“And what about me?” Ben suddenly chimed in, reminding them that two little ears had been listening to their conversation. “You’ll stay long enough to show me how to make friends with these horses, won’t you, Smitty?”
“Making friends with horses takes a long time, Ben,” Gabe said, sending Ben a wink.
“Not with this kid,” Smitty said, patting his new apprentice affectionately on the back. “Ben’s a real natural with horses.”
Gabe swallowed, hard. “Just like his grandfather.”
“Just like his uncle and his grandfather,” Smitty corrected, always determined to have the last word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BY THE TIME Ronnie made it back to the Flying-K, she was still so angry she felt like smashing something. And it should have been Gabe’s stupid face with her fist instead of slapping him openhandedly like a girl.
The bastard!
He’d been a stubborn ass forever. But Gabe’s first obligation had always been to his ranch and his horses. And that’s what had Ronnie so confused. The logical thing would have been to marry her and merge their two ranches.
What had Gabe done instead?
He’d married some piece of fluff from Texas who would have burst into tears had Ronnie bothered to say boo to the silly bitch. And all because of a dumb promise he’d made to Billy.
The stupid fool!
Storming into the house, Ronnie headed straight for the den. The fact that her father was sitting in his usual place at a card table playing solitaire didn’t prevent her from walking directly to the wet bar on the far side of the room. Pouring two fingers’ worth of bourbon into a tumbler, Ronnie belted it down in one easy gulp. But as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she sent a hostile glare in her father’s direction.
“What are you looking at?”
Ross Kincaid looked back down at the cards on the table and waited a few seconds before he said, “Isn’t it a little early in the day for whiskey?”
“Mind your own damn business, Ross.”
She poured herself another drink.
“Then I guess the rumor’s true,” he said. “Gabe really did marry the boy’s mother.”
Ronnie didn’t answer. She took the tumbler with her and flopped onto the heavy leather sofa facing the stone fireplace. She was pissed. And the last thing she wanted was any advice from her father. Ross was weak and gutless. Always had been.
How else would you describe a man falling to pieces when a worthless woman like her mother walked out on them? Pathetic, that’s what Ross was. Ronnie couldn’t even remember her mother, but she’d had enough sense to say good riddance to her a long time ago.
But not Ross.
After her mother left he’d lost interest in everything. His life. His ranch. And most of all, his only child.
To hell with both of them, Ronnie vowed as she brought the tumbler to her lips again. She’d never needed a mother or a father. By age twelve she could ride a horse as well as any man on the ranch. By sixteen she was breaking the most difficult horses herself. And by twenty-one she was doing the bookkeeping and making all of the major decisions where the ranch was concerned.
And what had her stupid father been doing during that time? He’d sat uselessly in the den playing solitaire, still pining away for a woman he hadn’t even seen in thirty long years.
Ronnie was the reason they still had a roof over their heads. She was responsible for making the Flying-K one of the most successful horse ranches in the state of Colorado. So any advice from dear Papa was not damned welcomed.
“I did you a huge disservice by not letting your mother take you with her when she left,” Ross said, as if he’d known exactly what Ronnie had been thinking.
“Like hell, you did.” Ronnie snorted. To annoy him, she drained every drop of the whiskey in her tumbler.
He pretended not to notice, his eyes still focused on the cards he was holding. And just when Ronnie thought she’d been successful at putting an end to any phony father-daughter chat, Ross said, “I’ve stood by and watched this ranch become your whole life. And I made a grave mistake in doing that. Maybe if you’d gone with your mother, maybe then—”
“What?” Ronnie shouted. “Maybe I would have followed in dear old Mommy’s footsteps? Spent my time jet-setting from here to there, dining on Russian caviar and drinking champagne instead of working my ass off to keep us from losing this ranch?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have turned out so—” he rubbed a hand over his forehead “—callous.”
“Callous? I’ll tell you what’s callous, Ross. Callous is being more worried about finding a new wrinkle in the mirror than the fact you have a daughter you haven’t seen since she was two years old. So don’t you dare call me callous. Save callous for the woman who walked out on both of us.”
She’d gotten herself so worked up she jumped up from the sofa and smashed her empty tumbler against the rock hearth of the fireplace. Turning to face her father, Ronnie said, “This ranch will always be my life. And whether you’ll ever admit it or not, I do a damn fine job running it.”
Ross shuffled his cards, still never looking in her direction. “Then why don’t you do that, Veronica? Why don’t you concentrate on running this ranch and leave Gabe Coulter alone? If I thought you actually loved the man, it might be different. But we both know all you’ve ever wanted is Gabe’s land.”
Ronnie didn’t deny it.
Instead she mocked her father’s words. “What did love ever get you, Ross? I’ll tell you what love got you. Nothing. Except a lifetime of living in the past.”
He looked directly at her for the first time. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And I know my own daughter. You don’t like to lose. But leave Gabe alone. He’s a good man.”
Ronnie threw her head back and laughed. “I’ll never leave Gabe alone. We’re two of a kind, me and Gabe. We’re ranchers first. And everything else comes second.”
“Not anymore, Ronnie. Gabe has a family now.”
“We had a family, too, but that didn’t keep my mother here, did it?”
His flinch made Ronnie smile.
She walked around the sofa and leaned over her father, her hands braced on the card table in front of him. “That little twit Gabe brought home won’t last a week. And when she skips town the same way my sorry mother did, I’ll be right here where I’ve always been. Waiting for Gabe to come to his senses so we can merge the Flying-K and the Crested-C and have the largest damn horse ranch in the state of Colorado.”
She headed for the door, but paused before walking out.
“You are right about one thing though, Ross. I don’t like to lose. And I intend to do everything in my power to make sure Miss Texas leaves Redstone as fast as her pretty little ass breezed into town.”
Her say over, Ronnie stormed out of the house and headed for the barn, the new scowl on her face put there by another old man who had taken Gabe’s side that day. She should have known that fool Smitty would back down the minute Gabe got home. Now she’d have to do some major damage control. She’d have to swallow her pride and formally ask her ranch foreman to stay.
Not that she was really worried about Charlie Biggs leaving. Hell, you couldn’t blow Charlie off the Flying-K with a stick of dynamite. She hadn’t missed the way Charlie looked at her. She could feel his eyes undressing her with every move she made.
And now that Gabe had gone and got himself married?
No, Charlie wouldn’t be in any big hurry to leave.
He’d hang around for sure now, thinking he might get lucky. Which wasn’t a bad idea when Ronnie thought about it.
She’d be damned if she let the whole town laugh at her behind her back. She’d show them. All of them. And she’d start by letting word get around town that she’d been too busy screwing Charlie’s brains out to even care that Gabe Coulter got married.
Stepping inside the open barn door, Ronnie looked around first, relieved to see no one else wa
s present except the man she’d come to see. Eating crow had never been her strong point and she damn sure didn’t want an audience when she did it.
Her focus settled on Charlie.
He was stripped down, wearing nothing but his jeans, his bare back to her as he rubbed down a saddle he had on the workbench before him. Her gaze swept across his broad muscled shoulders, then downward, settling on one fine cowboy ass if she had to say so herself. Had Charlie been a rancher instead of a ranch hand, she would have chosen him over Gabe Coulter any day of the week.
Charlie was a handsome devil. Hair black as a raven’s wing—gray eyes like a wolf.
And flirting with the devil was exactly what she needed after Gabe made her out to be a first-class fool. Ronnie took a step in Charlie’s direction. And finally sensing her presence, he glanced over his shoulder at her.
It was now or never to make amends.
“You’re staying on as foreman,” Ronnie told rather than asked him.
“Not interested,” he said, and went back to work on the saddle.
Ronnie rolled her eyes.
She really hadn’t expected any less. They’d had a huge fight earlier that morning when she’d told Charlie she was bringing Smitty in as acting foreman. Charlie had seen right through her intentions. Now he was going to make her beg.
But she’d do her begging her own way.
Ronnie walked over and casually propped herself against the workbench facing Charlie. With her elbows resting on the surface, all it took was a slight forward thrust of her breasts. And, presto! The front of her shirt popped open enough to give Charlie a peek at anything he wanted to see.
His gaze immediately went to her cleavage.
“Don’t be an ass, Charlie. You know I pay you more than anyone else pays a foreman around here.”
He looked away. “Maybe I’m not staying around here. Maybe it’s time I moved on.”
He went back to work on the saddle.
Hard muscles rippled.
Healthy biceps flexed.
Ronnie inched a little closer to him.
“But surely we can think of something that might entice you to stay,” Ronnie said, running the tip of her finger seductively up the full length of Charlie’s bare arm.
She felt him tense under her touch.
He put down the saddle soap and looked at her. “Yeah,” he said, “I can think of one thing that might make me stay.”
Ronnie smiled.
“I want to hear you say you’re through making an idiot of yourself over Gabe Coulter.”
Her hand shot forward to slap him.
Charlie caught her arm midair.
Ronnie could see the lust in his eyes. And Lord, how it did turn her on. Just once, she’d love to know what it felt like to be taken by a man who truly wanted her—not just because she’d made herself convenient.
Too bad about her pride, though. “Get off my property. Now!”
“I’ll get off your property,” Charlie said. “But not until I show you what you’ll be missing when I’m gone.”
Ronnie gasped when he jerked her forward. She tried to fight back, but he dragged her with him into the tack room. And when he kicked the door shut behind them, he pushed her roughly up against the plank wall and pinned her hands above her head with one strong arm.
Their gazes locked in a fiery battle of wills.
Ronnie, daring him to touch her.
Charlie, daring her to stop him.
His free hand roamed down her neck. Slowly, he unbuttoned the front of her shirt. Ronnie held her breath as his hand slid inside her bra. And when he gave her nipple a hard but ever-so-pleasurable squeeze, Ronnie moaned in spite of herself.
Instantly, his hot mouth came down on hers.
Ronnie kissed him back as forcefully.
She was much too aroused to push Charlie away, and way too turned-on to care. His hand slid from her breast, down her stomach, fumbling for the zipper of her jeans. She gasped again when his fingers slid boldly between her legs. And though she bit down hard on her lower lip trying to resist him, the shiver of sheer pleasure running through her body left her crying for more.
For the first time in her life, Ronnie surrendered.
And Charlie took complete control.
CHAPTER NINE
BY THE END of her third week on the ranch, every muscle in Sara’s body ached from the exertion of removing fifteen years of dirt and grime from the house she and her son now called home. Gabe had warned her Smitty ran off every cleaning lady he’d tried to hire over the years, but nothing could have prepared Sara for an all-male perspective of the acceptable level of clean.
Sara had washed everything from curtains to bed linens. She’d chased cobwebs and dust bunnies until they often showed up in her dreams as full-blown monsters.
She’d never been immune to hard work. But Sara soon found that taking on the responsibility of running a house, being a full-time mom to an active five-year-old and cooking three meals a day for a bunch of hungry ranch hands who wolfed down every morsel she placed in front of them was a never-ending task. More than once it crossed her mind that any woman who had the audacity to label being a housewife mindless work, did so only in fear that someone might ask her to take on such an overpowering assignment.
For Sara, there were no scheduled coffee breaks, no relaxing lunch hours, nor did she have any coworkers to help with the multitude of duties she performed on a daily basis. In a nutshell, she was it. And the enormous amount of organizational skills required to keep a mental note of what her son was doing, tend to a meal in the oven, supervise the laundry and dust and vacuum a fourteen-room house, was extremely overwhelming.
There were days when Sara would run from one task to another at such a maddening speed, she contemplated having Smitty shop for a pair of roller blades when he made his daily trip into Redstone. Thankfully, Smitty did make those daily trips into town for their supplies. Had shopping also been added to her vast list of duties, Sara would have collected her son and headed back to Texas after her second day on the ranch.
Life at the Crested-C began at sunrise and it ended shortly after dusk. And though a lesser woman would have admitted defeat, Sara had never been happier.
For the first time in her life, she had the joy of experiencing what it was like to be part of a real family. Granted, it wasn’t a typical family, but it was a family nonetheless. And nothing pleased Sara more than sitting at the opposite end of the large dining room table from Gabe, watching while seven burly cowboys folded their hands politely and waited for Ben to deliver his short “God is Great” prayer of thanks.
Sara never wanted to be anywhere else.
Especially since their new lifestyle was having such a positive effect on her son. Ben had adapted to their new surroundings so quickly it scared Sara. Not only had he abandoned his mother’s side to become Smitty’s constant shadow, but her five-year-old baby had jumped at the chance to have his own bedroom. Ironically, that happened to be Billy’s old bedroom—still adorned with life-size posters of the acclaimed rodeo star, and lined with the multiple ribbons and trophies Billy had won over the years.
At first, it had bothered Sara to be in a room where Billy’s presence was everywhere. But she eventually found comfort reading to Ben every night with Billy smiling down at them. It was almost as if Billy were trying to tell her he was sorry. And that he couldn’t have been more pleased to have his son home.
Being surrounded by his father’s possessions seemed to have given Ben a sense of comfort, too. And for that, Sara would be eternally grateful. Unlike her own unanswered questions about a father she never knew, for Ben, there would be no unanswered questions. Billy had become real for Ben. And as long as Gabe and Smitty were around, Sara knew her son would have answers for anything he ever wanted to know about his father.
The hardest part of Sara’s new life were those moments she spent in her own bedroom at night before she gave in to the exhaustion of the day and let sleep merciful
ly claim her. It was then that her old doubts and fears crept in to make her leery of her new peace and happiness.
Do you really think this can last? Didn’t you give Gabe the perfect out by agreeing to have the marriage annulled in six months if the arrangement wasn’t working?
And that had become Sara’s latest fear.
What if things didn’t work out? What was she going to tell Ben then? Even thinking about how devastated her son would be if they had to leave the ranch terrified Sara.
And that’s why many nights found her tossing and turning when such disturbing questions refused to leave her alone. Especially when the questions took on an even deeper level of cruelty.
Where do you think Gabe runs off to every night? her troubled thoughts would nag her. Do you really think he’ll stay in a phony marriage when he has a woman like Ronnie Kincaid waiting in the wings? You’re just his housekeeper, remember? The woman he puts up with because you happen to be his nephew’s mother.
Those were the thoughts that hurt the deepest, constantly reminding Sara exactly where she fit into the whole scheme of things. She would never be anything more to Gabe than his nephew’s mother. And the fragile bond that was slowly forming between them would never be anything more than the friendship Gabe said he wanted based solely on the mutual concern they shared for her son.
Of course, Sara told herself she was willing to settle for nothing but friendship from Gabe. That her life at the ranch would be complete, as long as she had the opportunity to watch her son grow into a good and honest man.
A man who would take his commitments seriously.
A man who would be kind and giving.
A man who was admired and respected by his peers.
A man like Gabe.
The same man who was winning tiny pieces of Sara’s watchful heart with each passing day.
THE FULL MOON BATHED the house in a silvery light when Gabe turned off his headlights and let the truck coast into the circular driveway. The long drives he’d been taking over the past three weeks were beginning to get the better of him. Still, driving around aimlessly and trying to clear his head was better than lying wide awake wondering what type of silky nightgown the woman in the room next to his was wearing while she slept.
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