Ultimate Texas Bachelor

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “Are those our dishes?” he asked her.

  Lainey blinked. “I didn’t know you and Lewis had any dishes. Other than paper plates and cups.”

  “Actually, uh, we don’t, as far as I know, which is why I was asking. We could use a few plates and glasses and stuff in the kitchen.”

  Lainey made a mental note to work on that. “Actually, these dishes are mine.”

  It was his turn to look surprised.

  “I’m going to need them when Petey comes out to stay at the end of the week.”

  He regarded her with an unreadable expression. “You thinking about taking the job here permanently?”

  Was she?

  Certainly it would be far enough away from Bunny and Bart that she wouldn’t have to worry about them pressuring her. Room and board wouldn’t be a factor, either, since that was free as long as she was out here. The fifty-thousand-dollar salary Lewis had talked about paying a housekeeper would go a long way toward Lainey’s other expenses, while she made a name for herself as a reporter, either at Personalities Magazine, under Sybil, or elsewhere, as a freelance journalist.

  But all that depended on Brad understanding what she ultimately had to do here. And, of course, Petey liking it out at the ranch.

  His eyes narrowed. Misunderstanding the reason for her hesitant look, he continued wryly, “Don’t worry if you are. I won’t make a pass at you.”

  Lainey scoffed as she headed back to the bedroom earmarked for Petey. Brad followed.

  “I know what you’re thinking about.”

  The kiss…

  “But that wasn’t a pass.” He stepped past the twin bed with a rough-hewn frame and the bureau, to review the boxes stacked against the wall.

  “It wasn’t,” she deadpanned, looking over at him.

  “That was just a kiss.” Brad was the picture of lazy male assurance. “If and when I ever make a pass at you, you’ll know it.”

  Lainey’s heartbeat quickened. “I expect I would. So it’s a good thing you’re not going to do it because I’m not one of the women who signed up to compete for your attention.”

  “Thank heaven for that,” he muttered beneath his breath, his lips taking on a brooding slant once again.

  Lainey edged closer. “Mind answering a question for me?”

  He lifted an indolent hand. “Depends.”

  “How come you were so…sort of gallant but humorless on Bachelor Bliss, at least in the beginning? I mean, I’ve just been around you a few days and you’re always full of witty remarks—”

  “Or full of something,” he said with comically exaggerated seriousness.

  “But you weren’t funny on the TV show like you are in real life. Tell me the truth. Did they make you rein in your natural—”

  “Don’t you mean wicked?”

  “—sense of humor while you were on camera?”

  Respect glimmered in his brown eyes. “You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that.”

  Aha! She’d known it! “So it’s true,” Lainey said, ignoring the tingle of awareness starting up inside her whenever Brad was near. “The show’s staff told you to rein in the repartee. What’d they do?” She regarded him with all the directness she could muster. “Write your dialogue on cue cards or something?”

  “Not all of it,” he allowed reluctantly.

  “How much?” Lainey pressed.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe…ninety-eight percent or something.”

  Lainey found this distressing. She figured the Personalities Magazine readers would, too. “But the TV show is supposed to be reality.”

  Brad grimaced. “There’s nothing real about that particular reality TV show. Everything on Bachelor Bliss is a setup, whether it’s the circumstances you’re in, or the person you’re with.”

  Interesting, Lainey thought. She wished she could dig out her notepad and pen. “Was the breakup with Yvonne part of the script?” Because from what Lainey recalled, it hadn’t looked that way. Yvonne had appeared really stunned by what Brad had had to say, or not say, to her that evening during the final proposal ceremony.

  An unreadable emotion shuttered Brad’s eyes. “I don’t know how we got on this,” he said gruffly.

  “Or in other words, you’re not going to tell me,” Lainey said, disappointed. Not yet, anyway….

  “You got that right.” He stalked out into the hall and across to the bedroom where she was bunking. A queen-size brass bed dominated the center of the room. Lainey had outfitted it with a ruffled white spread and several satin throw pillows. The clothes she’d been wearing earlier—including her lacy pink bra—were strewn across the bed.

  She blushed as Brad’s eyes touched on her lingerie. Silence fraught with sexual tension fell between them as they both turned to scan the writing on the sides of the moving boxes.

  “That box must be here somewhere,” Brad complained.

  “You’ve got a lot riding on these meetings, I take it,” Lainey said, still not finding anything marked “Pencils and Scissors.”

  Brad pulled a box from the middle of the wall that appeared to have no marking on it and turned it every which way.

  Finally, the one they wanted!

  “Let’s put it this way,” Brad muttered as he ripped it open. “I used every bit of my savings to repair the existing pasture fences, purchase the equipment I need for sprinkler and heat-detecting systems in the barn, not to mention what it cost to get a new roof put on the barn, repair the termite damage that had started on one end, and repaint the whole darn thing.”

  He began taking out wads of packing paper, handing them over to her.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” Lainey said as he dug deeper and deeper.

  “Yeah?” Brad emerged, victorious, with a ream of high-quality printer paper.

  Lainey dropped the wads of packing paper back into the box. “Was the barn that color when you bought the place?”

  Brad led the way out of her bedroom. “No, I painted it.” He paused at her front door. “Why? Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s a nice guy color, I guess.” Lainey stepped out onto the porch with him.

  “But?”

  She turned her glance to the buildings located behind the house. “I thought most barns were either red or white or weathered gray.”

  Brad grinned and shook his head, suddenly appearing in no more hurry to leave her side than she was to see him go. “See. That just shows how much you don’t know about ranching.”

  Lainey looked back at the barns and stables. In the moonlight, they didn’t look so bad, but in the daylight they were so deadly dull they practically faded into the landscape. “There’s a reason they’re all golden tan, right down to the corral fence?”

  “Yep.”

  And here she’d thought Brad and his brother just had no color sense whatsoever. “I’m dying to hear,” she prodded dryly.

  “It calms the cattle.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. Texas A&M has done studies on color and cattle management. That particular color is very soothing to cattle. They don’t know why exactly—seems the cattle aren’t talking,” he quipped, “but whenever cattle are around that color they are very calm and relaxed, which in turn makes them a lot easier to handle.”

  Lainey studied him. “You must have some theory as to why that’s so,” she observed softly.

  Brad nodded, more sober rancher now than flirting cowboy. “It probably has something to do with the fact that animals don’t see colors the way humans do. Their depth perception is different, too. This particular hue of tan eliminates shadows and blends well with the landscape, and hence the cattle are more apt to stay calm, less prone to balk, when you’re leading them toward either a barn or a fence painted this color.”

  “So how come all the ranches out here don’t have their barns painted this color?”

  Brad shrugged. “Maybe they haven’t done their research.”

  Lainey regarded hi
m with respect. Obviously there was much more to Brad than he usually let on. “The fact you have should help you with your loan.”

  “I hope so. I really need a bank to back us.”

  BRAD SEEMED genuinely worried, Lainey realized. More so than he should be given the circumstances. She asked the questions that would tell Personalities readers what Brad planned for his future. “Couldn’t Lewis just lend you guys the cash? Given the success of his computer-gaming company…he’s supposed to be rolling in dough.”

  Brad frowned. “He’s already put up the entire down payment for the ranch.”

  Determined to keep him off guard, Lainey pushed on. “You must have known this was going to be the case when you two decided to purchase the ranch together.”

  Tired of holding the ream of printer paper, evidently not ready to leave, Brad set the package on the rough-hewn cedar table next to the cushioned glider. He took a seat and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “We purchased it before I headed off to do Bachelor Bliss.”

  Lainey sat down on the other end of the glider and turned to face him. “They paid you to end up so miserable?” she said as they moved back and forth.

  Looking even more handsome in the soft glow of the guest-house porch light, Brad replied, “They gave all the contestants five thousand dollars to appear on the show. The real money for me—and the female contestants the public took a shine to—was to come later, in endorsements. The last bachelor, for instance, made over two million in television commercials when the series wrapped up. They had close to three million lined up for me.”

  Another fact the show’s viewers would be interested in learning. “Only now, because of the way the series ended, you’re public enemy number one,” she guessed.

  “Right.”

  “Hence the sponsors want nothing to do with you.”

  “Right again.” Brad sighed. He brushed the flat of his palm down his jeans. “Not that I had any business doing those commercials anyway.”

  Lainey’s hair was still damp from the shower; she wouldn’t style it in the usual sleek bob until tomorrow. She could see Brad noticing—maybe even liking—the natural waves. Self-consciously she tucked a curl behind her ear and tried not to notice him tracking the movement. “Didn’t you believe in the products?”

  Brad held her gaze. “I would never endorse something I didn’t believe in. The problem is,” he confided, frowning, “it’s not real work.”

  Lainey caught the snobbery in his tone. “I think the people who vie for and film those commercials would disagree with you.”

  He made a face. “It’s just not the kind of thing I do.”

  What was it Chip had said to her, whenever she had talked to him about her ambitions? Reporting? Come on, Lainey! Get real! That isn’t the kind of thing we Carringtons do. She hadn’t liked his snobbery then. She didn’t like recalling it now. A person was not defined by his or her profession. Her mother had not been low class just because she worked in a bar and wore the provocative outfit the establishment management demanded during her work hours, and equally flamboyant and sexy clothing when she was off. Her mother had been sweet and gentle and hardworking, beloved by all who knew her and bothered to find out the person behind the ensemble.

  “I disagree,” she said. “Work is work, and there is value in work whatever it is.”

  Her irritated tone brought a provoking smile to his lips. “You really think so.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  He paused to consider that and seemed to be searching for the exception to the rule, if only to get her goat. “Even for something like—say—stripping?” he asked her playfully.

  How had the situation gotten back to sex again? What was it about the two of them that sparks flew whenever they were together? “Okay. You got me there,” Lainey replied dryly. “I would not take my clothes off in front of a bunch of leering strangers for money. But that’s still work, and if someone chooses to do it to earn a living, then that’s their business. It’s not up to you or me to judge them.”

  “You only say it’s real work because you’ve never been in a situation where you’ve been leered at that way.”

  Close enough, Lainey thought, and before she could stop herself the words came tumbling out. “Oh, yes, I have.”

  Brad looked as ready to continue their argument as she was. “Ah, yes. That homecoming parade Lewis was talking about.”

  Lainey flushed. Why had she started down this road? “That was my fault for letting my friends dare me into wearing that dress.” She’d been young, foolish. Reckless to a fault in a way she wasn’t now that she was a mom.

  Brad stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Well, this was my fault for letting the producers talk me into appearing on that TV show.”

  “You didn’t sign up for it?”

  “No.” He settled more comfortably on the bench seat of the glider and laid one arm along the back of it. “They came to me. Apparently, cowboys are heroes and Texans are sexy and they wanted a bona fide Texas cowboy for their bachelor this time around. So they looked at rodeo standings, saw my picture and thought I was just handsome enough to be the star of the show.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Hell, no.” Brad turned to her, dark eyes sparkling. “I was already thinking about talking to Lewis about buying a ranch. The last thing I wanted to do was fly to Los Angeles and spend a month on an estate in Santa Barbara with fifteen contestants all vying to be the first Mrs. Brad McCabe.”

  “So why did you?”

  He scowled, his frustration with the situation apparent. “The commercial money afterward. Since I’m not a computer genius capable of starting my own company like my dad or Lewis, I knew it was the only way I’d ever get the kind of cash I needed, so quickly. I should have known a plan like that would backfire on me, and stuck to real work, instead of trying to take the easy route.”

  Lainey saw his point about that. In a lot of ways, her life had taken a wrong turn when she married money and let the demands of that kind of life control her. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with doing commercials for products you believe in,” she said, repeating her earlier assertion.

  “Moot point now,” Brad said.

  Just then Lainey’s cell phone rang. Alarmed—it was unusual for anyone to call her after midnight—she uncurled herself from the swing and went inside to get it, then came back out onto the porch to stand with him.

  “Hello?” she said, nodding at Brad.

  “Mom?” Petey’s thin voice trembled in her ear.

  “Hi, honey,” Lainey said, her voice dropping to the gentle tone she reserved just for him. She turned her back to Brad. “Is everything okay? Are you having a good time with your cousins, Aunt Bunny and Uncle Bart?”

  “Yeah. We saw fireworks in the shape of cartoon characters tonight. It was pretty neat.”

  “I bet.” He sounded homesick.

  “I want to ask you somethin’.”

  “Go right ahead,” Lainey encouraged softly.

  “Are you proud of me—for being so big and brave?”

  Where had that come from? Lainey wondered, momentarily taken aback. “Honey, I am always proud of you.”

  “Lainey?” Bunny’s voice came on the phone, crisp, businesslike as always. “Sorry to call so late, but Petey wanted to tell you about the fireworks.”

  “Is he okay? Because he sounds awfully homesick….”

  “He’s doing fine! What?—oh! I’ve got to go! We’ll check in with you tomorrow, okay? Love you!”

  Lainey heard a click as Bunny cut the connection. The dial tone sounded in her ear. Frowning, she ended the call on her phone, too, but left it plugged in and turned on in case Petey called back again.

  “Everything okay?” Brad asked.

  Lainey wasn’t at all sure how to answer that.

  “I’M SORRY, BRAD,” Tommy Johnson, branch manager of Laramie Savings and Loan, said. “Your business plan looks excellent. But without some sort of co
llateral…” He hesitated. “If you wanted to have Lewis co-sign for you or put up part of the ranch, well, that would be a different story.”

  “No.” Brad lifted a hand to cut off the discussion. “I was looking to stock the ranch on my own.”

  “I understand. But it’s not like the old days, where a handshake or a man’s word would suffice. We’re all owned by big companies now, and we have guidelines we have to have follow.”

  No one had to tell Brad it was a conglomerate world. Bigger had always meant better in Texas. But bigger did not always mean better in business. The loss of the personal touch also meant the loss of good service and ample opportunity. Still, maybe there was something he could do, some way to fix this. First, he had to know if lack of collateral was the only reason he was being turned down. “Answer me this. If I hadn’t been on Bachelor Bliss, would my chances be better?”

  “Not for obtaining a loan. But it would probably help you be taken more seriously in this new venture of yours. The last thing any businessperson wants to be thought of is fickle and unreliable.”

  “And because I didn’t propose to Yvonne Rathbone, that’s the view of me now.”

  Tommy made a face and rubbed his knuckles on the underside of his chin. “Actually, it goes a little further back than that.”

  Brad lifted a brow.

  “Unfortunately, your work history speaks to the same sort of problems,” Tommy explained. “You dropped out of college, hit the rodeo circuit off and on, and worked ranches here and there.”

  “For good reason! To supplement my income and learn as much as I could from as many top-rate sources as possible.”

  “The point is, you didn’t stay in any one place for long. Then you signed up to do that reality TV show, and reneged on that at the end.”

  He’d had a damn good cause for that action, too. Not that he planned to tell anyone what it was. Bad enough he’d been humiliated that way without letting the rest of the world in on it, too.

  “And now you’re in business with Lewis, a person who knows a lot about computer software but nothing about raising cattle. As much as the people around here love you, it’s going to take time and a lot of stability on your part for you to be taken seriously as a rancher.”