tetchy. “I’m heading over to the Double C. Keith and John will be here by nine. I’ll be back to get ’em started.”
Arguing with his father before his first cup of coffee guarandamnteed he’d start the day in a foul mood. Patrick headed for his truck and took out his frustrations on the gearshift during the short drive to the property next door.
The Double C had been a part of Crooked Creek until a decade ago when Caleb’s first wife had nearly bankrupted them. They’d been forced to sell half the ranch to keep from losing the entire spread. The new owner had opened a dude ranch which Brooke had bought right out from under their noses a few months back. And then Caleb had married her. Worse, his brother had fallen in love—an affliction Patrick planned on fighting all the way to his grave.
His newest sister-in-law had crazy ideas about operating a motivational retreat. City-slickers getting in touch with their inner souls, or some such hype. Caleb had convinced her to try running a dual operation for a year, but Patrick worried that her motivational thing would take off and she’d phase out the dude ranch.
He was probably the only one who hoped she wouldn’t decide to close the dude ranch portion of the Double C. His brother and his father preferred ranching, but for him working with the dudes was like summer camp—a little grit, but mostly fun. Each week brought new faces and a fresh crop of enthusiasm. It beat the heck out of riding drag and eating dust behind a herd of cattle. Besides, the dudes actually begged to do the dirty work. It left him feeling a little like Huck Finn when he pawned off his chores.
He glanced at his watch as he parked in the shade beside the barn. None of the crew was due until after lunch. Since the next batch of guests would arrive tomorrow, he’d have to work his tail off today. The sooner he started, the sooner he’d finish.
He stomped up the back porch stairs of the Double C homestead.
“Good morning.”
He whipped around at Leanna’s husky greeting. She lay curled in a lounge chair in the far corner of the porch with Brooke’s mangy mutt Rico at her side. With her hair mussed and hanging over her shoulders, she looked soft and sleepy. And sexy. He slammed the door on his wayward thoughts.
