by Lilian Darcy
Biggins had no clothing boutiques, and no craft galleries or antique stores. There were just three motels, two options for dining and a single beauty salon. Raine expected big city amenities at a stone’s throw from rural beauty, but she wasn’t going to get that here.
Jim Broadbent knocked on Lucas’s motel room door at eight-thirty the next morning, and they drove out to Seven Mile together. It was a pretty drive. The Medicine Bow Range dreamed in the distance. Rolling grasslands filled the foreground. The September grass was colored in the morning light like yellow chalk and fresh honey and clear-varnished pine floors.
Jim kept his conversation down to an intermittent trickle of facts about cattle breeds, growing seasons and water rights. An experienced realtor in his early fifties, the man gave the impression that he wouldn’t find this ranch too tough to sell, even in the unlikely event that Halliday Continental Holdings didn’t want it. He probably conveyed this same impression with every property he handled, and Lucas ignored it completely.
The mountains got closer. They passed the entrance to another property, and he had time to glimpse the name McConnell on the gate. Jim crossed a wide, shallow stream where the water ran silver over the rocks. Lucas knew that whatever attributes and advantages the Seven Mile Ranch might or might not have, it was going to be beautiful.
They turned onto a dirt road, and rumbled across several cattle guards. Ahead he saw a cluster of corrals and farm buildings, neat and modest and well-maintained. From this angle, they were almost lost beneath the enormous, soaring sky and looming mountain range.
“Who’s giving me the tour?” he asked Jim, as they approached the long, low ranch house, painted a faded barn red. “You?”
“I’m going to leave you with Joe Grant. Or his daughter.” Broadbent swung around and parked in the front yard at a crooked angle, then added, “Looks like it’s the daughter. Rebecca. Reba, everyone calls her.”
Rebecca Grant must have been sitting on the porch steps, waiting for their arrival. When Lucas caught sight of her emerging from the morning shadow cast by the house, she was still slapping her hands back and forth across the butt of her jeans to get rid of the dust.
She hadn’t dressed to impress, he noted, as her body hit the sun. Old Wranglers, scuffed boots, plaid flannel shirt. A swathe of dark hair hung around her face and partway down her back, glossy and healthy and natural.
As Lucas watched, she dragged a red circle of elastic from her pocket and pulled the mass of hair into a high ponytail at the back. The movement lifted her breasts inside the rumpled shirt and showed a glimpse of shadow on soft skin. She’d just completed the final twist of the elastic when she reached them.
“Hi,” she said. A wide smile jerked tight on her face and faded too soon. Mistrustful, ocean-toned eyes glinted like water.
“Reba,” answered Jim. “Beautiful morning.”
The realtor made introductions, and Reba chopped a hand in Lucas’s direction for him to shake. He complied, and felt the startling contrast of long, fine-boned feminine fingers and palms callused like cardboard.
“Is your Dad around?” Jim asked.
“He’s taken Mom into Cheyenne.”
“Doctor?”
She nodded, but didn’t say anything further on the subject.
“So you have a program mapped out for Mr. Halliday?”
“I thought we’d focus on the business side of the ranch today. The infrastructure. We’ll look at the recreational amenities tomorrow, Mr. Halliday, if you’re still interested in the place. We can take a drive down to Steamboat Springs, tour the far boundaries of the property. There’s a little cabin higher up, and you can get an idea of the fishing and gaming possibilities. If you’re still here after all that, we’ll take a closer look at the cattle.”
“Sounds good.”
“For now, we’ll start with the house,” she said, “since Mom’s not here to get disturbed by us coming through. Then the corrals, machinery sheds.”
“Forget about the house,” Lucas said, thinking aloud—insofar as he was thinking at all. Raine would be unimpressed with the ranch’s primary residence. She’d want it bulldozed to make way for something much grander. “It’ll have to come down, anyhow.”
Rebecca flinched and pressed her lips together, making her chin jut, and he realized that his statement had been cruel. She’d probably called this place home her whole life.
He couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Since his parents’ divorce when he was three, his mother had lived in four different homes, and his serially divorced and remarried father in…he’d lost count. At least seven. Lucas himself had shuttled back and forth between most of these so-called homes until going away to college at eighteen, but he’d never put down roots in any of them.
At one level, it had been fun, and yet… A faintly remembered sense of bewilderment and loss blew over his spirit, and for a few moments he almost envied Rebecca Grant.
Neck and jaw muscles tight with regret, he considered an apology, but that would only make his mistake worse. He wasn’t used to this kind of situation. His purchases and his takeovers didn’t usually have the power to hurt someone like this, on a personal, individual level.
The meaning of her jerky smile, mistrustful eyes and abrupt handshake became clear to him.
She didn’t want to sell.
“Would you like to stop in for coffee before we start, Jim?” Reba asked the realtor, but he shook his head. He was anxious to get out from under the awkward weight of atmosphere, probably.
“You’ll drop Mr. Halliday back to town when he’s ready, Reba?”
“Or Dad will.” Her voice was a little husky, and deeper than Lucas would have expected. It seemed to curl around him like a ribbon of scented smoke, drawing him in.
I should have driven the rental, he decided. Instead he’d listened to Jim’s warnings about dirt roads and confusing directions. Now he was beholden to prickly, intriguing Reba Grant in a way he didn’t like.
“Lucas, you’re going to be real impressed with this place.”
Jim offered the comment as he climbed into his vehicle. He roared out of the yard and back along the dirt track to the main road while Lucas was still, uncharacteristically, searching for the right reply. He really had no desire to hurt this woman, after the unthinking body blow he’d already delivered.
“Well, I’d like coffee,” she said, on a slow, stubborn drawl.
She turned on her heel and stalked toward the house, like a bad-tempered horse. Compared with the women he was used to, she didn’t walk with grace. Her movements were too angular, and too purposeful—blunt body language, surprisingly expressive.
Attractive, even.
Behind her, Lucas kept watching, for longer than he should.
“Sounds good,” he told her.
“So you’ll have to waste time on the house, after all,” she said sarcastically, over her shoulder.
“Listen, Ms. Grant—”
“You probably have no idea how it feels to care about a place like this, right?”
“No, you’re right, I don’t,” he answered, his voice clipped and tight.
“You probably think it’s only possible to care about a home with sixteen rooms and fifteen foot ceilings and priceless artwork on the walls.”
“Actually there’s no home I care about in that way.”
She stopped, turned fully, and stared at him for a moment. He stared back with narrowed eyes, masking the unexpected vulnerability he felt.
“Oh, well.” She sounded less defiant now, and her eyes had softened a little, although the words themselves were still an attack. “Maybe over your coffee you can work out the best angle for the wrecking ball, or something.”
He didn’t trouble to tell her that using a wrecking ball on this place would be like using a stonemason’s hammer on a thumb tack. In fact, they needn’t ’doze it at all. They could haul it to some less desirable position and use it as a bunkhouse for ranch hands or for the house staff
Dad and Raine would require when they were in residence.
Yep, definitely. Ideal. Practical. Inexpensive—it would come right off its footings, and onto a truck. There was no basement.
Would moving it instead of wrecking it come as good news to Reba, after his initial blunt announcement? Lucas didn’t think so, somehow. This house looked as if it had grown in this spot, like lichen on a rock. She wouldn’t want it moved.
Ahead of him, she reached the screen door. It opened into a screened-in porch that ran across the house’s narrow front and around to the side. Her backside rocked as she pushed on the door and stepped inside, and he had to pull his gaze away.
There was something about her. You couldn’t call her pretty. And “beautiful” was such a loaded word. All the women he knew were beautiful. It didn’t fit her, either. But she definitely had something. A current of energy running in her veins, a kind of magnetism, and undeniable strength. Whatever report he gave his father about this place in the end, he knew he wasn’t going to be bored here today.
Rebecca led him into a big farm kitchen and he saw furniture comfortably worn from use, and huge windows showcasing views of the mountains. On the bench top, a coffeemaker sent out the aroma of ground beans steeped in boiling water. She slung the dark liquid into two mugs like a waitress. She didn’t ask him if he wanted cream or sugar, just raised the waxed carton, the china bowl and her eyebrows.
He shook his head. “Black, thanks.”
Was it his imagination, or did she add generous quantities of both cream and sugar to her own mug with a big dollop of attitude at the same time?
“There you go,” Reba said, as she slid the steaming beverage in Lucas Halliday’s direction.
She was glad Mom and Dad weren’t here. She squeezed another token smile onto her face, then let it drop as soon as it had fulfilled its contractual obligations. She didn’t want to sell this place.
If it wasn’t for her mother’s health, and the much easier life Mom would have down in Florida where her sister lived, it wouldn’t be happening. And if Reba hadn’t broken off her long-standing engagement to her ranching neighbor Gordie McConnell two months ago, it wouldn’t be happening, either. She and Gordie could have run the two ranches together, leaving Mom and Dad free to make their move, but she didn’t have the right skills to do it on her own.
She had known that showing potential buyers around her home would be hard, and she’d dreaded it, but the reality was even harder.
The reality was Lucas Halliday, corporate wheeler-dealer, heir to the family empire, dressed down in elastic-sided boots, jeans just old enough to fit right and a thin cotton sweater with a designer label subtly emblazoned on the left breast pocket.
He unsettled her. The way he moved, like a man accustomed to his road through life paying out as smooth as ribbon in front of him. The way he looked.
He wasn’t conventionally handsome. His top lip was fuller than the lower one, and his prominent cheekbones were slightly uneven. His nose had a bend in it, just below the bridge. His skin was a little rough, as if he’d had trouble with it in his teens. But he had amber brown eyes, a strong chin, hair the color of maple syrup with a handful of Atlantic sand tossed in and a body that could have sold gym equipment to any man in America.
Let him buy the ranch, if he wanted it. She hoped he would make the decision quickly, and get out of her life, out of her space.
He seemed to fill it too forcefully.
After taking a gulp of her coffee, she went through to the cramped room beyond the kitchen that Dad used as an office. She grabbed the pile of papers he had prepared. There were surveyors’ maps of the property, marked with various details, sheets of figures on fodder yields and winter feed requirements and the inventory of farm machinery included in the sale.
Piling all of it in front of Lucas at the kitchen table where he sat, she said, “Here. Maybe you’d like to take a look at some of this while you drink your coffee. So we don’t waste time.”
She stressed the word “we” just a little. She could have been out with the hands today, refencing the stackyards or putting out salt. Instead, she had to spend her time with a man who planned to bulldoze her home and didn’t mind telling her so.
Except that when she’d tried to attack back, she almost thought she’d seen a spark of something softer in him. Understanding. Or even a wistful kind of envy. It sparked an unwilling curiosity inside her, which smoldered slowly, the way a carelessly thrown cigarette butt smoldered in dry summer heat before setting a whole forest on fire.
He took a mouthful of coffee, which left a film of the thin black liquid glistening on his lower lip. Then he sat back in his chair and twisted a little, to take in the view. He hadn’t looked at the papers she’d given him.
“This is great,” he said. His big shoulder pushed to within a few inches of her hip. From this angle she could see the way his dark lashes silhouetted against his cheeks.
“I hope you mean the coffee.” She took a step back, out of his space.
“Actually I meant the whole—” He stopped.
She glared at him, silently daring him to mention bulldozers again.
You want to praise the vista from the windows of a house you’re planning to tear down, Mr. Halliday? I don’t think so!
“Yes, I mean the coffee,” he agreed. “Great coffee.”
His mouth closed firmly over the last word.
No smile.
He lifted his mug toward his lips, met her spark spitting eyes with his, and if there was any kind of apology there, any kind of understanding, or the vulnerability she thought she’d seen before, he didn’t let it show. His gaze held hers, narrow-eyed and thoughtful. Arm and mug froze midair.
She felt herself getting hot.
Aware.
She hadn’t ever responded physically to a man this fast, and didn’t know why it was happening. She’d met impressive looking men before. Was it the adrenaline of wanting to fight this one, over the ranch?
Gee, that made sense—to link attraction and fight.
“Look,” he said, “I know you probably would have preferred for Jim to give me this tour.”
“Might have helped.” She folded her arms across her chest and hunched her shoulders, resisting the pull she didn’t want. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m not looking forward to this.”
“It’s the selling and leaving, surely, not the thought of the changes a buyer will make.” His eyes were steady and clear. “Any buyer is going to make changes.”
“I’d prefer not to hear about them, if I don’t have to.”
“You’re going to stay in the area, right?”
“I plan to, yes, at this stage.” In fact, she still felt very uncertain about what she wanted from her future. She loved it here so much.
He shrugged, as if nothing more needed saying.
Okay, so he had a point. Burying her head in the sand would be impractical and impossible, if she stayed in Biggins. A buyer could make worse changes than bulldozing a very ordinary home that just happened to have been hers for twenty-six years, and her family’s for a lot longer.
She set her mouth tight, detesting Lucas Halliday for being right, for being up front about it like this, for making her nerve endings sing without even knowing it and for apparently understanding that bluntness was just a little easier on her spirit than empathy would have been.
“I’m sorry this task is falling to you,” he said. Each word came out measured and matter-of-fact. “But my father will expect the kind of detail I can only get from someone who really knows the place. If it’s any consolation, he’s not going to haggle over the price if I tell him this is the ranch he wants, and he’s keen to push the purchase through quickly.”
He spread his hands in a gesture that almost looked like an apology. “Raine, my stepmother, wants a white Christmas in a log cabin this year.”
“We can do the log cabin,” she answered, just as matter-of-fact. “No guarantees on the snow. There, you
’ll have to negotiate with a higher power. Got any favors you can call in?”
He laughed. It should have eased the atmosphere, but it didn’t. Drinking her coffee in clumsy gulps, Reba watched him page through the documents and papers she’d laid out. He drank absently, giving the impression that he hardly tasted the strong brew, and he thudded the mug down on the table top between mouthfuls.
He took out a pocket calculator and keyed in several sets of figures, absorbed in his assessment. Was he checking Dad’s math? He scribbled some lines in a pocket-size notebook.
Uncomfortable about watching him, Reba retreated behind the breakfast bar. She wiped down the stove top, cleaned the crumb tray beneath the toaster and watered the row of African violets on the windowsill above the sink.
She almost watered Lucas Halliday himself, while she was at it. He’d come to the sink to return his mug. She’d been filling the little tin watering can again and hadn’t heard him, his movements masked by the sound of water drumming on metal. When she turned with the filled can, intending to water the flowering cyclamens in her parents’ room, as well, they came face to face and can to chest.
“Whoa!” He grabbed the pouring end of the can and a spray of drops darkened across the arm of his sweater.
“Oops.”
“No problem.”
He still had the mug. She snatched it from him too abruptly, turned and put it and the watering can on the draining board.
She could feel him still standing right behind her, feel him through to her bones, to the roots of her hair and to the walls of her lungs, which suddenly refused to draw breath. The strength of his pull on her body shocked her, and she heard his next words with a rush of relief.
“Ready to head outside?”
Reba kept both of them busy the whole morning. She did the job delegated to her by Jim Broadbent and her father, and she did it well, Lucas considered. It was painfully apparent how much she cared about this place, although she struggled hard not to show it. Again, with a hot pool of envy low in his gut, he wondered how that would feel.
