by Diana Palmer
“You devil, you,” Fred said, chuckling. “All right, all right. On that condition, I’ll take him and be much obliged. But I’d feel better if there was a man sitting up with him at night to guard him.”
Leo stretched sore muscles, pushing his Stetson back over his blond-streaked brown hair. It was late September, but still very hot in Jacobsville, which was in southeastern Texas. He’d been helping move bulls all morning, and he was tired. “We can take care of security for him,” Leo said easily. “I’ve got two cowboys banged up in accidents who can’t work cattle. They’re still on my payroll, so they can sit over here and guard my bull while they recuperate.”
“And we’ll feed them,” Fred said.
Leo chuckled. “Now that’s what I call a real nice solution. One of them,” he confided, “eats for three men.”
“I won’t mind.” His eyes went back to the still bull one more time. “He was the best bull, Leo. I had so many hopes for him.”
“I know. But there are other champion-sired Salers bulls,” Leo said.
“Sure. But not one like that one.” He gestured toward the animal. “He had such beautiful conformation—” He broke off as a movement to one side caught his attention. He turned, leaned forward and then gaped at his approaching daughter. “Janie?” he asked, as if he wasn’t sure of her identity.
Janie Brewster had light brown hair and green eyes. She’d tried going blond once, but these days her hair was its natural color. Straight, thick and sleek, it hung to her waist. She had a nice figure, a little on the slender side, and pretty little pert breasts. She even had nice legs. But anyone looking at her right now could be forgiven for mistaking her for a young bull rider.
She was covered with mud from head to toe. Even her hair was caked with it. She had a saddle over one thin shoulder, leaning forward to take its weight. The separation between her boots and jeans was imperceptible. Her blouse and arms were likewise. Only her eyes were visible, her eyebrows streaked where the mud had been haphazardly wiped away.
“Hi, Daddy,” she muttered as she walked past them with a forced smile. “Hi, Leo. Nice day.”
Leo’s dark eyes were wide-open, like Fred’s. He couldn’t even manage words. He nodded, and kept gaping at the mud doll walking past.
“What have you been doing?” Fred shouted after his only child.
“Just riding around,” she said gaily.
“Riding around,” Fred murmured to himself as she trailed mud onto the porch and stopped there, calling for their housekeeper. “I can’t remember the last time I saw her on a horse,” he added.
“Neither can I,” Leo was forced to admit.
Fred shook his head. “She has these spells lately,” he said absently. “First it was baling hay. She went out with four of the hands and came home covered in dust and thorns. Then she took up dipping cattle.” He cleared his throat. “Better to forget that altogether. Now it’s riding. I don’t know what the hell’s got into her. She was all geared up to transfer to a four-year college and get on with her psychology degree. Then all of a sudden, she announces that she’s going to learn ranching.” He threw up his hands. “I’ll never understand children. Will you?” he asked Leo.
Leo chuckled. “Don’t ask me. Fatherhood is one role in life I have no desire to play. Listen, about my bull,” he continued. “I’ll have him trucked right over, and the men will come with him. If you have any more problems, you just let me know.”
Fred was relieved. The Harts owned five ranches. Nobody had more clout than they did, politically and financially. The loan of that bull would help him recoup his losses and get back on his feet. Leo was a gentleman. “I’m damned grateful, Leo. We’ve been having hard times lately.”
Leo only smiled. He knew that the Brewsters were having a bad time financially. He and Fred had swapped and traded bulls for years—although less expensive ones than Fred’s dead Salers bull—and they frequently did business together. He was glad he could help.
He did wonder about Janie’s odd behavior. She’d spent weeks trying to vamp him with low-cut blouses and dresses. She was always around when he came to see Fred on business, waiting in the living room in a seductive pose. Not that Janie even knew how to be seductive, he told himself amusedly. She was twenty-one, but hardly in the class with her friend Marilee Morgan, who was only four years older than Janie but could give Mata Hari lessons in seduction.
He wondered if Marilee had been coaching her in tomboyish antics. That would be amusing, because lately Marilee had been using Janie’s tactics on him. The former tomboy-turned-debutante had even finagled him into taking her out to eat in Houston. He wondered if Janie knew. Sometimes friends could become your worst enemy, he thought. Luckily Janie only had a crush on him, which would wear itself out all the faster once she knew he had gone out with her best friend. Janie was far too young for him, and not only in age. The sooner she realized it, the better. Besides, he didn’t like her new competitive spirit. Why was she trying to compete with her father in ranch management all of a sudden? Was it a liberation thing? She’d never shown any such inclination before, and her new appearance was appalling. The one thing Leo had admired about her was the elegance and sophistication with which she dressed. Janie in muddy jeans was a complete turnoff.
He left Fred at the pasture and drove back to the ranch, his mind already on ways and means to find out what had caused that healthy bull’s sudden demise.
* * *
Janie was listening to their housekeeper’s tirade through the bathroom door.
“I’ll clean it all up, Hettie,” she promised. “It’s just dirt. It will come out.”
“It’s red mud! It will never come out!” Hettie was grumbling. “You’ll be red from head to toe forever! People will mistake you for that nineteenth-century Kiowa, Satanta, who painted everything he owned red, even his horse!”
Janie laughed as she stripped off the rest of her clothes and stepped into the shower. Besides being a keen student of Western history, Hettie was all fire and wind, and she’d blow out soon. She was such a sweetheart. Janie’s mother had died years ago, leaving behind Janie and her father and Hettie—and Aunt Lydia who lived in Jacobsville. Fortunately, Aunt Lydia only visited infrequently. She was so very house-proud, so clothes-conscious, so debutante! She was just like Janie’s late mother, in fact, who had raised Janie to be a little flower blossom in a world of independent, strong women. She spared a thought for her mother’s horror if she could have lived long enough to see what her daughter had worn at college. There, where she could be herself, Janie didn’t wear designer dresses and hang out with the right social group. Janie studied anthropology, as well as the psychology her aunt Lydia had insisted on—and felt free to insist, since she helped pay Janie’s tuition. But Janie spent most of her weekends and afternoons buried in mud, learning how to dig out fragile pieces of ancient pottery and projectile points.
But she’d gone on with the pretense when she was home—when Aunt Lydia was visiting, of course—proving her worth at psychology. Sadly, it had gone awry when she psychoanalyzed Leo’s brother Callaghan last year over the asparagus. She’d gone to her room howling with laughter after Aunt Lydia had hung on every word approvingly. She was sorry she’d embarrassed Cag, but the impulse had been irresistible. Her aunt was so gullible. She’d felt guilty afterward, though, for not telling Aunt Lydia her true interests.
She finished her shower, dried off and changed into new clothes so that she could start cleaning up the floors where she’d tracked mud. Despite her complaints, Hettie would help. She didn’t really mind housework. Neither did Janie, although her late mother would be horrified if she could see her only child on the floor with a scrub brush alongside Hettie’s ample figure.
Janie helped with everything, except cooking. Her expertise in the kitchen was, to put it mildly, nonexistent. But, she thought, brightening, that was th
e next thing on her list of projects. She was undergoing a major self-improvement. First she was going to learn ranching—even if it killed her—and then she was going to learn to cook.
She wished this transformation had been her idea, but actually, it had been Marilee’s. The other girl had told her, in confidence, that she’d been talking to Leo and Leo had told her flatly that the reason he didn’t notice Janie was that she didn’t know anything about ranching. She was too well-dressed, too chic, too sophisticated. And the worst thing was that she didn’t know anything about cooking, either, Marilee claimed. So if Janie wanted to land that big, hunky fish, she was going to have to make some major changes.
It sounded like a good plan, and Marilee had been her friend since grammar school, when the Morgan family had moved next door. So Janie accepted Marilee’s advice with great pleasure, knowing that her best friend would never steer her wrong. She was going to stay home—not go back to college—and she was going to show Leo Hart that she could be the sort of woman who appealed to him. She’d work so hard at it, she’d have to succeed!
Not that her attempts at riding a horse were anything to write home about, she had to admit as she mopped her way down the long wooden floor of the hall. But she was a rancher’s daughter. She’d get better with practice.
* * *
She did keep trying. A week later, she was making biscuits in the kitchen—or trying to learn how—when she dropped the paper flour bag hard on the counter and was dusted from head to toe with the white substance.
It would have to be just that minute that her father came in the back door with Leo in tow.
“Janie?” her father exclaimed, wide-eyed.
“Hi, Dad!” she said with a big grin. “Hi, Leo.”
“What in blazes are you doing?” her father demanded.
“Putting the flour in a canister,” she lied, still smiling.
“Where’s Hettie?” he asked.
Their housekeeper was hiding in the bedroom, supposedly making beds, and trying not to howl at Janie’s pitiful efforts. “Cleaning, I believe,” she said.
“Aunt Lydia not around?”
“Playing bridge with the Harrisons,” she said.
“Bridge!” her father scoffed. “If it isn’t bridge, it’s golf. If it isn’t golf, it’s tennis... Is she coming over today to go over those stocks with me or not?” he persisted, because they jointly owned some of his late wife’s shares and couldn’t sell them without Lydia’s permission. If he could ever find the blasted woman!
“She said she wasn’t coming over until Saturday, Dad,” Janie reminded him.
He let out an angry sigh. “Well, come on, Leo, I’ll show you the ones I want to sell and let you advise me. They’re in my desk... Damn bridge! I can’t do a thing until Lydia makes up her mind.”
Leo gave Janie a curious glance but he kept walking and didn’t say another word to her. Minutes later, he left—out the front door, not the back.
* * *
Janie’s self-improvement campaign continued into the following week with calf roping, which old John was teaching her out in the corral. Since she could now loop the rope around a practice wooden cow with horns, she was progressing to livestock.
She followed John’s careful instruction and tossed her loop over the head of the calf, but she’d forgotten to dig her heels in. The calf hadn’t. He jerked her off her feet and proceeded to run around the ring like a wild thing, trying to get away from the human slithering after him at a breakneck pace.
Of course, Leo would drive up next to the corral in time to see John catch and throw the calf, leaving Janie covered in mud. She looked like a road disaster.
This time Leo didn’t speak. He was too busy laughing. Janie couldn’t speak, either, her mouth was full of mud. She gave both men a glare and stomped off toward the back door of the house, trailing mud and unspeakable stuff, fuming the whole while.
A bath and change of clothes improved her looks and her smell. She was resigned to finding Leo gone when she got out, so she didn’t bother to dress up or put on makeup. She wandered out to the kitchen in jeans and a loose long-sleeved denim shirt, with her hair in a lopsided ponytail and her feet bare.
“You’ll step on something sharp and cripple yourself,” Hettie warned, turning from the counter where she was making rolls, her ample arms up to the elbows in flour.
“I have tough feet,” Janie protested with a warm smile. She went up and hugged Hettie hard from behind, loving the familiar smells of freshly washed cotton and flour that seemed to cling to her. Hettie had been around since Janie was six. She couldn’t imagine life without the gray-haired, blue-eyed treasure with her constantly disheveled hair and worried expression. “Oh, Hettie, what would we do without you?” she asked on a sigh, and closed her eyes.
“Get away, you pest,” Hettie muttered, “I know what you’re up to...Janie Brewster, I’ll whack you!”
But Janie was already out of reach, dangling Hettie’s apron from one hand, her green eyes dancing with mischief.
“You put that back on me or you’ll get no rolls tonight!” Hettie raged at her.
“All right, all right, I was only kidding,” Janie chuckled. She replaced the apron around Hettie’s girth and was fastening it when she heard the door open behind her.
“You stop teaching her these tricks!” Hettie growled at the newcomer.
“Who, me?” Leo exclaimed with total innocence.
Janie’s hands fumbled with the apron. Her heart ran wild. He hadn’t left. She’d thought he was gone, and she hadn’t bothered with her appearance. He was still here, and she looked like last year’s roast!
“You’ll drop that apron, Janie,” Leo scolded playfully.
Janie glanced at him as she retied the apron. “You can talk,” she chided. “I hear your housekeepers keep quitting because you untie aprons constantly! One kept a broom handle!”
“She broke it on my hard head,” he said smugly. “What are you making, Hettie?”
“Rolls,” she said. She glanced warily at Leo. “I can’t make biscuits. Sorry.”
He gave her a hard glare. “Just because I did something a little offbeat...”
“Carried that little chef right out of his restaurant, with him kicking and screaming all the way, I heard,” Hettie mused, eyes twinkling.
“He said he could bake biscuits. I was only taking him home with me to let him prove it,” Leo said belligerently.
“That’s not what he thought,” Hettie chuckled. “I hear he dropped the charges...?”
“Nervous little guy,” Leo said, shaking his head. “He’d never have worked out, anyway.” He gave her a long look. “You sure you can’t bake a biscuit? Have you ever tried?”
“No, and I won’t. I like working here,” she said firmly.
He sighed. “Just checking.” He peered over her shoulder fondly. “Rolls, huh? I can’t remember when I’ve had a homemade roll.”
“Tell Fred to invite you to supper,” Hettie suggested.
He glanced at Janie. “Why can’t she do it?”
Janie was tongue-tied. She couldn’t think at all.
The lack of response from her dumbfounded Leo. To have Janie hesitate about inviting him for a meal was shocking. Leo scowled and just stared at her openly, which only made her more nervous and uncertain. She knew she looked terrible. Leo wanted a woman who could do ranch work and cook, but surely he wanted one who looked pretty, too. Right now, Janie could have qualified for the Frump of the Year award.
She bit her lower lip, hard, and looked as if she were about to cry.
“Hey,” he said softly, in a tone he’d never used with her before, “what’s wrong?”
“Have to let this rise,” Hettie was murmuring after she’d covered the dough and washed her hands, oblivious to what was ha
ppening behind her. “Meanwhile I’m going to put another load of clothes in the washer, darlin’,” she called to Janie over her shoulder.
The door into the dining room closed, but they didn’t notice.
Leo moved closer to Janie, and suddenly his big, lean hands were on her thin shoulders, resting heavily over the soft denim. They were warm and very strong.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat while she looked up into black eyes that weren’t teasing or playful. They were intent, narrow, faintly glittering. There was no expression on his handsome face at all. He looked into her eyes as if he’d never seen them, or her, before—and she looked terrible!
“Come on,” he coaxed. “Tell me what’s wrong. If it’s something I can fix, I will.”
Her lips trembled. Surely, she could make up something, quick, before he moved away!
“I got hurt,” she whispered in a shameful lie. “When the calf dragged me around the corral.”
“Did you?” He was only half listening. His eyes were on her mouth. It was the prettiest little mouth, like a pink bow, full and soft, just barely parted over perfect, white teeth. He wondered if she’d been kissed, and how often. She never seemed to date, or at least, he didn’t know about her boyfriends. He shouldn’t be curious, either, but Marilee had hinted that Janie had more boyfriends than other local girls, that she was a real rounder.
Janie was melting. Her knees were weak. Any minute, she was going to be a little puddle of love looking up at his knees.
He felt her quiver under his hands, and his scowl grew darker. If she was as sophisticated as Marilee said she was, why was she trembling now? An experienced woman would be winding her arms around his neck already, offering her mouth, curving her body into his...
His fingers tightened involuntarily on her soft arms. “Come here,” he said huskily, and tugged her right up against his tall, muscular body. Of all the Harts, he was the tallest, and the most powerfully built. Janie’s breasts pressed into his diaphragm. She felt him tauten at the contact, felt his curiosity as he looked down into her wide, soft, dazed eyes. Her hands lightly touched his shirtfront, but hesitantly, as if it embarrassed her to touch him at all.
