The woman, the one with the fancy name of Alexis Chastain, was copying the way he shook his head as she said, “I told you, she can’t come so I’m taking her place.”
“That’s impossible,” Jace began with heat and not a little frustration. “You can’t do that….”
“Boss,” one of the other men broke in. “Does this have to be decided now? Can’t we go into the house? It’s near midnight and she looks about ready to drop.”
Jace looked over at the brothers who’d worked for him since graduating from high school just over a year ago. He couldn’t see much in the gloom, but he knew Rocky was the one who’d spoken. No doubt, Gil was nodding in agreement. He glanced back at the woman. He didn’t think she looked ready to drop. Her hands were on her hips, her spine was straight as a railroad spike, and if she tipped forward, that outthrust chin of hers would spear him in the chest. As far as he could tell, she looked ready to argue.
“Okay,” he said finally, giving her a wary look. “Gil, can you get this car out of here and park it up by the barn? Miss Chastain, give Gil your key and he’ll take care of the car for you.”
He was glad to see that she obeyed without question, meekly handing over the car key to Gil, who quickly started the vehicle and pulled away. Jace winced at the sound of metal scraping against the wall, then against the broken mailbox post, but Gil gave an apologetic wave and disappeared up the long, graveled driveway.
“I’ll put the hose away.” Jace took the end of the garden hose from Rocky and began looping it as he did a rope. He didn’t need to do this, but he always thought better if his hands were busy with something. What was he supposed to do with her? he thought furiously as he made loops in the plastic hose. Why hadn’t that Rachel Burrows girl they’d hired shown up as she’d promised? She’d signed a contract. Didn’t that mean anything? Blast it, he didn’t want to deal with this. He hadn’t even wanted to be head of the school board. He didn’t have kids. He would probably never even have kids. Why should he need to do the job?
Because it was his turn. In a community as small as Sleepy River, everyone took a turn at some job. This year, Jace was head of the school board.
Disgruntled, he nodded toward the other man. “Rocky, you take her up to the house.”
“I’ll go get your bag for you, miss,” Rocky said. “As soon as Gil parks your car for you.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” she said, and Jace could hear determination in her voice. She turned and stumbled around until she located her purse on the ground. She hitched the strap over her shoulder as she said, “I can take care of everything myself. If you’ll point me to the cottage I’m to occupy, I’ll be fine.”
Obviously, she thought that once she got inside the teacher’s cottage, they couldn’t dislodge her.
“It’s not ready,” Jace said.
“Not ready?” Now he heard a thread of panic in her voice. Hands thrust out, she turned from one to the other of them. “What do you mean?”
“You weren’t…I mean, Miss Burrows wasn’t expected until next week. No one’s lived in the cottage for a couple of years. It needs to be cleaned. No, I’ve got a guest room. You’ll stay there until we get this straightened out.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue further, but then snapped it shut. Rocky could be a gentleman when he wanted to and he turned on the charm now as he said, “Don’t you worry about a thing, miss. We’ll get you settled in and things will look a lot better in the morning.” Quickly, he took her arm and supported her as he guided her toward the ranch house. Jace could hear him talking quietly all the while, much as he did to a skittish filly.
Even as he wondered what in blazes he was going to do now, Jace finished winding up the hose and followed Rocky and Alexis to the house. Gil joined him as he reached the porch steps and the two of them walked inside together.
Jace nearly stumbled over his own size twelve feet at the sight that greeted him in the living room. Beside him, he heard Gil draw in his breath, and then choke out a cough.
Rocky was transfixed by the woman who stood, blinking in the glare of the overhead light Jace had flipped on when he’d run from the house. She didn’t notice the men because she was busy inspecting the very masculine-looking living room.
A sideways glance at Gil told Jace that he, too, was thunderstruck. Jace wouldn’t have been surprised to see the boys’ eyes begin to slowly twirl cartoonlike in their heads. Their jaws had gone slack. Jace hoped they didn’t start drooling.
He couldn’t blame them, though, he thought as his own gaze was drawn back to her. She was a beauty all right, he admitted grudgingly.
Curly chestnut hair cascaded to a slim waist. Her face was fine-boned with almond-shaped green eyes and lips as luscious as a fresh peach. She wore sage green slacks and a matching cotton sweater that, even streaked with soot, made her look cool and unruffled.
A feeling he hoped was dread stirred within him. Great, he thought. Just great. It didn’t matter what she called herself. He already knew her name. It was Trouble.
All this room needed was a chair made out of steer horns and cowhides, Alexis thought. The furnishings were dark, covered in scarred leather or faded Mexican serapes. There was a huge rag rug on the floor to lighten the somber mood of the room. For all its masculinity, the room felt invitingly comfortable. In fact, she wouldn’t mind curling up on that old sofa right now and falling asleep—after crying her eyes out for half an hour.
A low noise that sounded like undisguised irritation broke off her interest in the living room. She turned to see all three men staring at her. To her surprise, she realized Gil and Rocky were twins. They appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties, with dark eyes and thick black hair that looked as if it needed attention from a barber who knew his way around a haystack. Both men were staring at her as if they were in a trance. She’d had that look turned on her before and she automatically began to stiffen her spine and give them a cool look, but then she realized that they only saw her as an attractive woman, not as a marriageable princess. Gratefully, she gave them a warm smile that seemed to buckle their knees.
“Gwarp,” they said in unison and leaned on each other for strength.
Laughing softly, she looked at Jace McTaggart who was scowling ferociously. Her amusement died an instant death. This most definitely was not a man to be charmed. In fact, right now he looked mad enough to spit bullets.
Everything about him looked tough. He could fit right into an old western movie where it was often hard to tell heroes from villains.
This man could have played on either side of the law.
He was tall, at least six feet two, with broad shoulders that strained the seams of a white T-shirt, muscular arms and big hands that rested now at the waist of unbelted jeans that rode low on his hips.
His face would have invited comment anywhere. His dark brown eyes were deep-set and searching, his nose was long and straight over a firm mouth. Even his hair, as dark and rich as mahogany, was straight, swept away from his broad forehead, and precisely cut. It was as if nature had put him together using a ruler and T-square, leaving off any softening effects. She felt a jolt of dismay, followed by a surge of warmth when his eyes lifted to meet hers.
“Miss Chastain,” he began. “You don’t belong here, but we’ll discuss that in the morning. Right now Rocky is going to fetch your bag while Gil shows you to the guest room.” He nodded toward the back of the house. “It’s right through there and it has its own bathroom.” He gave his two young employees a significant look. “As well as a lock on the door. Feel free to use it.”
Alexis wanted to argue, to tell him she certainly belonged here, but she was too tired. “All right,” she said with a meekness that surprised her.
“Rocky. Gil,” Jace said. “Get moving.”
The two men finally seemed to come out of their trances. With a blush, Rocky turned and plunged toward the front door, but was brought up short by the sight of a pile of rags beside it.
Jace glanced at it. “That’s what Miss Chastain grabbed to fight the fire she started.”
She gave him a disgruntled look. She thought she’d done pretty well to find something to use.
Rocky held it up and she could see that it was an old quilt, streaked now with dirt and mud, and with long scorch marks running its length. “But isn’t this…?”
Jace’s direct gaze swung back to Alexis. “The heirloom quilt my great-grandmother made out of her wedding dress,” he said.
When she shut the guest room door behind her five minutes later, Alexis’s face was still burning with embarrassment.
How could she possibly have known that quilt was an heirloom? And what on earth had it been doing lying on a chair on the front porch if it was so important? Her family certainly never left such things thrown around, she thought self-righteously. Not that it would be easy to do so with one of the fifteenth-century tapestries that filled her family home.
Still, Alexis felt terrible about the ruined quilt and she knew she’d need to make up for it somehow, along with any other fire damage she had caused.
This was not an auspicious beginning to her new job.
She was too tired to think about that right now. Reaching up, she rubbed her temples with her fingertips, then looked at the room which was hers for the night.
Like the rest of the house, it was decidedly masculine. The bed had an old-fashioned iron bed frame and a high mattress covered with a black-and-blue plaid bedspread. A fifties-style lamp with a tiered shade in Chinese red stood on a rickety table that had been painted a cheerful yellow. A faded rag rug much like the one in the living room covered an oval section of floor beside the bed.
The riotous color scheme didn’t matter to her. Cleanliness was the most important thing and this room definitely looked clean. Stark, she thought with a grim smile as she set her suitcase on the bed and flipped it open, but certainly clean.
Delighted with the luxury of a private bathroom, Alexis quickly prepared for bed, then climbed gratefully between the covers. Even as she drifted off to sleep, she pictured Jace McTaggart’s face as he’d told her she didn’t belong in Sleepy River.
Tomorrow she would prove him wrong, she thought as she drifted into exhausted sleep. She appeared to be on some kind of quest to prove a number of people wrong. She might as well add him to the list.
Alexis thought of his snapping dark eyes, firm jaw, and emphatic statement that she didn’t belong. In fact, she would put him at the top of the list.
Chapter Two
Pounding on the bedroom door and a loud male voice announcing, “Breakfast in ten minutes,” had Alexis springing upright as if the palace guards had shot off a cannon over her head.
Hand clutched to her throat, she looked around wildly for Esther before she realized that her lady-in-waiting wasn’t there and she wasn’t in her own apartments in the palace.
It was several more seconds before her mind cleared enough to tell her that she was in Sleepy River, Arizona, where she had run for a temporary refuge from family tensions and responsibilities.
Exhaling a relieved sigh, she looked around and was pleased to see that the room didn’t seem quite as dauntingly colorful as it had the night before. In fact, the furnishings held a somewhat eclectic charm. The cheerful August sun streaming in the east-facing windows helped a great deal, sending a warm glow across the foot of the bed, the wooden floor and the cozy rug.
Alexis yawned, stretched and stared at her bedside clock. Even though she’d barely had six hours of sleep, she felt refreshed. More than that, she felt eager. She would begin preparing for her new job today—as soon as she had convinced her reluctant host/school board chairman that her presence there was no mistake.
She slipped out of bed and walked over to the window. Blinking in the bright morning sunlight, she gazed out at the view, and was pleasantly surprised to see an open pasture dotted with cattle in the distance. Towering pine, aspen and spruce trees covered the upslope of the nearest mountain and a fruit orchard grew nearby.
It was a lovely, pastoral scene marred only by the faint, lingering stench of burned grass from last night’s fire.
Wincing at the memory of her clumsiness, Alexis pulled away from the window and wondered how she was going to make up for that fiasco. Half-smiling, she remembered what her mother used to say, “Sometimes, all one can do is hold the head high and keep going, saying nothing.”
Somehow, Alexis didn’t think that Jace followed that philosophy.
What had he said? Ten minutes? Alexis glanced at the clock again. And she’d already wasted three. She scurried out of bed, grabbed some clothes from her suitcase and dashed for the bathroom.
Jace looked dubiously around the breakfast table. Rocky and Gil had arrived earlier than usual. Since Jace was the best cook of the three of them, he cooked breakfast while Gil and Rocky did some outside chores, then came in, unshaven, grizzled and already dusty, to eat eggs, toast and bacon and slurp coffee while they discussed the day’s work.
This morning, though, they hadn’t been able to make it outside for any chores because they’d been busy fighting over use of the bathroom. Jace had heard the unaccustomed weekday sounds of a couple of buzzing electric razors. He was then treated to the sight of his two hired men arriving in the kitchen with slicked-down hair, clean shirts, jeans and boots, wearing enough aftershave and cologne to knock over a nine-hundred-pound steer.
“You two boys going somewhere?” he’d asked, staring first at one, then the other of them.
“Nah,” they’d answered in harmony, then shuffled their feet and sat down. In unison, they turned to stare, unblinking, at the new schoolteacher’s bedroom door. They reminded him of a couple of coyotes waiting outside a prairie dog’s den for the tasty morsel to appear.
When her bedroom door did open and she emerged, Alexis jumped back immediately, alarmed by the rush of two large male bodies in her direction. The cowboys bowed before her and she threw Jace an alarmed look over their bobbing heads. He fought a grin, pleased to see that for all her boldness, these two hired hands could perturb her.
“Morning, Miss Chastain,” Gil said, grinning like a fool as he rose from his sweeping bow.
“Did you sleep well, miss?” Rocky asked, elbowing his brother aside.
Gil placed his booted foot in front of Rocky’s, reached out with his own elbow, and gave his brother a poke in the ribs that had Rocky’s eyes bugging from their sockets as he made a strangled sound.
“F…fine,” she stammered, looking at Jace’s two crazed cowboys and then at him as if trying to figure out which way to run.
“Boys,” he said mildly, strolling across the kitchen to take charge. “Quit crowding the lady. Let her sit down and have some breakfast.” He looked at her and nodded toward the table.
She gave him a wobbly smile that had him focusing on her. Last night, he had been too caught up in his surprise and annoyance to notice much beyond her knockout looks and her insistence that she had come to stay.
Now, he saw that she had courage, as well, because these two idiot cowboys hadn’t sent her shrieking back to her room. She also had compassion because she was still smiling at Gil and Rocky. Jace felt his interest in her growing and he didn’t like that at all. He frowned at the boys so furiously, they leaped to do his bidding.
“Oh, oh yeah, sure Jace.” They both stood back, still grinning, as she skirted cautiously around them. As she reached to pull out a chair, the boys seemed to recall their manners and, as one, vaulted to do it for her. She saw them coming and managed to dart aside just in time to avoid being flattened in the rush. As it was, they tripped over each other, hissed a few expletives into each other’s ears, and had a minor skirmish, but they eventually dragged the chair out. They gazed at Alexis like a couple of puppies waiting for a treat. Jace decided it was time he
took matters in hand.
“You two sit down,” he ordered them. “You’re scaring the hel…heck out of her,” he growled. For a moment, he considered telling one of them to pour her some coffee, but realized that putting anything hot into their hands at this moment was just asking for trouble.
He poured some for himself, and when he held up the pot inquiringly, she nodded and gave him a nervous smile as she seated herself.
There was a moment of awkward hesitation before Gil and Rocky realized they were supposed to be passing food and hurriedly grabbed for platters of toast and eggs which they shoved at Alexis. Bewildered, she reached jerkily for them before the contents sailed down her shirtfront.
Jace sighed. It was a good thing she would be leaving today or they would never get any more work done. He might be hoping for something that wasn’t going to happen, though. The real teacher they’d hired, Rachel Burrows, was only slightly less attractive than this woman.
Still, he’d better send her on her way directly after breakfast because Gil and Rocky had some branding to do and the way things were going, they’d be decorating each other’s rumps with the Running M brand.
He sipped his coffee as his gaze drifted over the bright red-brown fall of her hair. It cascaded down her back and contrasted with the pale gold camp shirt she wore with a pair of faded jeans. The combination of colors made him think of fall leaves, but her green eyes looked like spring.
When he realized what direction his thoughts were taking, Jace choked on a sip of coffee and coughed several times. Alexis gave him a concerned look, but neither Gil nor Rocky spared him a glance. They were so enthralled with her that he could have dropped dead on the tabletop and they would have done no more than reach across his cold, stiff body to get the butter for her. Obviously, it was time he got this situation under control.
“Miss Chastain, we appreciate you stopping by,” he began lamely. “But there’s been a mistake. You’re not the one we hired for the teaching position, so we’ll just wait until Miss Burrows comes, and…”
The Runaway Princess Page 2
