by Jane Porter
Tears started to her eyes. Worry and regret flooded her. Worry for Brock, and regret that she’d said too much. She wasn’t here to talk. She was here to work. She knew that. “I’m not crazy,” she retorted huskily, rubbing the tender spot on her wrist. “Don’t call me crazy.”
“You’re behaving in a completely irrational—”
“It’s a blizzard outside, Mr. Sheenan. And I was merely asking you to take precautions when you headed back out, and if that makes me crazy, then so be it. I am crazy. Make that a lunatic.”
His black eyebrows flattened and he looked at her so long it crossed her mind that she’d said far too much, pushed too hard, perhaps even lost her job.
And then his dark eyes glimmered and the corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “A lunatic?”
There was something in the way he repeated his words that made her want to smile.
Or maybe it was the shadow in his eyes that looked almost like amusement.
Or that very slight lift of his firm lips.
He seemed to be fighting a smile. Could it be?
If so, it was the closest she’d ever come to seeing him smile. Brock was a serious man. The agency said the death of his wife had changed him.
She understood. It’d been three years since the accident, and she still grieved for David and her children.
Her desire to smile faded. Her heart burned. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.
But then, there were no words.
The pain had been unspeakable.
She closed her eyes, held her breath, holding the agony in, and then she found her strength, and exhaled, and met her employer’s shuttered gaze.
“Let me fill your thermos,” she said unsteadily. “I’ve got some snacks for your saddlebag, too. Obviously you don’t have to take them. It’s entirely up to you.”
He leaned against the doorframe, blocking her exit. “You’re even more bossy than my last housekeeper, and yet you’re just half her age. I don’t want to know you in twenty years.”
And just like that he brought her back to reality. Who they were. Why she was here. His temporary housekeeper.
Harley managed a tight smile. “Good. You won’t have to know me in twenty years, because I’m only here until January thirteenth.” She looked up at him, expression blank. “And if you don’t return tonight, then I suppose I’m free tomorrow.” She motioned for him to move, with an impatient gesture of her finger. “Now if you’d please move, I have work to do.”
Brock didn’t know if he should throttle his bossy, imperious housekeeper or fire her.
He ought to fire her. Right here, right now. She wasn’t the right woman for the job. Wasn’t the right woman for him.
He swallowed hard, biting back the sharp retort as he stared down into his housekeeper’s startling green eyes.
What the hell was he doing with a beautiful woman for a housekeeper?
Harley Diekerhoff was not supposed to be attractive.
The name wasn’t attractive. The name conjured visions of a stout, strong woman with massive forearms and a sprinkling of dark hair above a thin pale lip.
Or so he’d imagined when the temp employment agency had given him her file as the best possible candidate for the six-week position as housekeeper and cook for his ranch.
He’d wanted a stout woman with massive forearms and a hairy upper lip. He’d been confident he’d hired one.
Instead Harley Diekerhoff was beautiful, and young, and probably the best housekeeper he’d ever had.
It pissed him off.
He didn’t want a stunning thirty-four-year-old with hauntingly high cheekbones and eyebrows that arched and turned into wings, making him want to look into her cool green eyes again and again.
He didn’t want a housekeeper with a wide full-lipped mouth, creamy skin, and thick hair the color of rich, decadent caramel.
And he most certainly didn’t want a housekeeper with curves, endless curves, curves that did nothing but tease his control and inflame his imagination.
His jaw tightened. He battled his temper. “Don’t get too carried away,” he said curtly. “I’ll be back tonight. You’ll still have a job to do in the morning.”
Her tawny eyebrows arched even higher. Her long ponytail slipped over her shoulder. “Good, because I like the job. It’s just—” she broke off, lips compressing, swallowing the words.
“What?” he demanded.
She shook her head, white teeth pinching her plump lower lip.
He tried not to focus on the way her teeth squeezed the soft lip. He didn’t want to focus on her at all. “What?” he repeated.
She sighed and glanced down at her hands. “Nothing,” she said quietly.
He said nothing.
She sighed again, twisted her hands. “I like it here,” she added. “And I like you. So just be careful. That’s all.”
He stared at her, perplexed.
She was nothing like Maxine, his housekeeper of the past nine years. Maxine didn’t laugh or smile or cry. She arrived every morning, did her work, and then left every night when her husband came to pick her up.
Maxine was silent and sober and moved through the house as if invisible.
Harley moved through the house as if a beacon shone on her. She practically glowed, bathed with light.
He didn’t understand how she did it, or what she did, only that from the moment she’d arrived seven days ago nothing in this house had been the same.
Suddenly aware that they were standing so close he could smell the scent of her shampoo—something sweet and floral, freesia or orange blossom and entirely foreign in his masculine house—he abruptly stepped back, letting her pass.
His gaze followed her as she crossed the kitchen, hating himself for noticing how the apron around her waist emphasized how small it was as well as the gentle swell of hips. “Just leave my dinner in the oven,” he said.
“If that’s what you want,” she said, reaching for the coffee pot to fill his thermos.
“That’s what I want,” he growled, looking away, unable to watch her a moment longer because just having her in his house made him feel things he didn’t want to feel.
Like desire.
And hunger.
Lust.
He didn’t lust. Not anymore. Maybe when he was a kid, young and randy with testosterone, he battled with control, but he didn’t battle for control, not at thirty-nine.
At least, he hadn’t battled for control in years.
But he was struggling now, inexplicably drawn to this temporary housekeeper who looked so fresh and wholesome in her olive green apron with its sprigs of holly berries that he wanted to touch her. Kiss her. Taste her.
And that was just plain wrong.
He ground his teeth together, held his breath, and cursed the employment agency for sending him a sexy housekeeper.
She walked toward him, held out the filled thermos and foil-wrapped packets of cheese sausage and coffee cake. “Be careful.”
He glanced down at her, seeing but not wanting to see how her apron outlined her shape. Hips, full breasts, and a tiny waist he could circle with two hands. Even with her hideous apron strings wrapped twice around her waist.
Aprons were supposed to hide the body. Her apron just emphasized her curves. And olive was such a drab color but somehow it made her eyes look mysterious and cool and green and her lips dark pink and her skin—
“I’m always careful,” he ground out, taking the thermos and foil packages from her, annoyed all over again.
He was a man about to turn forty and he’d spent the past eleven years raising two kids on his own, and he might not be a perfect father or a perfect man but he tried his best. He did. And while he appreciated his new housekeeper’s concern, he didn’t have time to be babied, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain himself. Not to his brothers, his dad, and especially not to a staggeringly pretty woman from California who was now living in his house, under his roof, bending and leanin
g and doing all sorts of things with her incredibly appealing body, all the while humming as she went about her work as if she were Snow White or Mary Poppins.
Most annoying to have a beautiful housekeeper. He would never have hired her if he’d realized she was so damn pretty. He didn’t want pretty in his house. He didn’t want to be tempted. He had a ranch to manage and two children who would be home from boarding school for their holidays in another week and he couldn’t afford to get distracted by a pretty face or a shapely body.
His gaze narrowed as it swept Harley Diekerhoff’s long, lean legs and gently rounded hips before skimming her small waist, then lifting to her face. “Always careful,” he repeated, and stalked out through the kitchen door to the back porch.
Harley Diekerhoff might be a perfect cook and housekeeper, but she was also a temptation, and that was a problem he didn’t need.
CHAPTER TWO
Harley rang the bell at six o’clock to let the ranch hands know dinner was ready. Brock had trained his hands to come to the main kitchen to help carry their dinner to the bunkhouse. One by one she handed off the various dishes—the platter of sliced flank steak, a substantial casserole of cheesy potato gratin, two loaves of warm buttered French bread, a bowl of green beans with almonds and bacon, a hefty green salad, and an enormous chocolate sheet cake with a gallon of milk for dessert.
Bundled in her winter coat and mittens, she followed the parade of ranch hands through the swirling snow, careful not to drop the oversized sheet cake with its thick chocolate icing. Brock said the hands didn’t need dessert every night. She disagreed. A man always needed something sweet before bed. Made a man feel cared for.
At least that’s how she’d been raised.
Young Lewis Dilford, one of the newer hands, held the bunk house’s front door open for her. She stomped her fleece-lined all-weather boots on the mat, knocking off snow before stepping into the bunkhouse. A fire burned hotly in the cast iron stove in the corner.
The bunk house was actually the original log cabin on the property, and on her first day at Copper Mountain Ranch, JB, Brock’s ranch foreman, gave Harley a tour of the outbuildings, including a walk through the bunk house.
JB told her that when Brock had bought the ranch thirteen years ago his plan had been to tear the old log cabin down and salvage the logs for a future project, but when he discovered that the walls and flooring were still sound, and all the cabin really needed was a new roof and some modernizing, he gutted the one-bedroom cabin, adding electricity and plumbing, a small indoor bathroom, and a working kitchen.
With the exception of some of the electrical work, Brock had done all the remodeling himself. It’d taken him a year to complete the bunk house, but he liked being busy, and it gave him something to do during the summers with the longer days of sunlight.
She glanced around the main room which was both sitting room and dining room. Chairs were pushed back against the wall and the pine dining table was already set.
“It looks nice,” she said, complimenting their efforts to make the table look nice with the tablecloth she’d given them.
Her first two nights here they’d ignored the table cloth she’d brought them. Apparently Maxine didn’t care if they used a tablecloth or placemats.
Some of the men weren’t sure they needed to use fancy stuff like table cloths, either. But Harley said it just might make dinner a little nicer, and while she couldn’t make them use a table cloth, it was their dinner, after all, and they ought to enjoy themselves. Feel good about themselves.
The next night she entered the bunkhouse and found the table covered with the cloth and five place settings of silverware and plates.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. They were watching her face and her quick surprised smile told them everything they needed to know. Since then they used the table cloth every night, and lately, they all washed up and combed their hair, too.
The lost boys of Copper Mountain, she thought, smiling a little as she looked at them now.
“I hope you are hungry,” she said, placing the cake and the milk on the table next to all the other dishes filling the center of the table. Maxine used to leave all the food on the buffet, but Harley put everything on the table so the men could stay seated and serve themselves family style. “I think I made too much.”
Lewis smiled shyly as he took a seat on one of the benches. “Can never have too much, Miss Harley.”
She smiled back, aware that he was the youngest in a family of seven, and from what she’d gathered, there hadn’t always been enough to eat by the time it was his turn. “Don’t worry about bringing the dishes back tonight. Leave them in your sink and I’ll get them in the morning.”
“That’s not the deal, Miss Harley, and you know it,” thin, dark bearded Al Mancetti said, boots thudding as he sat down opposite Lewis. He’d been here on the ranch for about five years now and tended to be on the quiet side, but apparently he was one of the hardest workers. “We’ll bring everything back. You done enough. And we’re grateful. You take care of us real well.”
“It’s my pleasure,” she answered with a smile. She liked these men. She enjoyed taking care of them. They appreciated her and that felt good, too. Normally she left after they had everything but tonight she lingered, mustering the courage to bring up her concerns about their boss. “It’s bad outside,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, ma’am,” JB answered, from his spot at the head of the table. “Biggest storm of the year so far. Four feet in the last couple hours alone.”
That wasn’t reassuring at all, she thought. “Mr. Sheenan’s out there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” JB agreed.
She glanced out the window at the dark night with the luminous snow reflecting ghostly white beyond the window. “He shouldn’t have gone alone.”
“He shouldn’t have gone at all,” JB agreed, “but you don’t tell him that.”
Her brows knit. “Shouldn’t someone go look for him?”
JB grimaced. “He’d have our heads for that, and I like my head where it is, on my shoulders.”
A guffaw of masculine laughter sounded around the table, and even Harley smiled faintly before her smile faded. “He could be in trouble,” she said hesitantly.
“Sheenan can take of himself,” Paul, the youngest hand said. He was close friends with Lewis and when they weren’t on the ranch, they competed on the rodeo circuit, traveling together whenever possible. Neither of them made good money on the circuit though, so they needed their jobs here on Copper Mountain Ranch to pay bills. “Nobody would mess with him. At least nobody in his right mind.”
Heads nodded and Harley glanced at the faces of the ranch hands.
“What about bears?” she asked.
“What about them?” Paul retorted, leaning across the table to stab his fork into the sliced steak. “It’s winter. They’re hibernating.”
“And wolves?”
“Sheenan has a gun.”
Harley’s lips pursed, even more alarmed.
Paul and Lewis laughed.
“Don’t you worry, Miss Harley,” JB said, using the nickname the hands had given her as Miss Diekerhoff was apparently too much of a mouthful, requiring too much effort. “The boss grew up in this part of Montana. He knows what he’s doing, and he’ll be back before bedtime. Nine or ten and he’ll be safe in his bed. Mark my words.”
Harley returned to the house and ate her dinner at the oversized island counter that filled the center of the kitchen, the fire warming her back, somewhat soothed by JB’s assurance that their boss would be back by nine or ten.
But nine came and went, with no sign of Brock.
And then ten came, and still no sign of him.
Harley dimmed the downstairs lights before heading up to her room, which would be a third floor room if there was a real floor. Instead it was a room carved out from beneath the massive wood beams of the steeply sloping roof. The walls were all lined with planks of weathered, r
ecycled wood—boards taken from old Montana barns—and her bed sat between two low antique chests with matching antique brass lamps. The bed linens were a neutral taupe on cream stripe, which added the rustic feel. The only real color was the deep crimson wool carpet on the hardwood floor. The pop of red made Harley smile, but tonight as she climbed into bed, she didn’t feel much like smiling.
It was hard to relax and fall asleep with knots in her stomach. She knew too well that accidents happened, and even smart, strong people could be overly confident of their skills. How could she sleep, picturing Brock lying buried in the snow, slowly freezing to death?
As her bedside clock showed eleven, Harley wondered if she should call the police, or maybe someone in Brock’s family.
His father wasn’t that far, another ranch twenty minutes south in Paradise Valley, and he had four brothers, although none lived in the area at the moment. But surely one of them would want to know that Brock was missing.
Surely something should be done.
She left bed to pace her room, a long black oversized cashmere sweater around her shoulders for warmth, with the antique wool carpet soft beneath her bare feet.
She was still pacing when she heard an engine outside. A truck was approaching the house. As she headed for the window, bright headlight beams pierced the crack in her curtains, sending an arc of white light across her dark bedroom.
Someone was here.
She pushed aside the curtain, and peered down. A big four-by-four truck with snow tires pulled into the circular drive in front of the house. The truck parked, headlights turned off.
She watched as the driver’s door opened, and then the passenger door, too. A man with fair hair wearing a heavy sheepskin coat stepped down from the driver’s side of the truck and two children climbed more slowly from the passenger side. All three tramped through the thick snow that had piled up since she shoveled the walkway late in the afternoon.
It was after eleven at night. Who would be arriving now? And with kids?
Harley was at the top of the second floor landing when the doorbell rang.