Scandal with the Rancher

by Julia Justiss

  She stepped backward and uttered a shaky laugh. “Well, that was plain speaking. I suppose it’s not ladylike or proper of me to admit it, but yes, I find myself...powerfully attracted to you. Though I still grieve for my husband and can’t imagine anyone taking his place, that doesn’t seem to alter the fact that I...want you.”

  “But!” she added, holding out a hand, warning him to keep his distance, “wanting doesn’t mean having—at least, not for a woman. It’s much simpler for a man. There’s no danger you might have to...bear the consequences.”

  “As long as you avoid maidens whose papas own shotguns.”

  She smiled, as he’d meant her to. “Exactly. Thank you for your honesty. I hope you won’t think less of me for being honest with you.”

  “No, I think more of you. In truth,” he said, the realization striking him, “you might well have screamed, or fainted, having a man come here and proposition you. So I’m even more impressed to find you beautiful, desirable, determined—and sensible.”

  She chuckled. “I suppose I should thank you.”

  He laughed, too. “It’s me who’s doing the thanking. Friends, then, is it?” He held out his hand.

  After some hesitation, she shook it. “Let us part as friends,” she amended. “I don’t think it’s safe for a respectable widow to remain friends with a man as compelling as you are.”

  “I’ve assured you, there’s no danger.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “As you’ve said—only from myself. Goodbye, Mr. Kelly.”

  He suddenly realized how isolated she was. “Do you feel safe, out here all alone?”

  She shrugged. “There haven’t been any Indian raids in this area for twenty years. I have a rifle and a pistol, and I can use them. I think I can hold my own.”

  Booze still felt vaguely disquieted. Even more, he felt an unprecedented desire to protect her. Puzzling over that, he said, “Then I’ll leave you in peace. Goodbye, Mrs. McMasters.”

  Having no excuse to delay any longer, Booze mounted the gelding, noting how the sunlight from the setting sun gilded the stone along the riverbank behind them and brought out auburn highlights in her dusky hair. She gave him a little wave, then turned and picked her way back up the hill.

  Booze rode on, desire still thick in his throat. He was caught like a coon in a sack, he thought ruefully. Although the lady had made it clear she was unavailable, never in his life had he wanted a woman as much as he wanted Marguerite McMasters.

  After surreptitiously watching Ronan Kelly ride away, Marguerite walked back into the cabin, poured herself the rest of the coffee, and wandered to the settee. Somehow, the room seemed even emptier and lonelier than when she’d arrived, now that the vitality and drive that was Ronan Kelly had left it.

  She’d been astounded to find him practically on her doorstep, her first reaction that she must have somehow signaled to him the strength of the desire he elicited. Her trip to the ranch having produced its usual contradictory emotions—a sense of comfort in returning where she belonged, but also a deep loneliness in returning to a home without Aidan. Her next reaction to Kelly’s presence was a strong, completely impossible desire to take advantage of their isolation by exploring the fierce attraction between them.

  Thank heavens for the rituals of civility, which required inviting him in and offering refreshments. By the time she’d gotten him seated and poured coffee, she’d wrestled her desire under control and realized he couldn’t have come for trysting. Although she couldn’t imagine why he would seek her out.

  When he offered to buy her land, she’d felt a sharp sense of something almost like—betrayal—that he would casually propose taking from her what she valued most in the world. She’d had to restrain herself from tossing her coffee in his face.

  But that furious reaction was in error, too. Instead of trying to cajole her with the quantity of gold he could easily afford to offer, or railroad her with reminders of his position and status, after expressing the oft-repeated doubt about the ability of a female to run a ranch alone, he’d accepted her refusal with perfect courtesy. He’d even gone on to ask about her beloved horses and express an interest in seeing them.

  And when attraction crackled between them again, he’d initiated a frank discussion of what he wanted, then accepted with good grace her inability to acquiesce.

  Not that she imagined he had any trouble finding willing bed partners. But in her experience, a powerful, successful and charming man used to getting what he wanted didn’t take kindly to have his wishes denied.

  If he had been irritated and impatient, she’d seen no sign of it. Rather than try to charm or persuade her into changing her mind, he assured her he would never take her as a lover unless she wanted him as much as he wanted her—a stance that completely disarmed the wary, protective instincts she’d summoned to resist him.

  Which, of course, made resisting him all the harder. Was that what he intended? To get what he wanted by pretending that yielding to him would be completely her choice?

  She couldn’t figure him out at all.

  Of course, he was charming. Conniving, too, probably. She’d be impossibly naïve to take at his word a man for whom flattering a lady was as automatic as breathing. Though she realized she did believe, on a level too deep for debate, that he would never coerce her to yield to him.

  Which did not mean he might not try to coax and seduce her. Was he counting on the lure of his wealth, power and pleasing compliments to eventually wear her down? Ronan Kelly did have a reputation for obtaining whatever he set his sights on.

  Enough! She’d spent far too much time already thinking about a man who would never marry her and whom she didn’t dare take as a lover. Even though she knew...she just knew that making love to him would fill some of the lonely, empty places in her soul.

  Well, it wasn’t going to happen. So she’d better stop thinking about it.

  Concentrate on your goal, Marguerite DeRivieras McMasters, she told herself. And put the handsome, tempting Ronan Kelly out of your mind.

  Chapter Four

  A few days later, Marguerite stood outside the schoolhouse, watching the children play on their after-lunch break. The warm spring breeze fluttered the leaves in the trees overhead and teased little strands out of her coiffure to lay damp against her neck. The river that, a few weeks earlier, swollen by spring rain and runoff, had been roaring past the banks below, was more placid now, though the deep currents in the center still moved with deceptive quickness.

  Out at the ranch, Yolanda and Desiree would be roaming the pasture, seeking out the best new grass or chasing each other to the river. As the days lengthened and the mares came into season, they would be restless, impatient, instinctively looking for a stallion to come courting.

  There wouldn’t be one again this summer. Might she have the funds to buy them a mate next year—or the next? How many years before she could breed their great potential into a new generation?

  A shout pulled her from her reverie. She looked up to see several of the older boys chasing each other around the rocks at the top of the ridge near where the ground dropped sharply to the river—too close to that drop for her comfort. Like boys everywhere, they had no sense of danger and every confidence that accidents only happened to someone else.

  “Boys, you’re too near the edge,” she called as she walked toward them.

  Predictably, caught up in their version of “tag-you’re-it,” they didn’t hear her, continuing to race around the rocks, the one behind giving the one in front a hard push each time he caught up.

  One of the younger boys, who held the older two in worshipful adoration, approached from behind. Apparently trying to join the game, he jumped between the leader and the follower.

  Before she could even shout a warning, the follower thrust out an arm to give the leader a push, his fist hit the smaller boy at an angle, and knocked him sideways.

  The child scrabbled for balance, lost it, and fell. Frantically grasping at the rock
s, he tumbled down the bank and into the river. He tried to right himself in the water, but the current was too strong for his small legs, sweeping his feet out from under him and carrying him away.

  “Stay where you are!” Marguerite shouted at the older boys, who were staring, stricken, at the river. Gathering up her skirts, she ran down the bank, skidding and sliding on the steep slope.

  Just before she reached the water’s edge, a thundering splash doused her. Shaking her head to clear her eyes, she saw Ronan Kelly launch himself from the waist-deep shallows into the deeper current and swim downstream after the child.

  With a few powerful strokes, he reached the boy and pulled the struggling child’s head above water. The youngster clinging to his arm, he swam them both back to the shore.

  Relief making her light-headed, she called, “Matthew, William, go into the schoolhouse and bring me the bag of rags behind my desk.” While the two older boys scrambled off to do her bidding, she waited anxiously for Kelly to ferry the child back to shore.

  Once it was shallow enough, Kelly set the boy on his feet and helped him out of the water. His lips blue and trembling, the lad cried, “I’m sorry, ma’am! I didn’t mean to jump in.”

  “Nor did I,” Kelly remarked behind him.

  “It’s all right, John, I know you didn’t,” she soothed the agitated child. “Does anything hurt?”

  “M-my hand does. I think I banged it on a rock.”

  She took the hand and flexed the fingers, noting that she could manipulate them without the child wincing. “No strains or breaks.” After looking him over and finding no further damage, she said with relief, “Let’s get you toweled off and into some dry clothes.”

  Looking up at Kelly, she said, “Thank you so much! I meant to go after him, but in these skirts, reaching him in time would have been difficult. You may well have saved his life.”

  “And yours,” Kelly said soberly. “That current is strong, and flattering as those full skirts are, soaking wet, they could weigh you down and pull you under.”

  The boys arrived back from the schoolroom with the rags she kept for mopping floors and chalkboards. Choosing the cleanest of them, she toweled John’s dripping hair and face. “That’s good enough. Let’s get you out of this wind. Hurry back into the schoolroom and stand in the corner by my desk.”

  “Should I take him home so his mama can get him into some dry duds?” Kelly asked.

  “No, I keep a set of old clothes in the classroom, just in case. Though I envisioned them for a child caught out in the rain, not for a near drowning! But you should get along back to the hotel and change.”

  Kelly shrugged. “Won’t be the first time I’ve been wet to the skin. Try driving a team of mules pulling a wagonload of goods through four days of steady rain! I do regret ruining my best boots. But you’ll be needing to get back to your charges.”

  “Yes, I should. I can’t thank you enough! When I think of what might have happened, had you not intervened...” She shivered. “I could be calling upon John’s mother to deliver something much more devastating than a sack of wet clothing.”

  “I’m ever happy to be of assistance to you, ma’am. Good day, Mrs. McMasters.” Tipping his hat to her—the only garment he’d managed to shed before jumping into the river, and therefore dry—he walked off in the direction of the hotel.

  As the full import of what might have happened sank in, she put a hand to her suddenly galloping heart. She might have lost a precious child.

  And probably her job, she realized with a second stab of alarm. Some on the board, Mrs. McCleary in particular, were always watching for a reason to remove her. She could have been accused of negligence, and dismissed.

  Losing her job meant losing the ranch.

  Unthinkable!

  As she walked back to the schoolhouse, Marguerite turned to look toward the town, watching Kelly disappear into the distance. She owed him far more than she’d first realized.

  What had brought him to the school in the first place? The building near the river had been one of the early settler’s houses, a simple structure of stone with open windows, sturdy enough to stand up to the play of rambunctious students and not fancy enough to be desirable as a residence any longer. It was also far enough from the other homes and businesses not to distract the children.

  Had Ronan Kelly walked this way to seek her out?

  A delicious thrill rushed through her before she halted her rampaging imagination. Why would he want to talk with her? With both of them having already made their positions clear on what they meant to do about the strong attraction between them, there was nothing further to say.

  Unless he was trying to persuade her to change her mind...

  She was being ridiculous, she told herself. True, he’d confessed he found her attractive, but there were other attractive women, even in a town as small as Whiskey River. Ronan Kelly wouldn’t be pining for lack of feminine company in his bed.

  Won’t be the first time I’ve been wet to the skin... He’d be in the hotel now, stripping off those wet clothes. She thought of the ripple of muscles as he pulled off the garments, the broad shoulders and strong back glistening with a sheen of moisture. Pictured pulling down the sodden leather of his breeches, freeing his legs, his manhood...

  She caught herself, shaking her head. What had triggered this sudden intensity of physical longing? Her gradual emergence from the depths of grief...or the tantalizing person of Ronan Kelly?

  Some of both, probably. Striding purposefully toward the classroom, she told herself to focus on her task and her charges.

  One last impression emerged before she made herself banish the thought—and image—of Ronan Kelly. Even if he had been coming by to charm her, it was hard to keep thinking of a man who ruined his best boots jumping into a river to save a child as merely a self-centered rogue, intent on getting what he wanted.

  Across town at the hotel, Booze quickly peeled off his soggy garments. Sitting down on his bed, he regarded his boots with a sigh.

  “I’ll be trying some oil and all, but it’s likely you’re done for,” he addressed them. “And serves you right, Ronan Kelly, wandering off toward the school, just to get a glimpse of a woman you can’t have. Dimwit!”

  Restless as he studied financial reports at the mercantile earlier that morning, he’d told himself he needed to get some fresh air and stretch his legs. Being cooped up inside going over figures always made him fidgety, but though Jesse was a conscientious clerk, his arithmetic skills were questionable. Booze found it advisable to recheck his figures at least once a month.

  He could have stretched his legs in any direction—around the central square, maybe over to the bank to share a cup of coffee with Michael. But his feet seemed to have taken him to the school building, without his having consciously decided to go there. As if something deeper than words or thought drew him.

  Which was ridiculous. If he were drawn to Marguerite McMasters, it was only because of the challenge she represented. With few exceptions, when he made his interest in a woman known, she was more than willing to give herself to him. Some required a game of courtship, the lady lavished with gifts and attention until she felt she’d been wooed enough to succumb. The interludes that followed were blessed with mutual enjoyment and usually with a congenial parting of the ways when the flame burned out.

  In the case of the few ladies who had not reciprocated his interest, he’d shrugged his shoulders and moved on. There were always more lovelies to be discovered.

  So why was he lingering over the prospect of Marguerite McMasters? She’d made it quite clear she wasn’t trying to entice him into the wooing game. No amount of posies would make her reconsider, and for good reasons he had to respect. He ought to dismiss any further amorous thoughts and move on.

  Unless...unless the sheer intensity of the force between them might weaken her resolve?

  The intensity was there, he was certain. Might he just need to wait for it to work its will? Surely, f
or a woman he wanted this much, it wouldn’t hurt to persist a bit longer.

  Powerful memories surged back of those charged moments in her deserted cabin. Her dark hair coiled in a coronet atop her head, a slanting beam of sunlight through the window gilding it to copper. The damp ringlets highlighted against the porcelain of her neck, teasing him to curl them around his fingers. The warmth and heat of her bending toward him, the scent of lavender and woman and the sugared coffee of her lips so close, so maddeningly close.

  Then, as now, the idea of kissing her, running his hands over the swell of her bosom, his fingers seeking the peaked nipples hidden under the demure layers of fabric, pulling her against him so he might feel the length of her pressed against him, fired an aching need that throbbed in his blood and hardened in his groin.

  Would she turn to fire in his arms after that first caress, deepening the kiss, impatiently pulling at his shirt, his trousers as his trembling fingers worked to loosen buttons? Desperate, needy, impatient with the slow process of undressing, would she jerk open his trousers, settle herself over his lap, thrust him within, while her skirts ruched up around her legs and he tasted the lace of her bodice as he suckled the breasts hidden beneath?

  Somehow, he knew she would respond with passionate abandon. He could picture it so clearly, almost taste the velvet of her lips, the rough pebbled texture of her breasts, the satin of her inner thighs.

  He took a shuddering breath. By the saints, he couldn’t remember ever becoming so aroused by the thought of being with a woman, especially when the possibility of satisfying that desire was not imminent.

  With Miss Evangeline’s just outside town, he could do something about the arousal. But though he was almost painfully hard, turning himself over to one of her Angels to rectify the situation didn’t appeal.

  Refusing to contemplate the implication of that odd development, he focused instead on his conclusion—Marguerite McMasters was definitely worth the wait.