Yet, even with that harsh tone lingering in the air after him, Ally couldn’t help feeling the oddest sense of disappointment.
Why? she wondered as she crossed the hall to peek in on her sleeping daughter. Was it disappointment that he’d gone? Or disappointment that he hadn’t kissed her?
It didn’t matter, either way it was bad, she told herself as she retraced her steps to her own room.
And what was even worse was that she suddenly found in herself an eagerness for 5:00 a.m. to come around again.
As impossible as that seemed....
Chapter Four
The second day of ranch work was harder than the first.
Ally spent the morning cutting weeds out of a gully with a scythe, raking them and hauling them where they could be safely burned.
After a lunch she’d again packed for herself, Jackson, and only two ranch hands today, Jackson sent the ranch hands off to check on stock somewhere apparently far away. He and Ally set out to dig postholes and repair fence.
The good part of it was that beyond riding in Jackson’s pickup truck, none of the chores required much sitting on her abused rear end.
The bad part...
Well, it was all bad.
Hot and dirty, backbreaking, muscle-wrenching, punishing hard work.
But the worst was that despite wearing gloves, her hands went from sore to raw to blistered.
And even though she kept reminding herself it was all worth it by picturing Meggie’s improved spirits the evening before, as the afternoon wore on she couldn’t help thinking that this was not the life she’d planned for herself.
Not by a long shot.
Once her former husband’s schooling and training were over and his career was on track, she was supposed to have been able to quit work. To have more kids and stay at home to raise them.
Maybe it was old-fashioned, but having a family and family life, being a stay-at-home wife and mother—this was all she’d ever really wanted. She had even been looking forward to downsizing her cooking to accommodate only the people she loved rather than a restaurant full of strangers.
Yet here she was, sweaty and grimy, fighting biting horseflies, with her back, shoulders and arms aching. Her hands hurt so bad she could cry, her fanny was sorer than if she had just delivered quadruplets, and she was fixing fence in the middle of a Wyoming prairie with a man she hardly knew, who seemed to want to work her to death.
Okay, so he was working right alongside her, every bit as hard.
But still...
What she wouldn’t give to be in that kitchen she’d dreamed of for so many years, listening to the sounds of tiny voices playing in the backyard while she made hot-cross buns.
Instead it was Jackson’s buns her gaze strayed to. Tight and just round enough, easing into long legs as thick and hard as tree trunks....
Ally sighed, surprising herself with the wistful sound of it.
Not that she was wistful over Jackson. Of course not. It must have just been a belated wistfulness for what she’d been thinking about before, because there was no way it could have anything to do with Shag’s eldest son.
No way at all.
“Get that roll of barbed wire off the truck,” he ordered just then, not so much as glancing at her as he hammered nails into a post they’d set earlier.
Nope, nothing about that to inspire wistfulness.
Ally did as she was told, bringing the fencing material to him.
Jackson didn’t thank her or even acknowledge her help. He went right on as if she were some handmaiden doing his bidding as she was obliged to.
Not that Ally expected anything different by then. She was actually getting used to his brusqueness.
Still, feeling a little ornery herself, she said, “You’re welcome,” as sweetly as if he’d expressed his gratitude effusively.
Then she got back to her current job of yanking off the old, rusty wire they were replacing, once again forcing herself to picture Meggie as she had been the evening before: so proud of her handiwork with that freshly painted doghouse, chattering over dinner....
And into that mental image sneaked a memory of Jackson from last night, too.
They’d had a nice meal. A pleasant conversation as they’d shared cleanup duty. In fact, that whole time had been surprisingly enjoyable.
Ally’s gaze wandered to him on its own again as if to confirm that this man and the one from the evening before were the same.
He wore a gray T-shirt that clung to his broad back like a second skin, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Although she couldn’t have imagined anything better even if she’d tried.
His shoulders were a mile wide and his spine was so straight that between the two he looked as if he could bear the weight of a whole house.
He had the short sleeves of the T-shirt rolled up above his biceps—not out of vanity, as she might have suspected of another man, but because his arms were so big the sleeves would be binding if they were any lower. And what they bared was the swell of work-honed muscles, hard and strong and glistening in the blaze of the sunshine.
Something else about the evening before flashed through her mind as she watched him just then—the moment when he’d handed her the liniment, when she’d thought he might be about to kiss her.
Or had that all just been in her mind?
She didn’t think so. She distinctly remembered him easing nearer to her, almost as if he were drawn to her.
Unwillingly. Or else he wouldn’t have snapped back as if he’d been on the precipice of a deadly fall.
So why had he almost kissed her at all? At the worst he seemed to despise her. At the best, he barely tolerated her. Those were not inspirations for kissing a person.
But then she couldn’t say she was fond of him, either. Not really. And yet when he’d been easing toward her, she’d done her share of moving his way, too.
Which was the craziest part of the whole business.
But crazy or not, it was true. If he’d have kissed her, she’d probably have kissed him back.
Right on those lips that hid beneath his mustache.
She’d never kissed a man with a mustache before....
She imagined that it would have tickled.
But she didn’t want to imagine that it would have tickled in a pleasant way, so she decided kissing Jackson would probably have been awful. Like kissing somebody with a hairbrush attached to his upper lip.
And his mouth would probably have been as hard and cold and closed off as he was. As stiff and unyielding.
And he’d have probably given her orders—just how to wrap her arms around him, where to put her hands, when to close her eyes, when to part her lips, which side to angle her head....
She’d have probably hated it. The whole thing. From start to finish. She’d probably never want him to do it again. Once would have completely cured her....
Cured her of what?
Of wondering about it?
Yes, all right, so she was wondering what it might have been like if he’d actually done it.
Cured her of wanting it?
Oh, Lord.
Okay, maybe deep down—really deep down—she’d wanted him to kiss her.
There just wasn’t any other explanation for why she’d been on the verge of meeting him halfway.
Or any other explanation for why she’d lain awake in bed thinking about what it would have been like to be held in those powerful arms, against that rock-solid man’s body. No other explanation for why she’d relived again and again what it had actually felt like to have him pick her up and carry her over one of those broad shoulders....
But still, she couldn’t let herself believe any of those things would be good. That any of them might be so good that they would make her knees weak.
She had to convince herself that everything to do with Jackson was as horrible as the work he had her doing made her feel.
Because the man in the kitchen the night before, the man who’d carried
her up the stairs, the man who’d nearly kissed her, was the same man who tortured her by day because he didn’t want her around.
And that was something she needed not to forget.
* * *
Jackson had Ally stretching barbed wire while he went behind her and did the finish-up work—tightening the wire around the nails, pounding the nails against the loop, shoveling dirt in around the cement that held the posts in place.
Like everything he’d set her to do, she was inept at it. Slow, weak and not tremendously coordinated. A greenhorn through and through.
But he had to give her credit. She worked without complaint under the toughest conditions, doing her best—no matter how inadequate that was—at the most unpleasant jobs he could throw at her.
He respected that.
And he felt a little guilty for subjecting her to so much.
But it was for her own good, he told himself.
Besides the fact that he didn’t want her here, that she was nothing but trouble and extra work for him, women like Ally didn’t belong in a place like this. They came with romantic fantasies and television-fed images of what life on a ranch was like. They didn’t know what they were getting into and they were a danger to themselves because they weren’t as serious about it as they needed to be. They didn’t take precautions.
Getting herself lost the day before was a prime example. Just wandering off in the middle of wide-open range she wasn’t familiar with. Without any food or water on a mercilessly hot day. Letting her horse get away from her...
Where the hell was her common sense?
But he knew the answer to that. It was back in Denver. That was part of the problem—women like Ally might have city sense, or suburb sense. But they didn’t have country sense.
They just didn’t belong here.
“Keep it tight,” he told her, barking at her as if slack in the wire were a felony.
She didn’t say anything. She just put an extra effort into pulling the heavy coil more taut, trying not to show how much her hands were hurting as she did. Just the way she’d tried not to let him know how saddle sore she’d been last night and still was today.
He admired that, too.
Damn her.
Damn her for everything she was stirring up inside of him. Like the worry that had made him nearly frantic when he’d discovered he’d lost her yesterday and thought the worst—that maybe she’d been thrown, that she might have broken her neck.
That if she had, or even if something else had happened to her out there alone, it would have been his fault....
Well, damn it all to hell, what was he supposed to do? Just let her move in here as if it were some resort? This was a working ranch and if she wanted to live on it, she’d better know it, she’d better do her share of pulling the load, and she’d better learn how to do that without risking her neck.
Except that he didn’t want her living here. Underfoot, getting in his way, causing him problems. Making him mad at himself for working her the way Shag had worked him and Linc and Beth. Making him mad for being worried when he’d lost her, for being relieved and grateful when he’d found her. Making him maddest of all for wanting to wrap his arms around her and hold on to her to convince himself she really was okay....
No, he didn’t need this. Not any of it.
And he sure as hell didn’t need her right there in front of him every minute where he had to look at that wild, curly copper hair, and those eyes that made him think of the ocean, and that rear end that wasn’t much more than a couple of handfuls...
So he was pouring the work on pretty thick. Ignoring every inclination to ease up on her. To accommodate her.
To kiss her....
Not that he’d actually ignored that inclination. He’d damned near given in to it. Only at the very last second had he stopped himself.
She didn’t belong here—that’s what he’d reminded himself to keep from making a huge mistake. And that’s what he said yet again to himself now.
He needed her to get the hell out before it was too late.
Too late for him.
Before he got used to having her around. Before he started to like it. To count on it.
Because about the time he did, he knew what would happen. The reality of life here would hit her. It would get to be too much for her.
And that would be when she’d leave.
So no matter how much he hated himself for what he was doing to her, he’d go on making things rough, trying to speed up the process of her getting her fill of this place before he got in too deep.
And if there was a part of him that almost hoped it wouldn’t work?
He was fighting it. Hard.
Much, much harder than he was working her.
* * *
It was nearly seven when Ally and Jackson finished for the day. By then the fence they’d fixed stretched behind them for more than a mile. But when they got into the truck, Jackson didn’t head back the way they’d come to return to the ranch.
“We aren’t going home?” Ally asked, wondering if he actually had more work for them to do today. And how she could possibly do it being as tired as she was.
“First I have to pick up a randy stallion that went courtin’ a neighbor’s mare last night,” he answered, going on in an unusual bit of talkativeness. “I swear the horse has radar. Every time this particular mare comes into season he seems to know it and he gets to her. I think if he was on the East Coast and she was on the West, he’d still catch the scent and make a beeline.”
Ally tried not to be uncomfortable with the subject. “Maybe it’s love.”
Jackson gave her a sideways glance that said how silly he thought that idea was, but didn’t comment on it. Instead he said, “Didn’t you wonder why I had the horse trailer hitched up?”
“Not really. This is my first time in the truck. I thought maybe it was just always there.”
That won her a second of those looks from the corner of his eye, but there was no time for more than that as they reached a small yellow ranch house. A boy of about fourteen sat on the porch doing what looked like exercises with his left arm—which was missing a hand and the forearm nearly up to the elbow.
Without preamble or an invitation to come along, Jackson hopped out of the truck.
“Jackson!” the boy greeted as if he were thrilled to see him.
“‘Evenin’, Josh,” Jackson answered as Ally did a quick debate with herself about whether to just wait or join them.
She finally decided that if she was going to live around here, she needed to know her neighbors and not be considered unfriendly, so she made the effort to move her weary body and got out, too.
She followed Jackson to where he stood with one booted foot on the lowest of the six steps that led to the porch. When she got there, he nodded in her direction and said, “This is Ally Brooks, Josh. You’ve probably heard all about her by now. Ally, this is Josh Mercer.”
“Hi,” Ally said, wondering about the curious introduction. Why had this boy probably heard all about her, and from whom?
“Nice to meetcha,” Josh answered, looking down at his feet rather than at her.
But his teenage shyness didn’t extend to Jackson when he switched his attention back again. “You still gonna fly me into the hospital next time in the helicopter?” he asked eagerly.
“Sure. Said I would, didn’t I?”
“They’re gonna fit up a hook then. I’ll be glad to get it.”
“Looks like you’re doin’ good, though. Last time I saw you, you weren’t movin’ much yet.”
“Pretty good, yeah.” The boy came down the steps then. “Mom’s in the barn. I’ll go tell her you’re here and we’ll bring up ol’ Buck.”
Jackson gave just one nod at that, turned around and hitched a hip on the stair railing to wait.
Ally watched Josh go and, when he was out of earshot, she said, “What happened to him?”
“He was fixing a thresher—that’s a piece of
farm equipment,” Jackson added in case she couldn’t figure it out.
Ally ignored the condescension. “His hand couldn’t be saved?”
“Nope.”
“But he’s just a boy. What was he even doing near a dangerous machine, let alone trying to fix it?”
For the third time Jackson’s expression showed disbelief. “Josh and his mom run this place themselves. His father was mule-kicked in the head and died of a brain hemorrhage about five years back. Josh’s been doin’ more than his fair share ever since. He’s a good boy. But accidents happen,” Jackson added. “And out here there’s the chance of a lot of them.”
She knew he was seizing the opportunity to point that out and scare her. And, truthfully, she was picturing Meggie in Josh Mercer’s shoes. But rather than giving in to the fear Jackson was trying to encourage, she reasoned that she’d make absolutely sure her daughter was never in a position to repair farm machinery and vowed to give the little girl some new warnings of things to be wary of.
“Hello, you handsome devil, you.”
That drew Ally out of her thoughts. She looked up to find the owner of a very sultry voice headed their way, with Josh bringing up the rear, leading the horse.
The woman, who had to be Josh’s mom, had on a pair of the tightest blue jeans Ally had ever seen and a V-neck T-shirt that looked as if it had been spray-painted on so that every lush, well-endowed curve of hers was shouting to be noticed.
Although she’d have been noticed even had what she worn whispered. She was tall, thin, tan and very attractive, with sun-shot blond hair pulled back into a French braid that hung past her shoulders—something Ally’s own unruly curls wouldn’t allow her to do.
The gleaming golden hair framed a lean, high-cheekboned face that would have turned heads anywhere in the world. Her features were perfect, that rare female countenance that was no doubt pretty in her girlhood, but had changed to beauty with a few years and a little maturity added.
And she had eyes only for Jackson—big, round nearly coal black eyes.
Suddenly Ally was very aware of her own appearance in comparison to Ms. Mercer. Short, freckled, frizzy haired, dirty and grimy was her own self-conscious, self-demeaning assessment. She was certainly no competition for this woman who could have been every man’s dream of a farmer’s daughter.
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