Best of Cowboys Bundle
Page 67
When Buck walked back into the ranch house, all was quiet. Five pair of eyes stared at him: Ty’s, Karen’s, Louise’s and Cait’s, and the new kitten’s.
“What?” he asked.
No one said anything. They just shook their heads. Then Cait said, “Go get her, Daddy.”
“Cait? What did you say?”
“I love her and I want her to be my mommy.” Cait got up from the couch and stood in front of him. Her head was bent so far back to look up at him that her pigtails were almost touching the floor. “Please bring her back. She likes you, too. She likes you a lot.”
Karen, Louise and Ty sat staring, dumbfounded. He hadn’t told them yet about what had happened in the barn.
But no one was more dumbfounded than he. Cait was speaking her mind.
He picked her up—she was still as light as he remembered—and didn’t pull away. “I love Merry, too, and I don’t want her to leave.”
Cait tugged on the sleeves of his shirt. “Then go get her before she goes back to Boston.”
“Another bossy woman in the house,” Buck mumbled, but he was so happy that he could burst. “I’ll bring her back. Don’t go away, Cait. We have a lot of talking to do—you, me and Merry.”
He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and she didn’t shrug away. She was smiling at him!
“Go, brother,” yelled Ty.
“Go,” shouted Lou.
“I knew it would work,” added Karen. “You both just needed a little time together.”
When Buck stepped out on the porch, Dan was pulling up with the Panhead.
Buck found Merry laughing and petting the same burros that she’d been scared of several days ago. He rode up on the Panhead with a note stuffed in his shirt pocket—the message that Merry had given to Dan for him. It read, “Buck, follow your dream. Love always, Merry.”
He cut the motor. “I don’t want to say anything stupid. I spewed enough stupidity in the barn last night.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out her note and handed it to her. “You’re my dream, Merry, and I’ll follow you. If you want to live in New York City or Boston or in Paris, I’ll live there with you, because I can’t live without you. I love you. Marry me.”
She smiled, then shook her head. His heart sank. She was going to turn him down.
“I don’t want to live in any of those places. I want to live right here with you—in the ranch house—the house that has been in your family for generations. I want to make our babies in the tree bed.”
“I’ll do my part.” His heart beat wildly. “But what about New York?” He took off his hat, ran a hand through his hair, then plopped the hat back on. “I can’t tie you down, and I don’t want you to resent me.”
“I could never resent you, Buck. My heart isn’t in New York or Boston. My heart is right here. I’d like to work on some Southwestern cookbooks, and I can do that from the ranch.”
Buck got off the motorcycle and walked toward Merry, the movement scaring the burros, who moved down the road.
“What about your parents? They aren’t going to like the fact that you’re marrying a cowboy.” He shrugged. “Actually, I’m worse than public TV, aren’t I?”
“Perhaps.” She laughed. “I’m following my dreams, too, Buck. And if they can’t accept you…well, that’s their problem.”
Merry stood straight and her voice was confident. “And, anyway, if I can handle wild burros, I can handle my parents.”
“You have a point there.” He couldn’t stop smiling.
“How many?” she asked.
“How many…what?”
Merry reached for her purse in the front seat and pulled out a pen and her notebook. She flipped to a clean page, and her pen hovered over it. “How many kids?”
“However many we’re blessed with.”
“Will you make their home as loving as yours was when you were a kid?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Of course,” he assured her.
“Another thing. I don’t want the ranch to be a dude ranch.” She tried to hold back a smile. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m terribly disappointed,” he said, clutching his heart. “Are you sure that’s not negotiable?”
“Not negotiable at all. I don’t want a bunch of people interrupting us in the tree bed.”
He whistled. “No problem. I’ll see to it personally.”
She pretended to write in her notebook. “Speaking of people, your brother and sisters are welcome at any time, but they need to follow their own dreams…which leads to our big problem—my money. When we get married, it’ll belong to both of us. And I want you to use it to buy out your sisters and brother.”
“Merry, I—”
“It’s not negotiable. Karen can start her own business. Lou can start up her law office, and Ty…well, he can do whatever he wants to do.”
Buck looked a little sheepish. “Karen said that marriage is like a merger. And that I can give you things that money can’t buy, and vice versa.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you all along?” She looked up to the sky and raised her hands. “What made that finally sink in?”
“The thought of losing you.” He cupped her cheek and saw the joy in her eyes. His chest tightened and he hugged her tight to him. “Karen thinks that you’re successful at what you do because you like being a homemaker, to a great extent.” Buck looked off at Lizard Rock. “I think she was only half right, Merry.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you create your own happy home with every meal you make and with every place you decorate because you didn’t have a happy home when you were a child.”
Damn, if the cowboy wasn’t right.
“Buck, will you shut up and kiss me?”
“But we’re in a public place.” He pointed to the burros grazing at the side of the road. “Any one of those could be a reporter in a burro suit.”
She pushed him away, laughing. “The hell with the tabloids. I just don’t care anymore. I love you, Bucklin Floyd Porter, and I don’t care who knows it.”
He took off his hat and tossed it. “Yee-haw!” He lifted her off the ground and twirled in a circle.
She was dizzy with happiness. He set her down but held her close again and rubbed her back. “Thanks for the bike, too.”
“I just couldn’t let you sell it. Your grandfather gave it to you.”
“And thanks for giving Cait back to me. She about yelled at me to go and bring you back. She wants you to be her mother.”
“Oh, Buck.” Tears of joy flooded her eyes.
“It’s because of you, you know. You reached my little girl.”
He took her into his arms. He could feel her heart beating next to his. Thank goodness he had come to his senses.
She looked up at him, her eyes full of mischief. “And I might as well tell you that I bought all of Olan Gunderson’s bulls. I told him that I was buying them for Karen as a get-well gift instead of a flower arrangement. I don’t think he believed me, but he’ll be delivering your sperm donors this afternoon.”
Buck stiffened.
“You’ve come a long way, Buck. Please don’t let your pride get in the way of our happiness. I can’t change the fact that I have money, so let’s just use it to make both our dreams come true.”
Buck wasn’t easy to convince, but she could see that he was trying like hell.
He looked out over the valley as if he were searching for answers on the horizon.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” he finally said. “But how about one stipulation? I’d like to pay off the debt on the ranch myself. If the gallery sale comes up short, I’ll keep on making furniture.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, it’s a deal. And I’d like you to make me a bookcase and a desk when you get a chance. I’ll share your office.”
“Deal,” Buck echoed. “Now, do you think we should have Louise draw everything up, nice and legal, or should I have my people talk to y
our people?” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the burros, “Is there a notary in the crowd?”
She chuckled. “Our verbal agreement is binding as far as I’m concerned. But we could seal the deal with a kiss.”
“Are we done with negotiations now?” he asked, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the burros, “Is there a notary in the crowd?”
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “I think we’re done.”
“Well, I have just one more thing,” he said, nibbling on her ear and her neck.
“What’s that?” She could barely speak.
He took the notebook and pen from her hand. He wrote something and handed it back to her.
She read his note, put her arms around his waist and kissed the stuffing out of him. “That’s sealing the deal with more than a kiss.”
“I drive a hard bargain.” His blood heated up and sweat broke out on his upper lip when he thought of what he’d written. “Damn, I’m hot.”
“It’s the desert,” Merry said.
“Not this time. It’s you.” He handed her a helmet. “I’ll send a couple of the boys back for the car.” Buck took the hand of the woman he was going to marry.
“I love you, Merry.”
Buck’s lips met hers, and Merry knew that she had found what she’d been looking for all her life.
Her Texan Temptation
Shirley Rogers
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
One
“G ot a problem there, Red?”
Deke McCall!
Mary Beth Adams froze, the toe of her worn brown boot wedged in the hole she’d just kicked in a water trough. Water trickled out of the deteriorated wooden box, forming a small, muddy pool at her feet.
Of all the people in the world she wouldn’t have wanted to catch her in such a dilemma, this heart-stopping cowboy from her past was at the top of her list. She cursed her temper as the taillights of her one and only ranch hand’s car disappeared in the distance. How could he just up and quit? Even if he’d gotten another job offer, she at least deserved some notice.
Gathering her pride, she turned toward Deke, causing her ankle to twist a little more. Pain sliced through it and up her calf, clear into her thigh. She gritted her teeth. “No, I’m just fine,” she retorted, annoyed that he’d called her by the childhood nickname she detested.
As if the two years since she’d seen him had never passed, a startling thrill tingled her spine. Unprepared for the onslaught of emotion, Mary Beth fought for a sense of control.
You’re not the same woman you were two years ago, harboring a schoolgirl crush, willing to give him your heart.
But by the rapid pounding in her chest, her heart didn’t seem to be listening.
Shoring up her courage, she looked at Deke. Apparently rodeoing agreed with him. His shoulders were infinitely broad, his arms even more muscular than she remembered. It shouldn’t hurt so much to see him.
Finally, because she couldn’t put it off any longer, she lifted her eyes and met his gaze. Sitting atop his horse and leaning back comfortably in his saddle, he grinned at her. Blond strands of hair poked out of his straw cowboy hat. Those gorgeous McCall blue eyes twinkled a little too merrily.
Damned if he didn’t look sexy.
“Yeah?” Deke tipped up his hat and held back a chuckle. Taller than most women, with curves that could stop a man in his tracks, Mary Beth was a sight to see. Balancing on one foot, her arms out like wings, she was shaking her hips in a provocative way that made him remember what it had felt like to make love to her.
Though most of her red hair was clasped behind her head, untamed wisps fell in cute little ringlets around her face, making her look more like nineteen than twenty-five. The glare in her green eyes suggested that the flush on her cheeks stemmed from her embarrassment rather than the late-summer Texas sun.
Gone was the young woman he remembered with the quiet, shy smile, the woman who’d seemed to blush modestly every time he’d spoken to her. Though they’d grown up in the same town, he’d been a couple of grades ahead of her. Truthfully he’d never paid much attention to Mary Beth.
Until that one night two years ago.
That one earth-shattering night had sent him a lethal warning that she could be a threat to his bachelorhood.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he watched as she continued to wiggle her hips, trying his level best not to laugh outright. “Looks like you could use some help,” he commented, his expression wry. A chuckle escaped his lips despite his best effort to contain himself.
“Thank you, but, no, I don’t.” What she needed was a miracle. A couple more months of problems that never seemed to let her get a step ahead, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the note coming due on the ranch at all. Short of a miracle, Paradise would be owned by the bank.
And Mary Beth no longer believed in miracles.
With an air of dignity, she managed to work her foot out of the trough without falling and making a bigger fool of herself. Water gushed from the gaping hole. She quickly sidestepped it, then clamped her teeth together when she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her right foot. Unable to put weight on it without adding to the biting pain, she lifted it slightly off the ground, shifting most of her weight to her other foot. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
But even as she asked the question, her mind slipped back two years. Alone and hurting after her father’s funeral, Deke had offered her comfort. It had been so easy to sink against him, to lose herself in his embrace. Though all of her life he’d barely noticed her, she’d been half in love with him since she’d been a teenager.
“Here in Texas or here on Paradise?” Deke asked, referring to her ranch.
Mary Beth looked around her, seeing the run-down ranch through his eyes. The disrepair of the house and outbuildings were obvious…and embarrassing. Even with the few head of cattle she ran, to call Paradise a ranch was a gross exaggeration. He was probably wondering why she’d let it get so dilapidated.
“On my land.” She didn’t care why he was back in Texas. Really, she didn’t. He’d broken her heart. Maybe not intentionally. He hadn’t known she’d harbored feelings for him all those years. But she’d suffered the sting of his rejection just the same. Well, times had changed. She’d changed. She was no longer a lovesick young girl, and she wouldn’t be so susceptible to his charm again.
In her gut she’d known that a McCall would never take up with an Adams. At least, not permanently. Her family had been poor, while the McCalls owned the most profitable ranch in Crockett County. She shouldn’t have been surprised when, after they’d made love, Deke had never bothered to call. But that hadn’t made his leaving hurt any less.
Her curt tone caused his eyes to lose a bit of their sparkle. “Some of the cattle with your brand have broken through a fence, and I came over to investigate. Thought I’d better ride down here and let you know.”
“I’ll take care of it right away.” How, she didn’t know. Though undependable and trifling, Clyde, her ranch hand, had been better than nothing. Now he’d quit to take a job with a spread near Dallas. Great. Another man in her life who couldn’t be depended on. When was she going to learn? With Clyde gone and without the money to hire anyone decent to replace him, she was on her own.
Why had she been obsessed with keeping this place? What made her even think she wanted to try to make it turn a profit?
Because your father didn’t think you have what it takes.
But her father had been dead two years now, and things on Paradise were worse instead of better. What was she doing here, still trying to prove a dead man wrong? If
she had any sense, she’d quit and go back to her life in San Antonio.
Except, if she left now, she’d be the failure he’d always claimed she would be. She choked back a tear. Why couldn’t he have loved her? If she’d been a son, his love and approval would have been automatic. But not for a girl.
Not for her.
“You expect Clyde back soon?”
Mary Beth blinked, her eyes focusing once again on her current problem—Deke McCall. “I said I’ll take care of it,” she said, ignoring his question. She’d figure a way to get the cattle off McCall land somehow. Damn, she hated asking for help. But the mortgage on the ranch was coming due, and if she lost even one head of cattle before she could sell them, she wasn’t going to be able to meet the payment. Still, she’d risk even that before she’d stoop to asking Deke for anything.
Deke’s eyebrows drew together as he sat up straight, his back rigid. “I just thought you might want me to lend a hand.” He figured he deserved her ire. Years ago he’d taken advantage of her, had made love to her, then he’d left and hadn’t so much as called her in the two years since. Now he’d shown up unexpectedly. What did he expect, a warm welcome?
He hadn’t planned to make love to her.
She’d been gone from Crockett a couple of years. He’d heard she’d been living in San Antonio. Then she’d been called home because her father had been in an accident. Hank Adams had passed away a couple of weeks after she’d arrived at Paradise.
Out of respect Deke had attended the funeral. He hadn’t cared much for Hank, but then, not many people had. Mary Beth had caught Deke’s attention when he’d spotted her in the crowd of well-wishers gathered around her. She’d returned to Crockett a changed woman, confident and vivacious, with a smile and a good word—for everyone, it seemed, but him.
That’s why he’d lingered at her house after the funeral when everyone one else had left. It had bothered him when he’d sensed that she had gone out of her way to avoid him.