Red-Hot Ranchman

by Victoria Pade

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excpert

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Copyright

  He was a keep-to-himself kind of cowboy

  Tan, lean, hard and handsome. Not that John’s being drop-dead gorgeous mattered to Paige. She’d sworn off romance. And she wouldn’t break her rule for a man as secretive and reclusive as her new neighbor. In fact, she’d made that rule to begin with because of men like him!

  And though she knew there shouldn’t be any kind of man-woman thing going on between them, she had a strong sense that there was. Certainly the way John looked at her made her all too aware that she was a woman, something she seemed to forget about these days. And there was no disputing the fact that he was a man.

  But no one was secretive without a reason…And Paige was determined to uncover his.

  Dear Reader,

  You’ve made the MORE THAN MEN books some of your favorites, so we’re bringing you more!

  These men are more that just tall, dark and handsome. They have an extraordinary power that makes them more than a man. But whether their special power enables them to grant you three wishes or live forever, their greatest power is that of seduction.

  This month meet John Jarvis. He may look like a rancher—but he’s more man than Paige Kenton could ever have dreamed! Writer Victoria Pade had this to say about him: “I found it intriguing to think about a man who’s as down-to-earth as they come, with a power that’s anything but.”

  So turn the page and be seduced by John. It’s an experience you’ll never forget.

  Thanks for all your letters about this bestselling promotion. Be on the lookout in the months ahead for upcoming MORE THAN MEN books.

  Regards,

  Debra Matteucci

  Senior Editor & Editorial Coordinator

  Harlequin Books

  300 East 42nd Street

  New York, NY 10017

  Red-Hot Ranchman

  Victoria Pade

  Chapter One

  “He’s got six puppies over there—two yellow-colored ones and four reds like Hannah the mom. An’ pretty soon there’s gonna be piglets, too, cuz when I said the sow is so fat she looks like she might ‘splode, John said it was cuz she’s gonna have babies, too. I hope she didn’t have ‘em while we were gone an’ I missed it, cuz John let me see the puppies when they were only three hours old an’ he said he’d show me the piglets even sooner than that if they’re born in the daytime an’ he can find me.”

  John, John, John.

  Paige Kenton marveled that even after three days away from home and their new neighbor, her six-year-old son, Robbie, couldn’t talk about anything else. In fact, Robbie’s eagerness to see John Jarvis again seemed to grow with every mile Paige drove their old truck nearer to the small town of Pine Ridge, Colorado, where they lived.

  They’d been to Topeka, Kansas, for the funeral of Paige’s great-aunt. Paige knew she should have stayed over the one other day she’d planned to, but Robbie had been bored and so itchy to get back that she’d decided to cut the trip short.

  Not that she wasn’t anxious to be home again herself, though for no reason that had anything to do with the neighbor she hadn’t met yet. Paige owned a small horse-boarding farm just outside Pine Ridge. While she worried about the animals in her charge, she was also concerned about the rash of burglaries to homes within Pine Ridge itself or just outside the town limits. The break-ins happened when the owners either were away on a trip or had just gone for an outing.

  Of course, she couldn’t have left the place in better hands on both counts. Pine Ridge’s resident sheriff, Burt Beamus—who was also a friend of Paige’s—had agreed to stop by every day to feed and water the horses as well as keep a close eye on things. But still, Paige knew she’d feel better when she was home again herself.

  “You think maybe we could ask John to come over for Sunday dinner or somethin’ sometime?”

  The change in Robbie’s tone of voice from enthusiastic recounting to timid curiosity drew Paige’s full attention to her son. She gave him a sidelong stare. “The only other time you wanted us to do that was because you were trying to fix me up with that substitute teacher who came in from Denver to take over your kindergarten class before Christmas last year when Mrs. Zenya got sick. You wouldn’t have that up your sleeve again, would you?”

  “Who? Me? No, ma’am!”

  Way too innocent.

  Then Robbie added, “You’d like John, though. He’s really nice.”

  He was not nice or friendly enough to have so much as introduced himself when he moved in two months ago or any time since.

  His house and Paige’s were the only two visible to each other, sitting the way they did three miles west of Pine Ridge proper—and yet he’d still managed to keep his distance. She’d gone over a few times at first to formally welcome him, but even though she’d been pretty sure he was home all those times, he hadn’t answered the door.

  If the man didn’t want anything to do with her that was fine with her, she’d thought. So when she’d spotted him working outside after that, she hadn’t approached the man.

  And obviously, he really didn’t want anything to do with her because he’d also gone as far as to write her letters about the water supply that fed his property through hers—water she owned and controlled the rights to—rather than just walk over and discuss it.

  Paige didn’t take it personally anymore. Not since she’d learned that she wasn’t the only one John Jarvis was standoffish with. Word had it that the man never said more than was absolutely necessary even to the people who had face-to-face contact with him in town, either. He placed orders that he needed ordered. He asked questions he needed answered. He gave instructions when it was necessary. He said please and thank-you. But that was about the extent of what anyone got out of him no matter how hard people tried to draw him into the chitchat that made Pine Ridge such a friendly little town.

  Robbie was the only person their neighbor had warmed up to.

  “An’ maybe,” her son was saying, “John’d bring over some of his honeycomb. He’s got a hive an’ the bees never sting ‘im or nothin’. One day he give me some honeycomb right outta there drippin’ with honey and showed me ‘bout suckin’ the honey out and chewin’ the waxy part like gum. It’s lots better’n the stuff from the store.”

  “I’m sure,” Paige said, too tired to correct her son’s grammatical errors.

  Initially, she’d been leery of the relationship between John Jarvis and Robbie. Pine Ridge was a safe place where everyone knew everyone else so she didn’t have the same fears for her son that she might have had in the city or the suburbs. But John Jarvis was a stranger.

  A stranger who happened to be a man with a dogtwo big draws for Robbie. John Jarvis also happened to live a stone’s throw away from the father-hungry little boy and it had been virtually impossible to keep her son away.

  “You’d like John if you just got to know ’im,” Robbie insisted. “In town they think somethin’s wrong with ’im cuz he don’t talk too much to anybody, but that’s not true. He jus’ don’t like to.”

  “He doesn’t talk too much because he doesn’t like to.” Paige finally corrected some of the little boy’s bad grammar because she didn’t know what else to say to that.

  “I know,” Robbie said disgustedly. “John tells me, too, when I say things wrong.” Then the little boy went back to his s
ales pitch. “Bet he’d talk to you, though. If we had ‘im over. An’ even if he didn’t, he’d talk to me so it’d be okay.”

  “And a whole lot of fun.”

  “Yeah,” Robbie agreed, missing her facetious tone of voice altogether.

  Even Robbie hadn’t had an easy time gaining access to their neighbor at the start. John Jarvis had been distant with the boy, too. But Robbie was persistent, tenacious and hard not to like, and eventually, his hanging out with John while he did chores outside and playing with Hannah—the red Labrador retriever John owned—seemed to have broken through the man’s resistance.

  Paige kept a close watch when Robbie went next door—even if it was from half an acre away—and listened carefully to everything her son said for signs of anything out of line from the man. But since she’d never seen or heard a single thing that wasn’t aboveboard in John Jarvis’s dealings with Robbie, she let her son keep going over there.

  In fact, from all of Robbie’s accounts, their neighbor was a patient listener who didn’t mind taking the little boy under his wing to show him how to do a few of the farm chores Paige had thought her son too young to tackle before. If the truth be known, Paige couldn’t think of any effect John Jarvis had on Robbie that hadn’t been positive. And Paige could forgive a lot of snubs for that. Actually, she didn’t care if her neighbor ever spoke to her so long as he was good to her son.

  “So could we invite ‘im?” Robbie asked.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Ple-e-ease.”

  “Let’s not talk about it right now, Robbie. It’s late and we’re both tired from traveling today. We’ll discuss it another time.”

  “That means no.”

  “That means we’ll discuss it another time.”

  They rode in silence past the road sign that proclaimed they were entering Pine Ridge, Population 956. But actually, Pine Ridge was farther up the road and they would come to Paige’s property before they got to the town itself.

  Just beyond the sign, she turned onto a seldom-used dirt road that ran along the backside of her property, which gave her a shortcut coming in from that direction.

  “Lookit—there’s Burt,” Robbie said, sitting up straighter from where he’d slouched down on the truck seat to pout and pointing to the sheriff’s sedan, where it was parked behind a black Trans Am on the soft shoulder. “Bet he’s got a speeder,” Robbie exclaimed, sounding excited again. “Bet that car can really go fast.”

  Paige wasn’t so sure her son was on the right track. Burt didn’t appear to be writing a ticket. Instead, he was bent over the open trunk of the car while a woman stood nearby.

  A very young woman—probably not more than twenty-five, if Paige didn’t miss her guess—dressed in a white leather halter top and a very short matching skirt that showed off legs a mile long.

  The woman had golden blond hair that cascaded halfway down her back. Paige had the impression that even if she had been speeding, she was flirting her way out of any kind of citation for it.

  The headlights on Paige’s truck drew Burt’s attention and he straightened up. He waved when he recognized her, then closed the trunk of the woman’s car.

  “Wow! Lookit that big eagle!” Robbie breathed, obviously impressed by the gold decal that spread its wings across the sleek hood.

  Paige pulled up behind the Trans Am and stopped. She was curious but also hoping to be reassured this didn’t have anything to do with the burglaries, since they were so close to her house.

  “Paige honey, what’re you doing back already?” Burt said by way of greeting when he’d walked around to her side.

  She said hello and explained her early return as the sheriff leaned a forearm along the rim of the door’s window opening.

  Burt had on a pale khaki uniform that bore his badge as the only official sign of his position. Pine Ridge wasn’t a place where he needed to wear a gun or handcuffs or any of the paraphernalia city police officers kept attached to their belts for ready use. Burt kept everything in his car.

  At almost forty—six years older than Paige—he looked more like her father than her friend. Not that he was unattractive, because he wasn’t. It was just that his hair had already turned snow-white and it aged him. Otherwise, he was just shy of six feet tall and didn’t have an extra ounce of fat on his body. His face was round and ruddy-looking with a ski-jump sort of nose and a bit of an overbite that Julie Nelwood—her best friend since grade school and the woman who was keeping company with Burt—thought was pretty cute.

  “Hi, Burt,” Robbie said, unfastening his seat belt to kneel next to Paige so he could look over her shoulder.

  “Hi, Robbie. How you doing?”

  “Good. Did John’s Peggy have her piglets?”

  John again. Paige rolled her eyes. “How would Burt know that?” she asked with a laugh.

  Burt chuckled, too. “Sorry. Haven’t heard.”

  Robbie lost interest then and went back to staring at the Trans Am.

  With a glance at the black car, Paige said, “Anything happen while I was gone?”

  Paige knew Burt would realize just what she meant. “Another bleepin’ break-in. Over at the Hollys’ house. They were out for bingo night and damned if they didn’t get hit. I was patrolling pretty careful because I knew so many folks were at the church, but I left town to check on your house. Couldn’t have been away for more than half an hour. Must have happened then. I swear it’s getting to seem like a game of outsmarting me.”

  “Was it the same as the others?”

  “Exactly. A quick in and out—through the back door this time. They took the TV, stereo, Bill’s coin collection, cash, the usual. Didn’t tear things apart or anything but cleaned them out pretty bad. Damn it to hell.”

  Poor Burt, Paige thought. She knew how frustrated he felt that his townsfolk were having this happen and he wasn’t able to stop it or find the culprits.

  “That’s why I’m out here tonight,” he went on. “Decided to watch your place until you got back, just in case. Seemed it might be the next likeliest target and maybe I could be waiting for whoever’s doing this.”

  Paige appreciated his conscientiousness. She nodded toward the Trans Am that had her son entranced. “But that isn’t our burglar?”

  “Thought it might be when I made my circle around here to check on things and spotted it. But she’s just passing through on her way home to Tinsdale and had a flat tire that I finished changing about two minutes ago.”

  “Sheriff Beamus?” the other woman called in a coy, singsong voice that made Paige want to tell her Burt was spoken for.

  But she didn’t. She did, however, notice that Burt was anxious to get back to her.

  “Julie okay?” Paige asked as a gentle reminder of her friend.

  “Just fine. Sassy as ever. She’ll be glad to know you’re back. She’s been worrying about your place getting hit, too,” Burt answered without a hint of guilty conscience.

  “Well, nobody has to worry anymore,” Paige said. “I’m home now. You can go get some sleep tonight after all.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Robbie chimed in as they said good-night, then Paige waited while the sheriff passed in front of her headlights to return to the Trans Am.

  Once he had, she waved at him and started off again, following the back road to another that took her around to the long driveway that formed a horseshoe in front of her house.

  And just that quick, she and Robbie were home.

  Paige breathed a sigh of happy relief as she stopped the truck in the curve of the drive and stared up at the small white clapboard two-story farmhouse trimmed and shuttered in dark green. It had a wide wraparound porch that made the lower level look much bigger than the upper when they were actually the same size, a huge paned picture window that looked out from the living room, and dormers from the bedrooms upstairs.

  The house had been standing for over sixty years. The pipes groaned, the furnace was ancient and the floor
s creaked, but she loved it.

  “Come on,” she said to her son. “Let’s just leave the truck here for tonight so we won’t have far to carry the bags.”

  Not that a six-year-old could carry much. Robbie managed her overnight case and a bucket that contained his building blocks, but the suitcase with their clothes, the gym bag filled with more toys, and a grocery sack stuffed with various other odds and ends were left for Paige to maneuver along with the keys to the house.

  When she got the heavy cherry front door unlocked, she pushed it open and let Robbie go in first, following behind with her hands too full to turn on the lights.

  The layout of the house wasn’t complicated. They stepped into a decent-size entryway with stairs facing straight ahead, the living room to the right and a hall alongside the staircase that ran all the way to the rear, where the big country kitchen was located.

  Moonlight poured in through the greenhouse window over the kitchen sink and spilled into the hallway so that house wasn’t pitch-black and they could at least make their way in without tripping over anything.

  “Let’s set everything down here and I’ll fix you something to eat since we had such a crummy meal in that roadside diner. Then we’ll take these things upstairs,” she said, pushing the front door firmly shut with her rear end so it would automatically lock.

  As she was setting the suitcase down, a bright light caught her eye. It flashed in from outside the kitchen’s greenhouse window. From very close outside. On the porch. For just an instant. Then it was gone.

  Paige knew every inch of the house, land and outbuildings, knew every source of light there was, and nothing could have caused that fleeting beam that had disappeared beneath the window’s sill as quickly as it bad come.

  Nothing but a flashlight.

  And no one had any reason to be on her back porch with a flashlight.