Cowboys Do It Best
Eileen Wilks
WHAT EXACTLY DO COWBOYS DO BEST? Seduction. Chase McGuire knew he shouldn't seduce his new, pretty boss lady. But he wanted Summer Callahan in the worst way. Wanted to show her what his work-roughened hands would feel like, as they rolled in the prickly hay in the barn, tangled in the cool sheets in his bed…EVERYTHING, HONEY!No man had ever made Summer feel the way Chase did. But she was a forever kind of woman and he was a wandering man who'd never commit to one place or one woman. Could Summer take a sultry, torrid affair and turn it into happily-ever-after?
“I Don’t Want This,” (#uc6493bcc-fbcc-5beb-8dea-c44305608821)Letter to Reader (#u3b722860-d4c6-5de0-a21e-83eea127854f)Title Page (#uc9977a14-2847-5f3f-a0d3-9c5a06329c51)About the Author (#ubd68970e-79cf-5c7a-adf7-0e1f6cbf6c28)Dedication (#ub965a565-a45e-5b60-bdcd-ac9c8b0e5154)Chapter One (#ue559b056-f365-54c1-a6eb-e909e50487f4)Chapter Two (#u060c8102-7beb-5ed8-82d7-e84a6d767291)Chapter Three (#u03f47553-7350-5684-881e-dff5ef898c47)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I Don’t Want This,”
Summer said breathlessly.
“I don’t suppose it matters much whether you want it to happen or not,” Chase said, looking down at her with no smile at all on his face. “Sooner or later we’ll be lovers, Summer.”
“I’m not one of your easy-come, easy-go women.” She felt each throb of her heart as passion and panic combined to thicken her blood.
“No, you sure aren’t, are you? You’re no more what I ought to want than I’m what you should want, but the only way you can keep me from having you, Summer, is to fire me—now. Are you going to do that?”
She looked at him and said nothing.
“I didn’t think so,” he said softly. “I’ll give you a little time, boss lady, to get used to the idea. But not much.”
Dear Reader,
The celebration of Silhouette Desire’s 15th anniversary continues this month! First, there’s a wonderful treat in store for you as Ann Major continues her fantastic CHILDREN OF DESTINY series with November’s MAN OF THE MONTH, Nobody’s Child. Not only is this the latest volume in this popular miniseries, but Ann will have a Silhouette Single Title, also part of CHILDREN OF DESTINY, in February 1998, called Secret Child. Don’t miss either one of these unforgettable love stories.
BJ James’s popular BLACK WATCH series also continues with Journey’s End the latest installment in the stories of the men—and the women—of the secret agency. This wonderful lineup is completed with delicious love stories by Lass Small, Susan Crosby, Eileen Wilks and Shawna Delacorte. And next month, look for six more Silhouette Desire books, including a MAN OF THE MONTH by Dixie Browning!
Desire...it’s the name you can trust for dramatic, sensuous, engrossing stories written by your bestselling favorites and terrific newcomers. We guarantee handsome heroes, likable heroines...and happily-ever-after endings. So read, and enjoy!
Senior Editor
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Cowboys do it Best
Eileen Wilks
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
EILEEN WILKS
is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage, raising two kids and innumerable dogs and cats along the way. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.
Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she tried everything from drafting to a brief stint as a ranch hand—raising two children and any number of cats and dogs along the way. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home.
This book is for my daughter Katie, whose “horse sense” was as necessary to my story as her patience with her distracted mother has been to my writing. Thanks, Katie.
One
Three days after leaving Birds’ Eye, Wyoming, Chase McGuire killed his truck. It died when he was twenty miles outside of San Antonio, and still 277 miles from his new job on an offshore drilling rig.
Built like the rodeo champion he’d been until last year, and dressed like the cowboy he still was, Chase had a livedin sort of face that looked a bit older than its thirty-two years. His collection of smile lines said he was accustomed to the tricks life got up to from time to time, and generally took them in stride.
He wasn’t smiling now.
Chase stood with the hood up on his three-year-old pickup truck and stared at his engine, so blasted disgusted with himself he could hardly see straight. The air stank of hot metal and burned oil. Chase didn’t need the smell, though, or the sight of his oil-free dipstick to tell him he’d messed up royally this time. When the gentle tap-tap-tap that had worried him for the last few miles suddenly mutated into a loud clang-clang-clang just before he coasted off onto the shoulder, he’d known all too well what was wrong.
It was a clear case of negligent homicide. His dash instruments had gone out about fifty miles back. A fuse, he’d thought, and hadn’t stopped. He was due in Port Arthur that evening and still had a lot of miles to cover. Maybe he should have gotten an earlier start this morning, but Fannie had been mighty persuasive about lingering. What kind of gentleman would turn down a request from the lady who’d been kind enough to put a weary traveler up for the night?
Especially when his hostess was built the way Fannie was.
He hadn’t figured he’d have any trouble making the time up. Of course, he hadn’t counted on some unknown road hazard puncturing his radiator during the fifty miles after his instrument panel went dark. He’d lost all his water and coolant and burned up his fuel pump, followed pretty damn fast by his motor.
Chase slammed the hood closed and walked back to the cab. He climbed up, grabbed his keys and the duffel bag that sat on the seat. He started to get out, but the sun catcher that hung from his rearview mirror caught his eye.
A friend had given him the little stained glass rainbow years ago, back when Chase left college to go on the pro rodeo circuit full-time. She’d told him he was chasing rainbows.
Chase hadn’t argued. Sure, rainbows were mostly illusion—a trick of light and moisture that fooled you into thinking you saw a bit of magic. But a man needed a rainbow or two to follow. He’d hung that sun catcher on his rearview mirror and followed it through thirty states, mailing his trophies and buckles back to his brother to keep for him.
Until last year. Fifteen months ago, to be exact.
Chase slipped the rainbow’s chain free from the mirror. He stuck it in the pocket on the duffel, stepped down from the cab and looked up and down the quiet country road.
Back the way he’d come lay the interstate. Chase preferred a more wandering sort of road, a road with more personality, some surprises along the way.
No, he couldn’t think of any reason to backtrack. The way he’d been headed, now, there were a dozen little towns spotting the countryside around San Antonio, clustered up as close and friendly as freckles on a redhead. Most of those tiny towns had a split identity these days, divided between their rural upbringing and their newer function as bedroom communities for the growing city at their center. There was bound to be one of those freckle-sized towns up the road a ways. He’d just walk until he came to it, or until someone took pity on his feet and gave him a lift.
Not that he had any idea in hell what he’d do when he got wherever he was going. He probably had enough cash on him for a tune-up. Not a new engine.
Chase put his good hat on his head and left the old one locked up in the truck, slung his tote over his shoulder and set off down the two-lane road.
He limped. He ignored that, just like he’d been doing for the past fifteen months.
The air was crisp, but hardly January cold. San Antonio was pretty far south, so far that the grass was still green. Good walking weather, he told himself.
Yeah, this was one of life’s better jokes, all right, he thought as his feet put a low hill between him and his pickup. A real zinger. Not that he was crazy about working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He’d done enough roughnecking from time to time, filling in between rodeos when he was starting out, to know what the work was like. But he needed something. A goal. Some kind of direction to aim at. He didn’t know exactly what he needed, but he sure as hell had to find out.
Chase had always played hard. Before he started shaving he’d understood that the only way to deal with life was to enjoy every moment you can and not take anything too seriously, because sure as anything, once you let something or someone matter too much, life pulled the rug out from under you. But ever since he’d left the circuit, he’d been playing too hard. Drinking too much and working too little. He’d started a slide down a smooth, steep shaft that led exactly nowhere.
When he woke up one morning with chunks of the night before missing, as well as most of the paycheck from his current two-bit job, he’d scared himself badly enough to take the job a friend of a friend offered him in Port Arthur.
Only now he wasn’t going to make it to Port Arthur.
Chase’s mouth drew into an unaccustomedly grim line. He’d just have to get himself straightened out some other way. He settled his tote on his other shoulder to get the weight off the side with the bad knee.
It took Chase less than a mile to decide that the road just didn’t look the same when you were hoofing it in cowboy boots with a burn knee.
Things could be worse, he told himself as he paused to stand, hip shot and thumb out, on the side of the highway as a big semi rumbled toward him. He could’ve broken down along one of those hundred-miles-of-nothing stretches back in Wyoming with freezing temperatures and snow for company. Around here, though, it wouldn’t be long before someone...
The semi thundered past in a rush of hot wind. Chase sighed, tugged down his hat and started walking again.
Not much traffic along this highway at one-fifteen in the afternoon.
Five minutes later, when the woman in the battered blue pickup slowed and pulled over, Chase knew his luck had finally taken a turn for the better. The woman who leaned out the window had thick arms, left bare in spite of the chilly air, with a rose tattoo on the left forearm.
She was the best thing Chase had seen all day.
As soon as the truck stopped, Chase started toward it at something like a trot in spite of his knee. A grin broke out across his face. “Hey, Rosie!” he yelled. “Have you finally decided to get rid of your old man and give me a try?”
The truck door opened, and a big woman leaned out. Her long ponytail was as red as Lady Clairol could make it, and the smile on her face puffed her cheeks out into twin moons. Her voice was as clear and pure as a church bell. “Chase McGuire, you idiot, what are you doing in Texas? Haven’t we passed a law against you or something? Come on, get in the truck, you fool.”
“That’s my Rosie,” Chase said, grinning like the fool she’d called him. He slung his tote in the back and climbed into the truck driven by the wife of an old rodeo buddy. “I can’t believe it. What are you doing around here? I thought you and Will had settled up in Oklahoma after he retired.”
“His ma isn’t doing so well. We packed up Joe—he’s the only one of the kids still at home—and came down to live with her last fall,” Rosie said, putting the gearshift through its paces with all the ease of a professional truck driver—which she had been, years ago. “She runs a couple hundred head just north of here and lives in Bita Creek. That’s Bita Creek you see dead ahead,” she added.
They were headed downhill at a steady seventy miles an hour toward a scattering of houses and buildings and trees—one of those freckle-sized towns Chase had counted on being nearby. He sorted through his recollections of Will Stafford, a man who’d been one of the best rodeo clowns in the business until stiffening joints and slowed reflexes made him retire. “I thought Will didn’t get along with his mom.”
“He don’t. And the old bat still hates my guts, too,” Rosie said cheerfully, slowing as they encountered the bar and gas station that signaled the outskirts of Bita Creek. “But what are you gonna do? She’s family.”
Chase nodded. He knew what she meant. If your family needed help, you helped. That’s all there was to it. Chase, of course, didn’t really need help. He was in a temporary bind, that was all. He could straighten this out just fine on his own, without calling Mike. Chase knew exactly how his big brother would react if he knew about Chase’s money problems.
No, Chase definitely wasn’t going to call on his family for help right now.
“You could’a knocked me down with a feather when I saw you strolling along the side of the road. What’s up? That your truck I saw broke down a couple miles back?”
Chase gave her a quick rundown of his recent past. He was good at making a story out of the banana peels life slipped under his feet, and Rosie laughed until she was wiping tears from her eyes. “Lordy,” she said, “you are one unlucky bastard, aren’t you? But don’t worry. Will knows lots of folks hereabouts, and anyone he don’t know, his ma does. He’ll find you some sort of job.” She reached over and patted his knee reassuringly.
Chase managed not to wince. Not that Rosie was the least bit rough. In spite of her manner and her build, she had gentle, almost dainty hands, as any number of wounded animals and banged-up kids over the years could testify. But even a normal pat hurt his knee right now, sore and swollen as it was from all his walking. That wasn’t Rosie’s fault. Somehow in telling Rosie about himself, Chase had neglected to mention the horse that had halfway crippled him last year.
“You know me, Rosie,” he said, with something close to his usual grin. “I never worry.”
Summer Callaway stood in the slanting light of the early morning sun in her bedroom. Twenty hours ago, the Bates’s sorrel gelding had tossed her on her left shoulder in the training pen, busting her collarbone and her budget, and plumb ruining her temper.
Summer considered herself a patient woman. She wasn’t a whiner, either. She just didn’t deal well with frustration.
Getting dressed wasn’t easy with a cracked collarbone and a dislocated shoulder, but so far she’d managed to pull on her panties, jeans and socks. It had hurt, but so did walking. Or sitting. Or breathing. She could live with that. Her hair—well, she’d gotten Maud to wash it for her last night after the pain pills kicked in, so at least it was clean. But she couldn’t pin it up or braid it or do anything to get it out of her way. It hung halfway down her back, some of the strands catching on the blasted clavicle brace Dr. O’Connor had strapped her into at the emergency room yesterday. That brace was supposed to keep her stable so she didn’t jostle her collarbone, but as far as she could tell, all it was good for was making it hell to take a shower. But she was mostly clean now and nearly dressed, and she figured Ricky could help her get her boots on before he went to school.
That left her with one little problem. Her bra.
Who’d have thought a woman who regularly mastered fifteen hundred pounds of some of the orneriest creatures God put on this earth would be defeated by a brassiere?
There was just no damned way to fasten the thing one-handed. She’d thought she could fasten it in front, then turn it around and ease her arms through the straps—but whichever end she wasn’t holding fell down.
She chewed on her lip, then stepped over to the worn, maple dresser that had been her mother’s once upon a time. By bending her knees to lower herself a bit, she managed to pin the bra between the dresser and her waist. But she couldn’t make the hooks come together by wishing, and one hand just wasn’t going to get the job done. “Damn!”
“That’s another quarter, Mom!” called her son’s voice.
“Right,” she muttered, standing straight and letting the stupid bra fall to the floor. Summer never went braless. Not only was it impractical for a 36-C woman who rode horses to forgo support, she didn’t... well, she just didn’t.
Today, though, it looked like she would.
“That’s seventy-five cents you owe the penalty box so far this morning,” Ricky said from the bathroom. She heard the water come on. The rest of her son’s words were distorted by the toothbrush he tried to talk around. “And a buck seventy-five from yesterday.”
“Yesterday didn’t count,” Summer said automatically. She began the laborious process of getting her left arm into the sleeve of a flannel shirt, holding her wrist in her good hand and guiding it through the armhole. “Maud agreed. Those pain pills had me temporarily incapacitated.” Ow, ow, ow and damn. Summer managed to keep the curse silent this time.
She heard Ricky enthusiastically spitting out the toothpaste. Spitting was the one part of toothbrushing he liked. “Yeah, but you said fifty cents’ worth before Aunt Maud got you to take the pain stuff.”
Strictly speaking, she’d said a good deal more than that, but Ricky hadn’t been around to hear it. She’d injured herself while he was at school. His “Aunt Maud”—a friend and neighbor, actually, rather than a blood relation—had driven Summer to the emergency room and waited with her. Maud had called the parents of the students Summer was supposed to teach riding to that day, too. She felt mortified just thinking about it. A riding teacher didn’t build confidence in the students or their parents by falling off her horse.
Maud had insisted on hanging around after bringing Summer home, fixing supper and nagging until bedtime. Summer hadn’t protested very hard. Not only had she been hurting like hellfire, there wasn’t much point. People mostly did do what Maud Hoppy told them to do. Even Summer.
Buttoning the shirt one-handed wasn’t so bad. It only took her twice as long as usual.
“I tell you what, champ,” Summer said when she heard the water in the bathroom cut off. She blinked rapidly to make her eyes stop watering and reached for the pale blue sling they’d given her yesterday. “I’ll pay up for yesterday if you can tell me what I owe, counting today. That’s fifty cents plus seventy-five cents.”
Silence. Math wasn’t one of her seven-year-old son’s strong points. Ricky took an avid interest in money, though, which was one of the reasons for the penalty box they both contributed to for minor infractions. Summer was confident she’d end up paying that box for her bad language yesterday and today. There was a new superhero movie showing in town, and the penalty box didn’t have quite enough in it yet to cover their tickets.
Settling her arm in the sling helped. She took a deep breath before opening the door, feeling more unsteady than she wanted to admit. She’d already taken ibuprofin, and she was determined not to fuzz up her head with a pain pill during the day. She’d get by. She was good at that, wasn’t she?
All the rooms in her little two-bedroom house were practically on top of each other, so she saw right away that the bathroom was empty. It was surprisingly tidy, though. Ricky’s pajamas weren’t in their usual morning spot on the floor. She glanced down the hall.
The bedroom at the end of the hall was Ricky’s. She saw right away that he had drawn his bedspread up over his pillow in his best effort at bed making. Action heroes climbed, crawled, leaped and mutated all over the twin bed.
That’s love, she thought, a lump in her throat. That’s real love. He’d already helped out by getting up early and going over to the kennel with her to feed their canine boarders. But bed making was about the most useless activity Ricky could imagine, something mothers insisted on for mysterious feminine reasons no seven-year-old boy could hope to understand. He’d made his up bed simply because it was important to her.
How had she ever gotten so lucky? Lord knew Ricky hadn’t drawn the best parent material. She did her best, but she didn’t know much about being a mother, having been raised without one herself. She’d been winging it since the day he was born. As for his father... whatever Jimmie’s sins had been, Summer reminded herself as she started down the short hall towards the kitchen, he’d paid for them. Paid dearly.
“You hungry this morning, champ?” she asked dryly as she entered the kitchen. Ricky was already at the table piling cereal into his mouth with that dribbly, rapid-action motion of his, greedy as any baby bird. The part in his dark hair was crooked, but he’d remembered to put on clean jeans as well as a clean shirt. The crumbs scattered around the cereal bowl told her he’d had one or more of the leftover muffins and hadn’t bothered with a plate. As usual.
She skipped the plate lecture and went to the cupboard for a coffee mug. When she reached up, though, even with her good arm, the motion pulled on the muscles attached to her collarbone.
Damn damn damn damn...
“Mom? You okay?”
“Sure,” she managed to say, and got the mug. “Did you feed Amos?” Since the huge orange tabby was sitting in her chair, daring her smugly to move him, she figured Ricky had already taken care of the cat. She just wanted to get his attention away from her for a minute, until she got her breath back.
How was she going to get through half the things that had to be done that day? Some of it she flat couldn’t do, like cleaning the kennels. She’d have to hire someone. Only there was no way she could afford it. The electric bill was due. Her quarterly tax payment was coming up. Then there were the property taxes, which had doubled this year. They were past due.
About the only thing paid up-to-date was the note she’d been forced to take out on the land when she inherited a rundown stable operation and a pile of medical bills after her father died. Summer paid that bill religiously. Maybe her priorities had been screwed up when she was eighteen, but not anymore. Nothing could be allowed to endanger her land.
“One twenty-five,” Ricky announced suddenly. “You owe the box a buck twenty-five, Mom.”
“I guess you got me.” She ruffled his hair with her good hand, making him duck and grimace, as she brought her coffee over to the table.
Fifteen minutes later Ricky tore out the back door, his backpack slung over one shoulder, making his usual mad dash for the school bus stop down the road. She glanced at the clock and sipped her second cup of coffee. Seven-thirty. Normally she’d start cleaning the dog pens about now. Today...well, she didn’t think she could shovel poop one-armed, but maybe she should try. Fortunately, the kennel only held five dogs right now. January was slow.
Well, she thought, pushing away from the table, sitting here brooding didn’t accomplish much. She’d do what she could and let the rest go, then come back to the house and find some way to squeeze enough from her budget to hire someone.
Summer grabbed the keys to the kennel from their hook by the door, stepped out onto the wooden porch at the back of her house, and got assaulted. Kelpie knew better than to jump up, so she ran in tight little circles and yipped. The black-and-white Border collie mix was supposed to be Ricky’s dog, but she adored everyone impartially. Two years ago Summer had found Kelpie huddled outside her fence, obviously abandoned. The dog had needed food, love and 132 dollars’ worth of trips to the vet to regain her health, and she’d been rejoicing ever since. Summer smiled and managed to stroke Kelpie’s head a few times before the animal raced off in delight.
At the end of the porch, Hannah, the aging bloodhound who had belonged to Summer’s father, limited her greeting to a dignified thump-thump of her tail.
A breath of wind stirred the sign at the main gate, the one that read “Three Oaks Kennel and Stable” with the little drawing of the oak tree on it. Summer inhaled deeply, enjoying the slight bite in the air, even enjoying the smell of the nearby stable—a smell that meant horses and home.
Some people liked to wander, she knew. Not her, not anymore. Running off with Jimmie had taught her that much. Summer needed roots. She needed to be on her own land, in her own house, with the people who were important to her nearby.
She was a lucky woman, Summer thought as she started across the big, grassy yard, heading for the kennel. She was living the life she wanted, she had a bright, wonderful son she loved more than her next heartbeat, and she’d learned a valuable lesson while still young.
Men were too damned much trouble. Period.
She had just reached the paddock that lay between the house and the kennel when a huge old Buick pulled up next to the chain-link fence that surrounded the front part of her property. Summer slowed and shook her head. She knew that car.
The woman who got out was as tiny as her car was big. She was a dried-up little dab of a woman in a faded cotton dress, with a face like crumpled tissue and thin white hair scraped back in a bun. “Summer!” the little old lady bellowed. “What do you think you’re doing? Didn’t I tell you I’d come over and take care of those dogs this morning?”
All bones and mouth, that was Maud Hoppy. Summer stopped. “Yes, you did. And I told you not to.”
Maud slammed the door of her tank shut and walked over to the small gate, the people-sized one just west of the big, truck-sized gate. “Don’t know what difference you thought that would make.”
Exasperated, Summer propped her good hand on her hip. “You’re nearly eighty, Maud. You don’t need to be shoveling dog poop.”
“I’m seventy-one.” Maud always lied very positively. She closed the gate behind her. “And I’m not going to shovel poop. I’ll just feed the silly things. Do you need me to feed the horses, too?”
“Ricky and I already fed the dogs. As for the horses, I got hold of Raul last night. He’s already been and gone.” Raul usually worked in the afternoons during the week, but he’d agreed to come early that morning to take care of the stable chores before school. He wouldn’t do the kennel, though. The strapping sixteen-year-old hunk of Latin machismo was afraid of dogs. Not that he’d ever admit it, of course.
“Good, then you and I can go back inside and drink coffee while you figure out how much you can afford to pay a hand for the next two months.” Maud took Summer’s good elbow and pulled. Her snowy white head barely reached Summer’s shoulder.
“Two months is impossible,” Summer said, towed reluctantly back towards the house by her tiny friend.
“The doctor said two months.”
“Dr. O’Connor doesn’t have to pay my bills,” she retorted. “I have to pay his.”
Still, somehow Summer found herself seated at her kitchen table with her checkbook, a pad and paper, and a computer printout of her current bills and projected expenses in front of her. Her shoulder throbbed in rhythm with her pulse as she added up a column of figures while Maud darted around the kitchen like a hummingbird, looking for things to clean.
Summer hoped Maud found something to clean soon. If she didn’t, she was apt to start cooking, and Summer really couldn’t afford to throw out whatever mess resulted. “Sit down and drink some coffee.”
“In a minute.” Maud pounced on the toaster, unplugging it and taking it over to the sink to shake the crumbs out. “Have you figured out how much you can afford to pay?”
“Yeah.” Nothing. That’s what she could afford. But by making a partial payment on her property taxes and putting the rest off another month or two—they weren’t going to seize her land, she assured herself, even if she was late—she could pay everything else that was due and hire someone for a while. “It’s not going to be easy finding someone, though. Getting someone who knows horses and doesn’t mind that the job is temporary—”
“Now there,” Maud announced in her raspy, Mae West voice, “I can help.” She turned around, toaster in hand, polishing it as she spoke. “You know Will Stafford?”
“You know I do, Maud. His wife Rosie and I are on the SPCA board together in Bica. But their son Joe already has a part-time job, doesn’t he?”
“I’m not talking about Joey. Last night Will was calling around, trying to find someone who needs a hand. Seems Will is helping out an old buddy from his rodeo days—”
“A rodeo bum.” Summer’s lip curled.
“Now, don’t you be judging everyone by that husband of yours. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, whether this fellow is like your Jimmie was or not. He’s desperate. Seems his truck died and he’s about broke. You could board him in that little room off the kennel and pay him real cheap.”
Maud sounded so satisfied with the poor man’s plight that Summer couldn’t help grinning. “Still, if the man is anything like Jimmie, I’d have a battle getting my money’s worth, no matter how little I paid him.”
“Jimmie was lazy. This fellow, though—I don’t imagine a fellow gets to be ‘Best All-Around Cowboy’ at the NFR without working for it. Besides, Will Stafford vouches for him.”
Summer frowned. “So who is this paragon?”
“Chase McGuire.”
“Chase McGuire?” she asked disbelievingly.
Maud put the toaster back where it belonged. “I’ll just make us some more coffee,” she announced. “You know this McGuire?”
Summer stood up. “Not really. I’ll make the coffee, Maud. I’m not helpless.” At least the coffee would be drinkable if Summer made it. She managed to beat Maud to the coffeepot, grabbed the glass carafe and took it to the sink.
She and Jimmie hadn’t exactly run in the same crowd as Chase McGuire. Jimmie had never made it near the top, while the other man had stayed high in the rankings for years. Why would such a man be interested in a two-bit job?
While the carafe filled with water, Summer used her good hand to shift her left arm in the sling, trying to ease the ache. “I’ve never actually met him, Maud. But no one who’s been involved with rodeo could help knowing who he is. I saw him around sometimes, back when I made the circuit with Jimmie.” Oh, yes, she’d seen him. She remembered his lean build, his shaggy blond hair and that deadly smile. And the women. She remembered that, too. He’d attracted women the way horses draw flies. “A man like that would never be satisfied with this sort of penny-ante job,” she said, and shut off the water. “No, he wouldn’t work out.”
“He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”
Summer gaped at her friend. “He...he—”
“Will’s at work, so I told Rosie to bring him by to talk to you about the job at nine-thirty. That seemed like plenty of time.”
How was it she’d never noticed that sly gleam in her friend’s faded blue eyes before? “I do not want Chase McGuire coming here. I won’t hire him, so it’s just a waste of my time and his. You’ll have to call Rosie back, Maud. I’m not changing my mind on this.”
“We’ve just got time to dust the living room before they get here,” Maud said.
Two
Thirty-two minutes later, Chase McGuire stood at her door, hat in hand, with Rosie Stafford. Rosie wore an orange blouse that went with her fiery hair about the same way that Tabasco sauce goes with jalapeños. Chase McGuire wore jeans, a sky blue shirt and that dangerous smile of his. He was a tall man, with just enough creases in his face to make it interesting. He had dark eyelashes, and his hair was six shades of blond all stirred up together.
Summer looked at the man standing at her front door and realized she’d been fooling herself when she thought she knew anything about him. Seeing Chase McGuire at a distance, hearing the gossip about him, was totally different from meeting him up close and personal. He radiated bad-boy charm the way a stove gives off heat.
Summer managed not to stutter when she told the two of them to come on in. “Have a seat, Rosie,” she said, gesturing at the old plaid sofa that Maud had vacuumed free of cat hair less than ten minutes before. “And...Mr. McGuire, too, of course.”
“Make that Chase,” he said, treating her to a smile that showed off the single dimple in his left cheek. “Otherwise I might forget to answer. ‘Mr. McGuire’ is my big brother, Mike.”
“Of course.” No, she’d never known this man. He made her feel...stupid, she thought. Stupid was definitely the word for what she was feeling. “Sit down, Chase. Can I get you something? Some coffee?”
Summer noticed two things when Chase followed Rosie to the couch. First, he limped. Not badly, but the stiffness in his stride was especially noticeable in a man so surely made for strength and grace. She also noticed his... physique. At the mature age of twenty-seven, Summer was used to considering herself past the age for youthful follies. She was dismayed to learn she hadn’t gotten over her weakness for a cowboy in a tight-fitting pair of jeans, after all.
“The coffee’s fresh,” Maud informed them. She was perched primly on a ladder-back chair, imitating a proper old lady.
“None for me, thanks,” Rosie said, settling herself into the cushions on the couch with a little grunt. “Seems like the bigger the rest of me gets, the tinier my bladder shrinks. Can’t drink more’n a couple of cups these days.”
Summer caught the quick glance Chase McGuire gave her sling before he answered easily, “I don’t need a thing.” He sat on the couch. The Stetson he turned to lay, brim up, on the end table was black with a rolled brim and a gorgeous band of silver conchas.
Not a hat to wear when mucking out a stall. “I’m not sure what to say,” Summer began, seating herself in the old recliner. Leaning against the recliner’s high back eased some of the ache in her collarbone and shoulder. “Maud talked to Will without discussing this with me first. I don’t know if you realize what the job would be.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “But I know it involves horses, so I don’t figure there’s too much of a problem.” That grin flashed again. “I’m good with horses.”
Yes, the NFR’s “Best All-Around Cowboy” a few years back ought to be good with horses. She wondered how he’d managed to go through all his prize money—a small fortune, really—so quickly. Gambling? Women? Not that this man would ever have to pay for a woman, but a lot of cowboys liked to spend whatever money they had on whoever had their attention at the moment.
“I’m sure you can handle horses just fine,” she said, “but I need someone to do the dirty work, not the fun stuff. Muck out the stalls, feed the horses, worm them, move them to pasture and back—oh, and probably tack up for me on Mondays and Fridays. I give lessons.”
“Now, Summer,” Rosie said, “Chase ain’t a Hollywood cowboy. He don’t mind getting dirty or shoveling out a stall. He’d make you a good hand.”
Chase shot his friend an exasperated look. “I’d just as soon apply for the job myself, Rosie.”
Summer shifted, trying to find a position that made the hurt go away. “But there are the dogs, too. At the kennel. You’d have to clean up after them, feed them, hose down the runs—and a lot of the owners want their animals bathed before they pick them up. I can’t imagine that someone like you would—”
“Ma‘am,” he interrupted. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘someone like me,’ but what I am is broke. So’s my truck, unfortunately. Your job’s got two things going for it. One, Rosie tells me you’ve got a room I might be able to stay in. Two, it’s temporary. That suits me, because I don’t plan on being here longer than it takes to save up enough to get my truck fixed.”
No, Chase McGuire wasn’t the type to hang around. “I can’t afford to pay much.” She couldn’t help noticing his eyes. They weren’t a plain old brown. Like amber glass held up to the light so the sunshine streams through, they seemed lit from within. Like he had something burning inside him.
“How much is not much?”
Summer didn’t like the way he was looking at her, all warm and approving—as if he’d noticed her noticing his eyes. She said stiffly, “Two hundred a week, with the room Rosie mentioned and two meals a day thrown in. I’d need you on Saturday and Sunday, too, at least at first.”
“Well,” he said, his smile widening, “if that’s an offer, you’ve got me, honey, for as long as you need me.”
She frowned. “I didn’t—”
“Good!” Maud boomed as she bounced out of her chair. “Glad we got that settled. You made a smart decision, Summer.”
“I didn’t—”
“You might as well get your stuff from the truck, Chase,” Rosie said, heaving herself to her feet. “I imagine Summer wants to put you to work right away.”
“His room’s at the kennel,” Maud told Rosie. “I’d be glad to show it to him. It isn’t much, but the bed’s decent and the smell’s not bad. There’s even a half bath Summer’s daddy built on, when he had a hand working here full-time.”
“I’m sure Chase’ll like it just fine, after sleeping on that old couch of mine last night,” Rosie said. “Well, Chase, I wouldn’t say you’ve landed in clover exactly. Maybe a big pile of horse dung soft enough to cushion the fall.” She chuckled. “And Summer, honey, don’t you worry about Chase. He’s a rascal, but an honest one. You might have to knock him on the side of the head a time or two, but he’ll do you a good job. You’ll be glad you hired him.”
I didn’t, Summer thought, but Maud picked up where Rosie left off, telling Chase how much he was going to like working at the Three Oaks. Summer couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
She glanced at Chase and saw that he was thoroughly aware of her predicament. His eyes were brimful of mirth.
Her lips twitched in spite of herself. “All right,” she said. “All right! The two of you can quit trying to out-talk me and embarrass me into hiring Chase. I do need a hand, and he’s willing to work cheap. And,” she said, sliding him a look, “like you said, Rosie, I can always knock him on the side of the head if I need to.”
And really, she assured herself, in spite of her unsettling reaction to this man, she didn’t have anything to worry about. After Jimmie, she was immune to the superficial appeal of a good-looking traveling man.
“Then I’ll just do like I was told,” Chase said, standing and smiling that easy smile of his, “and get my bag from the truck. I figured that if you did hire me, you’d need me to get to work right away, so I brought my stuff along. I hope you don’t mind...ma’am.”
Somehow, when spoken in his low, molasses-sweet voice ma’am sounded more like honey or sweetheart. Something restless and unwelcome stirred in her, a sensation as hot and ominous as the rumbling approach of a summer storm. “Of course not,” she said, a bit too sharply. “Come on. I’ll show you your room and get you started at the kennel.” She stood up, turned to say something to Maud...and then stood there, blinking foolishly, disoriented by the fierce grinding pain that seized her.
She’d forgotten her collarbone. She’d moved without taking her disability into account, and jarred the break. How could she have forgotten like that?
A big, warm hand cupped her good elbow, steadying her. “You all right?” Chase’s deep voice asked softly.
She turned her head and looked right into amber eyes with the mirth for once completely gone. Concerned eyes, thickly fringed with those dark, ridiculous lashes. She was close enough to see the texture of the skin stretched across his smooth-shaven cheeks. Men’s skin, she thought fuzzily, is so different from women’s. Summer looked at Chase’s skin and thought of leather, the smooth, supple sort of leather so soft it made you want to pet it, made you want—
“I’m fine,” she lied, and pulled her arm away.
Oh, Lord. What had she done?
Fate was a fickle female. Chase had known that before he was old enough to shave. For the first time in fifteen months, though, fate seemed to be favoring him some. He had a job now, with the promise of a roof over his head that wasn’t part of an old friend’s charity.
Two months wasn’t so long, he told himself as he retrieved his bag from Rosie’s truck. He could handle being without wheels that long, and he could learn to be around horses without having it matter so damned much.
His new employer ought to be a nice distraction. Of course, she hadn’t really wanted to hire him. He had the distinct impression Summer Callaway didn’t trust him.
Smart woman.
He really ought to leave her alone, he told himself as he headed back to the neat little frame house where the three women were probably picking him apart in his absence. So maybe she did have a body that would make a strong man weak and the prettiest blue eyes he’d seen in a long time. Those blue eyes frosted over every time he smiled at her. He was a rodeo cowboy, after all. Just like Jimmie Callaway had been. Considering what Chase knew about the jerk she’d been married to, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to keep her distance.
He frowned at the platoon of tiny toy soldiers and army vehicles blocking the sidewalk up to the house. Summer Callaway was a mother, apparently. He hadn’t known that. Not that Chase had anything against mothers. He just didn’t get involved with them. Nine times out of ten they were looking for someone to be a daddy to their little ones, and Chase was the world’s worst candidate for that role.
“Hey, Rosie,” he said, swinging the door open and stepping back into the neat-as-a-pin living room. The house smelled inviting, a friendly mingling of scents: pine cleaner, coffee and vanilla. The room itself was definitely “country,” from the maple end tables to the comfortably worn plaid upholstery to the gun rack near the door. Folks who lived in the country tended to take a practical attitude toward guns. They were a necessary tool for dealing with wild dogs, snakes or rabid skunks.
“I hope you haven’t been telling all my secrets.” He looked from his friend to the slender woman in worn denim, green flannel and a pale blue sling. She stood there watching him with those pretty blue eyes of hers.
Heat. Like a punch in the stomach he felt it again—the same hot, bubbling mix he’d felt when he first laid eyes on her. Anticipation. Hunger. A thrill a lot like the moment when he lowered himself onto the back of an angry bronc in the chute and knew he was in for one hell of a ride.
He smiled.
Rosie chuckled. “I can’t tell what I don’t know, and I’m sure I don’t know all your secrets. Well,” she said, and heaved herself to her feet, “I’d better get back to the house. You let me know, Summer, if this rascal gives you any trouble.”
Somewhat more reluctantly Maud announced that she had to be going, too. While the three women went through their leave-taking rituals, Chase watched his new boss.
Some might find her a bit on the skinny side, at least from the waist down. Not Chase. The moment she’d opened the door to him, he’d discovered a decided partiality for long, slim legs and a tiny butt, especially when they were matched up with full breasts and hair the color of whiskey in a glass.
He was all but positive she wasn’t wearing a bra under that big flannel shirt.
“Well?” she said, facing him as she closed the front door on her friends. “Are you ready to go to work?”
His gaze drifted lazily from her breasts up to her face. He was supposed to leave this woman alone? He shook his head, doubting himself already, and drawled, “I’m ready whenever you are, sugar.”
Frost warnings went up in those blue eyes. “We’ll go out the back door. Come on.”
Her house was small, but immaculate. What little he’d seen so far of her operation made him think it would be just as scrupulously tended, too, and he liked that. Chase wasn’t especially tidy with his own things, but he was downright nitpicky when it came to horses, their gear, housing and care.
“There’s a phone in the barn and another cordless unit in the kennel, but don’t worry about answering if it rings,” she said, pausing next to the back door to pick up a cordless phone. “I keep one of the cordless phones with me all the time so I can book appointments.” She frowned at the phone in her hand. “Dammit, I can’t put this on my belt if I can’t fasten a belt.”
“I’d be glad to help.” He couldn’t quite say that without smiling.
She turned the frown on him, then turned away, tucking the phone into her sling next to her arm. “The horses have already been taken care of this morning,” she told him, opening the back door and ignoring his offer. “Usually I do it, but Raul came over early today as a favor.”
And who, he wondered, was Raul, and just what kind of favors did he do for her? Chase liked the idea of doing “favors” for his new boss. He didn’t like the idea that someone else might already be doing for her what he was trying to persuade himself he shouldn’t do. “Raul?” he asked. “Is he a...friend of yours?”
She paused, holding the door open and looking at him suspiciously. “Why?”
He gave her his most innocent smile. “Just wondered why you didn’t offer him the job.”
She continued to frown. “Raul is in the eleventh grade. He can’t put in the kind of hours I’ll need in the next couple of weeks, but he’s a good hand.”
Chase nodded blandly as desire tightened down another notch. It doesn’t matter if another man is in the picture or not, he told himself. Not if he intended to keep his distance.
Was that what he intended? “I guess I’ll meet Raul this afternoon, then.”
“Right,” she muttered, giving him one last, wary look. “Well, come on.”
She’d barely set foot on the painted gray floor of the wooden porch when a black-and-white tornado shaped like a dog ran up to her, yipping and twisting itself in tight, excited circles. For the first time, Chase saw what Summer looked like when she wasn’t suspicious or hurting. When she smiled and meant it.
His breath caught in his chest.
“Hmm?” she said, stroking the head of the frantically happy dog. “Did you say something?”
“Quite a watchdog you have there,” he managed to say. She was beautiful. It came as a shock. Not just pretty or sexy or desirable. When Summer smiled with that soft look in her eyes, she was flat-out beautiful. “I imagine she’d be hell on a burglar, running around in circles until the poor fellow got dizzy from watching her.”
The light in her eyes changed from tenderness to amusement. “Oh, Kelpie here is pretty useless as a watchdog. She loves everybody. But I’d better take you over and introduce you to Hannah.” She walked over to where a large brown lump rested on the edge of the porch. The lump lifted its head and thumped its tail once when Summer lowered herself into a careful squat to pet it. “Hannah knows Rosie, so she didn’t mind when you two came up to the door, but we’d better give you a formal introduction now.”
Did she seriously think that decrepit old hound was a watchdog? Willing to play along, Chase set his bag down and hunkered down beside her. He caught just a whiff of Summer’s scent. Strawberries. It made him smile, because it suited her. “Hi, there, Hannah,” he said to the lump. “My name’s Chase.”
“I had something a bit more basic in mind,” Summer said dryly. “Here, give me your hand.” She reached out. and took it.
Heat lightning. That was all Chase could think of when she took his hand in hers—the hot, unexpected stroke of lightning that can flash unpredictably across a cloudless summer sky. Involuntarily, wanting only to hang on to the sensation a moment longer, his hand closed around hers. Her skin was soft, but her hand wasn’t. It was a strong hand, tough and capable.
That, too, stirred him.
He heard the hitch in her breath. But she didn’t look at him, didn’t acknowledge what arced between them. Instead, after a second she said, as level and calm as if nothing had happened, “Now we let Hannah smell our hands, so that she remembers your scent and mine mixed together.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” he said huskily, and stretched out their joined hands. The hound lifted her nose and sniffed at them. “Your scent and mine, mixed together...”
She jerked her hand away. She wasn’t quite fast enough, though, to rise to her feet without Chase’s assistance. He got hold of her good arm and steadied her.
Chase didn’t want to see all the color drain out of her face again, the way it had earlier. He’d cracked enough bones himself to know she had to be hurting. She wasn’t about to admit it, though, or go rest. Chase understood the need to keep on going when it made more sense to quit, and he was beginning to get the idea that this woman had an oversize helping of pride.
She pulled away. “Mr. McGuire, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your hands to yourself.”
Would she, now? “Well, I can’t quite promise to do that, ma’am. Not when you’ve been hurt and are maybe a bit too stubborn to admit you need a hand now and again. But I’ll keep what you said in mind.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, “and you know it. A man like you is well aware of—”
“Just a minute,” he said. “That’s the second time you’ve said that—‘a man like me.’ Now, I know we’ve never met. I’d remember. So you must have heard some gossip...or else you’re getting me mixed up with someone else. Like your husband, maybe?”
She looked as startled as if he’d reached out and slapped her. “I didn’t—you—did you know Jimmie?”
“I ran into him a couple times. Look, I know some rodeo wives get a bad feel for the rodeo and everyone connected with it, especially if their husbands stay on the circuit as much of the year as Jimmie did.”
She just gave him a hard, baffled stare and turned and started across the yard. Chase was left to pick up his bag and follow. Had she reacted that way because she’d been so much in love with the good-looking bum she’d been married to? Or did she already know plenty about Jimmie Callaway and just not want to discuss it?
The kennel was a long, cinder block building on the other side of the paddock, about twenty yards from the stable. It was painted white, with trim the same dark green as the little house they’d just left, and typical of what he’d seen so far. Not fancy, but sturdy and well maintained.
Chase automatically slowed when they reached the pole fencing surrounding the paddock so he could look over the four horses inside. Two of them he marked immediately as the sort of plodders she might put a beginner up on for those lessons she’d mentioned. He wouldn’t mind getting a leg over either of the other two, though. “That’s a fine-looking dun,” he said, referring to a mare with a coat a few shades lighter than Summer’s own golden brown hair. “She’s mostly quarter horse, isn’t she?”
Summer paused and glanced back over her shoulder at him, her blue eyes still chilly. “Mostly. She’s unregistered, but her dam had a lot of Thoroughbred in her.”
He nodded. The mare had the dainty ears and face of a Thoroughbred and the muscular hocks of a quarter horse. At that moment she perked up those pretty ears and ambled toward them. “I’ve seen some fine horses with that mix. She’s yours?”
The compliment pleased her, but she didn’t want to be pleased. Not yet. She turned to greet the horse. “Honey-Do and I have been together a long time. I started training her with my father’s help when I was nine. The two of us learned barrel racing together. She’s pushing twenty now, so mostly I use her for Western pleasure these days.”
“Honeydew?” he asked, trying to figure out the reason for the name. “Like the melon?”
“No.” Summer reached out her good hand to the horse, who had her neck stretched out, obviously confident of getting attention. Summer gave the horse a good, brisk rub up the jawbone and along the cheek strap.
Those lovely, capable hands of hers could do a number of things well, Chase felt certain. He could think of one or two in particular he’d like. He could, but he’d better not. Not if he was going to keep his hands off her.
“She started out plain old Honey when I first got her, for her color. I was nine,” she said, and spared him a slight smile, “and not especially original. Pretty soon, though, her name became Honey-Do as in, ‘Honey, do this,’ or ‘Honey, do that.’ Because Honey does just about anything you ask of her—don’t you, sweetheart?” she finished, her voice dropping into a croon.
Everything about her warmed up around animals. He couldn’t help wondering what it would take to get her to heat up for him. “What about the paint with the roan markings?”. he asked, setting down his duffel. “Is he yours?”
The raw-boned gelding he referred to was a big, ugly brute, maybe seventeen hands high. The animal looked up just then from pulling bites of hay off the bale set in the center of the paddock. When he saw that another horse was getting attention, he snorted and trotted over, using his weight to push Honey-Do aside and stretching out his own big, Roman nose.
“For my sins, he is,” Summer said. “He’s a two-year-old, so he’s not much on manners yet.” She turned sideways so the inquisitive horse couldn’t nudge her bad shoulder, then had to push his nose away when he started to lip the sleeve of her shirt. “Some cowboy wannabes out of San Antonio bought him and his mother when he was a colt, then lost interest. They sold the mare easily enough, but the future was looking pretty dim for Horatio here when I heard about him three months ago. I picked him up dirt cheap because they didn’t really want to sell to the knackers. I’d planned on training him fast in the basics and selling him, but I guess that’s not going to happen now.”
“I don’t know why you couldn’t do just that,” Chase said, leaning on the top pole to give the jealous Horatio a good scratch behind the ears. “He’s not exactly a pretty face, and he’s too big for arena work, but his gait looks smooth. I bet he’d make a fine working horse.”
“Timing,” she said succinctly. “In order to make any money on him, I need to get him trained before he eats up my profit. All I can give him is the basics. Like you said, he’s not pretty enough for the arena, and I don’t know how to train him for range roping or cutting, so I couldn’t expect to get any great price for him.”
Chase thought about that. “You’ve had him on the longe line?”
She nodded. “He’s stubborn, but he’s bright and not easily spooked. He walks, trots and lopes on the longe now, and you’re right about his gait. I’d just gotten him used to the bridle and was ready to move on to the saddle when this happened.” With a nod of her chin she indicated her sling. “Now he’ll forget what he knows before I can start working him again.”
“You do much training?”
“Right now it’s just Horatio and Maverick. That’s the Bates’s sorrel gelding—the one that dumped me on my shoulder yesterday. They wanted me to get him over some of his bad habits, so I’m working him as well as boarding him.” She stared out over the paddock, a frown pleating her brow.
“I’ll train them.”
That brought her head around fast—too fast, judging by the way she winced. “I’m not paying you trainer’s wages.”
She was a suspicious one, wasn’t she? He smiled. “You don’t have to. I figure I might find training a couple of ornery horses a nice change of pace after mucking out stalls and shoveling dog poop.”
Her brows lifted skeptically. “You want to train them—just for fun?”
“Sure.” He turned and eased a little closer to her. Close enough to make her just a bit uncomfortable, close enough to see the slight, involuntary flare of her nostrils, as though she were catching his scent. “Of course, I might have some other sort of motives mixed in there, like hoping to make you feel real grateful to me. But you’re too bright to fall for something like that, aren’t you? So I guess I’ll have to settle for what I said. A change of pace. A bit of a challenge.”
Beneath the frown that lingered on her face lay a sort of puzzled awareness. Her eyes were just a hint wider. A hint uncertain. “I guess if you worked Horatio, you could take a percentage. When I sell him. That would be fair, wouldn’t it?”
“Fair?” He did what he’d been wanting to do all morning, and ran his fingers down one long strand of hair, playing with it. “Doesn’t seem like it would be all that fair to you.” He rubbed the hair between his fingers, savoring the smooth, silky feel of it.
“Don’t.” Her voice was steady enough, but her eyes gave her away. He saw anger there. Confusion. Arousal. The confusion excited him as much as the arousal, and he didn’t like that. Only innocents were confused by their physical needs, and Chase wasn’t a man who looked for trophies outside of the arena. He liked his women easy and experienced. Easy meant no one got hurt, no one got burned when it was time to move on down the road.
But he wanted this woman. He wanted to seduce this woman.
His gaze slipped from her face to her throat, where he could see the rapid flutter of her pulse. Lower, to where her hardened nipple was puckered beneath the soft flannel of her shirt...on one side. On the other side was her sling.
He really shouldn’t be doing this.
The sound of a motor filtered through his lust-induced haze. Summer heard it, too. Her eyes widened. She stepped back. He let his hand fall. She frowned, looked over his shoulder and frowned harder. “Well, shi—shoot.”
It amused him that she’d edited out the cussword almost as much as it pained him to be interrupted. He turned.
A tall man was climbing out of a low-slung foreign car next to the smaller gate. Although the man wore boots and a black cowboy hat with his suit, Chase would be willing to bet he’d never sat on a horse. Even from here Chase could see that his face had the smooth, indoor look of a businessman.
“It never rains but it pours,” Summer muttered.
“So who is he?”
“Ray Fletcher.”
The minute the smooth-faced Ray Fletcher stepped through the gate, the belly-deep belling of a bloodhound erupted from the back porch of the house. Hannah heaved to her feet and bayed again, and a cacophony of barks, yips, yaps and woofs broke out at the kennel.
“Ray,” Summer said in a conversational tone that he barely heard over the din, “has never been introduced to Hannah.”
Chase grinned. Apparently Hannah was a little more alert than she looked, and she set the other dogs off. You couldn’t beat a dozen yapping dogs as an alarm system.
Ray Fletcher closed the gate and started across the thirty or forty yards from the front gate to the paddock. Chase noticed that Summer didn’t take one step toward the man. Fletcher had crossed half the distance before she made some kind of signal to Hannah, at which the old dog heaved a sigh and plopped back down. The rest of the canine clamor was dying down by the time Ray Fletcher reached them.
He was an indoor sort of man, all right, a little soft through the middle and under his smooth-shaven chin. Not bad looking. Not especially good-looking, either. There wasn’t much memorable about him, Chase decided, except the expensive clothes he wore...and his eyes.
Ray Fletcher’s eyes weren’t soft when his gaze flicked over Chase as quickly as a lizard’s tongue tasting the air, summing him up and dismissing him. Chase didn’t much care for the dismissal, but it did intrigue him. Offhand, he could only think of a few men who’d discounted him that quickly. A couple of them were fools. One was as ruthless and cunning as Chase had ever come across.
“Summer,” Fletcher said in a pleasant tenor voice, “as soon as I heard about your accident I came to see if there’s any way I could help. I know how proud you are, but perhaps you’d consider a loan.”
“Really? And here I thought you’d probably come out here to see if my getting crippled up meant I’d have to sell you my land.”
He looked pained. “I know you’ve never acquitted me of having ulterior motives for dating you, though I’d think you’d only have to look in the mirror to realize the truth. But mixing business with pleasure is never a good idea. I should have known better.”
“Well, if you’re really concerned, Ray, let me reassure you. This is Chase McGuire. He’s going to work for me while I’m unable to take care of things myself, so you see, I really don’t have any problems for you to concern yourself with. Chase, this is Ray Fletcher, a land shark from San Antonio.”
“For heaven’s sake, Summer,” Fletcher said, exasperated, then turned his quick brown eyes on Chase. “Mrs. Callaway does like to give me a hard time, Mr. McGuire. I’m a real estate developer, and—” he smiled and shook his head ruefully “—I made the mistake of trying to persuade Summer to sell her land. Now I’m one of the bad guys, as far as she’s concerned.”
“Is that so?” Chase stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and looked Fletcher up and down, his expression easy and pleasant. “You saying you aren’t a bad guy? Sure looks to me like a black hat you’re wearing.”
Fletcher couldn’t decide if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so he ignored it. “Summer,” he began, “about that loan. I’ve got the money to spare, you know that. Just say the word.”
“Now why would you think money was tight for me, unless you knew how much my property taxes had jumped this year? They doubled, Ray. And you know what’s odd? It was right after I turned down your offer that the appraiser showed up to reappraise my land. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”
He frowned. “You can’t seriously think I had anything to do with that.”
“You know how us women are, Ray.” Her voice turned low and cold. “We get these notions. I’m getting another one right now. I’m thinking you’d love to make me a loan so that you could somehow get me to default on it. That would simplify things for you, wouldn’t it? You and your plans for your fancy housing development?”
“Oh, enough.” Fletcher made a chopping gesture. “I put my foot wrong with you months ago, but this is getting ridiculous. You can’t blame me for every little thing that goes wrong.” He started to turn, then paused. “Look,” he said, “I really would like to persuade you of my good intentions. If you’re ever ready to give me a chance, just call.”
I’ll give you a chance, Ray. Just withdraw your offer for my land. Formally, in writing. And throw in something about how you won’t ever make another offer.”
He blinked before replying, a second too late, “When you get over your paranoia, call me.” He turned and walked off.
“That got rid of him,” Chase said when Ray Fletcher was out of earshot.
“Did you hear him?” Summer stared at Fletcher’s retreating back. “He offered me a loan. A loan,” she repeated, astounded at the insult. “I can’t believe it. He honestly thinks I turned down his offer to buy my land out of some stupid feminine pique. He thinks he can go right on pretending to be interested in me. Like that would make any difference about whether I’d sell the land or not.”
“How much land do you have?” Chase didn’t think a developer would be interested in the little bit of land that the stable, kennel and house sat on.
“All that,” she said, gesturing at the large, fenced pasture beyond the house and grounds, “and down from there to the river. Nearly forty acres, ten of it riverfront. My father fought hard to hold on to it. He had land speculators after him, too, always trying to get him to sell, but he held on. I am not,” she said, “going to let some inflated property taxes and a sore shoulder make me lose what he held on to.”
Pride, Chase thought. The woman had more of it than was good for her. She was stiff with it, practically quivering with outrage that Fletcher had thought he could get his hands on her land just because she had five times as much of it as she needed and nowhere near enough money—just because she was broke and hurt and might be thought, by some, to be just a tad vulnerable at the moment.
It was damned appealing. “Forty acres isn’t enough to ranch, but it’s more than you need to run a stable, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, disgusted. “I don’t imagine you’d understand.” She turned away. “Come on. The morning’s nearly over and the kennels are still dirty.”
Chase watched her walk away. Her back stayed stiff and straight, but her cute little butt swayed gently from side to side. He appreciated the stiffness almost as much as he did the sway. He watched her move and saw how the morning sun turned to copper when it tangled in her long, unbound hair.
He sighed. He was a weak man. A sadly weak man. And she was a sexy, prideful woman with an injured shoulder who wanted nothing to do with him. A woman like that didn’t know enough about her own body’s responses to defend herself against him, and he really ought to leave her alone...even though when he touched her hair her breath got shallow and her nipples got hard. Even though he couldn’t keep from speculating on how she’d respond if he touched her elsewhere.
She’d probably slap him silly.
“Are you coming?” she called without looking back.
He grinned and picked up his duffel bag. “Yes, ma’am,” he called, and started towards her.
He always had liked a challenge.
Three
By the time the floured chicken was spitting in the grease in the cast iron skillet, Summer felt she had herself back under control. Sure, she’d reacted to the man. No shame there, she told herself, humming as she held her hand under the faucet and washed sticky, egg-batter paste from her fingers. She was only human, and Chase McGuire was a very sexy man.
Pleased with herself for having acknowledged that fact in a calm, mature manner, she patted her hand against the towel hanging next to the sink and headed for the back door.
Her hired hand would need a little notice in order to clean up for supper, one of the two meals a day she owed him. He was probably in the barn. Raul had taken care of the stable chores and left before Summer realized they had rain headed their way. She’d sent Ricky to tell Chase to put up the rest of the horses and close up the box stalls.
That was twenty minutes ago. Ricky was still out there with him.
She frowned as she stepped out on the porch. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Ricky hanging around Chase McGuire for the next couple of months. The man was apt to stir up Ricky’s fascination with the rodeo.
Outside, the air was dusky with storm, the sky, a crisp, exhilarating gray as the day slid into evening. Wind bristled though the leaves on the oaks and made a nuisance of itself by grabbing her hair and throwing it in her face.
She turned toward the barn, and her shirttail flapped in the wind. The flannel rubbed across her bare nipples; and she shivered. She thought about how Chase McGuire had looked at her breasts. Openly. With obvious pleasure.
Somehow she had to figure out a way to get into a bra tomorrow.
None of the horses was out in the paddocks, and all the stalls on this side of the barn were shut to the outside. The southern doorway to the barn glowed a welcoming yellow from the lights Chase must have turned on to fight the premature gloom of the storm-shrouded day.
She paused when she reached the doorway. Neither Chase nor Ricky was in sight, but Dancer’s stall door was open. Kelpie lay in front of it, panting happily. Summer headed that way.
“So you got bucked off the first time, huh?” her son’s excited voice was saying.
“Sure did. And after all my bragging.” A long, mournful sigh, accompanied by the sound of something rubbing rhythmically against wood. “That’s when I learned why cowboys are supposed to be strong, silent types. We mostly get ourselves in trouble when we open our mouths. When we aren’t bragging, we’re putting our foot in it.”
Ricky giggled. “Do you put your foot in it?”
“All the time.”
Summer stopped in front of the stall next to Kelpie. The dog, exhausted from the day’s excitement, settled for standing up and butting her head against Summer’s leg. Dancer, a placid old mare Summer used for her beginning riders, munched lazily on her feed in one corner of the stall. On the other side of the stall, Summer’s hired hand drew a rasp rhythmically back and forth across a rough, splintery place in one of the wooden supports to the stall while her son watched. She noticed that his gorgeous black Stetson had been replaced by a beat-up, cream-colored distant cousin—a working cowboy’s hat, in fact.
Chase looked up, saw her and smiled the one-dimple smile that fit his face as well as his worn jeans fit his hips. “Looks like you’ve got a cribber,” he said.
A “cribber” was a horse that chewed on whatever wood was around, often swallowing air along with the wood and making itself miserable. “Dancer’s not the one with the taste for wood,” she said. Her voice came out wrong. She cleared her throat. “It’s that blasted gelding of the Bateses, the one who threw me. I moved him to the end stall. It’s a little bigger, more room for his toy.” She referred to the big ball that rolled around at the horse’s feet. Cribbers usually chewed out of boredom, and the ball gave the horse something to do.
“Chase wanted to get the wood smoothed down,” Ricky broke in, “so’s Dancer wouldn’t hurt herself on it. We already got all the horses in.”
We? “I see,” she said. “Well, I’m sure that was a good idea, but, Ricky, you aren’t to be following Mr. McGuire around, bothering him with a bunch of questions.”
“I wasn’t bothering him,” Ricky said indignantly. “Was I, Chase?”
“Not a bit.” Chase ran the rasp over the wood one last time, then smoothed his fingers over it, testing. “He helped me bring the horses in and then showed me where the tools were so I could get this taken care of.”
Summer shifted her feet uncomfortably. The man had found work that needed doing without being told. He was being patient and good-natured with Ricky—and she wished he’d been rude and obnoxious instead. She wished—oh, she didn’t know what she wished. She wanted to grab her son and tell him to stay away from Chase McGuire. “Ricky, you know I don’t let you handle all of the horses.”
He drew his narrow shoulders up straight, offended. “I just got Honey-Do an’ Dancer and Mr. Pig and Scooter. Just the ones you always let me get.”
Now she’d treated him like a “little kid” in front of his new hero. Summer sighed. “Well, it’s time to give me some help now,” she said. “Come on up to the house and feed Kelpie, Hannah and Amos.” Kelpie yipped when she heard her name, and pushed against Summer’s legs again.
“But, Mom, Chase said that he was going to—”
“Ricky,” she said once, in her warning voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but his lip stuck out.
“Go ahead and wash up after you feed them,” she said. “We’re having fried chicken for supper.”
That brightened his face again. He looked at Chase. “You don’t want to miss Mom’s fried chicken, so you prob’ly better get washed up pretty quick, too.” Then he took off at his usual dead run with Kelpie running and yipping at his heels.
“Sorry if I kept him from his other chores.”
She pulled her eyes away from the barn door her son had disappeared through. Chase stood just where he had before, about four feet away. Not close at all. Maybe her heart gave a little skip when she saw him with his eyes crinkled up at the corners from the smile that never seemed to leave his face. It didn’t worry her. The humming in her blood was really rather...pleasant. It was only a natural, physical reaction. “I doubt you had much choice,” she said dryly. “I can tell that Ricky’s going to be about as hard to detach from you as a burr from a dog’s tail. I hope your patience doesn’t wear out.”
“I like Rick,” he said, and walked toward her slow and easy. “He’s a bright kid, and he really did help me find where things were. He said the tools were his grandpa’s.”
Summer felt the little hitch in her breath as he drew closer. He couldn’t have heard it, though, which was good. It was best Chase didn’t know what effect he had on her.
She turned just a bit suddenly to lead the way out of the stall. “My father left me his tools along with his stable,” she said, speaking quickly to distract herself from what she was feeling. “Which was a good thing, since the place wasn’t in such great shape when I...he’d been ill,” she added, not wanting Chase to think that Sam Erickson would ever have intentionally neglected his property. “He couldn’t keep things up very well that last year.”
And she’d been gone. Summer’s mouth tightened with the familiar ache of reproach. While her father was dying, alone and too proud to tell her about his illness, she’d been following her cowboy husband around the rodeo circuit. She walked a little faster down the aisle between the stalls. “I’ve got to get back to the house and turn the chicken over. If you’d just shut off the lights when you—”
“Summer.” She didn’t jump when his hand landed on her shoulder, stopping her. Maybe she’d felt it, had felt him behind her and known he was going to touch her. Maybe...
Gently, he turned her to face him. “No need to gallop off so quick. I’m not going to do a thing you don’t want me to do.”
Oh, Lord. That’s what she was afraid of.
His fingers were callused. She felt them, rough and warm, on her throat, testing the place where her pulse bounded like a doe fleeing the hunter. He knew, damn him, and his smiling eyes told her he knew. “After all, you’re the boss, aren’t you? You’re in charge. Everything’s got to happen the way you want it to. Right?”
The rafters over their heads creaked in the rising wind. The barn smelled like a barn—like horses and hay—and so did the man in front of her, the man whose fingers rested lightly on the pulse in her throat. All around them horses shuffled their feet, stamped, chewed placidly on whatever remained of their feed, while Summer’s muscles softened like wax from the heat of a torch. From just one touch.
And that treacherous smile of his. And the idea, the sneaky, twisty worm of an idea he’d planted, that she could want, and could have what she wanted.
No. No, she knew where that led. With an effort she pulled back. “It’s starting to rain,” she said inanely, and turned and walked away. And if she felt him watching her leave—if she knew he was studying the sway of her hips and the shape of her bottom as she moved—she tried very hard not to enjoy the knowledge so damned much.
The air was cool with moonlight and rich with the smell of earth after rain. Chase welcomed the chill as much as the fresh scent. He lay crossways in his too-small bed in the little room off the kennel and looked at the patterns the moonlight made on the ceiling.
He was so hard he hurt. But for the moment, just for the moment, he didn’t mind, because it was a good kind of a hurt, an alive kind, the sort he hadn’t felt in over a year, not since he woke up in the hospital and realized his days of following the circuit were over. Since then he’d been with a few friendly ladies, but he hadn’t really wanted.
It was good to want again.
The wind had pretty much departed with the rain, so the shapes the shadow branches made on Chase’s ceiling shifted only slightly in the remnants of a breeze. Chase shifted, too, uncomfortable, but not really minding the ache that was keeping him awake.
Chase’s temporary quarters were about what he’d expected. The floor was cement, with a rag rug next to the bed. The single window had been painted shut with the same blue paint that was flaking off the chest of drawers, and the closet was the result of someone’s less-than-expert carpentry.
But the room was one huge step up from the couch where he’d spent the last two nights. It had a door that he could. close when he wanted—or leave open like he had it now. And it was as ruthlessly clean as the tiny bathroom next to it. He supposed the hard-headed woman he worked for must have come in here and scrubbed everything with one hand while he was moving the horses after lunch. She was just not too bright about some things, but Chase was already certain that sort of stubborn, prideful behavior was typical of Summer Callaway.
The storm that had threatened had made an appearance briefly. While he and his pretty boss lady and her son had sat at her kitchen table and eaten fried chicken with ovenfried potatoes, mustard greens drenched in hot sauce and biscuits with butter and honey, the rain had come. It had been one of those quick, noisy cloudbursts, lots of wind and a fast, hard drenching that finished up so abruptly you could just imagine someone upstairs turning off the tap. But while it had lasted...
Eating in the kitchen with a widow woman and her sixyear-old son might have made Chase feel itchy. It hadn’t. He’d felt comfortable. Maybe, he thought now as he watched the moon shadows, the combination of hot food and him on the inside of four snug walls, with a lot of wind and rain on the outside, was what had made him feel so relaxed and contented. Hard to say. Contentment wasn’t a feeling he’d had much experience with.
Chase shifted again in the dark, his skin hot with the same fever that had his groin aching. He shoved the covers off. Chilly night air flowed over his naked body, air freshly washed by the recent rain.
The contentment hadn’t lasted. Chase didn’t know what had called up the old memory. Maybe the rain. Maybe it had been the feeling, insidious and terrible, that had snuck in under his guard—that feeling of safety and permanence. Of family. By the time they’d finished eating—and getting in each other’s way trying to get the dishes done, since the fool woman wouldn’t admit that having only one arm to use hampered her in the slightest—he’d been starting to feel itchy. But it had still been raining, and Ricky had looked awfully hopeful when he’d asked Chase to play checkers.
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