by Anne Marsh
The heart attack had been quick.
Auntie Dee hadn’t had to leave the home she loved for too long. By the time Rose had got the message and understood there weren’t going to be any more phone calls ever again, Auntie Dee had been gone.
“So, are you going to tell me?” Beside her, Cabe rested a booted foot on the bottom rail of the porch. He’d picked the sturdiest rail of the lot and probably the only one not likely to break from his weight. Most of the boards were rotted clear through.
“Tell you what?”
“Why you’re so sure you want to hang on to this place?” He nodded toward the sagging porch step she sat on and the drawings. “What your plans are?”
“It’s just about a tear-down, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice rueful.
“Yeah,” he drawled. “It’s safe to say that. We did what we could for Auntie Dee, but she wouldn’t let us help much. None of us realized the house was this bad, or we would have done something, Rose. I promise you that,” he said fiercely.
“I can fix it.” It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the time. That was one advantage of being laid off and jobless. Too bad all those years of study and work hadn’t been enough to save her job as an architect’s assistant when the economy went south.
“Maybe.” He looked down at her, his gaze guarded. “This place is going to take a whole lot of work, Rose, and it’s going to take even more money. Do you have that?”
“I’ll find a way,” she said. All she had to do was come up with it.
To her surprise, Cabe’s hand brushed her shoulder. He’d been full of those casual little touches today: threading his fingers briefly through hers to tug her in a particular direction, his hand cupping her foot as he gave her a leg up to check on a ceiling fan. Jumping up, suddenly desperate to get away, she perched on the porch swing, hoping to God it didn’t give way beneath her. Cabe was driving her crazy, and he didn’t even know it.
“You ever just known a place was the right one?”
“Sure.” He shrugged, powerful shoulders moving beneath the faded cotton of his T-shirt as he took a step toward her and the swing. “The ranch.”
How close would he get? He was already close enough now to feel the heat coming off him. The V-neck of his shirt exposed the powerful column of his throat and had her thinking about something besides home repairs.
“So how’d you feel if someone came along, wanted to buy you out, Cabe? Would you give up that land?”
“Hell, no. That ranch has been in my family for generations. You don’t sell something like that.”
There was no mistaking the fierceness that filled his voice, stamped his face. Cabe’s maternal ancestors had been the Spanish aristocracy who’d come to California to start a new life and then mixed with the fierce, free-spirited Native Americans. Those men had all been warriors. Men who held on to what they had taken and fought for every inch, every arroyo. Cabe Dawson was a possessive man.
“It’s like that for me. I don’t want to sell this place.”
“It’s not the same.”
“How, Cabe? How is this any different?”
“This isn’t a ranch. This land hasn’t been part of your blood, part of your family for more than a century.”
“This was my home.”
“Sure, Rose,” he said wearily. “And I suppose the whole time you were gone, when you were anywhere but here, you just couldn’t wait to come back.”
He had the literal truth on his side. She’d run, and she’d run hard. She’d made one mistake after another, and now there was no way to fix the past. Maybe she’d fail at this, too. Maybe, she wouldn’t get Auntie Dee’s house perfect, but she wanted to try. Even if she couldn’t be perfect, she wanted to try.
She wanted to come home.
Anger bubbled up inside her. He shouldn’t be so calm always. Getting truly angry at Cabe Dawson was unfamiliar territory, but it felt right. She was done letting other people tell her how to feel, what to do. Where to go and where to be. First in L.A. as a child and then here in Lonesome, she’d always believed there was some impossible standard she should be living up to. She couldn’t be perfect, but she was also done trying to be imperfect.
“Don’t be an ass,” she snapped.
His head came up, his stare incredulous. Cabe Dawson could be an easy man until you pushed him too far. Then, he got as immobile as rock. The look in his eyes warned that he was more than halfway there now. Too bad she didn’t give a damn.
“Don’t stand here on my porch and tell me what I did or didn’t feel.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it. “Rose—”
“This was my home,” she stormed. “Here, with Auntie Dee. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, Cabe Dawson, and don’t you think I ever forgot that. Sure, I left. That was what I needed to do, then. Now, I’m back.”
“Let me write you that check, Rose.” He watched her, his face closed off and unreachable.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m fixing this place up.”
He turned away from the porch railing, watching her intently. She didn’t know what he expected to find. “You want to play house, come stay at the ranch house. You can redesign and redecorate to your heart’s content.”
“Consolation prize?”
“No.” Something she didn’t recognize flashed across his face, and then he closed the distance between them, his big, work-roughened hands caging her in the swing as they came down on either side of her. “You know you always have a place on the Blackhawk, Rose. You can come home with us.”
“I’m not family,” she pointed out, because it needed saying.
“No.” He watched her carefully. As if he had something that needed saying but no idea how to start. “No, you’re not, Rose. Whatever you were to my brothers, don’t make the mistake of thinking I ever saw you as a sister.”
There was that familiar hurt, followed by a flicker of hot, liquid attraction.
She didn’t need him to swoop in here and take care of her.
“This place, this house—it’s too much, Rose, and some of the problems are just plain beyond fixing. You’d need a new roof on the house, new siding, a new porch. And those are just the outside pieces. You get inside, and I’ll lay money the plumbing’s shot, right along with the electrical system. You have to see that.”
She could. She wasn’t blind, and when she stopped looking with her heart, she could see the never-ending list of what had gone wrong with the place.
“I know.” Her voice sounded small and strained, even to her own ears. The knot in her throat had her swallowing hard.
She was alone. The woman who’d raised her was gone. Her home was gone, too, she realized. Maybe the house itself could be salvaged with paint, lumber, and some serious contractor elbow grease, but Auntie Dee wasn’t there anymore. There was no fixing, replacing, or filling that absence. Tears swam in her eyes before she could remind herself she’d sworn she was all done crying, because crying never helped.
“Ah, Rose,” Cabe growled, hauling her into his arms, “don’t cry, baby.”
Nothing had ever felt more right to Cabe than pulling Rose Jordan into his arms.
He’d touched her last night, but that had been accidental. This was deliberate. At first, she stiffened, and then she melted, and that unspoken gesture of feminine trust should have warned him. Last night, she’d pushed his buttons. Whether she’d realized it or not, she’d made him see her as a woman fully grown for the first time. And right now, she needed him.
Needed what he could give her.
She’d lost a damned fine woman. They all had. Auntie Dee had been part of Lonesome for so many years that the town seemed a little emptier without her. He respected Rose for mourning the older woman’s loss, but her tears woke some primal strain in him he hadn’t known he possessed.
He wanted to fix this.
Wanted to make Rose feel good. Her unspoken trust as she fit her head into the hard curve of his shoulder made him feel importan
t. And, yeah, it was sexy as hell. When he stroked a hand down her back, his fingers found the soft line of her bra straps beneath the gauzy dress. The soft, warm weight of her breasts pressed against his chest had him thinking about other ways he could make Rose Jordan feel.
Christ. He was a bastard.
He wasn’t fixing anything for Rose.
He didn’t know what she had expected to find here. The house wasn’t in good shape, although it could have been worse. He’d made sure Auntie Dee was taken care of, but months of standing empty wreaked havoc with an old house.
Rose was still crying. He wanted to howl, to hit something, and those feelings were unfamiliar.
“Where did you sleep last night?” he growled against her skin.
“The car,” she said, confirming his earlier, uneasy suspicion.
The image of that hit him hard. He could just see her, sleepy and flushed, on the backseat of that little car. So vulnerable. Because a woman sleeping alone out here with just the flimsy protection of a Honda Civic door would be easy prey for a man who didn’t care about right and wrong.
“That won’t do.” He looked down at her. Ask, don’t tell, he reminded himself. “Why don’t you come on back to the ranch with me, Rose? We’ve got plenty of bedrooms there.”
This time, when she stiffened up like a poker in his arms, she didn’t relax again.
“Be reasonable, Rose.” He looked at the house again, because staring at Rose wasn’t going to help his cause any. He could see daylight through the roof of the porch, for Christ’s sake. “Staying here would be only one step above camping. Just this once, can’t you let me take care of you? Giving in this one time doesn’t mean you’re surrendering unconditionally.”
“Why?” she asked quietly. She stepped away from him, leaving his arms empty.
“Because you need a place to stay.” He forced his feet to get moving and headed for the truck. When he opened the passenger door for her, though, she was still standing there on the porch step, unconvinced. “There’s more than enough room out at the ranch,” he reiterated.
“I belong here,” she argued.
“Doesn’t mean you have to do without electricity tonight,” he countered. “Or dinner.”
“If I come, that doesn’t mean I’m giving up the house.”
Christ, he didn’t need to think about her “coming.” Not now. Forcing the sensual images from his head, he made his case.
“I get that. This is a temporary deal. A little détente. Come stay at the ranch, and take a couple of days to think things over. You don’t have to decide standing on the damned porch, do you?” Her feet finally started moving, and he knew he was on the right track. “Back at the ranch,” he coaxed, “you can look over the estimates, see what’s possible.”
“All right,” she said, climbing up into the truck. “But this is just temporary, Cabe. I’m coming back here.”
“Got it.” Shutting the passenger door, he went back around the pickup.
Primal satisfaction flooded him.
He was taking her home.
To his home.
Chapter Three
Taking Rose home with him had meant she couldn’t run out on him again. But it also meant she was sleeping just down the hall from him, and that was a distraction Cabe hadn’t been prepared for. The fucking fantasies were driving him nuts. There was no escaping her. Three days running, he’d gotten up and out early, but she’d been waiting for him at lunchtime.
Today, though she was completely dressed, she looked tousled and sexy, and all he could think about as soon as he laid eyes on her was figuring out a way to get her back upstairs and into his bed. He saw her, and he remembered the sweet, hot feel of her body beneath his when she’d pulled him into the swimming hole, when he’d taken her into his arms on Auntie Dee’s porch three nights ago. Hell, just hearing one of his brothers or the housekeeper mention her name had heat blasting through him.
Out of sheer desperation, he’d suggested she ride out with him in the pickup that afternoon to check on a watering trough. Surely that had to be about as unsexy as ranch work went.
Still, he was proud of his herd, and the animals needed their water. He had the best fucking beef cattle in the state. Select—that was the only way to make any money at it—and even then, it was a break-even proposition at best.
“We get to the trough, you follow the rules,” he cautioned. She might have him hotter than hell, but he knew what she was like. When she looked at him, all sweet innocence, he added, “I mean it, Rose. No games.”
“Sure.” Her hand darted out and flicked the radio on.
He covered her fingers with his. “Tell me I’m not going to regret this.”
“I can follow the rules.” When he shook his head and smiled, she repeated, “I can.”
“You never met a rule you didn’t want to break, Rose.”
“I was a kid,” she protested.
“You were eighteen. Old enough to know better. Remember that time you took the truck out into the foothills and camped out in the truck bed for two days? You had a bonfire going when I showed up, and the only food you had were marshmallows and beer. And what about the time you toilet papered my barn? You toilet papered my orchard,” he continued. “If I posted a no trespassing sign, you’d be sitting just beyond it in a lawn chair, Rose.”
“Just once,” she muttered, her fingers twitching in his hold.
“You cemented my saddle to the tack room wall and I woke up one morning and you were all sleeping in the cattle chute,” he continued ruthlessly. “Tell me how that is following the rules.”
“Those were pranks,” she protested.
“I discovered you in the cattle chute when I pulled up with a load of bulls,” he continued. “What do you think would have happened if I’d unloaded directly into the chute, Rose?”
“You didn’t.” She pulled against his hold and, this time, he let her go. “We all knew you wouldn’t run cattle in that chute without double-checking first. You were always careful.”
“I closed gates. You opened them,” he continued, shaking his head. “You drove that car of yours twenty miles an hour over dirt and we all knew you were coming when we saw the road dust. I said: Be home by nine, and you’d drop my brothers off at nine. The next morning.”
“A simple misunderstanding?” She grinned over at him. “Next time, you knew better. You clarified.”
“I’m just saying, no games today, Rose. Be careful and listen, okay?”
“Sure,” she repeated and gave him another smile.
As they jolted down the dirt road, Rose hummed along to a country hit playing on his appropriated radio dial. The song was all heartsick love and loneliness, suiting the sky ahead of them, which was filling up with dark clouds. The air around them was pure tension that came from more than the exchange they’d just had. He’d have a storm on his hands soon enough.
When he pulled up at the trough, the galvanized tank that should have held almost a hundred gallons was as dry as a bone. The pipeline from the source well ran almost a mile to this particular trough. If that well was running dry, too, Mother Nature had just raised the stakes on him.
Grabbing his tool belt from the back of the truck, he waded through the thirsty cattle and swung himself up onto the trough. The inch or so of standing water was barely enough to wet his boots. He got busy with the wrench, working the valve until the water came out grudgingly, flowing just a little faster.
There still wasn’t enough. The pipeline was only delivering maybe five, ten, gallons per minute—far less than he needed to keep the trough full. Enough for today, sure. Maybe even enough to get the herd through the rest of the summer, but the well was running on empty. The sluggish trickle from the pump should have flowed hard and fast.
Behind him, he heard Rose slide out of the truck and come over to lean on the railing. Watching.
“Empty?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said curtly. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to
have right now.
“You checked the pump?”
Better to have a broken pipe or a clogged pump than the truth. He’d brought three drillers out to the ranch, and they’d all said the same thing. There hadn’t been enough rainfall this last winter, and the aquifer was done. His ranch had drained it dry. Sure, the change hadn’t happened overnight, but the slow, steady suck—decades of overuse—still spelled the end.
“Pump’s sucking air.” He gave the valve one last, hard twist. It wasn’t going to help, but it made him feel better. “Water level’s just too damn low.”
“Oh.” She chewed on her lower lip, running through an unseen mental checklist. “You had someone out here to take a look?”
“I’m working on it,” he said tightly. “Right now, I’ll call it in. One of the hands can bring the water truck out here and fill her up.”
Maybe, if he gave her a little more time, she’d see the light. Maybe she’d decide to sell all on her own.
Hell. He was so screwed, it wasn’t even funny.
Going back to the truck, he made the call. As he hung up, however, tossing the cell onto the front seat of the truck, he realized fate wasn’t finished with him yet. The truck had a flat. Punctured tires were an occupational hazard out here. They weren’t going anywhere until he’d changed the tire, because he wasn’t taking the rough ranch roads on a bare rim. He reached for the jack in the pickup bed.
Rose looked at him. “You want a hand with that?”
“No, it’s a one-person job,” he muttered. Stripping off his shirt, he hung his hat on the side mirror, grabbed a wrench, and lowered himself down, sliding under the truck to free the spare.
Rose’s bare legs below her shorts moved in and out of his field of vision. He forced himself to focus on the task at hand.
When he got the spare free, he slid it out, and her legs moved away. Somewhere close by, thunder rumbled, and the cattle called restlessly.