Red-Hot Ranchman

by Victoria Pade

  “There’s a bag of food, a dish, a couple of chew toys and a new bed near the pen where the puppies are—those are all yours, too. My treat.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Paige said as Robbie ran out of the house. “The puppy is enough. You didn’t need to outfit it, as well.”

  “Didn’t do it because I had to. Did it because I wanted to.”

  “Thank you. For everything.”

  “I’m enjoyin’ myself. I should be thankin’ you.”

  “For clobbering you with a baseball bat, costing you a day’s work to fix my barn, a dog and everything the dog needs to boot?” she asked with a laugh.

  “For making me feel at home here for the first time in two months.”

  He held her eyes with those sea-foam green ones of his that seemed to see right into the core of her, and all Paige could think was what a shame it was that they’d wasted two months.

  Then she curbed the thought by reminding herself that she didn’t want to get involved with this man—or any man—but especially one she didn’t know inside and out, backward and forward, through and through. Which certainly couldn’t be said of John Jarvis.

  But still she couldn’t stop the sense of pure pleasure at being in his company anyway.

  Robbie came barreling back into the house just then, carrying the dog’s things and chased by the tail-wagging puppy that had been on their back porch the night they’d come home from Topeka to find John looking for it.

  “Now isn’t that a surprise?” John said, laughing at Robbie’s choice of dogs. Then to Paige, he added, “You know that my askin’ if Robbie could have a puppy and your sayin’ yes were only formalities. Those two belonged to each other long before we pretended to get into the act.”

  “I’m gonna go to bed right now so I can sleep with ‘im!” Robbie announced.

  “There’s a few things you better set up first—like papers on the floor,” John advised. “Don’t forget the puppy isn’t housebroken.”

  “Will you show me?”

  “Soon as we help your mom with this mess.”

  “It’s okay,” Paige put in because as much as she liked John’s company, she couldn’t deny her son the same thing. “Most things go into the dishwasher. Go ahead.”

  “It’d be quicker if we all three worked together,” John returned.

  But Paige wouldn’t hear of it and instead watched her son drag their guest upstairs for the second time, John carrying the canine accessories while Robbie carried the puppy.

  She honestly didn’t mind. There was such a family feeling in the house that while she cleared the table and cleaned the kitchen she basked in it, in the sounds drifting downstairs of John’s deep, deep voice and the higher-pitched one of her son, talking and laughing together.

  Actually, she realized that that sense of family had been with her all day. And she’d been enjoying it all day, too. Funny, but even though she considered herself and Robbie a family, it seemed more complete with the presence of a man. And she guessed that, deep down in a place she didn’t acknowledge to herself, she longed for that completion as much as Robbie did.

  The sense of family didn’t stop when John came back into the kitchen just as she was filling the sink with soapsuds to wash the few pots and pans that didn’t go in the dishwasher. Like a husband, he picked up the towel she kept on a hook nearby and stood beside her, waiting to dry as if it was something they did together every night.

  “I’ll do this,” she told him to hide her own quiet delight at having him only a few inches away. “You’re a guest and guests don’t do dishes.”

  “This one does.” And he proved it by taking a pan she’d just scrubbed, dipping it into the rinse water that filled the second sink and putting the towel to good use. “Boy and dog are all settled in for the night,” he said as he dried.

  “For now anyway. Don’t puppies cry the first night or two away from their mothers?”

  “Usually. But I think this one has adopted Robbie already and won’t. He seems right at home up there, snuggled in like Robbie is one of the litter. But in case he does, I told Robbie what to do about it.”

  Paige glanced at the big man towering above her, liking him more with every minute she spent with him, every minute she watched him treat her son better than Robbie’s own father had even during the short time he’d been with them. And something in her heart swelled even as her curiosity about him rose to the forefront.

  “You’re terrific with Robbie,” she said. “I appreciate it more than I can tell you.”

  “No appreciation necessary. I told you, bein’ around that boy is good for me.”

  “I’m surprised you don’t have kids of your own. Or do you?”

  “Hidden away somewhere?” he asked with a chuckle. “No, I don’t.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  She took another, longer look at him, indulging herself before returning to her dish washing. “How come?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I haven’t led the same kind of life most people have.”

  “What kind of life have you led?”

  He shrugged, and Paige was so tuned in to everything about him that she sensed it more than saw it. “Hard to explain. It just wasn’t conventional.”

  “In what way?”

  He laughed. “Most every way.”

  Lord but it was frustrating to try talking to him about his past. “I’d think that living on a ranch would be pretty conventional in Texas. Were you raised out on the range by wolves?”

  That made him laugh again, a sound she liked much too much. “Not quite. There were just things in my life that were out of the ordinary. It’s not worth goin’ into. The here and now is what’s important.”

  “Didn’t you ever even consider getting married?”

  “There’ve been women in my life, if that’s what you mean. Some I’ve thought seriously of tyin’ the knot with.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Why doesn’t anybody? It’s complicated and different every time.” He smiled at her then as he took the last pan to dry, but his brows pulled together in a frown. “Doin’ a lot of wonderin’ tonight, are we?”

  “Well, here you are, an attractive man of—what? Thirty-five, thirty-six years old?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “You seem to like kids. You’re great with them. I’d think you would want a family.”

  “I guess the truth of it is that I just never met the right woman to raise kids with.”

  “One who fitted into your unconventional life,” she said, fishing still as she drained the sink and wiped the faucet. She turned and leaned a hip on the counter’s edge to look at him directly.

  “Guess so.”

  “Are you leading this unconventional life next door now and I just don’t know about it?”

  “No, I’d say everything is about as conventional as it can get right now. Which is why I came here in the first place. I have a small house, a small spread I’m lookin’ to build up. I get out of bed before dawn every morning, put in a day’s work, sit in front of the television or read a book most every night. I have a six-year-old neighbor who comes to visit and breaks up the monotony for me, and I’m gettin’ to know his feisty momma and likin’ her entirely too well.”

  Paige was delighted to no end to hear that, though she tried to suppress it.

  “That conventional enough for you?” he asked, teasing her, she knew.

  “Are you a confirmed bachelor?” she asked, teasing him back.

  His grin this time was playful as he set the last pot on the counter and hung the towel back on the hook. “Are you proposin’?”

  “No!” she said in a hurry. “I’m not interested in repeating my mistakes. I was just thinking about you.”

  His expression softened as he studied her, once more leaving her with the sense that he was seeing beyond the surface she presented.

  After a moment he said, “I’v
e made my share of mistakes with women, too. But no, I’m not a confirmed bachelor. It’d just take somebody pretty special to let in that way.”

  Another man might have said that and left her feeling that he still hadn’t found anyone special enough—her included. But there was something in John’s eyes, in his tone of voice, in how he was looking at her, that said he hadn’t counted her out. Not at all.

  It scared her. Even as it gave her a warm rush of something else, something that certainly wasn’t fear.

  John was standing in the corner of the ell the counter formed and he didn’t have to reach far to take a strand of her hair in his hand, fingering it as if it were spun silk. “You never know when you’re going to meet up with someone, though, do you?” he said quietly, pointedly.

  More than anything in the world, what she wanted to do all of a sudden was close even the short, two-step distance between them, slip into his arms, wrap her own around him and feel that big body of his pressed against hers.

  It was a primal urge, so powerful that it wiped away all thought and took a force of will to keep her from doing it.

  But John wasn’t under the influence of her willpower and he took those two steps toward her. And when he did, she couldn’t keep from tipping her chin to look up into his ruggedly handsome face, from laying just one palm to the wide, hard expanse of his chest.

  He raised his other hand to the side of her face and held it tenderly as he bent to her, his lips hovering over hers in a sweet mingling of their breaths for a moment before he closed that distance, too.

  His mouth on hers was soft, supple. His mustache tickled slightly until he deepened the kiss, until he parted his lips and urged hers to do the same. And when his tongue came courting, meeting hers to play and tease and dance in circles around it, she was only faintly aware of his mustache brushing tantalizingly against her cheek.

  He let go of her hair and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her in close, giving her the perfect excuse to slip her own arms around him—almost the way she’d wanted to moments before.

  She spread her palms against his iron-clad back and let her breasts nudge a chest that was a work of art all by itself. And again she felt the familiar warm tingling sensation at his touch, a heady feeling that showered through her like glitter and set her nerve endings alight.

  Forever. She wanted to be in this man’s arms forever.

  But somehow that thought sobered her. She couldn’t feel that way about someone she hardly knew. And even if she felt it, that didn’t mean she should act on it.

  It would be so easy to let him sweep her off her feet. But she’d been swept off her feet once before, by a man she hadn’t known much better than she knew John, and she’d meant it when she’d said she wasn’t going to repeat her mistake.

  Paige summoned every bit of her willpower again and eased away from that kiss even as her body was shrieking for more.

  John wasn’t easy to elude. He bent farther, capturing her lips twice more with his for small, final kisses before he gave in and let her go.

  “Want to slap me?” he asked with one of those lopsided smiles.

  “No.” Hardly. What she wanted was to be held in his arms—closer than she had been before—and lost in more of those kisses he was so good at. “I just…”

  She just didn’t know how to respond.

  She settled on saying, “We shouldn’t rush things.” But she knew she should have told him they needed to keep things strictly neighborly and nothing more.

  John nodded. “Should I apologize?”

  “No.” Paige laughed slightly at that, at herself, at the speed with which she’d answered, sounding so eager for him to know he hadn’t done anything wrong, that she wasn’t sorry and didn’t want him to be, either.

  “Doesn’t take much for us to get carried away, it seems,” he said.

  “No. Not for either of us,” she answered.

  “So I guess we ought to work on it.”

  “I guess we should.”

  “Whether we want to or not.”

  “Right.”

  Yet neither of them was agreeing with any enthusiasm, and the way John was looking at her let her know that it wouldn’t take any encouragement at all to have him pull her back into his arms, back where she wanted to be.

  Paige stepped away from him instead, working at an imaginary spot on the sink’s edge with one finger because he was too appealing a sight and her willpower was weakening by the second.

  “I think I’d better go on home,” John suggested then. “Thanks for supper.”

  “Thanks for helping with the barn and the puppy and everything,” she countered.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him nod before he finally headed around her in the direction of the door.

  “It really is the truth, though, you know,” he said once he was there.

  “What is?”

  “That you just never know when you’re going to meet up with that one person you’re meant to be with.”

  A shiver ran up Paige’s spine and she wasn’t sure if it was delight or just plain fear. “But sometimes it’s too late,” she barely whispered.

  “It’s never too late, Paige,” he answered as softly just before he pushed open the screen and went out.

  Left alone in her kitchen, she found herself wishing he was right. Wishing she hadn’t ever learned the harsh lesson she had that made her worry he wasn’t.

  But most of all, wishing he was still there.

  Chapter Seven

  “So, how long can you stay?” John asked his brother the next day. They’d retrieved Dwight’s duffel from the baggage claim at Denver International Airport and were heading for Pine Ridge in John’s truck.

  “Few days. Maybe a week. Maybe till you kick me out. It feels good to get away from it all.”

  John shot his brother a surprised glance. “You feel good to get away from the ranch? I’ve never heard you say that before.”

  “Not the ranch. The people who’re still showin’ up lookin’ for you. I had a bunch all of a sudden after I talked to you on the phone that near broke my heart. Damn if they weren’t some sad cases.”

  John didn’t know what to say except “Sorry you had to see it.”

  “Seen it before. Only before I didn’t have to turn ‘em away. It’s as if folks just don’t believe you’re gone. Guess they’ll stop tryin’ eventually, but for now I’m glad to get away myself.”

  “And I’m glad to have you here. You know you’re welcome for as long as you want. Forever, if you have a mind.”

  “Can’t be forever, but could be for a while.” John felt his brother’s eyes on him for a few moments of silence. Then Dwight said, “You still bein’ antisocial?”

  John laughed. “Not so much, no. Been seein’ a lot of my neighbors—Paige and Robbie. Even went to a party with them in town Wednesday night.”

  “Paige is the woman, right?” Dwight said for clarification.

  “She sure is.”

  It was Dwight’s turn to laugh. “Likin’ her better ‘n better, I take it.”

  “Better ‘n better.”

  “You startin’ somethin’ up with her?”

  John thought about that. He thought about the way one look at Paige made his heart race. About the way the sound of her voice was as sweet as warm syrup. About the way he found himself wondering where she was, what she was doing, every minute he wasn’t with her. About the way he had trouble sleeping at night for thinking about her, picturing her, reliving those few brief kisses they’d shared, wanting a whole lot more of them, more of her, just plain wanting her…

  “Maybe,” he finally said in answer to his brother’s question.

  “She know anything yet?”

  “No.”

  “You goin’ to tell her?”

  “Been considering it.” But not seriously. Not yet anyway, even though the thought had occurred to him, Late at night, when he couldn’t get her out of his mind no matter how he tried, he imagined s
cenarios in which he revealed his secrets to her. But he didn’t know if he’d actually do it or not.

  What he did know was that he didn’t want to say more about Paige to Dwight right then, when he wasn’t sure himself where things were headed even if he was real sure where he’d like for them to be.

  So he changed the subject. “Heard anything from the lawyers?”

  “Just the usual. They’ve petitioned the court to have the records released and now the presiding judge has to make a decision. But they’re hopeful. The presiding judge is new to the bench—that means no ties or loyalties to old Judge French, so he might be more inclined to open things up for us.”

  “Good. I think.”

  “Had a call from that research institute you worked with years ago,” Dwight said then, taking a turn of his own at changing the subject.

  John took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at his brother again. “What’d they want?”

  “They heard. Who knows how. I’m supposed to let you know they’d be happy to do tests, see if there’s really a change and if they can tell why.”

  “Bull! They just want me under their microscopes. When I die fifty years from now, they’ll still be comin’ out of the woodwork, wantin’ to dissect me.”

  “I told ‘em you wouldn’t be interested. Told ‘em I didn’t even think anything had really changed. That you’d just hit a bad run because you were plumb worn-out.”

  John could feel his brother watching him once more, looking for a reaction to what Dwight had contended all along. John didn’t give him one. “Doesn’t matter either way,” he said flatly.

  “ ’Course it does. Or you wouldn’t be considerin’ tellin’ your new lady friend about it.”

  “I just don’t like playing mystery man with her. She’s curious about me, my past—”

  “And you’re feelin’ like you might want to get close enough to let her in on it.”

  “I’m feelin’ like I want to be honest with her.”

  “So why haven’t you been?”

  “Don’t know how she’d take it. Especially now, with the way things stand.”