by Diana Palmer
She put her hands on her hips and stared at him. ‘‘And what’s wrong with being a housekeeper?’’ she demanded, going on the offensive. ‘‘Where would you and your brother be right now if there weren’t women you could hire to bake and clean for you? I guess you’d have to get married then, or learn to cook, wouldn’t you?’’
He glared at her. ‘‘I could cook if I wanted to.’’
‘‘You’re the sort of man who makes a woman wish she didn’t have a culinary skill to her name,’’ she said icily. ‘‘You are so ‘lord of the manor-ish’, Mr. Hart!’’
‘‘It isn’t a manor,’’ he pointed out. ‘‘They have those in England. We call this a ranch.’’
She glared at him.
He grinned. ‘‘You really do rise to the bait beautifully,’’ he murmured, and something flashed in his dark eyes. ‘‘The sandwiches were good,’’ he added.
She looked surprised. ‘‘Nothing but ham and a homemade sauce,’’ she faltered.
‘‘You do that a lot with food,’’ he remarked gently. ‘‘I like the way you experiment with dishes. I even like the way you garnish the plates. You make things look appetizing.’’
She didn’t realize that he’d even noticed. ‘‘I learned that from a dietician,’’ she said without thinking. ‘‘If food is decorative, sometimes it makes up for bulk.’’
He smiled quizzically. ‘‘You can’t decorate biscuits,’’ he teased. ‘‘But you make really good ones.’’
‘‘Thanks.’’ She smiled back. ‘‘I’ll tidy up the kitchen if you’re through.’’
‘‘I am. Don’t stay up too late,’’ he added and his eyes were suddenly bright with mischief. ‘‘You need plenty of rest so that you can make biscuits for breakfast!’’
‘‘Okay. I’ll get an early night.’’ She laughed and went on past him to the kitchen.
He stared after her for several long seconds with an expression that he was glad she didn’t see. He liked the taste of her. That hadn’t been wise, kissing her that way. He was going to have to make sure it didn’t happen again. He didn’t need complications.
Nothing was the same between Meredith and Rey after that day. They were aware of each other. It wasn’t blatant, but she could feel tingling in her spine when Rey was in a room. It was instinctive. Her eyes followed him like puppies, and she flushed wildly when he caught her at it and gave her that amused, wordily glance.
Leo noticed, too, and it worried him that Rey was encouraging Meredith. He knew Rey too well to think he’d had a change of heart toward his bachelor status.
‘‘You’re leading her on,’’ Leo accused his brother one evening when they were alone in the study with the door closed. ‘‘Why?’’
Rey gave him a surprised glance. ‘‘You make it sound like a crime to flirt with her.’’
‘‘In your case, it is,’’ his brother said flatly. ‘‘You’re a rounder. She isn’t.’’
Rey shrugged. ‘‘She’s not exactly off limits,’’ he told his brother. ‘‘Not at her age.’’
‘‘And what do you have in mind? Seduction?’’ Leo persisted irritably. ‘‘She’s already been damaged enough by what happened with her father. The bruises are barely healed, and the mental scars are still there. Don’t play games with her.’’
‘‘Aren’t you self-righteous all of a sudden?’’ Rey shot back angrily. ‘‘You’ve been stringing Janie Brewster along for weeks, and we both know you don’t have any intention in hell of getting serious about her. All you want is first chance at that damned seed bull they’re thinking of selling! Does she know?’’ he added maliciously.
Leo’s eyes began to glitter. ‘‘Janie is a child,’’ he said furiously. ‘‘I pick at her, and not because of any damned bull. I’m certainly not hell-bent on seduction!’
‘‘She’s not a child,’’ Rey countered. ‘‘You’re leading her down a blind alley, when you know full well she’s in love with you.’’
Leo looked shocked. ‘‘She’s not in love with me! Maybe she’s got a crush. That’s all!’’
‘‘You don’t see the way she looks at you, do you?’’ Rey replied solemnly.
Leo cleared his throat. ‘‘We’re talking about Meredith,’’ he said firmly.
Rey’s eyes narrowed. ‘‘Meredith is an adult.’’
‘‘And she works for us,’’ Leo went on relentlessly. ‘‘I’m not going to stand by and let you make an amusement of her.’’
‘‘Jealous?’’ his brother taunted.
Leo was very still. ‘‘Is that the draw?’’ he asked softly. ‘‘Are we competing for a woman again?’’
Rey’s eyes flashed. ‘‘I would never have known about Carlie if you hadn’t started propositioning her in front of me. Do you think I can forget that?’’
‘‘I keep hoping you will someday. She would have taken you for the ride of your life,’’ Leo said quietly. ‘‘You’re my brother. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’’
Rey turned away with a muttered curse. Leo was right; he had saved him from even worse heartache, but the memory was still raw enough to hurt.
‘‘Don’t try to take it out on Meredith,’’ Leo told him firmly. ‘‘She’s had enough tragedy. Let her do her job.’’
Rey glanced at him over his shoulder. ‘‘I would, if she’d remember why she’s here,’’ he said venomously. ‘‘It’s not my fault that every time I turn around, she’s drooling over me! A saint could be tempted by a woman whose eyes worship him like that. I’m only human!’’
‘‘Don’t raise your voice,’’ Leo cautioned.
‘‘Why? Do you think she’s standing outside the door eavesdropping?’’ Rey drawled sarcastically. ‘‘What if she did hear me? It’s the truth. She wants me. A blind man could see it.’’
‘‘That’s no reason to take advantage of her. She’s not like your usual women.’’
‘‘No, she’s not. She has no ambition, no intellect. Besides that, she’s so inexperienced, it’s unreal. I never thought kissing a woman could be boring, until she came along,’’ Rey added coldly, trying not to let Leo see how attracted he was to their housekeeper. ‘‘She’s so naive, it’s nauseating.’’
Outside the door, Meredith stood poised like a statue with a cup of coffee in a saucer shaking in her hands. She’d come to offer it to Rey, and overheard words that had never been meant for her ears. She fought tears as she turned around and went quickly and silently back down the hall to the kitchen.
Hearts couldn’t really break, she told herself firmly, as she dabbed at the tears with a paper towel. She was just feeling the aftereffects of her devastating experience at home. It wasn’t as if she was really drooling over Rey Hart.
She felt like sinking through the floor when she realized that she did spend an inordinate amount of time staring at him. He was handsome, sensuous, attractive. She liked looking at him. And maybe she was infatuated, a little. That didn’t give him the right to say such horrible things about her.
If she hadn’t been listening, she’d never have known about them in the first place. She’d have gone right ahead, mooning over him and having him know it and be amused by it. Her pride felt tattered. She’d never been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but Rey had kissed her as if he enjoyed it, and she’d built dreams on those kisses. She realized now how truly naive it had been. The first man who paid her any attention in years, and she fell head over heels for him. Seen in that context, perhaps it wasn’t surprising after all. She’d heard Leo accuse him of being a rounder, and she had to admit that his experience ran rings around hers. Apparently he was accustomed to playing sensual games with women. That was all those devastating kisses that had brought her to her knees had meant to him—just a game. And she’d taken it seriously!
Well, she told herself firmly, he needn’t worry that she’d throw herself at his feet again. From now on, she was going to be the perfect employee, polite and courteous and eager to please—but she’d never stare at him longingl
y again. Thank God she’d overheard what he said to Leo. It had spared her a terrible humiliation. A little hurt now was far better than being wrung out emotionally down the road because she’d been ignorant of the facts. Wasn’t she herself always telling people that the truth, however brutal, was always best in the long run? It was time to take her own advice.
When Rey and Leo came in to breakfast the next morning, she put bacon and eggs and biscuits on the table with a cool, professional smile.
Rey was oddly subdued. He didn’t give her the arrogant scrutiny that had become force of habit in recent days. In fact, he didn’t look at her at all. Leo kept up a pleasant conversation about the day’s chores. They were moving some sick cattle into a pasture near the house so the vet could examine them, and stock was being shifted into closer quarters as well, within easier reach of the hay barn.
‘‘I thought you had those big round bales of hay?’’ Meredith asked curiously.
‘‘We do,’’ Leo agreed. ‘‘But we still bale it the old-fashioned way and stack it in the barn. You lose some of the round bales through weathering by sun and rain. The hay that’s kept dry in the barn has less deterioration and better nutrition.’’
‘‘But you feed more than hay?’’
Leo chuckled. He buttered a second biscuit. ‘‘You are sharp. Yes, we have a man who mixes feeds for better nutrition. No animal proteins, either,’’ he added. ‘‘We’re reactionaries when it comes to ranching. No artificial hormones, no pesticides, nothing except natural methods of pest control and growth. We’re marketing our beef under the Hart Ranch label, as well, certifying it organic. We’ve already got several chain supermarkets carrying our product, and we’ve just moved onto the Internet to extend our distribution.’’
‘‘That’s amazing,’’ Meredith said with genuine interest. ‘‘It’s like having custom beef,’’ she added, nodding.
‘‘It is custom beef,’’ Leo told her. ‘‘We’re capitalizing on the move toward healthier beef. Quick profit methods are going to fail producers in the long run, especially with the current attitude toward hormones and antibiotics and animal-product proteins for feed. We think that once organic beef catches on, the market will justify the added expense.’’
‘‘Word of mouth will take you far, too,’’ Meredith said. ‘‘Hospitals teach nutrition these days, not only to patients but to the community. Tailored beef will find a market among consumers with heart problems, who’ll pay the extra cost for healthier cuts of meat grown organically.’’
Rey was listening. He finished his biscuit and poured himself another cup of coffee from the carafe on the table. ‘‘J.D. Langley pioneered that organic approach locally,’’ he remarked. ‘‘He and the Tremayne boys got into terrific fights with other producers at seminars for a while. Then we saw the disasters overseas and suddenly everybody else was jumping on the bandwagon.’’
‘‘They’ll be glad they did, I think,’’ Meredith said.
‘‘Which reminds me,’’ Leo said, eyeing her. ‘‘Mrs. Lewis said her larder hadn’t been opened since you came here. So…what are you making these biscuits with?’’
She gave them a wary glance. ‘‘Light olive oil,’’ she said slowly.
Rey gaped at his biscuit as if it had suddenly sprouted hair. ‘‘Olive oil?!’’ he gasped.
‘‘Listen,’’ she said quickly, aware of horrified stares, ‘‘olive oil is so healthy that people who live on a Mediterranean diet have only a fraction of the vascular problems we have in abundance in this country. The fat content is still there, but it’s a vegetable fat, and it’s actually good for you. Until I told you, you didn’t even know you’d given up great gobs of animal fat in those biscuits!’’
The brothers looked at each other. ‘‘Well,’’ Leo had to admit, ‘‘they taste just as good as the others did.’’
‘‘That’s true,’’ Rey agreed reluctantly.
‘‘And we’re getting older,’’ Leo continued. ‘‘We don’t want clogged arteries giving us heart attacks and strokes.’’
‘‘Or bypass surgery,’’ Rey sighed.
‘‘So I guess olive oil isn’t so bad, after all,’’ Leo concluded, with a grin at Meredith.
She grinned back. ‘‘Thank goodness. I had visions of being tarred and feathered,’’ she confessed.
‘‘I’m not giving up butter, though,’’ Rey told her firmly, dipping his knife into the tub next to the biscuit basket. ‘‘Nothing tastes like real butter on a biscuit.’’
Meredith didn’t look at him. She couldn’t confess that what he was eating was not butter, but rather a light margarine that actually lowered cholesterol levels. She only smiled and poured herself another cup of coffee.
Leo and Rey had started moving bulls into the lower pasture, where new forage grasses were thriving even in autumn, when a mangy old longhorn bull suddenly jerked his head and hooked Leo in the shoulder.
Leo yelled and threw a kick at him, but the aggravating animal was already trotting nonchalantly into the new pasture without a backward glance.
‘‘How bad is it?’’ Rey asked, leaving the cowboys to work the cattle alone while he looked at his brother’s shoulder.
‘‘Probably needs stitches,’’ Leo said through his teeth. ‘‘Drive me to the house and let me change shirts, then you can take me to Lou Coltrain.’’
‘‘Damned bull,’’ Rey muttered as he put his brother into the ranch truck and took off home.
Meredith was sweeping off the back steps when they drove up. She gave Leo’s bloodstained shirt a quick glance.
‘‘Come on in here, let me have a look,’’ she said gently.
Disconcerted, Leo let her remove the shirt from his shoulder and bathe the blood away with a clean cloth.
She probed around the edges of the cut and nodded. ‘‘You’ll need stitches. Here. Hold this tight against the cut until you get to town.’’
‘‘I need to change shirts,’’ he began.
‘‘You need to get to the doctor. Which one do you use?’’ she persisted, picking up the mobile phone she kept on the table.
‘‘Dr. Lou Coltrain,’’ he said.
‘‘I’ll phone and tell them you’re on the way,’’ she said firmly.
Rey gave her a curious glance, but he hustled Leo out the door and into the truck again.
When they got to the office, Dr. Lou Coltrain’s nurse, Betty, came right out to meet them and guide them back into a cubicle.
Lou walked in, took a professional look at the cut, and grinned. ‘‘Stitches,’’ she said. ‘‘How about a tetanus jab?’’
Leo grimaced. ‘‘Well…’’
She patted him on the shoulder that wasn’t injured. ‘‘We’ll have you fixed up and out of here in no time.’’
He sighed, glancing at his brother. ‘‘I hate shots.’’
Rey shrugged. ‘‘You’d hate tetanus more,’’ he told Leo. ‘‘Besides,’’ he added, ‘‘I hear she gives sugarless gum to the good patients.’’
Leo made a face at him.
When Leo was stitched up and given his tetanus shot, Rey drove him back to the house, where Meredith made him a cup of coffee and cut him a slice of cherry pie, making sure he had a cushion for his back in the straight chair at the table.
Rey glared at the special treatment his brother was getting. ‘‘Maybe I should get gored,’’ he commented drolly.
Meredith stared at him, and she didn’t smile. ‘‘You’d get a vinegar dressing and a cup of cold coffee,’’ she said.
He glared at her, too. He felt as if he’d been put in the corner without supper. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. He gave them both a hard look and went back out the door, smoldering with bad temper.
Six
‘‘I shouldn’t have said that,’’ Meredith said wryly when Rey was gone. ‘‘I set him off again.’’
‘‘It won’t hurt him to have one woman who doesn’t fall all over herself when he’s around,’’ Leo told her flatly. ‘‘Sometimes
too much success can ruin a good man.’’
She toyed with her coffee cup. ‘‘Women like him, I guess,’’ she said.
He gave her a quick glance that she didn’t see before he started on his pie. ‘‘He’s had girlfriends since he was in grammar school. But there was only one serious one. She turned out to be a real loser,’’ he added quietly. ‘‘She soured him on women.’’
She sipped coffee. ‘‘You can’t judge an entire sex by one woman,’’ she pointed out.
‘‘Well, we had our mother as an example, too,’’ he continued. ‘‘She left Dad with five young boys and never looked back. We haven’t been overawed with sterling examples of womanhood, although Simon and Corrigan and Cag have made good marriages in spite of that.’’
She smiled absently as she looked at him. ‘‘I had a brother of my own,’’ she said without thinking.
‘‘Yes, I know,’’ Leo replied, surprising her into silence. ‘‘His name was Michael Johns. He worked for Houston PD.’’
Her gasp was audible. ‘‘How…do you know about him?’’
‘‘Remember Colter Banks?’’
‘‘Yes. Colter was Mike’s best friend.’’
‘‘Well, Colter’s our second cousin,’’ he told her. ‘‘I knew Mike, too. I’m sorry.’’
She clenched one fist in her lap and tried not to give way to tears. ‘‘Do the others…know?’’
‘‘No, they don’t,’’ he replied. ‘‘They weren’t that close to Colter, and they never met Mike. I haven’t told them, and I’m not planning to.’’
She searched his dark eyes. ‘‘What else do you know about me, Leo?’’ she asked, because of the way he was watching her.
He shrugged. ‘‘Everything.’’
She let out a long breath. ‘‘And you haven’t shared it with Rey.’’
‘‘You wouldn’t want me to,’’ he murmured dryly. ‘‘He’s having too much fun being condescending. When the time comes, he’s got a few shocks coming, hasn’t he?’’