Take care of her.
Uh-uh. No can do. He set his jaw hard enough to hear his teeth grind.
He walked away from her to get her bags, the children following him like a line of baby ducks.
He opened the trunk of her car and pulled out a suitcase and an overnight bag. There was one more bag, supple brown leather with a brass closure. A laptop. Right, common sense reminded him. She’s here to work, on the books.
Too bad, his libido whispered.
Use every trick in the book to get rid of her, his common sense answered. He needed an attraction to the woman who was here to look at his books like he needed a root canal. Not.
He planned to have her hightailing it back to the city by tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER TWO
AMY ENTERED the house and let the screen door butt her back. Her lungs wouldn’t expand enough for the air she needed. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea. Sure, she needed to face her fears of illness and dying, but spending time with these children was definitely trial by fire.
She had to do this. Simply had to.
She ran a hand over her face, pulling herself under control. The darkness and cinnamon scent of the foyer helped.
Hank entered the house behind her.
“Kids,” he said to the children following on his heels, “go wash up. Hannah should have lunch on the table any minute.”
They ran down the hall to a room at the far end. Seconds later, someone had the water running.
“That bathroom is across the hall from your bedroom,” Hank said. “It’ll be your own early mornings and late evenings. The rest of the time, the kids have to use it.” He shrugged his apology.
The lemon and soap scent of him drifted by her. Too nice. Her nerves went on high alert. She was here to test herself with the children. Being attracted—okay, very attracted—to Leila’s brother was not in the plan.
Amy followed Hank down the hallway, past a wide staircase leading to the second floor on one side and a closed door on the other. Pastoral landscapes dotted the walls, with not a single abstract in sight. He entered a room at the back of the house, the last one opposite the bathroom the kids were using.
Hank set one of her suitcases onto the floor and the other onto its side on the bed.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get those kids settled down for lunch. Join us when you finish freshening up.”
No. She needed to take exposure to those kids in baby steps.
“I’d like to go straight to the office,” she replied. “I’m not hungry.”
Her traitorous stomach chose that moment to grumble.
Hank’s smile looked smug. “That door leads to the kitchen, where you’ll find our housekeeper, Hannah.” He pointed behind himself. “The one down the hall is the dining room.”
The children ran down the hall away from the bathroom.
“You can’t miss it,” Hank continued. “Just follow the sound of those kids. They make enough noise to rouse the dead.”
Amy flinched away from that image.
She put on a smile but knew it didn’t reach her eyes. The psychic pain she’d been carrying for two years wouldn’t quit.
“Dolorous,” Hank whispered, then his gaze flew away from hers.
He backed out of the bedroom, bumping into a small table. He caught a vase of lilacs before it fell but not before water sloshed onto his hand. His shoulder bumped into the door frame when he stepped through it. With the vase still in his grasp, he disappeared into the hall.
Well, he couldn’t be more different from Leila than chocolate from vanilla. Hard to believe they were related. Hank must be fifteen, sixteen years younger than Leila. Funny. Was Hank a late baby? A midlife surprise for his mother?
No, wait. Leila had mentioned that her mother had died when she was young and her father had remarried. Maybe the second wife was a much younger woman.
Hank had whispered one word on the verandah—exquisite. A smile tugged at her lips, the first genuine one she’d felt in ages. She’d pretended not to hear, but it did her soul good that a man found her attractive. Especially these days.
The smile fell from her face.
It doesn’t matter, though. Nothing is going to happen here.
She stepped into the hallway and walked toward the dining room. The vase of flowers from her bedroom sat in a puddle on the hallway floor beside the open dining room door.
The suspicion that Hank was a bit of a bumbling gentle giant eased her low mood.
She entered a room swollen with sound. Hank sat at the far end of the table and an older gentleman, who matched Leila’s description of the foreman, Willie, sat at the near end. A couple of teenagers sat on one side of the table. Camp counselors? The young children filled in the remaining places, save one. Baseball caps hung from the backs of their chairs. She paused, arrested by the sight of all those bare heads lining the table, too vulnerable in their white roundness, like a nest full of goslings.
She bit her lip.
THERE OUGHT TO BE a law against a woman looking so sweet and beautiful, yet having the potential to be so much trouble. Hank shifted in his seat and watched the accountant walk to the chair beside Willie’s, worrying her pretty bottom lip with her teeth.
Hank watched Willie glance up at Amy, his water glass raised to his lips, then do a double take and choke. He slammed the glass back onto the table.
“Willie,” Hank said, “meet Amy Graves, Leila’s friend. The accountant.”
Willie coughed and sputtered into his napkin.
Hank knew how Willie felt. Amy Graves was a shocker. Beautiful. A generation younger than Leila. Smart.
Willie jumped to his feet, pulling Amy’s chair out for her. “How d’you do, ma’am? I’m Willie.”
Amy shook his hand.
“So, you’re stayin’ with us the whole summer?” Willie asked after he sat.
“No, only long enough for me to figure out the finances.”
Hank’s abs tightened.
“Uh-huh. What are you gonna do about the finances?” Willie asked.
Amy’s eyes darted to the children. “Well, I’m going to take a look at the books and make some recommendations for Leila.”
“Uh-huh? Like what?”
Hank knew that Willie was only making conversation, but this particular discussion didn’t belong here, now, in front of the children.
“We can discuss this after lunch,” he said and the accountant nodded, the tension around her mouth relaxing. Looked like she didn’t want to talk about this in front of the children any more than he did.
They finished Hannah’s excellent minestrone then Amy said “no” to dessert. Watching her weight? Lord, why? He stole a glance at as much of her body as he could see above the table. Her lovely chest rose and fell with her breathing. She wasn’t a large woman, nor was she too thin. She was just about right.
Hank finished two servings of Hannah’s apple cobbler. Then, while the children lingered over dessert with Willie and the counselors, he asked Amy if she would join him in the living room.
He led her across the hall to the far end of the room and gestured toward one of the two maroon sofas. He sat in an armchair across from her.
“Listen,” he started. “There’s been a mistake.”
She frowned. Quizzically. Great word.
“I don’t know what kind of letter Leila got from the bank,” he continued, “but there isn’t a problem here.”
“There must be something wrong or the bank wouldn’t have sent a letter.”
“Did you see it?” Hank asked. “Do you know what it said?”
“No, Leila called me from Seattle. Her boss sent her there this morning to handle a business emergency. She expressed grave concern about the state of the finances here.”
“I called the bank this morning,” he said, raising his arms and linking his fingers behind his head.
Her gaze dropped to his chest. “What did they say?” she asked.
“That nothing was wrong,” he answered. “They didn’t send Leila a letter.”
Amy’s gaze returned to his face. “But I know Leila received a letter.”
“I guess you’d better head back to the city and take it up with her.”
She looked at his chest again and he realized his shirt was stretched real tight across his pecs. She was staring. Made him feel warm. Self-conscious. He wasn’t used to women looking at him like that. She wasn’t thinking about money and banks. She was thinking about him and his chest. He lowered his hands to the arms of the chair.
She relaxed against the back of the sofa as if a string stretched tautly from him to her had let go. “I’ve told her I intend to check things out here, and I will,” she said.
“But there’s no need,” he insisted, his pulse picking up.
“In this situation, as the owner of the ranch, Leila is my boss, and I answer to her.” Her voice was quiet, but there was no denying her determination.
There it was, the bald truth he hated so much—that Leila could do whatever she wanted with his ranch, with or without his cooperation. He curled his fingers into his palms.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, unable to hide the belligerence in his tone. He’d been raised better than to treat a guest badly, but his heart rate was shooting through the stratosphere. Leila had been desperate enough to send a stranger here to look at the books. That could only presage bad news.
Presage. He liked that word.
Hank flexed his jaw and narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll look for evidence of neglect—” She hesitated, her manner cool now, then said, “Willful misuse of funds.”
She couldn’t possibly find out, could she?
Mice with sharp claws skittered up Hank’s spine, accompanied by foreboding.
Naw, he’d called the bank himself. Things were fine.
“Best-case scenario,” she said, “I’ll make recommendations on how to maximize your income and minimize your expenses.”
Hank’s throat burned. His pride ached. It had suffered when Dad had willed the ranch to Leila. Now here it was again, rearing its godforsaken head.
“Worst-case scenario?” Hank asked, his voice even rougher than earlier.
“We can discuss those options after I look at the books.”
Buzzing hummed in Hank’s ears. He shook his head, but it only grew louder.
He couldn’t stop. He needed to know. Now.
“Tell me,” he insisted, grinding it out between clenched teeth while panic rose like bile into his throat. This was what he’d always feared, wasn’t it? That he would screw up so badly he would lose everything that mattered to him.
“If we have to,” Amy whispered, “we would sell the ranch.”
The pronouncement bounced from the walls. It shot through the buzzing in his ears.
Hank sat in the eerie silence that followed and felt his heart fall through his body to the floor.
Sell the ranch.
The very worst the world could dish out.
But things weren’t that bad. Why would Leila and this woman think they could be?
Anger blazed through him, and the buzzing returned with a roar.
“Come again?” Hank yelled at the pale woman on the sofa.
The knuckles of Amy’s clenched hands turned white in her lap. “Leila is afraid that selling the ranch might be the only option.”
“You can’t—” His jaw tightened. “You wouldn’t—”
“I’m just preparing you for the worst.” Amy’s voice was gentle again, but it tore through Hank’s skin. Like thistle-down coating barbed wire, it did nothing to ease his pain.
“But things aren’t that bad. Donna at the bank would have warned me,” Hank insisted, his heart pounding his ribs.
“Because of the letter Leila received, she seems to think they are. We have to consider all options.”
Hank couldn’t figure out what was going on here. He’d been so careful.
Leila was making a mistake. This woman shouldn’t be here, talking about worst-case scenarios. He surged out of his chair.
No, he refused to accept this.
Hank pointed a finger Amy’s way and raised his voice. “Maybe where you come from, people consider all options, but in these parts, we don’t consider options we don’t believe in.” The pain of his unruly emotions, and his shame, and his fear of his own incompetence built in his chest. “We work hard to keep what’s ours.”
He towered over her and, for the briefest moment, she shrank against the back of the couch.
Then, her green eyes glittered with defiance, like she was building her own head of steam, and she sat up straight. One cheek turned pink, only one, fascinating him. It was the damnedest thing to watch that cheek turn even redder, while the other stayed pale. Peculiar. Another of those words he loved.
Forget the damn words you love!
She was casting a spell over him. Was this how she worked? Pulling men into some kind of obsession? Damned if he’d let her.
He felt the heat and anger of his own helplessness, at his own lack of control over the ranch he’d grown up on and loved, steamroll over this petite, dangerously beautiful woman.
“You’ll sell this ranch over my dead body,” he hollered.
He turned and stormed from the room, only to draw up short. Willie was herding the children out of the dining room into the hall and toward the front door. They stared at Hank with wide eyes.
His gut churned. He’d never raised his voice in front of any child before.
He rushed from the house and raced across the yard to the stable.
CHAPTER THREE
AMY STARED at his retreating back. The man wasn’t as mild-mannered as he looked.
The counselors began to herd the children through the front door.
“Take them to the field and start a game,” Willie said. The counselors nodded.
Willie walked to where she sat on the sofa.
“He has a temper,” she said, glancing at him for confirmation, but the ranch foreman looked at her as if she’d crawled out from under a rock.
“That there,” he said, leaning toward her, “is the first time I’ve seen that boy lose his temper since he was sixteen.”
He smacked his dirty hat onto his gray hair and pinned Amy with shrewd eyes. He got close enough for her to smell coffee on his breath. “You couldn’ a picked a better way to make an enemy of the sweetest boy on the face of this earth.”
He left the room, the heels of his cowboy boots banging reproach on the floor of the hall.
Amy sat dazed.
She’d seen the censure of every child and teenager standing in the hall when Hank had stormed out. Rather than blame him for his bad behavior, they’d looked at her as if she were the one at fault.
She raised her hand to her hot cheek, thinking of the way Hank had looked at her a few moments ago, not with the heat of anger, but with something almost like hunger. Then rage had taken its place, all of it directed at her.
The commingled heat of anger and chagrin burned through her.
How dare Hank make her look bad in front of these children?
Two years ago, she would have found a way to handle the situation better, but she was so far off her stride these days. Why hadn’t Leila warned Hank about this option? Perhaps she’d been wary of Hank’s reaction and had left it for Amy to deal with. So odd for take-charge Leila.
Amy stood and walked to her room, where she sat on her bed and fumed. How dare he treat her as if she was the villain here? He’d gotten himself into financial trouble, not her.
She had a good mind to march right back home to Billings and leave the ornery man to deal with his own problems.
Him and his useless pride. Over the past ten years, she’d often run into foolish pride in mismanaged corporations. Boards and managers who called on her for help routinely ignored her hard-won reputation and refused to consider her solutions.
Stubborn, stubborn m
an. Did Hank think she would be here if the situation wasn’t dire? Did he think übercapable Leila panicked at the drop of a hat?
And Willie. Did he have to look at her as if she was the cause of their problems?
She knew what would come next on Hank’s part—resistance, sly questions about her competence, the insistence on a second opinion. All in all, a noxious brew that wouldn’t let up until she either saved the ranch for them, or sold it.
She rubbed her temples. She was so darn tired of fighting, and she wasn’t sure she had the patience left to help people who wouldn’t help themselves.
The hell with it.
She was leaving.
She picked up her purse and dragged her suitcase from the bed.
As she reached the door, an image of Leila’s worried face popped into her mind. Leila had been her rock for the past two years. Amy owed her big-time and didn’t resent the debt one iota.
She sighed. Of course she wouldn’t leave. One more image of Leila’s normally indomitable face creased with worry was enough to make Amy stay put.
More importantly, if Amy went home, she would be back to square one. Living like a hermit. Ignoring decisions that needed to be made about her business. Wallowing in self-pity.
Leila hadn’t asked Amy to come. Amy had volunteered, both for her friend and for herself.
It was time to get over her problems and get on with life. These children could help her.
She set down her bags, walked to the window and stared at the massive fields of waving grain, at the neat-as-a-pin grounds, and at the large solid buildings—stables, barns, garages—all white and red in the blazing sun. Not one sign of neglect.
Admittedly Hank took care of the place.
In one of the fenced corrals, a mother horse and her baby nuzzled noses. Colt? Calf? No, calves were cows. Weren’t they?
This ranch could help her.
She’d stay.
For one week.
Not one day longer.
If an accountant with her skills couldn’t set this place right in a week, then it was time to change careers.
Amy took a deep, sustaining breath and turned from the window. She needed to call her mother, who would fret until she heard from Amy.
No Ordinary Cowboy Page 2