“Are you making mud?” she asked, her grumpiness echoing in her voice.
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, slowly, steadily, clearly accustomed to the hour and unperturbed by her mood.
And in that instant she had a flood of realization about him—the satisfaction she’d thought to deny him had been, instead, accomplished when she’d shown her temper. It told him he was getting to her and he liked that.
So, of course, she decided on the spot that he’d seen the last of it.
“Why don’t you let me make the coffee?” she suggested, if not bright and cheery, at least almost congenial.
“That’s right, you’re a chef. Guess you ought to be doing all the cooking.” He stepped away from the coffeemaker and swept a hand toward it as an invitation to have at it.
Ally dumped all the ground beans back into the can and started over, measuring them this time and then adding vanilla to them before starting the machine.
As she did she suffered Jackson’s unrelenting stare that seemed to assess her jeans, T-shirt, and hair piled atop her head and held there by an elastic ruffle.
Apparently he couldn’t find fault with anything because after a while he went to the butcher block and swung a leg over one of the stools there.
“Change of plans,” he said then. “On my way in from the chicken coop last night Ash came out and asked if I’d help him move some furniture this morning. So we won’t be heading out for the cattle until I’m done with that.”
Ally took a quick glance through the window above the sink and found that Beth’s place was still dark. Which meant that Ally was up this early for no good reason, and that Jackson had known last night that she didn’t need to be and could have let her sleep awhile longer.
She fought the urge to vent her aggravation at that fact and demand to know what she was supposed to do until he needed her. Instead she said, “I think I’ll go back to bed, then.”
He shook his head and chuckled as if she were out of her mind. “Not when you have my breakfast to fix and lunch to pack for us all.”
“Us all?”
“There’ll be four ranch hands working with us. Figure three sandwiches a man. Plus whatever else chefs rustle up for midday meals.”
He was trying to get her goat every time he said chef, because he made it sound like a joke. And while Ally had slightly mocked the title herself the night before, she hadn’t done it disparagingly. Which was the way he did it.
Still, she was not going to let him see that he was succeeding in goading her.
“And for breakfast?” she asked as if she were the waitress and he the customer.
“Bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast. The bacon and potatoes both crisp. Eggs over easy. Toast light, plenty of butter. Tabasco on the side for the eggs,” he answered as if he were, indeed, in a restaurant.
“Will I be needing to go out and slice the bacon off the hoof, coax the chickens to lay the eggs, pick the potatoes, and bake the bread first?”
Apparently she’d actually amused him with that bit of facetiousness, because a genuine smile came very near to slipping out before he checked it.
Still, Ally had seen enough to know that a smile made the corners of his eyes crease and tilted one side of his mouth more than the other.
It also had the oddest ability to warm her from the inside out....
“You should find everything in the fridge. This time,” he answered as if those things she’d only been joking about were possibilities for the future.
But then it occurred to her that anything was possible for the future, since she didn’t have the foggiest idea what living and working here would really entail.
“Does every day start this early?” she asked conversationally as she took what she needed from the refrigerator and began making breakfast.
“I sleep in until six now and then,” he answered matter-of-factly enough for her to believe he was being honest and not just trying to paint a worse picture for her benefit.
Then, as if he couldn’t sit still anymore, he got up, put place settings on the butcher block, and made the toast while she cooked everything else at once on a huge griddle.
“You don’t want to be out working in the worst heat of the day if you can help it,” he informed her as he did. “It’s better to get going in the coolest hours. Plus, there’s always so much to do on a spread like this one, there’s no time to waste lying in bed.”
“And what about weekends? Holidays?”
“There are still chores. Animals need food and water and lookin’ after no matter what day it is.”
“Is that what I’ll be doing—looking after animals?” she ventured cautiously, hoping to avoid more of his you’ll-do-anything-I-tell-you-to-do bluster.
Maybe it was the early hour or the quiet intimacy of the kitchen, but he answered her civilly, straightforwardly. “You’ll be doing everything I do, or would do if I didn’t have your help.”
“Which involves?”
“Too many things to talk about. You’ll see as we go along.”
“But it won’t be nice,” she guessed.
He shrugged and poured two cups of coffee while Ally filled their plates, and they both sat on stools at the butcher block and began to eat.
“Guess that all depends on what you consider nice,“ he answered. “Along with the everyday chores and upkeep and care of the animals, there’s heat and wind and fires and dust galore in the summertime. Harvesting, canning, drying a winter’s supply of what comes out of the gardens in the autumn. Blizzards in the winter that’ll keep everybody from reaching town. Planting, rounding up the stock, calving in the spring—”
“But it is all work and no play—is that what you’re saying?”
Again the shrug while he ate the eggs he’d smothered in Tabasco sauce without so much as a flinch. “The nearest neighbor is five miles away and doing the same kind of work.”
“Which means they’re too busy to socialize, too?”
“Yep.”
“So all we have to look forward to here is sweat and toil and days that start before dawn,” Ally summarized, realizing that while what he said might be true, he was still putting a worse spin to it than could possibly be the case or no one in his right mind would live the life he did.
She raised her chin to him and said with conviction, “I’m not afraid of hard work and long hours. I’ve done it before.”
“Done much ranchin’, have you?”
“Ranching isn’t the only thing that takes hard work and long hours.”
“And you’re up for it?”
“Bright and early.”
He watched her with more curiosity in his expression than had been there before. “Why?” He repeated the question he’d asked the first night she’d been here. “Why do this when you could live in the lap of luxury somewhere, pick and choose what you do, set your own schedule?”
But despite his almost amiable tone, she was no more inclined to tell her problems to him now than she had been then. So she merely met his stare evenly and said once again, “I’m not afraid of hard work and long hours.”
He chuckled a little at her reticence to confide in him, then nodded, slowly, as if he knew something she didn’t—like just how hard that work was going to be and how long the hours. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
Ally knew he’d see, all right, because she didn’t have a doubt that he’d be watching her every move just the way he was watching her right then.
With those blue eyes that she could get lost in if she wasn’t careful.
Good thing she was.
* * *
A quick glance at his wristwatch when Jackson finished helping Ash move furniture told him the morning was headed for nine o’clock and he was getting a late start on his own day’s work.
Still, he made sure he wasn’t needed any longer before he headed out of the remodeled bunkhouse.
“Wait for me,” Beth said, catching up with him as he did. “I want to ta
lk to Ally for a few minutes before you take her away.”
Jackson didn’t comment, he merely held the door open for his sister and then followed her out into the bright August sunshine.
But a few steps away from the bunkhouse, Jackson spotted Meggie at the chicken coop and sent Beth to tell Ally to get a move on while he veered in that other direction.
“How you doin’, Miss Meggie?” he asked as he approached.
The little girl smiled a shy, tentative smile up at him. “Good,” she answered, sounding unsure of it. “I did just like you said—I threw the chickens’ food around first so they’d go eat while I took the eggs. And it worked,“ she finished as if it were magic.
“‘Course it worked. Think I’d steer you wrong?” He plucked an egg and added it to her basket. “Got another job for you to do today while your mother and I are gone.”
Her expression turned pensive, almost fearful, and Jackson wondered if it was just him she thought such an ogre or if something else was the cause.
If it was him, he was sorry for that. He might be damned unhappy about having these two city girls on his hands, but scaring children was not something he did under any circumstances. He liked kids. And just in case he’d frightened this one, he wanted to show her there was no cause.
“See that big ol’ doghouse over there?” he asked in a friendly enough tone, pointing out what he was talking about. “How’d you like to give it a coat of paint for me? Spruce it up some?”
“I never saw a dog here,” she answered.
“Name’s Mutt—because that’s what he is. A big black-and-white hound with a long tail and ears that hang way down. He’s around somewheres—or he will be. He likes to wander but he always finds his way home again. Let’s give him a nice clean house to come back to.”
“Think I can do it?”
“Don’t know why not. I’ll show you how soon as we’re through here, and Hans will be around if you need help.”
“Can I paint flowers on it?”
“I only have a can of barn red for now. But maybe we’ll get some other colors later on and you can add them.”
The little girl’s smile turned more pleased than wary, making him feel as if they’d gotten off on a better foot. Hoping to keep that going, he pitched in to help her gather the eggs.
They did it in companionable silence, with Meggie glancing up at him every few minutes to give him a smile that seemed to offer friendship now.
She was the spitting image of Ally. Her curly coppery hair was the same color, though it was a short cap around her head rather than long like her mother’s. Her skin was just as pale and flawless, her lips as pink, and her ears as small and perfect. Only her eyes were different—plain hazel instead of her mother’s striking green.
The one thing he couldn’t judge the similarity of was their smiles, because he’d never seen Ally’s.
Not that he cared.
But somehow he couldn’t help wondering.
Any more than he could help thinking about her every minute since she’d walked into the honky-tonk...
Lord help him, it scared the hell out of him.
Not that he’d admit that to a single living soul.
But there’d only been once before in his whole life that this same thing had happened to him, one other woman he couldn’t pass on by and forget about.
Sherry.
And that had been a disaster.
A disaster he wouldn’t repeat. Ever.
“I think that’s all of them.” The little girl’s voice interrupted his musings.
Jackson took a look at the nests he’d been emptying by rote, without really watching what he was doing, and found she was right—the eggs were all gathered.
“Good job,” he praised, not only for what she’d done with the eggs but for pulling him out of thoughts he didn’t want to be lost in. “Remember what I told you to do with them?”
“Take the basket to Marta,” she repeated.
“Right. And while you do that I’ll get the paint things together.”
He watched the child as she did as she was told, telling himself that there wasn’t any connection whatsoever between the fact that he couldn’t get Ally out of his mind and that he hadn’t been able to get Sherry out of his thoughts all those years ago.
The only reason he couldn’t stop thinking about Meggie’s mother was because she’d gotten his back up. The only reason.
It didn’t have anything to do with any kind of attraction to her. No sir. She was just a vexation. A thorn in his side that couldn’t be ignored until he could get rid of it. Get rid of her.
And that was all there was to it.
Marta must have seen Meggie coming, because the older woman came out of her house and met the child halfway, sending Meggie on a return run at full speed once she’d accepted the egg basket.
“Whoa there, slow down. There’s no hurry—I haven’t headed for the shed to get your gear yet,” he told her when she reached him, ruffling up her hair.
But the feel of those silky locks flashed him back to the night before, and it wasn’t the child’s hair he was focused on so much as the memory of fingering the long strand of Ally’s curls. And somehow what shot through him at that moment, purely in response to the mother, was the same thing that had washed over him when he’d had Ally before him.
But it didn’t seem to fit with just being riled by the woman.
No, if he’d had no other reason to want Ally Brooks off his ranch before, he had an all-fired powerful one right then.
He’d be damned if he’d let anything start up with another woman who didn’t belong here.
No matter what.
* * *
Ally was in the kitchen packing the saddlebags Jackson had brought her when Beth came in through one of the sliding doors from the patio.
“‘Morning,” the pregnant woman greeted as she did.
“‘Morning,” Ally answered, though she’d been up so long by then it seemed as though it ought to be afternoon.
“What’s all that?” Beth asked with a nod at the food Ally was carefully putting into the heavy leather satchels.
“Lunch.”
“Ah. Better bring a lot to drink, too, it’s a hot one out there today.” She stole a cucumber-and-dilled-cream-cheese pinwheel before Ally wrapped them. “We just finished up at my place. Jackson was headed here with me but he stopped to see how Meggie was doing with the eggs. He told me to tell you it was time to leave and send you out.”
Jackson with Meggie?
Trying not to be too obvious, Ally went to the kitchen sink and rinsed her hands while taking a quick glance outside.
She couldn’t see the chicken coop from there, but she imagined she could hear the harsh criticisms and rebukes that poor, defenseless Meggie was no doubt suffering at that very moment from the man who didn’t want them around.
“Relax,” Beth said from where she sat on a stool at the butcher block. “Jackson is great with kids. He should have a dozen of his own.”
Only if they didn’t show up without warning to trespass on his precious ranch, Ally thought, tempted to rush out of the kitchen to her child.
But she knew that wasn’t a good idea, that what she was imagining was probably not happening and that charging in, in her overprotective-mother mode, would only make Meggie think there was something to be afraid of from Jackson. Ally had to hope that wasn’t the case. Certainly if what she’d seen of his treatment of her daughter the night before was any indication, there was nothing to worry about.
So why was she worrying?
“How about you?” Beth asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do you want more kids?”
Standing at the window wasn’t doing her any good, so Ally decided a better course of action would be to finish packing the lunch so she’d have an excuse to get outside to Meggie.
Somewhat belatedly she answered Beth’s question as she went back to the butcher block. “I’d like to have more kids, yes.” But mostly s
he’d just like to save the one she had now. She no longer carefully set food in among the cold packs, but stuffed everything in in a hurry.
“I know that in this mood Jackson seems pretty daunting, but he really isn’t as fierce as you may think,” Beth said again as if she could tell what was going through Ally’s mind. “You have to understand what this ranch means to him.”
“He made the analogy that it was like his child.”
“It’s true. Just the way Meggie is your child. And think how you’d feel if someone showed up one day to claim part of her. But he’ll get used to the idea if you just give him a little time. And then you’ll see that underneath that stern, tough exterior is a pretty tender heart.”
Ally thought that she’d have to see it to believe it. But the lunch was all stowed in the saddlebags by then and she didn’t want to waste time debating the subject.
Instead she hoisted the satchel to her shoulder, surprised by the weight and leaning low on that side because of it. “I’d better let him know I’m ready to go,” she said by way of an exit line.
Beth followed her out. “I came over to tell you that I’ll be around all day—along with Hans and Marta—to look after Meggie, so you don’t need to be concerned about her. Not that you’d need to be even if it was just Hans and Marta. They’ve been friends of the family for years and years. Hans used to run the lumber mill, then he retired, but the two of them were getting on each other’s nerves, so Jackson offered them light work here. It helps him out and them, too.”
Ally didn’t think it prudent to tell Beth that it wasn’t Hans and Marta she was worried about.
Beth went on as they headed for the barnyard. “Hans and Marta just got back from an extended vacation to Sweden to visit relatives they haven’t seen since they came to this country as newlyweds. The trip was Jackson’s gift to them for their fiftieth wedding anniversary this past May. They’ve been gone almost all summer.”
Ally assumed this sudden wealth of information was meant to illustrate just what a good guy Jackson really was. But at the moment it didn’t help ease her mind.
And then the two of them turned a corner of the paddock fence and came upon Jackson and Meggie not too far in the distance.
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