“Well, I just can’t tell you how excited we are to have you here,” the woman said happily when she had decided that the embrace had gone on long enough. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for Christmas morning!”
“Please, forgive my wife,” the man beside her interjected with a weary voice, although he looked upon the woman with clear affection. “She gets ahead of herself from time to time. Why don’t we start with introductions before we go any further? You’re Jolie Hill, I presume?”
“That’s right,” Jolie replied with a wide, albeit slightly uncertain smile. “I am indeed.”
“Good,” the man said with an answering smile and a nod of approval. “And I’m Denver Pratt, the ranch’s foreman. This eager one here is my wife, Miranda. I think it’s safe to say she’s been jonesing for a little bit of female company.”
“Not that you’ll be expected to entertain me,” Miranda said quickly, elbowing Denver in the ribs playfully. “He’s just trying to make up for my over-eager behavior. Or welcoming, which is what I prefer to call it. Think of us as your personal welcoming committee.”
Miranda’s words were so friendly that before Jolie could stop herself, she let a giggle escape her lips. She clapped a hand over her mouth almost as soon as the sound came out, but it was too late. She could see by the way Denver raised his eyebrows again that the reaction was noticeable. Jolie went from feeling pleasantly surprised to mortified in less time than it took to blink an eye. She had a habit of irreverent humor, and often found herself laughing at the wrong times. At twenty-nine, she was used to that part of herself. Even so, she had hoped to make it through the preliminary introductions to her future managers without doing anything foolish. Even the idea that she might start inappropriately laughing again when she met the owner of the ranch made her feel sick to her stomach, which was enough to wipe any lingering humor off of her face.
“Please, dear, don’t trouble yourself,” Miranda said kindly, clearly sensing Jolie’s discomfort. “You’ve got a lovely laugh, and you should use it as often as you can. Life’s too short not to giggle, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Jolie said with an uncertain smile, so grateful for Miranda’s kindness that she wanted to cry. “Thank you.”
“And now, if you two are finished,” Denver said, clearing his throat disapprovingly, but with a twinkle in his eyes, “let’s head inside. Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper, will be anxious to meet you as well, I’m sure.”
“Let’s just say, right here and now, that everyone working this ranch will be pleased by your arrival,” Miranda said happily, leaning in closer and speaking in a conspiratorial tone that made Jolie laugh again. “The Westland Ranch is a wonderful place to work and live, but the food sometimes leaves a little to be wanting. Mrs. Hobbs has been doing her best to take care of it, but she’ll be the first to admit that cooking isn’t her favorite thing. ”
Denver said nothing, but his grimace was enough for Jolie to know that he agreed with his wife. She took a deep breath and nodded to herself, already starting to feel a little more at ease as Denver and Miranda led her into the grand ranch house.
Starting something new was always tense, but it was comforting to hear how greatly her talents were anticipated. It would do her good to feel like she was being useful while doing something she enjoyed again, too. It had been a little while since that happened, since she’d left her job with her tail between her legs after a disastrous end to an ill-advised work romance.
“Oh, you’re here!” a woman Jolie took to be Mrs. Hobbs cried as soon as she stepped over the threshold. “How wonderful. I’m Mrs. Hobbs, the housekeeper. I’ll be showing you around the house, helping you get acclimated, and outlining your duties as well. How do you feel about coming with me while Denver sees to your things?”
“Oh, well, sure,” Jolie stammered, taken aback by the idea of the foreman taking on the role of bellboy for her. “If he’s okay with that. Honestly, I don’t have many things, though. It won’t be a problem for me to grab them.”
But Denver and Miranda were already headed back out the door, and he waved her off with a grunt. Jolie shrugged, then nodded at Mrs. Hobbs, who beamed at her as if giving a house tour were her heart’s greatest desire.
In the end, Jolie was glad to have somebody to show her around the house. It was big enough that she thought she might have gotten lost on her own. Her parents had chosen to live in a fancy penthouse in one of Houston’s high rises, and while it was elegant and almost ludicrously refined, it wasn’t anything like this. This place was old money, all deep, polished wood and impressive paintings big enough to span half a wall. Mrs. Hobbs, who looked like she had to be in her mid-seventies and who said she had worked in the Westland house for decades, told Jolie all sorts of things about the ranch’s history, although the stories mostly went in one ear and out the other. Jolie was too overwhelmed by the beauty and enormity of the place to be able to keep facts in her head.
Grab your copy of The Rancher’s Marriage Bargain
Available September 3, 2020
www.LeslieNorthBooks.com
BLURB
One fooled town.
Two fools in love.
For years, life on the road is the only life hotshot rodeo star Dean “Wildcard” Slate knows. Until an injury forces him to step away from the spotlight and spend time on the small-town ranch he’s always wanted. Without the tabloids following his every move, Dean can finally enjoy the quiet life for a while and maybe even have some fun.
Town sweetheart Marley Arrowood is finally happy with the way her life is going. She’s escaped from her perfectly planned-out future, ditched the ex she didn’t love and fulfilled her dream of opening a bakery. But one night with a handsome cowboy changes everything when Marley discovers another kind of bun in the oven.
Neither Dean or Marley was looking for a relationship but after the town and the press catch wind of their short-lived affair, they have no choice but to fool everyone that they’re in love to keep their reputations in tact. But more fool them when their fake romance starts to fuel very real feelings…
Grab your copy of The Cowboy’s Pregnant Fake Fiancée here.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
Carter Janus woke that morning with a curse primed and ready on his lips. The thirty-four-year-old rancher turned over in bed, grimacing, as the pins in his hip made themselves known, launching sparks of now-familiar pain. It had been a fitful night’s sleep; he had spent the majority of it chasing sheep rather than counting them.
But this was who he was now. He was a man in his physical prime who could barely walk without assistance. A rancher who could scarcely pick up around his own ranch—a horseman medically forbidden from ever riding again. He was the reflection he saw in the mirror: unshaven, unkempt, with new creases etched around his eyes and mouth that sent lifelong acquaintances skittering across the street to avoid him. He looked like one miserable cuss. Added to that, he looked like a man who was always in pain.
He was always in pain.
And there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.
“What’s got you so surly this morning?” Regina Janus, his mother and occasional equal pain in the ass, greeted him as he hobbled into the kitchen. He made a beeline for the coffee pot, unwilling to engage the woman who had raised him until he had a cup of liquid sunshine gripped in one calloused fist.
“You have to ask?” Carter finally answered, moments later, as he lowered himself into the chair across the table from her, holding his mug stiffly away from his body.
His mother’s mouth twisted in sympathy, and she reached across the table and gripped his forearm in solidarity. Carter let her. He knew she would take his pain away if she could. Didn’t matter that he was a grown man now, and she a widow with her own fair share of hurt to nurse.
“I know what’ll get your mind off that leg of yours: a change of subject. So how about you tell me all there is to know about that new PT from New York City that Grey
’s sending over today.” His mother’s eyes twinkled in a familiar way that meant trouble for him.
“Nothin’ to tell,” he grunted. So much for a change of subject. And so much for Grey keeping matters between the two of them. Grey Phelps might be based out of New York City nowadays, but deep down, he was still that kid from Sow’s Creek who had come over for play dates and often ended up sitting at the kitchen table trading town gossip with Carter’s mother over milk and cookies. “What do you want to know?”
Regina lifted her eyebrows as she took a sip from her coffee cup without deigning to reply. No such thing as a stupid question, but if there were, that would be one of them. Carter was wary of going down this track with his notoriously meddlesome mother, so he kept the information brief. “She’s thirty, maybe. Younger’n me. She’s named for some type of tree.” Willow. He had turned the name over in his mind a few times already, trying to decide what kind of woman it belonged to. He had purposefully kept himself from looking up her professional page online, telling himself he didn’t care and it didn’t matter. “She’s qualified,” he concluded.
“Grey said she has a son, and she’s bringing him along with her,” his mother coaxed. “But no husband in the picture?”
“Let’s not do this again,” Carter suggested.
Regina drew back with a look of bewilderment that, in Carter’s opinion, was overdone. “Do what again?” she asked innocently. “Just what are you accusing your mother of?”
“Meddling,” he answered without missing a beat.
“When have I ever meddled?”
He snorted at her wide-eyed expression. “I seem to recall a Christmas party last year where you talked me into playing Santa.”
“You were a wonderful Santa!” his mother protested. “At the very least, you were the handsomest this town has ever seen. You better believe some eligible ladies left that party with a complex about Christmas they’re sure to carry for years to come.”
“I’ve got chores to do,” Carter replied as he shoved his chair out from the table.
“You forgot your cane!” his mother called after him.
He half-turned and held his hand out. Regina tut-tutted disapprovingly but tossed the cane to him all the same. He snatched it out of the air and braced himself against it as he hobbled toward the front door.
“Carter…” His mother’s tone was less intentionally mettlesome now. “You don’t look well. Are you sure the pain isn’t too much today?”
“Ranch can’t run itself,” Carter said without glancing behind him. “And I can’t leave everything to Jack. Even a foreman’s got his limits.”
“You’ve got your limits, too,” his mother countered. Carter let the porch door swing shut behind him and pretended not to hear.
Within half an hour, the dogs started up barking fit to wake the dead. Carter paused in his labor, setting his rake aside, and limped up the hill in time to spy an unfamiliar car pulling up in the driveway.
The PT. She had arrived earlier than expected.
Carter leaned on his cane as he watched the car roll to a halt. The driver’s door popped open, and a woman stepped out. The ranch dogs swarmed her immediately, wagging their tails in approval and nosing at her hands for affection.
Grey had filled him in on a lot. But Grey hadn’t warned him how pretty she was going to be.
Carter would have never pegged the woman stepping out from behind the car door as a physical therapist. Her honey-blonde hair was down, hanging around narrow, erect shoulders in gentle waves. She could afford to run a brush through it after the long drive, and the slightly self-conscious look on her face as she hurried around the front of the car clued him that she probably thought the same, but he had an instant liking for the way that mane of hers was allowed to run free.
He wished he could see what color her eyes were.
He equally wished he could take back the thought.
“Carter Janus?” The woman gave up negotiating with whatever sat in the passenger seat and jogged through the sea of dogs over to him. Carter’s eyes narrowed. “Willow Spalding.”
It was tempting to leave her proffered hand hanging. It was on the tip of Carter’s tongue to tell her to get back in her car and go home to the city. He didn’t want any distractions from healing, and the woman tasked with his care was a diversion on legs. And God, what legs. Long and slender and subtly muscled, their definition accentuated by a pair of black form-fitting yoga pants.
Qualifications be damned: Willow Spalding was exactly what he didn’t need in a PT.
He had come to point where he could accept that he needed help getting back on his feet—back in the saddle. But in his opinion, the hands of a woman this beautiful were more likely to hinder any progress than they were to urge it along. Her presence was already enough to make him hot under the collar; she was already too distracting. Not to mention, the moment his mother clapped eyes on Willow, the elder Janus was sure to try and meddle. He didn’t need to be dodging the machinations of women when he could barely walk a straight line.
But distractions aside, something wasn’t right here. Despite her professional manner as she’d stuck her hand out to him in the first place, she seemed as tempted to snatch her hand back now as he was to let it hover untaken. When at last he sheathed her palm in his, he was introduced to a surprisingly strong grip but felt her hand tremble slightly. She pulled it back and averted her gaze quickly before he could get to the bottom of what color her eyes were.
She was like a skittish horse, he realized. Something had her spooked, something he couldn’t define. If it was her surroundings, he wondered how long she would last here with or without his discouragement.
“Sorry. I’m trying to get Tavish out of the car to come and meet you. He’s my—”
“He’s your son.” At least he knew that much, thanks to Grey and Regina’s gossipy ways.
Willow nodded and turned away, tucking a stray lock of hair behind one ear. Carter followed her gaze. A young boy, about five years old, was peeking out around the side of the cab, watching the two adults exchange words. His small face was pinched, intent, his eyes alert.
“It’s okay, honey.” Willow crossed back to the car and unhitched the boy from his car seat. As soon as Tavish was on the ground, the dogs swarmed him.
Carter stepped forward quickly, suppressing a grimace. He had moved too fast on his bad leg, but he was fully prepared to keep going if the boy needed rescuing. Turns out he had nothing to worry about. Tavish had dropped to sit cross-legged in the dust of the driveway and better entertain his new furry fan club. The boy smiled in a hesitant way, almost as if he was afraid of getting into trouble—but also as if the sheer tide of joy that came with the dogs was far too much to resist in the end.
Carter heard the boy’s mother breathe an audible sigh of relief before she opened her mouth to suggest, “Tavish, why don’t you say hello to Mr. Janus?”
Tavish looked up, then quickly turned his eyes away again.
Just like his mother, Carter thought. “That’s all right. Plenty here ahead of me who came to say hello first. That one’s Bella.” Carter pointed to the shepherd mix vibrating her stubby tail ecstatically on Tavish’s left. “And the one with one blue and one brown eye is Bud.”
He listed off the welcoming committee’s names methodically and tried not to notice the rapt way the boy was watching him. His mother, too, was staring at Carter as if she couldn’t comprehend the language he was speaking.
He ran out of dogs and decided to switch subjects as soon as the boy’s attention was once more diverted. “Five, ain’t he?” He remembered Grey mentioning the boy’s age. “Don’t he talk?” He eyed Tavish, perplexed, as the boy laughed again and accepted a thorough face-washing from Bella.
“We’re… going through a bit of an introspective phase,” Willow offered diplomatically. Her worried expression as she looked at her son said otherwise.
It’s got nothing to do with me, Carter reminded himself. If the boy
talks or he don’t, it’s all the same. I don’t expect them to last the month here.
But he wouldn’t send them away. Not yet.
Two pairs of eyes turned toward him, as timid as they were curious, and Carter saw that they were a matching pale green. That was one mystery put to bed, anyway. He didn’t intend to entertain any of the others.
“Guess I better invite you in.”
He turned and hobbled inside.
Grab your copy of The Cowboy’s Pregnant Fake Fiancée here.
The Rancher’s Tempting Nanny Page 20
