A Rancher's Heart

by Vivian Arend

  “I can light the fire,” he offered.

  Why the hell did his brain have to feed him images of her naked skin highlighted by firelight glow?

  Her gaze drifted to the clock on the wall. “Maybe tomorrow. I probably should head to bed. It’s been a longer day than I’m used to.”

  She gathered her things and stood. Caleb rose as well, and suddenly they were both standing there, looking at each other. That sense of…something struck again.

  “Well, good night,” Tamara announced. Then she walked away quickly.

  Walked? No, she damn near ran from the room.

  Caleb sat alone in the growing silence with far too many thoughts and needs he knew had to go unanswered.

  Chapter Seven

  Two days later she and the girls were maybe starting to fall into what Tamara could consider a comfortable routine. They hadn’t had any more huge blowups, at least. That much was good.

  She put the last breakfast plate into the dishwasher then grabbed for her phone, answering her sister’s familiar ring tone with a light tease.

  “Tamara’s Pawn shop—what you got to hawk?”

  “One older sister and a slightly used dad. I already got rid of the other old biddy who was making my life miserable,” Lisa said saucily.

  Tamara blew a raspberry into her phone. “I love you too, little sis. What’re you up to today?”

  “Avoiding Dad, helping Karen move stock—the usual.”

  Tamara tugged on her coat then took her coffee cup with her out on the porch. It was barely warm enough, but it was sunny, and she couldn’t resist the view. “Pretty typical. But I thought Dad was behaving himself better these days. What’s got him riled up?”

  Lisa hesitated before spilling the beans. “Karen made some suggestion about crops and animals for next year, and her lack of Y chromosome smacked him in the face a few times.”

  Yeah, that was business as usual. Tamara breathed out her frustration, thankful she was three hundred kilometers away. “You got any great plans for the evening?”

  “Saw some of the gang last night at Traders, but stop trying to control the conversation. I called to see how it’s going with you. How’s the nanny business?”

  Easy answer. “Better than having to deal with Dad pretending he’s not throwing a hissy fit.”

  Lisa wouldn’t let it lie. “You miss the hospital.”

  Tamara gave it some serious thought before answering honestly. “You know? I’ve been too distracted to miss the old job.”

  A soft chuckle echoed from the other end of the line. “He must be one fine cowboy.”

  Good grief. Little sisters were the worst. “Behave. That’s not what I was talking about, and you know it.”

  “What? I was making a simple observation. I think you were brilliant to pick a boss who looks tasty in Levis and a Stetson.”

  The only way to deal with this was to ignore Lisa’s innuendo, although…her little sister was right.

  The man looked damn fine no matter what he wore, or didn’t wear.

  Tamara focused on the real question. “It’s going okay. We’ve had a couple of testing moments here and there, but for the most part I think I’m surviving.”

  “Of course you are. I bet you’re doing awesome. I actually expected to get your voice mail at this time of day. What’d you do, duct tape them to their beds?”

  “Close. They’re cleaning their rooms. Or more accurately, they took off the sheets in Emma’s room so I could wash them, and the two of them are now working on Sasha’s room. I figure they’ll be done a week from Tuesday.”

  Lisa laughed. “So they take after you. Awesome. You should be able to offer all the tricks of the trade, like shoving the mess under the bed.”

  “It means I know where to find everything if they don’t actually clean.”

  “True that. One sec.” Lisa whistled sharply and called for her dog—must be walking outside and chatting on her cell. She was back a moment later. “What else you got going on?”

  “We’re making Halloween costumes. A rocket ship, and get this—a cat burglar.”

  Tamara had to smile. It had taken more than a couple of pieces of paper plus Emma bringing out a movie and shaking it at them before she and Sasha figured out Emma did not want to be a cat. “And now I’m going to be reading Harriet the Spy to them, because Emma is fascinated by the idea.”

  “You could have a Spy Kids marathon,” Lisa suggested. “Only don’t play the last one—and you only need the first so you can enjoy the second, so you could just watch that one.”

  “Yeah, one movie is really a marathon,” Tamara teased.

  A clatter rang in the background, and Lisa responded before coming back on the line. “I’m being summoned. Karen sends her love, and big sloppy kisses from all the puppies on the ranch, and I miss you, and call me soon, ’kay?”

  “Deal. Love you too.” Tamara hung up and stared happily over the view. The grazing cattle in the distance were little black specks against the faded yellow brown of the dry grass. They needed the snow to turn everything fresh and clean again.

  She took a deep breath and sucked in the cool air like a balm for the soul.

  It was too nice to not share. She leapt to her feet and headed indoors to Sasha’s room.

  The girls had music playing in the background, and the entire contents of Sasha’s closet piled in one enormous heap on her bed.

  Tamara raised a brow. “Interesting cleaning method.”

  They glanced at her guiltily from the floor where they were both ignoring the mess and had their noses tucked into books.

  “We were just—” Sasha started before Tamara interrupted.

  “No excuses. You need a break from cleaning, but not more indoor time. Grab your coats and pull on your boots. We’re going out for some fresh air.”

  The girls scrambled to their feet, and they were all outside in under two minutes.

  Sasha headed toward the cottage her aunt had lived in, but Tamara called her back. “Let’s go to the barns.”

  A quick twist and Sasha was racing in a new direction, Emma hard on her heels. Tamara followed more slowly, the trail in the grass well worn by previous trips. She smiled, wiggling her shoulders under her fall coat. She’d need to break out something more substantial soon.

  They passed an old chicken coop, the fencing broken in a few places. Tamara paused to examine it, but the girls were far enough ahead she only took a moment. It hadn’t been used for a few years.

  She caught up with them, but instead of heading into the barn they were climbing on a tire swing hanging outside the arena.

  Tamara stopped to let them play for a bit, and that’s when she realized that there was no door into the barn anywhere close to them.

  “Hey, Sasha. How do we get into the barn?”

  The dark-haired girl stared at her in surprise. “Daddy takes us.”

  What? “You mean you never go into the barn unless Caleb is with you?”

  Emma answered this time, shaking her head slowly, her eyes wide.

  She was missing something. “Then how do you do your chores?”

  “We don’t have chores in the barn. We have chores in the house,” Sasha explained, a tiny bit of smugness coming into her voice that she knew something Tamara didn’t.

  “You don’t take care of any of the animals?” Oh. Maybe there was a reason for that. “You don’t want to take care of any of the animals, is that it?”

  Once again, the girls exchanged a glance and this time Emma snuck close to her sister, motivated enough to make her point clear. She put her hand around Sasha’s ear and whispered.

  Sasha turned back with a shrug. “Emma and I like the cats, and I like horses, but Daddy says they’re too big, and we’re too little. He takes us riding, though. Him and Uncle Luke, and sometimes Uncle Dusty.”

  “So you don’t go in the barn, and you don’t have chickens—did you used to have chickens?”

  Sasha’s face closed up like a thund
erstorm had hit. “Not for a long time.”

  Then she caught Emma by the hand and the two of them headed back toward the house as if they were on a mission. Emma glancing over her shoulders a few times, her sad little eyes burning into Tamara’s soul.

  Okay, something was wrong. The girls obviously took that path often enough that it was still easy to see, but they weren’t mucking about in the barn? They weren’t climbing up into the hayloft to chase down kittens?

  Simmering began in her belly, but Tamara didn’t say anything as she followed the girls to the house, She made them a snack before getting them back on task in Sasha’s room.

  Only by lunchtime the simmering had turned into a small pocket of very hot coals, and if she didn’t do something about it she was going to explode.

  Maybe it was the phone call from Lisa that morning—a reminder that her father was still making her sisters’ lives miserable. But she hadn’t thought Caleb to have been of the same old-school bigotry that controlled George Coleman hard enough to have sent Tamara off the ranch.

  She got the girls settled with sandwiches and veggie sticks in front of a movie then headed out to the barns to track down Caleb.

  She ran into Kelli around the first corner.

  The young woman stopped and gave her a smile. “Hey, girlfriend. Heading for a ride?”

  “Need to talk to Caleb.”

  The words came out a little clipped, and one of Kelli’s brows rose. “Oh?”

  “Know where he is?”

  Kelli extended an arm deeper into the barn, pointing the way. “Give a shout if you want backup.”

  Tamara did her best to keep from stomping. “I’ll be sure to tell him that.”

  A soft snicker reached her ears, but it wasn’t enough to make a dent in her level of frustration. And when she poked her head into the room at the end of the hallway and discovered Caleb working on saddles, she marched right up and got in his face.

  “I think I missed a few things. I need you to clarify for me.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Tamara. Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was laced with sarcasm, so she pulled back enough to not dig herself too huge of a hole in case she was wrong. “I asked the girls when we were going to do their chores, and they informed me they only go into the barn when you’re with them. Which makes me think they probably don’t have chores.”

  “They have chores,” Caleb looked confused. “We talked about this. You said that they were already doing them.”

  “Dishes and cleaning inside the house. What about outside chores?”

  “They help weed the garden in the summertime. I guess they could probably shovel snow, but there’s been no use for that because Dusty uses the tractor.”

  He was not listening, and her temper kept rising. “There’s always a lot of chores taking care of animals. What’re they responsible for in the barns?”

  Understanding came into his eyes. “Oh. Yeah, they don’t have barn chores.”

  Caleb turned his back, lifting the saddle into place on the wall as if the conversation was done.

  Hell no was this conversation done. Tamara tugged on his arm, attempting to get him to face her. She’d have more luck rotating a tree, but she was angry enough to try.

  “You live on a goddamn ranch. What if they want to take care of it with you? And if you say they can’t because they’re girls, I will find where you keep the castration tools and prove that a girl can learn to do any task she sets her mind on—”

  “We have horses, and hands, and I don’t want little people wandering where they can get hurt.”

  She planted her hands on her hips. “There’s this awesome concept called supervision, darling.”

  Caleb stared at her from his full height, locking his dark brown eyes on hers. But instead of the fight she thought she’d get, he spoke softly.

  “Right, darlin’. Now that you’re here, you can give them the supervision I couldn’t before. You want to add outdoor chores, go ahead.”

  And that was it.

  Huh.

  It was bit of a hollow victory considering he didn’t even raise his voice.

  He was turning away when Tamara spoke again. “What animals can they help with?”

  His shoulders drooped for a moment before he straightened and moved closer. “You ever listen?”

  “When there’s something worth hearing.”

  His eyes flashed before he was back to hooded lids and an unreadable expression. “We’ve got too many horses around here that are untrained. I don’t want them—”

  “I said I’d supervise.”

  For a second his hands moved toward her, urgent and wild. Not in a way that scared her, but in a way that made a pulse go off, deep in her core.

  Then it was gone again, that fire in his eyes, and he was back to calm. Reasonable. He dipped his chin once. “Fine. No horses, but you’re in charge of whatever else you want them to do.”

  She was in his body space. He put his hands on her upper arms and held on tight, and another explosion went off in her core, heat blossoming outward in anticipation.

  When he basically picked her up six inches then rotated on the spot, Tamara was shocked into stillness.

  He lowered her to the ground then turned his back and walked out of the room.

  No word spoken in anger on his part, no real emotion other than those brief glimpses, while she stood there damn near shaking with adrenaline. Half from anger and half from being far too turned on when all he’d done was touch her arms.

  She rushed from the barn, thankful for the cool air brushing against her heated cheeks as she marched back to the house. He was the most infuriating, sexy, annoying, desirable ass she’d ever had the misfortune of meeting.

  But he had given her permission, and he hadn’t defined what that meant, so she was going to use this opportunity to make sure the girls got what they needed.

  She wasn’t thinking at all about how much this might piss off a certain cowboy who had a stick up his ass. Nope, not thinking that at all.

  She pulled out her phone and tapped in a familiar number.

  “Hey, you. What’s going on?” Her older sister Karen asked with a touch of concern. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s peachy,” Tamara informed her. “Today I’m a paying customer. I need a favour.”

  As she shared her idea for outdoor chores with her sister, Tamara felt a sense of satisfaction. A certain grumpy cowboy wasn’t going to like this one bit, and she didn’t care.

  She entered the house with a lot lighter step than she’d left, anticipation turning her grin into something slightly evil.

  He wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  Chapter Eight

  Peacefulness soaked into Caleb’s bones. Early-morning chores had gone well, and none of the animals had tried to kill him, which was always a bonus.

  He strolled back to the house to find the coffee was on but Tamara nowhere to be seen, although the scent of bacon was building in the kitchen.

  He grabbed a cup then headed to the front porch, pulling to a stop when he discovered Tamara curled up in one of the Adirondack chairs tucked out of the wind. “Mind some company?”

  She shook her head, gesturing to the second chair that already had a cushion on it. “It’s your view. I can’t get enough of it.”

  Caleb settled into place. He’d worried for a moment she would break his lovely mellow mood by starting in again on the chore issue, but like the night before at dinner, she didn’t say a word.

  Only, it wasn’t as if she was refusing to speak about it. More as if she wasn’t stewing over the topic. Definitely not pouting.

  He had to admit he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with the woman.

  She let out a happy sigh. “I could come here every day for an entire year and not get bored of that view. I’ve never lived this close to a lake before. I mean, we have water on the Whiskey Creek property, but it’s constantly moving.” She turne
d her face toward the lake, smile widening. “You have to go find a quiet fishing hole to get that kind of sparkle on the water.”

  “You fish?”

  Tamara snorted, taking a sip of her coffee before she lifted her head to answer him. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

  “It’s just… My sisters don’t like fishing. Ginny and Dare enjoy plenty of other outdoor activities, but they weren’t partial to putting bait on a hook. And since that’s one of the requirements, they tended to not join us when we went.”

  “Everybody pretty much likes what they like, and sometimes it doesn’t make any sense. Do your girls fish? Because there must be killer fishing around here.” She pointed at the lake “That stocked?”

  He didn’t know which question to answer first. “There’s rainbow in the lake and trout in the river.” It was horrible to have to confess it, but he was honest. “They’ve been a few times, but I don’t know if the girls like to fish.”

  He knew they liked to play dress-up, and they were both moderately terrible at helping in the kitchen. He knew Emma hated storms, and that Sasha would rather be skinned alive than admit she was afraid of anything.

  “Seems whenever it’s just me-and-the-girls time, outside of usual, you know, special-like, I try to do things I know they’ll enjoy.”

  Tamara spoke softly. “But sometimes you can’t tell what you like until you’ve tried.”

  He nodded, even as temptation said she was partially wrong. There were plenty of things that he’d never tried he was positive he would absolutely love. She’d turned her face back to admire the lake again, so it was easy to pretend to be gazing towards the barn and instead study her out of the corner of his eye.

  She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and her lips were curled in a gentle smile. He was pretty sure he would enjoy pressing his mouth to hers. He was fairly certain that if he got a chance he would thoroughly enjoyed tasting every inch of her body. And although he shouldn’t let his mind even begin to head in this direction, he was damn positive if he ever got her naked under him, he’d like that a whole hell of a lot too.

  He eased his legs forward, gaining extra room as he turned his thoughts to other matters in the hopes time would allow his body to settle.