The Rancher's Housekeeper

by Rebecca Winters

  “It’s a sacred place to the Lakotas where they perform the Sun Dance. June in particular is a time when most tourists are encouraged to honor their tribal traditions and don’t try to climb it. But we’re free to visit. Since it’s a beautiful Sunday and we both have the day off, how about we put our bikes in the back of my truck and drive there?”

  “You have a bike?” She sounded excited by the possibility.

  He nodded. “I think mine still works. We’ll pedal around and see the sights, then move on to other places and eat as we go.” She heard his chair scrape as he got up from the table. “If that doesn’t appeal, then tell me now and I’ll get busy working on the books for the accountant who’ll be here next week.”

  A whole day with Colt? It’s what she’d been wanting all along. Quick, Geena, before he withdraws his invitation and leaves. After she’d turned on the dishwasher, she flashed him a glance. “I’d love it.”

  * * *

  Eleven hours later, after doing the whole tourist-attraction loop through the Black Hills, Colt drove them into Hulett, a town nine miles from Sundance. He parked near the White Pine Inn before ushering Geena inside for the best steak dinner this side of the Continental

  Divide, according to the sign. They had a great live band and dancing. He’d been waiting all day for this. If he had to wait five more minutes to get her into his arms, he was going to explode.

  Once they’d been shown to a table and had given their orders, Colt asked her if she wanted to dance. The old Colt would have swept her into his arms without getting her permission, but he was on his best behavior and it was paying dividends. He felt they’d passed the point of no return today, they were no longer just boss and employee, but something more.

  “I’d like that. It all depends on if my legs can handle it. We must have pedaled miles and you don’t even show it. That has to come from working in the outdoors from sunup to sundown.”

  He hadn’t been doing a lot of that since Geena had come into his life. Mac told him the ranch hands were beginning to wonder where he’d disappeared to. “Which exercise was more painful for you? Riding Carrot Top or your bike?”

  “My bike, I think.” She chuckled. “But if you’re willing to take a chance on me, I won’t say no.”

  The news was getting better and better. He moved around the table and walked her to the dance floor. No line-dancing here. With the soft rock playing in the background, Colt could get close to her so he felt every line and curve of her body. That’s what he needed. To feel her molded to him and to breathe in her fragrance. She intoxicated him.

  After several dances, he looked into her face, trapping her eyes so she wouldn’t look away, but he caught her tearing up. “Are you too sore for this and haven’t told me?”

  “No,” she answered quickly. “A week ago I was lying on my prison cot trying to figure out how to make my life count for something. I just didn’t know how. If someone had told me that before long the Good

  Samaritan would rescue me and show me the time of my life, I would have known I’d gone insane.”

  He cocked his dark head. “Good Samaritan?”

  “Yes. That’s you.”

  Intrigued by the analogy he said, “In that case, what prevents you from allowing me to do something else good for you? I’m trying to improve my image as a whole-loaf guy. You could help me with that by letting me into your confidence a little more. You’re fighting tears. I noticed you doing the same thing earlier while you were holding the baby. What did Abby’s presence trigger in you?”

  Her body quivered. That reaction told him he was getting closer to the secret she was keeping from him.

  “When I saw you holding her, Colt, it reminded me that Todd’s life had been cut short and he was denied the privilege of becoming a family man.”

  Colt felt she was telling him the truth, just not all of it. “Do you know, when I picked her up out of her crib, the first thing I wanted to do was show her to Mom and Dad? My divorce took its toll on the family. I think they despaired over any of their sons producing grandchildren.”

  “Oh Colt—” One lone tear trickled down her flushed cheek. “I’m being so selfish thinking only of myself and my sadness. I’m sorry.” Their mouths were mere inches apart. She gave him a brief kiss on the lips before easing herself out of his arms. “Our dinner’s waiting for us.”

  The touch of her mouth stayed with him after they settled down to enjoy their meal. Once the waitress brought dessert, Geena shot him a question he hadn’t anticipated. Not tonight anyway. “Did you ever bring your wife here?”

  He put down his fork. “No.”

  “Tell me about her. I’ve seen the family pictures on the walls, but you’re always with family or friends, not one special woman. I’m filled with curiosity. How long were you married? What was her name? Where did you meet her?”

  Colt lounged back in the chair. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Why do you think?” she fired right back, then grinned. It was the grin that caused him to cave. “I’m a typical woman who wants to know everything. It’s the way we’re made.”

  He couldn’t refuse her. “Maybe on the drive home.”

  “Good. I’m going to hold you to that. It’s a woman’s prerogative and this woman wants to know what makes the great Colt Brannigan tick.”

  He danced with her a few more times, but the direction of their conversation had changed the tenor of the evening. Though he could tell by the way she nestled against him that she loved moving to the music with him, she wanted something else from him. When the band took a break, he asked her if she’d like to stay.

  Geena shook her head. “I’m ready to go.”

  Halfway back to Sundance, they reached the turnoff for the ranch. He drove them past the house to another road that took them up through a ravine lush with summer grass and foliage. No one would bother them here.

  He parked at the side of the dirt road and shut off the engine. “I brought you to this spot because it’s darker here. If you look up at the sky, you’ll see the constellations better.”

  “My first night out of prison beneath your ponderosa, the Big Dipper seemed so close I could reach up and touch it. It was a heavenly night.”

  Colt stirred restlessly while he studied her profile. “Until Titus and I came along and ruined it for you.”

  She turned to him with the hint of a smile. “Once my heart rate settled back to normal, I didn’t mind. Especially after you invited me inside the house when you could have ordered me off your property. The way the ranchers at the feed store talked, I assumed you were a man of probably fifty or so.

  “Instead I was confronted by this much younger, attractive, modern-day knight in boots and jeans who’d rescued me from a dragon. You took my breath away. I kept wondering why you couldn’t have come sooner and stormed my prison in Pierre.”

  Geena.

  “I think I’ve been very patient waiting a whole week to hear about the woman who captured your heart. Naturally she would have been beautiful. Probably small and delicate, the kind that brings out a man’s protective instincts. Blond maybe, with warm chocolate-brown eyes and a complexion like porcelain. How am I doing?”

  “Make it strawberry blond and you’ve described Cheryl.”

  “Ah. You have to watch out for those strawberry varieties. Nature endowed them with that particular advantage over the rest of the female population. How young was she?”

  “Twenty. I was twenty-one.”

  “And you were both smitten at first sight.”

  He examined her features in the moonlight. “That’s the word for it,” he said, concentrating on the woman next to him. “Nothing cerebral. Just pure hormones raging out of control.”

  “I’m sure there was more to it than that.”

  “Not really. It was the proverbial cas
e of opposites attracting.”

  She eyed him speculatively. “Then she wasn’t a farming girl?”

  “No. The daughter of a surgeon from San Francisco.”

  “I see. How did you meet?”

  “It was June. She was on vacation with several of her college friends. They’d driven to Reno for some fun and decided to take in a rodeo. Their first. I won my event that night and they were in the crowd to congratulate me. I stayed over to spend the next day with her.”

  “How long before you got married?”

  “Six weeks.”

  “That fast—”

  “Yes, ma’am. She followed me to some other rodeos on the circuit. By the time we reached Elko, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. We decided to get married in San Francisco. My family flew out for the wedding. We took a two-week honeymoon in Hawaii on my latest winnings, then I brought her home to the ranch. We lived in the house Travis and Lindsey are in now.”

  “I can guess the rest,” Geena murmured. “She hated the isolation and missed her friends.”

  Colt’s gut twisted because he realized Geena had to be feeling the same way since her imprisonment. She’d been uprooted from everything. He cringed to remember she’d had her life literally torn away from her.

  “Cheryl wanted us to move to California so I could find a good job.”

  Geena gave a caustic laugh. “She certainly didn’t know the real Colt Brannigan, did she? You could no more turn your back on your family and your Wyoming heritage than fly.”

  Neither could Geena forget her heritage when she was a South Dakota girl through and through.

  He’d offered to drive her by her grandmother’s home, but she’d refused because it would be too painful. More than ever he understood why she’d insisted on the housekeeper job being temporary. In time she hoped to recover certain mementos from the past and make her permanent home in Rapid City.

  If anyone deserved to get her life back it was Geena. Haunted by what she’d lived through, Colt was going to help her whether she wanted it or not.

  He started the truck and found a spot where he could turn around. She was silent all the way back to the house. Before they got out of the cab he turned to her.

  “Tomorrow morning I’ll be driving Hank to the clinic early so the doctor can remove his cast. We won’t be eating breakfast. After that I’ll fly him to Casper. He’s going to spend some time with our cousin Robert. I probably won’t be back until Wednesday. If an emergency should arise, Mac’s in charge, but you can always phone me. If all else fails, there’s Travis.”

  “Thanks for telling me.” She opened the passenger door. “I’m glad for Hank. He needs to get away.”

  Colt grimaced. “In case you didn’t guess that too, he thinks he’s still in love with Lindsey.”

  After a pause, “They have a history?”

  “Two dates only before she refused him a third one. Later on in the year she met Travis at a party by accident and they fell in love.”

  Geena nodded. “That explains his moroseness. The poor guy needs to settle down with a woman who has loved him for years. Like Mandy perhaps?”

  His eyes squinted at her. “What are you saying?”

  “Well, you have to admit she’s been a good sport to chauffeur him around with his foul disposition since the cast was put on. It isn’t friendship she wants. Hopefully one day soon he’ll realize a relationship with Lindsey was never meant to be and he’ll take off the blinders. Mandy hasn’t been biding her time for nothing over the years you know.”

  Colt burst into laughter. “How do you know so much about everyone in such a short time?”

  “That’s easy. I’ve been in prison observing women for over a year. Somehow Mandy has learned to appreciate all Hank’s wonderful qualities lying beneath that sinfully good-looking exterior of his. In the looks department all three of you Brannigan men were given more than your fair share,” she added.

  So saying, she jumped to the ground. “Have a good flight both ways and come home safely,” she whispered. “The Floral Valley Ranch couldn’t go on without you.”

  The last thing he saw were her imploring inky blue eyes shimmering in the moonlight. They put a stranglehold on him before she closed the door and vanished.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WEDNESDAY morning Colt left his uncle’s ranch and flew from Casper to Rapid City to see Lieutenant Crowther, the detective who’d broken the case for Geena.

  Colt sat across from him at his desk. “As I told you on the phone, Geena’s brother, Todd Williams, passed away while she was in prison. I’m trying to help her find the woman who was living with her brother at the time of Geena’s arrest. She’d like to recover some of her possessions. Do you know anything about her?”

  The detective nodded. “Geena insisted she’d been framed and gave the public defender the names of everyone she could think of. Janice Rigby was among the list of suspects I compiled while I was trying to reconstruct the facts of the murder. I’ll let you look at the rap sheet on her. She has an alias.” He printed out a form on his computer and handed it to Colt to read.

  Five years ago Janice had been arrested and served a one-year jail sentence for possession of marijuana in Leadville under the name Angie Rigby. After that there was a list of petty thefts throughout towns in the Black Hills area. Her last arrest had put her in jail for fifteen days. It had happened while Geena herself was in prison.

  Colt raised his head. Somehow this woman had hooked up with Todd and used him like a bank because he’d been willing. Geena had loved her brother. He dreaded the thought of telling her what he’d found.

  “When Geena first met Janice, she thought the other woman was involved with a man besides her brother, but a rap sheet like this means she had an addiction to drugs that started years earlier and this is only the tip of the iceberg. She probably sold every possession of Geena’s and Todd’s to support her habit.”

  The lieutenant’s brows lifted. “I’m afraid so. I doubt she’s in Rapid City now, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll run a search through the national database and see if there’s new activity on her reported in other counties or states. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know in case Geena is still interested in finding her. Give me your phone number.”

  They traded information.

  “One more thing,” the other man said. “There’s a piece of news not included on the rap sheet. With this last arrest, they did a physical on her. She was six months pregnant.”

  Pregnant?

  Colt shot out of the chair. Geena had to have known, but she’d never said anything to him about it. “I had no idea.”

  “Given the woman’s record, maybe the baby wasn’t her brother’s and that’s why Geena never told you.”

  “True.” But maybe the baby was Todd’s. If there’d been a live birth, Geena might have a niece or nephew out there somewhere. Getting back her mementos was one thing, but the possibility that the baby was Todd’s would explain her desperation to catch up with Janice. Suddenly it was all clear to him.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve helped me more than you know.”

  Colt called a taxi to take him to the airport for the short flight back to Sundance. After being away from the ranch for any reason, home always called to him. But as he set down the Cessna and started up the truck, he forgot there was a speed limit. It felt like months, not days, since he’d last been with Geena.

  To prove to himself she didn’t matter to him, he’d purposely refrained from phoning her and had stayed in touch with Travis and Ina instead. But his experiment had backfired on him and he could hardly breathe as he parked the truck and hurried inside the ranch house to find her.

  The house looked immaculate and was quiet as a tomb. He strode down the hall to his mother’s room and heard voices coming f
rom the veranda. When he stepped outside he found Travis and Lindsey eating lunch with Ina and their mother. Colt greeted everyone and kissed his mom who was still enjoying her food. “Where are your parents, Lindsey?”

  “They drove to Gillette for a big party, but they’ll be back this weekend.”

  Jim had probably gotten antsy sitting around.

  “You’re looking good. Where’s the baby?”

  “After Geena made lunch for us, she volunteered to tend her until her next feeding in order to give us a breather.”

  Travis eyed him. “Geena’s amazing! As you can see, there’s still plenty of food here. Sit down and tell us how Robert’s doing.”

  “Actually I’ve had lunch and there are some things I need to do, so I’ll fill you in at dinner.”

  He left the veranda and hurried through the house to the staircase. Taking the steps two at a time, he raced down the hall to Travis’s old room expecting to find Geena, but she wasn’t there. Colt checked the other upstairs rooms to no avail.

  That meant she was in her room.

  With his heart pounding like a sledgehammer, he went back down and took a few deep breaths outside her door. Afraid to knock for fear he’d wake the baby if she was asleep, he carefully turned the handle and looked inside.

  Geena lay in the center of the bed facing the door. The carrycot sat on the floor. She’d put the baby next to her and was studying her the way a mother would do. Her face was awash in tears. He might have been mystified if he hadn’t talked to the lieutenant. Moved by her pain and the tenderness she showed the baby, he entered the room and closed the door, then tiptoed over to the bed.

  Abby was sound asleep. When Geena saw him, he heard her quick intake of breath.

  “Lindsey told me you were watching her,” he whispered, “so I thought I’d let you know I’m back. I hope it’s all right I came in.”

  “Of course. Everyone must be glad you’re home safely.”

  And you, Geena?

  He leaned over. “She’s beautiful, just like her mother.”