The Rancher Meets His Match

by Patricia McLinn

  “Is something wrong, Dax?”

  His eyes jerked to hers. A frown dropped his straight brows low. His eyes bored into hers as if she had some answer he wanted.

  She looked away from that intense connection. The blender muttered at the pit of her stomach. If this was an example of the social whirl Mandy and others insisted she plunge back into, no thank you. Her stomach couldn’t take it.

  “That’s my son.”

  She glanced from Dax to the boy and back. She saw the resemblance in coloring and bearing. Something else, too . . .

  A separateness. How sad, she thought. Then she determinedly shook off the reaction. She had probably read way too much into subtle signs from a pair of strangers.

  “He looks like a nice boy.”

  “He is.”

  Dax studied her as if he could read some answer in her face. That tingling started up between her shoulder blades again.

  He drew a deep breath. “Hannah—”

  “Oh, there you are, Hannah!” Irene Weston bore down on them like a welcoming tornado. Cambria Weston Smith provided the business sense of the bed-and-breakfast operation that supplemented the Westerns’ ranching income, but her stepmother, Irene, provided its hospitable heart. “I hardly saw you standing off here in the shadows talking with— Why, Dax, how wonderful to see you.”

  Surprise and pleasure weighed evenly in Irene’s voice. She stretched up to kiss Dax’s cheek. Hannah could have sworn his lean, smooth-shaven jaw flushed red.

  “Hope you don’t mind my coming by and bringing Will.”

  “Mind? Of course not, Dax. You know you’re welcome anytime. And I’ve been inviting you to our cookouts for a month of Sundays.”

  He muttered something about “busy.”

  “Of course you are. But even running a ranch, you can’t keep so busy you don’t eat, Dax. So you go right on over and help yourself to those burgers Ted’s taking off the fire, while I make sure this young woman has a chance to meet all our guests. Especially old Zeke, who’s visiting us from his granddaughter’s in Miles City. Zeke worked for Ted’s grandpa as a boy and remembers Arnold Weston’s stories about bringing cattle up from Texas.”

  “It was nice to meet you, Dax,” Hannah said as Irene led her away.

  They’d gone maybe two yards, when a hoarse, “Stop,” came from behind them.

  As they both turned around, Hannah met Irene’s eyes for an instant, and saw there a surprise equal to her own.

  Dax stood where they’d left him. Now that he had their full attention, he didn’t seem eager to use it

  “What is it, Dax?” Irene asked.

  He muttered under his breath—from the tone, a curse. “Hannah, I wondered if you’d . . . if we could, uh, talk more. Later.” He made the last word sound like a reprieve.

  Hannah felt Irene’s eyes on her, but she didn’t return the look. She had a hard enough time trying to return words.

  “Okay.”

  Uninspired, but at least it was intelligible.

  He nodded once.

  “Of course you two can talk later,” Irene said. “Right after I get Hannah introduced around and you get some food, Dax. Get that boy of yours some, too. Get plenty of my special sauce, I know how you’ve always loved it.”

  Dax nodded again and headed in the direction of his son.

  Irene reclaimed Hannah’s elbow with an energy that belied the gray outnumbering the strands of red in her hair and started her off. “Well, Dax Randall.” Irene hummed a bit under her breath. “That’s surprising.”

  “I don’t know why he wants to talk later, he hardly said two words together before.” And Hannah didn’t know why she felt she had to defend herself.

  “He’s not one to waste words. He’s not one to socialize much, either. Especially with women.”

  Again, Hannah felt the older woman’s speculative gaze on her.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Irene continued, “he’s a good man. A good heart and dependable as they come. Out here, a good neighbor’s the best security you got, and Dax is the best. He’s done a fine job of raising Will on his own, too.” She smiled. “Oh, and he loves that boy of his something fierce. But he’s been hurt by . . . by life. He’s spent a long time with just him and his boy alone at that ranch. A long time.”

  “His sister doesn’t . . . ?”

  “No, June lives in town. She and Sally—that’s Dax and June’s mother—moved into town, oh, must be thirty years ago now, and left Dax and old William living on the ranch. After June got married, Sally had her own house. But since June’s Henry passed on, and with Sally’s health not real strong, she’s moved into June’s place. Works out well for them, but it leaves Dax and Will alone at the ranch, like it once was with old William and Dax.”

  Hannah gave a noncommittal murmur as she tried to finger-comb her tousled hair. Expressing the flash of compassion she’d felt at the image of Dax Randall living so isolated a life, as boy and man, was out of the question. She didn’t know him. She had no right trying to change his ways—even mentally.

  “Well, enough of my gossiping tongue,” Irene continued briskly. “What I want to know is how you’re handling this empty-nest syndrome they talk about, what with Cambria telling me your younger brother and sister are gone to college now. I tell you, I’m not sure how I feel about it at all, with my Pete off to Arizona. You want them to grow up, but it surely is hard to watch those fledglings fly away from the nest.”

  Hannah wouldn’t have labeled Irene’s talk as gossip—it held too much honest concern—but she was grateful the conversation had turned away from Dax.

  “I don’t think I’m a good one to talk to, Irene,” she said with a small laugh. “Most times I feel more as if I were the one booted out of the nest. Mandy and Ethan were forever telling me to get out more, even before they left home.”

  “As well you should,” added a new voice. Cambria frowned fiercely at Hannah at the same time she tucked her arm around Irene’s waist.

  From the way Cambria had spoken of her stepmother last winter, when she and Boone had lived in North Carolina, Hannah had suspected they were close. Now she saw their great affection.

  “You’ve spent the past four years being a mother to the twins,” Cambria added, “now it’s time to go out and have fun for yourself.”

  “I have had fun,” Hannah protested.

  “Being the youngest member of the PTA? Chaperoning dances for kids not much younger than yourself? Being seated with the parents old enough to be your parents?” Cambria clearly didn’t buy that Hannah hadn’t minded any of those things. “What you need is a little excitement in your life. Romance. Sizzle.”

  Tom between embarrassment and amusement, Hannah laughed. “Oh, Lord, you’ve been taking to Mandy, haven’t you?”

  “We did have a conversation before Boone and I came out to Wyoming in the spring,” Cambria said with great dignity, though devilment lurked in her eyes. “She strikes me as a very intelligent, perceptive girl.”

  “She could have been the tour director for Noah’s Ark,” Hannah said. “She sees everything as two-by-two.”

  “That’s not all bad,” Cambria murmured, and Hannah noted that she looked across to where Boone helped his father-in-law, Ted Weston, cook hamburgers on the grill. Cambria patted her eight months’ pregnant stomach and added, “Of course, sometimes two-by-two turns into two-by-three.”

  “It’ll be wonderful to have a grandchild,” Irene said with satisfaction.

  “And then you’ll have another fledgling in your nest, won’t you, Mama? At least for the summer months when we’re here in Wyoming. Did I tell you—” Cambria turned to Hannah. “Irene’s coming to North Carolina when we have the baby. Dad, too.”

  “That’s great,” Hannah said with a smile for both women.

  “Ted and I wouldn’t miss it for anything in this world,” Irene said.

  “And Boone wouldn’t let you miss it, bossy man that he is. Maybe that’s what you need in your life, Hannah,�
� Cambria added.

  “What? A bossy man? I already have one, thank you. Remember? I work for your husband.”

  They exchanged a grin, knowing how hard Boone Dorsey “Bodie” Smith had worked at curing his bossy tendency and giving his employees more responsibility and authority at Bodie Smith Enterprises.

  “I meant a baby,” Cambria clarified.

  Irene spared Hannah the necessity of trying to unlimber her frozen tongue. “She needs a husband first,” she said as matter-of-factly as if discussing a recipe. “It makes things so much easier that way, because—”

  “Irene! Where’s the sauce?” Ted shouted from behind the grill.

  “It’s right there,” Irene called back to her husband.

  “Where?”

  “I’ll be right there, dear. I’m sorry, Hannah,” she added. “I haven’t been much of a hostess. Cambria, I’ve been promising to introduce Hannah around, especially to Zeke. Will you see to that?”

  “Of course.”

  “And then, Dax said he’d like to get to know Hannah better. So find them a good place to sit for the singing.”

  “Dax?”

  Cambria didn’t sound merely surprised, she sounded amazed. Cambria turned to Irene, but she’d already started toward the grill to solve the mystery of the missing sauce, so her questioning gaze shifted to Hannah.

  “We were talking before and got, uh, interrupted,” Hannah said. “I don’t know why he’d . . .”

  She let it die when she saw Cambria’s gaze return to her husband, then slide to a nearby couple. Cully Grainger had come to Bardville to visit Boone, but was staying to run for sheriff because he’d fallen for Jessa Tarrant. The falling clearly was mutual.

  Cambria was still looking in their direction when she murmured, “I suppose stranger things have happened.”

  Then Cambria’s gaze shifted, and Hannah followed it to where Dax Randall stood at the fringe of the shadows beyond the firelight.

  “But not much stranger,” Cambria added.

  Chapter Two

  If Bardville, Wyoming, had enlisted her to mount an ad campaign to extol its virtues, Hannah would have chosen this night as its centerpiece.

  The people—all ages, several races, many walks of life—encircled a camp fire, a vaulted night sky as star-speckled and huge as imagination over their heads. The soft guitar and the blending of disparate voices in songs reached back to childhood to resurrect “Oh, Susanna” and “My Darling Clementine.” Their circle sat shoulder-to-shoulder tight as if to keep the night-cooled air at their backs from slipping in. The crackling fire toasted their faces and toes.

  Firelight carved angles and shadows in the most ordinary faces. On Dax Randall’s face it had the unsettling effect of seeming to add emotions. A flicker this way, and she thought she read pain. A shadow that way, and a glimpse of triumphant joy appeared. Another shifting, and determination and pride came to the fore. Then a subtle shading revealed tenderness. It was as if the fire burned the controls he kept on his expressions, showing what he could feel if he let himself.

  A log shifted, setting off a flare of light and sparks, and Dax’s face seemed to take on a cast of passion, like a man about to—

  Hannah jerked her gaze away, aware of increased warmth in her face. She stared into the fire, dragging her thoughts back to the charms of the night and her hypothetical ad campaign.

  Oh, yes, the people in the hurried, crowded cities back East would be pulled in by this place’s magic in a moment. Even she, living in a far less hurried, more-a-town-than-a-city comer of the Blue Ridge Mountains, felt the tug. Maybe it had to do with the past being near enough to touch here. People alive now had known the first whites to settle this land, had known the last Native Americans to fight for it. People like Zeke, who’d told her some of the tales.

  As he’d talked, she’d envisioned Dax Randall as the flinty trail boss, tough but fair. Sitting tall in the saddle no matter what adversities—

  “Want to take a walk?”

  “What?”

  “Want to take a walk?”

  She shivered at the sensation of Dax’s repeated low-voiced question stirring the hair by her ear.

  “You cold?”

  “No.” But she hugged her sweater tighter around her.

  When she’d landed this afternoon, the bright sun had heated everything, including her. But as soon as it sank behind the line of the Big Horn Mountains in a showy splash of red, the coolness of the earth and the darkening sky had wrapped around her, so she welcomed the cozy wool of the tunic-length cardigan sweater she’d added to her blouse and slacks. But no sweater would cure this shiver.

  “Maybe a walk’s not such a good idea.”

  “No, it’s fine. Yes. Let’s.” You’re babbling, Hannah. And the blender in her stomach had kicked on again. She half stood. He didn’t move. She dropped back to her log seat more rapidly than she should have for the comfort of her rear end. She shifted to ease one discomfort and closed her eyes hoping the other one would disappear.

  “You want to, or not?”

  She looked up to find Dax standing solidly before her with, from what she could see under the brim of his hat, a decidedly puzzled expression.

  Hannah straightened her shoulders. For whatever reason, her never infertile imagination had taken to imbuing this newly met man with romantic overtones. Good heavens, she was ascribing emotions to him because of accidents of firelight, connecting him with the highly romanticized remembrances of an elderly man about a time long past, if indeed, it had ever existed.

  “Yes, I do. I think a walk will be just the thing.”

  Just the thing to wipe out these ridiculous notions, and replace them with the reality of this man. This, no doubt, extremely prosaic man.

  She stood, and followed his lead in stepping over their seats to the outside of the circle. She didn’t hesitate when he put out his hand to assist her. She put her hand in his. It felt warm and hard and faintly roughened, which no doubt caused the tingling in hers.

  He released her hand immediately and tipped his head to indicate they would take a path that led off the opposite side of the circle. As they moved around the outside, many eyes followed their progress. Will Randall sat on the far side of old Zeke, several yards from his contemporaries, and his dark glower zeroed in on her and his apparently unheeding father.

  The glow of the fire didn’t reach far, but their eyes quickly adjusted to the gentler light of half-moon and stars. They walked side by side, the crunch of her shoes and his boots on the dirt path softened by a layer of fallen cottonwood leaves.

  “Nice night,” she offered.

  “Won’t be many left until it gets cold.”

  “Winter comes early here?”

  “Comes right on time for here.”

  She glanced up to see if she’d mistaken the hint of a grin she’d heard in his voice. That bit of inattention to her feet caught up with her immediately when she stepped on a branch and tripped into him. He caught her elbow, his hand extending along the underside of her forearm like an iron brace.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  He released her, then stepped back, letting her precede him. “Path narrows.”

  What is your problem, Hannah? she fumed at herself. She’d successfully run the advertising department for Bodie Smith Enterprises for four years, pleasing a demanding boss and serving a booming business. And before that, she’d handled one of advertising’s most difficult tasks—convincing people to give to charity. More important, she’d done a darned good job of raising Mandy and Ethan the past four years, if she said so herself.

  She was a competent, intelligent, accomplished woman who had come on this walk to erase foolish notions, and that was what she was going to do.

  They’d reached a wooden footbridge across a narrow stream. She stopped abruptly and turned to face Dax.

  “Let’s stop awhile and talk.”

  “ ’Bout what?”

  There, she thought triumphantly. W
as that wary response the answer of a Louis L‘Amour hero?

  Heartened, she searched for a topic. A flash of light caught her eye and she looked down at the stream. The moon and stars turned to narrow, glimmering ribbons in the water’s reflection as it slipped almost silently around dry-topped rocks.

  “How pretty.”

  Dax Randall moved next to her, his hands resting atop the railing as he looked down, too. He gave a rusty chuckle.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I was thinking it’s low, even for this time of year. Ranchers don’t see things same way as city folks.”

  She pushed her hair to the side, but the breeze teased it right back. “I’m not a city person.”

  “Heard you used to work in New York City.”

  “I did, but I grew up in Boone, North Carolina—in the mountains. And that’s where I live now.”

  His grunt of acknowledgment held a tinge of skepticism that challenged her.

  “Have you always lived on a ranch, Dax?”

  He shook his head. “Grew up here, but got away as soon as I could.”

  “Where to?”

  “Some college. Then spent a couple years in cities, myself. Denver, mostly. Dallas some.”

  “What brought you back?”

  “Will. I wanted him raised here.”

  Caught up in wondering at the contradiction that he’d wanted to raise his son in a life he’d been eager to leave, Hannah hardly noticed that he’d paused. But she certainly noticed his next words.

  “I’d like to see you while you’re here, Hannah.”

  Startled, she stared at him. Between his abrupt tone and a new grimness around his mouth, she doubted like was the appropriate word. But even if she’d misread him, it wasn’t such a good idea.

  “That’s very nice of you, Dax, but I’ll have work to do and I’m not going to be here long.”

  “I know. That’s why—”

  He broke off and looked even grimmer than before.

  “Ah.” She nodded once, understanding dawning and with it a surprisingly sharp disappointment. “I’m not in the market for a vacation fling, Mr. Randall. Maybe you’ve found that some women who visit here are more interested in the bed than the breakfast, but I’m not one of them. Good ni—”