The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter
Sherryl Woods
Fatherhood is filled with all kinds of unexpected surprises in this acclaimed Adams Dynasty story from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods.Widower Harlan Adams had plenty of experience with children–male children, anyway. So when a rebellious teenage girl stole his truck and went for a joyride, Harlan was baffled. Then he confronted her intriguing, sassy mother and was totally thrown for a loop. While he might not know anything about girls, he thought he knew everything about women. Trouble was, Harlan had no experience with a woman who told him no…
Fatherhood is filled with all kinds of unexpected surprises in this acclaimed Adams Dynasty story from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods.
Widower Harlan Adams had plenty of experience with children—male children, anyway. So when a rebellious teenage girl stole his truck and went for a joyride, Harlan was baffled. Then he confronted her intriguing, sassy mother and was totally thrown for a loop. While he might not know anything about girls, he thought he knew everything about women. Trouble was, Harlan had no experience with a woman who told him no…
The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter
Sherryl Woods
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u242f45c2-f0bc-55d3-8801-a49e6a4f2210)
Back Cover Text (#u8e8af5ff-fd63-531e-b1cd-016a522a0957)
Title Page (#udaf45681-158d-5243-af3d-865325420663)
Chapter One (#u5e6a262d-e197-5c0d-9984-2de4df279a32)
Chapter Two (#ue161b40b-b993-5d68-a461-9313247bd2e2)
Chapter Three (#u7dd564ee-b117-5b96-8126-a81d8c749914)
Chapter Four (#u65cf61de-bd2c-5e5e-8533-aab62098064d)
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)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_e56e1309-0338-50e5-ab54-ec30584fe29a)
Harlan Adams walked out of Rosa’s Mexican Café after eating his fill of her spicy brand of Tex-Mex food just in time to see his pickup barrel down the center of Main Street at fifty miles an hour. In the sleepy Texas town of Los Piños, both the theft and the speed were uncommon occurrences.
“Ain’t that your truck?” Mule Masters asked, staring after the vehicle that was zigzagging all over the road, endangering parked cars and pedestrians alike.
“Sure as hell is,” Harlan said, indignation making his insides churn worse than Rosa’s hot sauce.
“That’s what you get for leaving your keys in plain sight. I’ve been telling you for months now that times have changed. The world’s full of thieves and murderers,” Mule said ominously. “They were bound to get to Los Piños sooner or later.”
Given the time it was wasting, Harlan found the familiar lecture extremely irritating. “Where’s your car?” he snapped.
Mule blinked at the sharp tone. “Across the street, right where it always is.”
Harlan was already striding across the two-lane road before the words were completely out of his friend’s mouth. “Come on, old man.”
Mule appeared vaguely startled by the command. “Come on where?”
“To catch the damned thing, that’s where,” he replied with a certain amount of eagerness. The thought of a good ruckus held an amazing appeal.
“Sheriff’s close by,” Mule objected without picking up speed.
Harlan lost patience with the procrastinating that had earned Mule his nickname. “Just give me your keys,” he instructed. He didn’t take any chances on Mule’s compliance. He reached out and snatched them from his friend’s hand.
Before the old man could even start grumbling, Harlan was across the street and starting the engine of a battered old sedan. That car had seen a hundred thousand hard miles or more back and forth across the state of Texas, thanks to Mule’s knack for tinkering with an engine.
Harlan pulled out onto Main Street, gunned the engine a couple of times, then shifted gears with pure pleasure. The smooth glide from standing stock-still to sixty in the blink of an eye was enough to make a man weep.
In less than a minute his truck was in sight again on the outskirts of town and he was gaining on it. He was tempted to whoop with joy at the sheer exhilaration of the impromptu race, but he had to keep every bit of his energy focused on his pursuit of that runaway truck.
The chase lasted just long enough to stir his ire, but not nearly long enough to be downright interesting. Not a mile out of town, where the two-lane road curved like a well-rounded lady’s hips, he caught up with the truck just in time to see it miss the turn and swerve straight toward a big, old, cottonwood tree. His heart climbed straight into his throat and stayed there as he watched the drama unfold.
He veered from the highway onto the shoulder and slammed on his own brakes just as the truck collided with the tree. It hit with a resounding thwack that crumpled the front fender on the passenger side, sent his blood pressure soaring, and elicited a string of profanity from inside the truck that blistered his ears.
“What the devil?” he muttered as he scrambled from the borrowed car and ran toward the truck. Obviously the thief couldn’t be badly injured if he had that much energy left for cursing.
To his astonishment, when he flung open the driver’s door, a slender young girl practically tumbled out into his arms. He righted her, keeping a firm clamp on her wrist in case the little thief decided to flee.
She couldn’t be a day over thirteen, he decided, gazing into scared brown eyes. Admittedly, though, she had a vocabulary that a much older dock worker would envy. She also had a belligerent tilt to her cute little chin and a sullen expression that dared him to yell at her.
Taken aback by her apparent age, Harlan bit back the shouted lecture he’d planned and settled for a less confrontative approach. He could hardly wait to hear why this child had stolen his pickup.
“You okay?” he inquired quietly. Other than a bump on her forehead, he couldn’t see any other signs of injury.
She wriggled in a game effort to free herself from his grip. He grinned at the wasted attempt. He’d wrestled cows ten times her weight or more. This little slip of a thing didn’t stand a chance of getting away until he was good and ready to let her go. He didn’t plan on that happening anytime soon. Not until he had the answers he wanted, anyway.
“Must be just fine, if you can struggle like that,” he concluded out loud. “Any particular reason you decided to steal my truck?”
“I was tired of walking,” she shot back.
“Did you ever consider a bike?”
“Not fast enough,” she muttered, her gaze defiantly clashing with his.
“You had someplace to get to in a hurry?”
She shrugged.
Harlan had to fight to hide a grin. He’d always been a big admirer of audacity, though he preferred it to be a little better directed. “What’s your name?”
She frowned and for the first time began to look faintly uneasy. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Harlan Adams. I own White Pines. That’s a ranch just outside of town.” If she was local, that would be plenty of explanation to intimidate her. If she wasn’t, he could elaborate until he had her quivering with fear in her dusty sneakers for pulling a stunt like the one that had ended with his pickup wrapped around a tree.
“Big deal,” she retorted, then let loose a string of expletives.
She either wasn’t local or it was going to take a lot more to impress her with the stupidity of what she’d done. “You have a foul mouth, you know that?” he observed.
“So?”
“I’ll just bet you don’t talk that way around your mama.”
The mention of her mother stirred an expression of pure alarm on her delicate features. Harlan sensed that he’d hit the nail on the head. This ragamuffin kid with the sleek black hair cut as short as a boy’s, with the high cheekbones and tanned complexion, might not be afraid of him, but she was scared to death of her mother. He considered it a hopeful sign. He was very big on respect for parental authority, not that he’d noticed his grown-up sons paying the concept much mind lately.
“You’re not going to tell her, are you?” she asked, clearly trying to keep the worry out of her voice and failing miserably. For the first time since she’d climbed out of his truck, she sounded her age.
“Now why would I want to keep quiet about the fact that you stole my truck and slammed it into a tree?”
A resurgence of belligerence glinted in her eyes. “Because she’ll sue you for pain and suffering. I’m almost positive I’ve got a whiplash injury,” she said, rubbing at her neck convincingly. “Probably back problems that’ll last the rest of my life, too.”
Harlan chuckled. “Imagine that. All those problems and you expect to blame them on the man whose truck you stole and smashed up. You and your mother have a little scam going? You wreck cars and she sues for damages?”
At the criticism of her mother’s ethics, her defiance wavered just a little. “My mom’s a lawyer,” she admitted eventually. “She sues lots of people.” Her eyes glittered with triumphant sparks as she added, “She wins, too.”
An image suddenly came to him, an image of the new lawyer he’d read about just last week in the local paper. The article had been accompanied by a picture of an incredibly lovely woman, her long black hair flowing down her back, her features and her name strongly suggesting her Comanche heritage. Janet Something-or-other. Runningbear, maybe. Yep, that was it. Janet Runningbear.
He surveyed the girl standing in front of him and thought he detected a resemblance. There was no mistaking the Native American genes in her proud bearing, her features or her coloring, though he had a hunch they’d been mellowed by a couple of generations of interracial marriage.
“Your mom’s the new lawyer in town, then,” he said. “Janet Runningbear.”
She seemed startled that he’d guessed, but she hid it quickly behind another of those belligerent looks she’d obviously worked hard to perfect. “So?”
“So, I think you and I need to go have a little chat with your mama,” he said, putting a hand on the middle of her back and giving her a gentle but unrelenting little push in the direction of Mule’s car. Her chin rose another notch, but her shoulders slumped and she didn’t resist. In fact, there was an air of weary resignation about her that tugged at his heart.
As he drove back into town he couldn’t help wondering just how much trouble Janet Runningbear’s daughter managed to get herself into on a regular basis and why she felt the need to do it. After raising four sons of his own, he knew a whole lot about teenage rebellion and the testing of parental authority. He’d always thought—mistakenly apparently—that girls might have been easier. Not that he would have traded a single one of his boys to find out firsthand. He’d planned on keeping an eye on his female grandbabies to test his theory.
He glanced over at the slight figure next to him and caught the downward turn of her mouth and the protective clasping of her arms across her chest. Stubbornness radiated from every pore. The prospect of meeting the woman who had raised such a little hellion intrigued him.
It was the first time since a riding accident had taken his beloved Mary away from him the year before that he’d found much of anything fascinating. He realized as the blood zinged through his veins for the first time in months just how boring and predictable he’d allowed his life to become.
He’d left the running of the ranch mostly in Cody’s hands, just as his youngest son had been itching for him to do for some time. Harlan spent his days riding over his land or stopping off in town to have lunch and play a few hands of poker with Mule or some other friend. His evenings dragged out endlessly unless one or the other of his sons stopped by for a visit and brought his grandbabies along.
For a rancher who’d crammed each day to its limits all his life, he’d been telling himself that the tedium was a welcome relief. He’d been convinced of it, too, until the instant when he’d seen his truck barreling down Main Street.
Something about the quick, hot surge of blood in his veins told him those soothing, dull days were over. Glancing down at the ruffian by his side, he could already anticipate the upcoming encounter with any woman bold and brash enough to keep her in hand. He suddenly sensed that he was just about to start living again.
* * *
Janet Runningbear gazed out of the window of her small law office on Main Street and saw her daughter being ushered down the sidewalk by a man she recognized at once as Harlan Adams, owner of White Pines and one of the most successful ranchers for several hundred miles in any direction. Judging from the stern expression on his face and Jenny’s dragging footsteps, her daughter had once more gotten herself into a mess of trouble.
She studied the man approaching with a mixture of trepidation, anger, and an odd, tingly hint of anticipation. Ever since her move to Los Piños, the closest town to where her ancestors had once lived, she’d been hearing about Harlan Adams, the man whose own ancestors had been at least in part responsible for pushing the Comanches out of Texas and onto an Oklahoma reservation.
The claiming of Comanche lands might have taken place a hundred years or more ago, but Janet clung to the resentment that had been passed down to her by her great-grandfather. Lone Wolf had lived to be ninety-seven and his father had been forced from the nomadic life of a hunter to the confined space of a reservation.
Even though she knew it was ridiculous to blame Harlan Adams for deeds that had been committed long before his birth or her own, she was prepared to dislike him just on principle. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the prompt and very feminine response to a man who practically oozed sex appeal from every masculine pore.
He was cowboy through and through, from the Stetson hat that rode atop his thick, sun-streaked hair to the tips of his dusty boots. His weathered face hinted at his age, which she knew to be somewhere in his fifties, but nothing about his easy stride or his broad shoulders added to that impression. He had the bearing of a much younger man.
In fact, Harlan Adams strolled down the sidewalk, her daughter in tow, with the confidence of a man who was comfortable with himself and with the power his wealth had earned him. To dampen any spark of fascination he might arouse, Janet quickly assured herself it was more than confidence she saw. It was arrogance, a trait she despised. Since there was no mistaking his destination, she braced herself for his arrival.
A few minutes later, with the pair of them seated across from her, she listened with a sense of growing horror as Harlan Adams described the theft of his truck and the subsequent accident, which had clearly done more damage to the truck than it had to Jenny. Her daughter didn’t even seem flustered.
“He shouldn’t have left the damned keys inside,” Jenny muttered.
“Watch your tongue, young lady,” Janet warned.
A heartfelt apology rose to Janet’s lips but before she could begin to form the words, she caught a surprising glint of amusement in Harlan’s startlingly blue eyes. She’d been anticipating the same mischievous dark brown eyes each of his sons reportedly had, according to the fond reminiscences of the local ladies. They must have inherited those from their mother, she decided. Harlan’s were the bright blue of a summer sky just rinsed by rain.
“Jenny, perhaps you should wait in the other room, while Mr. Adams and I discuss this,” she said, sensing that the twinkle in those eyes might mean an inclination toward leniency that wasn’t altogether deserved.
The last of her daughter’s defiance slid away. “Am I going to jail?” she asked in a voice that shook even though she was clearly trying desperately to sound brave.
“That remains to be seen,” Janet told her without so much as a hint that she thought jail was the last thing on this particular victim’s mind.
“Are you going to be my lawyer?”
Janet hid her face so that Jenny wouldn’t see her own smile. “If you need one,” she promised solemnly, doubting that it was going to come to that.
Sure enough, the second Jenny was out of the room, Harlan Adams chuckled. “Damn, but she’s a pistol. She’s got the makings of one heck of a young woman.”
“If she doesn’t self-destruct first,” Janet muttered wearily. “I’m not sure I understand why you find all of this so amusing.”
He grinned at her and her heart did an unexpected little flip. There was something so unexpectedly boyish about that lazy, lopsided smile. At the same time, the experience and wisdom that shone in his eyes was comforting. Something told her at once that this was a man a woman could always count on for straight talk and moral support. A little of that misguided resentment she’d been stoking slipped away.
“Remind me to tell you about the time one of my boys rustled a bunch of my cattle to start his own herd,” Harlan Adams said, still chuckling over the memory. “He was seven at the time. Try taking your daughter’s mischief and multiply it four times over and you’ll have some idea why I can’t work up too much of a sweat over one stolen truck.”
“She could have been killed,” Janet said grimly, realizing as she spoke that she was shaking at the very thought of what could have happened to Jenny.
“But she wasn’t,” Harlan reminded her in a soothing tone that suggested he knew exactly the sort of belated reaction she was having.
“Then there’s the matter of your truck. I’m just getting my practice off the ground here, but I can make arrangements to pay you back over time, if that’s okay.”
He waved off the offer. “Insurance will take care of it.”
“But it’s my responsibility,” she insisted.
“The danged truck’s not important,” he countered emphatically. “The real question now is how to make sure that gal of yours doesn’t go trying some fool thing like that again.”
His unexpected kindness brought the salty sting of tears to her eyes. Janet rubbed at them impatiently. She never cried. Never. In fact, she considered it a point of honor that she was always strong and in control.
Suddenly, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she was not only crying, but actually considering spilling her guts to a total stranger. Harlan Adams was practically the first person in town to be civilized to her, much less kind. Truth be told, the move to Texas was not turning out anything at all the way she’d imagined it would.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me or with Jenny. I never cry. And she used to be such a good girl.”
Harlan’s expression remained solemn and thoughtful. “You know,” he said, “I used to teach my sons that tears made a man seem weak. The past year or so, I’ve had a change of heart. I think it takes someone pretty strong to acknowledge when they’re feeling vulnerable and then deal straight-out with the pain they’re going through.”
Janet guessed right off that it was his wife’s death that had brought him to a change of heart. The word on Mary Adams was mixed, according to the gossip that folks had been eager to share. Some thought she’d been an elegant, refined lady. Others thought she was a cold, uppity witch. One thing no one disputed, however, was that Harlan Adams had adored her and that she had doted on him.
Janet had wondered more than once what it would be like to love anyone with such passion. Her own marriage had been lukewarm at best and certainly not up to the kind of tests it had been put through. She’d been relieved to call it quits, eager to move far from New York and its memories to the land Lone Wolf had described with such bittersweet poignancy. She had legally taken the name he’d dubbed her with as soon as she’d settled in town. A new name, a fresh start for her and Jenny.
She glanced up and realized that Harlan’s warm gaze was fixed on her. He was regarding her with more of that compassion that made her want to weep.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with that girl of yours?” he offered. “Maybe we can figure this thing out together.”
Surprised at the relief she felt at having someone with whom to share her concerns, Janet tried to describe what the past few weeks had been like. “I thought coming here was going to make such a difference for Jenny,” she said. “Instead, she’s behaving as if I’ve punished her by moving from New York to Texas.”
“Quite a change for a young girl,” Harlan observed. “She’s at an age when leaving all her friends behind must seem like the end of the world. Hell, she’s at an age when everything seems like the end of the world. Besides that, it’s summertime. All the kids her age around here are caught up with their own vacation activities. Lots of `em have to work their family’s ranch. Must seem like she’ll never have a friend of her own again.”
Janet didn’t like having a total stranger tell her something she should have figured out for herself. She’d been so anxious to get to Texas after the divorce, so determined to get on with her life and to get Jenny settled in a safer environment than the city streets of Manhattan that she hadn’t given much thought to how lonely the summer might be for her daughter. She’d been thinking of the move as an adventure and had assumed Jenny was doing the same.
Now it appeared that the kind of energy that might have resulted in little more than mischief back in New York was taking a dangerous turn. She cringed as she pictured that truck slamming into a tree with her daughter behind the wheel. If her ex-husband heard about that, he’d wash his hands of Jenny once and for all. Barry Randall had little enough room in his life for his daughter now. If she became a liability to his image, he’d forget she existed.
“I have an idea,” the man seated across from her said. “I don’t intend to press charges for this, but we don’t want her getting the idea that she can get away with stealing a car and taking it joyriding.”
Janet was so worried by the prospects for Jenny getting herself into serious trouble before school started in the fall that she was willing to listen to anything, even if it was being offered by the exact kind of man she’d learned to distrust—a rich and powerful white man. A Texan, to boot. A sworn enemy of her ancestors.
“What?” she asked warily.
“I’ll give her a job out at White Pines. She can earn enough to pay off the cost of the truck’s repairs. That’ll keep her busy, teach her to take responsibility for her actions, and wear her out at the same time.”
“I said I’d pay,” Janet reminded him.
“It’s not the same. It was her mistake.”
Just one of many lately, Janet thought with a sigh. Perhaps if Jenny hadn’t shoplifted a whole handful of cosmetics from the drugstore the week before, perhaps if she hadn’t upended a table in Rosa’s Café breaking every dish on it, Janet might have resisted a suggestion that would have kept her in contact with this man who made her pulse skip. The kindness in his voice, the humor in his eyes, were every bit as dangerous to her in her beleaguered state of mind as Jenny’s exploits were to her future. At the rate she’d been going since they got to Texas, she’d either end up in jail or dead.
“Do I have any choice?” she asked, all but resigned to accepting the deal he was offering.
He shrugged. “Not really. I could sue you, I suppose, but that gal of yours says you’re the best lawyer around. You might win, and then where would I be?”
Janet laughed at the outrageous comment. A man who could keep his sense of humor in a circumstance like this was rare. She just might be forced to reevaluate Harlan Adams. And he might be just the kind of good influence her daughter needed. There was no question Jenny needed a stern hand and perhaps a stronger father figure than her own daddy had ever provided.
“Are you really sure you want to deal with a rebellious teenage girl for the rest of the summer?” she asked, but there was no denying the hopeful note in her voice as she envisioned an improvement in Jenny’s reckless behavior.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said solemnly, his gaze fixed on her.
Janet trembled at the speculative gleam she saw in his eyes. She hadn’t had this kind of immediate, purely sexual reaction to a man in a very long time. She’d actually convinced herself she was capable of controlling such things. Now not only was Jenny out of control, it appeared her hormones were, as well. It was a dismaying turn of events.
It also served as a warning that she’d better be on her guard around Harlan Adams. It wouldn’t do to spend much time around him with her defenses down. He was the kind of man who’d claim what he wanted, just as his ancestors had. Whether it was land or a woman probably wouldn’t matter much.
She adopted her most businesslike demeanor, the one she reserved for clients and the courtroom. “What time do you want her at White Pines?” she inquired briskly, prepared to temporarily sacrifice her emotional peace of mind for her daughter’s sake.
“Dawn will do,” he said as he rose and headed for the door.
He must have heard her faint gasp of dismay because he turned back and winked. “I’ll have the coffee ready when you get there.”
Janet sighed as he walked away. Dawn! If he expected her to be coherent at that hour, he’d better have gallons of it and it had best be strong and black.
Chapter Two (#ulink_41bf5898-5b30-5c6a-9b07-a359c2367ef9)
“I’ve taken on another hand for the summer,” Harlan mentioned to Cody when he stopped by just before dinner later that night.
His son sat up a little straighter in the leather chair in which he’d sprawled out of habit as soon as he’d walked through the door. Instantly Harlan could see Cody’s jaw setting stubbornly as he prepared to argue against his father’s unilateral decision. Harlan decided he’d best cut him off at the pass.
“Don’t go getting your drawers in a knot,” he advised him. “I’m not usurping your authority. This was just something that came up.”
“Came up how?” Cody asked, suspicion written all over his face. “There’s no budget for another hand. You told me that yourself when we talked about it just last week.”
“It came up right after my truck was stolen and smashed up,” Harlan explained. “Let’s just say that no money will be changing hands. The thief will be working off the repair bill.”
Cody’s jaw dropped. “You hired the thief who stole your car? Haven’t you ever heard of jail time? If any of us had stolen a car and gone joyriding, you’d have helped the sheriff turn the lock on the cell.”
“It didn’t seem like the thing to do with a thirteen-year-old girl,” Harlan said mildly. “Seemed to me this was a better way to teach her a lesson.”
Cody fell silent, clearly chewing over the concept of a teenage girl as his newest ranch hand. “What the hell am I supposed to have her doing?” he asked finally.
“You’re not her boss,” Harlan said, amused by the relief that instantly spread across Cody’s face. “I am. I just wanted you to know she’d be around. Her name’s Jenny Runningbear.”
“Runningbear? Is her mother…?”
“The new lawyer in town,” Harlan supplied, watching as curiosity rose in Cody’s eyes.
“Did you meet her?” Cody asked.
“I did.” He decided then and there that he’d better be stingy with information about that meeting. His son had the look of a man about to make a romantic mountain out of a platonic molehill.
“And?”
“And, what?”
“What did you think of her?”
“She seemed nice,” Harlan offered blandly, even as he conjured up some fairly steamy images of the raven-haired beauty who’d struck him as a fascinating blend of strength and vulnerability. Nice was far too tame a description for that delicate, exotic face, those long, long legs, and eyes so dark a man could lose himself in them.
“Really?” Cody said, skepticism written all over his face. “Nice?”
Harlan didn’t like the way Cody was studying him. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?” he replied irritably.
“Just seemed sort of namby-pamby to me,” Cody retorted. “I might have described her as hot. I believe Jordan said something similar after he spotted her.”
Harlan bit back a sharp rebuke. His gaze narrowed. “Exactly how well do you and your brother know the woman?”
“Not well enough to say more than hello when we pass on the street. Never even been introduced. Of course, if we both weren’t happily married, we’d probably be brawling over first dibs on meeting her.”
“See that you remember that you are married,” he advised his son.
“Interesting,” Cody observed, his eyes suddenly sparkling with pure mischief.
“What’s interesting?”
“The way you’re getting all protective about the mother of a teenage car thief. What time are they getting here in the morning?”
“That’s nothing you need to concern yourself about.” He stood, glanced at his watch pointedly as he anticipated his housekeeper’s imminent announcement that dinner was on the table. “I’d invite you to dinner, but I told Maritza I’d be eating alone. It’s time you got home to your wife and those grandbabies of mine anyway.”
Cody didn’t budge. “They’re eating in town with her folks tonight, so I’m all yours. I told Maritza I’d be staying. I thought maybe we could wrangle a little over buying that acreage out to the east, but I’d rather talk more about your impressions of Janet Runningbear.”
“Forget it,” Harlan warned. “Besides, since when does my housekeeper take orders from you?”
Cody grinned. “Ever since I was old enough to talk. I inherited your charm. It pays off in the most amazing ways. Maritza even fixed all my favorites. She said she’d missed me something fierce. I’m the one with the cast-iron stomach.”
Harlan sighed as he thought of the hot peppers that comment implied. Between lunch at Rosa’s and that darned accident, his own stomach could have used a bowl of nice bland oatmeal. It appeared he was out of luck.
“Well, come on, then. The sooner we eat, the sooner I can get you out of here and get some peace and quiet.”
“You really interested in peace and quiet, Daddy? Or do you just want to make sure you get some beauty sleep before you see Janet Runningbear in the morning?” Cody taunted.
“Don’t go getting too big for your britches, son,” Harlan warned. “You’re not so old that I can’t send you packing without your supper. Push me hard enough, I might just send you packing, period.”
“But you won’t,” Cody retorted confidently.
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Because so far only you and I know about this new fascination of yours. Send me home and I’ll have the whole, long evening to fill up. I might decide to use that time by calling Luke and Jordan. They like to be up-to-date on everything that goes on around White Pines. They’ll be flat-out delighted to discover that you’re no longer bored.”
Harlan could just imagine the hornet’s nest that would stir up. He’d have all three sons hovering over him, making rude remarks, discussing his relationship with a woman he’d barely spent a half hour with up to now. They’d consider taunting him their duty, just as he’d considered it his to meddle in their lives.
“That’s blackmail,” he accused.
Cody’s grin was unrepentant. “Sure is. It’s going to make life around here downright interesting, isn’t it?”
Harlan sighed. It was indeed.
* * *
“I don’t see why I have to work for him,” Jenny declared for the hundredth time since learning of the agreement her mother had made with Harlan Adams. “Aren’t there child labor laws or something?”
“There are also laws against car theft,” Janet stated flatly. “You didn’t seem overly concerned about those.”
A yawn took a little of the edge off of her words. No one in his right mind actually got up at daybreak. She was certain of it. Even though she’d forced herself to get to bed two hours earlier than usual the night before, she’d wanted to hurl the alarm clock out the window when it had gone off forty-five minutes ago.
She’d dressed in a sleepy fog. With any luck, everything at least matched. As for her driving, she would probably be considered a menace if anyone checked on how many of her brain cells were actually functioning. The lure of a huge pot of caffeinated coffee was all that had gotten her out the door.
At the moment she could cheerfully have murdered Jenny for getting them into this predicament. The very thought of doing this day after day all summer long had her gnashing her teeth. She was in no mood for any more of her daughter’s backtalk.
“Why couldn’t you just pay him?” Jenny muttered. “There’s money in my account from Dad.”
“It’s for college,” Janet reminded her. “Besides, I offered to pay Mr. Adams. He refused.”
“Jeez, did he see you coming! I’m free labor, Mom. He’ll probably have me scrubbing down the barn floor or something. I’ll probably end up with arthritis from kneeling in all that cold, filthy water.”
“Serves you right,” Janet said.
At the lack of either sympathy or any hint of a reprieve, Jenny retreated into sullen silence. That gave Janet time to work on her own composure.
To her astonishment, Harlan Adams had slipped into her dreams last night. She’d awakened feeling restless and edgy and unfulfilled in a way that didn’t bear too close a scrutiny. It was a state she figured she’d better get over before her arrival at White Pines. He had struck her as the kind of man who would seize on any hint of weakness and capitalize on it.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon in a blaze of brilliant orange when she arrived at the gate to the ranch. She turned onto the property with something akin to awe spreading through her as she studied the raw beauty of the land around her. This was the land Lone Wolf had described, lush and barren in turns, stretched out as far as the eye could see, uninterrupted by the kind of development she’d come to take for granted in New York.
“This is it?” Jenny asked, a heavy measure of disdain in her voice. “There’s nothing here.”
Janet hid a smile. No Bloomingdale’s. No high rises. No restaurants or music stores. It was little wonder her daughter sounded so appalled.
She, to the contrary, was filled at last with that incredible sense of coming home that she’d wanted so badly to feel when she’d moved to Los Piños. She considered for a moment whether Lone Wolf’s father might have hunted on this very land. It pleased her somehow to think that he might have.
“That’s why they call it the wide open spaces,” she told her daughter. “Remember all the stories I told you about Lone Wolf?”
“Yeah, but I don’t get it,” Jenny declared flatly. “Maybe I could just get a job in the drugstore or something and pay Mr. Adams back that way.”
“No,” Janet said softly, listening to the early morning sounds of birds singing, insects humming and somewhere in the distance a tractor rumbling. Did he grow his own grain? Or maybe have a nice vegetable garden? On some level, she thought she’d been waiting all her life for a moment just like this.
“I think this will be perfect for you,” she added as hope flowered inside her for the first time in years.
Jenny rolled her eyes. “If he makes me go near a horse or a cow, I’m out of here,” she warned.
Janet grinned. “This is a cattle ranch. I think you can pretty much count on horses and cows.”
“Mo-om!” she wailed. Her gaze narrowed. “I’ll run away. I’ll steal a car and drive all the way home to New York.”
“And then what?” Janet inquired mildly. Jenny knew as well as she did that there was no room for her in her father’s life. Even though at the moment his selfishness suited her purposes, she hated Barry Randall for making his disinterest so abundantly clear to his daughter.
Jenny turned a tearful gaze on her that almost broke Janet’s heart.
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” she asked.
“Afraid not, love. Besides, I think you’ll enjoy this once you’ve gotten used to it. Think of all the stories you’ll have to write to your friends back in New York. How many of them have ever seen a genuine cowboy, much less worked on a ranch?”
“How many of them even wanted to?” Jenny shot back.
“You remember what I always told my clients when they landed in jail?” Janet asked.
Jenny shot her a tolerant look and sighed heavily. “I remember. It’s up to me whether I make my time here hard or easy.”
“Exactly.”
A sudden gleam lit her eyes. “I suppose it’s also up to me whether it’s hard or easy for Mr. Adams, too, huh?”
Janet didn’t much like the sound of that. “Jenny,” she warned. “If you don’t behave, you’ll be in debt to this man until you’re old enough for college.”
“I’ll be good, Mom. Cross my heart.”
Janet nodded, accepting the promise, but the glint in her daughter’s eyes when she made that solemn vow was worrisome. The words had come a little too quickly, a little too easily. Worse, she recognized that glint all too well. It made her wonder if Harlan Adams just might have bitten off more than he could handle.
One look at him a few minutes later and her doubts vanished. This was a man competent to deal with anything at all. When he rounded the corner of the house in his snug, worn jeans, his blue chambray shirt, his dusty boots and that Stetson hat, he almost stole her breath away.
If she was ever of a mind to let another man into her life, she wanted one who exuded exactly this combination of strength, sex appeal and humor. His eyes were practically dancing with laughter as he approached. And the appreciative head-to-toe look he gave her could have melted steel. Her knees didn’t stand a chance. They turned weak as a new colt’s.
“Too early for you?” he inquired, his gaze drifting over her once more in the kind of lazy inspection that left goose bumps in its wake.
“No, indeed,” she denied brightly. “Why would you think that?”
“No special reason. It’s just that you struck me as a woman who’d never leave the house with quite so many buttons undone.”
A horrified glance at her blouse confirmed the teasing comment. She’d missed more buttons than she’d secured, which meant there was an inordinate amount of cleavage revealed. She vowed to strangle her daughter at the very first opportunity for not warning her. At least the damned blouse did match her slacks, she thought as she fumbled with the buttons with fingers that shook.
“Jeez, Mom,” Jenny protested. “Let me.”
Janet thought she heard Harlan mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, “Or me,” but she couldn’t be absolutely sure. When she looked in his direction, his gaze was fixed innocently enough on the sky.
“Come on inside,” he invited a moment later. “I promised you coffee. I think Maritza has breakfast ready by now, too.”
“Who’s Maritza?” Jenny asked.
Her tone suggested a level of distrust that had Janet shooting a warning look in her direction. Harlan, however, appeared oblivious to Jenny’s suspicions.
“My housekeeper,” he explained. “She’s been with the family for years. If you’re interested in learning a little Tex-Mex cooking while you’re here, she’ll be glad to teach you. She’s related to Rosa, who owns the Mexican Café in town.”
“I hate Tex-Mex,” Jenny declared.
“You do not,” Janet said, giving Harlan an apologetic smile. “She’s a little contrary at this hour.”
“Seemed to be that way at midday, too,” he stated pointedly. “Not to worry. It would be an understatement to say that I’ve had a lot of experience with contrariness.”
He led the way through the magnificent foyer and into a formal dining room that was practically the size of Janet’s entire house. Her eyes widened. “Good heavens, do you actually eat in here by yourself?”
He seemed startled by the question. “Of course. Why?”
“It’s just that it’s so…” She fumbled for the right word.
“Big,” Jenny contributed.
“Lonely,” Janet said, then regretted it at once. The man didn’t need to be reminded that he was a widower and that his sons were no longer living under his roof. He was probably aware of those sad facts every single day of his life.
He didn’t seem to take offense, however. He just shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
He gestured toward a buffet laden with more cereals, jams, muffins, toast and fruits than Janet had ever seen outside a grocery store.
“Help yourself,” he said. “If you’d rather have eggs and bacon, Maritza will fix them for you. She doesn’t allow me near the stuff.”
“How come?” Jenny asked.
“Cholesterol, fat.” He grimaced. “They’ve taken all the fun out of eating. Next thing you know they’ll be feeding us a bunch of pills three times a day and we won’t be needing food at all.”
“There are egg substitutes,” Janet commented.
“Yellow mush,” he contradicted.
“And turkey bacon.”
He shuddered. “Not a chance.”
Janet chuckled at his reaction. “I’m not going to convince you, am I?”
“Depends on how good you are at sweet talk, darlin’.”
Her startled gaze flew to his. Those blue eyes were innocent as a baby’s. Even so, she knew in her gut, where butterflies were ricocheting wildly, that he had just tossed down a gauntlet of sorts. He was daring her to turn this so-called arrangement they had made for Jenny’s punishment into something personal. The temperature in the room rose significantly.
Nothing would happen between them. Janet was adamant about that. She was in Texas to tap into her Native American roots, not to get involved with another white man. She’d tried that once and it had failed, just as her mother’s marriage to a white man had ended in disaster exactly as Lone Wolf had apparently predicted when her mother had fled the reservation.
She drew herself up and leveled a look at him that she normally reserved for difficult witnesses in court. “That, darlin’, is something you’re not likely to find out,” she retorted.
Jenny’s eyes widened as she listened to the exchange. Janet was very aware of the precise instant when a speculative gleam lit her daughter’s intelligent brown eyes. Dear heaven, that was the last thing she needed. Jenny was like a puppy with a sock when she got a notion into her head. If she sensed there were sparks between her mother and Harlan Adams, she’d do everything in her power to see that they flared into a blaze. She’d do it not because she particularly wanted someone to replace her father, but just to see if she could pull it off.
To put a prompt end to any such speculation, Janet forced a perfectly blank expression onto her face as she turned her attention to the man seated opposite her.
“Exactly what will Jenny be doing today?”
“I thought maybe I’d teach her to ride,” Harlan replied just as blandly, apparently willing to let that sudden flare of heat between them die down for the moment. “Unless she already knows how.”
“Oh, no,” Jenny protested.
Janet jumped in to prevent the tantrum she suspected was only seconds away. “She doesn’t, but riding doesn’t sound much like punishment or work to me.”
“She has to be able to get around, if she’s going to be much use on a ranch this size,” he countered. “I can’t go putting her behind the wheel of a truck again, now can I?”
He glanced at his watch, then at Jenny. “You ready?”
Jenny’s chin rose stubbornly. “Not if you were paying me a hundred bucks an hour,” she declared.
Janet thought she detected a spark of amusement in his eyes, but his expression remained perfectly neutral.
“You scared of horses?” he inquired.
Janet watched her daughter, sensing her dilemma. Jenny would rather eat dirt than admit to fear of any sort. At the same time, she had a genuine distrust of horses, based totally on unfamiliarity, not on any dire experience she’d ever had.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Jenny informed Harlan stiffly. “Horses are dirty and smelly and big. I don’t choose to be around them.”
Harlan chuckled at the haughty dismissal. “I can’t do much about their size, but I can flat-out guarantee they won’t be dirty or smelly by the time you’re finished grooming them.”
Jenny turned a beseeching look in Janet’s direction. “Mom!”
“He’s the boss,” Janet reminded her.
“I don’t see you getting anywhere near a smelly old horse,” Jenny complained.
“You’d be welcome, if you’d care to join us,” Harlan said a little too cheerfully.
“Perhaps another time. I have to get to work.”
“Why?” Jenny asked. “You don’t have any clients.”
Janet winced. The remark was true enough, but she didn’t want Harlan Adams knowing too much about her law practice, if that’s what handling one speeding violation could be called.
“Business slow?” he asked, leveling a penetrating look straight at her.
She shrugged. “You know how it is. I’m new to town.”
He looked as if he might be inclined to comment on that, but instead he let it pass. She was grateful to him for not trying to make excuses for neighbors who were slow to trust under the best of conditions. Their biases made them particularly distrustful of a woman lawyer, who was part Comanche, to boot, and openly proud of it.
“What time should I pick Jenny up?” she asked.
“Suppertime’s good enough. You finish up at work any earlier, come on out,” he said. “We’ll go on that ride. I never get tired of looking at the beauty of this land.”
Janet found herself smiling at the simplicity of the admission. She could understand his appreciation of his surroundings. Perhaps even more than he could ever guess.
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that one of these days,” she agreed. She stood and brushed a kiss across her daughter’s forehead. “Have a good time, sweetie.”
“Is that another one of those things you tell all your clients who end up in prison?” Jenny inquired, her expression sour.
“You’re not in prison,” Janet observed, avoiding Harlan’s gaze. She had a feeling he was close to laughing and exchanging a look with her would guarantee it. Jenny would resent being laughed at more than anything.
“Seems that way to me,” Jenny said.
“Remind me to show you what a real prison looks like one of these days,” Janet countered. “You’ll be grateful to Mr. Adams for not sending you to one.”
Janet decided that was as good an exit line as she was likely to make. She was halfway to the front door when she realized that Harlan had followed her. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly.
“She’ll be okay,” he promised.
Janet grinned at his solemn expression. “I know,” she agreed. “But will you?”
Chapter Three (#ulink_232da0e0-1451-527d-aecf-bdd5e66708dc)
When Janet’s car had disappeared from sight, Harlan turned and walked slowly back inside. For the first time he was forced to admit that his decision to haul Jenny Runningbear’s butt out to White Pines to work off her debt wasn’t entirely altruistic. He’d wanted to guarantee himself the chance to spend more time with her mother.
But now, with Janet on her way back to town and her taunt about his ability to manage Jenny ringing in his ears, he wondered precisely what he’d gotten himself into.
Raising four stubborn sons, when he’d had authority and respect on his side, had been tricky enough. He had neither of those things going for him now. If anything, Jenny resented him and she had no qualms at all about letting him know it.
He sighed as he stood in the doorway to the dining room and studied Jenny’s sullen expression. If ever a teen had needed a stern hand, this one did. Whether she knew it or not, she was just aching for someone besides her mama to set some rules and make her stick to them.
It was a job her father should have been handling, but he’d clearly abandoned it. It was little wonder the girl was misbehaving, he thought with a deep sense of pity. Typically in the aftermath of divorce, she was crying out for attention. Maybe she’d even hoped if she were difficult enough, she’d be sent back to her father for disciplining.
It took some determination, but Harlan finally shoved aside his inclination to feel sorry for her. It wouldn’t help. He figured whatever happened in the next few minutes would set the tone for the rest of the days Jenny spent at White Pines.
“Thought you’d be outside by now, ready to get to work,” he announced. “I won’t tolerate slackers working for me.”
Her gaze shot to his. “What does this crummy job pay anyway? Minimum wage, I’ll bet.”
“It pays for a smashed up pickup, period. Think of it as a lump sum payment.”
“I’ll want to see the repair bill,” she informed him. “If the figures for my pay, based on the minimum hourly wage, are higher, I’ll expect the rest in cash.”
Harlan wanted very badly to chuckle, but he choked back his laughter. This pint-size Donald Trump wannabe had audacity to spare. “Fair enough,” he conceded.
“And I’m not getting on a horse,” she reminded him belligerently.
“That’s something we can discuss,” he agreed. “Meantime, let’s get out to the barn and groom them. They’ve been fed this morning, but tomorrow I’ll expect you to do that, too.”
She stood slowly, reluctance written all over her face. Harlan deliberately turned his back on her and headed out through the kitchen, winking at Maritza as he passed. He didn’t pause to introduce them. He had a feeling Jenny would seize on any delay and drag it out as long as she possibly could. She might even inquire about those Tex-Mex recipes she claimed not to like, if it would keep her out of the barn a little longer.
With her soft heart, Maritza would insist on keeping Jenny in the kitchen so she could teach her a few of her favorite dishes and coddle her while she was at it. That would be the end of any disciplining he planned. Until he’d laid some ground rules and Jenny was following them, he figured he couldn’t afford to ease up on her a bit. Her very first day on the job was hardly the time to be cutting her any slack.
“Was that your housekeeper?” Jenny asked, scuffing her sneakers in the dust as she poked along behind him.
“Yes.”
“How come you didn’t introduce us?”
“No time for that now,” he said briskly. “You have a job to do. You’ll meet Maritza at lunch. She’ll be bringing it out to us.”
“We’re going to eat in the barn?”
Harlan hid a grin at her horrified tone. “No, I expect we’ll be out checking fences by then.”
She scowled at him. “I thought you were rich. Don’t you have anybody else working this place? I can’t do everything, you know. I’m just a kid.”
“Trust me, you won’t even be scratching the surface. And yes, there are other people working the ranch. Quite a few people, in fact. They report to my son. They’re off with the cattle or working the fields where we have grain growing.” He shot her a sly look. “You had any experience driving a tractor?”
“The sum total of my entire driving experience was in your truck yesterday,” she admitted, then shrugged. “You want to trust me with a tractor after that, it’s your problem.”
He grinned. “You have a point. We’ll stick to horses for the time being.”
He led her into the barn, which stabled half a dozen horses he kept purely for pleasure riding. Jenny eyed them all warily from the doorway.
“Come on, gal, get in here,” he ordered. “Let me introduce you.”
“Isn’t it kind of sick to be introducing me to a bunch of horses, when you didn’t even let me say hello to the housekeeper?”
“You’ll get to know Maritza soon enough. As for these horses, from now on they’re going to be your responsibility. I want you getting off on the right foot with them.” He pulled cubes of sugar from his pocket. “You can start off by offering them these. That’ll get you in their good graces quick enough. Let’s start over here with Misty. She’s a sweetie.”
Jenny accepted the sugar cubes but she stopped well shy of Misty’s stall. “Why is she bobbing her head up and down like that?”
“She wants some of that sugar.”
Jenny held out all of it. “Here. She can have it.”
“Not like that,” he corrected, “unless you want her to nip off a few fingers at the same time.”
He showed her how to hold out her hand, palm flat, the sugar cube in the middle. Misty took the sugar eagerly. He grinned as Jenny’s wary expression eased. “Was that so bad?”
“I guess not,” she said, though she still didn’t sound entirely convinced.
For the next two hours he taught her to groom the horses, watching with satisfaction as she began first to mutter at them when they didn’t stand still for her, then started coaxing and finally praising them as she worked. He’d never known a kid yet who could spend much time around horses and not learn to love them. Jenny’s resistance was weakening even faster than he’d hoped.
When he was satisfied that her fear had waned, he walked over to her with bit and saddle. “How about that ride now? Seems to me like Misty’s getting mighty restless and you two seem to have struck up a rapport.”
Jenny regarded the black horse with the white blaze warily. The gentle mare wasn’t huge, but Harlan supposed she was big enough to intimidate anyone saddling up for the first time.
“I don’t know,” Jenny said.
“Let’s saddle her up in the paddock and you can climb aboard for a test run. How about that?”
“You’re not going to be happy until I fall off one of these creatures and break my neck, are you?” she accused.
“I’m not going to be happy until you try riding one,” he countered. “I’d just as soon you didn’t fall off and break anything, though I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll get thrown sooner or later.”
“Oh, jeez,” she moaned. “My mom really will sue you if that happens. We’ll ask millions and millions for pain and suffering. We’ll take this whole big ranch away from you and you’ll end up homeless and destitute.” The prospect seemed to cheer her.
“I’ll take my chances,” Harlan said with a grin. “Come on, kid. Watch what I’m doing here. If you don’t cinch this saddle just right, you’ll be on your butt on the ground faster than either of us would like.”
Jenny grudgingly joined him in the paddock. With trepidation clear in every halting move she made, she finally allowed him to boost her into the saddle on Misty’s back.
“I don’t know about this,” she muttered, shooting him an accusing look. “What happens now?”
“I’ll lead you around the paddock until you get used to it. Don’t worry about Misty. She’s placid as can be. She’s not going to throw you, unless you rile her.”
“Is there anything in particular that riles her?” Jenny inquired, looking down at him anxiously. “I’d hate to do something like that by mistake.”
“You won’t,” he promised.
It only took two turns around the paddock before Jenny’s complexion began to lose its pallor. Satisfied by the color in her cheeks that she was growing more confident by the second, Harlan handed her the reins.
Panic flared in her eyes for an instant. “But how do I drive her?”
“You don’t drive a horse,” he corrected. He offered a few simple instructions, then stood by while Jenny tested them. Misty responded to the most subtle movement of the reins or the gentlest touch of Jenny’s heels against her sides.
“Everything okay?” he called out as she rode slowly around the paddock.
Jenny turned a beaming smile on him. “I’m riding, aren’t I? I’m really riding!”
“I wouldn’t let you enter the Kentucky Derby just yet, but yes, indeed, you are really riding.”
“Oh, wow!” she said.
Harlan chuckled as she seemed to catch herself and fall silent the instant the words were out of her mouth. Clearly she feared that too much enthusiasm would indicate a softening in her attitude toward this so-called prison sentence she felt had been imposed on her.
“I’m ready to get down now,” she said, her tone bland again.
Harlan patiently showed her how to dismount. “I think you’re going to be a natural,” he said.
She shrugged with studied indifference. “It’s no big deal. I’d like to go inside now. Too much sun will give me skin cancer.”
He hid another grin. “Run on over to the kitchen. Maritza will give you some suntan lotion. She might even have some of those cookies she was getting ready to bake out of the oven by now.”
“Jeez, milk and cookies, how quaint,” she grumbled, but she took off toward the house just the same.
“Be back here in fifteen minutes,” he shouted after her.
“Slave driver,” she muttered.
Harlan shook his head. If she thought that now, he wondered what she’d have to say when she saw the fence he intended for her to learn how to mend.
* * *
Janet wasn’t sure what to expect when she drove back out to White Pines late that afternoon. She supposed it wouldn’t have surprised her all that much to find the ranch in ashes and Jenny standing triumphantly in the circular driveway.
Instead she found her daughter sound asleep in a rocker on the front porch. Harlan was placidly rocking right beside her, sipping on a tall glass of iced tea. He stood when Janet got out of the car and sauntered down to meet her. Her stomach did a little flip-flop as he neared.
To cover the tingly way he managed to make her feel without half trying, Janet nodded toward her daughter. “Looks like you wore her out, after all.”
“It took some doing. She’s a tough little cookie.”
“At least she thinks she is,” Janet agreed. She allowed herself a leisurely survey of the man standing in front of her. “You don’t appear to be any the worse for wear. You must be a tough cookie, too.”
“So they say.”
He tucked a hand under her elbow and steered her toward the porch and poured her a glass of tea. Jenny never even blinked at her arrival.
“Business any better today?” Harlan asked only after he was apparently satisfied that her tea was fixed up the way she wanted it.
Rather than answering, Janet took a slow, refreshing sip of the cool drink. It felt heavenly after the hot, dusty drive. Her car’s air-conditioning had quit that morning on her way back to town and she hadn’t yet figured out where to go to have it fixed. The sole mechanic in Los Piños, a man with the unlikely name of Mule Masters, was apparently on vacation. Had been for months, according to Mabel Hastings over at the drugstore.
“My, but this tastes good,” she said, sighing with pure pleasure. “It’s hotter than blazes today. I thought I’d swelter before I got back out here.”
“What’s wrong with your car? No air-conditioning?”
“It quit on me this morning.”
“I’ll have Cody take a look at it when he comes in,” he offered. “He’s a whiz with stuff like that.”
“That’s too much trouble,” she protested automatically. For a change, though, she did it without much energy. It seemed foolish to put up too much of a fuss just to declare her independence. That was a habit she’d gotten into around her ex-husband. Weighing her independence against air-conditioning in this heat, there was no real contest. Air-conditioning would win every time.
“Nonsense,” Harlan said, dismissing her objections anyway. “It’ll give Cody a chance to snoop. He’s dying to get a closer look at you, so he can tell his brothers that I’ve gone and lost my marbles.”
Startled, she simply stared at him. “Why would he think a thing like that?”
His gaze drifted over her slowly and with unmistakable intent. “Because I’m just crazy enough to think about courting a woman like you.”
Janet swallowed hard at the blunt response. She could feel his eyes burning into her as he waited patiently for a reaction.
“Harlan, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here,” she said eventually.
It was a namby-pamby response if ever she’d heard one, but she’d never been very good at fending off the few men bold enough to ignore all the warning signals she tried to send out. She’d ended up married to Barry Randall because he’d been persistent and attentive…until the challenge wore off.
With that lesson behind her, she should be shooting down a man like Harlan Adams with both barrels. Suggesting he might be getting the wrong idea hardly constituted a whimper of protest.
He reached over and patted her hand consolingly, then winked. “Darlin’, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ideas I have. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
That, of course, was the problem. She didn’t trust him or, for that matter, herself. She had a feeling a man with Harlan’s confidence and determination could derail her plans for her life in the blink of an eye. She couldn’t allow that to happen for a second time.
“You running scared?” he inquired, his lips twitching with amusement.
“Scared? Not me.”
His grin broadened. “You sound like Jenny now. I didn’t much believe her, either.”
“Harlan—”
“Maybe we’d better get this conversation back on safer ground for the moment,” he suggested. “Wouldn’t want you getting too jittery to drive home tonight. Now, tell me about your day. You never said how business was.”
Janet’s head was reeling from the quick change of topic and the innuendos Harlan tossed around like confetti. With some effort, she forced her mind off of his provocative teasing and onto that safer ground he’d offered.
“I had a call from somebody interested in having me draw up a will,” she told him. “They decided I was too expensive.”
“Are you?”
“If I lowered my rates much more, I’d be doing the work for free, which is apparently what they hoped for. The man seemed to assume that since I’m Native American, I handle pro bono work only and he might as well get in on the ‘gravy train,’ as he put it.”
Harlan’s gaze sharpened. “You get much of that?” he asked.
He said it with a fierce undertone that suggested he didn’t much like what he was hearing. Janet shivered at the thought of what Harlan Adams might do to protect and defend those he cared about.
“Some,” she admitted. “I haven’t been around long enough to get much.”
“Maybe it’s time I steered a little business your way.”
She suspected that was an understated way of saying he’d butt a few heads together if he had to. She understood enough about small towns to know that a sign of approval from a man like Harlan would guarantee more clients coming her way. As much as the idea appealed to her, she felt she had to turn it down. Barry had always held it over her head that her career had taken off in New York because of his contacts, not the reputation she had struggled to build all on her own.
“No,” she insisted with what she considered to be sufficient force to make her point even to a man as stubborn as Harlan appeared to be. “I need to make it on my own. That’s the only way people will have any respect for me. It’s the only way I’ll have any respect for myself.”
“Noble sentiments, but it won’t put food on the table.”
“Jenny and I won’t starve. I did quite well in New York. My savings will carry us for a long time.”
“If your practice was thriving there, why’d you come here?” Harlan asked.
“Good question,” Jenny chimed in in a sleepy, disgruntled tone.
“You know the answer to that,” she told her daughter quietly.
“But I don’t,” Harlan said. “If it’s none of my business, just tell me so.”
“Would that stop you from poking and prodding until you get an answer?”
“Probably not,” he conceded. “But I can be a patient man, when I have to be.”
Janet doubted that. It was easier just to come clean with the truth, or part of it at least. “My divorce wasn’t pleasant. New York’s getting more and more difficult to live in every day. I wanted a simpler way of life.”
She shot a look at Jenny, daring her to contradict the reply she’d given. Her daughter just rolled her eyes. Harlan appeared willing to accept the response at face value.
“Makes sense,” he said, studying her with that penetrating look that made it appear he could see straight through her. “As far as it goes.” He grinned. “But, like I said, I can wait for the rest.”
Before she could think of a thing to say to that, a tall, lanky cowboy strolled up. He looked exactly like Harlan must have twenty or so years before, including that flash of humor that sparkled in his eyes as he surveyed the gathering on the porch.
“Looks right cozy,” he commented, his amused gaze fixed on his father. “Anything going on here I should know about?”
“Watch your mouth,” Harlan ordered. “Janet and Jenny, this tactless scoundrel is my youngest, Cody. Son, this is Janet Runningbear and her daughter Jenny.”
Cody winked at Jenny, who was regarding him with blatant fascination. “Don’t tell Daddy, but just so you know, I’m the brains behind White Pines.”
“If that were true, you’d have better control over your manners,” Harlan retorted.
Janet chuckled listening to the two of them. Talk about a chip off the old block. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that any trait Cody possessed, he had learned it at his father’s knee. That included everything from charm to arrogance. Still, she couldn’t help responding to that infectious grin and the teasing glint in his eyes as he squared off against Harlan. The squabbles around here must have been doozies.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful?” Harlan suggested. “Janet says the air conditioner in her car has gone on the blink. Do you have time to take a look at it?”
“Sure thing,” Cody said readily. “Let me get a beer and I’ll get right on it.”
“I could get the beer,” Jenny piped up eagerly.
Cody tipped his hat. “Thanks.”
Janet speared her daughter with a warning look, then said to Cody, “If one single ounce of that beer is missing when it gets to you, I’d like to know about it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cody said, winking at Jenny, who blushed furiously.
When they were gone, Janet turned to Harlan. “If he were giving the orders, I suspect Jenny would be docile as a lamb the rest of the summer.”
“But he’s not,” Harlan said tersely. “I am.”
“Jealous of the impact your son has on the Runningbear women?” she inquired lightly, just to see if the remark would inspire the kind of reaction she suspected it would.
Harlan’s expression did, indeed, turn very grim. “He’s married.”
She grinned. “I know. Heck, everyone in town heard about his courting of Melissa Horton. It was still fresh on their minds when I moved here. But last I heard, looking’s never been against the law. I ought to know. I read those big, thick volumes of statutes cover-to-cover in school.”
He scowled. “You deliberately trying to rile me?”
“I didn’t know I could,” she declared innocently.
“Well, now you know,” he asserted.
Janet couldn’t help feeling a certain sense of feminine satisfaction over the revelation. But hard on the heels of that reaction came the alarm bells. It was entirely possibly that she was enjoying taunting Harlan Adams just a little too much. She had a hunch it was a very dangerous game to play. He struck her as the kind of man who played his games for keeps.
Chapter Four (#ulink_00914b77-f400-5ca1-8a7c-b073359e134e)
Harlan hadn’t liked the gut-deep jealousy that had slammed through him when he’d seen the amused, conspiratorial look Janet and Cody had exchanged. Her comment that checking a man out wasn’t any sort of legal sin had grated on his nerves just as badly.
Even though he’d guessed that the woman was deliberately baiting him, his blood had simmered and his temper had bordered on exploding. It was an interesting turn of events. He hadn’t expected to react so strongly to a woman ever again.
Oh, he’d been attracted to Janet Runningbear the moment he’d set eyes on her. He’d been convinced, though, that he’d deliberately set out to settle her into a corner of his life just to relieve the boredom with an occasional feisty exchange. She was doing that, all right, and more. In spades.
She was stirring up emotions he’d thought had died the day he’d buried his wife just over a year ago. He wasn’t so sure he wanted that kind of turmoil.
Unfortunately, he was equally uncertain whether he had any choice in the matter. It had been his observation that when a man was hit by a bolt of lightning—literally or in the lovestruck sense of the phrase—there was no point in trying to get out of the way after the fact.
Given all that, he was almost relieved when Cody announced that the car’s air conditioner was working. Janet declined a halfhearted invitation to stay for supper, insisting that she and Jenny had to get home. Harlan waved them off with no more than a distracted reminder to be there at dawn again.
“Well, well, well,” Cody muttered beside him.
Harlan frowned at his son’s knowing expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that it’s downright interesting to watch a woman twist you this way and that without even trying.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cody grinned. “Then you’re in an even more pitiful state of denial than I imagined. Want me to call in Jordan and Luke? Among us we probably have enough experience with women to give you any advice you need. Goodness knows we denied our feelings long enough to drive just about everyone around us to distraction. No sense in you doing the same thing, when we can save you all that time.”
“Go away.”
“Not till I’m through watching the entertainment,” Cody shot back as he sauntered over to his pickup. “‘Night, Daddy. Sweet dreams.”
Sweet? Harlan could think of a dozen or more words to describe the kind of dreams Janet Runningbear inspired and “sweet” would be very low on the list. Provocative. Seductive. Steamy. Erotic. He had to go inside the air-conditioned house just to cool off from the images.
He consoled himself with the possibility that their first two meetings might have been aberrations. Boredom could play funny tricks on a man. The first thing that came along to relieve it might get exaggerated in importance.
Yes, indeed, that had to be it, he decided as he settled into a chair in his office with a book he’d been wanting to read for some time. A good, page-turning thriller was exactly what he needed tonight. That ought to get his juices flowing better than a leggy, sassy woman.
But the words swam in front of his eyes. His thoughts kept drifting to the enigmatic woman who presented such a placid, reserved facade. He’d enjoyed sparking confusion in those dark, mysterious eyes. He’d relished making a little color climb into her cheeks. Janet Runningbear wasn’t nearly as serene around him as she wanted desperately for him to believe.
He also had the feeling, virtually confirmed by her earlier, that there were secrets to be discovered, hidden reasons behind her decision to relocate to Texas.
As a kid he’d been fascinated by stories of buried treasure. He’d spent endless hours searching for arrowheads left behind by Native Americans who’d roamed over the very land on which White Pines had been built. Somewhere in the house, probably in Cody’s old room, there was a cigar box filled with such treasures.
If Janet Runningbear had secrets, he would discover them eventually. He’d make a point of it.
And then what? He wasn’t the kind of man who courted a woman just for sport. He never had been. He’d tried to instill the same set of values in his sons, tried to teach them never to play games with women who didn’t fully understand the rules.
Everything about Janet that he’d seen so far shouted that she was a woman deserving of respect, a single parent struggling to put a new life together for herself and her daughter. If he was only looking for diversion, would it be fair to accomplish it at the expense of a woman like that? It was the one question for which he had an unequivocal answer: no!
So, he resolved, he would tame his natural impatience and take his time with her, measuring his feelings as well as hers. It was the only just way to go.
But even as he reached that carefully thought-out decision, the part of him that leapt to impetuous, self-confident conclusions told him he was just delaying the inevitable. He’d made up his mind the minute he’d walked into her office that he wanted her and nothing—not his common sense, not her resistance—was going to stand in his way for long. “Where the devil have you been?” Mule asked in his raspy, cranky voice when Harlan finally got back into town on Saturday after four whole days of trying to keep Jenny Runningbear in line. “Ain’t seen you since that gal stole your truck.”
Mule’s expression turned sly. “Word around town is that you’ve got her working out at White Pines.”
Harlan tilted his chair back on two legs and sipped on the icy mug of beer Rosa had set in front of him the minute he sat down. “Is that what you’re doing with your time these days, sitting around gossiping like an old woman?” he asked Mule.
“It’s about all there is to do since you dropped out of our regular poker game to play nursemaid to that brat.”
Harlan accepted the criticism without comment. Mule grumbled about everything from the weather to politics. His tart remarks about Harlan’s perceived defection were pretty much in character and harmless.
Mule’s watery hazel eyes narrowed. “I don’t hear you arguing none.”
“What would be the point? You think you know everything there is to know about the situation.”
“Meaning, you think I don’t, I suppose. Okay, so fill me in. Why’d you hire her?”
“Because she owes me a lot of money for repairs to my pickup,” he said simply. “You ought to know. I had it towed to your garage.”
“Ain’t had time to take a look at it,” Mule said.
“When are you planning to end this so-called vacation of yours?”
“Who says I am? I’m getting so I enjoy having nothing to do. Maybe I’ll just retire for good.”
Harlan nodded. “You’re old enough, that’s for sure. What are you now, eighty?”
Mule regarded him with obvious indignation. “Sixty-seven, which you know danged well.”
“Of course,” he said. “Must be that boredom ages a person, lets his mind go weak.”
“There ain’t a thing wrong with my mind.”
“Then I’d think you’d be itching to tackle a job like that truck of mine.”
“I’ll get to it one of these days,” Mule said. “When I’m of a mind to.”
“If you don’t plan on going back to work, maybe you ought to sell the garage. The town needs a good mechanic. Cody had to fix Janet Runningbear’s air-conditioning the other night, because you’re on this so-called extended vacation of yours.”
“Bet he ruined it,” Mule commented with derision. “Air-conditioning’s tricky.”
“It’s been working ever since,” Harlan said, deliberately setting out to goad the old coot into going back to the job he’d loved. “You know Cody has a way with mechanical things. He’s probably better than you ever were and he’s not even in the business. Maybe I’ll have my truck towed out to White Pines and have him take a look at it.”
Mule set his beer down with a thump. “I told you I’d get to it.”
“When?”
Mule sighed. “First thing on Monday.”
“Fair enough.”
“Just don’t start bugging me about when it’ll be done. Decent work takes time and concentration.”
Which meant it might take months before he saw that pickup again, Harlan decided. Still, he couldn’t regret his decision to have the truck taken to Mule’s garage, rather than someplace bigger or fancier in another town.
His friend had closed up shop almost three months ago for no reason Harlan had been able to discern. He’d been on this strike of sorts ever since. He wasn’t likely to be happy again until he had his head poked under the hood of a car.
“Don’t look now, but that brat is heading this way,” Mule announced. “With her mama. Whoo-ee, she sure is a looker, isn’t she?”
Harlan tried not to gape as Janet came into Rosa’s wearing a vibrant red sundress that bared tanned shoulders and swung loosely around shapely calves. Her straight, shiny hair hung halfway down her back like a shimmering waterfall of black silk. He stood automatically at the sight of her.
“You again?” Jenny greeted him irritably. “This is my day off. I thought I’d get a break. Shouldn’t you be mucking out stalls or something? I hope you’re not planning to leave `em untouched all weekend and expect me to clean up the mess on Monday.”
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