The Rancher Meets His Match

by Patricia McLinn

  Will’s blatant disapproval, however, posed an insurmountable obstacle. She wouldn’t come between father and son, even if she could.

  Now that obstacle stood contritely before her.

  She smiled at Will. “I wouldn’t say you were a jerk. No need to apologize. You weren’t so bad.”

  “Yeah, I was.” The stubborn lines around his mouth said he would take his punishment whether she wanted to dish it out or not. He looked very much like Dax at the moment. “I was a real jerk about you and Dad, uh, sort of seeing each other.”

  “That’s natural, Will.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe so, but it wasn’t right. Especially not since you’re really, you know.” Red rushed up his neck and he ducked his head again. “Helping me out.”

  She didn’t know. Helping him out? “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Because Dad knew I didn’t—I mean, to sort of show me what . . .” He shrugged, then added as if it said everything he could possibly hope to say. “Girls.”

  “Girls?”

  “Yeah.” His heartfelt syllable conveyed deep appreciation that she agreed with him. She still didn’t know what he was talking about. Or rather, she didn’t know what it had to do with her and Dax. “You know, how to talk and be around them and even, uh, ask them out on, uh, dates. Not that I’m going to do that,” he added hurriedly.

  Before she could ask for clarification, he launched on a spate of words that had her head spinning and her heart shriveling.

  “Dad told me how you didn’t really want anything to do with him in the first place and how you wanted to spend your vacation in peace, but you’ve been seeing him, anyhow. And he’s been taking you out and all to help me out. That’s how it’s always been with him and me—he’s always shown me how to do stuff. Like riding and roping, but other things too, you know, homework and such. He says that’s what a father does for a son. But you didn’t have to do any of this, and I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for being such a jerk when you were taking time from your vacation and all. And . . . and, well, thank you. That’s all.”

  “You’re welcome.” The words came automatically. Automatic reactions were all she had left.

  When Will said goodbye with the great cheer of one who’d successfully discharged his duty, she answered that automatically, too.

  Then she retreated to her cabin, to wait until Dax arrived for their second try at seeing a movie.

  Chapter Eight

  Dax smiled at her when she answered the cabin door. A warm, slow smile. A little shy, a lot personal. As if he was remembering. As if it was drawn from him just because he was glad to see her.

  She wanted to throw something at him. She wanted to slam the door. She wanted to cry.

  But, no, she would deal with this in a straightforward, adult manner. No outbursts of tears or temper. If she’d been misled, she’d gone along more than willingly.

  “You ready? Sheridan okay with you tonight?”

  “Dax, I’d like to talk to you.” She pushed the screen door open and stepped out.

  His smile dimmed. “Something wrong, Hannah?”

  She sidestepped the hand he would have put on her shoulder.

  “Let’s go sit on the bench.” Without waiting for an answer, she led the way to a bench not far from the footbridge over the stream.

  He sat beside her, a frown in place and his brown eyes as grim as the night she’d met him. “What’s this all about?”

  She drew a deep, steadying breath.

  “I want to ask you if the reason you started showing interest in me and asking me out is that you’re acting as a kind of role model to your son—that you’re using me to show Will how to get along with girls.”

  He stilled, and his eyelids lowered to half cover his eyes. The grooves by his mouth etched deeper. After a moment, he swallowed.

  She braced for the evasions, the half-truths, the self-serving, self-excusing, convoluted explanations and rationalizations.

  “Yes.”

  She hadn’t been braced for that.

  Not the single word. Uncompromising. Spare. Unvarnished.

  A strangled laugh caught at her throat, but it came from surprise not amusement.

  Maybe she’d been hoping, just a little, it wasn’t true. And that he’d somehow convince her it wasn’t true.

  “How’d you...?”

  “Will.” She saw the grim lines in Dax’s face tighten, and she quickly added, “He thought I kn-knew.” Dax shifted as if he would reach for her and she held out a hand to stop him. “He was thanking me.”

  He remained at the distance her gesture had left him, but his low voice seemed to reach out to her.

  “Hannah.”

  She didn’t think she’d ever had a more eloquent apology. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. But he had. And he was sorry.

  “Why?” she asked when her voice cooperated.

  “It’s like I told you.” Jaw tight, voice grim, he presented the picture of a man determined to tell an unpleasant truth about himself. “I haven’t dated women around here because I don’t want anything permanent, and no matter what they say, that’s what they’d be thinking might happen, and then it gets to be a mess. So I steered clear.”

  He regarded her from under the lowered line of his brows as if searching for understanding, and she found herself nodding.

  This was a man she could trust. The thought slid into her mind. She considered it.

  A man she could trust? He’d hurt her, hadn’t he? He’d used her.

  But he wouldn’t pull lines on her—he certainly hadn’t to this point. And the first tough question she’d asked him, he’d answered with unflinching honesty.

  “That’s been fine for me. But not for Will. Problem is, Will took my way of livin’ to mean he shouldn’t have anything to do with the girls ’round here, either. He got left out. Worse, he was cutting himself out. He needed something to get him started, to help him jump in the ring. To see it was okay to try.”

  Beyond his deep voice, she heard the familiar light tones of her sister telling her it was time to start her life again. Time to regain a social life. Time to open herself to certain possibilities again. Then Cambria’s voice joined in, talking of babies and two-by-twos. And Irene’s phrase about an empty nest.

  And her own, inner voice, spoke up, though softly.

  This was a man she could trust.

  “A stranger seemed the answer. Somebody who wouldn’t be around long, wouldn’t get the wrong idea. After meeting you, June thought you’d be the perfect stranger.” The lines around his mouth dug deep and his lips thinned. “It was a damned fool idea. Not that I’m laying this off on June. I decided. I mean, I, well, I, uh, I thought you’d be the perfect stranger to show Will I didn’t have anything against . . . You know.”

  “Okay.”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say it herself until it came out. Since Will’s words this afternoon, she’d been teetering between denial and a hurt she kept telling herself she shouldn’t feel so deeply. Dax’s forthrightness had ended the denial and somehow taken away the bitter taste of the hurt. Yes, she still felt disappointed that the possibilities she’d let herself dream of, though briefly, weren’t going to come true. And, no, it didn’t escape her that there’d been an element of using her in Dax’s plan.

  But he’d certainly come clean now.

  This was a man she could trust.

  She liked him. She trusted him. She enjoyed his company. And she was safe from getting too involved with him.

  She would leave in eight days. And after what he’d just told her there was no danger that she would really fall for him. An opportunity like this to ease back into dating at practically no risk was unlikely to ever come again. Could she afford to pass it up?

  After all, didn’t this situation with Dax show how dull her social instincts had become? She had been on the verge of falling for this man, when he’d viewed her as a partner in a demonstration for a teenager.

  I
t was laughable.

  Almost.

  “Okay,” she repeated. “Let’s do it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Let’s show Will how it is.” She wasn’t sure if his stare meant he was simply stunned, or also shocked. Maybe decent women in his world didn’t consider dating under these circumstances. “Unless you don’t want to?”

  He looked away from her for the first time. His gaze seemed to be pinned on the small stream. His big hands clenched, then released. He cleared his throat and said, “I, uh, I’m not going to marry again.”

  Now she felt awkward. “I wasn’t— I didn’t mean . . .” Protesting made it worse. She swallowed and drew in a deep breath. “Dax, let’s lay our cards on the table here.

  “You said I was the perfect stranger to help you give your son some lessons on how a man and woman . . .” She bogged down on terminology. “Or, uh, a boy and girl, sort of, get together.”

  “I wouldn’t say lessons.” One side of his mouth tilted up in a grin as dry as tinder. “I wouldn’t be one to be giving anyone lessons. More like if he sees me doing it, he’ll see it’s all right for him to be doing it, too.”

  Their eyes locked, and the phrase doing it seemed to echo between them.

  Hannah watched Dax swallow hard and knew the only reason she didn’t do the same thing was her throat muscles seemed to be frozen. Her imagination, however, was in fine form. Dax’s touch, stroking, testing. Dax’s mouth on her, tasting, delving. Dax’s body above her, heating, claiming. Her hands on his broad chest, sliding down it, discovering the landscape of his muscles. Then lower, to his waist. And lower still . . .

  “Being interested in a girl, I mean,” Dax said at last.

  Hannah’s thoughts jerked back to reality.

  “Yes. Of course. Well, anyway, you said your sister said I was the perfect stranger to suit your purposes. Well, you’re the perfect stranger for me, too.”

  He frowned.

  Apparently it hadn’t previously occurred to him that turnabout could be fair play or the sauce that spread over the goose could suit the gander just fine. From his expression he didn’t particularly like the idea. Too bad.

  She sat up, feeling a new enthusiasm for her idea. He’d viewed her as the perfect stranger, why shouldn’t she view him as a practice run? A trip around the dating block with training wheels before she ventured out to try the real thing with a man who might stay in her life longer than two weeks.

  “Raising my brother and sister, along with earning a living hasn’t left me much free time. You must know how that is, with the ranch and Will.” The barest dip of his head signaled his agreement. “Everyone’s telling me it’s time I get back out there—into the dating whirl. But taking that first step . . . Well, maybe this is a good way to do it. I leave in eight days. You don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to get involved. We get along okay.”

  His dark eyes met hers again, and the heat of them recalled the moments they’d spent on her couch less than twenty-four hours earlier. Get along okay?

  She licked her lips, and his eyes followed the motion. “I leave in eight days.”

  “You said that.”

  “What?”

  “ ’Bout you leaving in eight days. You already said that.”

  “It’s worth repeating,” she said, defensively. “Because it means there can be no misunderstandings. We can go on as we were, and everybody wins. You can help Will feel comfortable with girls, because he sees you doing—uh, I mean being with me. And it could help me get my feet wet with dating again. So what do you think?”

  Before he could answer, another thought occurred to her.

  Go on as we were. Going on as they were included last night on the couch. Going on as they were meant his mouth tempting her lips to open to his tongue, his hands skimming across her skin, his body heating hers. Not a good idea.

  “I don’t mean a fling, Dax. I’m not looking for a one-night stand or a vacation romance that gets all involved, uh, physically.” Her cheeks were blazing. Too bad. For him to truly be the perfect stranger to get her started back into dating, she had to make this clear. His face remained impassive. “Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying you don’t want to go to bed with me.”

  Heat bolted through her as her unruly imagination flashed visions and sensations of lying beside Dax’s tough body in a wide, sheet-tangled bed. Oh, my. Didn’t want to go to bed with him? She couldn’t say that. Not without lightning coming down and striking her, to burn her outsides the way her thoughts had cindered her insides.

  He saved her from lying, evading or—worse—telling the truth, by adding bluntly, “You mean no sex.”

  “Right,” she agreed with the enthusiasm of relief that his second, more clinical description produced no mind pictures. She hoped her dreams would be as cooperative. They sure hadn’t been G-rated last night. “Pleasant companionship. An easy reintroduction to dating. No stress, no strain. Platonic. That’s what I mean. The sort of relationship you’d like to show Will. If you still want to.”

  He hesitated so long she’d started to imagine how awkward the next eight days could be if he said no.

  “Yeah. I want to.”

  * * * *

  Pleasant companionship. No stress, no strain.

  She had made him sound like an ancient horse good for nothing more than ending its years out to pasture, or a white-muzzled dog that spent the day dozing in the sun. No, she’d made him sound like a young boy. Will’s age.

  Well, his hormones felt about that lively lately. Brushing arm to arm during the movie last night had had him in a sweat.

  She’d gone along when he insisted on taking her to Sheridan for the movie. He couldn’t have said what the movie was about to save his soul. She’d said she had a good time when he brought her back to the cabin, walked her to the door and saw her in without setting foot inside himself. It hadn’t even been eleven o’clock.

  He’d been left to a long night of trying to sort things out.

  He was still trying Monday morning as he drove into Bardville.

  They’d show Will the way of getting to know a woman—Dax’s hands tightened on the truck’s steering wheel—in a social sense, not a biblical sense. And there’d be no danger of it going beyond that. Not now that her opinion of him had dipped below a snake’s belly, and with good cause.

  Not only had he sought her out at the Westons’ for the sole purpose of flirting with her, but he’d gone way beyond that with kisses and touches that had nothing to do with wanting Will to know it was okay to be interested in females. And now that it wouldn’t be happening anymore, the knowledge that he wanted Hannah in his bed was as stark and clear as if it were written on the windshield before his staring eyes.

  The first part had been wrongheaded. Going beyond that had broken all his rules.

  So it was a good thing—no matter what his gut felt like—that Will had spilled the beans and everything came out in the clear. No danger of him getting in any deeper this way. Much better this way.

  “Much better,” he murmured as he turned off Bozeman Avenue and onto Buffalo Street

  Dammit—he just wished she hadn’t sounded so damned eager to agree when he’d said “no sex.”

  But that was foolhardy. Hannah Chalmers wasn’t the kind to go to bed with a man she wasn’t involved with. And he wasn’t a man to get involved. She’d said it, she wasn’t interested in a one-night stand. Not even an eight-night stand.

  One night down. He suspected he was in for seven more very frustrating nights.

  “June!” Dax swung open the back door of the small house where his sister had lived for thirty-one years, first with her husband Henry and after his death with her mother.

  “Quit your bellowing, Dax. You sound like a weaning calf.” She came in carrying a divided plastic tote brimming with cleaning cans and rags in one hand and a broom in the other. “I’m in the same county, you know—and close that door before the wind blows in all t
he dirt I spent the morning sweeping out.”

  He marched over to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. “I wish you weren’t.”

  “Sweeping? Pour me one, too.”

  He obeyed and June took a seat on the bench under a window facing the backyard. He leaned against the counter.

  “In the same county. Then you couldn’t butt into my life and I might get some peace.”

  “You don’t need peace. You need a good shaking up,” she said sternly. “Sometimes you need a good kick in the head.”

  He grunted and swallowed from his cup.

  “Ah.” June sat back in her chair. “Now I get a good look at you, I’m thinking maybe you got that kick in your head, and since you treat your horses too good to deserve it from them, I gotta think a woman did the kicking, and it musta been Hannah Chalmers, since she’s the only candidate.” She tilted her head. “Guess she’s got a good, strong leg on her.”

  “You sound damned pleased.”

  “I am. So what happened?”

  “Your great plan turned out not so great. She figured out I’d asked her out just to help out Will.”

  “Just to—Dax Randall, you don’t need a kick in the head, you need a house falling on you. That’s what you told her?”

  “Well, she asked,” he said defensively. “I wouldn’t lie.”

  “Of all the stupid—you’re hopeless. So she tore a strip off your hide and now she won’t have anything to do with you, huh?”

  “No.”

  “No? No what?”

  “She didn’t tear a strip off my hide and turns out she’s in the market for a perfect stranger herself. We’re going to keep seeing each other—as friends.”

  June gave a snort of laughter.

  “June, you—”

  The back door opened, and a woman with gray hair and a slightly halting walk came in. She smiled when she saw him.

  He pushed away from the counter. It was Monday. One of his mother’s days for physical therapy on her hip. What was she doing here?