by Mindy Neff
She also stumbled on another interesting bit of information. Brice had been married. He’d been writing alimony checks to a Sharon DeWitt up until a year ago.
For some reason that she couldn’t pinpoint, it bothered her that he’d been married, that another woman had lived with him here, shared intimacies over the breakfast table, had ridden with him across his land, flown with him in his plane, made love with him...admired his butt in those sexy-as-sin chaps.
Caught up in her musing, she nearly bolted out of the chair when Brice walked into the room.
“I was just checking your books.” Her cheeks flamed, and she felt like a thief caught with her hand in the till—even though he’d given her permission to have a go at the books. As a CPA, she knew intimate details about her clients’ lives; occasionally she raised an eyebrow or gave a chuckle, but she’d never jolted like this, never felt as though she were invading a client’s privacy.
She took a breath, steadied her nerves.
“I see you were married.” It came out as an accusation, and she could have just died.
“Ancient history.”
“Not too ancient. You paid pretty hefty alimony.” She tried to sound businesslike, which was difficult with him watching her so. He looked tired, but oh, so enticing. She noticed that his hat did indeed brush the top of the doorjamb as she’d expected it would. She cleared her throat. “No checks recently, though.”
“Those ended when Sharon remarried. She’s expecting a baby.”
“Oh. Is that a good thing? I mean, are you okay with it?” Was he still carrying a torch for his ex-wife? And why in the world should that matter?
“Sure. She always wanted kids.”
Her brows rose. “And you didn’t?”
“Couldn’t.” He moved into the room, his loose-hipped stride mesmerizing her.
“Sorry.” She shouldn’t have pried. But when he stopped in front of the desk, she was eye level with his silver belt buckle—and she realized that chaps, from a front view, were even more erotic than from the back. Buckled low on his hips, with ties going between his legs, they formed a frame on his anatomy that no “good” girl should be staring at.
Well, she’d never considered herself a good girl. Still, her hormones gave a healthy, glad leap, and though she told herself it wasn’t polite to pry, her brain and mouth couldn’t seem to get their signals straight.
“How long were you married?” She saw amusement in his eyes and waved a hand in a gesture of apology. “Never mind. I’m certain it’s none of my business.”
He perched a hip on the corner of the desk. “Two years and one winter.”
She frowned and drummed her fingers on the desk, completely forgetting that she’d just decided not to pry. “That’s an odd way of answering.”
“Winters out here are tough. Sharon was a city girl.” His tone held a slight hint of accusation. “She needed malls and people, fine dining—that kind of stuff.”
“But you’ve got a plane.” She said it as though that would solve everything. “Aren’t those places easily accessible by air?”
“Sharon wasn’t crazy about flying. Actually, she hated it, was scared silly.”
Maddie couldn’t imagine such a thing. And being a pilot herself—though she hadn’t flown in ages—she knew what it felt like if the trust level of your passenger was missing.
“Besides,” Brice went on. “Ranching’s a seven-day-a-week job, it isn’t something you put on hold to go gallivanting to the nearest mall five hundred miles away. I didn’t have the time to fly her to the city every weekend.”
“Oh.” Just like he didn’t have the time to be checking on her and Abbe every few hours—day and night— she thought.
Brice shifted against the desk, removed his hat and toyed with the brim. Talking about the past made him uncomfortable. Frankly, he didn’t even know why he was volunteering the information—except for the fact that his life was basically laid out for her in the pages of his ranch records.
“How’s the bookkeeping going? Making any headway?”
“I’m just getting my feet wet. You’ve got a great computer here. Why haven’t you used it?”
“I haven’t the slightest clue how, and I don’t really want to.”
“Then why’d you buy it?”
“My ex bought it.”
“Well, I’ll teach you how to use it. I’m good at this kind of stuff. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.”
“I doubt it. Just don’t do away with my manual system.” When she left—and he was sure she would— he didn’t want some damned machine holding his records hostage.
“Okay. I’ll design two sets of books, one by hand and the other on the computer. But I’m betting you’ll like what the computer can do.”
“We’ll see.” He ran his fingers over the corded band of his hat, then set it aside on the desk. “I talked to Leonard today. Your car’s ready.”
“Oh, good,” she said absently, looking thoroughly in her element as she scanned entries in his journals. “What was wrong with it?”
“Burned electrical wire.” He waited a couple of seconds, watched the way she drummed her fingers against the desk. He noticed that she did that a lot. Like a nervous habit. “So, when you’re up to it you’re free to leave.”
He saw the instant panic, saw her fingers still, close into a fist, her knuckles going white.
“It’ll take a while to straighten out the books.”
“Don’t let that stop you from getting on with your life. The old way has worked fine for me all these years.”
She stood, paced. “But you said it needed streamlining. Plus you hired me to cook—”
“Madison.”
“And you bought the baby furniture.” She turned, stepped close, nearly fitting herself between his widely spread knees. “You can’t fire me so soon. You’ve got to give me a chance to prove myself.”
Her hands were fisted in his shirtfront, her lips a breath away from his. Desire, swift and fierce, caught him by surprise.
“I’m not firing you.”
“You’re not?”
She moved closer, scorching him with her heat when the tips of her breasts brushed his chest. She was wearing her contact lenses today; he could see the discs floating over her light blue irises. Something passed between them: a silent communication, an invisible, sultry dance that a man learned to recognize at puberty.
He had no idea how it had happened. One minute she was strung tighter than a steel post, then the next, her features had softened, her breath quickened. She licked her lips, focused her gaze on his mouth.
He nearly swallowed his tongue.
“I just said...” He couldn’t help it. He had to touch her. Reaching out, he tucked a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear. Her eyes went even wider, and damn it, he had an irrational urge to taste her.
“Said what?” Her voice was soft, breathy.
He needed to get out of here before he did something he’d regret. “Never mind. I’ve got to get back to work.” He eased her away from him and stood, nearly groaning when their thighs brushed, pressed for an instant.
She stepped back to give him room. Reluctantly, it seemed.
Man alive, this woman spelled trouble. For a minute there, he’d thought she intended to seduce him into letting her stay. And with Madison, he didn’t think it was a conscious act of calculation; it was more an act of desperation.
There was something deeper to the panic he keep seeing in her eyes. He wanted to know what it was.
But right now wasn’t a good time. For self-preservation, he had to put some distance between them.
Because the longer she stayed, the deeper he got. Already he found himself making excuses to come back to the house, anxious to see Madison and the baby.
And that was a dangerous habit to get hooked on.
Especially now that he was also looking for any excuse under the sun to kiss her.
And resisting those excuses with Herculean effort.
Brice adjusted the bandanna around his neck and tugged his hat lower on his forehead. It had snowed off and on for the past two days. A fresh powder of white covered the ground and the wind blew like a banshee. He tried to tell himself that the wind was a good thing; it cleared patches of ground so the cattle could forage. Unlike other animals, cows wouldn’t paw and root through the snow to find grass, which would amount to a huge loss of beef if a rancher didn’t keep a close eye.
Still, Mother Nature was fickle. The winds could die off as quickly as they’d blown in. It wouldn’t be safe to wait much longer before they moved the rest of the herd to a lower section.
And that, of course, would mean spending a night away from the ranch.
Brice’s reluctance to carry on with his work disgusted him.
Damn it, Madison Carlyle was an employee. He had no business worrying about her and her little baby, had no business itching to hold them both, wanting to stick close to home in case— In case what? he wondered, aggravated with himself.
He hefted the final bale of hay and tossed it over the bed of the truck.
“That should do it for a while,” he said to Dan. “I’ll clear the road on the way in.” He was driving the pickup with the snowplow attached to the front. The engine was running with the heater going full force. Still, his bones ached from the cold. “There’s a line down in the East section.”
“Randy’s already on it. I’ll head that way and give him a hand.” The red-haired ranch hand vaulted over the side of the pickup, wincing slightly as his bum leg tried to buckle beneath him. Tough and wiry, never once did he complain.
Brice shut the tailgate of the truck and tugged his hat lower against the wind. Dan stepped closer, pitched his voice so it wouldn’t carry any farther than the two of them.
“You might want to take Moe with you, boss. He’s got no business being out in this nasty cold, and he’s too damned prideful to quit.”
Brice nodded. “I’d planned to.” He raised his voice against the wind. “Come on, Bertelli. If I’m gonna plow us a path, I’ll need an extra set of eyes peeled for downed fences.”
Moe’s pride shot up quicker than a cat’s back. “You got better eyes than a buzzard sightin’ a carcass, and you know it, boy.”
“Maybe so, but if I run us in a ditch trying to do two things at once, I won’t be fit company for a good long time.”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “And the rest of us’ll pay.”
Moe shot Dan a squinty-eyed look, then glanced back at Brice. “You ain’t been fit company in a coon’s age, and yer impertinent to boot.” Grumbling, he yanked open the passenger door of the truck. “You gonna stand there all day grinning like a ’possum, or we gonna get?”
Brice made an effort to subdue his laughter. He was crazy about this old man and wouldn’t deliberately hurt Moe’s pride for the world. “I imagine we’ll get,” he said, imitating the other man’s words.
The snow wasn’t sticking too bad. As he scraped the way with the front plow, he activated the dump, welded beneath the bed of the truck that dispensed salt crystals. He stopped twice to pound stakes against barbwire sections that were sagging from the wind and weight of the snow, and by the time they neared the barn, he felt like a block of ice.
“Looks like we got comp’ny,” Moe said.
Brice saw the late-model Dodge truck with a horse trailer hitched to the back, saw the man hunched against the wind, standing on the front veranda as though he’d knocked but hadn’t gotten an answer.
Where was Madison? Out here if a stranger came calling, it was neighborly to let him in to warm up.
His gut clenched and his senses went on alert. Was something wrong with her? With the baby? Disaster scenarios flitted one after the other through his mind. He pulled right up to the front door, left the truck running. “Take it to the shed for me,” he said to Moe and opened the door. “I’ll see what’s up.”
The guy was young, appeared to be a drifter. Nice wheels, though. “Help you with something?”
The man stuck out his gloved hand. “Name’s Mike Collier. Came to inquire about work.”
Brice had a pretty full staff as it was for this time of year. Then again, there was the herd of Angus he’d planned to move. He hated to turn away a man in need. He had the biggest spread north of the Nebraska divide and was in a better position than his neighbors to take on an added expense.
Besides, an extra man might be more of an incentive for Moe to stick closer to the homestead.
“You from around these parts?”
“Up Montana way. I’m a hard worker. Don’t mind the cold.”
Brice knew he ought to ask a few more questions, but at the moment he was anxious to find out why Madison wasn’t answering the door.
“Fine then.” He named a salary, inclined his head toward the bunkhouse. “Go ahead and stow your gear. Moe Bertelli will fill you in on the operation.”
“Much obliged, sir.”
“DeWitt,” Brice corrected. “Brice DeWitt.”
The drifter nodded and went to retrieve his belongings.
Brice twisted the front doorknob and frowned when he found it locked. His heart pumped harder. He rarely locked the door. No one did around these parts.
Tugging his glove off with his teeth, he fished for the spare key wedged behind the wood shutter decorating the window.
The curtain fluttered, then the door swung open.
He stepped in, shut the door behind him and focused on Madison. She looked fragile and pale, as though her nerves were a calf’s breath away from shattering. Her blue eyes held the barest hint of panic.
Feeling on the verge of panic himself, he quickly scanned the room for signs of injury or anything else amiss. A cheery fire crackled in the hearth. The magazines were stacked neatly on the maple table and the room smelled of lemon polish and pine logs.
He made it to her side in three strides, tipped up her chin. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He frowned. “Don’t hand me that. You look like you’ve just come face-to-face with a starving mountain lion. Why didn’t you answer the door? I thought something had happened to you or the baby.”
She turned away from him, moved to the fireplace, held her hands out for warmth. He saw the fine trembling in her fingers.
It was time he got some answers.
He rested his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him. Snow dripped from the brim of his hat, melted on the shoulders of his jacket.
“Talk to me, sunshine. You’re scared of something. Maybe I can help.”
“You have,” she said quietly. “You gave me a job.”
That was debatable, but he set the thought aside. “Are you in trouble?”
She closed her eyes, stepped back. “Who was the man at the door?”
“A drifter looking for work.”
“Are you sure?”
“He said so. That’s good enough for me.” He peeled off his coat, tossed it along with his hat and gloves onto a recliner chair. “You told me that there wasn’t a Mr. Carlyle, so I imagine I’m barking up the wrong tree if I’m drawing parallels of association between you and Mike Collier?”
“Who?”
“The guy I just hired.”
“You mean you hired him in a matter of minutes? Just like that without finding out anything about him?” She wrapped her arms around her middle, gave a quick glance down the hall, as though she had a desperate need to check on her baby. She hadn’t responded to his question, but he had his answer. She didn’t know Mike Collier. But she was definitely spooked.
He raised a brow. “I hired you pretty much the same way—sight unseen.”
“Yes. And just look what you got for your trouble.”
He didn’t think she’d meant to say that. And though he still had doubts about her suitability as a cook and housekeeper, some mushy spot deep inside him didn’t want to classify her as a mistake.
; Which showed very poor judgment on his part.
“I should go check on Abbe.”
He snagged her arm, held her still. “She’s not crying. Leave her be.” He urged her down on the couch, spread an afghan over her lap. Her sweatpants were thin and she was shivering.
“Talk to me, Madison. You’re not a cook, yet you go into a tailspin when I suggest that the Flying D isn’t really the place for you—”
“I can cook,” she argued.
“I’m sure you can. But it’s not a profession that utilizes your qualifications. It’s also something you’re not crazy about doing. So that gets me to wondering why you would answer my ad in the first place. Why you’re willing to seduce me into letting you stay—”
“I did not!”
“Why you panic when a drifter shows up,” he finished, ignoring her denial. “Who are you, Madison Carlyle? And what are you hiding from?
6
Madison had hoped to bluff her way onto the ranch, to do a good job—because she always excelled at whatever task she took on—and to find safety.
She’d hoped this subject wouldn’t come up.
But it had. She’d obviously lost her touch at hiding her emotions. Which was too bad because the stakes had never been this high before.
She picked at the fuzz on the deep green afghan, sighed. After all he’d done for her, Brice deserved answers.
Trusting others didn’t come easily. This time, she had to chance it.
“I’m not sure where to start,” she said at last, wishing he would sit down. His working attire was highly distracting.
He poked at the fire, then obliged her without even knowing it and sat on the edge of the chair closest to the hearth.
“Take your time. Start at the beginning or the middle. I’ll try to keep up.”
Her fingers drummed a silent beat against her thigh.