by Various
“What about the dead cows?”
“I’m almost certain a creep named Xavier Gonzalez from Mezcaya killed them and did this to you. He will pay. Apparently, he’s got a nasty little operation running guns from Texas to Mezcaya, and he sees me as a personal threat to his business. Nobody knows where Gonzalez is right now, but I swear we’ll catch him. So, your focus is to get well. Mine is to keep you safe.”
She ran her hands through his hair and sighed.
“The mystery is all but solved. The bad guys will be brought to justice,” he promised as he traced her cheek with a rough fingertip. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Nothing—”
“Nothing…to be afraid of…because I have you to protect me.” She smiled at him with joy and love in her eyes. “I was right to come home to you.” She felt completely happy, maybe for the first time in her life.
“Oh, Phillip, Phillip, my darling…. When I drove off from The Saddlebag I thought I wouldn’t ever see you again, that you wouldn’t want me. I was in hell.”
“Me, too. I love you.”
Tenderness at his velvet, reverent tone burst inside her like a new flower even before he put his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. Gently, without speaking, they held on to each other. Then he kissed her, a deep, long kiss that Celeste wished would go on forever.
Their souls and hearts were in that kiss.
“Forever,” she whispered. “No more goodbyes. Only you.”
“Forever.”
He patted his pocket. “It’s a good thing I held on to this big chunk of ice.” He pulled out a familiar black velvet box and opened it.
“Oh, Phillip—” When she looked at it and then at him, her blue eyes flashed with more fire than his diamond.
“I’ve been carrying it around, waiting for the right moment.”
“Looks like you found it.”
He slipped it onto her finger. Bringing her hand to his mouth, he kissed each fingertip. Not saying anything, he gazed into her eyes.
“Oh, Phillip—”
“Home. You’ve come home,” he whispered. “To me, where you belong.”
Epilogue
The long white limousine raced through gray storm clouds and thick driving rain toward the Lazy W. Dozens of cans tied to the back bumper rattled noisily behind them.
“Not very good planning…getting married during a hurricane,” Celeste whispered as Phillip kissed her.
“Tropical depression,” he corrected gently.
In the rear seat of the vehicle, the bride and groom soon forgot the cans and the rain or the damp satin streamers glued to the trunk of the car. They were kissing and holding each other so tightly, their bodies seemed glued together.
After another long kiss that left her breathless, Celeste held up her hand and gazed at her rings. All day, all during the reception, she hadn’t been able to stop looking at them.
“Mrs. Phillip Westin,” she murmured, glancing up at him. “Oh, darling, I can’t believe you did it.”
“We did it.”
“I’m a respectable married woman.”
“Don’t let it go to your head. I mean, I don’t want you to start acting…too respectable.”
“You mean in bed?”
“Exactly.”
She laughed. “I can’t believe the whole town came to our wedding. Why, the reception at the Lone Star Country Club filled the club to its maximum capacity.”
“And maybe then some.” He grinned. “Free food and booze. It’s going to cost us.”
“I don’t care. Everybody was so nice to me.”
She still couldn’t believe that the town accepted her because Phillip had chosen her to be his wife. They didn’t care who she’d been before or if her wedding gown was low-cut and clung to every curve.
Now she was somebody, really somebody. Finally she had a family and a home…even a town to call home. She was loved and accepted. She was safe.
When the chauffeur pulled up to the big white house and got out and opened their door, Phillip wasted no time in getting her out of the rain. As soon as Celeste managed to get out of the car, he gathered her into his arms and carried her up the stairs and through the front door.
Inside, he let her go even though his eyes continued to hold her. Her knees felt weak because at last they were alone again. She knew what he wanted, what he’d wanted ever since the preacher had made them one.
Without speaking she reached up and began to undo the studs of his shirt. He slipped out of his tuxedo jacket as eagerly as if this was their first time. Soon she had the studs undone, and she’d managed to get him out of his shirt, too. He flung it on the floor impatiently, and she wrapped her hands around his lean waist.
His brown skin was hot. His eyes burned her.
“Oh, Phillip…”
“I can’t wait,” he said. “But then, I never can.”
“Who says you have to? We’re married.”
“All those guests… I thought they’d dance forever.”
“They’re still dancing,” she said. “We’re the only ones who snuck out early.”
“It’s our honeymoon. We’re entitled,” he murmured, kissing her earlobe.
With awkward hands, he began to unfasten the tiny satin buttons at the back of her dress.
Then they were on the floor, and he covered her with his body. She closed her eyes and ran her hands over his thighs.
She felt something touch her abdomen, and she began to tingle all over. She giggled and grabbed at his hand blindly. “What…”
“Don’t open your eyes,” he whispered, “or I’ll have to blindfold you.”
Satin ribbons curled over her nipples, her eyelashes, and her throat. And then he touched her with something ice-cold.
“What’s that?”
“Just be quiet. Enjoy.”
“But it’s kinky.”
“Only the first time.”
She knew Phillip deserved a proper, virginal bride. Not her. And yet he had told her over and over he wanted no one else.
She kept her eyes shut and surrendered to the sense of touch. For a long time different sensations played over her until she was quivery and nervy, and still he wouldn’t take her.
Then he licked her in sensitive places, and still with her eyes closed, she licked and touched him back.
He leaned over her. “Wrap me with your legs.”
Instantly her legs came around him. When he drove inside her, thunder clashed outside and rain began to beat at the windows with gale force. The storm wasn’t nearly as wild as she felt.
He said her name above the roar of the storm and she whispered his.
Never had she felt so hot or so desired. She was married. She belonged to him—utterly.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you, Mrs. Phillip Westin.”
Then he came, and she exploded, too.
“Being married just makes it better,” she whispered a long time later.
“Every day, I’ll love you more,” he said.
“Oh, me, too. Me, too. You’re my dream, my everything.”
“Sing to me,” he murmured.
“Nobody but you,” she began. “Only you…” Her throat was suddenly too tight to sing.
“Don’t ever say goodbye,” he commanded.
“Everywhere I go, there’s nobody in my heart…only you.” She paused. “Enough singing.”
“But not nearly enough loving—” He picked her up and carried her to bed.
“It’s about time, cowboy,” she purred when her golden head hit the pillow and he covered her with his much larger body.
She circled him with her arms.
He was all man, all hers, at last, forever.
********
WHAT THE RANCHER WANTS
(aka Housekeeper to the Millionaire)
LUCY MONROE
Vacancy: housekeeper needed for eligible millionaire! Sexy Win Garrison wants a new housekeeper to make his life easy, not someone who tries to get a ri
ng on his finger!
When curvy Carlene Daniels arrives on his doorstep, Win isn't fooled by her oversized jumper and hastily pulled-up hair. She's a knockout! So why is she trying to look like a frump? It makes him want to get her out of those clothes -and into his bed!
Carlene doesn't seem to want to play...but what this millionaire wants, he gets!
Chapter 1
Carlene Daniels parked her car in the circular drive in front of the most imposing ranch house she’d ever seen.
Being from oil-rich Texas, she’d seen a few too…not to mention the beautiful homes built locally by millionaire celebs looking for anonymous vacation homes.
Anonymous. Right.
Built in the California Mission style, this home’s three-story stucco walls gleamed pristinely in the bright sunshine, the red-tiled roof and wrought-iron accents looking elegant rather than historic. She wondered who lived here. Typical for the area, the ad had given no particulars about the family she would be working for. If she would be working for them.
Sunshine Springs was not a hotbed for career opportunities, especially for an ex-schoolteacher turned cocktail waitress. But it was time to stop hiding behind spandex miniskirts and her job at the bar. Her experiences with Grant Strickland had made her realize that.
She’d left Texas in pain and determined to leave her old life behind completely. When the only opening available when she arrived in town had been working in a bar, she’d taken it because in no way would it remind her of the job and the kids she’d loved so much back home. But memories didn’t go away with a change in setting and she wanted her life back.
Carlene opened her car windows a crack and put a sunshade on the dash to protect the car from turning into a portable oven before sliding out of the driver’s seat and slamming the door.
Swinging the wrought-iron gate open to the entryway, she slipped inside and rang the doorbell.
After a couple of minutes and no answer, she rang it again.
They were advertising for a housekeeper after all. If the bell hadn’t been answered by now, it probably hadn’t been heard.
The door swept open. “What’s the rush?”
The husky, masculine demand caught her completely off guard. Oh, wow…this man was…totally yummy. Black hair, cobalt-blue eyes and a tall, droolworthy muscular body.
“I…uh…”
The piercing blue gaze traveled from her hair to her toes and back up again. Then it made a return journey, leaving chills in its wake. Wow…again.
She knew what she wanted him to see: a woman from another time in her life, before she’d taken the job as bartender at the Dry Gulch. A time when her clothes and manners matched the woman she was on the inside.
Instead of the revealing outfits she wore to work nowadays, she had donned a long straight denim skirt, a loose white scooped-neck top, and white sandals. Flats. After months of wearing nothing but spiked heels that added inches to her diminutive height, these shoes almost felt as if she were wearing bedroom slippers.
The only concession she’d made to the glitz she’d grown accustomed to was the silver and turquoise belt around her hips. Even her normally riotous brown curls had been tamed in a loose French braid and she’d left off everything but the barest of makeup. She looked exactly like what she wanted to convey: a nice girl. Non-threatening in the feminine stakes and perfect for the role of housekeeper.
She stifled a cynical snort at the thought. Even her oversized top could not disguise her generous curves. Curves that had been causing her trouble since the sixth grade. And she was pretty sure it was those curves that had caused the second once over and small tilt at the corner of the man’s otherwise rather grim lips.
However, she was darned if she was going to have breast reduction surgery, as her mother had suggested in order to make herself appear more respectable. She liked her figure. She just didn’t like the things it made people assume about her character. An old familiar ache tried to work its way to the surface and she forced it back down.
That part of her life was over. She wasn’t going to let it dictate her present any longer and she sure as shootin’ wasn’t going to let it dictate her future.
“You Carlene Daniels?”
She nodded, experiencing an odd inability to speak.
“I’m Win Garrison. Expected someone older.”
“So did I.” The words were out before she even realized she was going to say them.
She’d set this interview up with the former housekeeper. The woman had spoken little English, adding no further details about the family she was leaving behind than the ad had given. All Carlene knew was that Rosa’s last day had been yesterday and that she, Carlene, had an interview for the position of housekeeper with Rosa’s former employers today.
However, Carlene had heard of Win’s ranch, the Bar G. Who hadn’t? Only it had never occurred to her that the owner of a ranch that bred free-range mustangs, not to mention having the most prestigious thoroughbred horse breeding and training program this side of the Rockies, would be younger than fifty. Win Garrison was maybe thirty, but certainly not much older.
Making no effort to respond to her comment, he turned around and started walking down the hall, clearly expecting her to follow him. “I’ll interview you out in the courtyard.”
She walked behind him, cataloging his attributes like an inventory control clerk and powerless to focus her attention elsewhere. Despite his obvious wealth, Win’s clothes were that of a working cowboy. His long legs were encased in a pair of jeans washed to a comfortable, faded softness that clung to his backside with almost indecent snugness. His ebony hair brushed the collar of the dark T-shirt that rippled with his muscles as he walked.
The man was too hot for Carlene’s peace of mind. Maybe this job was not such a good idea…but hand-tooled boots clicked on the tile floor ahead of her drawing her inescapably toward a future as uncertain as the past she’d left behind.
Where was his wife? Why would he conduct the interview for a housekeeper and cook?
Win led her through the entrance hall to another interior hallway that surrounded the courtyard.
An intelligent concession to central Oregon’s cold winters, she thought. They went outside through one set of four sliding glass doors placed in the walls of windows that faced the courtyard from the house. She followed him to a large brick patio and couldn’t help but admire the beautifully kept foliage along the way. Small shrubs and patches of grass, broken by stone pathways leading to the house, surrounded a two-tiered cement fountain. “It’s lovely.”
“Thank you.”
He moved forward and pulled out a chair from the wrought-iron patio set. She sat down.
“Want anything to drink?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”
He nodded and sat across from her.
When he didn’t immediately begin asking questions, she decided to ask a few of her own. “Mr Garrison, I’m afraid I have almost no information regarding you and your family. When I called on the ad in the paper and spoke to your housekeeper, she told me little more than that she planned to be gone as of yesterday. Do you have children? Will Mrs Garrison wish to interview me as well?”
It made her nervous to have to go through a two-interview process for the job of housekeeper, but she would survive. It just meant that much longer before she knew whether or not she had the position. What she really wanted to ask was if there had been a lot of other applicants.
He leaned back in his chair, his boots scraping on the stone tile. “No.”
No? No, what? She smiled faintly. “Would you care to expand on that a little?”
“No kids. No wife. No other interview.”
She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or worried by that bit of news. “Then perhaps you would like to commence with this one?”
His eyes narrowed. “You sure you wouldn’t like to do it? You seem to be doing fine so far.”
Crud. It was the teacher’s instincts coming
out again. She would have thought, after all this time out of the classroom, she’d have no problem treating adults differently than the children she used to work with. But then a lot of times patrons at the bar needed the same kind of handling.
She tried another smile. “Um…okay. We can get the rest of my questions out of the way first. Is this a live-in position?”
“No.”
She managed to bite back a sigh of relief. The job of live-in housekeeper to a man as good-looking as the one before her was rife with the potential for gossip. The last thing she wanted was any more gossip. “What are the hours, then?”
“Rosa worked from seven-thirty to four.”
Carlene nodded. “What exactly do the duties entail?”
He frowned and shrugged.
She stared at him in shock. “You don’t know?”
“Why do you think I need a housekeeper? It’s the house stuff. I don’t want to have to worry about it. A cleaning service comes in a few times a week. Rosa took care of setting that up.”
Great. His Spanish-speaking housekeeper had set up the cleaning service…which meant that the maids probably spoke Spanish as well. She could hope they were bilingual because her college French wasn’t going to do her a lot of good here.
“What else did Rosa do?”
Win’s frown deepened. “I told you…I’m not sure. I run my ranch and the stables. She ran the house.”
“And that’s what you want me to do…run the house?”
He nodded, almost smiling. “Yes.”
“Did Rosa cook all your meals?”
“Yes. Both for me and the hands.”
“Okay.” Now they were getting somewhere.
“Did she make your bed?” Oh, nuts…why had she asked that? Not that she didn’t need to know, but she really didn’t need to be thinking about bed and this man in the same sentence.
But Win looked as if he was thinking. “The service only comes in maybe three times a week…my bed is made every night when I climb into it, the towels and such are gone from the bathroom too. Yes…guess she made my bed.”
“And did the laundry.” Not to mention a pile of domestic stuff that Carlene was quickly coming to realize Win never even thought about.
