скачать книгу бесплатно
Dust settled on the stretch of dirt road she’d just driven in on from the highway. The driveway bisected golden fields of…what? No clue. Amber waves of grain. But what kind of grain? One of the things she’d have to find out. What was it and how much profit did they make on it? Or did they feed it to animals, an expense they could claim?
Meadows of green and gold stretched as far as she could see, changing into rolling hills on the horizon.
Above it all, white puffs of cotton candy dotted the huge bowl of brilliant blue that earned Montana the moniker Big Sky.
She sucked in a breath. “Beautiful.” She listened to the gentle breeze carrying the distant sounds of children’s laughter and her heartbeat slowed, her shoulders relaxed. Calmness crept through her.
A sigh slipped from her lips.
Not fifty yards away, a flock of birds waddled through the grass, older birds leading the flock and young furry chicks following behind. Ducks? Geese? She didn’t know the difference.
She was out of her element here. Once a city girl, always a city girl.
The ranch house stood wide, white and placid in the late morning sun. Blue shutters framed windows on the second floor, flower boxes brightened windowsills with yellow pansies. Wicker chairs on the veranda beckoned. Come and rest a spell, put up your feet, unburden your weary shoulders. Welcome.
Pretty. She’d expected something rugged, made with logs and adobe or whatever materials people used in the country.
She stepped onto the veranda and heard a cacophony of children’s voices approach from the side of the house. A big man with kids dangling from his back, arms and legs rounded the corner of the house. Muscles on top of muscles bulged in his denim shirt and jeans.
Amy smiled. This must be Hank Shelter. Leila said her brother always had children hanging on to him. Amy hadn’t known she’d been speaking literally. She counted five children clinging to the man.
Hank leaned down to talk to the two sitting on his feet. “You kids are comin’ in for lunch whether you want to or not.” His voice, as rough as cowboy boots shuffling on gravel, sent sexy shivers running through Amy.
She rubbed goose bumps from her arms.
The kids answered Hank in varied chirps, “No, Hank, not yet.”
“We want one more ride around the house.”
“Now kids, we’ve been around this veranda three times already this mornin’ and old Hank ain’t gettin’ any younger. I gotta wet my whistle and fill my grumblin’ belly.”
Amy rolled her eyes. Corny. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
The man looked up from under the brim of a dusty white cowboy hat. Eyes that shone with the warmth of aged scotch widened when he saw her.
His average-looking face—large nose and strong jaw—would never grace a magazine cover, but a face as bracketed by creases as Hank’s was spoke of character.
He snatched the hat from his head, exposing a thick mass of glorious brown hair. One streak of caramel ran across the top of his head from a widow’s peak.
Then he smiled and Amy’s breath caught. The world was suddenly a brighter place. Good thing he lived under the open Big Sky. He’d eclipse the sun in any other state.
Warmth and sincerity shone from his broad white smile and she felt an answering smile creep across her mouth.
His hazelnut and whiskey eyes sparkled. My, my. With only a handful of grins, this man could chase the devil out of a witch’s den and have the old crones eating out of his hand.
Crones? Where had that come from? It certainly wasn’t a word she ever used in the city. She’d been on the ranch less than five minutes and already she was relaxing into a different lingo.
Amy’s hands itched to trim Hank’s ragged mustache. Don’t hide a smile so beautiful. Flaunt it.
Hank Shelter, aren’t you a surprise?
One little girl let go of his biceps to wrap her arms around his waist. “I love you, Hank.” She gazed up at him with adoring blue eyes.
“Thank you, darlin’,” he answered. “A man needs to hear that every so often from a beautiful woman.” He rubbed his hand across the child’s neck with such tenderness that Amy felt a longing rise in her.
Do that to me.
The young girl giggled and hid her face against his shirt.
When Hank removed his big hand from the back of the child’s head, Amy gasped.
From beneath the girl’s baseball cap, a bare skull peeked out above a baby-chick neck. A cancer survivor.
Her brief moment of peace shattered. Amy rubbed her chest.
She’d known that the Sheltering Arms ranch took in poor, inner-city kids who were recovering from cancer, and she thought she’d prepared herself for them.
So wrong.
They all wore ball caps with no hair peeking out below. Nothing but more of those delicate bare necks.
The hands Amy wiped on her thighs shook.
The girl turned her face toward Amy. Sallow skin, dark circles under her eyes, thin to the point of pain.
Gulping deep breaths, Amy washed herself with icy aloofness. Rise above it. Come on, you can do it.
She turned away and stared hard at the fields, digging deep for strength.
Amy’s glance returned to the children against her will, like a tongue probing a sore tooth to see whether pain lingered.
It did.
A boy sitting on Hank’s foot pointed to her and asked, “Who is she, Hank?”
HANK’S TONGUE stuck to the roof of his mouth. What was this curvy female, the most beautiful one he’d ever seen, doing on his ranch?
Blond hair. Green eyes. Perfect body. Made a man want to…what? Where were his treasured words when he needed them?
“Exquisite,” he whispered. His favorite word. Damn. Hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
For a second, he thought she might be mother to one of the children, but he’d met them all in the city a few weeks ago.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” He tried to clear the battery acid out of his voice.
“Are you Hank Shelter?” she asked and her voice washed over him like a Chinook melting February snow. Awareness hummed along his nerve endings.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.” Nerves—or the kid clinging to his throat—made him sound rougher than usual.
“I’m Amy Graves, Leila’s friend. How do you do, Mr. Shelter?” She extended her right hand toward him.
Leila’s friend? “You’re the accountant?”
Leila was in her early fifties. Amy didn’t look a day over thirty. Didn’t that just knock the wind out of him?
He realized his mouth was hanging open and he clamped it shut.
His fingers tingled and his heart pounded. Slow down, he warned his treacherous libido.
His body wanted to jump a few fences, but his heart balked at the gates.
He set down the two girls hanging from his right arm, then wrapped his fingers around Amy’s hand. It nestled as soft as a calf’s ear in his big-galoot palm and started long-forgotten urges. He dropped it like a hot cow pie.
He cleared his throat. “Ma’am, if you’ll give me your keys, the kids and I will get your luggage.”
The woman nodded.
She’s fragile these days.
She looked fit, but he understood what Leila meant about the fragility. Emotional, maybe.
Take care of her.
Uh-uh. No can do. He set his jaw hard enough to hear his teeth grind.
He walked away from her to get her bags, the children following him like a line of baby ducks.
He opened the trunk of her car and pulled out a suitcase and an overnight bag. There was one more bag, supple brown leather with a brass closure. A laptop. Right, common sense reminded him. She’s here to work, on the books.
Too bad, his libido whispered.
Use every trick in the book to get rid of her, his common sense answered. He needed an attraction to the woman who was here to look at his books like he needed a root canal. Not.
He planned to have her hightailing it back to the city by tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER TWO
AMY ENTERED the house and let the screen door butt her back. Her lungs wouldn’t expand enough for the air she needed. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea. Sure, she needed to face her fears of illness and dying, but spending time with these children was definitely trial by fire.
She had to do this. Simply had to.
She ran a hand over her face, pulling herself under control. The darkness and cinnamon scent of the foyer helped.
Hank entered the house behind her.
“Kids,” he said to the children following on his heels, “go wash up. Hannah should have lunch on the table any minute.”
They ran down the hall to a room at the far end. Seconds later, someone had the water running.
“That bathroom is across the hall from your bedroom,” Hank said. “It’ll be your own early mornings and late evenings. The rest of the time, the kids have to use it.” He shrugged his apology.
The lemon and soap scent of him drifted by her. Too nice. Her nerves went on high alert. She was here to test herself with the children. Being attracted—okay, very attracted—to Leila’s brother was not in the plan.
Amy followed Hank down the hallway, past a wide staircase leading to the second floor on one side and a closed door on the other. Pastoral landscapes dotted the walls, with not a single abstract in sight. He entered a room at the back of the house, the last one opposite the bathroom the kids were using.
Hank set one of her suitcases onto the floor and the other onto its side on the bed.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get those kids settled down for lunch. Join us when you finish freshening up.”
No. She needed to take exposure to those kids in baby steps.
“I’d like to go straight to the office,” she replied. “I’m not hungry.”
Her traitorous stomach chose that moment to grumble.
Hank’s smile looked smug. “That door leads to the kitchen, where you’ll find our housekeeper, Hannah.” He pointed behind himself. “The one down the hall is the dining room.”
The children ran down the hall away from the bathroom.
“You can’t miss it,” Hank continued. “Just follow the sound of those kids. They make enough noise to rouse the dead.”
Amy flinched away from that image.
She put on a smile but knew it didn’t reach her eyes. The psychic pain she’d been carrying for two years wouldn’t quit.
“Dolorous,” Hank whispered, then his gaze flew away from hers.
He backed out of the bedroom, bumping into a small table. He caught a vase of lilacs before it fell but not before water sloshed onto his hand. His shoulder bumped into the door frame when he stepped through it. With the vase still in his grasp, he disappeared into the hall.
Well, he couldn’t be more different from Leila than chocolate from vanilla. Hard to believe they were related. Hank must be fifteen, sixteen years younger than Leila. Funny. Was Hank a late baby? A midlife surprise for his mother?
No, wait. Leila had mentioned that her mother had died when she was young and her father had remarried. Maybe the second wife was a much younger woman.
Hank had whispered one word on the verandah—exquisite. A smile tugged at her lips, the first genuine one she’d felt in ages. She’d pretended not to hear, but it did her soul good that a man found her attractive. Especially these days.
The smile fell from her face.
It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing is going to happen here.
She stepped into the hallway and walked toward the dining room. The vase of flowers from her bedroom sat in a puddle on the hallway floor beside the open dining room door.
The suspicion that Hank was a bit of a bumbling gentle giant eased her low mood.
She entered a room swollen with sound. Hank sat at the far end of the table and an older gentleman, who matched Leila’s description of the foreman, Willie, sat at the near end. A couple of teenagers sat on one side of the table. Camp counselors? The young children filled in the remaining places, save one. Baseball caps hung from the backs of their chairs. She paused, arrested by the sight of all those bare heads lining the table, too vulnerable in their white roundness, like a nest full of goslings.
She bit her lip.
THERE OUGHT TO BE a law against a woman looking so sweet and beautiful, yet having the potential to be so much trouble. Hank shifted in his seat and watched the accountant walk to the chair beside Willie’s, worrying her pretty bottom lip with her teeth.
