by Carol Grace
"Decaf?" she said at last, grabbing a large white apron from the hook on the wall and wrapping it around her as if it were a shield from his penetrating gaze.
"Regular," he answered.
When the coffee was brewed she filled two mugs and pushed the kitchen door open with the toe of her canvas shoe. She was proud of her patio. The afternoon sun warmed the bricks she'd laid and the fence sheltered it from the brisk ocean breeze.
"I hope it isn't too cold out here for you," she said, putting the mugs on a small metal table.
He smiled and her heart did a double somersault. She'd never seen a smile transform a face like that. His sensuous mouth curved and laugh lines appeared at the corners of his eyes. She felt as if she'd said something wonderfully witty, but she didn't know what it was.
"Hardly. I just came down from the Yukon Territory, up near the Arctic Sea."
"The Yukon...as in Yukon Man?" she asked, stupefied.
"That's right. That's where I saw your ad."
"Oh, oh, of course. My ad." She didn't ask if he'd ever appeared in Yukon Man himself. It was obvious he wasn't the kind of man who needed to advertise for a woman. But if he did, he ought to be on the cover. He was everything the rugged Yukon man should be: granite-jawed with deep-set eyes that viewed the world with interest, and high cheekbones bronzed from the midnight sun. If only this was what her pen pal Jack looked like. But that was wishful thinking, and unworthy of someone who was more interested in character than outward appearances anyway.
"This is a silly question," she continued, "but I don't suppose you know a Jack Larue up there in the Yukon?"
He smiled again and her knees threatened to buckle. She hoped he had no idea the effect that smile had on her. "Afraid not. It’s a big territory."
"Oh...right. I know that. So, you're here on vacation?"
"Business actually. I'm a geologist and my home office is nearby in Menlo Park. I thought I'd take a few days off before I report, and soak up some California sunshine at the beach." He sat down in a chair next to the table and stretched his legs out. "Tell me, Mandy, how's business?"
He could have stayed for a week and not asked that question. It was the one question she didn't want to answer.
"Actually, summer is our slow season," she confessed. "But things really pick up during the fall with the good weather." She crossed her fingers behind her back and sat down across from him.
"I'm lucky to get a room, then. The weather's great, the view's spectacular, and I guess there are some interesting things to see around here."
"Oh, absolutely." She beamed at him. Here was the perfect guest. He liked the place to begin with, and if he liked it maybe he would spread the word around the Yukon and more men would come and she'd be booked ahead of time, earn money and make a go of it. "In fact, I'll make a list of attractions for you, like the Winchester Mystery House, Great America and, of course, our own beach and tide pools."
"I was hoping you'd be able to show that to me in person," he said, looking at her intently over the rim of his coffee cup.
She paused. "Well, that depends..."
"On how busy you are. I understand that. It’s just that I'm so bad at directions I'd probably get lost on my way out of your driveway."
"Even to the beach?"
He drew his eyebrows together, then pointed to the ocean straight ahead of them. "That way?" he inquired.
She nodded.
"I guess I could get that far by myself, but after that..."
"I'll see what I can do, Mr. Gray." He seemed to be coming on a little strong, this Adam Gray. Did bed-and-breakfast guests really expect the hostess to take them sightseeing? Maybe they did. Maybe she should. After all, she had nothing else to do that couldn't wait.
"Call me Adam," he said.
"Maybe you'd like to see your room, Adam," she suggested, pushing her chair back from the table.
He joined her a few minutes later in the living room with a leather overnight bag slung over his shoulder.
"You live here all alone?" be asked, following her up the stairs.
"My sister Laurie lives with me. But she's a flight attendant and she's out of town right now. She's the one who suggested I advertise in Yukon Man," Mandy said. "She subscribes." She paused on the landing and looked at Adam over her shoulder.
He nodded. "I don't suppose you ever... ?"
"Read it? No. And I'd never answer one of the ads. I don't suppose you would ever...?"
"Advertise myself? Not on your life. You know what kind of women you'd meet, pathological liars, schizophrenics..."
"The same kind of men who advertise. It’s really a shame our society has come to this," she agreed, coming to a stop at the upstairs landing.
He leaned against the smooth, polished railing. "Well, now that we have that out of the way, what kind of man are you looking for?"
"Me?" she asked, startled. "I'm not looking for anyone." She turned to face him. "What about you?"
"Me, either. Living in the Yukon is not conducive to long-term relationships. I know. I tried."
A tiny wrinkle formed in her forehead. "I'm sorry."
He put his hand on her arm. "Don't be. It’s over now and it was a learning experience. I learned what's really important."
The touch of his hand sent signals to her brain that said, Watch out. But for the moment she chose to ignore them.
"Which is... ?" she prompted.
"Freedom, independence, excitement, adventure." His gaze locked on hers, and the words sunk in and stayed there. His hand stayed on her arm, too, the warmth radiating all the way through her body. Mandy's breath sat stuck in her throat. There was an aura about him, a magnetic field she'd stumbled into by mistake and couldn't get out of. She was supposed to be going somewhere, doing something, but she couldn't remember what it was… Oh, yes. The room.
She pulled her arm away and turned around. "Right down here at the end of the hall," she said briskly. "I think you'll find everything you need. The bathroom's next door."
"Thanks."
She managed a smile, then hurried down the stairs to take refuge in the kitchen.
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Here’s an excerpt from Wild Mustang Man Another book by Carol Grace
Bridget McCloud braced her elbows against the wooden fence and held her binoculars up to her eyes. There on a hilltop, riding a wild mustang horse, was the man she was looking for—strong, virile, powerful and sexy. Unable to restrain herself, she let out a whoop of joy. She was not a bounty hunter or a desperate spinster. She was the president and owner of Bridget McCloud Advertising, about to land her first major account with the manufacturers of Wild Mustang men’s cologne.
Now that she’d found her Wild Mustang Man, nothing could stop her. She grinned to herself, wishing her administrative assistant and best friend Kate was there to share the excitement and the view. Not that she would have surrendered her binoculars. Not just yet.
Silhouetted against the blue Nevada sky, wild horse and rider moved as one. Bridget could almost hear the rhythmic fall of the hoofbeats, feel the muscles ripple under the man’s denim shirt and smell...yes, she could almost smell the tangy, masculine scent of Wild Mustang men’s cologne.
With a sigh of ecstasy, she let the binoculars fall against her chest and lifted her Nikon from its case, pressed the shutter and filled her memory card with shots of her future Mustang Man. She never saw the bicycle bearing down on her from out of nowhere. If she had she would have leaped out of the way before it plowed into her and knocked her to the ground.
The bike crashed onto the dirt road, the rider thrown to the side. Bridget staggered to her feet, dazed and bruised, head pounding. The daredevil rider, all four feet of him, was sitting in the dirt, staring at his skinned knees.
“Sorry,” he said, wide blue eyes looking up at her as she limped toward him. “Didn’t
know anybody was there.”
“Same here,” she acknowledged. “But I think you got the worst of it. You or your bike,” she said, noticing the smashed spokes, the twisted handlebars. “I better take you home and get you bandaged up.”
“I am home,” he said, waving at the fields on the other side of the fence. Painfully he got to his feet, but his knees buckled and Bridget caught him in her arms before he lost his balance again. His dusty hair tickled her nose. She felt his body stiffen like a wounded animal, before he yanked himself out of her arms. “I’m okay,” he said, his upper lip stiff with pride. But his voice shook ever so slightly. “I can crawl through the fence and be back before my dad knows I’m gone.”
Bridget frowned at his stubborn determination, more than a little concerned about the cut above his eye and the blood oozing from his knees.
“What if I crawl through the fence with you and make sure you get there?” she offered.
He shrugged his narrow shoulders, and his teeth chattered. Bridget wondered if there were more injuries than met the eye or if he was that afraid of his father. “Okay, but we gotta hurry. If my dad finds out about this he’ll have my hide.”
“What’s left of it,” Bridget muttered, giving him a worried glance as she followed him, squeezing herself through the slats in the fence.
The two of them staggered up a sagebrush-covered hill toward a sprawling ranch house, two steps forward, one step back as Bridget’s binoculars bounced against her chest, and her camera case swung back and forth from her shoulder. She began to wonder who was helping whom. The further they walked, the stronger the boy got, and the weaker Bridget felt. Oh, to be young again, she thought, as he pulled her forward, his small grubby hand in hers. Oh, to be wearing sensible shoes instead of sandals.
She wasn’t married, though she’d always thought she would be by now with a child of her own. Not a daredevil boy who raced a bike in defiance of his parents’ wishes, but a sweet obedient little girl dressed in ruffles. She sighed. Because it was not to be. She’d seen her plans for marriage and a family go down the drain this past year and was proceeding full steam ahead on the next best thing—her career. She couldn’t deny, however, that the stubby, grubby little hand in hers brought a rush of maternal and protective feelings she thought she’d successfully buried, even though she, with her bruises, was in no shape to protect anyone, especially not this tough little kid here.
“How old are you?” Bridget gasped, the hot dry air searing her lungs as she trudged slowly upward.
“Five and a half. Going on six.” He turned to look up at her, squinting in the bright sunlight. “How ‘bout you?”
“Thirty-one.”
His blue eyes widened in amazement “You don’t look that old.”
“Thank you,” Bridget said with a reluctant smile.
“My dad’s older than you.”
“Really? Is he around, by any chance?”
The boy pointed to the hill behind the house. “Out riding.”
“What about your mom?”
He pointed up at the cloudless blue sky. “She’s in heaven.”
Bridget was stunned into momentary silence and her leaden feet stopped moving.
“Come on,” he urged, almost jerking her arm out of its socket.
She picked up her feet, wiped the perspiration off her forehead and forced herself to move. This was no time for gratuitous sympathy. Besides, she had no idea what to say to a boy whose mom is in heaven. This was a time to change the subject.
“Does your dad ride wild mustangs?” she asked, pausing to catch her breath.
“How’d you know?”
“If his name is Gentry, I’ve heard about him. That’s why I’m here. I want to talk to him.”
“‘Bout a horse?”
Bridget refrained from saying, No, it’s ‘bout a men’s cologne. This wasn’t the time or place to broach the subject of his father as a male model, so she just nodded. And thanked God the large, stone ranch house was now only steps away.
As the boy pushed the heavy, oak front door open, Bridget drew a deep breath and stepped into the quintessential Western living room with native rugs on the wide-planked floors and large leather chairs flanking a huge stone fireplace. Their footsteps echoed off the thick walls of the empty house.
She had a brief, fleeting view of a large, framed photograph of a woman on top of the mantel before the boy dragged her down a long hallway to a cool, tiled bathroom. Before she could stop him, he was kneeling on the sink, dripping blood all over the aqua porcelain and pawing frantically through the medicine chest, tossing bottles and jars and tubes to the floor where they landed in noisy confusion.
“Stop, whatever your name is, and let me clean you up,” Bridget demanded, setting her equipment on the edge of the tub. With a burst of energy, she lifted the boy off the sink, sat him firmly on the toilet seat and grabbed a washcloth from a towel rack. Miraculously he held still, hands clenched into fists, his face pale under a smattering of freckles while she carefully cleaned the wounds on his knees with soap and water then turned her attention to the laceration over his eye.
Boys, she thought with a flash of intuition—this is what they do. They take chances. They climb up too high. They ride too fast and they fall off their bikes. They skin their knees. And this is what their moms do. They clean them up and send them back out to play. But she was not his mom. She was nobody’s mom. And wasn’t likely to ever be. Not the way her life was going. That was okay. There were other things to do besides being a mother. And she was doing them. But for the first time in weeks the face of Scott Marsten flashed before her eyes. His cruel words rang in her ears.
“Face it, Bridget, you just don’t have what it takes to make a man happy. I thought it was because you put all your effort into your job, but now it turns out you haven’t got what it takes to make it in advertising, either.”
Blinking back a sudden rush of tears, Bridget peeled the adhesive off an extra-large-size Band-Aid when heavy footsteps resounded down the hall, and a loud, angry voice called, “Max, where are you?”
So that was his name. Max froze, his eyes wide with fright. Bridget slapped the bandage on the boy’s knee while she imagined an angry Paul Bunyan on his way to skin both their hides with his ax.
“What in the hell is going on here?” the man demanded, filling the doorway with his six-foot, three-inch frame, and pinning Bridget with his piercing blue eyes.
“It...it was an accident,” she stuttered, suddenly feeling five and a half, going on six, instead of a mature thirty-one, going on thirty-two.
His gaze shifted to his son, who was now standing, feet planted apart, staring up at his father. “Max?”
“I ran into this lady on my bike, and I gotta go get it. She came to see you ‘bout a horse,” he said edging around his father. Bridget’s wobbly legs wouldn’t hold her up another minute. She sank to the commode as she listened to Max’s footsteps racing back down the hall. When the front door slammed shut, she looked up into stormy blue eyes under a furrowed wide brow.
“I can explain,” she said weakly. This was not how she planned to meet the man destined to sell a million bottles of men’s cologne in the next year. Not sitting on a toilet seat with her leg gashed in six places, her forehead pounding, one eye almost swollen shut. But now that he was standing only a few feet away, she was more convinced than ever that he was the one. On his horse he was a magnificent figure of a man. Off his horse, he was...he was everything she’d ever dreamed of. For her men’s cologne campaign, of course. Tough, handsome, rugged, sexy— Suddenly she felt faint. She leaned forward and put her head between her knees.
“What’s wrong?” Leaning forward too, Josh Gentry braced his hands on her shoulders and lifted her head to face him. He’d been so worried about Max he hadn’t noticed the woman’s eye was black-and-blue and almost completely closed. Not only that but one leg was gashed in several places.
“Good God, you’re hurt. Did Max do this?”
“It was nobody’s fault. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Josh grabbed a clean towel from the shelf, doused it with soap and water and gently cleaned the dirt from her wounds. He’d done it many times for horses, and often for Max, but never for a woman with spectacular legs in linen shorts. It had been so long since he’d noticed a woman’s legs or anything at all about them, he felt slightly dazed himself, as if he was the one who’d been run down by a bicycle.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said, applying antiseptic cream and bandages, then helping her to her feet. “Where did you say it happened?”
She pointed in a general westerly direction. “On the dirt road, just outside your fence.”
He nodded, clamping his lips together to keep from exploding. Max was supposed to be at his grandparents’ ranch today, learning to groom horses. “Let’s get some ice for your eye,” he said grimly.
“I’m fine, really,” she protested, grabbing her camera case and binoculars before he walked her down the hall toward the kitchen, holding tightly to her arm in case she decided to bolt and then sue him later for negligence. She was gutsy, he’d give her that. She hadn’t even winced when he’d washed her wounds, and didn’t complain about her eye. On the other hand, she was a city woman no doubt, from her clothes and her manner, a tourist taking pictures, one who might walk out of here saying she was okay and then fall apart and have hysterics.
