Red-Hot Ranchman

by Victoria Pade

  “The night we came home from Topeka. I suppose Burt also told you I hit my elusive neighbor with a baseball bat?”

  “Way to go! Talk about a memorable first impression. And on a guy who’s been dodging you, no less.”

  The waitress came to their tableside just then to bring Robbie crayons and a place mat he could color.

  In a town the size of Pine Ridge, everyone knew everyone else and so Paige and Julie chatted with the young girl whose mother took in sewing and alterations. Then they ordered their pizza—one large deepdish pie with nearly everything on it the place offered—and three drinks.

  When the teenager had gone, Julie said, “So what’s he like? Is he as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as I’ve heard?”

  Robbie frowned at Julie as if he didn’t particularly like having his friend spoken of that way. But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he went to work on the place mat.

  Mindful of her son’s protectiveness—and to camouflage her own feelings about their neighbor—Paige answered more conservatively than she might have under other circumstances. “John is a very good-looking man all right.”

  Julie saw through her response. She grinned. “Is he nice, too?”

  “Yep,” Robbie interjected, without looking up, as if the question had been directed at him.

  “He seems to be,” Paige confirmed. “Actually, he isn’t much like people around town think he is. He came over again last night and—”

  “John came over last night?” Robbie asked, sounding surprised.

  Julie echoed the sentiment by raising two well-shaped eyebrows.

  “After you were asleep,” Paige said to Robbie. Then to Julie, “He saw me go out to the barn to tend Nijjy’s fetlock and he came over to talk about the water rights.”

  That satisfied Robbie, who went back to his coloring.

  Julie was not so naive. “He just came to talk business, huh?” she said as if she didn’t believe for a minute that that was all there was to it. “Did he get what he came for?” she added, her tone laced with innuendo.

  “I didn’t sell him either my property or the half share of the water, no.”

  “Did he talk you into anything else?”

  “No,” Paige said firmly. But even though she was trying to convey to her friend that there was nothing at all going on between her and John—which in fact there wasn’t—just talking about him made her remember very vividly the time they’d spent together the evening before. The way he’d made her feel. Her own thoughts of his kissing her. The secret wish that he would have…

  “Are you friends now?” Julie asked, her tone still full of insinuation.

  “We’re just neighbors,” Paige corrected.

  “You’ve been neighbors all along.”

  “And we still are.”

  “Except that now he comes over for late-night business discussions.”

  “Just because he saw me outside and thought he might as well.”

  “Sure. I think Robbie’s right. You should ask him to Burt’s party Wednesday night.”

  “Yeah!” Robbie broke in again.

  “I’ll bet,” Julie went on, “that if you and Robbie ask, he’d come. And then he’d be able to meet half the people in Pine Ridge all at once and they’d get some of their curiosity about him satisfied. You’d be doing a public service.”

  Paige rolled her eyes for the second time in the past half hour. “I’m sure he wouldn’t come.”

  “But you’d like him to,” Julie goaded.

  “I would,” Robbie cut in immediately, completely unaware of the undercurrents that were flowing between his mother and Julie.

  When Paige didn’t say anything at all, her friend persisted, “Tell me more about what he’s like.”

  Paige shrugged as if to show how inconsequential her reply would be. “He has a good sense of humor. He seems intelligent. He’s surprisingly easy to talk to. Charming…”

  That didn’t seem benign enough an observation and Paige was instantly sorry she’d said it. She certainly didn’t go on to add that he had such potent masculine magnetism that even Nijjy had been taken with him. Not to mention Paige herself.

  Instead, she went on to say, “But he does seem pretty guarded and I’m sure he wouldn’t come to Burt’s party no matter who asked him.”

  “Sounds as if you like him.”

  “He’s a perfectly fine neighbor. Never bothers about anything. Quiet—”

  “And could you be just a little A-T-T-R-A-C-T-E-D to him?”

  Paige waved away that notion, wishing it was as easy to deny to herself. “No, I couldn’t be.”

  “Those things happen whether you want them to or not.”

  Julie knew her only too well.

  But still Paige couldn’t give in and admit to the stirrings she’d experienced the past few days all because of her new neighbor. Not to Julie. Not even to herself.

  Paige gave Robbie some change to put in the jukebox so he’d be out of earshot before she said, “John Jarvis is a man who’s managed to move into this town and live here for two months without letting anyone get to know him or anything about him. To me that makes him a high risk. And high risks are strictly off-limits.”

  “Excuses, excuses. You’re just scared. Here’s how you get over it—you ask a few questions, learn about him a little at a time, and then he isn’t high risk or off-limits. And a good way to start is to invite him to the party.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  But the idea was dangerously tempting.

  “Then I’ll have Robbie do it,” Julie threatened.

  “It wouldn’t make any difference. The man won’t come.”

  “You never know unless you ask. And it would be the neighborly thing to do.”

  ONLY A LUNATIC WOULD CHOP firewood on a ninetytwo-degree day. A lunatic or a man with something—or someone—to work out of his system.

  By three o’clock Monday afternoon, John had nearly a cord cut and was still going strong.

  The someone he was trying to work out of his system was Paige Kenton. But the fact that he’d let her into his system in the first place was also a sign that he was a lunatic, he thought. Or a glutton for punishment.

  He knew damn good and well that he shouldn’t have given in to the pull of her presence right next door. He shouldn’t have spent every minute yesterday thinking about her, watching for her. And he sure as hell shouldn’t have gone over there last night when he’d seen her head for her barn.

  Yes, he was serious about needing more access to the water, but he knew that had only been an excuse to spend some time with her. He just shouldn’t have let the urge win out.

  And he was mad as hell at himself that he had.

  John slashed a log in two with such force it not only split but the halves shot several feet apart.

  He was getting himself into trouble and he knew it. A long time ago, he’d resigned himself to the fact that he would never have a normal life. A wife. Kids. Friends other than his brother.

  A man who was considered a freak didn’t have those things.

  Sure he’d had people around. Too many people. So many that it was actually isolating because they weren’t people who wanted to get to know him. Who came around because they enjoyed his company or liked him as a person. But only people who made demands on him. People with high expectations of him. People who needed him. People who didn’t think there was ever a moment in his life that couldn’t be interrupted or disturbed. Or ever a moment that he couldn’t be called upon.

  The experience made him leery. It convinced him he never again wanted to be in the kind of situation he’d just left behind.

  And it sure as shootin’ let him know that he was never going to have anything close to a normal life. The best he could hope for was a peaceful one, lived on his own, away from everything and everybody. So no one realized the truth about him and the ordeal all started over.

  Then along came Robbie, stirring up feelings of wanting—wishing—for kids of his
own. Stirring them up strong enough that he’d talked himself into letting down his guard with the little boy. And as bittersweet as being with the boy was, as much as the time he’d spent with Robbie had left him thinking if only I were like other men, I could have a son like that…he still enjoyed the child’s company so much it was worth it.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can let down your guard with his mother,” John said aloud with another fierce whack of the ax.

  This time he brought it down hard enough to shatter the log into kindling. He just wasn’t sure if the anger that fueled him came from having broken his vow to keep his distance or from knowing he damn well couldn’t let himself do it again.

  He reached for another log and realized he’d run out. Too bad he hadn’t run out of anything else. Like the images of Paige that went right on flashing through his mind. Like the overwhelming urge to see her again. To spend time with her. Like crazy thoughts about what it might be like to hold her. To kiss her. Thoughts that had kept him walking by her side from the barn to her house the night before, tempting him to do just that. Making it tougher than it had ever been to stay resigned to the solitary life he needed to lead.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered, bending to pick up as much of the wood as he could carry to stack on his back porch.

  That was when he heard the phone ringing.

  He set the wood down and crossed the yard, knowing who was calling. His brother was the only person who had his number.

  When he reached the phone on the kitchen wall just inside the back door, he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, Dwight,” he said.

  “Finally. Where’ve you been, boy? I been callin’ you all day long.”

  “I was gone earlier, but I’ve been choppin’ wood most of the afternoon.”

  “In August heat? Or isn’t it as hot up there as it is here?”

  “It’s hot,” John assured him, grabbing a dish towel to mop the sweat off his bare neck and torso.

  “Somethin’ botherin’ you?”

  Hard to fool his brother. But he only said, “You callin’ with news?”

  “Sorry. The lawyers are still haggling. It’s not easy to go up against a judge—even a retired one—and get a ruling reversed. Especially when the ruling has to do with the retired judge’s son. I was just thinkin’ about you and wanted to know how you were doin’.”

  “Fine. How about yourself?”

  “Good. Good.” Dwight paused. “A lot of folks are comin’ around here, askin’ after you yet.”

  “I’m surprised, what with the way things were when I left. Thought word would’ve spread. Sorry you have to be bothered.”

  Dwight didn’t respond to that. “You made the front page of the Sunday newspaper again a week ago. Headline read, ‘Local Legend Disappears Into Thin Air.’”

  “Local legend,” John repeated wryly. “Makes me sound like a hero. That piece couldn’t have been written by anybody around there in the past five months.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. The article got into the ugly details. Said that was no doubt why you took off.”

  “A fresh reminder should help get the rest of the folks to stop botherin’ you lookin’ for me.”

  “Would you come home if they did?”

  “You know I wouldn’t,” John said, for some reason glancing out the kitchen’s side window at Paige’s house. “Why don’t you sell out and come up here?”

  “I bought your share of the land and let you keep your half of the mineral rights to the oil wells. Nobody’s going to buy me out and let us both keep those, you know that. And we’d be damn fools to sell ‘em.”

  “How about a visit, then?” John suggested, thinking that if he could get his brother here he’d have a distraction from Paige. Maybe it would get him over the temptation to get to know her. When Dwight left again he could go back to being only aware of her part of the time.

  “You goin’ stir-crazy on me?” Dwight asked.

  “A little. I could use some company. And you never have come up here to see the place.”

  “I suppose I could. It’d give me a breather.”

  “So how about it?”

  “Have to talk to old Ralph, see if he can handle the place, maybe get his sons in to help.”

  “Do it.” Because the more John thought about his brother coming here, the more he reckoned it would be his salvation from his attraction to Paige.

  “Let me look into it all.”

  “Then call me back.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Apparently he’d been too eager. “Fine. Lonely maybe.”

  “That little neighbor boy quit comin’ around to keep you company?”

  “Robbie? No, he’s still visitin’. Met his momma the other night.”

  “Did you now?”

  “Nice lady. Pretty. Hardworkin’.”

  “Maybe you ought to get neighborly.”

  “Maybe you ought to get off this phone and go make arrangements for a visit yourself.”

  “She must be more than hardworkin’ for you to bite off my head like that,” Dwight said with a laugh.

  “I said she was nice and pretty.”

  “Real nice and real pretty is my bet. Makes it hard to keep being a recluse, huh?”

  “Just make sure when you come up here you aren’t followed,” John said, trying to change the subject.

  “Well, I’ll definitely be comin’ now. To get a look at your neighbor, if nothin’ else.”

  “When?”

  Dwight laughed again, heartily. “Hankerin’ after her and tryin’ not to, aren’t you? That’s why you’re out in August heat choppin’ wood.”

  “I have work to do, Dwight. Call me when you know somethin’.”

  “I know this neighbor woman’s got you itchy, sure as I know seeds sprout in spring.”

  “Yeah, yeah, well, it doesn’t matter.”

  Except that it did. It mattered a lot to John to be craving Paige’s company as much as he was and not be able to have it.

  “She doesn’t have to know everything,” Dwight suggested.

  “Doesn’t she? You really think I could keep it from her?”

  Dwight didn’t answer that because they both had too much experience to believe it. Instead he said, “Maybe you could trust her to keep your secret.”

  “Maybe I’d best just keep to myself.”

  “And spend the rest of your life being lonely?”

  “I won’t be lonely if you come up for a damn visit.”

  “Okay, okay. No sense gettin’ het up. I’ll see what I can do.”

  They finally said goodbye and ended the call.

  But John couldn’t deny that he was all het up. Only not over anything his brother had said.

  Over Paige. Over his own yearnings in her direction.

  And over the fact that he wasn’t sure he could stay away from her…

  “WHILE THE BROWNIES BAKE, we’ll see to Nijjy’s leg and then we’ll be done for the day,” Paige told Robbie as she slid the pan into the oven after they’d had supper that evening.

  “I gotta go get my space guy. I flew ‘im over to watch Frieda eatin’ before cuz it’s so funny to see ‘er chew, an’ I think I left ‘im there.”

  Frieda the cow was in a small fenced-off field behind the barn, where it was easy for Paige to bring her in for milking. “Come on. You can go through the barn and out the back door to look for him.”

  Robbie practiced his whistling along the way and Paige realized he was working hard at walking like John. Only on John it was a loose-limbed, long-legged, confident sort of swagger that came naturally. But Robbie’s imitation was comical. He put too much emphasis on swaying to and fro, and leading with first one shoulder and then the other, taking steps that were so far apart he looked as if he were jumping puddles.

  Paige hid a smile and didn’t say anything, but she watched him even as he passed by Nijjy’s stall and went through the barn’s back door because it was too
funny to miss.

  Not until Robbie was out of sight did she call hello to Nijjy and ease open the stall gate.

  As always, she had to coax the mare with apples, but once she had, she removed the dressing in a hurry. She was anxious to see the wound. That morning, for the first time, it had actually seemed improved and she hoped she hadn’t been mistaken.

  When she cleaned away the earlier application of ointment, she found she hadn’t been. In fact, the injured leg was even better than before. So much better that there were no signs of infection and the wound had closed enough to be left unbandaged to let the air get at it.

  “Looks like we’ve finally got this thing licked, girl,” she told the horse just as Robbie came bounding back into the barn shouting for her.

  “Somethin’s the matter with Frieda! She’s layin’ down an’ there’s blood comin’ outta her mouth!”

  Paige didn’t like the sound of that. “I’ll be right out,” she said, gathering up the soiled bandages.

  “I’ll get John! He knows everything ’bout cows!” Robbie announced, taking off like a shot before Paige could say no.

  Not that she couldn’t have called after him. But somehow the words just didn’t form as quickly as the thought that if Robbie talked John into coming over, she’d get to see him again. Or as quickly as the little thrill that possibility raised.

  Out behind the barn, Paige found Frieda just as Robbie had described. She knelt on the ground near the cow, petting her as she tried to figure out what was wrong.

  The animal stared up at her with sad, pleading eyes and let out a mournful moo. It broke Paige’s heart to see her in such a state, but before she could even guess what was wrong, she. heard Robbie coming back and glanced up to find he did, indeed, have John in tow.

  John looked as if he might have stepped out of a shower not too long before—his hair was wet and slicked back. He had on boots and low-slung jeans, with a black T-shirt tucked into them, the short sleeves rolled slightly above bulging biceps.

  Paige’s pulse picked up speed as she drank in the sight. Even under these circumstances. He was a cross between a Greek god and the Marlboro man, she decided.

  “See! There she is!” Robbie cried, pointing to Frieda as they came up alongside Paige.