Red-Hot Ranchman

by Victoria Pade

  “Not a thing.”

  “Could someone have been hunting rabbits or something?” she wondered out loud, remembering that that was what Robbie had been chasing into the woods.

  “You said you called out to them. So even if they were hunting, they should have answered you, not shot at you.” John’s voice had an edge to it that made Paige realize suddenly that this incident had him riled and concerned, too.

  “Maybe somebody’s camping back there and doesn’t want anyone to know. Or hiding something,” she suggested, wanting badly to find any explanation that made it only a coincidence that had put her and Robbie in harm’s way.

  “We didn’t see anything,” Dwight said. “But maybe your sheriff can do a more thorough search later on and come up with something. We were just lookin’ for whoever followed you two.”

  Paige had finished her shot of bourbon by then and felt a little calmer. Calm enough to feel even more like an intruder than she had before and remember her manners. “We’d better go home and leave you to your visit.”

  “Not on your life,” John said before she’d so much as made it out of her chair. “You’re going to stay here a while, have dinner with us.”

  “We’ve been visitin’ our whole lives,” Dwight added hospitably. “I’d a lot rather look across the table at a pretty face than at this old mug here.”

  “No, really—”

  “No, really, you’re stayin’,” John said.

  Paige was still too shaken to argue or to want to take her son and go home alone so soon after what had happened in the woods, so she gave in without much more of a fight. As a result, she was treated to a T-bone steak brought straight from Texas by Dwight, a baked potato with all the fixings, and corn on the cob—also grown and brought in by John’s brother.

  But besides the food, the company was therapeutic as both men told tall tales of their escapades as boys, teased each other and provided enough entertainment that even Robbie listened without his usual chatter.

  When the meal was finished, Paige insisted on doing the dishes, but John wouldn’t hear of her tackling them alone. Instead, while Dwight took Robbie out to the barn to see the piglets that had been born a few hours before, John and Paige cleaned the kitchen up together.

  “You feelin’ better?” he asked as they worked.

  “Much. Thanks to you and your brother. Who’s very nice. I like him.”

  “Can’t say I feel as good.”

  “About your brother? I had the impression that the two of you are very close.”

  “About what happened to day. I don’t like it and I’ve been thinkin’ all evenin’ about the time comin’ for you and Robbie to go home.”

  “We’ll be all right,” she said, even though the idea wasn’t altogether appealing to her, either. She nodded toward the puppy Robbie and Dwight had brought over from home as the cooking had begun. “We have our guard dog,” she joked.

  John smiled at that, glanced at the puppy, then raised a devilish half grin to her. “I was leanin’ a little more toward spendin’ the night over at your place myself,” he said with an element of randy teasing to it.

  “Were you now?”

  “It could be on the back porch, but then I’d have to ask my brother to spend his first night here on your front one so I’d know all the bases were covered. It’d be a lot easier to just give me the middle ground. Say, on the couch? Unless you were otherwise inclined.”

  A rush of relief ran through Paige at the suggestion, which told her how unnerved she still was. But she felt something else that didn’t have a thing to do with the incident in the woods. It was a twitter of delight at the prospect of John’s going home with her.

  Enough of a twitter to let her know that his spending the night even just on her couch might be more dangerous than an unseen stalker with a bow and arrow, since the intensity of her attraction to him tended to make her lose sight of everything else when he was around.

  “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” she said, adding quickly, “I can’t let you leave your brother alone here.”

  “He’s a big boy. He’ll do just fine. But I won’t be able to rest thinkin’ about you and Robbie alone next door tonight.” He bent down and whispered in her ear, “And I’ll behave myself, in case that has you worried. You can take that lethal baseball bat of yours to bed with you. Believe me, I don’t ever want to come up against the Pine Ridge slugger again.”

  Dwight and Robbie came in just then and John straightened away from her. But the feel of his warm breath lingered against her skin. It seemed to shimmer right through her.

  In a louder voice, John said, “Dwight won’t even miss me, will you, Dwight?”

  “I don’t know. When?”

  “Tonight. If I sleep on Paige’s couch.”

  Robbie had only to hear that and his eyes lit up. “John’s gonna spend the night with us?” he asked his mother excitedly.

  “It really isn’t necessary. I’ll lock the doors. We’ll be fine.”

  “Can he sleep in my room?” Robbie piped up again.

  “It’d be better if I slept down on the couch,” John answered, ruffling the little boy’s hair.

  “Can I sleep there with you, then?”

  This time, Paige jumped in to answer. “You need to be in your own bed. John won’t want to go to sleep at eight-thirty and you need to. You were up at four this morning looking for Buddy, remember?”

  “But I’m not tired.”

  “Your mom’s the boss,” John said, putting an end to the discussion that had somehow left no room for John’s staying over to be denied.

  Even Dwight was no help when Paige tried again to use his visit as an excuse for John not to go home with her. Dwight only assured her that he agreed with John about it being a good idea to have him there.

  And before Paige knew it, she, Robbie and John were bidding Dwight good-night and heading home while Robbie told her all about the new piglets. But Paige was only half-listening to her son. More of her thoughts were on John and having him just downstairs when she went to bed.

  And that prospect did crazy, fluttery things to her stomach.

  BEFORE ROBBIE WOULD LET his light be turned off for the night, he insisted on a game of checkers with John. Since he didn’t get to bunk with his idol, Paige conceded that.

  Besides, she had her shower to take, and with both John and Robbie occupied, that was just what she did. Quickly.

  When she was finished, she brushed out her hair and then went to the closet to find something to put on for the remainder of the evening. Ordinarily she would have just slipped into the football jersey she slept in and sat around for the remainder of the evening in that. But with John in the house, that was out of the question. And it was too hot to add a bathrobe over it.

  So instead, she opted for a clean pair of cutoffs and a loose-fitting, sleeveless blouse that was big enough and substantial enough to camouflage the fact that she hadn’t bothered with a bra.

  John was just leaving Robbie’s room when she stepped out of her own and opened the linen-closet door just beyond it to get sheets, a blanket and a spare pillow to make up the couch for him.

  “I must not have been much of a challenge. Robbie fell asleep before we finished the game,” John whispered with a nod in the direction of her son’s room as he took the stack of bedding out of Paige’s arms.

  Paige peeked in through the door and found her son lying on his side on top of the covers, curled around both the puppy and Buddy in peaceful oblivion. Rather than risk a disturbance by going in, she pulled the door closed without making a sound and pointed at the stairs to let John know that’s where she was leading him.

  He followed her to the living room and set the bedding on the coffee table.

  “Would you like a glass of iced tea? Or a beer or something?” she offered.

  “Iced tea sounds good.”

  Again he trailed her, this time into the kitchen where he leaned against the edge of the counter while she poured t
wo glasses of the drink over lots of ice and garnished them with a wedge of lemon each.

  “I’m glad today’s escapade didn’t scare Robbie enough to keep him from sleeping,” she said as she handed one of the glasses to John.

  “It’s still on his mind. He made me promise to check the doors and windows to be sure they were locked, and he wanted to know if I could beat up a burglar or knock down a guy shooting an arrow. Plus he told me three times that he was glad I’d be downstairs all night.”

  “Poor little guy. I suppose he feels like he has to be the man of the house and it’s probably a relief to have that job taken off his shoulders under the circumstances.”

  “How long have you two been on your own?”

  “Since Robbie was barely six months old.”

  “What happened to his father? I know he’s said he doesn’t remember him, so that must mean he doesn’t see or hear from him.”

  Paige leaned against the opposite counter and took a drink of her tea. She hadn’t wanted to talk to John about her past before. But now it seemed like a good idea. Almost a way of warning him off, of letting him know why she was leery of a relationship with him. With anyone.

  “D.J.—that’s what Robbie’s father was called, short for David Jerome—disappeared in the middle of the night, taking with him every penny we had to our name, everything of value in the house—including jewelry that had been in my family for three generations—and leaving me with an outrageous credit card debt I hadn’t known about and a sky-high tax bill. He’d apparently stashed the tax money somewhere instead of using it to pay the taxes the way I thought he had.”

  One of John’s thick brows arched in surprise. “Good God. Was there any kind of reason for it all?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think that was probably his plan the whole time. Julie had left the city to move back here again by then and she had Burt do some investigating when the police in Denver just shrugged me off. Burt discovered that D.J. already had two arrest warrants out for him for pulling con jobs like that—wooing women and bilking them out of everything he could.” Paige let out a wry, mirthless laugh. “I suppose I should be flattered—he actually married me and stayed longer than he had with the others—almost two years. And as far as I know, Robbie is the only child he’d produced up to that point. Maybe that means there was something he liked about me besides my being an easy mark.”

  John’s expression darkened, his outrage on her behalf clearly evident. “The guy should be shot.”

  “Or I should be, for being so gullible.”

  “Were you gullible? Or would he have fooled anybody?”

  Paige appreciated that question. It made her seem less of a dupe. Unfortunately, she felt inclined to admit to her own mistakes in the match.

  “I’m ashamed to say that I barely knew him before I married him. We met in a grocery store of all places, and it was a whirlwind courtship of three weeks before he whisked me off to a wedding chapel in Las Vegas. He didn’t say much about himself—like someone else I know,” she said pointedly and received a one-sided grin for it. “But I was crazy about him and thought that didn’t matter. I was actually touched when he’d say he felt as if his life had only really begun when he met me, that nothing that came before that was worth talking about.”

  “And the whole time you were together you didn’t have a clue about him?”

  “Not until the end when he started to seem remote, uninterested in me or Robbie or anything in our lives. He started spending a lot of time away from home, only giving me ambiguous reasons for his absences. I was beginning to worry that he was having an affair—which he may have been. I never really found out. But I didn’t want to believe even that. It certainly never occurred to me that the few things he did tell me about himself were one big piece of fiction. But they were. Even his name. It was really Jerome David—J.D. instead of D.J. I just took everything he said at face value.”

  “Who doubts what somebody tells them about themselves?”

  She laughed slightly again. “I guess I do. Now.”

  John smiled tenderly at her. “Well, I haven’t told you anything about myself that isn’t true, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “You haven’t told me anything about yourself period.”

  His smile turned into a sheepish grin. “You heard a lot tonight.”

  “About pranks you played on friends and camping trips you and your brother took as boys. That isn’t much.”

  “It’s something.”

  “What happened to your folks? They didn’t crop up in too many of the stories,” she said, testing to see if he’d be more open with her now that she had been with him.

  “My dad died—and technically so did I—when I was about Robbie’s age.”

  “Technically you died?”

  “We were struck by lightning. We were in a big storm, runnin’ for the house from the barn. My dad was holdin’ my hand. It hit him and ran through him into me. They tell me I didn’t have a heartbeat when the ambulance arrived and the paramedics weren’t even going to work on me. Then Dwight saw me twitch and shouted like hell for someone to help. But my dad didn’t come out of it.”

  “Wow. I’ve never known anybody who’s been struck by lightning, let alone lived through it.”

  But John seemed to have said all he wanted to say about it because rather than adding anything, he went on, “And my mother died of a sudden heart attack about five years later. Her brother had come to help with the ranch after Dad died and he just stayed on to run the place and raise Dwight and me. He passed away about ten years ago, and now there’s just the two of us.”

  “Dwight’s older than you are?” Paige had guessed that from the stories they’d told earlier.

  “Only by a year. But he thinks it gives him bossin’ rights.”

  John took a last drink of his tea and once again Paige had the sense she’d learned all about him she was going to for the moment. There was something final in the way he set his glass in the sink and pushed away from the edge of the counter with his jean-clad hips.

  She was right because then he said, “Let’s make good on my promise to that boy of yours and check the locks.”

  They went around the house together, checking doors and leaving a few high windows open to let in some of the cooler night air, and ended up in the living room again.

  “Would you look at that moon?” John marveled after he’d made sure the two long windows on either side of the picture window were shut tight.

  Paige stood beside him as he held open the drapes. The moon wasn’t too high in the sky yet, but it was full and bright, the color of summer squash.

  “Werewolves’ll be out tonight,” she joked.

  “That’s all right. I won’t let any of them at you, either,” he said with a small chuckle.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Mmm,” he agreed, but something about the sound of it made her glance up at him.

  He wasn’t looking at the moon anymore. He was looking at her. And he was doing it in a way that said she was what he’d rather be admiring.

  Then, out of the blue, he raised one hand and rubbed just the backs of his fingers along the length of her bare upper arm, stirring that shimmering sensation inside her again. And try as she might, she couldn’t tamp it down.

  “I’d better make up the couch and let you get some sleep,” she said in a hurry, turning away to do just that while her suddenly weak knees could still carry her.

  As she removed the back pillows from the couch, stacked them on the armchair and snapped out a flat sheet to tuck in over the seat cushions, she could feel John still watching her from the window. And she was all too aware of him even without so much as lifting her eyes to him.

  She knew just how snugly his black T-shirt hugged the mounds of his chest and how tautly the sleeves stretched over his biceps. She knew his hair had fallen to his brow and that no matter how often he raked his fingers through it, it would fall there agai
n with a mind of its own. She knew his sharp jawline was clean shaven, his mustache was as bushy as ever and that those penetrating eyes that were following her every move at that moment were clear and pale and a color that seemed to come straight from the sea.

  She also knew that just thinking about him, just being this near to him, made all her senses stand up and take notice, not to mention the fact that her nerve endings seemed to have risen to the surface of her skin with just the simple touch of his fingers to her arm.

  As she laid out the top sheet, John came across the room with those long, confident, booted strides of his. He rounded the couch and propped a hip on its back.

  “What is there about us, Paige?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, not glancing up from her chore.

  “I mean, why is it that no matter how good my intentions are, the minute I’m with you, all I can think about is misbehavin’?”

  So she wasn’t the only one with these feelings, she thought. But it seemed like a safer course to make a joke about it. “Maybe I’m an instigator.”

  “Or maybe you’ve just gotten into my blood.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that so she didn’t say anything at all.

  But John didn’t leave the silence hanging too long. “I’ll tell you what makes me a whole lot madder at that ex-husband of yours than his stealin’ your money and jewelry. What really riles me is that for some reason he stole your knowledge of just what a desirable woman you are. But he did, didn’t he?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she murmured almost too softly to be heard, an admission in itself.

  “He left you believin’ he never did want you for yourself, didn’t he? That he only misled you, used you to get what he’d been after in the first place.”

  “That was what he did.”

  “Well, he was pretty damn stupid for a con man. I know that because he left the best, most valuable assets behind—you and Robbie.”

  John’s words heated her from the inside out, but she tried not to give in to it.

  “Doesn’t matter anymore,” she said, setting the pillow at one end of the couch and then picking up the blanket and laying it across the top. “I’ll just leave this here instead of putting it on. You’ll probably be too hot to need it.”