The Rancher Gets Hitched & An Affair of Convenience

by Cathie Linz

  “I realize that. But if I could get you a good deal on some new appliances it would certainly make life easier. For all of us.” She nodded toward the sign on the wall that read “If the Cook Ain’t Happy, No One Ain’t Happy.” She wondered which of the string of departed housekeepers had left that little memento behind.

  “This isn’t Chicago,” he reminded her. “We don’t have lots of stores out here. In fact, there’s only one place in Bliss that sells appliances, and even then it’s out of a catalog.”

  “Bliss?”

  “The closest town.”

  “Right. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the road signs last night. I was just relieved to get here in one piece.”

  “Whose cool car is outside?” Rusty demanded as he and Lucky burst into the kitchen. He skidded to a stop a few inches from his father while Lucky slid on a slippery spot on the black-and-white-checked linoleum. Cleaning the slick egg white from the floor was clearly high up on the agenda, Tracy decided. Zane had already picked up the broken shards of the bowl and thrown them away.

  “If you’re referring to the red car, then it’s mine,” Tracy replied, grabbing a bunch of paper towels and blotting up the worst of the egg mess on the floor before dumping the dripping paper towels in the trash.

  “I don’t like it,” Rusty said, even though his voice had been eager with excitement a few seconds before. Now it was sullen, as was his expression. And he had his father’s stubborn chin.

  Well, Tracy could be just as stubborn. “I’m staying.”

  The twins didn’t look at all pleased with her declaration. In fact, they looked so downright dismayed that she almost felt guilty. Trying to make it up to them, she spoke to Rusty. “After we clear things up around here, maybe we could drive into Bliss and you and your sister could show me around town.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Zane inserted.

  “Why not?” Tracy asked. “I thought we agreed that ordering new appliances would be the thing to do.”

  “Only if you can find them for under five hundred dollars. For both the stove and dishwasher. Including delivery. And no weird colors. White or black only.”

  “Done,” she promptly said, knowing she had connections in the business. “But first we need to clean up the kitchen.”

  “Good idea. The twins will help you. I’ll leave you to it then.” A moment later he was gone, leaving Tracy alone in the kitchen with two very militant munchkins.

  “Well,” Tracy began and then didn’t know what to say next. How did one approach hostile children? Cautiously, that was for sure. Yet, she couldn’t afford to let them get the upper hand.

  Think about how you deal with difficult clients, she told herself, recalling how she’d sometimes likened some of them to stubborn children. And she’d won over those clients in the end. She could do the same with these two.

  She knew practical techniques to defuse confrontations. Granted, she hadn’t used them on Dennis when she’d gone to his apartment to tell him she was having second thoughts about their engagement, only to find him in bed with another woman. But then she hadn’t wanted to defuse that situation, she’d wanted to hightail out of it. And she had. By running off to Colorado, cappuccino machine in hand, to become a rancher’s housekeeper.

  Which brought her back to the twins. “I’m sorry you’re not happy about having a housekeeper taking care of you. As you’ve guessed by now, I’ve never been a housekeeper before so I don’t exactly know what I’m supposed to do and not do.”

  The twins’ expressions immediately went from combative to crafty. As they advanced on her, she could easily imagine them rubbing their hands with glee.

  “You’re not supposed to make us do housework,” Rusty stated.

  “Yeah, and you’re supposed to let us eat whatever we want, whenever we want,” Lucky said.

  “No green vegetables,” Rusty declared. “A good housekeeper never serves green vegetables.”

  By now they had Tracy backed against the rattling refrigerator. But still they kept coming, their words tumbling out.

  “And always bakes chocolate cake every night,” Lucky said.

  Rusty nodded. “Yeah, and doesn’t make us clean our rooms.”

  “Or make our beds,” Lucky added.

  “Or say we can’t eat in our rooms,” Rusty tacked on.

  Tracy gazed at them with awe. Standing there in clean jeans and yellow T-shirts, they looked so angelic as they lied through their teeth. She was impressed.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, sliding away from the fridge and making a clean getaway. At least the twins were no longer glaring at her with daggers in their eyes. “But first we better do as your father said and clean things up in here. Where do you keep the mop?”

  “In there.” Lucky pointed to a pantry door.

  Feeling more confident that she was getting things under control, Tracy opened the pantry door only to have a small furry animal scurry out between her feet.

  “It’s Joe! Get him, get him!” Lucky shrieked as she and Rusty both nosedived toward the streak of fur.

  “That’s a mouse. Don’t touch it!” Tracy shrieked just as loudly. “Come back here!” She grabbed a handful of Rusty’s T-shirt only to have him wiggle out of it a second later.

  Bare-chested now, he joined his sister who’d slid the hallway area rug into a pile near the front door as she did a right-angle turn into the living room.

  “I got him,” Lucky yelled in relief a moment later, holding up her hands and cuddling the mouse to her nose.

  Tracy shuddered. She hated mice. She’d had a thing about them ever since Lenny Bronkowski had dropped one down her shorts in the second grade.

  Tracy knew she shouldn’t just stand there and let the twins hold a rodent to their noses, or even worse, to her nose. If she were a brave woman she’d just saunter over and toss that mouse right out on its skinny little behind. Too bad she’d used up all her gutsy moves getting out here to Colorado in the first place.

  Salvation came in the form of Buck, who spoke from his seat in a leather recliner in the comer. “So you found Joe. He’s their pet mouse,” he added for Tracy’s benefit.

  Lucky stopped cooing to her mouse long enough to say, “I was so afraid that Precious had gotten to Joe.”

  “Precious?” Tracy asked, trying to tell herself that a pet mouse was better than a wild one, surely.

  “Rusty’s pet snake,” Buck said.

  Of course. She should have guessed as much. “What’s wrong with a dog or a cat as a pet?”

  “Couldn’t get one to stick around,” Buck admitted. “They kept running off.”

  Tracy suspected the twins’ hell-on-wheels ways had something to do with that.

  Buck confirmed her hunch. “Mighta had something to do with the fact that the twins were practicing their ropin’ skills on them to the point where the animals were rope-shy and sleeping with one eye open. So we’re left with Joe and Precious,” Buck said. “They usually don’t stray very far. You better put Joe back in his cage, Lucky.”

  “Oh, Grandpa.” It looked as if Lucky was going to say more when the older man fixed her with a nononsense look that stopped her protest.

  Tracy took note and wondered if she’d ever be able to duplicate that look—part frown, pure disapproval. If she tried it, she’d probably end up getting wrinkles.

  “Why are you running around with no shirt, boy?” Buck asked Rusty.

  “She tore it off me.” Rusty pointed an accusing finger in Tracy’s direction.

  When Buck turned his frowning disapproval toward her, Tracy couldn’t help getting defensive. “I was trying to stop him from running after the mouse. I didn’t know it was a pet.”

  “Could have been worse,” Buck told her with a slow grin that added more lines to a weatherworn face. “My great-great-granddaddy, Jedidiah Best, brought a pet armadillo with him clear up from Texas. We still got it stuffed and on display in the den. You can take a gander at it if yo
u’d like. Family legend has it that the armadillo brought him good luck.”

  Speechless, Tracy just shook her head, indicating she’d take a pass on viewing the stuffed armadillo. She was still recovering from the mouse.

  “That stuffed armadillo didn’t bring Cockeyed Curly Mahoney much luck, though,” Buck continued. “Not that he was family, exactly. More like a friend of the family. You ever heard the stories about Cockeyed Curly the bank robber?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Tracy replied.

  “Legend has it that Cockeyed Curly hid the gold coins from his last heist in these parts. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter he choked on a piece of steak and died, taking the secret of his treasure’s hiding place with him. So you see what I mean about him not having very good luck in the end.”

  “Grandpa knows lots of stories about Cockeyed Curly,” Rusty said.

  “Of course the most famous story is the one about the treasure map,” Buck said. “My great-great granddaddy saved Curly’s hide in a barroom fight over in Leadville. To repay Jedidiah, Curly drew him a map supposedly showing where he’d buried his treasure. Then Curly went to eat that fateful steak dinner where he choked and died. But that map, if it ever existed, has long since disappeared.”

  “Maybe it was written on invisible paper,” Rusty suggested.

  Buck chortled at the idea before his expression turned serious. “I can tell you that some of that money would come in handy right about now. Family ranching isn’t exactly a booming operation these days. The little guy is fast becoming a thing of the past, just like the other legends of the west,” Buck noted with a brooding expression. “Doggone corporations are taking over the world.”

  “Grandpa don’t like corporations. Don’t like city folks, neither,” Lucky added with a pointed look in Tracy’s direction.

  “Doesn’t like city folks,” Tracy automatically corrected.

  “That’s what I just said. You want to pet Joe before I put him in his cage?” The little girl held up the mouse and practically waved it underneath Tracy’s nose.

  Tracy could feel the blood draining from her face even as she hid a shudder, imagining little mousy feet scuttling and scratching against her skin. “No, thank you.” Did her voice sound faint? She certainly hoped not. If the twins sniffed out her fear of mice they’d pounce on it in an instant. Or have the mouse pounce on her.

  Everyone was allowed one weakness. It was just her luck that mice was hers.

  “I thought I told you to get on upstairs and put Joe back in his cage,” Buck reminded Lucky. “Unless you want Precious to make a meal of him.”

  “What kind of snake is Precious? And where is he or she?” Tracy quickly added, looking around the living room and only now realizing how messy the place was.

  Last night she’d been so glad to have a roof over her head after the long drive and torrential rain that she hadn’t really been paying attention to the decor. Not that she could see much of the decor, what with the newspapers and toys strewn around the place.

  There was no missing the huge fieldstone fireplace that filled most of one wall. A pair of matching green leather chairs faced each other like gunfighters at high noon, while a couch stood off to one side as if it were an uninterested bystander. Buck’s brown leather recliner had seen better days and appeared to be held together with duct tape. The carpeting may have once been green as well, but it was hard to tell as most of it was covered with papers, socks and an assortment of stuff. If there was a snake in the room, it would be hard-pressed to find an inch of wiggle room.

  “The kids wanted a boa constrictor,” Buck said. “But I put my foot down and said no. So Precious is just a garden variety snake. And she’s kept in the kids’ room nowadays.”

  Tracy picked up on that qualifier right away. “Nowadays?”

  “Precious has gotten into the housekeeper’s bed a few times,” Lucky announced with a grin that wasn’t intended to do Tracy’s peace of mind any good.

  “Yeah, but your pa made you promise that Precious wouldn’t do that ever again, remember?”

  Lucky’s cockiness evaporated at the sound of Buck’s reprimanding voice. “Right, Grandpa. I remember.”

  “Good.” Buck nodded. “Because it’s too plumb upsettin’ for the snake to be plunked down in strange places all the time.”

  Too upsetting for the snake? What about the housekeeper? Tracy wondered. Apparently she was on her own in this Wild West Best household.

  3

  IT TOOK A GOOD TWO HOURS to get the kitchen back in shape, even with the twins’ so-called assistance. Most of the time the kids were more of a hindrance than a help, but Tracy figured that the work was good for their character. At the end of the exercise she had a newfound appreciation for the maid service that she’d had come in twice a week back in Chicago.

  The silver lining was that she’d burned enough calories that she wouldn’t have to do her aerobic workout. Who knew housework could be so tiring? And there was still the living room to be done.

  But first she had to make lunch. She found a bottle of spaghetti sauce in the walk-in pantry along with several boxes of pasta. She warmed the sauce in the countertop microwave but forgot to put a lid on it, so tomato paste spattered all over. By the time she got that cleaned up, the pot of boiling water that held the spaghetti was frothing over.

  Since the twins were doing nothing but laughing at her, she sent them into the dining room to set the table. She didn’t have time to instruct them on how to lay a proper place setting, so she just gathered the silverware and stuck it in a nice looking ceramic pot big enough to hold it.

  Tracy had worked as a waitress one summer in college, so she knew how to efficiently transport as many plates in one trip as possible. The table was set, the big bowls of spaghetti and sauce set in the center, when the men came in at noon. In the blink of an eye, the food had been consumed and they were outside again, heading back to do whatever it was cowhands did on a ranch. Things had no doubt changed some since the Cartwrights ran their Ponderosa ranch on Bonanza, where they’d had an excellent Chinese cook, as she recalled.

  Which got her to thinking what she wouldn’t give for an order of pot stickers and Szechuan chicken.

  Zane made no comment about her spaghetti lunch, but he did eat it. He even brought his own dish, now empty, into the kitchen. He set it on the counter just as she was turning from the sink. Their bodies collided midstep.

  Her startled gaze met his as awareness shot through her system. Did he feel it, too?

  Zane looked into her green eyes and recognized trouble when he saw it, or felt it. And feel it he did, clear to the soles of his feet. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman’s soft body pressed against his, or smelled the citrusy freshness of a woman’s hair. Her hands were city-girl soft, her perfume expensive.

  She didn’t belong here. It was as obvious as the spaghetti stain on her ritzy silk shirt. So what if her eyes were the green of a mountain meadow or her lips just made for kissing. She wasn’t for him. He’d already learned his lesson by getting hitched up with a city girl. His ex-wife, Pam. She lacked staying power and had run off when the twins were little.

  Look but Don’t Touch. That was his motto where city girls were concerned. Taking a step away from Tracy, he beat a retreat out of the kitchen, remembering that line about those not being able to take the heat, staying out of the kitchen. That was one piece of advice he aimed on taking.

  “Is the hot water heater fixed?” she asked him before he could reach the door.

  Hot water? That’s what he’d be in if he hung around her much longer. “Not yet. But it should be fixed by tonight.”

  That was the extent of his conversation before he left the room.

  Tracy watched Zane through the kitchen window as he strode toward the horse corral near the barn. Actually he was doing that cowboy amble she’d found so sexy the night before. Men are pond scum, she reminded herself and set to work on the sinkful of dishes. She broke two nails
with her scrubbing. The continued lack of hot water made the washing more difficult and had her hands looking like prunes by the time she let the dirty water out of the sink.

  Definitely the first thing she had to do was to go check out Bliss and get some 20th-century appliances.

  No, she corrected herself, looking down at her clothing. First she had to change clothes. Her linen pants and coral silk shirt were goners. No wonder Zane had stared at her so strangely. It was because she was a mess, not because he was attracted to her.

  Leaving the twins in Buck’s care, she went upstairs and managed to find her jeans and a denim shirt as well as a pair of designer athletic shoes in her luggage. Her suede boots had not recovered from the mud and rain the night before. She wasn’t sure they ever would. She’d only been in Colorado twenty-four hours and already she’d ruined three hundred dollars’ worth of clothing. At this rate she’d be broke and naked in no time—not really a lifetime goal of hers.

  She would have liked to redo her hair into something fancier but she was running out of time, so she left it loose around her face. Some sunscreen and lipstick and she was ready to go.

  It wasn’t until she was downstairs that it occurred to her that both kids wouldn’t fit in her two-seater Miata, something she hadn’t considered at the time she’d made the offer earlier to give them a ride, so Buck told her to use the pickup truck out front.

  Tracy had never driven a truck before, but at least it had an automatic transmission and not a stick shift. The thing was huge. It felt like she was driving a tank the size of a small country.

  After making sure the twins had fastened their seatbelts in the passenger seats directly behind her, she drove out the long gravel driveway that led to the main highway. Looking out her rearview mirror she got her first real look at the exterior of the ranch house. It was painted white and had a wraparound porch that showed signs of sagging. Or maybe it was the mirror that was crooked. The two-story building was reminiscent of the farmhouses that she’d occasionally glimpsed while speeding along the interstate in Iowa and Nebraska—big rambling structures from a time when no one worried about fuel conservation or heating bills.