Its beauty stirred him, warming his heart as he felt again that connection to this land, this place.
The empty coffee cup left on the table indicated Harrison must have been sitting here earlier. He hoped the serenity of the spot brought her some comfort.
And then she was back, tray in hand with two cups of coffee on it, plus a sugar bowl and a pitcher of cream.
“I forgot to ask how you take your coffee, so I brought a little of everything.” She attempted a smile, which didn’t quite succeed. “I’m afraid my social skills, never the best, aren’t as sharp right now as they should be.”
“Understandable, and I take mine black anyway.”
“Ah, good man. So you actually like coffee.”
“The elixir of life. Or at least the fuel that starts the morning. With all the varieties available now from local coffee companies, why would I want to cover up the flavor?”
“My thoughts exactly. If you want to taste cream and sugar, make a milkshake.”
“Have you tried the coffee at Riva’s Java in town? She orders in beans and roasts and blends her own.”
“Yes, Daddy and I . . .” She paused a moment, swallowing hard. “We used to stop by when we were in town.”
For a few more minutes, they sipped their coffee and chatted about other downtown businesses. Finally, Duncan said, “I expect you’ll be headed back to Dallas soon?”
“I’m not sure yet when I’ll be leaving.”
Surprised, Duncan almost asked how she could afford to spare the time away from work just now, but he caught himself. It wasn’t any of his business how she chose to handle her job. Maybe, despite what she’d told her father that day on the ridge, she was able to do some work remotely.
“Well, I don’t imagine you can stay on too much longer. Before you leave, I wanted to give you a proposition to consider. For when you start thinking about what you’ll do with the ranch.”
“A proposition?”
“Yes. I expect your career keeps you pretty busy. You can’t get down here much, and a ranch doesn’t run by itself. I’m guessing that sooner or later you’ll decide to sell it. I’d consider it a privilege to buy you out. I’ve talked to the bank about financing, and I think we could work something out. In fact, if you decided you wanted to take me up on the offer, I’m ready to take over pretty much immediately. So you wouldn’t have to worry about trying to take care of the ranch once you were back in Dallas. With tax season and all, I imagine you already have more than enough on your plate.”
For a moment she simply stared at him. Then abruptly, she stood, paced away from him and halted, looking out over the meadow. Already considering his offer, maybe? Duncan thought hopefully.
But when she turned and stomped back to the table, it wasn’t relief he read on her face—but fury.
“How dare you,” she spat out, her eyes narrowed, her breath coming fast. “My Daddy hardly gone two weeks, the dirt on his grave over on the hillside barely settled, and you come here wanting to take his ranch away from me? His pride and joy? His dream?”
Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to broach the prospect this soon. Trying to backpedal, Duncan rose and held up a placating hand. “Look, I never meant to try to railroad you into doing something you didn’t want! I just figured you’d be letting it go eventually—”
“Well, maybe you figured wrong! I know you’ve wanted this ranch back since the day Daddy bought the land. But he made this place his and loved it just as much as you do. He’d never have let it go, and neither will I! So pack up that charming smile and that ingratiating manner, haul your ass back to your truck, and get off my land. Now!”
As irritated by now as she was angry, Duncan picked up his hat and jammed it on his head. “I only meant to be neighborly. I thought I might be able to take a burden off your hands. I see now I was mistaken.”
“You got that right. Goodbye, Mr. McAllister. Please don’t bother to stop by and be ‘neighborly’ again.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am. Thanks for the coffee.”
Giving her a curt nod, Duncan stalked back to the pickup. After he jumped up, started the engine, and threw it into reverse, he looked back to see Harrison Scott still standing on the patio, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at him.
Muttering a curse about illogical, high-strung city women, he gunned the engine and spun off in a shower of pebbles.
Okay, maybe he’d hit her up too soon, but she didn’t need to act like he was trying to steal the ranch out from under her, he thought, still indignant—and, truth be told, a little hurt. Yes, he wanted the land, but he had also really wanted to help her.
He remembered the chaos that happened when the man who ran a ranch died unexpectedly. He’d been thirteen, old enough to handle some of the chores, but too young to take over. Helpless to stave off disaster when the bottom dropped out of the beef market and the mortgage crisis hit.
Ranching was never a safe bet, but he hadn’t heard any rumors that the Scott place was in financial trouble. Miss Don’t-Steal-My-Land would probably be okay hanging on to it until she made up her mind what to do.
It shouldn’t take too many weeks of trying to operate a ranch from a city office a five-hour drive away for her to give up the attempt.
He’d keep his ear to the ground, and when the inevitable happened and she conceded it was time to sell, he’d be ready. Because when it came to a choice between continuing her city job and managing the land, she was sure to choose the city.
No matter how cute she looked in those worn jeans and scuffed boots.
Chapter Three
On a fair spring afternoon two weeks later, Duncan was walking his fence line near the border with the Scott Ranch, checking for any strayed cows who might have calved in the last twenty-four hours. Most of the herd stayed together, but occasionally a cow would wander off on her own. He much preferred to find the calves soon after birth, when they were still small enough for one man to tag without help.
As he neared the top of the rise, he saw a figure about a hundred yards away applying a fence stretcher to a run of barbed wire. Must be the Scott’s ranch hand, occupied in the never-ending chore of fence repair. Which was another reason why he looked for cows along his own fence line, so he could find and fix any breaks or stretched-out places before too many cows found them.
He was about to turn back toward his lines when something about the distant workman caught his eye. Taking a second look, he’d just concluded that the ranch hand was female, and was wondering who she might be, when a piercing scream shattered the silence.
His heartbeat accelerating, Duncan took off at a run.
A moment later, he reached the woman, who was hopping up and down on one foot, beating at her raised boot with one hand while trying to extricate her other hand, which was snagged on one of the fence’s sharp barbs.
“Hold still so I can get your hand free,” he ordered.
“Can’t!” she gasped, still beating at the boot. “Fire ants!”
He took in her dilemma at the same moment that her voice registered. “Harrison?” he said incredulously.
Before she could answer, he snapped out of his shock and ducked under the fence. Placing one hand at her waist to steady her, he knelt beside her and yanked off her boot with the other, then stripped off her sock and scraped off the stinging insects that were swarming up her leg. Avoiding the trail of ants that had attacked her, he stood back up, wrapped his arm around her waist, and carefully jiggled her bleeding hand to extricate it from the barb.
Whipping a kerchief out of his pocket, he offered it to her. “Wrap this around your hand. Don’t worry—it’s clean enough to make do until we can get you to a first aid kit.”
“You can let me go now.”
“Not until I check your boot and make sure none of the critters are still inside. Let me help you over to that post.”
Fortunately, she didn’t attempt to argue, nodding instead and then hanging on to him awkwardly while he w
alked and she hopped on one foot to the nearby fence post. Once he was sure she was balanced against it, he went back to retrieve her boot and sock. After checking the sock, he upended the boot and shook it hard, then peered inside.
“I think the interlopers are gone, but let me check.” He ran his fingers down the inside from the top to the ankle and then worked his way toward the toe, carefully feeling along the interior. Satisfied there were no ants left, he pulled his hand back out. “Good to go. Are you ready to put it back on?”
Grimacing, she nodded. “I’ll have to if I want to get back to the house. I’ll tend the bites when I doctor the hand.”
“Did you ride here or drive up?”
“Drove. The pickup is on the other side of the ridge.”
“Let me drive you back. Your hand should stop bleeding long as you keep some pressure on it, but no sense moving it around anymore than you have to.”
He thought for a moment she was going to refuse, but then she nodded. “Thanks. And thanks for coming to help. I’m surprised you bothered, after how . . . unpleasant I was to you the last time we met.”
“I’d never let unpleasantness stop me from saving a lady in distress,” he joked. “And to be fair, I didn’t realize it was you until I got right up to you. Too late to retreat then. I should have recognized you straight off, but I didn’t think you’d still be in Whiskey River.”
Once again, he wondered how she was managing her accounts from a distance—especially if she was spending her time, not on her computer in the office, but out on the range, mending fences. But he wasn’t about to ask and invite a biting recommendation that he mind his own business.
“Let me finish fixing the bit of fence that caused all the trouble, and then I’ll drive you back.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“You got it.” Picking up the crimping tool she’d dropped and another coupler from the box beside it, he quickly slipped the two ends of the broken wire through the coupler, crimped them in place, then separated each wire end into two single strands and wound them back around each other to lock the repair in place.
Tucking the box of couplers and the crimping pliers into his coat pocket, he unfastened the fence stretcher. “Done.”
“Wish I could repair a fence that fast. I’d get a lot more work done in a day.”
“Years of practice. I’ll carry the tools. You just concentrate on keeping pressure on that hand. That is—are you okay to walk? You’re not feeling dizzy or light-headed, are you?”
“Feeling stupid, maybe, but that won’t keep me from walking.”
She set off, Duncan falling into step beside her.
“I must look like a complete idiot,” she mumbled. “Granted, I’m not the handiest person, but I’m not usually this klutzy. Just as I got the two ends of the wire pulled together, I dropped the coupler, which hit a rock and rolled away. I pulled off my glove so I could pick it up, and I was so focused on trying to retrieve it while still hanging on to the wire, I wasn’t watching where I stepped. Then . . . ant attack, which made me jump, and I caught my hand . . .” She sighed. “I would have gotten myself free eventually, but you probably saved me ten or twenty more ant bites.”
“Just being neighborly—whether you want me to or not,” he added, remembering what she’d flung at him when she’d ordered him off her property.
She flushed. “Sorry about that. I do owe you an apology. Granted, you caught me at a . . . bad time, but I shouldn’t have unloaded on you. Which I realized as soon as I was thinking calmly again. I thought about stopping by the Triple A to say just that, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. So, will you accept my apology . . . neighbor?”
Duncan smiled, a little surprised by how pleased he was to clear the air between them. “Sure. To be fair, I shouldn’t have brought up selling the ranch so soon after you’d lost your Daddy. But I didn’t expect you would hang around Whiskey River very long.”
And why are you still here, a month after the funeral? Though he didn’t want to ask her outright, he was curious enough to give her an opening to explain—if she wanted.
She blew out a breath. “My return to Dallas is . . . on hold. While I get a better handle on what’s needed to run the ranch.”
Duncan wondered how you could put an accounting career on hold in the middle of tax season and still have a job to return to. Maybe the boyfriend her father disparaged had stepped up in her time of need and was covering for her.
Though he hadn’t attended the funeral, Duncan realized.
By now, they’d reached her pickup. Duncan opened the passenger-side door for her. “Do you need a hand up?”
“Thanks, I can manage.”
Too bad, Duncan thought as he walked around the back to stow the gear. When he helped her off the fence, he’d been too focused on ending her pain as quickly as possible to appreciate the feel of her slim waist under his fingers. This time he could have savored touching her.
Live-in boyfriend, he reminded himself again.
Not live-in at the ranch, his libido answered.
Close enough, his conscience shot back. He’d never been the kind of man who hit on another man’s woman, and he wasn’t about to begin. Even if he was finding her proximity surprisingly arousing, given that she wasn’t at all the type that normally caught his eye.
But there was something about her . . . a subtle attractiveness that invaded his senses, her stoic self-reliance, a kind of quaint dignity—and yes, he had to admit it, the feeling that she really needed his help.
He’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. It almost compelled him to assist her, whether she wanted him to or not. For which he figured he owed her an apology too.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, he turned on the engine and engaged the drive. “I honestly thought I’d be helping you out by offering to buy the ranch. Obviously, I did the opposite, upsetting you instead of easing your burdens at a difficult time. I’m sorry for that. So—will you forgive me?”
She nodded. “We’ll call it even.” She was quiet for a few minutes, then said, “I don’t know if you know it or not, but when Daddy bought this ranch, he wasn’t aware of the circumstances behind the sale. He just saw pictures of the property in the real estate brochure and immediately knew it could be the ranch he’d dreamed of owning since he was a boy. When he did discover afterward why the land came to be on the market, he . . . struggled about owning it. Except he knew you didn’t have the means to buy it back.”
“I never really blamed him for buying it. Someone would have. Someone who might not have taken care of it as well as he did.”
“I hope I can do nearly as well. The last few days have been hard enough without carrying grudges,” she said, taking off her hat and brushing her tangled hair behind her ear.
Thereby revealing a large, ugly bruise that ran from her cheekbone to her ear and up to her forehead.
“Holy sh—” Duncan sputtered. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“It only hurts when I laugh,” she said wryly. “I was helping Juan tag newborns, prepping the gun and holding the supplies while he knelt down to immobilize the calf. We were almost done with one when suddenly the calf’s mama jumped over, butted Juan, and knocked me into the truck.”
“Did you see a doc? Half a ton of nervous mama could slam you against it with enough force to give you a concussion.”
She shook her head. “Didn’t have any symptoms. Just a good headache and an ugly bruise.” She sighed. “It’s Juan I’m worried about. He fell over at a bad angle and wrenched his back. I got him to agree to let me do the fence-mending and only check the cows every other day, with me along to help when he does, but I’m afraid even that is too much for him. I don’t like the way he looks when he walks—or the look on his face when he’s walking. I probably ought to refuse to let him continue—except I know I couldn’t tag the babies on my own.”
Her eyes brightening, she said, “I don’t know many people around Whiskey River, but yo
u do. Can you think of anyone I might be able to hire to help me out until Juan recovers?”
Duncan frowned, scanning his memory for available cowhands. “Pretty much everyone who works cattle is already working. There are always high school kids looking for jobs, but for tagging you need someone who knows what he’s doing.”
The next words found his tongue before his brain could examine them. “I could probably help you out until Juan’s fit to go again.”
“No, I couldn’t ask that of you. You have your own cows to tend, and your herd is bigger than Daddy’s.”
“If you ride around every day and locate the newborns, I could stop by in the late afternoon and tag them for you.”
“Are you sure you don’t know anyone else? I hate to impose.”
“No imposition. Just—”
“—being neighborly?” she finished.
Ready to reply with a joke, he looked over to see her smiling, and the words went right out of his head. He hadn’t seen her smile before, he realized, not really smile. And when she did . . .
Golden highlights danced in her dark eyes, brightening her pale face and giving her the look of a naughty pixie, while the broad curve of her lips made her mouth look fuller, lusher. He swallowed hard as a wave of arousal pulsed through him.
The sound of the tires hitting the rumble strips at the edge of the road snapped him out of it. Switching his eyes back to the road, he jerked the wheel to steer the truck around the curve, realizing as he did so that they had almost reached the Scott Ranch.
Which was a good thing. Having amorous thoughts about Harrison Scott would complicate life a little too much.
A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of the house. “Let’s get that hand tended.”
“That’s okay. I can handle it. I don’t want to take you away from your work any longer.”
“Are you left-handed?”
She angled him a look. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re going to have some trouble cleaning and bandaging that wound if you’re right-handed. It’s bled enough that it ought to be fairly clean, but you’ll need to wash it out good, douse it with antiseptic, and bandage it. Think you can manage all that with your left hand?”
The Rancher Page 3
