Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: A Ranch for His FamilyCowgirl in High HeelsA Man to Believe In

by Hope Navarre

  “I think you know the definition,” George replied.

  “Walt isn’t an alcoholic.” He simply had a binge every now and then.

  George smirked at him and Ryan knew that Milo Bradworth would receive a tip that the current manager had a probable substance-abuse problem. This guy never let up. He wanted to extend his contract for a year, pulling in a hefty salary and throwing his weight around, and Ryan didn’t think either he or Ellie was going to be able to do anything about that.

  That night he’d joined Ellie in her garden where she’d proudly showed him the improvements she’d made. There were flowers everywhere. Banks of petunias, rows of daisies and snapdragons and pansies. She beamed up at him, making him want to kiss her yet again.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, wanting to smile at the instant frown that formed on her face. “Don’t you think a pie-shaped bird feeder would add something?”

  “Jerk,” Ellie muttered, but she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling back.

  He didn’t leave until sunrise.

  They stayed awake for most of the night talking, sharing experiences, laughing. Bonding. Ellie, he discovered, had a profound sense of whimsy that she rarely expressed. Why? What would people think if she wore lime-green heels to work? He’d suggested that it didn’t matter what they thought, only what she thought. “In other words, screw ’em,” he advised.

  Ellie laughed. “You have no idea of what my world is like.”

  “Probably not,” he agreed, tracing the line of her hip with his fingertips.

  She propped up on one elbow. “I admit that I don’t even own lime-green heels, although I do admire them. But think about it... Would you want the person who made the decision as to whether or not you got to keep your job wearing frivolous heels?”

  “I’m having a hard time imaging George in heels, frivolous or not,” he replied.

  “George isn’t making that decision,” she said, her expression sobering.

  “Are you sure?”

  One corner of her mouth lifted. “I’m doing what I can to make sure of it.”

  Ryan didn’t ask for details. With Ellie he found that if he waited, she let loose with what she wanted him to know. She simply wasn’t one to be pushed and he, fortunately, was patient. It worked out.

  “I like it when you stay,” she finally murmured as her eyes drifted shut.

  He idly stroked her hair. “Maybe I’ll stay more often.”

  She nodded against his chest and a moment later her breathing became steady and deep. Ryan put a protective arm over her and closed his own eyes. Tomorrow was coming all too soon, so it felt good to be so at peace right now.

  * * *

  RYAN HAD NO rodeos that week, so in seven days they made love at least seven times, enjoyed more than one sunrise before Ryan slipped out of the house and discovered that, for having grown up in such different environments, they valued many of the same things. Peace and quiet, a good beer, now off-limits to Ellie, old movies and goofy TV reruns. But there was an undercurrent, a sense that as good as things were at the moment, it couldn’t last. Not without taking a hard look at some hard issues. At some point they were going to have to either face those issues or go their separate ways.

  Ryan was in favor of the former. He was falling in love with Ellie, and unless there was a radical shift in their dynamic, he saw no reason he couldn’t be there for her. It wouldn’t be an easy adjustment. He was more than aware of that. The thought of fatherhood, if their relationship went that far, was intimidating to say the least, but he could handle it. One day at a time, as with everything else in life.

  And if Ellie wanted to avoid commitment for a while, take things slow as, knowing Ellie, she’d probably want to do, he was good with that, too. But he didn’t want to end the relationship just because Ellie had this idea drilled into her head of what her future had to be. Circumstances shifted and changed and so could life paths. One simply needed to be aware of the choices.

  * * *

  ELLIE HAD NEVER been in a relationship where she’d felt so...connected. She’d always dated the career driven, which, she now realized, had protected her from having to connect in a more intimate way. She’d never had to bare her soul, let the other person know her real fears, her real heartaches. She’d always held those things close out of lack of trust—fear of having someone else know too much about her—and had replaced that closeness with a more superficial bond, a shared drive to succeed. The need to put a career first.

  She hadn’t yet told Ryan about the traumas of being raised by a distant mother, but when she did, she knew he’d understand, even though his relationship with his own mother was tight. She had the feeling she could tell him anything, which, while drawing them closer, also frightened her—as did the fact that she suspected Ryan felt as strongly about her as she did about him. It was evident in the way he looked at her, treated her. The way he’d sometimes splay his hand over her abdomen, as if silently telling her that he accepted her—all of her.

  But still she didn’t know if she was ready to take a chance. To jump in with both feet, only to find out it wouldn’t work, and then have to scramble to deal with the emotional fallout...and at the same time be there for a child.

  Serious stuff.

  It would be so much simpler to just go it alone...if it wasn’t for the fact that they seemed to be doing so well together, and that she had a feeling that Ryan was falling in love with her.

  Or that she was quite possibly falling for him, too.

  She went to roping practice with him several times, sitting on the rough bleachers, a little apart from the others as usual, but the people there still smiled and said hello and she answered back in kind. Kids raced by, squealing and clamoring up and down the stairs, and it struck her more than once that in a year from now she would have a kid and in two years’ time her child might be toddling up and down the stairs. It was a sobering thought.

  After Ryan’s last run, she made her way off the bleachers and slowly walked through the sea of horse trailers, wondering if this was the last time she’d be doing this. She had to contact Kate’s father, give him her decision. She also had to make a logical decision, not an emotional one.

  As she approached the trailer, she could see that Ryan was talking to a man who seemed out of place in his pressed khakis and corduroy sports jacket. Ellie stopped, not wanting to walk in on the conversation, but a split second later the guy gave his head a grim shake and stalked off toward a BMW parked at the edge of the fairground lot.

  Ryan watched him go, then turned back to his horse, catching sight of Ellie as he did so. She started toward him again as he unsaddled his horse, his expression taut.

  “More trouble with your dad?” she asked impulsively.

  “Yeah.”

  She cocked her head. “Walt says you don’t have a dad.”

  His movements stilled, then he met her eyes. “Walt’s wrong,” he said simply before lifting the blanket off the horse’s back and carrying it to the tack room.

  The ride home was silent. Ellie had expected Ryan to ask her why she’d been discussing him with Walt, but he didn’t. By the time they pulled into the ranch, her jaw was aching from holding it so tightly. After Ryan parked, he pulled the key out of the ignition and finally spoke.

  “If you have a few minutes, I would like to tell you what’s going on.”

  Ellie’s lips parted. She hadn’t expected that. “Sure,” she said, her heart beating faster for no real reason.

  “That guy I was talking to... He was a representative of my father.”

  “And Walt has no idea that you have a father?”

  “I’d appreciate it if he never did know it.” Ryan fiddled with the keys he held for a moment, before saying, “My father was married when my mom got pregnant. She never named him on the birth certi
ficate. No one knows.”

  His father was a married man who never claimed him? For a moment all Ellie could do was to stare at him. She hadn’t even realized that her hand had traveled up to cover her belly protectively.

  “No one?”

  “Only my mom, my brother and now you.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “That would be my father’s legitimate son. My father’s wife doesn’t know, and that’s why I’m being paid to keep my mouth shut.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Ellie asked.

  Ryan stared down at the steering wheel for a moment, as if straightening out the reasons in his mind. “Because if I sign that agreement, I can’t tell you and if we ever...you know...I want you to know.”

  “If we ever what, Ryan?”

  “If we ever move beyond what we have now.”

  “Do you see that happening?” she asked cautiously. There’d been times during the past few days when she’d thought about her and Ryan and her child making a life...but she never let herself think about it for long. Didn’t allow herself to fantasize about happily ever after because reality had a way of kicking fantasies like that to the curb, to make a person feel foolish for ever thinking that way.

  He reached out to take her hand, turning it over in his, caressing her palm with his thumb. “I see us taking one day at a time.”

  She tried to smile, though it wasn’t easy as she was still feeling the aftershock of discovering that his mother’s situation was so similar to her own. “Good answer,” she murmured.

  He squeezed her fingers. “I’m not trying to add to your stress level. I just wanted you to know the truth.”

  The truth...that until he’d told her, only four people in the world knew. Now there were five. Not even Walt, who Ryan looked at as a surrogate father, knew. A twinge of panic crept up on her at the thought, but she pushed it down.

  * * *

  THE CALL ELLIE had been dreading came the day after she found out about Ryan’s father. She hadn’t meant to make Kate call, but each day she thought that she needed just a little more time to make the proper decision—a decision not based in avoidance. She wasn’t yet at that point.

  “It’s Nick,” she told Kate. “I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Kate said. “So are you thinking of staying in Montana?”

  “That may not be the best choice, either. I—” she hesitated, then made a blurting confession “—might be in over my head.”

  “How so?”

  “I got involved with a guy.” Ellie rubbed a hand over her face, wondering how much to tell...or even how to tell. “It was just supposed to be a two-ships-in-the-night kind of thing. He was dealing with issues and so was I and together we could just kind of forget them.”

  “And then it got serious.”

  “It seems to be.”

  Kate was quiet for a moment. “You want to get out before it gets more serious?”

  Ellie cleared her throat. “I don’t want to make a mistake and be an emotional wreck when I have my baby. I need to be strong, not vulnerable.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell Kate that her biggest fear was that Ryan saw too much of his mother’s situation in her own. That he was compensating for past wrongs without even knowing it. She wanted to be his lover, not his project.

  “Valid.”

  “Rotten timing on my part,” Ellie said. “I need a job. I need autonomy.”

  “You have a job. All you have to do is say the word,” Kate said gently. “As long as it’s in the next ten days. If you don’t want it, then Dad will have to fly it.”

  “Understood,” Ellie said. “I’ll get back to you soon.”

  “Yeah...and in the meantime, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Not helpful,” Ellie said with a choked laugh. Kate was notorious for getting herself into man trouble.

  “Okay,” Kate said. “Do the opposite. And call. Anytime.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  Ellie hung up and let her head fall back against the cushion of the leather chair. She needed some distance, some space. Something that would allow her perspective. She needed to be where she wasn’t tempted by a hot, caring cowboy whose motives she wasn’t sure of. He made her feel so good, so safe and at the same time so unsettled. What if she loved him and he only thought he loved her?

  * * *

  SOMETHING SEEMED OFF about Ellie. She smiled and laughed and made love, but there was an air of preoccupation about her that made him feel edgy. Something was up.

  “Have you heard on a job?” He was guessing as they walked to the pond one evening after dinner.

  “I did get a job offer,” she said slowly, watching his face as she spoke. “I haven’t made a decision yet. It’s not an optimal situation, but I’m not in a position to be too choosy.”

  Ryan had the oddest sense of the bottom falling out of his world, even though he’d known this day was coming. He wanted to ask her questions about the job, but instead followed his gut and let the matter be. She reached out and took his hand and they walked in silence.

  It wasn’t until they were on the way back that she said, “I’m working on getting George kicked off the place.”

  “As a going-away present?” Ryan asked, surprised to hear the touch of bitterness in his voice. Ellie heard it, too, and slipped her hand free. “I didn’t mean to be snide,” he said, glancing over at her. “I just hate to see you go.”

  Her eyes held his for a moment, and then she put her hand back in his and they walked on. But somehow it didn’t feel the same.

  * * *

  GEORGE, APPARENTLY SENSING that Ellie was never going to be an ally, had given up on the nightly meetings shortly after trying to take Hiss out with a shovel. Ellie was fine with that, but now that she’d finished looking into George’s consulting track record, she requested a meeting. Her original intent had been to see if she could find any ranchers who did not sing his praises and to discover what his actual percentage of employee retention was. The employee retention rate was every bit as dismal as Ryan had indicated, but the information from the lesser-known ranches that he’d “turned around” had been even more telling.

  But it was only fair that George have a chance to answer the charges.

  The one question he seemed to resent most was when she asked him to recount his time on the Bear Creek Ranch just south of the Canadian border.

  After some digging and assurances of anonymity, she found that George had worked his way into the good graces of the new owners, fired the crew, brought on several of his cronies to fill the vacancies and left the ranch no better off than when he’d started the job—except that he’d been able to spend nine months in a beautiful area with world-class fishing and his friends had gotten lucrative employment.

  George made noises about not all changes being evident on the surface, and Ellie had nodded in an understanding way.... But she wasn’t fooling George and he wasn’t fooling her.

  At the end of her three days of research, Ellie understood exactly why George had been so over-the-top in his instantaneous assessment of Walt. He wanted Walt’s job, at least for a while, and then he probably had a friend who could slip into the position when it was time to move on. Ellie sent the file she’d compiled on George’s not-so-successful ventures to Milo and waited for the call. It was better that he call her and she was surprised at how fast she heard from him.

  “What’s this file about, Ellie?”

  “Have you had time to read it?” she asked patiently.

  “I’ve been locked up with lawyers.”

  “That is a file on some of your consultant’s not-so-stellar jobs.”

  “Meaning...?”

  “I know that it appears that George did a fantastic job
of turning around some properties,” Ellie said carefully, “and those were properties that were in dire need of turning around. I’ve done some research and come up with a few properties that he’s ‘turned around’ that actually only needed some minor tweaks.”

  “What’s your point, Ellie?”

  “As you know, George wants his contract extended for a year here while he shapes things up...but I don’t think the place needs a year’s worth of George. The people who work here are doing a decent job.”

  “He knows ranching, Ellie.”

  “I’m not saying that George isn’t good at what he does. What I am saying is that sometimes he works things out so that a property needs him, whether it actually does or not.”

  Milo didn’t answer immediately, so Ellie said, “He’s like a surgeon that, once the patient is opened up, does a lot of extra stuff, whether it’s necessary or not, because he has the opportunity. He’s not only addressing the actual problem, he’s doing what he can to invent problems—on paper anyway.”

  “Are you certain about this? Or is this that Madison guy talking?”

  Ellie put a hand on her forehead. “That Madison guy has no idea I’ve been looking into this, Milo. I checked with ranches George has worked with—the ones that don’t have testimonials on his webpage. He’s notorious for shaking up personnel.”

  “Sometimes that has to happen.”

  “But not always, and after making some calls, I can tell you that he always fires at least half of the crew. Every single place he’s consulted. You should keep that in mind.”

  “What about the manager at the Rocky View—that Walt character? I couldn’t get any information out of him without prying it out and George indicated he had a drinking problem. Are you saying he should stay?”

  “He’s good at what he does,” Ellie said. “He’s a cattleman, and from what I understand and what the ranchers I’ve talked to say, his breeding program is top-notch. My suggestion is that he step down from the management position, concentrate on cattle breeding and that Ryan Madison step in as manager. He has a college education and he’s the one who started turning the place around financially.”