The Rancher's Request

by Stella Bagwell

  “Maybe in our golden years, Angie. When all we have are our memories.”

  Later that afternoon, Matt was in one of the barns gathering ear tags and vaccination equipment when Lex walked up behind him.

  “There you are. I’ve been hunting everywhere for you,” his blond cousin said. “What are you doing in here? I thought we were going to ride out to range five and look over that herd. Williamson, that buyer in Clovis has been ringing my phone off the hook. I’ve got to ship him something just to shut him up.”

  “I forgot,” Matt said. “And I told the boys we were going to work the cattle here at the ranch yard before we moved them out to pasture. They’ve been penned for three days. They’re losing weight and I want them on grass as soon as possible.”

  Shoving the supplies into a duffel bag, Matt turned to face the other man, then wished he hadn’t when Lex started to whistle under his breath.

  “Hellfire, you look like you’ve been run over by a steamroller.”

  “Thanks, cuz,” Matt quipped with sarcasm. “You always were a real charmer.”

  Lex leaned in closer to inspect the lines around Matt’s eyes. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you get any sleep? I thought—” His words suddenly broke off as something suddenly registered with him and he grinned with pure mischief. “Oh yeah, how could I forget. Gracia stayed at the house last night. She said you had a date with the newspaperwoman. How did that go? From the looks of you, not good.”

  Growling with frustration, Matt bent to zip the duffel bag closed. “Even though it’s none of your business, it went fine. Just fine.”

  Lex began to chuckle and Matt lifted his head to cast him a hard glare.

  “Oh. I’m beginning to see the light. And thank God you have, too.”

  “Lex, I’m warning you to keep that big trap of yours shut or you’re going to be eating dirt and plenty of it.”

  The other man was still chuckling when Matt’s cell phone began to ring. He pulled the small instrument out of his pocket and answered, “Matt here.”

  “Matt, it’s Geraldine. I’m sorry to disturb you and I won’t keep you but a minute. I just wanted to give you an invitation to supper tonight. Nicci is actually going to come home early for one evening and we—the two of us—thought you might like to bring Juliet with you.”

  Matchmaking from his aunt? If it weren’t for Lex being present, he could have laughed out loud. If only his family knew just how matched he’d already been with Juliet.

  “Geraldine, Juliet and I already had supper together last night. Surely Gracia told you.”

  “She did. But what does two nights in a row hurt? I’m sure the woman will have to eat somewhere and Cook is grilling rib eyes tonight.”

  He turned a droll look on Lex. “Is your son going to be there?” he asked his aunt.

  The woman chuckled. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “I won’t bother,” he muttered, then in a more serious tone, added, “Okay, count us in. That is, if Juliet can make it.”

  “I’m sure you can persuade her, honey. See you at seven,” she said happily. “And don’t worry about Gracia. She’ll be staying over with me again tonight.”

  His family was obviously maneuvering him. But why should that bother him when being with Juliet was the only thing his mind wanted to contemplate. Talk about having it bad, he thought wryly. He was worse than a lovesick bull separated from his herd of heifers.

  “All right, Geraldine,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

  He punched the off button and slipped the phone back into his shirt.

  Lex studied him with a keen eye. “All kidding aside, Matt, I want you to be happy. I’ve wanted that for a long time. And I’m hoping this woman turns out to be everything you need.”

  Matt wiped a weary hand over his face. “I don’t know, Lex. I wasn’t looking for this to happen. But it has and now she’s gotten a hold on me. If she isn’t right for me—then I’m in for a hell of a time.”

  Seeing the anxious shadows in Matt’s eyes, Lex reached over and gave his cousin’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “Come on, cuz, let’s get to work.”

  Later that evening, as the sun began to dip behind the mesquite-covered hills, Juliet found herself once again in Matt’s truck and on her way to the Sandbur ranch. Only an hour earlier, she’d arrived home and walked into her kitchen to prepare herself a snack. When the telephone rang and it had been Matt inviting her to have dinner with him, she’d been taken by surprise. She’d been thinking, even hoping he’d be calling her soon, but she’d never expected to hear from him this quickly.

  It had taken her only a few split seconds to assure him she’d be ready to go. The idea of hemming and hawing, as some women did just to keep a man wondering, had never entered Juliet’s mind. After last night, it would have been stupid to try to hide her eagerness to be with him. The intimacy they’d shared was beyond petty dating games.

  Glancing over at him, she said, “I have to admit that I was surprised to hear from you this evening.”

  A wry twist to his mouth, he said, “I wasn’t going to call you. I figured you were tired. But I could tell Geraldine was eager for us to come.”

  Juliet was tired all right. At the most she’d gotten three hours of sleep and her body was sore in places she’d not even known existed. Yet none of that mattered. Just looking over at his rugged profile and tough, lean body was enough to fill her with excitement and longing. She knew the evening was going to be a long one until she could be alone with him again.

  “I’m glad she wanted us to be there,” Juliet told him. “Does she invite you over to her house very often?”

  Matt shrugged. “Oh, three or four times a month probably. It gives Lex and I, and sometimes Cordero, a chance to talk about the business side of the ranch. And Geraldine enjoys having family around her for any reason. Nicci is so tied up at the clinic that she’s rarely around and her younger daughter, Mercedes, is in the air force. So my aunt has to mostly settle with us hairy old guys for company.”

  Smiling wistfully, Juliet gazed out the passenger window. “I’m sure you men make her happy. Especially since she’s a widow. If I might ask, what happened to her husband?”

  “Paul?” A frown tugged his brows together as he stared ahead at the highway. “He was killed in a boating accident down on the gulf near Corpus. He’d gone out with some of his old cronies that he’d worked with at Coastal Oil. Somehow he went overboard without anyone seeing. By the time they turned the boat around to go after him, the waves had sucked him under.”

  Shocked by his brief account, she turned her head to look at him. “Did they ever find his body?”

  His frown deepened as he tossed her another glance. “Yes. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  Realizing she must have sounded like a lawyer, or even worse, a nosy journalist, she said, “I’m sorry if I sounded heartless, Matt. It’s just—my mind is trained to assimilate facts and the story somehow sounds flimsy. But if the incident was ruled as an accident, then I guess there’s no reason to consider it suspicious.”

  His expression turned to wry admiration as he focused his gaze back on the highway. “You’re sharp, woman. Funny that you should be so quick to come to that notion. Geraldine has always thought there was more to Paul’s death than what the police released in their report.”

  “Was an autopsy done?”

  Matt nodded grimly. “The coroner said it looked as though Paul had suffered a heart attack and that’s what had caused him to fall over the edge of the boat. But Paul had never had any sort of heart ailment. He went for regular tests and checkups with his doctor. He didn’t smoke and exercised regularly. It didn’t make sense. But then God has his own ideas about when a person’s time is up.”

  Juliet’s thoughts turned to Geraldine as she tried to imagine the unbearable loss she’d suffered. If Matt was suddenly taken from her, for any reason, how would she, could she go on? He’d already become too much a part of her to be
able to survive without him.

  Turning her mind away from the uneasy thought, she said, “You’re right. But sometimes evil people intervene.”

  “Hmm. Well, Geraldine thinks it odd that two of Paul’s old buddies later ended up making millions selling their shares of the oil company. There were rumors that insider trading had gone on, but that fact was never proved, so a case was never opened and Paul’s was closed and marked accidental death.”

  She stared at him with something like horror. “Matt! A good investigator should have been brought in. Geraldine—”

  “Was worried,” he said with a shake of his head. “At that time she said Paul had been behaving oddly. Something had him greatly distracted. She’d started to think it might be another woman, but after his death, she feared it had something to do with the company. She believed Paul was a good, honest man, but when he refused to discuss anything with her, she couldn’t help but wonder and worry. Then when he died so suspiciously, she decided it would be best not to drag up what might best be left buried with him.”

  Juliet nodded thoughtfully. “I can understand that. He was gone and loving memories were all she had left. She didn’t want to lose them, too.”

  He looked at her with surprising tenderness. “You’re thinking like a woman now, Juliet. Instead of a reporter.”

  Her heart swelled as she reached across the seat for his hand. He readily gave it to her and she squeezed his fingers.

  “You might not believe it, Matt, but the woman in me wins out every time.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, honey.”

  Chapter Ten

  A few minutes later, they arrived at the Saddler house. To Juliet, the majestic home looked almost as it did the day she attended Raine Ketchum’s wedding. Except the living room wasn’t cleared of furniture for dancing and the hordes of laughing, partying people filling up every nook and cranny of every room were now gone.

  Geraldine herself met them at the front door and as she led the two of them to another room that she called the parlor, Juliet marveled at all the fresh flowers sitting here and there, the antique furniture and the photos and paintings on the wall. Everything in the house seemed to have character and history to it and the images definitely brought home the fact to Juliet that Geraldine was proud of her heritage. No wonder she was reluctant to dig into the unknown past of her husband’s death or that of her grandfather. She wouldn’t want her family’s image tarnished for any reason. And especially not for newspaper sales.

  Juliet silently groaned. She didn’t want to think about that tonight. She loved Matt. And his family was becoming her family, too. She was finding everything her heart had ever hungered for. What would Matt and Geraldine think if she wrote a story about their ancestors, even if it was a good story? Would they be resentful? Would they ever forgive her? Dear God, she prayed, she had to do this right. Otherwise she was going to lose everything that had ever mattered to her.

  Gracia and Lex were waiting for them in the parlor and Nicci showed up within a few minutes. Cook served the adults strong margaritas in cold, fluted glasses, while Gracia had to settle for a soda over ice.

  Juliet was surprised to see the teenager dressed in a skirt and short-sleeved sweater tonight. Her long hair was swept demurely back into a neat French braid and she looked far more mature than the girl that Juliet had found crying on the lawn that day of the wedding. She appeared to be far happier, too, and Juliet truly hoped that she was a part of the reason a smile was now on the teenager’s face.

  As for Matt, he seemed to be totally comfortable with the idea that she was sitting close beside him in the presence of his family. In fact, he took her hand often and each time he looked at her, she could feel the undercurrents of his desire throbbing through to her fingertips. The subtle glints in his eyes were tiny promises of what the night would bring, and Juliet found it a struggle to keep her mind on the conversations around them.

  “Now that the house isn’t full of wedding guests,” she told Geraldine, “I can see just how beautiful it is.”

  The older woman, who was dressed casually in jeans and a checked shirt with a turquoise bolo tie fastened at her throat, looked at her and smiled warmly. “Thank you, Juliet. After we eat, I’ll have Matt take you on a tour. When he was just a boy, he used to reside here, he knows all about the house.”

  Juliet’s gaze vacillated between Geraldine and Matt. “What was that like, living with your sister and brother-in-law?” she asked the woman.

  Geraldine laughed with genuine pleasure. “Oh, it was wonderful. I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. Of course, Liz and I were both very young then and we had energy to spare. And believe me, we needed it with both of us chasing after young children and trying to help with chores here on the ranch, too. Paul’s job required him to do a lot of entertaining so I was constantly planning parties and welcoming executives into our home.” She turned a fond smile on Matt. “Mingo, Matt’s father, hated all the socializing and would always find some reason to stay down at the barn until all the guests had gone.”

  “So now we know where he gets his antisocial attitude,” Nicci teased from across the room.

  “I’m not antisocial.” Matt spoke up in his own defense. “I just prefer things quiet.”

  “Yeah, like a tomb,” Lex put in.

  Everyone laughed at that, including Gracia, who was curled up on the opposite side of her father.

  “Aunt Geraldine says Daddy was naughty when he was little. But he doesn’t want to talk about that in front of me,” she said with smiling mischief.

  Juliet laughed. “I’ll bet somebody around here is willing to tell on him.”

  “Well,” Nicci said, “I have to admit that all of us kids were rather rambunctious. I’m surprised this house still looks as good as it does. We used to run up and down the staircase, skate on the floors and slide down the banister. We tried experiments in the kitchen and ended up blowing yellow food coloring all over the walls and floors. One time when we were about ten or eleven, Matt took his lariat and tied the door handle to my bedroom shut so that I couldn’t get out.”

  Grinning, Juliet turned her head to look at him and found grooves of amusement bracketing his lips, but it was the twinkle in his eyes that told her he’d not always been a serious man.

  “Always a cowboy, sounds like,” she said.

  “Always,” Geraldine spoke up. “Matt used to howl when Liz would haul him out of the saddle and make him come in to do his homework.”

  Not about to be left out, Lex said to his sister, “What about me, Nicci? You didn’t tell Juliet that I was the one who was your hero and came along and let you out of your bedroom. Took some doing, too. I had to get out my bowie knife and cut Matt’s rope. He was mad as a hornet.”

  Nicci laughed. “That’s why you ended up with a black eye, little brother.”

  The bantering and laughter continued until Cook appeared in the doorway to call them to the dining room. The group quickly made a noisy exit to that part of the house. Matt kept his arm firmly around the back of Juliet’s waist and she welcomed the affectionate contact. It made her feel wanted and connected to him in a special way.

  Once they gathered around the table, Gracia was quick to point out Juliet’s chair, which was, of course, next to Matt’s. The teenager sat on the opposite side of her.

  The dining room was large, with the long walls broken up by several wide arched windows. A long table with enough room for twelve people was covered in a deep red tablecloth and set with colorful Mexican pottery. In the middle, small bowls of yellow marigolds sat at intervals to lend a festive mood to the meal.

  Nearly an hour later, the steaks and accompanying dishes had been eaten and Lex was beginning to stretch.

  “Great supper, Mom, but I’ve got several phone calls to make tonight before I turn in.” As Matt’s cousin rose from the table, he looked over at Juliet and gave her a smile and a wink. “Juliet, your company really brightened the place up tonight. I hope
we’ll see you again soon.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  Once Lex had left the table Nicci quickly followed, saying she had medical reports to read. Matt said to Juliet, “If you’re ready, I think we’d better be going, too.”

  Geraldine frowned at her nephew. “But you haven’t shown Juliet the house yet. Surely you can do that before you go.”

  “I have to be up at four in the morning,” he explained. “And Juliet has to be at work early, too. We’ll do it another night, Geraldine.”

  The older woman smiled her concession. “I understand. Besides, that will give you a good excuse to bring Juliet back for another visit.”

  Nodding, Juliet quickly expressed her thanks to Geraldine for the meal and her hospitality, then rose from the table.

  “If you don’t mind waiting for just a minute or two,” she told Matt, “I’d like to go to the kitchen and thank Cook for the lovely meal.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be waiting out on the porch.”

  Jumping eagerly to her feet, Gracia said to Juliet, “I’ll show you the way.”

  The teenager grabbed Juliet’s arm and practically pulled her out of the dining room, then once they entered a wide hallway, Gracia tugged her to one side.

  “You probably already know the way to the kitchen,” she said in a conspiring whisper, “but I wanted to talk to you without Daddy hearing.”

  Juliet studied the teenager’s sweet, eager face. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “No! No, I think everything is cool! Daddy likes you. Really, really likes you! I can tell.”

  With a cautious smile, Juliet said, “Well, honey, I don’t know about the really, really part. But we have become—close,” she said, unable to think of a more suitable word to describe her relationship with Matt.

  Gracia sighed with a mixture of joy and hope. “Oh, Juliet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you became my mother?”