Red-Hot Ranchman

by Victoria Pade

  “Do you really think we’re in that much danger?” she asked in disbelief.

  He grinned a bit sheepishly. “Truth to tell? I was looking for an excuse to get you to agree to Robbie’s having one of the puppies because he’s so crazy about them, and I thought I’d use the watchdog stuff as my hook. By the time the puppy’s any protection at all, whatever’s going on now will be history.”

  Paige laughed and wished she didn’t enjoy the man’s company so much.

  “What do you say? Can I offer your son the pick of the litter?”

  “He’ll be overjoyed,” she said by way of agreement, knowing that Robbie wouldn’t only be thrilled to have a dog, but would be doubly thrilled by the fact that the dog came as a gift from John.

  Neither of them said anything for a moment, and even though the silence was companionable, Paige worried that if she didn’t fill it, he might leave.

  “So how do you like Pine Ridge?” she asked to forestall his departure, hating herself for not thinking of anything more clever.

  “Seems like a nice town. What I’ve seen of it. Were you born and raised here?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Is this the only place you’ve ever lived?”

  “No. When I left to go to college I planned to stay away forever and become a city girl—it was Julie’s and my goal. I was gone all through those four years—in Fort Collins—and then nine more on top of them in Denver.”

  “But you ended up coming back. What happened?”

  “Life. Marriage, Robbie, divorce, working fifty-hour weeks, having to put Robbie in day care all that time. It just didn’t turn out to be the way I wanted to live after all. So I came home.”

  He nodded, watching her intently.

  “Ever tried city living?” she asked.

  “Can’t say I have, no. Visits are always more than enough for me. A week or so in the traffic and noise, and I have to be back in the wide-open spaces.”

  That fitted the general consensus of him—the keepto-himself cowboy, spending more time alone out on the range than around people.

  “On the other hand,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle, “there’ve been times when I’ve thought maybe I should stick with city living long enough to get used to it and try getting lost in the crowd.”

  “Try getting lost in the crowd? You say that as if it isn’t really possible.” She took an exaggeratedly closer look at him. “Are you a rock star hiding out here and I just don’t recognize you?” she joked.

  He just laughed.

  “Okay, if not a rock star, maybe you’re a countryand-western singer.”

  “Can’t carry a tune,” he said this time.

  “A big-deal rodeo rider?”

  “I’ve been known to ride in one or two, but it wasn’t a big deal, no.”

  “Are you a televangelist?”

  He laughed again and the deep, rich sound of it seemed to float on the air. “That’s me all right. Some flashy son of a gun hidin’ out here.”

  “I wouldn’t say you were flashy, no.” After all, attractive though he was, he downplayed it in his dress and demeanor. As much as it was possible to.

  “But you do think I’m hidin’ out?” he asked, seizing what she’d pointedly omitted.

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  He scrunched up that handsome face of his in a wryly menacing frown. “Okay, you’ve got me. You’ve found me out. I’m a desperado lyin’ low until my villainous gang of train robbers can meet up and we can go on hijackin’ the Amtrak.”

  “Very funny,” she said, noticing that the more relaxed he grew, the more his gs disappeared.

  He smiled again, clearly enjoying putting her on. “Does the sheriff think I’m hidin’ out here, too, for some reason?” he asked then.

  “The sheriff?”

  “He came around this afternoon askin’ a lot of damnfool questions as if he thought I was up to somethin’.”

  “Are you up to something?” she asked, trying to make it sound like a joke but not altogether succeeding.

  John went on smiling and Paige couldn’t tell if it really had a secretive edge to it or if she was just imagining it. But rather than answer right away, he studied her even more intently than he had before. Sizing her up almost. Maybe seeing through her…

  “I’m not up to anything but settling in,” he finally said as if challenging anyone to dispute him. “And I’m not hidin’ out. At least, no more than you are, I don’t think.”

  “Me? I’m not hiding out,” she said, laughing at the idea.

  But this time he didn’t seem to be kidding. Instead, his expression seemed to say, Aren’t you?

  That ticked her off suddenly, unaccountably. What was he hinting at? That she was the one who had secrets?

  “I better get these horses into the barn and call it a night,” she announced out of the blue.

  “I’ll give you a hand.”

  “You don’t have to,” she answered as she headed for the horses.

  Paying her no mind, he rose up on the one booted foot that was hooked on the bottom rail, swung his other leg over the top and jumped down on the paddock side of the fence.

  His chuckle caught up with her a split second before he did. “What’d I say that got your hackles up?”

  “My hackles aren’t up,” she insisted, raising her arms and shouting a hee-yaw that headed the horses toward the open barn door. But there was no denying that the mood between them had changed. She was bristling. Not that she understood it, any more than she could understand the other effects the man had on her. But there it was.

  Between the two of them it didn’t take long before all the animals were safely in the stalls. Paige locked the paddock door, the rear one that led to the back field, and then the great door after she and John were outside again.

  That was when he took up the conversation as if it had never been interrupted. “Want to know what I’m bettin’?”

  “Ah, so maybe you’re a gambler trying to keep away from temptation. Better watch out for bingo night over at the church,” she said with a hint of causticity to her voice.

  “I’m not much of a bettin’ man, no,” he answered without taking offense to her tone. “But I’d be willing to wager that you didn’t come back here from turnin’ yourself into a city girl for all those years just to slow the pace of things. No matter what you claim.”

  She shot him a measured glance meant to put him in his place.

  It didn’t. He just went on. “No, here you are, keepin’ to the outskirts of a small town where there aren’t a half-dozen single men who’ll even notice you’re alive, let alone that you’re a woman to set hearts—and other parts—afire. In two months I’ve never seen you bein’ picked up even by one of the few men Pine Ridge has to offer for so much as one evenin’ out. And to hear Robbie talk, I’d say you don’t go anywhere without him to stand between you and anybody who might give you a nod.”

  “So I don’t date. That doesn’t mean I’m hiding out.”

  “Doesn’t it? Unless I miss my guess, somebody hurt you. Bad. You’re hidin’ out all right, away from any chance of meetin’ up with someone who might get too close to you.”

  “You’re standing pretty close,” she countered because he was. So close she could smell the scent of a clean, citrusy after-shave.

  She headed for her house to escape it. And maybe him and his insights, too.

  But he came along, falling into step beside her. “Folks who really are hidin’ out don’t want it called attention to and that’s why it makes you mad that I did.”

  “And what about you?” she retorted, feeling contrary and ready to dish out a little herself. “Here you are, a man who barely gives the time of day to anyone. Who’s cloaked himself in mystery by being so standoffish. Who hasn’t made any moves to become a part of the community. Who’s living like a hairy old hermit in a hole. Who didn’t so much as answer the door when I came to introduce myself two months ago and has barely looked
my way since. I’d definitely call that hiding out.”

  Another man might have gotten angry with that diatribe. It just left John laughing again as she climbed the steps to her back porch and pivoted to face him.

  He’d come onto the porch, too, and stood with one hand braced against the post as if he was going to do a one-handed push-up, the other jammed into the back pocket of his tight jeans.

  “Don’t fool yourself. I’ve done plenty of lookin’ your way the past two months. And I did accept your invitation to go to Burt’s party.”

  “But why have you kept your distance from me?”

  He gave a slow grin that elevated only one side of his mustache. “I was usin’ willpower to keep away.”

  “Why?” she repeated, trying to ignore his flirting even as it made her pulse race.

  “Because I could see enough to know you were a whole lot more temptin’ than any church bingo game. And maybe I came here to hide out from anyone gettin’ too close, too.”

  It wasn’t much of an admission or very revealing, but it was something. And it was enough to cool her head of steam.

  “So I’m not the only one who’s been hurt by somebody.”

  He shrugged one of those broad shoulders. “Different ways for people to get hurt.”

  He was staring at her very seriously, and the air between them had changed yet again to something more intimate, more charged with a sexual tension that made Paige’s nipples pucker inside her lightweight shirt. She was grateful she hadn’t turned on the porch light and was hidden by the shadows.

  “What did I do, knock the willpower out of you with that baseball bat?” she asked, intending to put this exchange back on a friendly plane, yet wondering where the soft breathiness to her voice had come from.

  “Willpower is only so strong. But it wasn’t that bash on the head you gave me that did it in. It was seein’ you close up the other night for the first time. That’s what shot it all to hell.”

  She didn’t know what to say. But it didn’t seem to matter because he held her eyes with his even in the darkness of the porch and she suddenly knew he was going to kiss her. For real this time.

  Back away before he does! she told herself.

  And she could have, too. Easily, because they were only standing facing each other. It wasn’t as if he was touching her in any way but with his eyes. He was still gripping that porch post with one hand while his other remained in his back pocket.

  Yet when he began to lean toward her, slowly, almost imperceptibly, she didn’t budge. She stood right where she was, raised her chin, tilted her head and let him press his mouth to hers.

  Sweet bliss, that’s what it was. A chaste kiss that placed only his warm, adept lips to hers without any other part of their bodies meeting.

  But even so, it was powerful enough to draw her up onto her tiptoes, to raise a yearning inside her for more. For those big hands to be against her back. For his bulging biceps to hold her captive. For her breasts to be flattened against the wide, hard expanse of his chest…

  But instead, John ended the kiss by drawing away suddenly, staring down into her face again and chuckling a little. Wryly now.

  “What’d I tell you? Willpower shot to hell,” he said, making light of the situation in a tone that was husky enough to tell her otherwise.

  Paige swallowed the desires he’d so easily aroused in her and fought for something to say the way a drowning person fights for air. “Guess you’d better work on it,” she finally returned.

  “Guess I’d better,” he agreed but without seeming to take the reprimand too seriously.

  “I have to go in,” Paige blurted out. She was afraid if she didn’t, it might be her own willpower that went next and it might be her who instigated the second kiss.

  “Okay. Night,” he said without an argument.

  “Night,” she barely managed to whisper in return.

  But neither of them moved. They just went on staring at each other.

  Until John pointed his chin in the direction of her door. “Go on,” he ordered. “I don’t want to leave before I know you’re all the way inside.”

  The protectiveness again.

  It was nice.

  Just not as nice as it would have been to have him wanting her to stay out on the porch for more kissing.

  Paige nodded, crossed to the door to unlock it and went in. But once she was behind the screen, she couldn’t resist looking back at him again.

  He was standing just outside the door, surprising her because she hadn’t heard him follow her that far.

  “Lock up tight,” he said.

  Then he put an index finger to his lips, kissed it lightly and angled it her way so quickly that when he’d turned on his heels to go, she wasn’t altogether sure what she’d seen.

  But what she was sure of was that she really knew no more about him than she had before.

  And that she was drawn to him no less.

  Chapter Five

  Paige was a light sleeper, and at the first sound of pounding on her back door, she came awake with a jolt.

  “Fire! Fire!” was the next thing she heard, accompanied by more pounding. “Your barn’s on fire!”

  Those words of warning made her leap out of bed like a shot. She ran to the window and saw the bright flash of flames licking its way around the rear corner of the barn, lighting the dimness of a dawn that was barely beginning while the air grew hazy with an acrid gray smoke.

  She didn’t need to see more. Paige ran downstairs and threw open the back door where John was still shouting for her to wake up.

  The minute he realized he’d succeeded in rousing her, he turned and ran for the barn, calling over his shoulder, “Bring the key to unlock the great door so we can get the horses out!”

  Paige snatched the key ring from the countertop where she’d left it when she’d gone to bed and, giving no thought to her bare feet or legs beneath the red football jersey she wore for pajamas, ran outside.

  She was right behind John with the keys to the padlock, but she was so unnerved by the sounds of the terrified animals inside the barn she fumbled and dropped them.

  John snatched them up a split second later, unlocked the padlock and threw the doors wide open.

  Paige saw the flames suck into the interior, but didn’t hesitate in following John into the barn. He’d already begun opening stall doors and slapping the rumps of horses to head them outside. A few were too frightened to move and had to have their eyes covered with whatever was at hand—empty grain sacks, saddle blankets—before they could be led out. But between the two of them, they made quick work of it and then tackled the fire itself.

  Paige unraveled her hose and turned it on the blaze while John filled pails of water from the trough to fling at those spots along the perimeter where the spray didn’t reach or where flames leaped out to catch patches of dry grass.

  They worked frantically but efficiently, without the need for either of them to tell the other what to do until they managed to put the fire out. Then they soaked down the site and everything nearby before acknowledging that they were home free.

  Paige turned off the hose. John set his pail beside the trough again and together they stood surveying the damage.

  Something seemed to catch John’s eye and he went up to the burned section, the lower half of which was now a smoldering tunnel-like hole in the barn. Hunkering down, he stared at something at the base of the opening where the flames had clearly begun.

  “Looks like it could have been a box of kitchen matches set fire and left here,” he said. Then he sniffed the air and stood once more. “Gasoline,” he announced tersely.

  “What’s going on around here?” she demanded, realizing this near disaster had not been an accident and finding it hard to consider setting a barn full of animals on fire a prank.

  “All I know is I came out to watch the sunrise, saw smoke and then the fire,” John said.

  “But you didn’t see who set it or anyone hanging
around?”

  “Not a soul. They’d probably run off into the woods by then. Doesn’t look like they wanted to burn down the whole barn or they’d have drenched it with more gas and started it over at the other end where the hay is stacked. I’d say they just splashed a little on the barn wall, set the matches to burnin’ down below and high-tailed it out of here.”

  “Lord,” Paige groaned, reaching up to sweep her hair out of her face. It was then she noticed she’d burned her hand. There was a straight line of blistered flesh that ran from the base of her thumb to the back of her wrist.

  John saw it at the same time. “You’re hurt,” he said, reaching out as if to take her hand in both of his.

  But something stopped him at the last minute because before he actually touched her, he pulled back and jammed his own hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  “It’s okay. I must have hit something hot when I had to drag Nijjy out of her stall. She was in back, closest to the fire. But it isn’t anything serious,” she assured John, although now that she’d noticed it, the burn did sting.

  Just not enough to keep her from suddenly becoming aware of some other things, as well.

  Like the fact that she was standing there in her pajamas, and even though the football jersey was slightly thicker than an ordinary T-shirt and fell to midthigh, it was damp from the spray of the hose and clinging to her.

  Like the fact that John was barefoot, too, with his wet, muddied feet poking out from beneath jeans that were torn at the knees. The jeans were zipped up but unfastened at the waistband, leaving his navel to peek out at her from between the open front of a disreputable old chambray shirt that hung loosely around his hips.

  She also couldn’t help noticing that the shirt was damp and hugged his shoulders and what it covered of his chest like a second skin.

  “Well, we’re a sight, aren’t we?” she said a bit nervously.

  “Yeah, I suppose we are,” he agreed, dragging both his hands through his hair to pull it back from his forehead.