Rugged

by Tatiana March

  “I understand you’re a farmer,” Rachel said.

  “A rancher.”

  She paused, the ladle unmoving above her plate. “There’s a difference?”

  “Farmers grow crops. Ranchers raise livestock.”

  “And what do you raise? Pigs? Chickens? Sheep?”

  This time he spotted the twinkle in her eyes. “Just beef.” His mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “And a few milk cows, and horses for riding the herd. Cats for keeping mice under control in the barns, and a goat for a reason I can no longer remember. When I was a boy, I had a dog, but that was years ago.”

  “Never thought of getting another one?”

  “I don’t have the time for dogs.”

  She fitted the lid with care on the cast iron pot, so that the ladle stuck out through the small notch along the edge, and sat down. “The same way that you don’t have time for women?” she asked quietly.

  He grunted a reply that could have meant anything.

  In silence, Jed studied his plate, heaped with unrecognizable things in various shades of brown. He speared a forkful of what looked like chicken and tasted. Sucking in a frantic breath, he gave in to the spasm that shook his body.

  “What the hell did you put in this?” he growled. “Gunpowder?”

  “Huh?” She jerked to attention, picked up a spoon and filled it with stock. Her lips pursed into a dainty circle to blow a cooling stream of air on the tiny portion.

  His chest tightened as he watched her mouth pucker, as if for a kiss. All too soon, she stopped blowing and tipped the contents of the spoon into her mouth. “What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes round with innocence. “It’s a Thai green chicken curry.”

  Cautiously, he took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “It won’t kill me?”

  “You asked for it hot.”

  “I meant temperature.”

  “Sorry.” She grimaced, looking more amused than apologetic. “Normally, I open tins or heat TV dinners.”

  “How did you do this?”

  “I threw the chicken and vegetables into the pot and poured a jar of curry sauce on top.” Her face furrowed. “If you don’t want me to cook for you again, I’ll understand.”

  “It’s okay.” He shrugged. “If I live, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Her laughter rolled over his skin, light and silvery, like moonlight.

  For a few moments, they ate in silence.

  When the sharp whinny of an agitated horse broke the calm outside, Jed bolted up. His fork clattered to the plate. “I’ve got to go.”

  After checking the handgun and the flashlight in the pockets of his sheepskin coat, he shoved his arms into the sleeves and strode across the floor. “Thanks for the food,” he called out, barely pausing to glance back from the front door.

  She stared after him, alarm stamped all over her face.

  He hesitated. She would misunderstand, think there was danger. He ought to stay. Her eyes drew him back, as potent as a rope yanking a bull to his knees. The thought sent a jolt of panic through him. With a decisive jerk of his arm, Jed shoved the door open and descended the porch stairs, leaving the staccato beat of his boots ringing in the darkness.

  “Georgia, you damn goat,” he muttered to himself as he stalked up the hill, aided by the beam of the flashlight. “When will you learn to leave Nebraska alone?”

  He paused at the barn and calmed the big quarter horse. Nebraska occasionally got fed up with Georgia, the pesky little goat suffering from a bad case of hero worship. Jed had understood the fracas to be just a friendly squabble, but he’d seized the excuse to flee anyway. Leaving in a hurry saved him from trying to figure out how a man was supposed to say goodnight to a woman at the end of a candlelit dinner.

  Heat arrowed inside him as he imagined kissing Rachel James, or Rachel Goldman, whatever her name was. How would it feel, to press his lips against that soft, rosy mouth of hers? To put his arms around her, drawing her close, and have her melt into him, instead of struggling to break free?

  Forget her, he told himself. She’s just another slut from the city.

  He slammed the door of the stall in frustration, startling both horse and goat.

  But even as his mind formed the words, he knew them to be a lie.

  Rachel was different.

  * * * *

  The next evening, Jed paused on the porch of the log cabin. Firelight reflected through the window, painting the snowdrifts in a restless orange flicker. The same restlessness churned inside him. He shouldn’t have come. It had been a hard day, riding the pastures, dealing with problems caused by the early cold snap.

  He hadn’t washed, or changed out of the dirty jeans and sweat-stained flannel shirt he’d worn since the morning. Deep inside his mind he wondered if he was trying to show Rachel the worst of himself. Not that there was anything better hiding beneath the surface.

  He ought to quash any danger of becoming involved right now. No explanations, no excuses. He’d ask her to prepare a bowl of food that he could take away with him. He was busy. That’s all. He didn’t have room in his life for the illusion of feminine grace, or the alluring contrast of his strength and her softness, and how the two might mix in some romantic interlude that would only serve to deepen his solitude.

  Raising a fist, Jed rapped on the door and took a step back.

  The heavy panel swung open.

  Rachel stood before him, holding a wooden spoon in one hand, her slender body silhouetted against the lantern light in the room. She wore the figure-hugging sweater again. Her hair was tied into a ponytail. Without the mass of curls, her features looked more fragile. Small nose, rounded chin, plump mouth, and the bold slash of dark eyebrows that added a hint of determination to the delicate features.

  An odd sense of tumbling out of balance seized Jed when their eyes met. Hers were a clear gray that shone in the shadows, as if lit from within. The color of stones in a mountain stream, clean and pure. She should never see anything ugly, least of all the scarred face of a man who had no idea of how to treat a woman.

  He should go.

  “I’m glad you survived the Thai green chicken curry.” She smiled up at him. “It’s salmon today. I think it’s a lot better. I’ve been experimenting. I seared the fish in a pan first, to seal in the flavor, and I steamed the veggies instead of cremating them to a pulp.”

  Chattering away, she stepped aside to let him in.

  Despite his intention to leave, Jed found himself following her.

  He pulled the door shut behind him, halted, pulled the knit cap from his head.

  “You left your hat yesterday.” She pointed to the hooks by the entrance where she’d hung up his battered old Stetson. “I almost came up this morning to bring it to you, but I thought you might not welcome the intrusion.”

  “It’s okay.” He twisted the knit cap in his hands. “I had this.”

  His eyes followed Rachel as she busied herself transferring a pot and a frying pan from the table back to the stovetop. Then she spun around to face him in the dull glow of the storm lanterns.

  “I have to ask, because it’s been bothering me,” she said bluntly. “Why are you trying to be friendly now, after acting so hostile when I first came to ask for your help?” Her mouth pulled into a hard line, and Jed got the impression she did it to keep her lips from trembling.

  She was confronting him, despite being a little afraid. Her display of courage felt like another blow aimed to knock down his defensive walls.

  His fingers tightened around the damp wool of the ski cap. “I grew up with Frank and Linda Collins living here, and I miss them. I decided it’s time I made an effort to get on with the new neighbors. This place is surrounded by my land.”

  She emitted an angry sound. “I don’t think you’ve made any effort up to now. From what I hear, you’ve been equally hostile to everyone. Acting friendly requires a bit more than lowering your shotgun, you know.”

  He gave an awkward shrug, unwilling to talk about th
e fashion models, how they’d played their game of knocking on his door and making fun of him.

  “I’m tired,” he said. “Can we just eat?”

  “Sorry.” The frown on her forehead smoothed. “Sit down. It’s ready.”

  He settled at the table. Rachel dished out the strips of salmon, and the medley of carrots and peas and cauliflower, and poured some kind of creamy sauce on top. While Jed watched her bustling around, words started to trickle out of him, like melt water dripping down a gutter, and then growing into a rippling brook. In halting, awkward sentences, he told her about his day, riding out, taking the tractor from the barn by the lake, distributing bales of hay to the herds, breaking the crust of ice in the water troughs, looking out for injured animals.

  “Is it just you?” she asked. “Don’t you have any ranch hands?”

  “A family lives down by the lake, near the big barn that I use for calving. Martha’s husband used to be the ranch manager when I was at school. She’s a widow now. She keeps the milk cows and looks after most of the horses, and gets groceries from Jackson once a week. Her sons, Jesse and Gabe, work as ski instructors in the winter and help me with the herd the rest of the year.”

  “How many cows do you have?”

  “Five hundred cow and calf pairs.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “And you do all the work yourself?”

  He nodded. “It’s not unusual. Even ranches four times the size only have two or three full time managers. I do staggered calving, mostly late spring and fall, which makes it easier. Cows find a private spot on the pasture and drop the calves. Then it’s just a question of keeping them alive and healthy and fed, until the calves are sold.”

  “I thought calves were born in the spring.”

  “They can be born any time of the year. It’s up to the rancher.” He lowered his gaze to the plate, grateful for the shadows that hid his blush. “I don’t do artificial insemination, but I can decide when to let the bulls in with the cows. Early calving gives bigger yearlings because they have more time to grow. Late calving saves on shelter and feed, and some people think it’s better for controlling disease and gives a better quality of meat. More gamma globulin.”

  “Heavens,” she said. “It’s a science.”

  “It’s a business.” He sighed. “That’s the hardest part. Doing the books.”

  “Oh?” Her mouth pursed. “That’s my world. I studied law, but I went to work in an accounting firm. I do people’s taxes.” She directed an earnest gaze at him. “Maybe I could help. I need something to keep my mind occupied.”

  His muscles grew taut. She was weaving herself around him like a slim thread that could all too easily snare his heart. Cooking for him. Drawing more words out of him than he normally spoke in a month. Offering to help. If he invited her to do his books, she’d need to come up to the house. Would her fragrance linger? Would her voice soak into the timbers and whisper back to him during sleepless nights? Would the house retain the cadence of her footsteps and match it to his heartbeat when he sat alone, thinking of her?

  It was too dangerous.

  “No,” he said, his tone curt. He knew the harsh reply would stop her from asking again. “It’s just a few numbers on a scrap of paper. Nothing sophisticated enough to interest you.”

  One slim shoulder rose and fell inside the white sweater. “Fine,” she said. “But the offer’s there, in case you change your mind. I expect to be here until the middle of December when Melvin and his New York crowd take over the place.”

  “Is he the big man with long hair, or the slim one with a goatee beard?”

  Her straight dark brows shot up “Don’t you know your new neighbors at all?”

  “Only as specimens of an alien race.”

  She laughed that silvery laugh again. It made shivers dance along his spine.

  “I assume the big man is Melvin. My boss, Hank Goldman, is his brother, and he’s huge. The one with a goatee must be Philippe. They own a photographic studio together.”

  “Are you related to your boss?”

  “No.” She looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

  “Same last name. Goldman.”

  “Oh. That.” She slumped in the seat. “Not related. It’s just a…coincidence.”

  She was lying. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew that he should avoid getting tangled up with her. With an angry gesture, Jed shoved the empty plate away.

  “That was good,” he said. “I’ll go and cut firewood.”

  “No need.” She must have noticed the sudden shift in his mood, because her tone became strained. “I spent most of the afternoon learning how to do it. I picked the smaller logs and chopped enough wood to last for a couple of days.”

  Jed got to his feet, edgy and bristling.

  So much for the idea that she might need his help for anything, or that he might be able to forge any sort of a friendship with the likes of her.

  “I can’t come to dinner tomorrow night,” he said brusquely. “There’s too much to do on a ranch. It doesn’t make sense to waste evenings on small talk with someone you don’t give a damn about, and whom you’ll never see again.”

  She flinched, as if he’d slapped her.

  “I understand,” she said in a tightly controlled voice. “I didn’t know what to cook anyway. Most of the frozen food will need an oven. Perhaps you’d like to take a tray of lasagna with you, or a meat and potato pie. They’ll just go to waste otherwise.”

  Jed shrugged into his coat and stalked to the door, where he paused, his hand on the lock, his back to her. “Damn,” he muttered. He wanted her to argue, say something sarcastic. If she gave him the slightest reason to dislike her, he’d be able to walk away. But instead, she fought back tears and told him she understood. “Come by tomorrow before it gets dark,” he said, almost despite himself. “Bring the food that needs cooking.”

  Then he stormed out without looking back.

  Chapter Three

  Rachel knocked, knocked again. No lights illuminated the big house. She’d set out to climb the forest track when the twilight started to thicken. Now it crossed her mind that Jed’s idea of before it gets dark might be different from hers.

  He might have meant pitch black.

  She tried the tarnished brass knob. It turned smoothly. The door swung open on silent, well-oiled hinges. Her hand tightened inside the blue mitten that curled around the handle of a shopping bag full of food she’d hauled with her.

  Would she dare to go inside?

  She shrugged away the doubt. If Jed didn’t want her entering, he would have locked the door. She stepped into the dark hall, fumbled for a light switch and found it. Unlike her cabin, where the front door opened straight into the living area, the big house had a vestibule to keep out the cold. Rachel pulled off her boots. Feeling the icy draft over the floorboards, she changed her mind and put them back on.

  If Jed slept with his boots on, surely she didn’t need to remove hers to cook.

  With caution, she pushed the inner door open—and gasped in surprise.

  She’d expected a dark, slightly unkempt bachelor pad with shabby furniture. Instead, she found a soaring room with full-height cathedral windows on the right and a massive stone fireplace along the far wall. A dog-leg open staircase rose to the upper floor. The furniture was mostly wood, even the sofas covered in black and red padded cushions. And, all around, gnarled trunks of dead trees stood like ghosts, taller than a man, the natural contours of the wood polished into a smooth shine.

  Rachel went up to the nearest sculpture and ran her fingers over the surface. It felt soft as skin. Someone must have stripped off the bark and sanded each piece by hand, a task that would have taken hours of painstaking labor to complete.

  Leaving the timber statue, she continued her tour. A door led to a cluttered den. Rows and rows of books crowded the open shelves. Romance novels jostled for space with classics and thrillers and biographies. Agricultural and wildlife magazines teetered in high stac
ks. An ancient desktop computer stood on the floor in one corner, the keyboard wedged behind the bulky monitor.

  On the big desk, a ledger sat open, surrounded by scattered papers that looked like invoices and delivery notes and bank statements. Rachel craned her neck to check the last entry in the columns that ran across the page of the ledger. May. And it was November now. The tax season loomed close. She spotted a calculator buried beneath the papers and backed out of the room before she gave in to the temptation to put her skills to use.

  Kitchen.

  That’s where a woman’s place is.

  Rachel grinned at the thought as she strolled through the living room. From what she’d seen, Jed Ferguson was an old fashioned man. If he ever married, he’d take the word obey in the woman’s wedding vows at face value.

  A good thing she had a life to go back to.

  Because when it came to men, obey wasn’t part of her vocabulary.

  * * * *

  Jed walked up the hill, carrying the dying calf in his arms. It would have been easier to shoot him down at the pasture, as he’d done with the cow, but he didn’t like the idea of the orphan not being given a chance. And he disliked the idea that the animal would die cold and hungry, his last memory watching his mother die.

  It sounded too much like what had happened to his brother.

  The lights were on in the house.

  Pleasure soared inside him at the thought that he could come home, aching with fatigue, and find the house bright and warm, a hot dinner on the table, and a pretty woman waiting for him, eager to ask about his day.

  A man could get used to it.

  He pushed away the thought with an angry snort. A man could get used to a lot of things, including idleness and drinking too much. Just because something sounded tempting, it didn’t make it into a good idea.

  He took the orphan calf into the barn and tried to get him to drink some milk. After finding an old blanket to wrap around the tiny animal, Jed left the barn and went into the house. As soon as he’d walked in through the door, Rachel rushed up to him. She was wearing the same jeans and white sweater she’d worn yesterday, and the day before. He knew that for the rest of his life he’d remember how she looked in them.