“And you could have a baby of your own,” Paz said.
Jane laughed. “Can’t you just see that?”
“Yes, I can,” Paz said seriously.
Finished drying her hands, Tina crossed the room. “Right now, I can have this baby. Andi promised I could watch Missy while she went for a ride.”
With mixed reluctance and relief, Jane handed the child to her.
“Well, then.” Andi stood. “Jane’s now free to walk with me out to the corral.”
Jane’s breath caught. Luckily, Paz and Tina, both cooing over the baby, hadn’t noticed. “What’s the matter, coz? Have you forgotten the way?”
“Not at all.” Andi’s small smile said she had noticed Jane’s reaction. “I just have a sudden craving for your company.”
Jane faked a sigh. “Well, I guess if you can’t do without me, I’ll have to take that walk to the corral with you.”
With any luck, she would get a glimpse of the rancher in charge.
They left through the door to the back porch and went down the stairs.
“Here we are,” Andi said, her voice as bright as the sun overhead. “Just like old times, walking to the barn together.”
Jane raised her eyebrows and looked at her.
Tina was the youngest of the three cousins. Jane was the oldest. With just a few months’ difference between herself and Andi, they had been close growing up, though they saw each other only when their parents’ vacations coincided.
“Yes,” Jane said. “Here we are. And what exactly are you leading up to with that cat-and-canary grin?”
“Nothing but giving you the opportunity to talk. You look like you need it. And now’s our chance. So tell me, what’s happening between you and Pete?”
“Why should there be anything going on?”
“Oh, Jane. That’s as bad as the line you used yesterday. ‘Why should his distraction have something to do with me?’” Andi mimicked. “Come on—admit it. You’ve had a thing for him for years.”
She looked ahead of them up the path. Eddie, the stable hand, led a fully saddled horse from the barn. As Jed had cleared the hotel for the week except for family and wedding guests, more than likely the horse was for Andi to ride.
“Yeah,” Jane said finally. “I’ve got a need to aggravate Pete.”
“And I’m sure you’ve done a great job of it. But don’t tell me there’s not something else beyond that.”
“So, a long time ago, we each had a schoolgirl crush on one of Grandpa’s ranch hands. Neither of those crushes lasted.”
“No, they didn’t.” Andi’s suddenly emotionless tone told Jane she was thinking of the man she had gone on to marry.
She, on the other hand, had just gone on with life.
She looked across the yard to the barn again.
When she saw Pete standing in the doorway, her pulse quickened. He watched their approach, removing his Stetson to run his hand through his hair. The light brown strands picked up golden highlights from the sun.
Jane’s breath caught.
She hadn’t realized she’d inhaled so sharply with pleasure until she heard her cousin laugh.
“I was only half-right yesterday,” Andi said. “Maybe you and Pete are both ready for some companionship.” She looked over at her. “You said yourself you gave him the option to send someone else to help. He didn’t take you up on it, did he?”
“No.” A tiny shot of satisfaction made her fight to hide a smile. “But that doesn’t mean anything. He’s probably just glad to get a break from his ranching duties.”
“Uh-huh. And you’d probably be glad to get your hands on your hot rancher, just the way Tina has.”
“He’s not mine.”
“Maybe he could be.”
At the thought, her pulse picked up again, but she shook her head. “We don’t have a lot in common, Andi. Besides, he’s got a family keeping him here, and I need to stay on the move.”
“You could stop moving. Take those cooking lessons from Paz,” Andi teased.
“As if.”
As ridiculous as the idea was, she couldn’t help but thank Andi for trying. Just as she couldn’t help the way her heart began to thump when Pete waved his hat in greeting. Then he turned and entered the barn.
She wasn’t about to chase him, not after Andi’s teasing and especially not with Eddie standing in the doorway watching Andi get into the saddle.
Instead, she rested her arms on the corral fence until Andi trotted her horse away from the barn. She watched until both horse and rider made one speck in the distance.
After another few moments, she shot a glance toward the barn, then finally walked back to the Hitching Post alone.
* * *
EVEN RANCH MANAGERS had to have a day off, Jane admitted when the rest of Sunday passed without a sign of Pete. She hadn’t talked to him since Friday, hadn’t seen him since that morning. Both meetings seemed a very long time ago. She felt worse when she recalled how he had turned away when she and Andi approached.
This afternoon, though she might temporarily have lost an assistant, she seemed to have gained a shadow.
Rachel, Robbie and Andi’s son, Trey, had settled down on the sitting room floor to play under the watchful eye of their doting great-grandfather and, often, Andi or Tina.
Every time Jane entered the room, Rachel found a reason to come sit beside her, as she had done on their trip to Santa Fe the day before. Sometimes, she would bring an update on a board game. Other times, she would show off one of the horses the kids were playing with in a cardboard corral.
“Looks like you’ve made a conquest of that one,” Jed said on her next visit to the room. He sat cradling Andi’s sleeping infant to his chest.
Jane sank onto the couch opposite him. Considering the way Pete reacted every time she spoke to his daughter, she couldn’t imagine him calmly taking the news of Rachel’s attentions.
“You look good with a little one by your side,” Jed added.
She shook her head. “Don’t start, Grandpa. Tina and Andi have already given you a few great-grands to keep you occupied.”
“Always room in my arms for another one.”
“Always room in your heart, too, I know.” She smiled. “But no room in my life yet.” And maybe there never would be.
“Haven’t seen Pete around here today.”
She stiffened. “No.”
“The boys are still working the northeast pastures. Gotta get them done before they can move on.”
“So that’s—” She stopped, mentally kicking herself for the slip Jed was too smart not to notice.
He nodded. “That’s why he’s not around.”
From across the room, Rachel spotted her, waved and began to get to her feet.
“Sounds like you two are making some good progress,” he added. When she stared at him, he continued quickly, “With the pictures, I mean. Now, don’t forget what I said the other day about readying up one of those cabins.”
“I won’t.” Truthfully, until he had mentioned them, she had forgotten all about the small cabins on the far side of the hotel. They were being refurbished as part of the Hitching Post’s rejuvenation, and the contractors had finished their work in one of them.
“The suites upstairs are nice,” he continued, “and they’ll do fine, too, but we can’t have a website without showing off those honeymoon hideaways, now, can we.”
“Jane’s going to take pictures in the cabins, Grandpa Jed?” Rachel hopped up on the couch beside Jane. “Can I go with you, Jane? I never get to go in the cabins. You can take some pictures of me, too. And I can help you.”
Jane smiled. A shadow and a new assistant, all in one. If only she could hold that much interest for Rachel’s daddy.
Not likely. Just because she was fascinated by the man, she couldn’t fool herself into thinking he was genuinely wrapped up in her.
As she settled back against the couch, Rachel held up a toy horse. “I like this one best, because it’s a Shetland, like Bingo. I learned to ride on Bingo.” She leaned forward to whisper, “Sometimes I let Robbie have this one. Because Miss Loring says we have to share.”
“Miss Loring gives you lots of good advice, doesn’t she?”
Rachel nodded. “My daddy and Sharon and Grandpa Jed do, too. But they don’t give me a time-out if I don’t remember.”
Jane looked toward Jed, whose huge grin made her struggle doubly hard to hold back her laugh. “What do they do?”
“Well, Sharon tells me I need to stop and think two times about how I would feel if somebody didn’t share with me.”
“That’s good advice, too.”
“Yeah. And Grandpa Jed says—” Rachel took a deep breath and attempted to mimic Jed’s deep voice “‘—I’ll tell you flat-out straight, little girl, sometimes you have to con-...con-...’”
“Concede,” Jed supplied.
“‘—concede.’ That means give up, right?”
“It can,” he agreed. “But it can also mean to let go for just a while.”
Exactly what she should do with her fantasies of Pete.
When Missy squirmed in Jed’s arms and he turned his attention to the baby, she focused on Rachel. “And...your father?” she asked quietly under Missy’s cries. “What does he say when you don’t remember to share?”
Rachel laughed. “He says I’m an apple falling out of a tree. Or something like that.” She looked down to stroke her pony’s mane. When she looked up again at Jane, she was wide-eyed and unsmiling. “And then he just looks sad.”
Chapter Six
Late Monday afternoon, Pete reined in near the quiet corral and dismounted to lead his horse across the yard. When he gave a loud whistle, Eddie came running to take the reins from him.
As boy and horse walked away, Pete turned to Jed, who stood in the barn doorway as if he’d been set there during spring planting and had been sending down roots ever since.
“Almost finished with the sweep of the southeast pastures?” the boss asked.
He nodded. Already, yesterday, they had moved on to the new area. From his viewpoint, Jed’s decision to close the hotel to guests had worked in the ranch’s favor this week, freeing up all of his men. “We’ll be done with these pastures in the coming day or so. Then we’ll move the herd and go on to the next.”
“You’ll have everything squared away by the end of the week, won’t you?”
“Before that.” He grinned. “The boys and I are taking Cole to town on Thursday to celebrate his last days as a free man. They’ve all already warned me they won’t be in shape for any hard riding on Friday.”
“Cole’s friends, too?”
Cole’s best man and another of the ushers were traveling in from Texas. “Yeah, he says they’ll get in Thursday afternoon.”
“And I expect them all to be sober for the rehearsal dinner on Friday.”
“Can’t speak for them, Jed, but you know I won’t have trouble holding my head up.” His nights out on the town had always been low-key and far between anyhow, but they’d virtually ended once Rachel had come along. He’d much preferred spending his free time with his baby girl.
“Good.” Jed laughed. “If the best man runs into trouble, we might need you to step in.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” He shoved his work gloves into his back pockets. “I’d better go along and take a look at Starlight.”
“And then mosey on over to the house, would you? Jane’s upstairs in one of the suites.”
“Sure.”
Luckily, with the women gone to Santa Fe on Saturday and his long hours on the ranch yesterday, he’d had a break from running around after her. From the stress of denying his own instincts and maybe taking unfair advantage of hers.
After a nod to Jed, he returned to the barn—just the way he had done yesterday when he’d seen Jane and Andi approach. From a distance, the two women didn’t look related. Andi, with her long blond hair, had worn a white blouse and beige jeans with her brown riding boots. Jane made a stark contrast.
He seriously didn’t like her addiction to black clothing, but he would have given anything to walk up to her and touch her dark hair again. He’d had to walk away, go back to the barn and to his job, or risk making a fool of himself in front of his stable hand and Andi.
He had hoped today’s equally long day would have given him another reprieve. There his luck had run out. So had his ability to resist her. His ride home had been filled with thoughts and images of her.
Spending another few photo sessions with her would be a small price to pay in return for everything Jed had given him. Yet he still didn’t get why the boss had him helping her with jobs one of the ranch hands could easily tackle.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t all he didn’t understand.
What was more puzzling was he couldn’t figure out why he was more interested in Jane than he’d ever been in any woman.
More often than not, she stayed behind her camera as if it were a protective shield, making him wonder why she needed the defense. At times, her comments seemed at odds with her wry smile; other times, her laugh left her mouth soft and her eyes gleaming. And then there were the clothes she wore, the leg-hugging pants paired with loose-fitting black shirts, as if she wanted to hide all those curves he still managed to see every time she shifted.
He shifted now at the sudden tightness below his belt—a reaction he’d gotten accustomed to since taking on the role of Jane’s assistant. A purely healthy response to a completely unexpected sexual attraction. Forget denying and worrying. They ought to give in once and for all. Then they could get over the attraction.
* * *
“WHEN I GO get Paz’s necklaces, will you take my picture, Jane?” Wearing a blouse she had borrowed from Jane, Rachel stood in front of the floor-length mirror in one of the honeymoon suites.
“Of course.”
“Good.”
This afternoon, as soon as the school bus driver dropped Rachel and Robbie in front of the hotel, Rachel had come in search of Jane. If her daddy was here, he would have promptly sent her home, Jane knew. But she hadn’t seen him, Rachel had begged to stay, and a call to Sharon had resulted in the woman’s wholehearted approval of the plan.
“And when you finish your work, can you play a game with me?”
Rachel’s enthusiasm made her smile. “I think I can manage that.”
“Good,” the little girl repeated. She glanced at herself in the mirror. “My hair is just like Andi’s.”
“Yes, it is.” Jane turned her attention back to the plate of strawberries she was arranging on the dresser.
Somehow, she had become Rachel’s best buddy. For the rest of the afternoon yesterday, the little girl had played at the Hitching Post. Whenever Jane had gone back to the sitting room, Rachel had continued to hover close by.
Pete, on the other hand, hadn’t come near her or the hotel. She hadn’t seen him yet today, either. To her dismay, she felt another twinge of disappointment. She had no other verbal sparring partner here on the ranch, and though Pete might be a pain to work with, he kept her on her conversational toes. And, if she had to be honest, he had an effect on other parts of her body, too. Two small touches, yet the memories—combined with her fantasies—were more than enough to make her flush.
How could such an irritating man be so darned attractive?
From the corner of her eye, she watched his little girl turn and twist to check her reflection in the mirror, the way they had all done at the bridal shop on Saturday. “Look at my hair,” Rachel said. “It
’s just like my mama’s, too.”
Which meant wavy, blond and beautiful, and nothing like Jane’s straight, shoulder-length black bob. She didn’t need Rachel’s input to know that.
Pete’s ex-wife—just plain “Marina” to her fans in name but definitely not plain in appearance—had taken the modeling world by storm. Her face and figure had already appeared on some of the most coveted magazine covers and most widely viewed websites in that world. A friend of Jane’s, on assignment in Paris, had seen Marina grace the runway at a prominent fashion show and had raved about how the camera loved her.
“Do you think my mama’s gonna visit me soon?”
Jane froze. She wasn’t equipped for this conversation. She wasn’t the person Rachel should talk to. But here they were, with the question still unanswered. Carefully, she added two champagne glasses to her arrangement on the dresser and just as gently said, “I’m not sure when your mom will come to visit. Maybe you should ask your father.”
“No. I ask him and ask him—”
And just how did Pete react to that?
“—but he never tells me. Sharon won’t tell me, either.”
“Well...maybe they don’t know.”
“Then they should find out.” Rachel stared up at her and added solemnly, “Miss Loring says it’s okay to ask questions. She says if we don’t, we won’t learn the answers.”
She smiled. “Miss Loring is right again.”
“But not now. I don’t have any answers.” Rachel sighed. “I think Mama forgot all about us.” The tears in her eyes broke Jane’s heart.
Obviously, the little girl was starved for her mother’s attention.
If she, without a single nurturing instinct in her body, could understand that, why couldn’t Pete?
* * *
PETE TRUDGED THROUGH the Hitching Post’s lobby and up the wide staircase. He wished he had already paid his debt to Jed in full. He wished he had the strength to stay away from Jane. He’d tried yesterday by returning to the barn, but this was a new day and he couldn’t fight the urge to be with her.
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