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Cait remained silent, so Merry decided to tell her a story. “Princess. What a perfect name for your pretty kitty. My kitty’s name is Bonita. I’ve had Bonita since I was a little girl. Do you want to know a secret, Cait?” Merry could see a hint of interest in the girl’s eyes. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I told Bonita all my secrets. I bet you tell all yours to Princess.”
Merry could have sworn that Cait gave a slight nod. She didn’t know if she did that regularly or not, but it made Merry feel good.
She turned to Buck to see if he’d noticed Cait’s small reaction to her. He gave a slight nod and a wink indicating that he had. For some reason, that made her feel even better.
“Buck?” Karen motioned for Buck to come over to her bedside. She put her hands around his neck as if she were choking him, and said, “Get out of here, you big lummox, so I can get some sleep.”
When he bent over her bed, she hugged him. “Really, Buck. Take Merry and Cait home. Merry’s dead on her feet, Cait is tired and so are you. There’s nothing either of you can do here.”
“I’ll call Louise and tell her what happened,” Buck said. “And then I’ll try to find Ty. One of his buddies will know which jail he’s in this time.”
Karen yawned. “He’s up at the line shack and you know it. And make sure Lou doesn’t come home. She needs to take her bar exam.”
“She’d better pass so she can get a job and finally earn her own keep. I’m not supporting her any longer.” His voice was gruff, but his eyes twinkled.
The ride back to the ranch was quiet. Cait slept sandwiched between Merry and Buck. Even in sleep, she was guarded. Her head didn’t lean any farther to the left, because if it did, it would have rested on her father’s arm. Nor did she lean to the right, as Merry was there, a stranger she only knew from TV.
Merry wanted to know what had happened between Buck and his daughter to make the little girl shun his affection. Could Cait still be that traumatized because her mother had left her? Maybe it was because Buck had thrown himself into his work and ignored her at a critical time in her young life.
Merry supposed it was possible that both of these things could have made Cait withdraw.
It was obvious that Buck loved his daughter, but he seemed frustrated as to what to do at this point.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Buck gently take Cait’s little hand and hold it. Merry blinked back tears. At least when the girl was sleeping, she didn’t pull away from him.
Merry’s own eyes wouldn’t stay open, and she felt herself floating into sleep. Her head was so heavy, she couldn’t help but lean the side of her face against the cold pane of the truck’s window.
She let herself drift off, just a little.
“Hey, Meredith Something Turner, wake up,” whispered a deep voice. “We’re here.”
“This isn’t Boston,” she mumbled, trying to get the cobwebs out of her brain.
“Far from it.”
Rubbing her eyes, she noticed that the passenger’s side door was open, and Buck held his daughter and the stuffed cat—Princess—in his arms.
Then she remembered. She was at the Porter ranch.
She scrambled out of the tall pickup, shut the door and followed unsteadily behind him, more than a little sleep-drunk.
“Would you mind opening the door? The key’s under the third flowerpot from the right.”
Merry found the key and was unlocking the door when she heard Buck humming a soft tune. She stole a glance at the big cowboy, swaying slowly, studying his daughter, who was sleeping peacefully in his arms.
By the light of the moon, she could see the love on his face. Yet bone-deep sadness was visible in the tightness around his mouth. His daughter couldn’t—or wouldn’t—return his love.
He met her gaze as she held the door open for him to enter the house.
When he was halfway down the hallway with Cait in his arms, he asked, “Is there anything you need?”
“No. I’m fine. You just take care of Cait.”
He shifted his daughter’s weight. Cait gave a little sound but never woke. “Cait has been sleeping in here because her room is being painted. We were going to move her to Karen’s room when you arrived, but her room isn’t done yet, either. The painters just need one more day so they can finish up. Then we can get everything back to normal.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what Karen had in mind for sleeping arrangements for Cait tonight. The two of them were sharing my bed. Every other room is cluttered with furniture and smelling of paint. I could put Cait on the couch in the living room.”
“Don’t you dare put her on the couch. If anyone goes on the couch, it’ll be me. Cait can have the tree bed.” She remembered that Buck had moved out of his room. “I could take the futon, that’s perfectly fine with me. But I don’t want Cait waking up, seeing me, and being scared. I’m really a stranger to her.”
“Everyone’s a stranger to her,” he whispered.
Merry followed Buck into her room. She flung back the linens of the tree bed. “She must be getting heavy.”
“Never.”
He set his daughter down gently, her head on the pillow. He took off her shoes and set them on the floor. Then he placed the stuffed cat next to her. He moved the sheet, blanket and comforter over Cait and gently brushed her hair from her face. He kissed her softly on the forehead. “G’night, Caitie. May your dreams be as sweet as you.”
How beautiful, Merry thought. How loving. If just once her mother or father had said something like that to her, but they never had. She’d gotten all her kind words from Pamela, the housekeeper.
He stood, looking at his daughter for a while, and then turned as if suddenly remembering that Merry was there.
“I should get you settled.” He looked around the room. “Where did Karen put the linens for the futon? They’re probably in the closet in the bathroom.”
He suddenly looked tired.
“I can handle it.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“Buck, are you sure I shouldn’t sleep on the couch? If she wakes up and I’m here—”
“Hard to tell what Cait will do. She seems to tolerate you more than some,” he said. “She knows you from TV, so you’re not a complete stranger. I’m sure she’ll be okay, but it’s late, so if you don’t mind for one night…”
“No. Not at all.”
For what seemed like an eternity, he stared at Merry. “You know, if you’re scared to be alone, I can sleep here, too.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I meant that I’ll take the couch in the living room,” he added, and grinned. “But really, there’s nothing to be afraid of. There hasn’t been a snake or a burro in the house in…” He looked at his watch. “In at least two hours. But let me get my rifle, and I’ll have a look under the futon for you.”
Terror struck deep into her bones. Snakes? But even in the dim light, she saw the twinkle in his eyes, and she knew she was being teased.
“Buck, you don’t have to sleep on the couch. You can go to the…um…” She couldn’t think of the word that Karen had used earlier. “Barracks?”
“Bunkhouse.”
“Yes. Go ahead. We’ll be all right.”
He tweaked the brim of his hat and walked out of the room. In the doorway, he paused and looked back. “Thanks again…for everything,” he said, but didn’t leave. “Um…Cait might have a nightmare. I just wanted you to be aware of that.”
With that, he was gone.
A nightmare. Terrific.
She could make an eight-course meal for a party of fifty. She could decorate a three-thousand-room hotel and casino. She could write bestselling cookbooks, change the Porter’s home into a successful dude ranch like they’d asked her to do, but she knew nothing about children.
Meredith Turner had never been a child herself.
The windows of the room stared back at her like huge, blank eyes. She undressed in the bathroom.
Even though Buck had been teasing her about snakes, she hated to have her fears thrown in her face. She hated to show one chink in her armor. Her competitors would like nothing better than to find something on her, something past or present that they could zero in on.
She was supposed to be the perfect woman, the perfect hostess, the perfect cook and homemaker.
Meredith Bingham Turner, Miss Hospitality.
If she believed her own hype, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.
She found a sheet, blanket and pillow in the linen closet in the bathroom, and began to make up the futon.
Listening to Caitlin’s gentle breathing, she wondered again what demons had a hold of the sweet little girl.
Merry knew about demons. She was a personal failure, in spite of her business success. Men wooed her, then they used her for her clout or for her bank account, or both, so it was impossible to know whom she could trust.
She couldn’t get a compliment from her parents even if she received every award known to humankind. She needed to get better control over her company, and she needed a break from men. Her one true friend was in the hospital, and Merry had a gut feeling that Bucklin Floyd Porter and his daughter were going to test her mettle.
So no matter how handsome he was, no matter how delicious he looked in jeans, no matter how sweet he was to his daughter or how his deep voice made her think of moonlit nights and satin sheets, the last thing she needed was to get involved with him or Cait.
Then again, he hadn’t asked her to get involved. She was just here to do a job. And that was a good thing because she had nothing else to give anyone.
Chapter Four
Buck shook out the folded serape and picked out a couple of pillows that were positioned on the furniture.
He’d decided to sleep on the couch after all, just in case Cait had her usual nightmare. He wanted to be nearby. Karen usually handled nightmare detail, since his presence sometimes made things worse, but Meredith shouldn’t have to deal with it.
He also didn’t blame her if she didn’t exactly feel safe. After all, she was a city girl who didn’t know her way around a ranch or the desert.
With her big green eyes, shiny blond hair and designer everything, Meredith was a tenderfoot and totally out of her element. It wouldn’t be long before she was gone, and that was fine with him. Although he appreciated her help with Karen’s illness, and her attempt to be nice to Cait, he didn’t want her changing his ranch—his life—around.
Until he could put her back on a plane and get the time to work on his furniture—his plan to save the ranch from bankruptcy—he’d keep an eye on her, for his sister’s sake.
He supposed he owed Merry a debt of gratitude for coming to help. It wasn’t her fault that the ranch was going under. He’d tried like hell, but he couldn’t turn a profit. There had been too many unforeseen expenses after his parents had died. Because he’d wanted his brother and sisters to go to college, he did what he had to. He refinanced and took out loans. Because he wanted Caitlin to go to the best psychiatrists around, he took out more loans.
At this point in time, the Rattlesnake Ranch needed to diversify and not depend only on cattle. He’d hit the area banks and applied for more loans so he could buy a couple of bulls with a good track record that he could breed to some of his more outstanding cows. He also wanted to buy a half-dozen good bucking horses and some basic breeding equipment that he needed to get started. All his applications were denied. Bank after bank told him that he had too big of a debt load already.
Karen, Louise and Ty had insisted that something serious had to be done. Hell, Buck always thought that, too, which was why he wanted to get into rodeo-stock contracting.
Then Karen suggested the dude ranch thing, saying that the profits could go into paying off all the loans first. Then he could develop the rodeo-stock part of the operation.
That might happen if he lived long enough, but it wouldn’t happen in the year that he said he’d give them to make the dude ranch a success.
Already he couldn’t stand the thought of strangers living in his house. The ranch meant everything to him, much more than it did to his brother and sisters. Karen wanted her own nursery and flower shop in town. Louise had set her sights on being a corporate lawyer. Ty—well, Ty didn’t know what he wanted yet, but he definitely didn’t want to be stuck on the Rattlesnake much longer. Ty liked to roam.
Buck wanted to buy them out, and he was pretty sure they’d all want to sell. They just didn’t have the love of the land that he had. He knew that they were only sticking around because they felt that they owed him.
But they didn’t owe him anything. After the car accident in Florida that killed his parents, he just did what he had to do, plain and simple, and was glad to do it.
He’d been in the Army and assigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, when he was called into the chaplain’s office and told that his parents had died. It had been his folks who’d encouraged him to take some time off from the ranch and see the world after he graduated, and when the Army recruiter came to his high school, he’d thought it was the perfect answer. He could see the world and serve his country while doing so. Mostly, though, all he ended up seeing was Fort Benning for a year as an assistant to the captain of Human Resources.
He’d received a hardship discharge from the Army and came home to take care of his brother and two sisters, even sending them all to college, just like his folks would have wanted. Now, to save the ranch, he’d had to go along with his siblings. He hated to do it, but his gallery sale wasn’t scheduled until six months down the road. He’d tried to stall things until then but was overruled, and the wheels started moving even before Karen had placed that call to Meredith. His sisters and Ty didn’t want to wait until the sale.
“Why bet against a sure thing?” Karen had asked.
The Rattlesnake Ranch was going to become the Rattlesnake Dude Ranch, and Buck was powerless to halt things at this point.
Porters had ranched this land since after the Civil War. He’d die before he sold to that lunatic Russ Pardee, who made him periodic lowball offers. Pardee probably already knew that a Southwest developer, the Jace Corporation, was interested in making a golf course and condos for the rich out of a chunk of the Rattlesnake, and he no doubt planned to turn Buck’s land over to them for a fat profit.
In the dim light, Buck scanned the family room. Everything in it held special memories for him. He remembered his mother painting all the pictures that were displayed. There was Ty riding his first horse. Louise, with her red hair flying, running barrels. Buck, his dad and Gramps fishing by the river. Karen potting flowers.
He remembered helping his dad put in the beehive fireplace around which the family gathered every night. Blankets, rugs and pottery made by their Pima Indian friends were displayed through the house.
He had to give Karen a lot of credit for playing the Meredith Turner trump card. He should be grateful that there was a way out, but he was going to be the laughing stock of Arizona when he opened his ranch to dudes. Russ Pardee would see to that.
Damn. His brain was going in circles. He wanted to get rid of Meredith so the dang-blasted dude ranch wouldn’t be a success, but that would be like kicking himself in the ass.
He needed to shut down and get some sleep, but he was finding that harder and harder to do with everything on his mind.
Now he had Karen to worry about. He wondered how his sister was doing over at the hospital. She’d looked so sick and pale. He knew she’d be okay after her surgery, but he hated for her to have to suffer all that pain. He said a quick prayer for her, tried to get comfortable on the couch, closed his eyes and hoped that sleep would come.
Merry awoke to the neighing of horses instead of the sound of honking traffic. She couldn’t remember where she was, but twisted tree branches were over her head.
Burrowed into her side on the bed was a little girl with light blond hair. Caitlin.
Cait had had a bad dream during the night, just as Buck had said she might. She’d been crying and whimpering in her sleep, and Merry remembered getting up and putting her arms around her. Then she’d lain down next to Cait in the tree bed.
Merry had pushed back Cait’s sweat-soaked hair, and in the girl’s sleepy state, she’d mumbled, “Mommy, why don’t you love me?”
Merry felt the tears stinging her own eyes. She remembered thinking the same thing when she was Cait’s age.
After Cait was quiet, Merry got up to go back to the futon. Then the girl had said, “Mommy, don’t go.”
Merry looked at the sleeping child. She had Buck’s jaw and maybe his nose. She definitely didn’t have his thick black hair. She wondered about Debbie, Buck’s wife. There weren’t any pictures of her in the house, and Karen hardly spoke of her.
Merry decided to get up and start breakfast. Carefully, she moved away from Cait so as not to wake her.
On her way to the kitchen, Merry stopped, startled by the sound of soft snoring. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the massive form of Buck sleeping on the couch in the living room. His chest was bare and broad with just a hint of black hair. A blanket was draped—barely—across his middle and over one leg, but his other leg was exposed from his thigh on down.
Her fingers itched to touch the hard muscles of his chest and arms. She wanted to trace a path with the palm of her hand down his tight stomach and let it linger. Instead, she tucked her hands into the satin-lined pockets of her khaki pants and forced herself to steady her breathing, then she hurried to the kitchen.
