Claimed by a Cowboy

by Tanya Michaels

  Sam had tensed the second she asked her question, but he’d yet to answer it. Finally, he spared a glance over his shoulder. “No.” He poured a glass of milk and cut a slice of cake without offering any further explanation.

  Lorelei sighed inwardly. The return of Monosyllable Man. Oh, well. She wasn’t sure she could have articulated her and Wanda’s relationship, anyway. It was difficult to complain about a parent who had loved you and bragged about you without sounding crazy. Or, worse, whiny. She took a seat at the table and grabbed a napkin, prepared to indulge in a little cupcake therapy.

  Directly opposite her, Sam scraped a chair back across the tile. But after a few bites, his fork clattered to the plate.

  Lorelei looked up, surprised.

  “My mother…” If his words were visible, they’d be the color of rusty water spurting from a faucet too long unused. “I was an only child. Considering the hours my father worked, I’m shocked they even managed to have me. But after he was gone, she sent me to stay with Uncle JD. Said it was just temporary.” Sam looked away, but not before she glimpsed the bitterness etching its way into his expression.

  “You were there longer than expected.” It wasn’t a question.

  He stabbed at the cake. “’Til I left on the rodeo circuit at eighteen. Don’t matter now, of course.” His informal speech seemed like a forced attempt at casualness, and he continued without ever looking at her. “But when I was a kid, there would be these days when I was out in the field and I’d see the dust that meant someone was coming down the road and I—”

  “You thought it was her,” Lorelei added almost desperately. She felt compelled to rescue him from saying the words himself. She ached for the small boy whose hopes had been raised and dashed each time.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “This sounds loco to admit, but whenever someone came down that dirt road and it wasn’t her, I felt like they’d, I don’t know, taken something from me. I hope that’s not how you felt today, Lorelei. Like I took the inn from you?”

  Like you took her from me. But it wasn’t his fault that Lorelei and her mother had lost their chance to ever be close. A mass of conflicting emotions grew inside her like some malignant tumor.

  “I don’t even want the inn,” Sam admitted with a short, self-deprecating laugh. “What the hell would I do with it? Wanda left a legacy of gracious hospitality. She put everyone at ease.”

  Lorelei’s hands clenched in her lap. Not everyone.

  He took a deep breath. “I can’t give you your mother back. But if you want to step into her shoes, run the inn—”

  “Run it? I’d be as inept as you!” When he quirked an eyebrow, she backpedaled. “I—I mean, I have a life in Philadelphia.”

  “Right. How silly of me to forget.” He tipped his chair back on two legs, regarding her through narrowed eyes. “I’m sure your Rick is anxious for you to get back.”

  Rick didn’t get anxious about anything but making partner. She waved a dismissive hand. They’d had a mutually beneficial and highly flexible arrangement, not an exclusive relationship. “More importantly, I have a career there. A job I worked hard to get and don’t plan to give up so that I can come down here and fix tea and fold guest towels. No, we should sell the B and B. Split the profits,” she offered, touched by the way he’d been about to turn over the whole kit and caboodle to her. He’d been important to her mother and, despite Lorelei’s shock that afternoon, he deserved to share in the inheritance, too.

  His chair hit the floor with a thud and he rose immediately. “Good night, Lorelei.” There was no good reason, as far as she knew, for him to have snarled the words.

  “Wait.” She frowned. “I thought we were talking.”

  His words carried back to her, muffled. “And now we’re not.”

  Frustrated, she strode after him. She could maybe excuse his storming out of the will reading—after all, he’d apologized for that behavior. But another rude exit in the middle of a conversation? This one actually ticked her off more because she’d thought for a few moments that they’d connected on some level.

  “You’re going to walk away again?” she demanded from behind him. “Is this a habit with you?”

  Since she wasn’t prepared for him to stop suddenly in the hallway, she almost lost her balance trying to keep from plowing into him.

  “Leaving seemed more polite than staying to speak my mind,” he growled as he turned to face her. “You don’t want to be in my company right now.”

  Aggravated past diplomacy, Lorelei rolled her eyes at his soft warning. “Oh, brother. Is that anything like ‘you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry’? You’ve already lashed out at me once today, and I survived. Go ahead, cowboy, tell me again what a lousy daughter I was. I’d love to have the stellar insight of someone who barely knows me and never had a single firsthand glance of what my relationship with Wanda was like. Let me have it,” she challenged, poking her index finger right below his collarbone. “I can take anything you can dish out.”

  Chapter Six

  She probably could handle anything, Sam reasoned. It was probably easy to keep your composure if you had ice water in your veins. He’d foolishly thought he was getting a look at a different Lorelei tonight, one who truly missed her mother and was capable of empathizing with people. She’d even somehow got him to open up about his own family history, which he never did.

  So when she’d deftly turned the conversation to “profits” and shrugged off the possibility that there might be actual people in Philadelphia who meant more than her precious career… God. She seemed more like the biological child of his parents than a relative of Wanda Keller’s.

  “Well?” Lorelei taunted.

  It seemed criminal that her expression could be so cold after he’d glimpsed a brief flare of unguarded heat earlier. Objectively, Lorelei was attractive—especially with her thick hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, her pink T-shirt and pajama shorts adding a rosy flush to a face scrubbed free of makeup. But the unmistakable desire he’d seen in her dark gaze had transformed her beyond a pretty woman to stunning, an enchantress from a man’s dreams. He wanted to make her acknowledge what she’d felt, wanted to do something that thawed her the hell out.

  Without consciously planning to, he backed her toward the wall. Her breathing grew hectic. Sam tried to ignore the rise and fall of her braless chest just inches from his body.

  In contrast to her obvious physical awareness of him, her tone was deliberately bored. “I’m not impressed with the Neanderthal act.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and Sam hardened.

  “It’s not an act,” he said grimly. The thought of tossing her over his shoulder and dragging her back to his cave was far more appealing than it should have been. When had he leaned in so close to her?

  He straightened. “I am going to bed. Alone.”

  She shoved at his shoulders with both hands. “I sure as hell wasn’t volunteering to join you.”

  “I meant, don’t follow me this time,” he clarified. But he held her gaze, not stepping aside yet, as he waited for her to agree.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” she declared.

  No, we won’t. He turned toward the staircase. He’d already said more than intended to Lorelei Keller, and he didn’t plan to make that mistake again.

  He didn’t bother telling her he’d been hired to help supervise a two-day trail ride out of Bandera. He was packed and planned to get an early start. Sam took the stairs two at a time, confident he’d be able to slip out tomorrow without encountering Lorelei. If he was uncharacteristically lucky, she might even be gone by the time he returned.

  WHEN LORELEI WOKE, SUNLIGHT was streaming between the curtain panels. She blinked, her mind groggy and her body tingling. Sudden embarrassment cut through her mental haze and she tried to stifle the me
mory of erotic dreams flavored with German chocolate kisses. She hurried out of bed, moving with impressive speed for someone with no coffee in her system, and headed for the shower, leaving the water colder than she normally would.

  Forty minutes later, she was dressed, her damp hair neatly braided, and feeling in control again. She made her way to the kitchen, telling herself that if she should happen to run in to Sam Travis, he wouldn’t make so much as a dent in her equilibrium.

  Whether he was wearing a shirt or not. She even walked down the stairs with extra caution, lest Oberon decide it was time to race the Kitty 500 again.

  But there seemed to be no sign of man or beast today.

  She pulled out the coffee and a filter, then noticed a piece of scratch paper from the notepads Wanda placed in each guest room and by the kitchen phone. Sam’s handwriting was an unselfconscious scrawl of black across the pale purple stationery.

  L—

  I’ll be on the road for the next couple of days, so you’ll have the place all to yourself until Tuesday night. If you head back to Philly before then, just lock up when you go. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to my inn.

  S.T.

  She crumpled the paper in her hand. His inn? The man was schizo. Last night, he’d seemed on the verge of giving it to her. Then he’d done a complete about-face, treating her to that obnoxious display of testosterone. Her toes curled at the memory, and she gave herself an impatient shake. She was not the type of woman to go weak in the knees because some bare-chested cowboy leaned over her, looking as if he were about to kiss her senseless and carry her up the stairs.

  No, that idea was not attractive at all.

  “Rowrrr?” The meowed greeting, more inquisitive than hostile, jolted her from her reverie.

  “Morning, Obie.” She glanced down. “Hope you weren’t looking for Travis. He’s gone, and I for one am thrilled. Turns out, he might actually be more of a beast than you.”

  AFTER AN HOUR OF THE chuckwagon cook playing harmonica to accompany a “cowboy balladeer,” riders were finally turning in for the night, disappearing into their tents in groups of two or three. Armed with a padded bedroll, Sam had opted to sleep outside, where he could periodically check on the horses and the dying fire. It was a beautiful clear night but cool enough that bugs wouldn’t be an issue. Away from big cities and towns, the stars were magnificent in the inky sky—almost too crowded for him to make out individual constellations. Why spend the night beneath the colorless canvas of a tent when he could savor this instead?

  During Sam’s early teens, he and his uncle had often camped in the open air. JD had died years ago while Sam had been working cattle on the other side of the state, but he could still hear the old man’s voice in his head on nights like this.

  “All you need is right here,” his uncle had said. “Texas dirt beneath your feet, a sky full of stars overhead and the occasional Shiner beer—but not ’til you’re older, boy. Don’t know why my brother could never understand. Instead of appreciating the gifts he had in his life, he worked himself into the ground pursuing the almighty dollar. Your mama’s no better, throwing herself at that country club king. But you won’t make their mistakes, will you?”

  “No, sir,” Sam murmured nearly two decades later, his breath creating wispy puffs in the cooling air. The temperature had been dropping since the sun set, and he welcomed the crispness. It helped him think. Now that the riders were bunked down for the night and the peaceful rustling wind had replaced choruses of “Deep in the Heart of Texas” and “Home on the Range,” he felt more clearheaded than he had since the morning he’d found Wanda. I needed this.

  Maybe he’d simply been getting too stir-crazy in the B and B. That might explain his temporary insanity last night. He didn’t know which was harder to believe—that he’d almost kissed Lorelei Keller, or that, unless his instincts were completely off, she would have let him. They had nothing in common.

  Well, they’d both lost fathers at a young age and seemed to have complicated relationships with their mothers. But other than that…

  Sam frowned into the blackness. For all that he’d resented his mother dumping him on JD, he had to admit that upbringing had probably saved him. What would he be like now if the Dallas country club king had raised him? Sam couldn’t understand why Lorelei had habitually refused to her mother’s entreaties to come home, why she seemed so disdainful of her roots. Had she ever been lucky enough to see her birthplace the way he did? He folded his arms beneath his head, drinking in the raw beauty of the night.

  The only things marring his peace were the unwanted thoughts of Lorelei, buzzing through his mind like mosquitoes. He’d seen real pain in her eyes when she talked about her parents and had glimpsed a wickedly tempting heat in her eyes last night. Was it too late for someone to save the number cruncher from up north? Despite how coldly efficient she could sometimes be, there was real emotion deep down.

  Deep, deep down.

  Not my problem. Sam put his hands behind his bed and looked up at the thousands of twinkling stars. He had a simple, uncomplicated life that provided everything he needed and it was a shame other people couldn’t find fulfillment without their sixty-hour work weeks and cell phones and the ability to check email every ten minutes.

  Still, as he drifted to sleep, his imagination provided tantalizing fantasies of what it would be like to show Lorelei the Texas he knew, to see the constant tension around her eyes relax and her mouth curve into a beckoning smile. A sight like that might actually rival the stars.

  THE STORM THAT ROLLED in Monday afternoon was severe enough that Lorelei stopped packing boxes to assess the probability of a power outage. She rummaged through several kitchen cabinets and desk drawers in search of candles, matches and flashlights. Rain lashed the windows and the wind outside was howling more angrily than Oberon the summer he’d been sprayed by a skunk and Wanda had given him a bath. But the wind and rain were mere whispers compared to the house-rattling booms of thunder.

  Shivering, Lorelei huddled deeper into her sweater. It was one of her rainy day favorites—forest-green ribbed chenille with a zipped-up neckline. She still felt chilled, though, either from the damp weather or the emotional havoc of digging through her mother’s memories and trying to parcel them out to various acquaintances and charities. Maybe it was time she took a break from cataloguing and sorting Wanda’s personal items and fixed herself a late lunch. It seemed like a good day for soup.

  Armed with a flashlight, just in case, she made her way into the kitchen’s walk-in pantry. Within minutes, she’d located pasta, broth and canned chicken. Onions hung in a mesh bag over the counter.

  “As long as we’ve got all the basic seasonings and carrots in the fridge, we’re in business,” she muttered.

  The last thing she expected to hear was an answering voice. “Hello?” A man, not Sam or the lawyer, called from the front of the house.

  Lorelei was startled enough that she dropped a can on her foot. She sucked in a breath. “J-just a minute.” Given the neatly typed sign posted in the front window about the inn not being open for business, she hadn’t expected anyone to walk right in without knocking. Should’ve locked the front door after walking down to the mailbox this morning.

  She set down her ingredients on the table and limped down the hallway to the entrance. Two men, both dripping water off their coats, stood at the welcome table. They were perusing not the official pamphlets on local attractions, but rather the spiral notebook in which Wanda had encouraged visitors to write about any “paranormal encounters” they’d experienced in the Hill Country.

  “Ooh.” The one with the receding hair line waved the little notebook in the air. “Read this part about the nearby Flagstone Guesthouse. It claims that doors open and close by themselves and that things turn on and off for no reason. Lights, faucets, television sets.”

 
Lorelei cleared her throat, announcing her presence. “I’m sorry, but we’re not renting out any rooms right now. Or arranging tours.”

  “Oh, we know.” The other man, a shaggy, auburn-haired guy, beamed at her with baffling enthusiasm. “We’re not here to check into a room, although that would be awesome. We stopped by because we heard someone died.”

  “Right here in the hotel,” his friend crowed happily.

  Lorelei’s stomach knotted. These two hadn’t been drawn to the inn by stories of Wanda’s legendary hospitality and the promise of hot coffee on a cold wet day. They were here because of morbid curiosity, because they were delighted at the idea that someone—her mother!—had died under this very roof.

  “The woman you’re referring to was Wanda Keller, my mom and the owner,” she said stiffly. “Which is why—”

  “Has she tried to contact you since she crossed over?” the redhead asked.

  His friend groaned. “We’ve had this conversation, Dwayne. They haven’t crossed if they’re still here.”

  The bearded fellow, Dwayne, was too excited to debate the point. “Maybe Mrs. Keller could become famous in these parts for haunting the place, like Mrs. Mueller’s ghost over at—”

  “Show a little respect!” Lorelei snapped. She’d always hated conversations like this, but having to endure her mother’s insistence that Lorelei’s father wasn’t truly gone hadn’t been anywhere near as upsetting as these two idiots practically cackling with glee over Wanda’s death. It had been less than a week since her death and they were reducing to her to some urban legend. Where’s Oberon when I need him to attack someone?

  The shorter man held up his hands, palms facing her, in a conciliatory gesture. “Your mother based this place on supernatural anecdotes and ghost stories, ma’am. She was interested in the same things we are. I don’t think she’d mind our being here.”