“But not where Daddy can’t find us.”
“No, not where your daddy can’t find you,” Ally assured, sighing to herself and wondering if anything would ever get Meggie’s mind off her absent father.
She stood and smoothed away her daughter’s burnished curls to kiss her forehead. “It’s late. You need to go to sleep. You know where my room is, right?”
“Across the hall.”
“If you need anything, just holler or come in there.” Ally tapped the tip of her daughter’s small, turned-up nose. “I love you. Sleep tight.”
“Mom?” Meggie stopped her from leaving. “What are you gonna do here?”
Ally smiled. “I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll open a restaurant or a catering business. Or maybe I’ll just be a mom—Shag left us enough money to live even if I don’t work.”
“I’d like you to just be a mom,” Meggie said.
“Well, we’ll see. But for right now, let’s concentrate on getting settled in.”
Meggie wiggled to a comfortable spot amongst her bumper pad of dolls and stuffed animals, and finally closed her eyes. “See you in the morning.”
“See you in the morning.”
Ally slipped out the door, closing it behind her. But she didn’t go straight across the hall to the room Beth had suggested she use. Her throat felt full of travel dust and the late August heat seemed to still be with her in spite of the coolness of the house. Something cold to drink was too appealing a thought to resist.
Well, she might have resisted it if Jackson Heller had been there. But since he wasn’t, she decided to take Beth’s advice to make herself at home.
The nearly silent hum of the air conditioner was the only sound in the whole place as she padded down the stairs and across a huge entryway, and stepped into the sunken living room with its three couches in a U around a square coffee table and the biggest television she’d ever seen.
Through the living room, she went into a connecting dining room and around a table large enough to seat a whole summit conference.
Then she pushed open the swinging door that led to the kitchen and stopped short.
Jackson Heller was standing at the refrigerator, one long arm draped over the open door, the other lying across the top as he peered inside. Clearly he hadn’t heard her entrance, because he didn’t budge.
Until that moment Ally hadn’t realized how big a man he was. Six foot three if he was an inch, divided perfectly between long, jean-encased legs and a torso that grew like a symphony from a narrow waist to shoulders a mile wide, filling out a Western-style shirt better than the designer of it would ever have believed possible.
Ally considered sneaking out before he realized she was there, but just as the thought occurred to her, he must have sensed her presence, because he turned his head in her direction and caught her with those blue eyes.
Lord, but he was good-looking! Somehow, even though she’d noticed his eyes in the honky-tonk, she hadn’t realized just how good-looking the rest of his face was. But it wasn’t only his eyes that were strikingly gorgeous. This guy was drop-dead handsome.
He had thick hair the color of espresso, cropped short on the sides and longer on top. His brow was straight and square, his nose slightly long, slightly narrow, slightly pointed—what the romance novels she read called aquiline.
The mustache Meggie had noticed was full and well-groomed, not so much hiding his exquisitely shaped mouth as making it seem all the more intriguing. His cheeks dipped into hollows hammocked between chiseled cheekbones and a jawline sharp enough to slice bread, giving his face a rough-hewn ruggedness. And he had the same cleft in his chin that his father had had, the same one she’d noticed in his brother, only on Jackson Heller it was so sexy that every macho movie star in the world would have killed for it.
But handsome or not, he was no happier to see Ally in his kitchen than he had been to see her in the honky-tonk.
He slammed the refrigerator door closed without having taken anything from inside and faced her.
Showdown at the O.K. Corral Kitchen.
Salad shooters at the ready.
Oh, Lord, it must be late, Ally thought, I’m getting goofy.
She stood as tall as she could and met him eye to eye. “I came down for something to drink.”
He just went on staring at her, his eyes boring into her like spears. “You sure as hell aren’t what we expected,” he finally said. “Never knew old Shag to dabble with a younger one.”
“Excuse me?”
“I just want to know one thing.” He poked his chin toward the ceiling. “Is that little girl up there our half sister?”
“Your half sister?” Ally repeated as what he was alluding to began to dawn on her. “You think Shag and I—”
“You were the mysterious lady friend he hightailed it to Denver to be with these last ten years.”
Lady friend—he’d referred to her as that earlier, too, but only now did the meaning of it sink in. “No, I wasn’t.”
His eyes narrowed at her. “Don’t play coy with me. I’m no ignorant country bumpkin. You slept your way into a quarter share of this ranch and I don’t appreciate it. I don’t give a damn about anything else that old man left you a part of—spending ten years cozied up with him earned it for you. But Linc and Beth and I paid our dues on this place being worked like dogs by that contrary cuss of a man, and if you think you can sashay in here as if it’s some kind of resort where you can lie around the pool all day long while somebody waits on you, you have another think coming.”
“Now hold on,” Ally said, her voice louder than she’d intended it to be, and just as stern and angry as his. “In the first place, Meggie is not your half sister and I didn’t sleep my way into anything. Your father’s lady friend was my mother and for the last ten years the relationship they shared was nothing as sleazy as you’d like to make it.”
Jackson Heller merely went on goring her with his cornflower blue eyes.
Ally wanted to hit him. But instead she just continued. “As for Shag leaving me an equal share of his estate—I concede that you and your brother and sister have every right not to be thrilled by it. I was hoping you all wouldn’t resent it and I’m sorry to find that even one of you does. But Shag’s including me in his will was the kindest, most generous thing anyone has ever done for me and it just happens to have come at a time when I couldn’t have needed it more, so if you think you’re going to scare me into refusing anything, it’s you who can think again.”
“I told you, the only thing I give a damn about is the ranch. You’re welcome to the rest. Hell, you’re even welcome to stay in town if that’s what you want to do—”
“Oh, thank you so much for your permission!”
“But you’re not welcome on my ranch!”
“It’s our ranch and I don’t have to be welcome to be here.”
They’d both been shouting and now he stopped. But the quiet, barely suppressed rage in his voice was somehow worse. “I made an offer to buy you out through all those lawyers a few months back. I’ll up it by five thousand dollars right now.”
“I’ll make you the same offer and you can go,” she bluffed.
He saw it. “Don’t make me think you’re a fool.”
No, for some reason she didn’t want this man, of all men, to think of her that way. Though she didn’t understand why it should matter. It did, however, change her tone to one more reasonable. “Look, I came here to live for a reason that doesn’t have anything to do with money. I’m not leaving.”
“Ten thousand more.”
“A hundred thousand more, a million more—it wouldn’t matter. Meggie and I are staying.”
Oh, what an ugly look he gave her!
“Let me guess,” he said with a sneer. “You have some damn television idea of what it’s like to live on a ranch and you thought you’d come up here and have a little Western adventure. Or you’ve had a falling out with some desk jockey in Denver and you thought you’d show him, y
ou’d just pack up and move. Or—”
“Don’t make me think you’re a fool to believe drivel like that,” she countered.
Again their eyes locked in a stare-down.
“Fifteen thousand.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Unless of course he picked her up bodily and threw her out, which at that moment Ally thought was a possibility from the look of utter contempt he had on that incredible face of his. But incredible face—and body—or not, he was still the most disagreeable man she’d ever encountered and she didn’t like him any better than he liked her.
Then, through clenched teeth, he said, “Why would you stay somewhere you’re not wanted?”
“I have my reasons,” she answered just as dourly, having no intention of confiding any more than that.
“There are no free rides with me,” he threatened. “If you live here, you work here.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she claimed, hoping she wasn’t biting off more than she could chew. “And before you go around smearing verbal mud on my mother’s good name again, you also had better know that she didn’t sleep her way into my inheritance, either. Originally Shag had wanted her to be left the quarter share, because he genuinely loved her and wanted to provide for her should he die before she did. But she wouldn’t hear of him leaving her anything at all. She didn’t know until after his death, when the lawyer contacted me about the will, that he’d honored her wishes about herself and given it to me instead.”
“And you’re going to earn it,” he said, the threat in his voice again. “Tomorrow I have to take some oilmen out to the wells on the farthest end of the ranch and I’ll be gone until suppertime, so you have until the next day to rest up. And then—if you don’t get smart and leave—you’re mine.”
Okay, so he did manage to send a shiver up her spine.
Still, Ally toughed it out, raising her chin to him as if accepting any challenge he could toss her way. “Fine,” she said. “But there’s one stipulation I have, too.”
This time he lifted his chin at her, daring her to venture it.
“No matter what your feelings about me or my being here or your father’s will, my daughter is not to be burdened by it. I was hoping to find that you were like Shag—kind, patient—”
“Shag, kind and patient? You must be out of your mind.”
Ally had no intention of arguing that with him, too, though she was curious as to why he seemed to dislike his father so much. She went on as if he hadn’t interrupted her. “My daughter has been through a lot in the last few years and I won’t have any more inflicted on her. So I’m telling you here and now that you’d better watch your step around her.”
“Who the hell do you think you’re talkin’ to, lady?” he shouted again.
“You,” she shouted back. “Just keep your bad attitude clear of my daughter.”
He let out a sound that was equal parts disgusted sigh, mirthless laugh, and disbelief at her audacity. But Ally wasn’t going to let it bother her. Too much. Instead she turned and hit the swinging door she’d come through and left the kitchen in what she hoped was a blaze of righteous indignation, feeling those blue eyes on her the whole way.
Jerk! she thought. Insufferable, rude, insulting, hotheaded jerk! No wonder Shag had kept his connection with her mother and her and Meggie so completely separate from his life and family in Wyoming. He’d probably been embarrassed to let anyone know he was related to a person like that!
Yet Ally remembered Shag suggesting that she and Meggie might benefit from some time up here, so he couldn’t have been hiding his oldest son. And in spite of him, he must have thought the good outweighed the bad.
Which was what Ally had to hope for. Because now that she had Meggie here, now that she’d talked herself blue in the face about how great this new beginning was for them, she couldn’t just turn tail and run before giving it a chance. Regardless of Jackson Heller the Jerk.
She’d just have to comply with whatever he wanted her to do to earn their right to be here and hope he steered clear of Meggie.
No, she wouldn’t hope he’d steer clear of Meggie. He’d better steer clear of her. Because if he so much as looked cross-eyed at her daughter, he might find himself with a rolling pin stuck up that romance-novel nose of his.
Ally climbed the steps and stormed into the room across the hall from where Meggie was, wondering what she’d gotten them into, praying that it wasn’t yet another wrong turn she was taking with both their lives.
But even as she worried about it and cursed Jackson Heller for making this as difficult as he possibly could, she also wondered why it was that her recalcitrant mind kept flashing a mental picture of the to-die-for handsome face of that very same man.
With whom she now shared a home.
Chapter Two
Jackson was in no better temper when he got up the next morning just before dawn than he had been when he had gone to bed the night before. In fact, after spending more hours mentally rehashing his argument with Ally Brooks than sleeping, he was madder still as he stood in the spray of a steamy shower.
He had half a mind to post Lady, Go Home signs all through the house. His house. And Linc’s and Beth’s if they ever wanted to come back to live in it. But not some damn Denver woman’s house.
About two in the morning he had conceded a couple of things. He believed she hadn’t been Shag’s lady friend, because his father just wasn’t the type to play footsy with a woman young enough to be his daughter.
Which led to Jackson’s second concession—that he might have been out of line to accuse Ally Brooks—or anyone else—of sleeping their way into the old man’s will. Jackson of all people knew that Shag Heller had never in his life done a single thing he hadn’t wanted to do, regardless of what anyone else tried to maneuver or finagle, and no matter what the relationship.
But it did sound like Shag to try to provide for the woman he’d been involved with for ten years, a woman he’d clearly had feelings for. And barring that, to leave what he had been determined to give her to her daughter.
Jackson turned off the water, yanked his towel from where it was slung over the shower door and dried off with punishingly angry strokes, too aggravated to feel any pain. Then he threw his towel into the hamper with a vengeance and went into his pitch-dark bedroom, turning on the light near the closet that held his clean shirts.
He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Ally Brooks he didn’t care that she’d inherited what she had—excluding the ranch. What Shag owned was Shag’s to do with as he pleased, and not Jackson, Linc or Beth had been financially hurt by that fourth piece of the pie being served outside of the family.
But the ranch, that was something else again.
It was Jackson’s whole life.
Linc and Beth had grown to hate the place, probably because of old Shag’s harsh methods when it came to chores. To say he’d been a taskmaster was to soft-soap the reality of it. He’d worked all three of his children twice as hard as any of the ranch hands he was paying for the job, and often in the form of some pretty unreasonable punishments.
But for some reason Jackson didn’t quite understand, the more he’d worked the place, the more he’d loved it.
Linc said he had mile-deep roots here and his brother was right. Deeper roots even than old Shag had had.
Their father had tired of the life. By the time he got Beth off to college, he’d been ready to wheel and deal and concentrate on the business end of things, so he’d turned the place over to Jackson.
Jackson had been twenty-two then and more than willing to take the reins. And for the past fifteen years there hadn’t been a day he’d regretted it. Not a day he’d been sorry to rise with the sun, work in the heat or the cold, dirty his hands or break his back.
Beth thought he loved the ranch like a man loved a woman, but he thought it was more the way a man loved his only child. He fed it. He groomed it. He tended to its every need. He put his blood and
sweat into it. He sacrificed for it. And never once had he resented it.
Not even when that sacrifice had nearly ripped his heart out....
He pulled on his boots, pushing away old memories as he did.
The point was, this place belonged to him and he belonged to it.
And no damn woman from Denver had any business walking in and claiming any part of it.
He was dressed by then and turned off the light to leave. As he did he was tempted to slam the bedroom door closed after himself, just for the sake of disturbing Ally Brooks. She’d disturbed him enough to have it coming, that was for damn sure.
A man needed a decent night’s sleep when his day started before sunrise. He didn’t need to be all riled up, tossing and turning, telling off a blasted woman in his mind. Plotting how the hell he was going to get rid of her. Devising jobs for her that were bad enough to match the worst old Shag had ever come up with.
Wondering if those crazy wild curls of her hair were as soft as they looked....
Damn, but she’d made him mad. First at her. Then at himself for thinking ridiculous things like that.
But he closed the door quietly rather than slamming it. Unlike his father, he wasn’t usually given to fits of rage and he didn’t like the way it felt. Didn’t like giving in to it, and that’s what slamming the door would have been.
Still, though, as he passed by Ally’s room he muttered, “Take the money and get out of here,” wishing she’d do just that.
His offer to buy her share of the ranch had been more than fair. That, on top of the rest of what she’d inherited could keep her in a Denver penthouse—or wherever else she wanted to be—for the rest of her life without her ever lifting a finger. So what was she doing here?
No doubt she had a fantasy of the place as some sort of dude ranch. Jackson could just imagine the brochure—Life on the range. Horseback riding. Swimming. Napping in the shade of an old oak tree. Barbecuing under the stars of a Wyoming sky....
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