Always a McBride

by Linda Turner

  Seated across from Taylor, Phoebe realized almost immediately that she should have found somewhere else to sit at the table. Every time she looked up from her plate, he was right in her line of sight. And something wasn’t right. Unobtrusively watching him, she couldn’t help but notice that although he seemed to enjoy the McBrides’ company, his rare smile never quite reached his eyes. He was tense—she could see it in the stiff set of his shoulders—and for the life of her, she didn’t know why. She’d always liked the McBrides—they were a great family—and when they invited you into their home, they treated you like family. That should have put Taylor at ease. So why wasn’t he? What was going on?

  A frown knitting her brows, she was tempted to ask him, but then Joe asked, “Have you talked to the Thompsons yet, Taylor? Or the Clarks? They’ve been ranching here as long or longer than we have. If you’d like, I can introduce you to them. Marlin Clark is pushing ninety and can tell you stories about this area that go back before the Civil War. He’d make a great addition to your book.”

  “That sounds great,” Taylor said easily. “I can use all the help I can get. Why don’t I give you a call in a couple of days and we’ll set something up? At your convenience, of course,” he added. “I don’t want to interfere with your work. The ranch has to keep you pretty busy.”

  “I should have some time next week. I’ll call Marlin tomorrow and set something up.”

  “You need to see the ranch, too,” Zeke added. “Elizabeth and I are heading up into the back country for a couple of days to check on the wolves. Why don’t you come with us? You can’t really see a ranch until you see it from horseback.”

  Surprised, Taylor lifted a brow. “Did you say wolves?”

  Zeke’s wife, Elizabeth, grinned, her green eyes sparkling with amusement. “I’m a wolf biologist. A couple of years ago, I was in charge of a government project that reintroduced wolves into the Liberty Hill National Forest.”

  “She wasn’t very popular around here for a while,” Zeke added grimly. “She almost got herself killed.”

  “I knew when I started the project that there would be a lot of opposition,” she said simply. “People didn’t understand.” Her eyes momentarily clouded with something that looked an awful lot like sadness, but before Taylor could be sure, she blinked it away. “Anyway, Zeke and I ride up into the back country every year just to check on the wolves and see how they’re doing. We’d love for you to come.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” he admitted. “Just tell me where and when you’re going, and I’ll be there.”

  Pleased, Elizabeth turned to Phoebe with a smile. “What about you, Phoebe? You’ve never seen Napoleon’s pups, have you? They’re beautiful animals. And there’s nothing like seeing them in the wild. You should come, too. I know you’d love it.”

  Phoebe didn’t doubt that. She’d heard about the wolves for years and had always been fascinated with the story of how Elizabeth had released them back into the wild despite the sometimes violent opposition of the locals. And from what she remembered of the story, Elizabeth had come very close to being killed. Still, she had done what she’d set out to do, and Phoebe couldn’t help but admire her for that. She’d never seen a wolf anywhere but at the zoo. How could she possibly pass up a chance to see some in the wild?

  Be careful, a voice in her head warned. This little trip has a price tag. Taylor’s going along. Are you prepared to be paired with him again? Keep this up and the McBrides are going to start thinking of you as a couple. Is that what you want?

  No, of course not, she automatically assured herself. But the evening hadn’t turned out to be so bad. And she wanted to see the wolves! This was likely to be her only opportunity. Not even hesitating, she said, “I’d love to.”

  “Good,” Zeke said. “You haven’t been up in the back country with us since you were a kid. This’ll be fun.”

  Phoebe didn’t doubt that. She always enjoyed the McBrides’ company. And having other people around would, she hoped, distract her so she wouldn’t be so aware of Taylor.

  You’ve been surrounded by other people all evening, the irritating voice in her head reminded her. You’re still aware of every move the man makes. If you want to get him out of your head, let him go into the mountains with Zeke and Elizabeth, and you stay home.

  She should have. That certainly would have been the wiser thing to do. But she’d always wanted to see the wolves, and she wasn’t going to deny herself this opportunity just because Taylor had been invited, too. So what if she found herself attracted to him? It was just a fleeting physical attraction and certainly something she could control. After all, she didn’t even like the man!

  The conversation turned to what they would each need to bring for the weekend campout, then shifted back to Taylor’s book and the research he was still doing. Ranching was in Joe’s blood, the red dirt of the land as much a part of him as the lines in the palm of his hand, and there was nothing he liked more than talking about the ranch. As soon as the meal was over, he invited Taylor to take a look at the new bull he had just bought, and the men all headed for the barn.

  As soon as they were gone, Merry immediately turned teasing eyes on Phoebe. “It’s about time we got some time to ourselves to talk. So what’s Taylor’s story, Phoeb? Is he married? He’s not wearing a ring—”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not married,” Angel said dryly. “Jerks who fool around on their wives never wear rings.”

  “He doesn’t seem the type,” Elizabeth argued before Phoebe could say a word. “Has he asked you out yet?”

  “If he hasn’t, then you need to get busy, girl,” Merry told Phoebe. “Have you looked at that man? He looks like he just stepped out of Jane Eyre.”

  “It’s his eyes,” Janey said. “They’re so dark and brooding.”

  A grin pulling at the corner of her mouth, she added, “It’s a good thing Myrtle’s not here or she’d be matchmaking like crazy. She’s been wanting you to settle down and give her great-grandbabies for years.”

  Alarmed, Phoebe said, “Don’t you dare call her! There’s no relationship here!”

  “Maybe not yet, but give it time. The man’s handsome, intelligent, and appears to be available. What’s not to like?”

  “If you play your cards right, you could be engaged by Christmas.”

  The McBride women grinned at her with broad grins, granting her no mercy. Frustrated, Phoebe couldn’t help but laugh. “I should have known you all would do this to me. He’s just a paying guest, ladies. In a month, he’ll be gone. And so will I! So don’t start planning the engagement party. It’s not going to happen!”

  “Never say never,” Merry warned, her blue eyes twinkling. “You’re asking for trouble.”

  “He’s not my type,” Phoebe assured her, confidently. “It’s not going to happen.”

  Phoebe knew they were just having fun teasing her, but later, as she and Taylor said their goodbyes and climbed into her car, the awareness that she told herself she wanted nothing to do with was back, stronger than ever. Horrified, she tried to ignore it, but as they approached Myrtle’s, she felt like a teenager on her first date and the evening was about to end. Would he kiss her?

  Mortified by the direction of her thoughts, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that it was so dark inside the car. Otherwise, he would have surely seen the blush firing her cheeks.

  Sure he must be able to hear the pounding of her heart, she blurted out, “The McBrides are great, aren’t they? When I visited my grandmother when I was a kid, I loved going out to the ranch. Sara had a photo album on the coffee table and it was filled with all these old pictures of their ancestors when they first came to Liberty Hill in a wagon. I loved it. While Myrtle and Sara visited, Janey and Merry would tell me stories about their great-grandparents and the long-lost uncle who was a Pony Express rider who was killed by the Indians in Oklahoma. His wife moved to the ranch after he died and started the county’s first school….”

  Desperat
e for something to distract her from his closeness—why did she have to pick now to notice how long his legs were next to hers?—she rattled on like an idiot about the McBrides. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything, for which she was heartily grateful, but she was still more nervous than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t seem to stop talking. Then, before she realized it, she was pulling into Myrtle’s driveway.

  Her heart slamming against her ribs, she told herself to get a grip, but her palms were sweating, for heaven’s sake! She’d never been so skittish around a man in her life, and there was nothing she could do but try to end the evening as quickly as possible.

  It should have been easy. All she had to do was unlock the front door, wish him good night, and escape to her room, where she could die of embarrassment in private. But as she hurried up the sidewalk to the front door, he was right there with her, step for step. And when her fingers were suddenly trembling slightly and she couldn’t hold the keys steady enough to fit the key into the dead bolt on Myrtle’s front door, one of his hands closed over hers, steadying it as he guided it into the lock. Just that easily, he stopped her heart beating in her chest.

  “Thank you,” she said huskily. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I guess I’m tired. Did you get what you needed from the McBrides? Joe and Janey are the two that can probably help you the most….”

  Taylor had never heard a woman talk so much in his life. Normally, he would have been irritated, but he’d have been blind not to notice that she was jittery about something, though he didn’t have a clue what. Obviously, she’d known the McBrides all her life and enjoyed their company, so it was doubtful that anyone had said anything to upset her. So what was going on? He wanted to thank her for all her help—without her connections to the McBrides, it could have taken him weeks to track down his brothers and sisters and find a way to meet them—but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise. If she’d just give him two seconds to say what he had to say…

  Giving in to impulse, he did the only thing he could think of to shut her up. He leaned down and kissed her.

  The second his lips brushed hers, he knew he’d made a mistake. From the moment he’d first met her, there’d been something about her that had teased his senses. He couldn’t get her out of his head, and kissing her, he realized, only made the situation much, much worse. Dear heavens, her lips were soft! He’d kissed his share of women, but never one this soft, this sweetly arousing. The subtle, delicate scent of her surrounded him, enticing him until all he could think of was her…the good humor that invariably sparkled in her eyes, the tenderness of her touch as she’d cradled a puppy close that morning for a good-morning kiss on the nose, the grace and sensuality of her figure as she moved about the kitchen, cooking a gourmet breakfast fit for a king.

  More than once, he’d told himself she couldn’t be for real. But there was no question that the woman who hesitantly kissed him back was real right down to the soles of her delicate feet. With nothing more than a kiss, she made him want more. Before he could stop himself, his arms folded her close.

  That’s the way to get the lady out of your head, a voice in his head taunted sarcastically. Kiss the stuffing out of her, then go upstairs to your room alone and try to go to sleep. Yeah, right. That’ll work.

  He liked to think he wasn’t a stupid man, but at that moment, he’d never felt more idiotic in his life. What was he doing? He’d come to Liberty Hill for one reason and one reason only—to make his father pay for what he had done to his mother. That goal hadn’t changed just because Gus McBride was dead. His children and widow had to know what kind of man he was, and he wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way of his plans, especially a woman who didn’t seem to care about anything but what she was going to make for breakfast tomorrow. He liked smart, ambitious women, and that description didn’t quite fit Phoebe. Oh, he didn’t doubt that she was intelligent—she’d held her own with the very educated McBrides at dinner, moving from one topic of conversation to another without so much as a blink of an eye—but he’d never seen anyone so laid-back when it came to business. How did she expect to succeed in life when she seemed to have no other ambition than to run her grandmother’s bed and breakfast? Liberty Hill was hardly a tourist hot spot, and to add insult to injury, it was over fifty miles from the nearest interstate. She’d be lucky if she kept it booked one month out of three!

  She had to know that, he reasoned. She was too smart not to. But her lack of overnight guests didn’t seem to bother her—from what he’d seen, little did. While that might be refreshing for a while, he was sure that with time, her laid-back manner would drive him right up the wall.

  And here he was kissing her as if there was no tomorrow.

  Abruptly coming to his senses, he set her from him, but it wasn’t easy. He ached for her, damn it! Then she looked up at him in dazed confusion, her big blue eyes clouded with a passion she obviously didn’t understand any more than he did, and need tightened in his gut like a fist.

  Taking a step back from her was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Fighting the urge to reach for her, he said roughly, “It’s late, and I’ve still got some work to do. Thanks for taking me to the McBrides.”

  He turned and strode up the stairs without looking back, but it wasn’t until Phoebe heard his bedroom door shut firmly that she came back to earth with a jolt. Shaken, she dropped down onto an antique bench in the entry hall and stared up the stairs as though she’d never seen them before. What had she done? she wondered wildly. She didn’t go around kissing men she barely knew…especially not the way she’d just kissed Taylor! If he hadn’t been the one to come to his senses, she would have been in serious trouble.

  Because she’d loved kissing him.

  The thought terrified her—she had to be losing her mind!—but she wasn’t a woman who lied to herself. She was attracted to him, and for the life of her, she didn’t know why. She was a romantic with a soft heart, and Taylor was a hard, cynical man who had openly admitted that he didn’t care about anything but work. Getting involved with him could never be anything but a mistake.

  Not, she quickly assured herself, that she was involved with him. He was a paying guest, nothing more, and the one kiss they’d shared hardly classified as a relationship.

  Logically, she knew that and accepted it. The problem was that the kiss he’d given her was anything but ordinary. Her toes were still tingling, for heaven’s sake!

  Troubled, more unsure than she’d ever been in her life, she told herself to go upstairs and go to bed and the situation would look better in the morning. But she was asking the impossible. As she made her way up to her room, she couldn’t help but be aware of his presence in the house. Even though he’d shut his door and she couldn’t hear a sound coming from his room, she knew every step he’d taken, every chair he’d sat in, since he’d first walked in her grandmother’s front door. And when she changed into her nightgown and crawled into bed, all too easily she could picture him lying in the four poster down the hall, staring at the ceiling, just as she was. It was, she knew, going to be a long night.

  Taylor didn’t sleep. He told himself it was because he’d finally met all of his half brothers and sisters after wondering all his life if they existed or not, and his mind was too active to allow him to sleep. But deep in his gut, he knew there was only one person responsible for his sleeplessness, and it was the woman down the hall. What the hell was he going to do about her?

  The answer evaded him all night, frustrating the hell out of him. By the time the sound of Phoebe’s alarm floated softly down the hall to him the next morning before dawn, he knew he had to put some space between himself and the lady, and damn soon, before he did something stupid—like kiss her again.

  So he quietly dressed, then waited in his room for the arrival of the rental car, which was being delivered by nine that morning. He had some reading to keep him busy, some case work he’d brought with him to work on in the privacy of his own room. C
oncentrating, however, turned out to be a heck of a lot harder than he’d anticipated. Downstairs, Phoebe started breakfast, and soon the enticing scent of fresh-baked muffins drifted up the stairs. Without even closing his eyes, he could picture her moving quietly about the old-fashioned kitchen. She would be humming softly to herself, and she’d look as fresh as the summer morning. And after the way he’d kissed her last night, she could be dressed in a suit of armor and he’d still have a hard time not reaching for her.

  Swearing softly, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to wait for the delivery of the rental car before he got out of there. Not when she was so damn tempting. His face etched in grim lines, he grabbed his cell phone and quickly punched in the number of the rental car agency in Colorado Springs and requested that the car be delivered to Ed’s Diner instead of the bed and breakfast. A few minutes later, he quietly made his way downstairs and let himself out the front door.

  In the kitchen, Phoebe had unconsciously been listening for his step on the stairs for an hour or longer, wondering all the while what she was going to say to him when they came face-to-face. She needn’t have worried. Just as she pulled the muffins from the oven, she heard the front door shut. Surprised, she frowned. She’d known Taylor’s rental car was being delivered that morning and that he would, no doubt, be out most of the day doing research on his book. After all, that’s what he was there for. But what if his plans had changed after last night? With the delivery of his rental car, he would no longer be afoot. He didn’t have to stay in Liberty Hill. He could go wherever his research took him.