What a Rancher Wants

by Sarah M. Anderson

  “I put a pool in up at the bunkhouse when I opened the hotel,” he said, wondering if she’d have a one piece or a bikini—and how little that bikini might cover. Didn’t matter—she’d fill it out. All of it. “We’ll open it up in a few months.”

  The if you’re still here hung out there, but now he wasn’t sure that Gabriella—or Alex—would still be here. The more he learned about Rodrigo del Toro, the more he believed the older man would do anything to make sure his family was “secure.”

  She could easily be playing the poor-little-rich-girl card right now—held virtual prisoner by her mean father, never allowed to roam outside, never allowed to live a normal life. She could be trying to pluck at his heartstrings; make him feel as though he was her only possible savior from a life of house arrest.

  She would be—if she was trying to manipulate him. He felt sure about that.

  She turned to him, a sunny smile brightening her face. “When did you open the hotel?”

  “A couple of years ago. I host theme weddings and week-long vacation packages. Hell—”

  She shot him a look. “Heck,” he corrected himself, “I even hosted a Dallas-themed murder mystery dinner when they launched the reboot on TV.”

  Nothing in her face changed—not on the surface, anyway, but it was like watching a shadow pass over her face. Everything about her got...colder. “The land is valuable to you?”

  What the hell? He’d lost her—and he had no idea why. “It’s been in my family for almost a hundred years—I’m the fourth generation of McDaniels to ranch here. There was no way I was going to let it go without a fight. Running a hotel and dude ranch may not be the same kind of hard work my grandpa did, but I do all right.” Far better than his parents had done, that was for sure.

  She gave him a measured look for another beat or two, then the shadow moved on and she was walking back over to Gale, tightening the cinch and swinging up into the saddle as though she’d been doing it all her life. She sure hadn’t needed his help mounting up earlier and he felt a little stupid for having done so.

  But he’d wanted to touch her, to see what she’d do. Would she have taken it as the come-on it sort of was—and would she have tried to use the attraction he obviously felt to her advantage?

  She hadn’t. She’d just looked down at him with that confused, almost innocent air about her. Which had done things to him.

  Things that might get him shot by the end of the day.

  He mounted up and they headed back down the trail toward the bunkhouse. “Franny will have lunch waiting on us,” he said into the silence, although she had not questioned them returning the way they came.

  “Tell me more about Alejandro here.” The way she said it, it was less a conversation, more a cross-examination.

  Yeah, this wasn’t datelike activity. This was riding with the enemy—a woman who had access to the one man who could clear Chance’s name in this whole mess. A man who apparently didn’t remember a damn thing. A man who might be vulnerable to suggestion.

  It didn’t matter how attracted he was to Gabriella del Toro, how touching her stories were. Hell, it didn’t matter a damn bit how well she rode. The only thing that mattered was clearing his name. A distant second to that was figuring out what had happened to his friend.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You said he was popular here?”

  “Yup. He rolled in and started throwing money around like it was confetti. A lot of people were suspicious, but money talks.” Hell, he’d been one of the doubters—what had Alex Santiago known about Royal, Texas?

  “Indeed.” She didn’t seem surprised by these statements. Then she turned her face toward his and broke out an absolutely stunning smile. “What is the phrase? All hat, no cows?”

  The laugh burst out of him before he could think better of it. She giggled along with him, even as she looked mildly embarrassed. “Close, really close,” he said, wiping an honest-to-God tear from his eye. Man, he hadn’t laughed that hard since... Well, since before Alex had gone missing. “All hat, no cattle. But you’ve got the drift.”

  She gave him a funny look—funny confused, not funny amused. Although she still looked amused. “The what?”

  “The drift. You understand the basic idea of all hat, no cattle.” He looked at her. “Say, where’d you learn to speak English?”

  Color rushed to her cheeks, which had him staring. “Am I not making myself clear?”

  “No—it’s not that at all.” Jeez, he was sticking his foot in his mouth. “You’ve got a different accent. Not quite Mexican, but not American, either. It’s real pretty,” he added, although he didn’t know why.

  Well, he knew why. It was the same reason he shouldn’t be complimenting her. Any attraction he felt for Gabriella del Toro was irrelevant. He had to remember that.

  This was going to prove hard, what with her fluttering her thick black eyelashes at him and looking all pleased with his compliments. “Papa did not like the American accent. All of my tutors were British.”

  Chance was getting the feeling that dear ol’ Papa didn’t like anything American—which led to the inevitable question of why he had sent his son up here. “Alex’s tutors—were they British, too?” Because Alex hadn’t talked quite the way Gabriella had. He’d gotten the drift of all hat, no cattle from the get-go, no explanation needed.

  At that, her cheeks flushed and she dropped her gaze away from his. That’d be a no, he thought. Then she answered the question. “Papa saw more value for Alejandro to be familiar with American slang.”

  Okay, so Rodrigo had raised his son to be a— What? A mole? Trained him to infiltrate the bustling urban hub of Royal, Texas?

  And he held his daughter to a different set of standards— like a bird in a gilded cage.

  Chance detested men like Rodrigo del Toro—men who used their family as pawns and, worse, who hid their manipulations behind the façade of concern and care. His own parents might not have had much of a go at running a successful ranch, but by God they’d loved him—and each other—and done everything they could to raise him up right.

  This meant not saying the things that were running loose in his head right now, because it was clear that, no matter what he thought about the man, his daughter somehow managed to still love him. Instead he damn near bit his tongue trying to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t his place to judge what went on in other people’s families. He wasn’t about to start casting stones. Lord knew he had enough sin.

  So he took the easy way out. “Well, if you need anything explained, you let me know.”

  “I will.”

  Funny, he thought as the barn came into view.

  She sounded as if she meant it.

  Six

  They rode up to the barn and dismounted. “Where do the saddles go?” she asked as Marty came out to meet them.

  Chance looked over and saw that she already had the saddle off the horse and was standing there as if he expected her to rub ol’ Gale down herself. “Marty’ll get it.”

  “I don’t mind. I curry my horse at home.”

  Behind her, Joaquin nodded. He’d managed to stick the dismount and was also undoing Beast’s cinch.

  Gabriella may be coddled, but she wasn’t spoiled. “Marty will get it,” he repeated. A flash of defiance crossed her face, so he added, “Fran’s got lunch waiting on us.”

  She looked as if she wanted to argue, but at the mention of lunch, everything changed. “Of course—I forgot. I groom Ixchel.” She handed the saddle over to Marty, who looked bemused by a guest insisting on working.

  They began the short walk up to the bunkhouse. “What does So-cheel mean?”

  “Ixchel,” she repeated, her lips smoothing out all the rough edges of the word. “She is the Mayan goddess of midwifery and, to a lesser extent, m
edicine.”

  “Sure.” He’d never heard of her, but that didn’t mean it was a weird name. But he wasn’t going to say that.

  Not that he needed to. She gave him a sly look and said, “Is it so much different than naming a horse after the founder of modern nursing—Florence Nightingale?”

  He was probably gaping at her, but he couldn’t help himself.

  She laughed. That light, easy sound. “Although I am sure you had the songbird in mind, yes?”

  “Yeah, that was what I was going for. Seem to have missed it by a country mile, though.”

  “Is that different than a city mile, then?”

  “Sort of. Fewer sidewalks, more twists and turns. Have to go slower.”

  They reached the front doors of the Bunk House. He held the door for her, but Joaquin—who had trailed them the entire time—insisted that Chance go in second.

  “Oh,” Gabriella breathed in that slightly surprised voice as she looked around.

  “It’s not a real bunkhouse,” he explained as she gaped at the three-story lobby, finished in rough-hewed logs and decorated with plush leather furniture and thick Navajo rugs. The decorator he’d hired had wanted to use deer antlers as accessories—for lamps and chandeliers and whatnot—as well as cowhides for rugs, but Chance had put his foot down. He didn’t live in the bunkhouse, but it was still his home and he wasn’t about to have the McDaniel name associated with clichés like that.

  “The old bunkhouse was falling apart—Marty liked it, but he was the only one. So I had it leveled and I built this one.”

  She did a slow turn as she stared up at a three-tiered wrought-iron chandelier with mica shades before turning to face the massive stone hearth, the chimney running up the length of the wall. “I used Texas red sandstone—rough-cut—for the chimney and had the chandeliers custom-made by a guy I know.”

  “Amazing,” she said as she did another slow turn. “You live here?”

  “Nope. My house is a little farther out on the range. I grew up in that house.”

  “Oh, you live with your parents, as well?”

  He wanted to be amused. If an American woman had asked that question, it would have been loaded with disgust that a grown man still lived with his momma. But for Gabriella, no such disgust existed. If anything, she sounded happy to have found a bit of common ground with him.

  “They passed on. Back when I was in college. I’m the only McDaniel left.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have put it in exactly those terms, because Gabriella looked at him with her big, beautiful eyes—eyes that pooled with unshed tears. She reached out and laid her hand on his arm for the second time today. “Oh—my apologies. I didn’t know.”

  More than anything, he wanted to touch her back—to put his hand on top of hers, to feel her skin underneath his.

  Light flashed off of her neck and, for the first time, he noticed the jewelry she was wearing today. Whereas she’d had on ropes of turquoise in Alex’s house, today she had on simple silver crosses.

  He leaned in closer. Maybe not so simple. The surface of the cross at her neck was hammered, but the texture was so finely done that it looked solid from a distance. In the center was a green stone—small, but exquisitely cut. A perfect emerald.

  She noticed him looking and tilted her head back, giving him full view of her smooth collarbone. He forgot about the necklace until she said, “The earrings match.”

  He dragged his gaze away from her chest and up to her ears. The crosses did indeed match—hammered silver with a small but perfectly cut emerald in the center. “They’re stunning.”

  “Thank you.” A soft pink blush flooded her cheeks—and edged down her collarbone.

  Innocent, he thought. Sweet and innocent, with a hint of pride in her tone.

  Unless it was all an act.

  “Did you make them?”

  “Yes. That is my business.”

  He knew he was probably staring at her with his mouth open like a catfish, but he couldn’t help it. The work was amazing—not some mass-produced, made-in-China crap that any teenager could buy at a mall. “You make jewelry?”

  “Yes.” She removed one earring, then the other. Finally, moving at a speed that made something deep inside Chance hurt, she lifted her hair away from her neck and unfastened the necklace. She was still fully dressed, of course, but watching her remove her jewelry was one of the more erotic moments of Chance’s life. Something about it felt intimate—forbidden, almost.

  If he wasn’t staring at her before, he sure as hell was now.

  “There is a trick,” she explained, taking a few steps over to the table in the center of the lobby. “The pieces are interlocking.”

  As he watched, her fingers nimbly arranged the three crosses. The interior arms of the two earring crosses slipped behind the top of the cross pendant, then she snapped the arms of the pendant behind the center of the smaller crosses. “It took me months to figure out how to balance the needed thickness to make them lock into place with the flexibility to bend but retain their shape.” She demonstrated by picking the trio of crosses up and giving it a light shake. It didn’t fall apart.

  “You made that?”

  “The three crosses,” she said, a pleased smile on her face. “Tres Cruces—that is the name of my business.” She put the assembled piece into his hand and then turned it over. “This is my mark.”

  She pointed to a small indent on the back of each separate piece—and damned if it wasn’t three crosses lined up exactly as she’d arranged them on his table. Tres Cruces—tTt.

  “I didn’t realize you were so accomplished.” Too late, he did realize that was a backhanded sort of compliment. “I mean, I didn’t realize you did metalwork. Obviously, I realized you were quite accomplished—figured that out when you spoke such pretty French.” She giggled at him and he felt foolish—but also pleased. “Yeah, I’ll stop talking now. First rule of holes and all that.”

  Her eyes still brimming with good humor, she said, “The first rule of holes? What is that?”

  “The first rule of holes—when you’re in one, stop digging.”

  “Ah. An Americanism.” She still looked a little confused. “What hole are you in that you must stop digging?”

  Chance ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah—I’m embarrassing myself.” But he had to admit it was sort of worth it to hear the lightness of her laughter. “Do me a favor and save me from myself—tell me about your business.”

  Just then, Carlotta, a receptionist at the front desk, hurried past him. “Buenos días, Señor McDaniel.”

  “Buenos días, Carlotta,” he replied, handing Gabriella’s three crosses back to her and forcing himself to take a step away. Not only was he running the risk of Joaquin plugging him in the back, but if Chance’s staff saw him making googly eyes at a woman—well, word would get around.

  He wasn’t interested in one-night—or one-afternoon—stands. He didn’t want to be the last McDaniel, but so far he hadn’t done a bang-up job of finding a woman who’d cotton to his way of life. Cara Windsor sure hadn’t, although he’d thought for a while she might be willing to give it a go. Before Alex Santiago had come and turned his whole life upside down.

  “Carlotta, can you tell Fran we’re here?”

  Carlotta snuck a curious glance in at Gabriella before she said, “Sí, señor.”

  Chance watched her go, wondering how fast news of Gabriella’s arrival would spread through his staff—and whether anyone would believe that he wasn’t making the moves on Gabriella.

  He sighed heavily. Just another sordid tale in the life of a fictional character named Chance McDaniel—first he kidnapped his best friend and dumped him south of the border, then he wined and dined his best friend’s sister, no doubt corrupting her innocence. What next—he’d been plotting to overthrow t
he mayor? Conducting satanic rituals on his land? He was getting damn tired of people choosing to believe what they wanted about his life instead of what was true. He’d hoped things would get better now that Alex had been found, but with his memory gone, he hadn’t exactly been able to prove that Chance had had nothing to do with his disappearance.

  He forced himself back to the present, but it was tough. Gabriella spun his head around way too easily. “The restaurant is this way.”

  He led Gabriella and Joaquin off to the north side of the lobby, where an open doorway was framed with huge rough-cut logs. The restaurant wasn’t a big thing—twenty tables—but it did a brisk business thanks to Franny’s cooking.

  Chance guided Gabriella—with Joaquin close behind them—to two tables in the corner of the restaurant. It was quiet today—they had a few people already here for the wedding tomorrow, but most of them were out doing wedding-related preparations for tomorrow.

  Basically, they had the place to themselves.

  “The tables are rather small,” Gabriella noted, one of her delicately curved eyebrows lifting in what he hoped was amusement and not irritation.

  “We like to promote a quiet atmosphere here, so, yeah—Joaquin, you’ll be at this table here.” Chance saw the look that the two exchanged, but he didn’t care. Sure, Joaquin was probably a great guy, but Chance would like to get through a conversation with Gabriella without having the big man staring daggers at him. Besides, Gabriella seemed to be smiling. “You’ve got your back to a wall and full view of the room. Try not to shoot anyone, okay?”

  Joaquin glared at him.

  Franny came bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. A big woman, Franny was in her mid-fifties, her children grown and living in Houston. She’d taken it upon herself to look after Chance. Some days, he could do without being henpecked, but most of the time, he appreciated that there was always someone on his side.