She would get dressed…
Her arms lifting her nightgown, her breasts revealed. Skin so smooth it looked like wedding satin exposed to his flesh….
“Mr. Beringer?”
He started.
“Did you hear me?”
He felt his own cheeks fill with color. Amazing. Now he was blushing.
“Yeah. That’s fine.”
She stared up at him with narrowed eyes. “If you want to wash up, you can use the bathroom attached to my father’s bedroom.”
For a second his imagination twisted the words into an invitation to share the shower with her.
In your dreams, Scott.
“Be careful because the tap water gets hot fast.” She kept her gaze on him for a second longer, as if she was worried he might still follow her.
“Thanks.”
She gave him one last look before turning away. Wow. What was it about her that had him thinking such testosterone-charged thoughts? That had him wondering what kind of man she was attracted to? That had him wishing it was his kind of man.
You’re not her type, Scott old man.
No, but he could dream, couldn’t he?
Just one night in bed with her. That’s all he wanted. He wasn’t fool enough to believe anything more than that could last. It never did.
It took him only a second to find the room in question, and the shirt, and then he began to wash up and change. By the time he’d finished, he heard her running a shower. That shot a new burst of energy through him. Amanda Johnson naked. That must be a sight. She’d be tanned. He wondered if it was an all-over tan.
Scott, you’re losing it.
He was, but he’d known that before arriving. During the week he’d been away he’d found himself thinking of her constantly. During the long, long flight back from Singapore he’d wondered if he’d feel the same way when he saw her again. Despite having embarrassed himself in front of her again, he did.
Distraction. He needed a distraction. The kitchen. Only a handful of people knew that he loved to cook. Hell, he was a better-than-average cook. He was a great cook. Scott had long since figured out that his love of food probably had something to do with his lack of it as a child. But whatever the reason, he prided himself on his hidden talent.
She was in the shower alone.
Stop it, Scott.
Five minutes later he’d found pans, spices and various other items he might need. The appliances were ancient, but the place had a homey feeling to it. Chickens ran around the wallpaper, the curtains and the small rug in front of the sink. He’d even found an apron in the shape of a giant chicken in the drawer, the wings spreading back to tie around his waist. He put it on without a moment’s hesitation, then opened the refrigerator door in preparation for a raid.
“What are you doing?”
Scott turned, startled to see a wet-haired Amanda standing in the doorway. What’d she do, jump in and out?
You’ll need a cold shower if you keep reacting to her in this way.
Darn, but if he’d thought her pretty with that cascade of hair falling loose around her shoulders, she was even prettier with it slicked back.
“I’m going to cook you breakfast.”
“I don’t eat breakfast.”
Something inside Scott fizzled like a spent fire-cracker. “You don’t?”
She shook her head.
He told himself not to be disappointed. Regroup, Scott. No big deal. She likely wouldn’t have been impressed by his cooking skills, anyway. “Ah, but you’ve never had one of my breakfasts.”
Her pretty blue eyes looked large and luminous without her hair framing her face. “Mr. Beringer.”
“Scott,” he instantly corrected.
“Scott,” she said. “A rancher usually feeds the livestock before he feeds himself.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“But I thought we were the dominant predators.”
“The what?”
“We eat when we want to eat. They eat when we want them to eat.”
She shook her head. “They get mad when they’re made to wait. And you saw what happens when a bull gets angry.”
His suitcase. He’d forgotten about it.
“But I was going to make you my special huevos rancheros in honor of my first day on the homestead.”
Her eyes narrowed—it must have been the word homestead. It didn’t take a man with a doctorate in computer science to figure out that she was thinking it was no longer her homestead.
“Do you want to learn about ranching or not?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Not until we eat. You know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Fine. I’ll go feed the livestock.”
He closed the refrigerator door. “No, wait. I’ll go with you.”
She didn’t look relieved. In fact, she looked kind of irritated. “Hey, slow down,” he called.
“The steers are hungry, Mr. Beringer. I don’t like to make them wait.”
“And here I thought ranchers ate hearty breakfasts.”
“You’re not a rancher, Mr. Beringer.” And her unspoken words were that he’d never be.
Scott stiffened, and if she’d known him better she would have realized her mistake. One never, ever challenged Scott Beringer…not if they hoped to win.
Chapter Three
Amanda felt Scott staring at her all the way out to the barn doors.
Had she been too hard on him? Should she care if she had been?
No, she firmly told herself. The whole week she’d waited for his return, she’d thought of ways to scare him off. The first of those plans started right now.
And yet she felt a surprising stab of guilt, and the urge to banter around with him. Ridiculous. The man had stolen her family’s heritage. He was like one of those cattle tycoons of the old days, the ones that squatted on small rancher’s land. His picture should be inserted into dictionaries under the words robber baron.
I’m going to cook you breakfast.
She’d wanted to eat breakfast with him.
Careful, Amanda. You might find yourself actually liking him.
She pulled open the giant wood doors that exposed the interior of the barn to early morning sunlight. Dust motes flew through the air on streamers of sunlight that illuminated a wall of hay.
“Wow,” Scott said. “That’s a lot of bricks.”
Bricks? She almost laughed.
“They’re called bales,” she corrected. “And there’re twenty tons of them.”
“Twenty tons?”
She nodded. “And we’ll go through most of it by the end of next month.”
“But I thought cattle grazed on grass.”
She turned to him. Her hair had dried a bit, despite the chilly morning air. She wore a gray sweater that she realized now was the wrong thing to wear. Slivers of the hay would stick to it and prick her all day. Darn. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.
“Cattle need at least ten acres of pasture grass per head. That means we’d need approximately ten thousand acres for all the cattle we have. Since the ranch is less than two hundred acres, and we’re able to lease only a few hundred more, we have to supplement with rice hay.”
“Rice hay?”
“It’s cheaper than grass, and cattle do well on it.”
“So what the hay?” he joked.
She caught the smile that almost slipped out at the last moment, going to the right and pulling down two sharp metal hooks before turning back to him.
“Planning on dressing as Captain Hook for Halloween?”
“No,” she said. “You are.”
“I are what?”
“Going to be Captain Hook.” She handed him the hay hooks. “Here you go,” she said with a bright smile. “You need to load a ton of it into the back of our one-ton.”
“I what?”
She really shouldn’t feel bad about the loo
k on his face. She shouldn’t. But it was hard not to feel just a little bit guilty at the expression of horror he shot her.
“A ton of it,” she reiterated. “That’s about twenty-five bales.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
She shook her head, having to fight back the smile again. “No, I’m not.” She refrained from telling him that she usually helped her father load the bales. It was easier with two people. Instead she said, “If you want to be a rancher, this is one of the chores you’ll have to do. Daily.”
“Daily?”
Now he looked horrified. Poor guy. Poor what? Now wasn’t the time to start feeling sorry for him. “What’s the matter? Not up to the task? ’Cause if you’re not, we can certainly stop right now. Of course, you’ll have to give up on your plan to become a cowboy.”
His eyes narrowed. And once again that odd transformation came over him, the one she noted the first day they’d met. Like the chameleon she’d seen in the local pet store he changed right before her eyes. He seemed to stand straighter, the intelligence that always shone from his eyes intensifying until it made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. This was the man who’d formed a software company from the ground up. Who was worth more money than she would ever see in an entire lifetime. Who did not, if the press was to be believed, take no for an answer.
“I’ll do it.”
“Great,” she said. But she really didn’t think he’d make it past five bales. Okay, maybe seven. “I’ll wait here while you go get the truck.”
He gazed at her a moment longer, something within Amanda stilling at that look. She was almost relieved when he turned away, set the hooks on one of the lower bales, then headed out of the barn.
“Keys are in it.”
He lifted a hand in silent acknowledgment but didn’t glance back. Less than five minutes later, he was backing the diesel into the barn in a manner that made Amanda wonder if he’d driven big vehicles before. She’d expected him to have to struggle to fit the wide truck through the double doors, but he cruised on in as if he’d done it a hundred times.
That was her first surprise.
Her second came when he turned off the loud motor, the smell of diesel making her wave her hand in front of her face and cough. The dust motes were in action again, tickling the inside of her nose. A dove nesting in the barn’s rafters coo-cooed into the sudden silence. Scott hopped out of the truck, reached up and removed his glasses only to drop them into his pocket, then went to the tailgate. It lowered with a thud. Next, he picked up the hay hooks, one in each hand, turned to the nearest golden bale and sunk the hooks with a thunk that belied an ease Amanda would have never thought possible. He lifted the one-hundred-and-twenty-pound bale, saying, “How do I stack it?” and sounding not at all out of breath as he did so.
She was so surprised, she found herself saying, “Put it all the way in the front, up against the back window, long side against the bed,” before she remembered she’d wanted him to figure that out on his own.
He nodded, hefting the bale inside without even huffing, then climbing inside to position it correctly. And now that she thought about it, he hadn’t sounded at all out of breath after his running of the bulls this morning. In fact, he’d sounded in better shape than she.
He jumped down from the back of the truck, his legs flexing expertly as he landed. Amanda stepped back and crossed her arms in front of her.
The next one went in just as easily.
So did the next.
And the next.
He was sweating a bit by the time he’d loaded seven. The next five went in a bit more slowly, but that was because he had to lift the bales atop the others. By the time he hit twenty, he’d figured out on his own the best way to stair-step them on top of one another.
Amanda didn’t say a word.
Ten minutes later he was done. A little winded and a bit sweaty, but done. He turned to her and said, “Now what?”
Amanda had to close her mouth.
Maybe it was the he-man way he’d loaded the hay. Maybe it was the way he so casually leaned against the tailgate of the truck. Or maybe it was because he suddenly didn’t look a thing like a computer genius. Whatever it was, she had to struggle to remember his question.
Hubba, hubba, what a man.
Hubba, hubba…have you lost your mind?
“Now what?” she repeated to herself. She stiffened. “Er, ah. Now you go out to the pasture and feed them.”
“The bulls?”
“No, no…they have enough to graze on. The hundred heads of steers next to the bulls.”
“All right.” He came toward her. And suddenly Amanda went on heightened alert. If she was a submarine, her red lights would be blinking. He stopped right in front of her.
Warning. Warning. Warning.
“You have some dust on your face.”
Dust?
“It probably dropped from the barn roof,” she said, her voice seeming to come from a distance.
“Do you want me to remove it?”
“Sure,” she said, before she recalled the way she’d felt when they’d bumped into each other in the house, the way she felt right now, because there could be no denying the way her whole body buzzed as he came near, the way the look in his eyes made her stare up at him unblinkingly, the way she felt as he lifted a hand, then gently, oh so gently wiped the dust away from her cheek.
“There,” he said.
And, oh, my, she couldn’t believe it, but just that touch made her grow damp between the legs.
She was attracted to Scott Beringer.
Get a grip, Amanda.
She felt dizzy, realized it was because she was holding her breath, then sucked in a blast of oxygen. That helped. Marginally. “How—” She had to work her mouth in order to make the words come out. “How do you see without your glasses?”
“I don’t need my glasses for anything but reading. In fact, I’ll just move them to the truck, if you don’t mind.”
Mind? Mind what? Oh, yeah. The glasses. “No. That’s fine.”
He smiled. Amanda just about melted. It was a crooked smile. Not suave. Not flirtatious, just a genuine crooked smile that made her heart all but melt at the boyish, yet masculine friendliness of it.
She stepped back, waved a hand at her face, saying, “Dust,” in case he thought she was doing something silly, like waving the heat out of her cheeks, which she was.
Lord, you’ve got the hots for Scott Beringer.
There were a million reasons why that shouldn’t be, not the least of which was that he’d stolen their land. And yet she couldn’t deny the truth, despite what she tried to tell herself.
“Um, if you don’t mind, I’m going to let you do the feeding part all by yourself.”
“By myself?”
She nodded and said, “It’s easy.” And it was. “You just drive about two hundred yards out and start feeding. Honk the horn when you’re done.” She turned away from him before he realized the reason why she wouldn’t meet his gaze was because she was in danger of doing something silly, like touch him. Or maybe even jerk his head down and kiss him.
“Where are you going?” he called after her.
“Into the house to make breakfast.”
“But I’ll do that.”
Oh, no, he wouldn’t, because just right now she didn’t need to admire him any more than she did, and she had a feeling Scott would cook as well as he did everything else.
“I’ll cook,” she said over her shoulder, nearly running into the door in the process.
Get a hold of yourself, Amanda.
“You just remember to close the gate when you’re done.”
She didn’t know if he nodded or not, didn’t know because she was halfway across the barnyard before she heard the truck start up.
Breakfast first, then part two of her plan. She could handle that, right?
Right?
Chapter Four
It was a sign of how discombobulated she was t
hat it took her nearly a half hour to realize something was wrong. Very wrong.
By Amanda’s calculations, it should have taken Scott roughly twenty minutes to feed the steers, and that was taking into consideration his inexperience. But when the clock struck a quarter hour, Amanda figured she’d better check on him. Turning off the stove, Amanda removed a pot of sizzling sausages, their basil-and-garlic smell making her stomach growl.
What had he done?
She saw for herself a few seconds later.
Scott Beringer sat in the back of the truck atop a bale, only when he saw her, he shot up like a patio umbrella. Surrounding him on the ground were bales of hay, unopened, frustrated cattle milling around as they tried to get to the food. Scott tried to shoo them away so he could jump down, but he was simply out-numbered and likely too afraid to plunge into the midst of a hundred head of cattle.
She heard his faint cry of help.
“Well, I’ll be,” she murmured.
Why the heck hadn’t he opened the bales?
Because you didn’t tell him to.
She slapped her forehead. “You idiot,” she yelled, but it was hard to say who she meant, her or Scott.
She’d have to go rescue him.
SCOTT COULDN’T BELIEVE how relieved he was to see Amanda Johnson riding her horse toward him. Granted, it was usually the man that rescued the woman, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, this particular knight looked great atop a horse—better than he would. Her hair had dried into its masses of ringlets, the breeze picking up a red strand and playing with it. She looked glorious with the morning sky as a backdrop, and all he wanted to do was touch her. Unfortunately, she didn’t look half as impressed with him as he was with her.
“Nice going,” she said as she pulled her horse to a stop just outside the herd of cattle.
“I’d only fed a few bales and suddenly I was surrounded.”
“You’re supposed to open them first.”
“Open them?”
She shook her head, and he wasn’t sure, but he was pretty certain she rolled her eyes, too. But then she kicked her horse forward, and the cattle parted as if her horse were a bowling ball and the cattle the pins.
“If you wrap the hay hooks around the twine,” she said as she got close enough for him to see that her waist was tiny when tucked into jeans, “it’ll snap the cord. You throw flakes to the steers, not the whole bale.”
Cowboy Lessons (Harlequin American Romance) Page 3
