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“I want to talk to you.”
“About the land?”
He didn’t answer.
“Talk to Maddie and Delia, though their answer will be the same as mine. No, this place isn’t for sale.” Even if she had no idea what they were going to do for cash. “No, no, no.”
His mouth twitched at her adamant tone. “You keep sweet-talking me like this, and I’m going to get ideas.”
“Go get ideas about Shirley.” She fairly choked on the name of his enthusiastic blond ranch hand and reminded herself she didn’t care about him. Not one little bit.
He let out a huge grin. “And jealous, too. That’s so sweet.” His voice lowered, deepened to a rich honey. “Ready to admit it, Zoe? You’re hot for me.”
“Ha!” She lifted her chin. “I’m too hot for you. Now, go home. You smell like a cowboy.”
“I am a cowboy.” His eyes glittered knowingly, as if he could see right through her facade to the secret part of her she liked to keep hidden. “And I want to talk to all three of you,” he said.
And what Ty wanted, he got. No use trying to fight it, he’d probably just toss her over his shoulder and cart her into the kitchen, where even now she could hear her sisters’ voices.
It was pointless to fight with him. So she shrugged in acquiescence and sashayed away.
Ty watched, a slow, appreciative smile crossing his face now that she had her back to him. God, she was so easy to bait, and he loved to see her flash all that fire she struggled to contain.
She was something; that compact, hot little body of hers spitting all that attitude, her wild hair falling around her shoulders. A strand slipped in her face, which she tugged at with a low sound of annoyance.
Oh yeah, she was riled up good now.
And while there were other things he might love to do to her as well as tease, Zoe Martin was off-limits. They’d both set those limits three days ago. He’d done so because, despite her innocence in the whole thing, he resented like crazy that she was holding Ben’s dream. He was far less certain why she held back from their obvious, unfortunate attraction, though he got a feeling it was because she’d been hurt and betrayed far too much in her short life. It did disturb him to watch her hide her natural sensuality and passion, especially when he knew that sensuality and passion were directed at him.
She concealed them behind a wall of indifference that exasperated him. Which was why he so enjoyed the bickering; it pulled her out of her shell and revealed the true Zoe.
But she was a weakness, one he didn’t have time for.
He’d come to a decision. One that would solve this problem once and for all. He was going to do exactly as Constance had asked. He would manage this place for them. It meant getting the ranch running from nothing. It would take money, hard work and grit, none of which he was even sure they had.
Truth was, he was banking on them not having it. As soon as they saw how much was involved, he figured the city girls would be happy to sell—to him—and head back to Los Angeles.
Nobody would get hurt; they’d go home and he would fulfill his promise to his brother. Perfect. Hoping it worked, Ty followed the tantalizing scent of food, and the equally tantalizing scent of Zoe Martin.
* * *
“Go ahead, Ty, you take that last piece.” Maddie held out the pan and smiled at him. He smiled back because it had taken her these entire three days just to feel comfortable enough to speak easily to him, and he felt relieved she’d decided to trust him.
Relieved and guilty, because he didn’t deserve their trust when he wanted them to leave so badly.
The mouth-watering aroma of melted cheese and sausage continued to call to him. But he’d had four pieces already, and he hadn’t come to eat them out of house and home.
“You know you want it,” Delia teased him.
They’d had an instant connection, he and Delia. A brother-sister connection that had them immediately bonded. And now he’d bonded with Maddie as well, their relationship was softer, more gentle than the teasing one he and Delia shared.
He wanted to resent these women, and did. But some of that resentment was fading, no matter how he struggled to hold on to it.
God, he missed Ben. He supposed that would never change. But how to keep his dream alive without hurting these women?
Maddie was a haunting beauty, with huge wide eyes that just made a man want to drown in them and offer to slay dragons. Those eyes held secrets, painful ones, and he wondered at them. Delia was tall and slender, a glamour girl. Intelligent, too, with a wicked sense of humor he got a kick out of. And in her eyes was a need to belong. Well, she belonged now, to the ranch he wanted for himself.
Then there was Zoe. She was different from her sisters, far different. He wasn’t satisfied by anything so simple as friendship, and he didn’t understand it.
“Eat,” Maddie said to him again, gesturing with the box. “You’ve lost weight.”
Zoe snorted.
He ignored Zoe and winked at Maddie. She held the pan patiently.
His stomach growled.
Oh, what the hell. He took the piece, studying the third sister, the one who didn’t easily fit into any simple category.
Did she feel the same way about him? Hard to tell since she hid everything going on inside that head behind a screen of grumpy indifference.
She wiggled uncomfortably under his scrutiny, then finally swallowed a bit of pizza before demanding, “What are you looking at?”
“You.”
She flushed, fidgeted some more, giving herself away. “why?”
He simply grinned and continued eating, undisturbed, relaxing now that he knew the truth...she was secretly crazy about him.
A comfortable silence filled the room as they ate. They were all sitting on the freshly cleaned living room floor, before a warm, crackling fire, eating picnic-style.
That they didn’t have four chairs in the kitchen wasn’t the point. The sisters just loved being together, and they were willing to share that with him—and he wanted their one and only possession for himself.
“I didn’t come to eat,” he said quietly, putting down his pizza.
“Really,” Zoe said dryly, brushing off her hands. “I never would have guessed.” Her eyes sharpened on him. “You being here wouldn’t by any chance have anything to do with you wanting this land, would it?”
Chapter 3 (#ulink_d8dda650-4cd9-5194-8290-98805f828e46)
“Zoe, be nice,” Maddie said lightly. She swiveled her head, her short, dark hair flying around her face, her dark, deep eyes warm with affection as she spoke to Ty. “She’s a bully today because that jerk at the bank in Lewiston didn’t hire her.” She looked at Zoe again and reached for her sister’s hand. “He just didn’t recognize a treasure when he found one, that’s all.”
Zoe swallowed, closed her eyes for a long heartbeat, clearly touched, and just as clearly uncomfortable with Maddie’s easy love.
Ty’s curiosity upped a notch, so did a strange sense of protectiveness. The drive to Lewiston was long and never easy in the best of times. “Why did you want a job there? It’s too far for you to drive it every day.”
Zoe recovered from Maddie’s affection in the blink of an eye and looked at him as if he were something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. “It’s funny how expensive this habit of eating is.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, Zoe,” Delia said quietly. “We’ll find a way. We’ll sell something, or get a loan.”
“Delia’s right,” Maddie insisted. “We’ll make it work together or not at all.”
Ty watched the three of them, felt their closeness as a tangible thing.
And it was, he reminded himself. These women were family. They were closer than family, for they’d chosen to be related. He’d chosen to be unrelated to the family he had left. It’d been for a good reason, that reason being survival basically, but the fact remained. He had no one.
God, he missed Ben.
Drawing in a deep breath, he realized the truth he’d only guessed at before. These women couldn’t afford to get the ranch going, but they were too stubborn to give up. They might never leave and sell him the land. There was only one thing to do.
“I came here tonight to talk to all of you,” he said. Zoe frowned, Maddie’s brow wrinkled in worry. Delia sat calmly, waiting. Typical, he thought. The pessimist, the worrier, the cool one. Already, they were worming their way into his affections. He couldn’t stand the thought of any of them being hurt.
That it was him trying to hurt them was unbearable. “I’d like to be your partner,” he said.
That was met with stunned silence.
“You’re already manager,” Zoe said suspiciously.
And how she hated that. “This would be different. I’d be an equal partner. I’d share the losses.”
“And the profits,” she pointed out.
“Well, yes.”
They all stared at him, three pairs of wide eyes, as if he’d lost his marbles.
“Hey, this is a good thing, ladies,” he said, smiling into their pensive silence. “You want a ranch. You don’t have the needed capital. I do. It would give you money to survive on until you got your stock built up through purchases and breeding.”
“Wait a minute. Did you say breeding?” Delia carefully set down her drink. “Here?”
She said breeding as if it were a four-letter word, and it made Ty laugh. Delia was a city girl, born and bred. Los Angeles was her playground. Hell, she probably did think breeding was a bad word.
Once upon a time he had felt stifled in a city, claustrophobic. Chicago was a place where one couldn’t even turn around without bumping elbows with a neighbor, and he had resented that. Ben had, too, and for as long as he could remember, Ty had wanted out.
He needed open space. Fresh air. His own land, lots of it.
What he needed was their land.
“And you have enough money just lying around that you could lend it to us,” Zoe said, with serious doubt.
“Yes.” He hadn’t gotten it by inheritance, that much was certain. His mother had been a whore, his father a career criminal. He didn’t have any relatives who would leave him a time bomb, much less something of value. He’d simply been very successful at raising and training horses, investing his profits wisely, making the most of what he’d earned.
“And how much is this going to cost us?” Zoe asked. “In say...land?”
Trust her to speak so bluntly. “I’m not going to cheat you out of anything, Zoe. Ever.”
Her eyes, the color of drenched moss in the dim light, stared at him warily, unwilling to believe, which hurt in a way he hadn’t expected.
“Well, I for one know you’d never hurt us,” Delia said gently as she scooted around the pizza to put her arm on his shoulders. She squeezed him. “We just don’t want to take your money, that’s all.”
“It wouldn’t be right,” Maddie said, smiling sweetly and patting his knee. “You keep it for yourself, Ty.”
He couldn’t believe it, but his throat actually tightened at their easy affection and trust. He hugged Delia back, and touched Maddie’s lovely face. Something about the heat warring with fear in Zoe’s eyes kept his hands off her, for she wasn’t as simple to show easy affection to as her sisters.
But he wanted to touch her; the need shocked him. “I can help,” he said instead. “You expected this place to be up and running.”
“But, Ty, we hadn’t decided that we were definitely going to...breed,” Delia pointed out.
Ty had spent every summer since he was ten on a series of ranches in “the country,” really just a suburb of Chicago. At first he’d been sent there by the city officials because no one had wanted the trouble-causing boy he’d been. He’d been worked hard, and he had grown to love every minute of it, while still pretending to hate it.
Then later he’d gone willingly, taking Ben, feeling more at home in the great outdoors than anywhere else. He loved horses, loved all animals, and had begged, borrowed and practically stolen to make Ben’s fantasy of ranching come true.
It had to be in one’s blood to make this hard living work. And if it wasn’t in these women’s blood, they’d go away and he would buy the land. Then they’d all win.
“Let me get this straight.” Zoe studied him carefully. “You want to be involved as a partner, not just to manage, but to own a part of it.”
“Yep.”
“You want to control it.”
Her mistrust was palpable, and he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to her to make her this way. “I wouldn’t even attempt to control you, Zoe,” he said softly, everything else fading away but this woman with the bcautiful and so-unsure eyes. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You couldn’t, anyway,” she said, lifting her chin.
“It snows here in the wintertime,” Delia said shakily.
“Quite a bit,” Ty told her.
“If we had a bunch of animals here, we wouldn’t be able to head south for warmer weather.”
“You’ll love cross-country skiing. I’ll teach you,” Ty said, shocked to discover he meant it. But they were leaving soon. He was counting on it, he reminded himself.
“Oh Lord,” Delia murmured, rubbing her head. “It just hit me. The wilds. We’re really living in the wilds.”
“Eighty-three thousand square miles of wonder,” he confirmed. “That’s Idaho. There’s no place more wild in the U.S., except for maybe Alaska.”
Delia moaned.
“Well, it’s not like we’re camping,” Maddie pointed out in her quiet, infinite wisdom. “You have electricity for your hair dryer, Delia. A tub for your bubble bath.”
Zoe let loose enough to laugh, the sound unexpectedly light and happy. Her tense face transposed, softened...and took Ty’s breath away. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Skiing,” Zoe murmured a bit dreamily. “I’ve always wanted to try it.”
The yearning in her voice tugged at him. “You’re in, Slim?”
He knew what the stakes were for her; Delia had told him. After years of going to college at night while working full-time during the day, Zoe had finally gotten her business degree. Would she be happy running a ranch when a cool, easy living was all she’d ever wanted?
“And you’re going to stick with us?” she wondered. “No matter what?”
