by Cora Seton
Things could have ended much worse than they had.
The main barn was untouched, however, and housed Atlas, Lena’s stallion—singed in the blaze, but better now—in a quickly built temporary stall. Connor had told him the other horses had been boarded at other ranches for the time being.
He called a greeting to the other men, wincing a little because his mouth still stung. Lena had gotten a good hard crack at him with that spoon.
He probably deserved it.
A smarter man would have noticed right away last night Lena looked far different than she’d ever looked in her photographs. He had, actually, but hadn’t put two and two together to realize how out-of-character it was. He’d meant to compliment her and had stuck his foot in his mouth instead. Typical.
“Hey, Logan. Ready to work?” Brian called back. He was playing with a couple of dogs. Jo’s, Logan guessed. He knew she bred McNabs for their cattle herding tendencies.
“Sure thing.”
“Good. There’s a lot to do,” Connor said. Another dog chased his heels. “This is Max,” he said, giving the dog’s head a pat. “Those are Champ and Isobel.”
“Nice to meet you, Max.” Logan bent down and ruffled the dog’s ears.
He was happy to see Brian and Connor again. While they hadn’t served together actively, they’d all gotten to know each other during their stint at USSOCOM, and soon the three of them easily came up with a plan to divvy up the work. They were about to get to it when Lena strode in, her jaw set, and pushed her way among them.
“I suppose you’re gloating, aren’t you? You think you’ve won. Well, you haven’t!”
“Lena—”
Lena cut Brian off. Like the rest of them, she wore jeans, boots and a sturdy fall coat to ward off the coolness of the morning. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her fancy nails were gone, and she didn’t have a lick of makeup on. She’d come to work, that was clear.
Nothing girly about her.
“I’m not going to let a bunch of strangers run this ranch!” she asserted.
“You aren’t making sense,” Brian said. Connor winced, and even Logan, new as he was here, could see Brian had taken the wrong tack.
“Not making sense? You think I’m going to sit and watch while the four of you men take over? You think I’ll let you steal my land right out from under me? I’ve seen how this goes before, remember?”
“Lass, you’ve got it all wrong,” Connor tried.
“Don’t lass me. I’m not some child you can bribe with pretty phrases and lies.” She looked at each of them in turn. “I can still drive you off this land; just like I’ve driven off everyone else who hasn’t belonged here. You think I can’t?”
Logan held his tongue. No, she couldn’t. Not him, at least. But she didn’t know that yet, and he wasn’t so rash he’d be the one to tell her.
“Get out of my barn!” she burst out. “Now—I don’t want to see a single one of you for the rest of the day!”
The men exchanged startled looks, and Lena balled her fists, obviously ready for a fight. Logan grabbed Connor. “Let’s go.”
“But—”
“You heard the lady. Let’s go.” He pushed Connor toward the barn door.
Brian followed, frowning, and when they reached the back porch of the house, he demanded, “Why did you let her run us off? She can’t run this place alone. We’re all supposed to—”
“If I don’t marry Lena, none of us gets to stay here,” Logan told him. “The more we try to force the issue, the worse it’s going to get. You all have lived with her. I haven’t. But even I know when a woman is about to snap. First you came, then Connor, then Hunter—and for whatever reason, she allowed that to happen. Now the General has sent her a husband. We can’t pretend she doesn’t know that. We’ve got to cut her some slack—let her feel she’s got some kind of control over her life.”
He knew how bad it felt when someone else tried to take control.
“We need to step back and let Lena take the helm until we know where her weaknesses lay. Then we can step in to help and she’ll be grateful—not pissed.” As he’d learned so painfully, it didn’t make sense to save someone who didn’t need saving.
“Since when do you know anything about human nature?” Brian demanded, but Logan could tell he was speaking from surprise, not derision.
Logan knew why. Most of the time he was so quick to joke around no one took him seriously.
But he was serious about marrying Lena and staying the heck away from Idaho. That meant stepping up his game.
“Lena wants control of the ranch. She wants to run the cattle operation the way she thinks it ought to be run. According to everything you guys have told me, it’s what she’s wanted all her life, but the General has never let her do it. How’d you feel if you were standing in her shoes?”
“So, we just hand it over to her and walk away? Then what? Go get jobs in town?” Connor asked.
“No. We stay right here.” He mulled it over. “As Lena’s hired hands,” he added, a grin tugging at his mouth. Why not? It was a tidy solution.
Brian whistled. “You know what? That’s kind of brilliant.”
“I don’t know.” Connor scratched the back of his neck.
“Think about it,” Brian said to him. “How many times have you disagreed with Lena’s ideas so far?”
“Not many,” Connor admitted.
“Me, neither. She knows what she’s doing. Anyone can see that.”
“Except the General,” Connor pointed out.
“I think he sees it, even if he doesn’t want to act on it,” Logan said. “But we won’t act like hands forever; just until she learns she can trust us. Then we can all work together.”
“You think she’ll ever trust us?” Connor asked him.
Brian answered him. “I don’t think Lena is unreasonable. I think the General’s the one who’s pushed her too far. Logan’s right; we just need to let the pendulum swing back the other way.”
Connor took a deep breath. “I guess I can do that. For now.”
“I can, too,” Logan put in. It had been ages since he’d ranched on anything like a daily basis. Letting Lena call the shots—for now—would give him a chance to catch up on any changes in protocol that might have occurred over the years.
“What about rebuilding the stables?” Connor asked.
“We’ll let her take lead on that, too,” Brian said. “Here’s the plan: we report for duty each morning, do the jobs she assigns us and keep our mouths shut. You think that’s possible, big guy?”
Logan snorted. “It’s possible…” He’d do his best because he thought it was the best plan. But Brian was right.
Keeping his mouth shut wasn’t going to be easy.
Lena had often done the chores with only Jo’s help, so it was no struggle to get the basics done this morning. She’d taken an active interest in every part of the cattle operation from the moment she’d learned to ride a horse—which wasn’t too long after she leaned to walk. Back then Amelia had ruled the roost with the aid of a trusted overseer who’d contributed to Lena’s education. He was older than her parents, however, and retired only months before Amelia died.
By that time Lena felt she knew enough to run the place herself. She’d never understood the General’s need to impose his will on her from a distance. Maybe if he’d come to see the ranch himself, he’d realize how good she was at running the place. Instead, he’d only ever looked at the monetary reports sent by the overseers and never commented that the ranch was far more profitable when she ran it.
He just didn’t care. Not about her. Not about Two Willows. And not only did he not care—he continually found ways to undercut her and ruin her plans. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to replace his daughters with sons. She remembered one hot July afternoon back when she was seven, back when she and her sisters treated their father like he was some kind of god who arrived home on leave occasionally to be doted on by all of them. She’d hung on hi
s arm, telling him about her horse, her archery practice, her cattle wrangling skills.
And then her cousins had arrived.
They were distant cousins, barely kin as she understood it. Something about great aunts and uncles that made her parents welcome them even though they were strangers. Earl Reed and his wife, Nancy, were a boisterous pair, and their four sons were half-wild, raised on a ranch down in Colorado. They were just passing through on a vacation to Glacier National Park and only spent two nights at the ranch, but Lena hated every minute of it because their presence turned the General into a traitor.
He no longer seemed to hear a word she and her sisters said. He was too busy playing catch with the boys, riding horses with them—Lena and her sisters’ mounts, which meant they had to stay at home. Racing with them, inviting them along to do chores.
When Lena couldn’t stand it anymore, she rebelled. At the end of the second dusty, hot afternoon, she saw the General leading Earl and his sons to a watering hole on Two Willows property. Her watering hole. Lena slipped after them, found them stripped down, splashing and laughing in the creek, and decided she’d had enough. She would be included if it was the last thing she did.
Lena stripped, too, and ran to cannonball into the water.
The General’s bellow stopped her short.
“Get out of here, girl, and put your clothes on! Get back home to your mama. You trying to disgrace us all?”
She’d never moved more quickly. Never felt such shame. She grabbed her clothes, streaked away like a cougar was chasing her. Hid in the barn until her cousins left the following afternoon, Alice sneaking her food and water. Her mother appeared late that night and gave her a battery-operated lantern and a blanket to make her hideout more comfortable.
“You’re getting older, sweetheart,” she said. “People are funny about bodies. There isn’t anything wrong with them, but people like to pretend there might be.”
“He yelled at me.”
When Amelia sat down, Lena had curled against her mother, the ache in her heart so sharp she thought it would shred her inside.
“He was trying to protect you. It’s hard to understand, but boys and girls are different, and it gets complicated as you get older. All you need to know is your father loves you, and your cousins will leave tomorrow. Everything will go right back to normal; you’ll see.”
Her mother had been wrong about that. Lena couldn’t unlearn what she’d come to understand that day. Like Amelia said, boys and girls were different. Boys could do whatever they wanted. Girls couldn’t. Not unless they fought and fought and fought for that right.
It was the only time her father had put his worldview into words so succinctly, but his actions made his feelings loud and clear as the years went by. Men were in charge; women weren’t. Men could run ranches; women couldn’t. Men could be trusted to watch over themselves; women needed to be supervised.
Now there were four men at Two Willows.
Four men to impose their will on her.
Maybe she should just give up.
Exiting the barn, she came face to face with the charred remains of the stable and stopped in her tracks. She couldn’t give up. She had to rebuild it, and that would be much harder to accomplish on her own.
She wasn’t on her own, though, she told herself. She still had four sisters, and she could organize the rebuilding of the stables if they would agree to help her.
Of course, she knew what they would say: let the men do it. They didn’t realize the General hadn’t sent the men to help them; nor had he sent them as ready-made husbands.
He’d sent the men to replace them.
One by one he was getting the sons he’d always wanted. Brian had replaced Cass. Connor had replaced Sadie. Hunter had replaced Jo—
And Logan was here to obliterate her in the General’s eyes.
Of course, she and her sisters would still exist. Still live at Two Willows.
The General didn’t care about that.
Finally, he’d have an army of men living at his wife’s ranch. Men loyal to him.
Men he could control.
Her dream of running the cattle—of making this one of the pre-eminent ranches in the land—
Would die.
A breeze whispered over her cheek, cold and sharp, another hint of the hard winter ahead. She’d fought the General for eleven years. She had to keep on fighting.
She couldn’t let him win.
She was still standing like that, contemplating the burned-out stables, sorting plans in her head, when a fluttering piece of white cloth caught her attention. Lena straightened.
Someone was coming down the track from the house, waving a white handkerchief at the end of a long stick, a couple of dogs following briskly at his heels.
Logan—with Champ and Isobel.
Lena sighed. Who else?
With her hands braced on her hips, Lena waited for him.
“Make it fast.”
“I come in peace,” he told her when he approached, Champ and Isobel running circles around him, sniffing and investigating their surroundings. “With a message from Brian and Connor, as well as myself.”
“Spit it out. I’ve got work to do.” He was handsome; she’d give him that. An intelligence lurked in his eyes despite his joking manner. Lena wondered what he was like when he stopped messing around, then nearly groaned. She didn’t care if Logan was smart or as dumb as a stump. Either way, he was far too dangerous to let past her guard.
“You didn’t ask us to come here. Your father sent us without consulting you. We get that—and we wish it was different.”
“So?” If he thought he was scoring points, he wasn’t. He was right; she didn’t want him here.
“So, Brian loves Cass, and Connor loves Sadie—and you know Hunter loves Jo. Anyone could see that last night. They aren’t going anywhere. But that doesn’t mean we have to be your enemies. None of us want that.”
“No, you just want to run the show and boss me around—”
“You’re wrong. We want the opposite of that.”
“You want me to run the show and boss you around?” she asked sarcastically. Did he think she was stupid? She bent down absently to give Isobel a pat.
“Exactly.”
When he didn’t elucidate further, Lena let out a huff of exasperation. “I told you not to waste my time.” She stood up again, and Isobel wandered off.
“You know Two Willows. You grew up here. This is your mother’s ranch. You should be the boss. None of us is clamoring for the job.”
“And you’ll what—follow orders?” She wasn’t buying it.
He flashed a grin that made her swallow. Hell, he was handsome, wasn’t he? “Yes, we will. All of us have made careers out of following orders. You might not believe this, baby girl, but we’re just happy to be here. Alive. Working. With a chance to make a home for ourselves here. All of us love ranching. We’ve got it made at Two Willows. So, boss us the fuck around. We’ll do our best.”
“What if your best isn’t good enough?” This had to be a trick, and Lena hated tricks. Hated the hope that coursed through her veins at his words. Scott had fooled her, too, she reminded herself. Pretended to care for her when he was using her all along.
“Then shit-can us and kick us to the curb,” Logan told her. “Come on—we’ll be a kick-ass crew of hired hands. The best you ever had.”
“Hired hands? What does that mean? You’ll want to be paid?”
Logan thought about it. “Guess we will. Fair wages. We’ve got to be able to take our wives out to dinner now and then, don’t you think?”
“You have a wife?” Somehow the thought of it twisted her gut.
“Not yet.” And before she could stop him, Logan took two steps forward, bent down and snatched a kiss, jerking back out of the way again before she could slug him. “I’d say that’s a start,” he added and walked away jauntily, whistling for Isobel and Champ to follow him. The little furry traitors did. “We’ll l
ook for a roster of chores in the kitchen at lunchtime,” he called over his shoulder.
Lena scrubbed his kiss off her lips with the back of her hand and watched him go, pissed and shocked and… thrown off-kilter.
He was an ass. A cocky bastard. And she hadn’t liked his kiss. She didn’t know why her heart had leaped when they touched or why her lips still tingled. She was not attracted to the Marine. At all.
But if the men really wanted to be hired hands, she’d boss them around. And Logan? She’d make sure he paid dearly for that kiss. By the time she was done with him, he’d be too tired to try anything like that again.
Chapter Three
‡
Thank God he had fantastic reflexes, honed by his time in the military, Logan thought as he strode toward the house, the dogs racing ahead of him. It had been worth risking an uppercut to his face to get that kiss—and to see Lena’s expression afterward. She’d been shocked. Outraged, maybe.
But he didn’t think she’d been disgusted.
Her mouth had been soft under his, and his body thrummed with interest when he thought of kissing her again. He needed to be patient, though. Give her time to get used to him. Used to the idea he meant to be her man.
Lena’s man.
He liked the sound of it. Liked the solidity it would lend to his life. The period it would put to his parents’ dream of him entering the priesthood. And if Alice was right, and Lena was the woman he was meant to save, so much the better. Anything to get St. Michael out of his dreams.
He spent the rest of the morning in the guest room answering emails that had accumulated in the last weeks of his service, checking news sites, and generally wasting time until lunch. When the noon meal rolled around, Logan couldn’t help but feel anticipation, mixed with a dash of concern. What if Lena blew them off?
But she didn’t. She rose to the challenge they’d given her and posted a roster of duties near the kitchen door—the first thing he saw when he walked in.
The second thing he saw was Lena. Her watchful gaze resting on him.
He checked the roster again.
There were a lot of jobs listed under his name.
