Michael's Father

by Dallas Schulze

  "Thank you for giving me a chance, Mr. Bryan."

  **Kel. We tend to be on a first-name basis around here."

  **Kel, then." She smiled up at him, a hint of shyness in her expression. "I'll see you at the Lazy B day after tomorrow."

  He took the hand she thrust out, feeling the same jolt of awareness he'd felt the first time, the same urge to pull her closer. He heard her breath catch a little. The hustle and bustle of the restaurant disappeared, and for a moment it seemed as if there was just the two of them, alone on a plane of sensual awareness.

  Kel's fingers shifted subtly around hers, the conventional handshake becoming almost a caress. Me-

  gan's eyes widened, suddenly more gray than blue. Her lips parted as if she was having trouble catching her breath. Kel could almost taste the softness of her mouth.

  A busboy dropped a tray of dishes with a crash loud enough to shatter eardrums in half the state.

  Megan jumped as if shot.

  Kel dropped her hand as if it were on fire.

  Each took a half step away from the other.

  "I have to go," she said, her voice as breathless as if she'd just completed a marathon.

  He nodded. Had he actually been about to kiss her? Right here in front of God and half of Casper, Wyoming? "Fll see you day after tomorrow," he said.

  **Yes." Her agreement held just a touch of hesitation, and the look she shot him was uncertain. He wondered if she was having second thoughts about coming to work for him. God knew, he had second, third and fourth thoughts about hiring her, even on a trial basis. But if she'd changed her mind, she didn't say so.

  *'Goodbye." Her voice was a little breathless.

  "Bye."

  Kel watched her walk out of the restaurant, his eyes lingering on the provocative swing of her hips. She was five foot almost nothing of temptation. Pure trouble. And he'd just hired her to work on his ranch.

  -As Megan disappeared through the restaurant's door, he sank back into the booth. He'd lost his mind. Just having her on the place was going to cut up his peace. A week of looking at those legs, of thinking

  about that pale hair spread across his pillow and he'd be a babbling idiot.

  He reached for his coffee. It wouldn't be smart to forget that that delicate look could go along with a will of iron. Roxanne had looked just as fragile. He hadn't realized until after he married her that she was about as fragile as a Brahma buU and even more dangerous.

  His mouth hardened at the memory of his ex-wife. Roxanne had been dark and several inches taller than Megan Roarke but she'd had a similar air of delicate femininity, the kind that tended to bring out a man's protective instincts. Only Roxanne had proven well able to take care of herself.

  Kel rose from the booth and dropped enough money on the table to cover the bill plus tip. He scooped his hat off the seat and made his way to the door, nodding absently to one or two acquaintances on the way. Standing on the sidewalk, he turned the gray Stetson in his hands. Narrowing his eyes against the late spring sunshine, he stared at the pay phone on the comer.

  He'd been seeing Carla for a couple of years now. She'd come out of a bad marriage with a tidy settlement, payoff from her husband's wealthy Charleston family in return for her agreement not to tell the press that their precious son was an abusive s.o.b. She'd moved to Wyoming, settled her two children into school and gotten a part-time job, though she didn't have to work.

  Their informal arrangement worked out well for both of them. He Uked her, and she felt the same way about him. But there were no ties, no strings, no emotional entanglements. His occasional visits pro-

  vided them both with a needed sexual relief without asking more of either of them than they were willing to give. Carla wouldn't mind him calling at the last minute. If she was busy, she'd say so. But if she wasn't, they could spend the lest of the morning in bed before he made the two-hour trip to the ranch.

  With a muttered curse for his own stupidity, Kel shoved his hat onto his head and turned away from the phone. Striding to where he'd parked his truck, he jerked open the door and slid into the cab. He had the itch, all right, but it wasn't one Carla could scratch. The only fingers he wanted on this particular itch belonged to his new housekeeper.

  Cursing himself for seven kinds of a fool, Kel headed the truck north. He was a fool not to call Carla. He was a fool to let Megan Roarke under his skin. But most of all, he was a fool to have hired her.

  She was a fool to have taken the job.

  Megan closed her motel room door behind her and leaned against it. She'd been a fool to push for the job. If she'd had a brain in her head, she'd have turned tail and run after that first handshake.

  She stared at her hand, half expecting to see scorch marks on the palm. She could still feel the heat generated by that simple touch. Curling her fingers into her palm, Megan pushed herself away from the door and walked into the room.

  Her purse bounced onto the bed as she kicked off her pumps. She sighed with pleasure and flexed her toes against the carpet. High heels were a ridiculous fashion. They were impractical, uncomfortable and

  clearly a remnant symbol of the days when a woman was viewed as little more than a decorative object. Which didn't explain the box in the trunk of her car that contained fifteen different pairs of them.

  At five feet one and one half inches, she needed all the help she could get. Besides, cultural remnant or not, she liked the way she looked in heels. Smiling at the foolish mental argument, Megan opened the buttons on her suit jacket and shrugged out of it. Beneath it, she wore a shell-pink camisole trimmed in ivory lace.

  Kel Bryan had looked at her as if he could see exactly what lay beneath her suit.

  Remembering the look in those green eyes, Megan felt her cheeks warm. She'd had men look at her as if wondering what she'd look like without her clothes. No moderately attractive woman reached the age of twenty-five without getting such a look a few times. Depending on the circumstances, she'd been either annoyed or indifferent. But she'd never felt her pulse accelerate, never felt her skin heat. Never felt... aroused by a look.

  Her flush deepened, and she avoided looking at her reflection in the mirror over the dresser.

  The fact was, she'd never met a man who affected her the way Kel Bryan had. With a simple touch, he'd shaken her all the way to her toes, and she'd found herself all but browbeating him into giving her a job. If she'd had any sense, she wouldn't even have sat down after that first handshake. Any sensible woman would have turned and run for cover.

  It wasn't too late. She didn't have to show up at the Lazy B m two days. She could pack her few belongings into her car and move on to another town-Cheyenne, maybe, or Etenver. She'd never been to Colorado.

  Megan sank down on the bed and stated at the dull brown carpeting under her feet. She wasn't going to Cheyenne or Denver. Day after tomorrow, she was going to make the two-hour drive north to Kel Bryan's ranch. She was going to see if his eyes were really as impossibly green as they'd seemed, if that jolt of awareness had been her imagination and if it would happen again.

  It wasn't the sensible thing to do, but she'd been sensible for most of her twenty-five years and she couldn't see that it had gotten her all that much. It might be interesting to see how life went when she wasn't sensible.

  Chapter 2

  If you've hired this woman to baby-sit me the way Grade did, you're wasting your money."

  Kel looked over his shoulder at his sister, Colleen, who was setting the table for breakfast.

  "I think nineteen is a little old for a baby-sitter."

  **I think so, too. But Grade rarely let me out of her sight the last six months and you've been almost as bad since she left."

  Kel wished he could have read some anger in her tone or expression but there was none. They could have been discussing the weather report for all the emotion Colleen revealed. A few months ago, he'd never have beUeved it possible that he'd actually find himself hoping for a display of temper from his usually
volatile little sister.

  "Grade's known you since you were a baby. It's only natural that she'd fuss over you a bit."

  "That explains Grade. What about you?" Colleen asked, shooting him a dry look.

  **rm your older brother. I'm supposed to take care of you." He picked up an ^g and started to tap it against the edge of the bowl in front of him.

  **I can take care of myself, Kel. I may be crippled but Fm not helpless."

  *'You're not crippled!" The egg hit the bowl with more force than he'd intended. Cursing under his breath, he reached in to scoop bits of eggshell out with his fingertip.

  **A11 right, handicapped, then."

  "You're not handicapped, either!" he snapped. The eggshell dropped into the eggs and with a muttered curse he picked up the bowl and dumped the contents into the sink before turning to face his sister.

  She was carrying a pitcher of orange juice from the refrigerator to the table, and Kel had to restrain a wince when he saw her awkward gait. It had been almost six months since the accident, but he couldn't get used to seeing her Uke this. Not Colleen, who never walked if she could run and never ran if she could ride a horse instead.

  "You're not handicapped," he said again, his tone quiet but determined. "The doctor says there's no reason you shouldn't be good as new after a httle more physical therapy."

  ^*Almost good as new," Colleen reminded him. "I've already had four months of physical therapy and I still walk like Quasimodo.''

  "You'll have four more months of physical therapy and four more after that, if that's what it takes."

  "I'm tired of it." She sounded like a petulant four-year-old, but at least there was some emotion in her voice.

  "Tough." Kel got another ^g out of the refrigerator and cracked it into the bowl. "You're not giving up. Colleen. If I have to drag you kicking and screaming to therapy, I'll do it. But you're not giving up."

  "It's m>'leg."

  She slammed the orange juice onto the table and Kel could feel her glaring at him. He turned to look at her. Her eyes, the same deep green as his, were bright with annoyance. But he'd rather deal with a tantrum than face the indifference with which she'd greeted almost everything these past six months. "You're right. It's your leg," he said calmly. "But I'll be damned if I'll let you give up on this."

  Their eyes clashed, hers angry, his determined. Colleen looked away first.

  "It hurts," she muttered, sounding so much like a little girl that it was all Kel could do to keep from snatching her up in his arms and telling her that she never had to do anything that hurt again.

  "I know," he said quietly. "But it's not forever."

  "It feels like it." She sighed and shrugged lightly, indifference slipping into her eyes. "I'll keep going to therapy." Her tone made it clear that she was doing it to please him, not because she believed it was doing her leg any good.

  "Good." Kel didn't care why she went, just as long as she went. He turned to the neglected eggs.

  A few minutes later, the two of them sat down to breakfast. Ordinarily, Kel would have been out of the house at dawn but he'd lingered this morning so that he'd be here when Megan Roarke arrived. He supposed he could have left it to Colleen to greet her, but since he'd been the one to hire her, it seemed like he should be here. At least that was the excuse he'd given himself, he admitted ruefully.

  **I don't see why we couldn't have just managed on our own while Grade was gone," CoUeen said, interrupting his thoughts.

  *'Because I don't have time to clean house and you're not up to some of the heavier work."

  **I can clean the house," she protested. ''I'm not a—" She broke off, flushing as she realized what she'd been about to say.

  "Cripple?" He lifted one brow as he finished the sentence for her.

  "I can clean the house," she repeated, refusing to respond to his baiting look.

  "What about cooking?" He picked up a slice of bacon, her contribution to the meal, and gave it a pointed look. Sooty black flakes drifted from it to his plate.

  ''You can't cook, either," she pointed out defensively, stirring her fork through the overcooked mass of scrambled eggs.

  "But Megan Roarke can. At least she says she can."

  Colleen considered that idea. "So you really didn't hire her to baby-sit me?"

  "I hired her to keep us from starving to death." He got up from the table and picked up their barely

  touched plates. "It's only for a week's trial, anyway. If she can't cook or can't take the isolation, we'll be on our own again. How about hot fudge sundaes for breakfast?" he asked, peering into the freezer for something to replace the inedible breakfast.

  In the two days since her interview with Kel Bryan, Megan had almost managed to convince herself that it was a desire to work in a rural setting that had prompted her to push for this job.

  But rural didn't even begin to describe the ranch's setting. Isolated. Vast. Empty. She couldn't find a single word to encompass it. The land stretched out on all sides, empty except for the long ribbon of highway. To the north and west, mountains thrust upward, peaks jagged against the sky.

  The tumoff for the Lazy B was marked with a simple wooden sign, and Megan turned the car onto the gravel road. A couple of miles and several cattle guards later, the road curved around the shoulder of a low hill and ended in the midst of an assortment of buildings larger than some of the towns she'd seen recently.

  She stopped the car in front of a big clapboard house and turned off the engine but stayed where she was, absorbing the scene in front of her. The house was painted white, the trim deep blue. The simple colors stood out like jewels against the buff-colored hiUs behind it. There was a wide front porch shaded by the overhanging roof, and narrow flower beds lined the porch and the short walkway.

  In front of the house was a modest-sized lawn, crisp green with summer's early growth. After the landscape she'd just driven through, the rich green seemed almost painfully bright. A low spUt-rail fence marked the boundary between the lawn and the packed dirt and scrubby vegetation of the ranch yard.

  It was a neat, tidy picture of a well run establishment, the kind of place where it would be a pleasure to work, a perfect place to spend the summer.

  But Megan stayed where she was, her palms damp on the steering wheel. There was no mistaking the tall figure who'd stepped out onto the porch.

  Kel Bryan.

  The one—the on/y—reason she'd pushed so hard for this job. Now that she was here, she couldn't pretend otherwise. It hadn't been working in the country that had tempted her. It had been Kel Bryan's leanly muscled body and the shock waves set off by a simple handshake.

  With a feeling that fate was looking over her shoulder, Megan reached for the door handle.

  Kel had almost convinced himself that he'd imagined how attractive she was, that her hair hadn't been moonlit gold, that her legs hadn't been longer than they had any right to be. When he saw her again, he'd wonder what it was that had made her seem so extraordinary.

  But as she slid out of the bright blue compact, all he could think of was that her legs were even longer than he'd remembered and her hair gleamed almost silver in the bright sunhght.

  One look at iier and his jeans were suddenly too tight.

  A week, he told himself. A week was all he'd agreed to. He could control himself for a week. She turned to shut the car door, giving him a perfect view of slender hips and a softly rounded bottom encased in faded denim that lovingly molded every curve.

  Kel bit back a groan as the blood heated in his veins. She hadn't been on the property five minutes and he was ready to explode. A week in this condition and he'd end up a damned eunuch.

  Megan felt her breath catch as Kel left the porch and came toward her. She'd almost convinced herself that he couldn't be as big as she'd remembered. Or as attractive. But the weakness in her knees told her that she'd been wrong. He was every bit as big, every bit as bone-meltingly good-looking as he'd been the first time they'd met.

 
Wearing jeans, a blue chambray shirt and a pair of scuffed black boots, he could have stepped right out of a cigarette commercial. In the sun, his dark hair had subtle red highlights, as did the thick mustache that covered his upper lip. He closed the distance between them in long, easy strides, a man comfortable with himself and his surroundings.

  Megan thought about going to meet him but she wasn't entirely confident that her knees would support her. She wanted to believe that it was just nerves caused by the idea of starting a new job, but she'd never been that good at lying to herself.

  "Have any trouble getting here?" Kel asked by way of greeting.

  **No. The directions you gave me were very clear."

  **Good." He stopped in front of her. Megan had to tilt her head to meet his eyes, those clear green eyes that had figured in her dreams these past two nights. Thinking of those dreams, she felt her color rise and hoped he'd attribute it to the warmth of the sun.

  "Welcome to the Lazy B, Megan.'* Kel held out his hand. There was an imperceptible moment of hesitation before she placed her fingers in his. If she'd thought that remembered shock of awareness might have been her imagination, she'd been wrong.

  It was like grabbing hold of a live wire, feeling the current run through her body, bringing every nerve ending to tingling life. And just as before, she saw that same awareness flare in Eel's eyes and knew he felt the spark between them.

  "I wondered if you'd show up," he said abruptly.

  "Are you sorry I did?" Megan was shocked to hear herself asking the question. Such bluntness wasn't like her at all. But then, this kind of sensual awareness was a new experience.

  Was he sorry? Kel let his eyes drift to the soft fullness of her mouth as he debated the answer. He should be. And he very well might be later. But right now all he could think of was how her mouth would feel under his. And he knew, with unshakable certainty, that he was going to find out. Sometime before this week was up, he was going to taste Megan Roarke. He was going to have her in his arms, feel her mouth open

  under his and see if she tasted half as sweet as she looked.

  And if she kept looking at him like that, her eyes all smoky blue, as if she was wondering the same things about him, that moment just might come a hell of a lot sooner than it should.