To Wed a Rancher

by Myrna Mackenzie

  Exactly, Rachel thought, and both Shane and Ruby had already pegged Shane as a man who had done some bad things.

  “Now for the even bigger question. Is it true Shane’s selling Oak Valley?” Angie asked.

  “That’s what I’m here for. To help him get it ready to be sold.”

  Ruby shook her head. “That’s a shame. That ranch was the best in the area in its day. He’s selling the whole ranch?”

  “Every cup and saucer, every blade of grass.”

  “Everything? I’d really love to see some of that stuff,” Angie said. “I’ve met a few people who worked there for a short time. They said that Shane’s mother had some fancy things.”

  “You’ve never been there?” Rachel asked.

  Another look was exchanged by Ruby and Angie. “Shane’s stepfather was a bit of a hermit. Not into having folks over.”

  “Well, Shane’s having an open house when he puts the ranch on the market,” Rachel offered.

  The women’s eyes lit up. “When?” they asked, almost in unison.

  “Three weeks. Maybe a little less.” After all, one day was already done, and she was pretty sure that if Shane managed to finish up all the work he wouldn’t wait to put Oak Valley on the market.

  “That’s going straight on my calendar,” Angie said.

  “We’ll be there,” Ruby declared.

  “Lots of people will be there,” Angie said. “Oak Valley opening its doors? That will pull people in.”

  “Hopefully to buy the ranch,” Rachel offered.

  “Maybe.” Ruby looked doubtful. “Not too many people around here who could afford a ranch that size. Most people will just want to see the place.”

  “And the women will want to drool over Shane,” Angie added.

  Uh-oh, Rachel thought. Maybe she should have asked Shane before she shared this information. Maybe he’d planned to keep his open house “by invitation only.” She doubted he was going to be pleased to know that his new housekeeper had just invited the world to his door step to drool and paw.

  She hadn’t even done one ounce of work for him and already she had given the man a reason to fire her. Other than her utter lack of skills…which he would find out about tomorrow.

  Focus, Rachel, focus, she ordered herself the next morning. Keep your plan in mind. Shane Merritt has nothing to do with your plan, nothing to do with your future. But she’d spent a good part of yesterday working beside him, and later sitting beside him as he’d coached her through the paces of learning to drive a stick shift.

  “Like this?” she’d asked, wrestling with the shift.

  “Like this,” he’d said, covering her hand with his own as he’d moved the stick through the gears, showing her, guiding her.

  Driving her crazy just because he was touching her, even though it was a completely impersonal touch.

  “You are an idiot,” she whispered between clenched teeth as she put Shane’s lessons to use and drove all the way from Ruby’s to the ranch, only lurching a little and only stalling the car twice. “Don’t start getting any ideas about Shane. Don’t you remember what Ruby told you? And don’t you remember that you have golden plans for your future?”

  Yes, she was finally going to be free to put down roots and have her own life exactly the way she had always wanted it. Where she wouldn’t have to move all the time, where she might finally get the chance to settle down and have a real life on her own terms. Doing something as crazy as losing her mind over a man like Shane, who would mess with her dreams and who was so very wrong for a woman like her… Well, she knew better than most people what the consequences of that kind of idiocy would be.

  Stop feeling things, she ordered herself.

  Simple. Easy. Should be a breeze to pull off as long as she put her mind to it. But the minute she climbed out of the car and Shane walked toward her, all broad shoulders, long denim-clad muscular legs and smoldering eyes, easy flew right out the door.

  “Something wrong?” she asked. “Did I…? I didn’t get a scratch on your car or anything, did I? I was really careful to park it far away from all the others at the inn.”

  He shook his head. “The car’s fine. You were driving real smooth, too.”

  An inordinate sense of pride welled up in Rachel and she started to smile. Until she remembered that those were the types of comments Dennis had made about her photos, and he had merely been trying to butter her up so he could use her. Not that there was any question about her being used this time. She was, after all, a hired employee, and as such, Shane was openly using her services…and paying her well for them. And then, too, a compliment was a compliment. She’d been trained by the best in how to handle compliments.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your role in my smooth driving,” she said politely. And then, because she had sounded like some of the prim, prissy girls she had known in school, the ones she hadn’t liked and who hadn’t liked her, she rushed on, “So, there’s no problem?”

  “Just a holdup. One of the men I’d hired to help out broke his leg yesterday. For a while I thought I was going to have to ride out and look for someone new, but he managed to talk a friend into subbing for him. He’ll be here later today. We’re all set to get started. A full complement of ranch hands.”

  Rachel blinked. “Is that what I get to call myself? A ranch hand?” That was a title she’d never thought to own. A bit exotic, at least in the world she’d grown up in. She liked it. “Could be awesome.”

  He almost cracked a smile, almost showed her those amazing dimples, and he held out his hands in a submissive gesture. “Go for it. Knock yourself out.”

  “I intend to. Chance of a lifetime. So…I guess I should start tackling the ranch house?”

  “I’ll just be over at the barn repairing the roof. Shouting distance away and in plain sight if you need me. I’ll see you at lunch.” Then he was gone. And she was alone with the house.

  “And I’m expected to make lunch,” she reminded herself. Gulp. Okay, okay, this is nothing. Cleaning. Cooking. People did this all the time. Ordinary people did it, and she had always wanted to be just an ordinary person. The kind who lived in the same place all the time and took care of that place, because that was what ordinary people with homes of their own did. This was her chance to have that for a few weeks. She could do it. Shane was counting on her to do it.

  So…first things first. Find a computer, look some stuff up. She had wanted to do that last night, but Ruby had been working on her books and Rachel owed her too much to ask her to stop her own work in order to let Rachel access the internet.

  Now Rachel headed toward the office she remembered Shane showing her. On her way there she glanced out the window.

  And saw Shane climbing off a ladder onto the roof of the barn. He stood there, all male, surveying his territory, a tool belt slung low on his hips. As she watched, he leaned into the tilt of the roof. Casually. Easily. As if he’d done this sort of thing before.

  And then he took off his shirt and she saw bronzed muscles. She saw those broad shoulders. Naked.

  Her mouth went dry.

  At that moment Shane started to turn. In a second he would see her staring at him if he looked this way.

  She let out a muffled squeak and jumped back away from the window. Without turning around again, she scurried toward the computer and plopped down in front of it. She stared at the screen.

  And remembered what Shane had looked like standing there like the king of the ranch. All male all the time. Ranch guy. A man who could run a company, fix a car or mend a roof without even blinking. The kind of men women lusted over. The girls in the countless boarding schools she’d attended all her life would have gotten into shrieking, calculated battles over a man like that. Her mother would have set out to charm a man like that. And win him…until the newest husband material came along.

  “And both of those are just two of the many reasons why you’re not interested.” She didn’t ooze charm. She didn’t want to. And anyway, Shane
was clearly out of her league. He could have all those charming women, and apparently had already had many.

  I’m the housekeeper, she reminded herself. I’m on the road to my future, to my dream. And she had better start giving some thought to that future real soon.

  “Yeah, just as soon as I figure out the most efficient way to clean a house quickly and how to make something palatable for lunch.” A man who had spent the morning pounding nails in a roof would probably have a big appetite when he came in all hot and sweaty.

  Rachel tried not to imagine that moment. She hoped Shane had put his shirt back on by then. She hoped he’d be so tired he wouldn’t notice any problems with the food.

  But first she had to find some food to make and directions on how to make it. Her fingers flew over the keys, their clacking sounding a lot like…desperation.

  When Shane walked back into the house, nothing looked that different from the way it had looked that morning…except there seemed to be a few computer printouts lying about. He looked at the one lying beneath the hallway mirror. The Best Way to Clean Mirrors and Windows it read. There was another one on the oak sideboard called How to Make Woodwork Glow along with One Hundred Uses for Vinegar and The Easiest Way to Get Grease Off a Stove. There were more, but just then he heard a loud clatter, followed by, “Juno and Jupiter and…and…oh, darn it!”

  “Rachel?” He rushed into the kitchen.

  She was standing at the stove, and she whirled around when he appeared. Red sauce had splattered her white blouse, there were smudges of dust on her cheeks and the light that had been in her eyes this morning had dimmed. She looked…pained.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” The words sounded like an accusation. He didn’t mean them that way, but his mother’s death had begun as an injury. And—no, he wasn’t going there.

  To stop his thoughts, he slid closer to her and took her hand. He looked her over, searching for burns from the sauce. He reached out and placed two fingers beneath her chin, turning her face from one side to the other. Searching since she still hadn’t spoken.

  “Rachel, could you please say something? I’m sorry I shouted.”

  “I can’t even make spaghetti. Anyone can make spaghetti. Look, it says so right here,” she said, holding up a sauce-splattered computer printout.

  She gazed up at him with those big brown eyes that looked so sad and he wanted to waltz her back across the kitchen, lean her against the counter and kiss the sadness from her lips until they tilted up into her sunny smile again.

  But that would be mad. It would be bad.

  “Who says you can’t make spaghetti?” he asked, sounding grumpier than he had intended.

  She bit her lip. “I lied about knowing how to do this stuff,” she said. “I hate people who lie. Dennis lied. And…lots of people have lied. But I don’t. I hate that, but I did this time. I wanted the job.”

  “Well…wanting things makes everyone do things they regret later. I don’t quite recall any lies from you, though.” He had to say that, because even though he knew what she was talking about, he hated that forlorn look in her eyes, and he felt partially responsible. He’d suspected her secret and had hired her, anyway. He’d treated her to his frowns, he’d worried about his all-too-male reaction to her, and in an attempt to escape that reaction he’d left her to tackle something she had no experience with. Guilt assailed him, and he already knew way too much about guilt.

  Plus, there was no excuse for him having left her feeling so stressed about her duties. As a man who’d trained many people, worked with many employees, he knew the drill. He understood how to make sure people were comfortable in their work before he left them alone to do their jobs.

  But with Rachel…he’d walked away because she messed with his senses, wreaked havoc with his resolve. She distracted him, and he seriously couldn’t afford to be distracted. Nonetheless—

  “I implied that I could cook,” she said, cutting into his thoughts. “And that I understood the secrets of house keeping. I told you that I knew enough, and I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t really a lie because enough is a relative word.”

  He couldn’t help himself then. She sounded as if she’d just done something truly heinous. And, much as he wanted to build a rock-solid wall between them, to keep all smiles and interaction to a minimum, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “It is a relative word.”

  “Don’t you dare let me off the hook. I have standards, and if I expect others to adhere to them, I have to adhere to them, too.”

  “All right,” he said quietly. “You’re entitled to your standards. That’s a nice motto to live by, I suppose.”

  “It’s not my own. Ms. Drimmons, Sidson School, Grade Five. I didn’t even realize that I’d absorbed or…stolen her motto.”

  He smiled more. “Rachel, you don’t have to confess all your supposed sins to me. Or any of them, for that matter. Plus, as far as sins go, using someone else’s motto isn’t a very big one. All right?”

  “I know that, but put together with my lying—”

  “Which I’m not concerned about and we’re going to move past, providing you don’t tell me any more lies. Anything else I should know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, then, why don’t we look at the spaghetti?”

  “It’s easy enough to see,” she said, wearing that delicious blush he was beginning to look forward to. “There was something in the instructions about flinging a bit against the wall. I think I may have flung too much.”

  Shane looked to the wall opposite the stove. At least a dozen strands of spaghetti were either making their way down the wall or lying on the floor.

  He couldn’t keep the amused look off his face.

  “It’s not funny.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay,” she conceded. “It is funny, but I’m not laughing.”

  And then she was chuckling. And so was he. Shane realized that this was the first time he’d laughed since his return to Oak Valley. It felt like a release valve, helping him breathe. And while he knew it was a temporary release, because nothing had changed, for the moment it was welcome.

  “Come on, I’ll bet the spaghetti is entirely edible.” He started toward the stove and she followed him. “The sauce is a little burned on the bottom, because the heat was a little high, but what’s on top will be fine.”

  “I could probably make a meal out of what’s on my shirt.”

  Okay, he could not let that pass, even though everything that was smart and good told him not to look at her shirt.

  He looked…and was rewarded with that glorious, enticing blush again. He also realized that she was right. A lot of the sauce had bubbled out of the pan and plopped onto her shirt.

  “I’ll lend you one of mine,” he said. And this time he did the right thing. He locked his senses down and didn’t try to imagine Rachel wearing the same shirt that lay against his skin every week.

  Instead he handed her a colander to drain the pasta. “Let’s eat.”

  She hesitated. “You’re being very generous. I hardly made any headway on the house, and this isn’t the meal you had every right to expect. Why aren’t you firing me?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to examine his motives too closely. But an answer that was just as true as any other reason slipped out. “You’re trying, you’re working. That’s the truth, and…there’s one more truth.”

  She looked up at him, waiting.

  “For reasons I don’t want to discuss, I never wanted to come back to Oak Valley and Moraine. Being here is barely tolerable. But…you’re an incredibly interesting person. You distract me from things I don’t want to think about.”

  And now those brown eyes widened. “I…distract you?”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t saying more. He’d said too much. He hoped he hadn’t been wrong to tell her that. “Shane?”

  “Let’s eat,” he said, changing the subject. “And then let’s get back to work. This afternoo
n I might need you to take some photos. I assume you do know how to use that Hasselblad?”

  Good. She’d raised her chin. He preferred a defiant Rachel to a sad one. Sparring with her, he had to keep his wits about him. That kept him from thinking too much about touching her.

  Rachel felt much calmer now that she was back on familiar territory. For half a second she wondered if Shane knew that and had thrown out the topic of photography to help her get her bearings. But, no, she had never shared just how passionate she was about photography with anyone, not even Dennis, who had been a photographer himself. She’d learned as a child that being overly passionate about something sometimes invited criticism, even laughter or derision. Still, she was grateful for the chance to do something she understood even if she still had a lot to learn before she would feel that she had even come close to mastering her craft.

  “You’re safe,” she said. “I know how to take photos. I’m not a pro by a long shot, but you won’t have to go looking for someone else as long as you don’t need anything too involved.”

  “Just basic shots,” he agreed.

  “And these basic shots…they’re of the barn you’re working on? Of the house?”

  “A few of those, and some of the other landmarks on the ranch. Also I’d like some of the horses.” Had his voice warmed just a little? Maybe. Maybe not. His expression gave nothing away.

  Rachel wasn’t nearly as successful at concealing her feelings. “You’re bringing the horses back?” She couldn’t help smiling.

  “You like horses?”

  “I—I don’t know. That is, of course I’ve seen them, and they’re beautiful, but I’ve never actually spent time with any. Still, they’ll add some life to the ranch, won’t they? I mean…it’s beautiful, but so quiet. Lonely.”