by Cathie Linz
She’d nailed his fears to the wall by accusing him of thinking her feelings for him were fleeting. He’d assumed that she’d prefer her old life in the city to the new one she’d made with him and his family out here on the ranch. He’d been wrong. About a lot of things.
Tracy was no butterfly. No fleeting breeze. She was a keeper. She was nothing like his ex-wife.
Pam had been all surface shine, like fool’s gold. But Tracy’s emotions ran deep and true, like a vein of the kind of gold men would risk their lives for.
He loved her. And he aimed on fighting for her.
Turning to Dennis, Zane growled, “Beat it. We still hang two-timing jerks out here in Colorado. You’ve got one minute to get off my property. And don’t ever come back.”
Zane must have looked convincingly dangerous because after a few sputters, Dennis turned tail and drove off in a rush, his BMW leaving a cloud of dust.
One problem dealt with. Now he just had to make up with Tracy.
He started by trying the door. She’d locked it His door hadn’t been locked in years. And never against him.
He gently knocked on it, figuring he had some ground to make up. “Tracy, honey, let me in. We need to talk.”
He was hoping his first use of an endearment with her would soften her somewhat. His hope was in vain. She refused to answer him.
“Come on, honey,” he said in his best coaxing voice. “Let me in. I know I made a few mistakes. Okay, some big mistakes. Like assuming that you’d prefer your old life in the city to the new one you’ve made out here. Clearly you took offense at that.” One way of describing her fiery temper tantrum. “But honey, I believe you now. I believe that you do truly love it out here. And I believe that you love me. Tracy, honey, are you listenin’ to me?” He moved closer so that his lips were practically smack up against the wood of the door. “I’m telling you somethin’ important here, honey. I’m telling you that I love you. So let me in, honey. Let me into your heart and I swear I won’t hurt you again. Come on, sweetheart.” If honey didn’t work, maybe sweetheart would. No. Maybe another endearment, then. “Darling? Sweet cakes?” Still no answer. Shifting his head, he put his ears instead of his lips to the door. There was nothing to indicate she was on the other side—no telltale breathing or crying or yelling.
It was only then that he belatedly realized two things. First off, mad as she was, Tracy had probably stomped back upstairs and was no longer within hearing distance—which made him feel like an idiot.
But not as much an idiot as the second discovery, which was that Murph’n’Earl were standing not twenty feet behind him. Maybe they hadn’t heard.
No such luck.
“Darling?” Murph said, his voice choked with laughter as he hung onto his sidekick’s shoulders to stay upright.
“Sweet cakes?” Earl replied, his shoulders shaking.
Both ranch hands were smacking their hats against their knees as they were just about bent double with their enjoyment of the moment, tears of mirth running down their weathered cheeks.
Zane didn’t take the time to reprimand them. Not that they’d listen to him anyway. He had bigger fish to fry. He needed to get back in his own house. He tried the windows on the main floor. All locked. Tracy was nothing if not efficient.
There was another way...one he hasn’t used since he was a teenager—up the large cottonwood tree in the back. Unless Tracy had left the back door unlocked? He raced around back, but that door was also dead-bolted and the windows downstairs locked. Which left him with the tree.
If he thought he could make the climb without an audience he was mistaken. Murph’n’Earl followed him around the ranch house and had plunked themselves down on the back stoop as if waiting for the show to begin.
“Don’t you two have something else to do?” Zane said.
“Nope,” they replied in unison.
“There’s horses out in the barn waiting to be fed.”
“Done.”
“What about that length of fencing out by Rock Creek that needs fixing?”
“Later.”
He was wasting time arguing with them. Not that Tracy was likely to go anywhere, locked up as she was in his house. But she might take it into her mind to pack up and leave, mad as she was. And he didn’t want to have to hightail after her. So it was either make a fool of himself now or do it later, farther away.
He preferred being on home territory. So he moved closer to the tree, looking for a handy branch to pull himself up with. He hadn’t climbed this tree in what...twenty years?
“Your pa cut down that low branch a few years back,” Murph told him. “Just in case you were wondering.”
“Great,” Zane muttered, wondering how bad his luck could get.
“You need us to give you a hand up?” Earl offered.
It went against the grain to ask for, or even accept, their help after they’d just laughed themselves silly at him, but given the situation Zane didn’t have much of a choice. His grunt was meant to be a yes and was taken as such.
“I’m taller so I should be the one to give him a leg up,” Murph said.
“I’m stronger,” Earl maintained. “That means I should be the one.”
“I don’t care which of you gives me a leg up,” Zane impatiently interrupted them. “But let’s get a move on here before I turn fifty.”
In the end it was Earl who joined his fingers together for Zane to step into, but it was Murph’s taller shoulders that he stepped onto for a minute before grabbing a thick branch and swinging himself onto it.
From there Zane managed to move higher to another branch and another, until he was almost at the window of the guest room. He moved out along the branch.
“Take care,” Earl called up. “That branch is thinner than you think it is, and you’re heavier.”
No sooner had the ranch hand spoken than the branch beneath Zane’s bare feet broke with a crack, leaving him dangling from the limb. It took him a moment or two to haul himself back up to a safer position.
When had he gotten so old that tree climbing took his breath away?
Moving more cautiously now, he inched his way back out on this branch, which was thicker than its predecessor. Reaching out as far as he could, his fingers brushed the window frame. The window wasn’t locked. It opened easily.
The same couldn’t be said for his entry through it. Oh it was easy enough to get his shoulders through, but then a belt loop on his jeans got caught on something, leaving him dangling like a beached fish, half in and half out the window.
He could hear Murph’n’Earl laughing themselves silly down below. He could also hear something else. The sound of a shower running. So that’s where Tracy was. In her bathroom downstairs.
The blood rushed to his head as he reached around and tried to undo the belt loop from whatever it was caught on. Nothing worked. No matter how he wiggled he couldn’t get free. He had to work fast. He sure as hell didn’t want Tracy catching him this way.
There were times a cowboy had to do what a cowboy had to do. Zane had done up his jeans in a hurry, only fastening the top button. Once he got that undone, he wiggled out of his jeans, leaving them behind as he went hunting for the love of his life.
She was still in the shower. He planned on joining her. Pulling back the shower curtain, he said, “So you really do love me, huh?”
12
TRACY’S STARTLED SCREAM echoed off the bathroom’s ceramic-tile walls, nearly deafening both her and Zane.
She’d decided to take a quick shower to cool down after her fight with him. She certainly hadn’t expected him to join her there! Not after she’d locked him out.
But she’d only locked the outside doors. Not the inside ones. Like the bathroom door. Tactical error.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, as if it was of no importance that she and he were both naked.
“Joining you.” He stepped into the tub and leaned forward to lick the droplets of water from her shoulder.
Tracy refused to be swayed by his persuasive mouth. “Stop that and get out of my shower!”
His “umph” was the only response to her elbowing him in the stomach.
“Did I forget to tell you that I love you, too?” he murmured in her ear.
She stopped her protests long enough for him to kiss his way down the column of her throat. He held the golden rope of her long wet hair in one hand, lifting it out of the way to place a string of kisses along her nape.
To his surprise, Tracy wasn’t easily convinced of his feelings for her. “So you love me, huh? Big deal. You don’t want to love me. You don’t think I’m the right woman for you. You think I’m the kind of woman who would go from your bed back to Dennis.”
The next thing he knew he had a faceful of cold water, as she reached down to twirl the faucet before hopping out of the tub.
His yowl of surprise gave her some satisfaction. He really had his nerve. Thinking he could kiss her into submission. And okay, so she did weaken for a moment when he’d finally said the words she’d been longing to hear, when he’d finally said that he loved her. But it wasn’t enough. He still had plenty of making up to do, before there could be any making out.
Marching into the bedroom, she toweled off and deliberately put on a citified outfit of black-linen slacks and a tailored lime-green blouse. She twisted her wet hair on top of her head and held it in place with a banana clip.
By this time, Zane came out of the bathroom, with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Anybody ever tell you that you’ve got a temper that could turn a blizzard around and send it home with a suntan? I know I’ve got some explaining to do but I need you to calm down and listen to me.”
She gave him a haughty look. “I’m listening.”
He sighed, as if talking was the last thing he wanted to do next to being tied to an anthill. But his rugged face wore an expression of stubborn determination that Tracy recognized. This rancher was on a mission and heaven help the person who tried to sway him from it. “My ex-wife, Pam, left when the twins were only a year old, just starting to talk and walk. Well, actually they went right to the running stage, rather than walking,” he admitted with a wry smile that warmed Tracy’s insides. “I had to put up those kiddy gates all over the house. Ended up breaking my toe by climbing over one of them. It was mighty embarrassing. After climbing over fences and gates all my life, I get tripped up by a little kiddy gate. But I’m getting off the subject here.”
“Which is?” Her voice was husky, her resolution already wavering just a tad.
“Why it took me a mite bit longer to realize that I love you than it should have. Pam was a city girl from Denver who headed for the bright lights of Las Vegas when she found life on the ranch downright boring. After she left, I vowed that the next woman I let into my life would be one born and bred for ranch life.”
“Like the cattle are, you mean,” she sarcastically tacked on, her aggravation rapidly returning.
“I was trying not to make the same mistake twice.”
She narrowed her eyes and shot him a warning look. “I have to tell you that you’re not endearing yourself to me by referring to me as a mistake.”
“You’re not a mistake. You’re my destiny.”
With those words he scored an emotional bull’s-eye with her. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart pounded. And the look in Zane’s eyes...it was enough to make her kneecaps melt.
Zane hadn’t wanted to love her, true enough. But then she hadn’t come west looking for love, either. He came with emotional baggage and so did she. But the bottom line was that he loved her and she loved him.
As if sensing she was weakening, Zane reached out to cup her cheek in his hand. “I was wrong about you,” he admitted gruffly. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known and you’d succeed at whatever you set your mind to. I have no doubt of that. I’m just grateful you set your mind on loving me.”
Was he just saying what she wanted to hear? Could she believe? “I don’t know.”
He placed his finger over her lips, stopping her words. “I admit that you’re not getting much of a bargain here. I’m never going to be the kind of man to make pretty speeches. The prettiest speech I ever made you missed out on because you weren’t at the front door when I made it. But I do love you. And I do believe in you.”
“Was that so hard to say?” she whispered.
“Well, normally I’d rather eat rattlers than talk about this emotional stuff, but you’re worth it.”
Throwing her arms around his neck, she kissed him, letting her lips do the talking as he’d so often done with her. He seemed to understand what she was trying to communicate, because he returned her kiss with raw abandon.
He wooed her with erotic flicks of his tongue across the roof of her mouth in just the way he knew she loved.
His bath towel fell to the floor as he pulled her closer, his thumb brushing her breast through the silky material of her blouse.
She wasn’t sure who was leading whom, but when they ended up on her bed Zane surprised her by leaving her there. Was he going back upstairs to get more condoms?
“This time we’re going to do this right,” he declared.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Meaning there was something wrong with the way we did things last night? The several ways we did things?”
“No.” He grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his waist again. “I’m not exactly dressed for this situation, but what the heck.” Returning to the bed, he went down on one knee and took her hand. “Tracy Campbell, will you marry me?”
She gulped like a fish out of water.
“You’re not going to make me dress up in a suit or something to propose, are you?”
His put-upon tone of voice made her smile. “Your birthday suit is fine,” she replied with a saucy grin. “I must say that your proposal of marriage has caught me off guard, Mr. Best. And that manly chest of yours is a mighty big distraction. How did you get those scratches?” She frowned in concern before blushing, wondering if she’d marked him while they’d made love last night.
“I got these from climbing the cottonwood tree to get in here,” he told her.
“You poor baby,” she crooned. “Let me make it better.” Leaning forward, she kissed the scrape closest to her before licking her way to his nipple.
“Do you aim on answering my proposal or just driving me to distraction?” he asked with male stoicism.
“The answer is yes. Yes, I plan on answering your proposal. Yes, I plan on driving you to distraction or plumb loco as you so often put it. And yes, I will marry you.”
With a cowboy howl of victory, Zane leapt to his feet and grabbed her in his arms. This time when they fell to the bed they stayed there and made love with a newfound tenderness, as well as the familiar passion and heat of two souls destined to be together.
ZANE DID EVENTUALLY have to get out of bed several hours later to take care of some chores that couldn’t be put off. A ranch didn’t close for weekends or holidays or joyous occasions. There were still animals to be watered and fed. But he only did the bare necessities before returning to her.
Zane told her that Murph’n’Earl were keeping a low profile and had left a big note in the barn saying they’d gone off to fix those fences over by Rock Creek. Which meant he and Tracy should have the rest of the afternoon and evening to themselves.
Tracy cooked her special Shrimp de Jonghe dinner for him and Zane made a point to be suitably impressed. He showed her just how much by carrying her back to bed and making love to her.
Afterward, wrapped in each other’s arms, the setting sun bathed them in its warmth. And in that moment, Tracy felt such a sense of inner peace.
A second later it was shattered by the sound of the front door banging open and the booming sound of Buck’s voice. “We’re ba...ack!”
Tracy gave Zane a panicked look. His expression wasn’t much calmer.
“I thought they were
n’t due back until tomorrow,” she said even as she dove for the closet and some clean clothes.
“That’s what he told me.” Zane was yanking on his jeans and tugging a shirt on as he spoke.
How had her underwear gotten on top of the lamp? she wondered. Oh yeah, now she remembered. She tried not to blush.
Buck had already caught her kissing Zane, but catching her in bed with him was another matter entirely, even if they were now an engaged couple.
“You ready?” Zane asked, hurriedly jamming his shirt in his jeans.
She nodded, wondering if anyone would be able to tell that she had her T-shirt on backward.
“Hey, this is a surprise,” Zane said as he met his family in the kitchen.
“The kids got homesick halfway down to Pueblo,” Buck said. “So we overnighted and came on back.”
“We missed you, Pa,” Lucky said.
“I missed you too, peanut. And I’ve got some news for you.”
“Is Joe okay?” she asked nervously.
He ruffled her hair and gave her a reassuring smile. “Your pets are all fine. This is about Tracy and me. We’re engaged.”
“Engaged in what?” Buck asked suspiciously.
“Engaged to be married,” Zane retorted.
“Does that mean Tracy is staying here?” Rusty asked. “For good?”
“For good, for bad and for all the times in between,” Tracy replied, nervous of the twins’ reaction. While they’d certainly warmed to her, and she loved them to bits, she wasn’t sure what their reaction would be to this news.
She quickly found out. With a miniature version of their father’s cowboy howl of victory, both Lucky and Rusty launched themselves at her to engulf her in hugs.
“I guess that means it’s okay with you two,” Zane noted wryly.
Turning to face his dad, Rusty said, “She’s not bad for a girl”
“Yeah, that’s how I feel about her, too,” Zane said with a slow smile.
“I guess I won’t even ask why there’s a pair of jeans hanging out the upstairs back window,” Buck said. “Instead I’ll just say that I’m pleased you two finally came to your senses. And I’ll add that I’ve got a bit of good news myself, thanks to missy here.” He nodded his head toward Tracy. “She sent out a letter and box of samples to that major chain of Western supermarkets. Well, I stopped by the post office in town to pick up the mail and, well, to make a long story short—”
