The last time someone had the audacity to talk to Cameron like this, he’d sent the joker through a plate-glass window. He hated the way women used their sex as an excuse to blurt out whatever they felt like saying without regard to consequence. No matter how pretty this one was, he for one wasn’t about to be bullied by someone who barely came up to his chin.
“For your information, I don’t belong to anyone. And if you don’t think so, just watch how fast I walk away from this bird-brained operation of yours!”
The exact opposite of this belligerent cowboy, whose voice paralleled his temper, when Pat was angry, her voice dropped several cool degrees. When she spoke again, her words were cold enough to freeze-dry the blazing Wyoming sun overhead.
“That contract is legally binding, and the only way you’re walking away from here is if I fire you.”
In fact, nothing could have made Pat happier at the moment than to send this macho cowboy down the road with an imprint of her boot upon his sexy derriere. Unfortunately, she was far too desperate to let pride get in the way of good sense. Circumstances had left her a widow with three small children and a ranch in dire need of repairs. She had tried telling Hadley that making a go of an emu ranch smack-dab in the middle of cattle country wouldn’t be the cakewalk he thought it would be. He hadn’t listened of course. Once he was off on one of his get-rich-quick schemes, there was as much chance of stopping Hadley Erhart as the guard rail that had given way and left him dead at the bottom of Red Canyon one snowy night.
Cameron’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean to tell me you’d try keeping a man here against his will?”
His words conjured up for Pat all sorts of improper sexual images utilizing ropes and handcuffs. She dismissed the innuendo with a haughty swipe of the hand.
“Nobody forced you to sign that contract.”
Lady or no, Cameron was just about to tell this brassy little firecracker where she could put her legally binding contract, when he felt the barrel of a gun poked into the small of his back.
“Freeze, varmint!”
Two rascals wearing battered cowboy hats, shorts emblazoned with cartoon characters, and worn, dusty boots regarded him from behind matching scowls. Drawn by the commotion, Johnny and Kirk Erhart had been covertly watching the heated interplay as intently as any full-fledged theatrical production. With a trail of improvised cowboy paraphernalia dragging behind them, the two boys rushed to their mother’s defense.
“Reach for the sky!”
While one boy kept his plastic gun steady against the interloper’s back, the other gathered a loop of rope into his hands. Hoping they weren’t contemplating a hanging, Cameron raised his hands in mock surrender.
Clearly he had been ambushed.
“Johnny!” his mother scolded. “How many times have I told you not to point that at anyone?”
“Mom...” the child said in embarrassment before regaining his stage presence. “Keep ‘em up there where I can see ’em.”
His finger twitching on the trigger of his cap gun, the older boy informed Cameron with genuine Western resolve. “Around these parts, mister, a man stands by his word.”
What the woman’s ire had not evoked in Cameron, a child’s innocence had—a sense of guilt. Johnny, the woman had called him. Darned if the kid didn’t remind him some of himself at that age. Cameron fought the urge to run his hand through the lad’s shaggy, sandy-colored hair.
An image of another little boy standing in the shadows of the Wind River Mountains came back to him as clearly as if it had been recorded for posterity. Tears streaming down his face, the child had linked hands with his mother and vowed to someday “show ’em all that a Wade could never be beaten.” Almost two decades had passed since the seed of that particular promise had been planted. Time enough for Cameron to cultivate a way of returning home an unprecedented success, reclaim the land he considered his birthright, and turn it into one of the finest operations in the country.
There was more than just a little self-indulgent gratification involved in his game plan, and he knew it. Knew it and accepted it as part of why he was the man he was. The kind of man who wouldn’t let a couple of broken ribs in the semifinals of the National Rodeo Championship stop him from achieving his dream. The kind of man determined to overcome any obstacles in his path, no matter how large—or how small...
A funny ache settled in the pit of Cameron’s stomach as he studied the stubborn set of this little boy’s jaw. He wondered how he would have reacted at that age had someone come onto their property and commenced yelling at his mother.
“That’s all right, ma’am,” Cameron said, squatting on his haunches to meet the child at eye level. “I understand that a man’s got to do what it takes to protect what’s his.”
Johnny seemed to visibly grow an inch. Off to the side a couple of paces, his brother holstered his toy gun.
“You’re not really gonna break a promise you made to my mom, are you?” The look the boy gave him was so piercing that it almost made Cameron forget why he was here.
Almost.
Gruffly he reminded himself that he wasn’t here on a charity case. Having limited interaction with them, he didn’t even particularly like kids. His job here was not to rescue anyone, but rather to kick this pushy mommy and her brood off his ranch before she tried bamboozling him with those unusually long eyelashes. It suddenly occurred to Cameron that the best way to accomplish his purpose was not by butting heads with her. No matter that she had made a laughingstock of the Triple R, it was after all in his best interest to stick around awhile.
“All right, lady. You win.”
Cameron capitulated with a bona fide grin that activated a matching pair of dimples on either side of his mouth. He’d have to remember to thank Johnny later for providing him an opportunity to squeeze out of the corner he’d backed himself into.
“Whether your contract is legally binding or not, it’s lucky for you that I’m a man of my word. Looks like you’ve got yourselves a prisoner, boys.”
Wondering exactly what she’d let herself in for, Pat contemplated Cameron’s use of the word lucky. It was obvious that Johnny and Kirk were fascinated by the rough-and-tumble cowboy who looked like he’d just stepped off the set of their favorite television series. That phony line about him being a man of his word certainly sounded like a load of typical Hollywood hype to her. Pat’s cynical thoughts were interrupted by her youngest son’s most frequently uttered complaint.
“I’m hungry.”
“I just fed you,” she responded with a telltale sigh.
“But that was hours ago.”
It was at that precise moment that the baby decided she had been ignored long enough. Flinging her bottle out of the playpen, Amy protested her prolonged captivity with an ear-splitting wail intended to let anyone within a mile radius know of her unhappiness.
Cameron watched Pat’s eyelids drift shut in weariness. “Go get your sister, boys,” she instructed, “and I’ll get started on dinner.”
It wasn’t every day a real live cowboy landed on their front steps, and certainly not one who appeared willing to indulge them in a game of make-believe. Consequently, Johnny delegated the mundane chore to his little brother.
“Kirk, you go get Amy while I take the prisoner to the hoosegow.”
Pat graced Cameron with an amused smile. “You can take that to mean the house. Hopefully you and I will be able to have a calmer discussion about terms of your new job over dinner.”
Proud of the way she uttered the words as smoothly as if she were looking at the man’s résumé instead of the hard plane of his chest, she added as an afterthought, “That’ll give me a chance to thank you properly for saving me from breaking my neck earlier.”
Although Cameron could think of a variety of ways that this fiery little number could show her appreciation, he doubted whether any of them were what she had in mind. He tried bridling those wayward thoughts, but his lazy smile nonetheless made Pat remember for the
first time in a very long while that she was a woman as well as a mother.
Chapter Two
Hoping to stop the boys’ squabble over who was supposed to be in charge of the baby, Cameron paused on his way to the “hoosegow” to emancipate the squalling toddler from her playpen. There was no benevolence in the act; he wanted only to put an end to the tot’s deafening howls for attention. It was little wonder her mother was crazy. In his opinion, anyone forced to endure that kind of nerve-grating caterwauling for more than one solid minute just might have a right to be.
To his complete and utter surprise, the baby stopped crying the instant he picked her up. Grateful for small miracles, Cameron mutely bore the fruit-stained kiss she planted upon his cheek as she nestled against his chest with a satisfied coo. Her actions only confirmed his theory that women were genetically programmed from birth to manipulate men. A femme fatale at this tender age would undoubtedly turn a mother prematurely gray and a father bald.
Which, by the way, made him wonder where the heck the man of the house was, anyway. Cameron was anxious to see what kind of elusive louse expected a woman to reshingle a house all by herself. He hadn’t noted a ring on Pat’s finger, but then again Cameron wouldn’t exactly expect her to wear one while doing such physically exacting work.
“For crying out loud!” he exclaimed, shaken from his errant thoughts by a growing wet spot down the front of his clean, new shirt.
One didn’t have to be Dr. Spock to discern the cause to be a leaky diaper. Loosening the baby’s sticky hands from around his neck, Cameron thrust her from him as if she were a package of nitroglycerin. As far as he was concerned, all children should come wrapped in cellophane with detailed warning labels attached.
“Keep on moving, mister,” Johnny directed him at the end of his plastic barrel.
Cameron gritted his teeth as he foisted the baby into Kirk’s thin arms. Not used to being bossed around by anyone, it was especially galling to bend his will to a ten-year-old’s. As he took his first faltering steps toward captivity, Cameron could have sworn that big goofy-looking bird in the corral winked at him.
Pat paused to watch her children interact with her new foreman. Considering his overtly hostile reaction to her, he was actually being a pretty darned good sport—or prisoner, rather—as Johnny directed him at gunpoint up the back steps. Pushed back at a rakish angle, Cameron’s black felt cowboy hat allowed his hair to fall carelessly across his forehead. Pat couldn’t help but notice how the dark blond color was shot through unevenly with streaks of sunshine. Suddenly he looked far less a broad-shouldered ruffian than a charming grown up version of her own two little imps.
Albeit an incredibly virile version.
Startled by the womanly reaction that curled her stomach up in a tight ball and sent handfuls of tingles racing through her body in a flash of heat, Pat was amazed that some stranger could waltz into her front yard, pluck her in midair like a pop fly and simultaneously make her wish she was wearing something soft and sexy. She thought she had buried those feelings with her husband, and it terrified her to think of them resurfacing. As a mother and businesswoman, she had more than enough to handle with a clear head, let alone one filled with the stuff and nonsense of romantic fairy tales.
Once upon a time, Pat had been young and naive enough to fall for such balderdash—and had spent the duration of her life paying for it. Ignoring her parents’ repeated warnings that Hadley Erhart’s pockets were as empty as his promises, she had eloped at eighteen, pledging herself one hundred percent to each of her husband’s successive ventures. Unfortunately, Hadley had a habit of expending more energy in the engineering of his next get-rich-quick scheme than in the arduous process of making any of them actually work. As his stern father-in-law commented at his funeral, Hadley was a whole lot better at starting things than finishing them.
It was less allegiance to her late husband’s memory than a commitment to abandon the gypsy life they had lived, hopping from one risky endeavor to another that kept Pat so stubbornly rooted to this place. The moment she’d laid eyes upon it, she had fallen in love with this run-down old ranch. It had as much character as the mountain range just outside her back door. Life in the shadows of those larger-than-life mountains was hard, no question about it But, isolated from the problems of more populous areas, the soil in Wyoming was good for growing happy, healthy children.
Even though the local naysayers were laying bets against her chances of surviving just one winter, Pat was determined to make a real home for her family right here. And if that meant having to humble herself by making dinner for some obnoxious cowboy who openly regretted saving her neck, then so be it.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, clearing off a spot for Cameron on the sofa and casting an embarrassed look at the abandoned toys cluttering the room, “while I get started on dinner.”
Short of declaring it a national disaster area, there was nothing she could do about the state of disarray of her house. Fixing supper was the priority of the moment. Simple fare like peanut butter sandwiches or macaroni and cheese generally sufficed for their evening meal, but one look at those long legs stretched across her living room floor sent that idea skittering away like a sunbeam upon rushing water. It was highly unlikely that a man as big as Cameron would be satisfied with her usual laissez-faire attitude toward food.
Pat would have liked to have impressed her new employee with her culinary talents. Unfortunately, the empty pantry was a reflection of her checkbook. She could only hope that her new foreman was handier with a hammer than Hadley had been. The last thing she needed around here was another helpless man with an appetite to match his impressive frame.
As if worried Cameron might attempt an escape, Johnny and Kirk took their places on either side of their prisoner on the couch and settled in for their favorite television program. It was an animated version of an old Western, underscored by the timeless theme of good versus bad. The last time he’d watched a show where the heroes and villains were so easily identified by the color of their hats, he’d been no older than the two boys who held him captive.
Cameron glanced uncomfortably at his own dark hat resting on the edge of the sofa. Like a dog trying to rid itself of a pesky flea, he tried shaking the feeling off. It wasn’t as if God had personally assigned him to this family’s troubles. He had more than enough of his own to handle. Cameron reminded himself that his primary objective was to ascertain just how cheaply he could buy back the old place. And do so before he became emotionally attached to the “squatters” who were presently attached to it. He knew that anything more would simply be tempting fate.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cameron caught a glimpse of the woman working in the kitchen. He snapped his head around in a double take. It looked like she was attacking an avocado with a hammer. A second look determined that it was in fact the biggest, greenest egg he had ever seen. While green eggs and ham might be a suitable meal for Dr. Seuss, the very thought made Cameron’s stomach quiver.
Ten minutes later he found himself seated before the world’s largest omelet. Milk, home-canned apples, and garden-fresh salad accompanied it. Ever vigilant, Johnny and Kirk flanked him on both sides. Amy sat beside her mother in a high chair that had been mended too often with great gobs of duct tape.
Despite the growling in his stomach, Cameron was about to beg off the main course when a familiar voice echoed through his mind. “People whose manners are absent probably are missing more than just their manners. No matter how old you get, son, or how important you might think you’ve become, just remember your mother raised you right and act accordingly.”
Rose Wade had been dead for almost fifteen years, but Cameron felt her presence in this house as surely as when she had taught him respect at her table. A lump formed in his throat. As inexplicably as a moth is drawn to a flame, Cameron’s memories had led him back home in search of that which had been stolen from him. Was it innocence, he wondered, or pride?
An obe
dient son, he complied with his mother’s ghostly command. Sectioning off a tiny piece of omelet, he took a hesitant bite. To his astonishment, it was quite tasty.
He lifted his gaze from his plate to discover Pat waiting for his reaction. She looked so anxious and so lovely sitting there that his heart swelled up in his chest like an overinflated balloon.
“Not bad,” he commented, taking another mouthful.
Cameron watched the hardness around her eyes soften. He was on the verge of encouraging her to use that dynamite smile of hers a little more often when a handful of egg drilled him square in the forehead.
“Amy!” her mother cried out in horror.
Undaunted, the tot launched her spoon into space where it did a double somersault before landing in the middle of their guest’s dinner plate.
The boys roared as Amy clapped her hands in glee.
“I’m so sorry,” Pat stammered, coming at Cameron with a napkin.
“No harm done, ma‘am,” he said, stopping his red-faced hostess in her tracks with a careless wave of the hand. “It isn’t the first time I’ve had egg on my face, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”
Pat was impressed by this gruff cowboy’s tact. She knew few men who would have handled the incident half as graciously. The instant the poor man had stepped onto her property, he’d been beset by calamity—from women dropping from the sky into his arms, being captured by the infamous Erhart Boys, to being ambushed at the dinner table. Watching him wipe the splatters from his once clean Western-cut shirt, she could hardly blame Cameron for his lack of enthusiasm about signing on at Fort Bedlam.
Wyoming Born & Bred Page 2