by Mary Brady
“Come to dinner tonight,” Ethel said as she put a gentle hand on KayLee’s arm again.
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t put you to so much trouble.”
“Shucks, call it a sales tactic. We’re offering you a service, after all, and a sample might clinch the sale.” Cora’s grin, KayLee noted, was much wider than Ethel’s, and Cora in the turquoise cap and coat used it now as persuasion.
“In that case, I suppose I could come to dinner.” And they could lock her in their basement never to be heard from again.
“Come about six-thirty.”
No pushing? KayLee thought.
“If that doesn’t work for you, let us know.”
“Could we make it tomorrow night? Since I’m going to the ranch, I don’t know how late I’ll be back in town.”
“Tomorrow night, six-thirty,” Ethel said and Cora nodded.
“Tomorrow.”
The women started off down the street and KayLee toward her room, feeling as if she were walking away from hurricane force winds.
She let herself in and sat down in the chair at the table near the window and sighed. The room smelled like musty old motel. The sooner she got out of the inn, the better for her baby’s health and well-being.
Cora and Ethel had come with Holly’s recommendation, after all. Maybe they were a couple of dears offering to be her godsend in the way of a safe haven, and she had to live somewhere.
She tugged on the drapery cord to let in the muted daylight.
The sheet from the sisters had a price that KayLee at first took to mean weekly, but the price was another indication she wasn’t in Southern California anymore.
“We’re going to make it, baby,” she whispered as she rubbed where her child kicked against her ribs. “We are. I promise.”
She sat for the next hour and a half going over the lists Curtis and Baylor Doyle had assembled. She wondered if they had conferred at all. The lists looked as if they somehow purposefully came up with opposing goals.
She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyelids shut. She might have to wear her glasses more if she was going to have to try this hard. She gathered the papers and popped the flash drive from her laptop. The best thing to do at this point was take the lists and her computer and head out to the ranch. Baylor was expecting her this afternoon. Getting there by noon should get her back on track with the Doyles as an on-time person, someone they could put their faith in, someone who would more than get the job done.
She packed up and put on her borrowed coat.
When she stepped outside, big beautiful fluffy snowflakes were falling from the sky, as if from a snow maker on a movie set.
How beautiful. She hadn’t seen a snowfall since the last time she went to Wisconsin in the winter and that had been almost ten years ago. It was so beautiful out in the street, it had to be a good omen.
She found the long-handled brush she’d bought at a gas station in Missoula and brushed at the snow that had already accumulated on her car’s windows.
BAYLOR WASHED UP in the bucket of cooling soapy water, for what seemed like the five hundredth time this calving season. He’d leave Lance to deal with this afternoon’s birthing calves. His brother knew well enough to call if he needed help.
There were always mishaps and flukes of nature during birthing season, but so far they’d been lucky, only one stillborn calf. The last of this year’s batch should be born this week and put an end to the year’s birthing incidents.
He stopped, dripping soapy hands suspended over the bucket. There would be one more birth this year. KayLee Morgan had brought that to the ranch. The births of the three children living here had been highly anticipated events and when Trey had nearly died on his first day, it had sent a shock wave through the family.
Seth and Amy were still in Helena with the boy. He’d have surgery as soon as he was stabilized, Seth had told him—possibly tomorrow, hopefully the next day if not.
KayLee should be here in an hour or so to do what she called a “walk-off” of the site for the first two cabins. With luck the snow would hold off.
He dried off his hands, secured the cap on his head and stepped outside.
Snow was falling with flakes so large they made audible plops when they hit the ground. He looked up at the sky and wondered if they were finally about to be dumped on. Heavy gray clouds hung like the bellies of pregnant cows.
Yep.
He’d better call KayLee and tell her to stay in town. She had no idea what a spring snowstorm in Montana could mean.
CHAPTER NINE
BAYLOR STRODE ACROSS the frozen ground toward the house. If it was snowing in town, KayLee might stay put. With any luck someone would have warned her about driving in the mountains during a snowstorm.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind, when the blue Ford appeared out of the snow, windshield wipers flapping furiously, and rolled to a stop near the house.
She’d better be prepared to stay the night.
As he headed in the direction of the car, she leaped out and waved. Hair the color of burnished bronze in the snow-filtered light fell in ribbons over her shoulders, the ends dancing in the wind. The big brown coat wrapped around her never looked so sexy and as she neared him, he could see the flush in her cheeks.
“It’s so surreal,” she said in a hushed voice as she approached, her footsteps crunching with every step.
She stopped in front of him with wonder on her face. He could smell the sweet scent of her, see her green eyes sparkle with excitement. Then she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the falling snow.
Yeah, Baylor thought of the dream in front of him, surreal.
Flakes fell into her hair and onto her eyebrows and her nose. They melted on her pink lips, forming small fascinating droplets of water, and he found himself wanting to taste them.
Then he found himself wanting to smack his sorry self on the back of the head in frustration at such thoughts.
With her eyes still closed, she stuck her tongue out to capture flakes.
A shot of hot need flashed through him.
Oh, darlin’, please don’t do that.
She opened her eyes and dropped her chin as if she knew what she was doing to him.
“I thought you might stay in town today.” He cleared his throat of the unwanted huskiness he found there and hoped his head—and everything else—might clear soon, too.
“I haven’t been in a snowfall since I lived in Wisconsin.” She stretched out her arms and spun slowly. “I didn’t realize seeing it again would make me feel so giddy.”
It didn’t make her look giddy. It made her look sexy, sensual. He wanted to take her somewhere—anywhere but the family ranch—and make love to her in front of a blazing fire, all day, until the snow melted into summer.
He really could not afford to be thinking that way. Thinking that way would not get the job completed and get him on his way out of this valley and off to Denver. “The snow might make it harder to do what you came all the way out here to do today. You could wait and do it tomorrow. Evvy and Holly would love your company.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother anybody and the snow is so pretty. I love being out in it,” she said as she dropped her arms to her sides and smiled up at him.
Yeah, the snow’s pretty until you try to drive your itsy-bitsy car in a storm that has more blow and drift than anything you’ve ever seen in your life. The thought of her driving that car in a mountain snowstorm stirred the foolishness deep within him, brought up his need to protect—and sometimes in order to protect, one had to conquer.
“Have any problems driving out here?” He hoped to God so. It would make talking her into staying for the duration easier and if he didn’t already think it was a good idea, Evvy would insist he do so.
“My car has all-wheel drive and it’s not like I’ve never driven in the snow, and to me this is one of nature’s gifts.”
“It’ll be a big gift wrapped in sparkly paper and tied with a gi
ant red bow if we can get the last of the calves born safely and not have them out in the middle of a blizzard.”
She tilted her head to try to look up at him without the flakes falling into her eyes and then blinked when they did. “A blizzard. Will it get that bad?”
“It might. You need a hat.” He tugged the bill of his Miller’s Hardware cap that kept much of the weather out of his eyes and resisted the urge to put it on her head. The last time he had done that, his sister, Crystal, had smacked him hard and told him to mind his own business, she could take care of herself.
He hoped it was still true, that his sister was out there somewhere taking care of herself.
“Walking the sites will give me a good feel of what I need to change, if anything, and I can’t wait to see the plans start to become real.” She set her fists on her hips in determination. “So I’m going to go out and do the walk-off quickly so I can still get back to town this afternoon.”
Back to town this afternoon? So it would be a fight. “You need some overshoes.”
“These shoes’ll be okay.” She held up the toe of a totally inadequate-for-the-weather light blue running shoe. “Your mother wears this kind of shoe.”
“My mother wears athletic shoes inside the house because she had a knee replaced. If you have another pair to wear when you need to throw that pair out, then you’re good to go. The ground is not all frozen and pretty white snow.”
“Sarcasm. I deserve that for being unprepared.”
She offered no excuses, though he could think of a couple she might use, like she didn’t know she was getting the job, especially not right away and, according to the report, she had lived in Southern California for almost a decade.
She examined her athletic shoes and then looked up at him, blinking as the snowflakes pummeled her face. “Do you have a pair of overshoes I could borrow?”
“Four buckles enough for you.” He almost laughed at the thought of the city woman clomping around in four-buckle overshoes. But the longer she stayed out in the snow, the sooner she would admit she shouldn’t drive back to town today.
“I guess. If I knew what that was. Buckle overshoes are somewhere in my memory, like my grandfather had them or something.”
“Let’s go in the mudroom and I’ll get you a pair.”
“Thanks. As soon as I can get to a bigger town, I’ll get myself some proper gear.”
He nodded and escorted her into the mudroom, where the closets of the tile-and-wood-paneled room held enough communal hats, boots, coats, etc. to supply an army.
As he sorted through the footwear, she asked about Trey and he told her what he knew. It was hard to tell a woman expecting a baby about a child who was desperately sick.
He held up a pair of boots.
She grinned and nodded. “Four-buckle overshoes. Montana is chock-full of new experiences for me.”
He knew the quickest way to get these boots on her was to do it himself, so he knelt on the rug in front of her and held the boot for her to stick her foot inside. She put a hand on his shoulder for support as she lifted her foot from the floor. Her small hand barely applied pressure as she kept her balance, but he had to work really hard to keep from thinking what it would feel like to have her press her palms to his naked shoulder, massage his bare back with her small fingers.
After he’d clipped all four buckles on each boot closed and was still kneeling in front of KayLee, he glanced up to see his mother in the doorway, smiling all angelic-like.
“Hi, Mrs. Doyle,” KayLee said.
“Give her a hat, too, Bay, dear.”
ON HER OWN INSISTENCE, KayLee headed out alone to where the cabins would be built. It wasn’t very far from the main house, but the snow was beginning to fall harder. She had heard the Wild West stories about people tying a rope between the house and the barn so they didn’t get disoriented in the blowing snow and wander off never to be found again.
As she ventured forward, snow obscured the trees and turned their spread branches into dark hulking figures, nearly hidden in the white. There were two or so inches of snow under her feet, and she was glad Baylor had found boots for her.
She stopped in the all-encompassing white.
What if she couldn’t find her way back? What if she was one of those people who wandered off?
She did an about-face to check to see if she could still see the outlines of the ranch buildings.
She could. She could also see the form of a man heading toward her. She had assured Baylor she could do this by herself, that she actually preferred to do it by herself, but she stopped and waited for him.
Hands in his jacket pockets, he had a cowboy hat on now, a bigger version of the one he had found for her to wear. It’d keep the snow from going down her neck he had said as he plopped the hat on her head. Keep the snow out of your eyes, too. Then he tucked her hair behind her ear and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from leaning into the gentle touch of his fingers.
She watched as he approached in long strides, eating up ground quickly and looking powerful, like a big cat, a big sexy male, alpha cat. Not a cat, a wolf.
He drew closer.
No, a man.
The kind a woman would be drawn to if she were trying to propagate the species. Or wanted protection for a child already in progress. She doubted many females ignored Baylor Doyle—only the blind ones, and only as long as they couldn’t touch him.
She smiled at the thought of how the hormones of the female body created a different kind of thinking. To her pre-pregnant self, this thinking would have been over-the-top, even bordering on irrational. Knowing she had a real reason for being irrational—no matter what Cindy said—she grinned wider. She liked it. It was fun, even exhilarating.
KayLee squeezed her hands into fists and tried to calm her breathing. She wanted Baylor Doyle, but she was not going to have him. She had other priorities, and he was a client. Having him could mess things up on many levels. Not the least of which, for her baby’s protection, she had to maintain some kind of boundaries for herself.
Having him wouldn’t be fair to him, either. She doubted he was the love-’em-and-leave-’em type.
He strode right up to her and leaned down to kiss her.
No, that was her imagination. He actually stopped a few feet away.
“Had enough of being out here alone?”
She smiled at him. “How’d you know?”
“When she was little, my sister, Crystal, would freak out when she got too far away and the snow obscured the buildings.” He pointed toward the stand of trees by the stream. “One day when she wandered too far and the snow started coming down hard, she stood in that bunch of trees and screamed until one of the dogs started howling.”
“How long was she out there alone?”
“A long time. At least ten minutes.”
Even with his teasing tone, KayLee could tell he had great affection for his sister. She might ask him about her someday.
“I was starting to feel uncomfortable, but thank you for letting me come out by myself. Being…well…frightened of being alone out here is one of those things I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t experienced it. It’s creepy, but somehow exciting on a primal, woman-against-the-elements kind of way.”
He chuckled.
His laughter had been tinged with a yeah-right kind of tone, most likely about the woman-against-the-elements remark.
“I’ll hang around, keep an eye on you, won’t let you wander off into the woods and get lost.”
As much as the necessity of having a caretaker rankled her free-spirit sensibilities, sometimes—protection of the innocent child being one of those times—it was wiser to let it happen. What better guardian for an unborn child than Baylor Doyle?
She left him standing under a pine tree and wandered the area, counting measured steps, jotting notes on paper with a pencil. There were some things one of her instructors at the school of architecture and urban planning had told her she would always h
ave use for—a blank paper and a pencil with a decent point. The woman had been correct. Soggy but functional where nothing else would have worked as well today.
She looked up and around every now and then to see Baylor keeping vigil some distance away. Male guarding female.
He waved and she waved back and continued walking off the perimeter of the second cabin site near the stream. Being up close and personal with her projects gave her an organic, almost biologic, connection that drawings, notes, aerial photos and even drive-by site visits could not offer.
This cabin was going to be the most beautiful of all, with its breathtaking views and relative isolation. Many a romance would prosper here.
Crackling fire in the stone fireplace, comfy long-stranded flokati rug under a naked couple, sweat glistening on their bodies as they professed their love in words and actions…
“Are you warm enough?”
The sound of Baylor’s voice so close drew her out of the fantasy. She recognized she had been standing in one spot for a while. Snow had collected on her coat while she’d been thinking of things she’d be better off not thinking of at all.
“I am, thanks to my borrowed coat.” She brushed at the snow on her shoulder and shuffled her feet.
He was such a caring man, thoughtful even. It seemed part of his nature to be in charge, to look after things. He was the kind of person she needed in her life right now.
She took two steps closer to him and reached a hand up to his shoulder.
She had meant to tell him how thoughtful she thought he was.
Instead, she tipped her head back so the brims of their hats wouldn’t crash together and kissed him on the mouth. His lips chilled by the cold air quickly warmed and she pressed harder. The surge of need closed out the other thoughts in her brain except for this man, of kissing him, of wanting him until she wanted to drop in the snow and make love to him.
She jerked away. “I, um, I didn’t mean to do that.”
She studied him to see if she could tell how much damage she had caused.
“It felt like you meant it.”