Rancher's Wife

by Anne Marie Winston

  He thought about the offer he’d made yesterday in a temporary fit of insanity. A day in her company was going to be sheer torture. “You still interested in riding out with me this morning?”

  “Yes.” Across the room, his gaze met hers and she quickly dropped her own.

  “You ever take your hair out of that ponytail?”

  Startled, she looked up again. “What?”

  “I said—”

  “Yes. Sometimes.” Her speech was rushed as if she was nervous. “But it’s more practical to wear it this way, especially if I’m going to be working all day.”

  He digested that as he took the bread from her and started slapping thick ham sandwiches together. True, he’d offered to show her the ranch today, but he’d assumed that he’d swing back by the house about ten o’clock and prod her into action. He hadn’t expected to spend the entire day with her trailing around behind him.

  The telephone call he’d overheard last night replayed in his head against his will, and he wondered sourly if “Karl” was missing her more than she appeared to be missing him. The current lover, perhaps? One of several? She hadn’t sounded sorry to be brushing him off as she had.

  He watched her from beneath his lashes as she set the long table in the dining room with quick, efficient motions. She paused to heat the large cook pot and mix up a huge quantity of pancake batter, then threw on a large skillet of bacon and sausages.

  “There are more of those brownies in the pantry from last night,” she said as she filled a pitcher with orange juice and another with milk, then started a second pot of coffee.

  He finished wrapping the sandwiches and brownies, assembling them into individual lunches with an orange and a bag of chips. Then he added a container of raw vegetable sticks and jugs of iced tea and water to each pile, as well, watching her expertly juggle the breakfast preparations.

  One thing he had to say for her, she knew her way around a kitchen. “You do this kind of thing before?” he asked.

  She paused to flip a pancake onto a waiting platter. “My daddy worked on a ranch up near the Black Mountains when we lived here before. I helped in the kitchen a lot.” Her voice was husky and rich with reminiscence. “I know how much food it takes to feed hungry men.”

  He found himself reacting to the sound of her, the smell of her, clean, fresh and female, as she brushed by him to carry a loaded tray of food into the dining room. Scowling, he picked up another one and followed.

  He didn’t want to notice her. He didn’t want to wonder if her breasts beneath the snap pockets of the traditional Western shirt were as round and full as they looked, if her slender hips and long legs would cradle a man as perfectly as he suspected. He didn’t want to imagine what she’d look like sprawled beneath him with her hair flung over the pillow and her pouty lips begging him to take her.

  But she was fast becoming all he could think about. Only ten more days. It was almost a prayer. She’ll be leaving in ten more days.

  “...look like you got out of bed on the wrong side, Boss.”

  He became aware that sometime during his fantasizing he’d taken his seat at the head of the table. The speaker was Joe-Bob, the youngest of the cowhands he employed and one of the only three who weren’t married. Wes, his foreman and right-hand man, was grinning as if he knew exactly what Day had been thinking.

  Day scowled at them both. “Listen up,” he announced to the table at large. “Here’s the schedule for today....”

  By the time he had finished detailing assignments and answering general questions, the meal was over. The hands stampeded through the kitchen to snag their lunches and the day began.

  Angel, who had been sitting quietly at his left throughout the meal, began to clear the table. When she stood, his hooded gaze slid down her body despite his best intentions. As it reached her waist, the buckle on her belt caught his eye.

  Without thinking, he slipped a finger through a belt loop on her jeans when she started to move toward the kitchen. “Whoa, there. What’s this?” He raised a disbelieving brow. The buckle on her belt was the unmistakable silver prize buckle awarded to junior rodeo champions for barrel racing.

  Angel shrugged. “I used to fool around with rodeo competition when I was a teenager.”

  He snorted, suddenly aware of the hot press of her flesh against the backs of his fingers. “Lady, if you won this, you did a hell of a lot more than fool around.” He removed his fingers and stepped away, feeling that he’d narrowly escaped being burned. Damn the woman! She had enough sex appeal for five.

  In her company, he was starting to feel as frustrated as a stallion penned in the stall next to a mare in heat. Worse, actually, because there was no way he could allow himself to take what his body wanted from this woman. Abruptly he turned on his heel and left the kitchen. He needed some air.

  Corky came snarling out from under the porch to growl at his ankles until Day pointed a stern finger at the dog. “One of these days I’m gonna get rid of you, you old faker.” The dog appeared ferocious to strangers, but everyone on the ranch knew he was all bluster and no business.

  While Angel finished cleaning up the kitchen, he saddled his horse and another for her—not the placid little mare he’d first had in mind, but a spirited gelding that would more easily keep up with the work he wanted to accomplish. Still, until he saw her swing easily into the saddle, he hadn’t believed she could ride so well.

  Jada had hated horses.

  He deliberately put the thought out of his mind as they rode out of the yard. Today he wanted to check on the stock in several areas of his range. Tomorrow he’d ride out with some of the men and cull the ones that weren’t healthy, get them ready for sale.

  The morning went fast. Angel was as good a rider as that buckle she wore had indicated. If she was in any discomfort, she hadn’t made a peep and she kept up with his pace easily, handling the gelding’s early liveliness with aplomb until he settled down to work. She had borrowed a hat from Dulcie’s old collection and, riding beside her, he had the oddest feeling of...of rightness, as if he was meant to do this with a woman at his side one day.

  Not this woman. He instantly rejected the idea. Angel lived a life-style foreign to his, one that he’d tasted and found as poisonous as the deceptively lovely tansy that covered his land in the spring.

  The hours slipped away and the angle of the sun told him it would soon be lunchtime. He hadn’t made lunches for Angel and himself because he’d planned a loop that would take them back to the house by noon. He liked to try to get in to the house to have lunch with Beth Ann a couple of days each week, except during branding, when there was no time for anything except the endless cycle of bawling calves and their anxious mamas. Circling around now to come back toward the house, he paused near the front entrance to the ranch road, where the rock columns with the Red Arrow Ranch sign suspended above them in black iron greeted visitors.

  “See that bull over yonder?” he asked when Angel reined her horse in beside him.

  She nodded. “The one with the white blaze down his forehead?”

  “Yep. Don’t forget that blaze. Old Red’s the only bull on the ranch with that face. He’s got a mean streak a mile wide, and it’s directed solely at two-legged creatures.”

  Angel regarded the bull solemnly. “Why do you keep him?”

  “He’s a great stud. Comes from solid stock and his calves fetch good prices. And if we handle him from horseback, he’s as docile as any bull is ever going to be.” Day squinted into the sun. “I doubt you’ll ever have cause to remember this, but I’ll tell you anyway. As long as you’re in a vehicle or on horseback, you’re just part of the scenery to him. But don’t ever let him see you walking around. Couple of years ago, he rolled a pickup over on one of the hands who had gotten out to check a bad tire.”

  Angel sucked in a breath and her face paled. “Did he kill him?”

  Day shook his head. “Guy got lucky, dived back through the window and stayed inside even after Old Re
d turned it over.” He laughed grimly. “We had to tranquilize the crazy animal until we could get the pickup towed.”

  Angel shuddered. “I’ll remember.”

  Her voice was thready and he glanced at her in concern. “Hey, you don’t have to worry. Like I said, as long as you don’t walk around in front of him, you’ll be fine.”

  “You went away to college, didn’t you?”

  Day raised his brow at the seemingly irrelevant topic. “Yes. I majored in agricultural economics at New Mexico State.”

  “That’s why you don’t remember me, because I moved here the year you left. But what you also don’t know is that two years later my dad was killed in a bull-riding exhibition.”

  An icy shock ran down his spine. He vaguely remembered his own father telling him about a hand from the Double Dos who’d gotten hammered by a bull at a rodeo. “Did you see it?”

  She shook her head, and he noticed that she seemed to be regaining her composure. “I was preparing for my own contest. When we heard that somebody had gotten gored, we all went running over to see—and it was my dad.”

  Day reached across the space that separated their horses and covered her hand where it lay on the horn of her big Western saddle. “I can’t imagine. That must have been pretty horrible for a young girl.”

  “It was.” She looked at him, her eyes unusually sober, and he realized abruptly how gently good-humored she was most of the time. A man could get used to that kind of quiet presence at his side. If he was the kind of man who needed that, which he wasn’t, he reminded himself.

  The ride back to the ranch house from the road was only a few miles, and they rode into the barn in plenty of time for lunch. The last half hour, he was aware of Angel trying to find a more comfortable spot in her saddle.

  “Ooh-ouch,” she said, shifting in her seat as he dismounted. “I enjoyed that so much I forgot I’m not used to hours of riding anymore. I’m going to be sorry later.”

  Day held up his arms. “C’mon, softy, I’ll help you down from there.”

  She smiled ruefully, grimacing as she slid out of the saddle, but the expression faded as his hands clasped her waist and drew her down before him.

  He set her on the ground. He knew he should remove his hands from her soft flesh, step back and break the moment, but all the willpower in the world couldn’t have made him release her. Her gaze clung to his, her eyes dark and inviting, and all around them the smell of leather, horseflesh and hay warred with the peculiar feminine fragrance that his body already recognized as being uniquely hers. Damn, but she’d gotten under his skin fast. Unbidden, the thought came that she’d probably done the same thing to hundreds of other suckers.

  How many other men had been seduced by those eyes? How many others had inhaled that scent, or been driven crazy by the subtle, soft invitation of her body so near?

  It was an intrusion, an uncontrollable break in his concentration, and he recoiled as if she were a rattler delivering a warning buzz. The telephone conversation he’d overheard came back to him and he told himself not to be a fool. This woman had legions of men at her feet already. He wasn’t going to be one of them.

  “Who’s Karl?” he asked aloud.

  Her forehead wrinkled and the clouded bemusement in her eyes gradually cleared. “Karl? He’s my—” She stopped and her brows snapped together as the accusation in his voice registered. “What business is it of yours?” she demanded in as sharp a tone as he’d ever heard her use.

  Day turned away, unwilling to acknowledge the jealousy eating at him, and began to unsaddle his horse. “Anything that happens on my ranch is my business,” he said in a deceptively mild tone. “If your lovers are going to start showing up after you dump them, I want to be prepared.”

  “My—?” She stepped back a pace and shook her head as if to clear it. “What does Karl have to do with— You think Karl is my lover?” Her voice rose at the end as if she found the very idea unfathomable.

  Hell, for all he knew, maybe the guy was her husband. He forced himself to tune out the snippets of intimate conversation he’d overheard and concentrated on unbuckling her saddle and heaving it off her horse, but she slapped his hands away.

  “Just go away. I can take care of my mount myself.” She was madder than he’d ever seen her, red flags of color staining her fair cheeks, her brown eyes nearly black.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “This animal is my responsibility, and I’ll stay until he’s properly cared for.”

  She practically gritted her teeth at that and he could see her mouth working in impotent rage. She led the horse to his stall, but in the middle of brushing him down, she whirled with the brush in her hand, pointing it at him like a weapon.

  “Karl is my agent,” she said in a voice that shook with fury. “And if you have any other sleazy thoughts floating around in your head, you can keep them to yourself because I’m done worrying about what a jerk like you thinks of me!” She put the horse away, gave him feed and fresh water, cleaned her tack in icy silence and then turned on her heel. “Thank you for the tour,” she said with icy politeness as she stomped out of the barn.

  Behind her, Day couldn’t suppress a grin. She sure got high-and-mighty when she got mad. And Karl was her agent, not her lover. But the grin faded as he remembered the headline on the tabloid he’d picked up the day before. She might act offended, but nobody could collect a reputation like that without there being some grounds for it. His ex-wife was living proof of that.

  * * *

  For the next several hours, Angel pitched in with all the housework she could, which suited her fine. The clean air, the simple yet necessary tasks, the solitude...all were working their magic on her taut nerves, even if Dulcie’s pigheaded brother was determined to believe the worst of her. Determined not to let him get to her, she hummed to herself as she pegged the last of a basket of sheets to the clothesline, then retraced her steps into the house. Passing through the utility room, she entered the laundry room at its opposite end.

  It was amazing how many sets of clothes a big man working outdoors could dirty. She grimaced as she started the washer for a load of shirts, then bent to remove several pairs of long-legged jeans from the dryer as the washer chugged into another cycle.

  Day’s, she thought. She knew the three hands who lived in the bunkhouse took care of their own laundry and the other three were married, so these clothes must belong to Day. Day...he fascinated her against her will. Something about him appealed to her senses, called to her so strongly that she had to fight back the urge to seek him out, to resist trying to get to know him better, even though he’d been less than welcoming. It would never work anyway. He couldn’t stand her.

  But down deep, she thought he must be a good man. In the days she’d been here, she’d seen how hard he worked. And yet he always had time for Beth Ann in the evenings, no matter how exhausted he appeared. The kind of man she’d dreamed of meeting someday.

  The kind of man that doesn’t exist, she reminded herself.

  Her next handful of fabric yielded a tiny pair of overalls, and she smiled, her mood lightening. She was going to have to keep in touch with Beth Ann after she left the ranch. The thought was incredibly depressing. In just four short days, the little girl had woven herself into Angel’s heartstrings in a way Angel knew was going to last forever. As Beth Ann grew more used to Angel, she was beginning to chatter uninhibitedly, following her around the house to “help” with the chores Angel volunteered to do. The only reason Beth Ann wasn’t with her right now was because she’d gone down for her customary nap after wheedling Angel to read her two stories.

  Angel smiled to herself as she lifted the basket of clean clothes and started back through the utility room toward the kitchen. Beth Ann would be waking soon and she’d promised the little girl she could help make some custard for supper.

  Two steps into the room she halted in confusion as Day slowly swung to face her from the sink where he’d been washing up. He’d removed h
is shirt and the vast expanse of his bare, tightly muscled chest met her stunned gaze.

  The room, already small because of the two big freezers that took up space, seemed to shrink even more in size. She should speak. Offer a casual greeting. But somehow she couldn’t quite remember how to utter the words.

  His shirt was wadded in a muddy ball in the sink and the jeans he still wore were caked with mud down one leg. His chest gleamed where the water he’d splashed on his face had dripped down to caress taut pectorals. As he reached into the sink and held up the shirt he’d been rinsing, muscle bunched and rippled, drawing her attention to the sculpted planes of flesh. His chest was nearly hairless except for a T-shaped dusting of hair that spread across his breastbone and arrowed down the midline of his body. Flat copper nipples the size of quarters peeped through the hair across his breast.

  “I got into a mud-wrestling match with a heifer,” Day said.

  Her gaze flew to his, and she felt her cheeks color at the amusement in his eyes. He knew she’d been standing there drooling over him!

  “Oh. Who won?” It wasn’t a brilliant comeback but at least she’d managed a sound. She was aware that he was assessing her—probably trying to decide if she was still angry, she thought.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out. She looks about like I do right now.”

  She seriously doubted that, trying to ignore what seemed like acres of male flesh exposed to her view. With an effort, she unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and concentrated on his words, hoping for a businesslike tone. “I just put a load of shirts into the wash. Why don’t I throw that one in, too?”

  Day hesitated. The amusement had faded from his eyes and he seemed to be searching for words. “Angel—Angelique—hell, I don’t even know what to call you!”