Chapter 1 #2
He’d been back to the ranch just twice since Richard’s death. Each time had been with a different bimbo—er, woman—at his side and a disinterested smile on his lips as he watched their guests get excited over milking cows and feeding pigs.
Neither time had he indulged in any of the activities available, at least nothing that involved the great outdoors. No, his recreation of choice had been staying in bed with his guest and ringing for room service—which they didn’t have.
At least he’d called ahead each time as he was doing now, warning her. She supposed she should be grateful for that consideration. “I’m sorry,” she said into her phone. Mud dripped off her nose. “We’re booked.”
“I didn’t tell you when I’m arriving.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re solid for the month. A group of businessmen is checking in, and we have three more groups booked back-to-back after they leave.”
“I’m sure we can find a spare room,” he said easily.
We. That meaning her and the mouse in her pocket, she supposed. “For when?”
“Tonight.”
She gripped the phone. Mud squished through her fingers. “So soon?”
“Yep.” Was that a laugh in his voice? “Why don’t you go ahead and finish terrorizing that poor pig first. I’ll wait.”
Pulling the phone away from her ear, she stared at it, heart hammering in her ears. Another drop of mud dripped from her nose to the receiver.
“I’d offer to help,” he said. “But I’m not interested in a mud bath as a part of my pampering.”
Lifting her head, she searched her immediate vicinity.
Big house at her right, series of small one-room cabins on her left, where the staff lived.
One large barn and stables straight ahead, a smaller hay barn beside it, and behind them the open corrals and fields of the ranch.
Beyond that, the Dragoon Mountains, where she’d led countless expeditions to abandoned mining camps and old Apache lookout points along mountain precipices and ridges that rolled along as far as the eye could see.
Twisting around, she looked behind her. The new grass, the driveway…and the black truck that hadn’t been there before her pig hunt. Leaning against the driver’s side stood a man she recognized all too well, despite only seeing him three times in her life.
He looked the same; he always did, which was to say knee-knockingly good.
He was just over six feet, with dark hair on the wrong side of his last haircut, thick and unruly to the top of his collar.
There was a few days’ growth on his lean jaw, and mirrored sunglasses on eyes she knew to be a steely, unsettling shade of gray like his father’s had been.
He wore a dark blue T-shirt with some emblem she couldn’t read over his left pec, probably his firefighter’s patch, and nicely fitted Levi’s faded in all the stress points.
He had running shoes on his feet, not boots, and inwardly she sneered at the thought of him walking in those toward her, in the mud.
Seeming quite unconcerned, his long legs were casually crossed, his broad shoulders relaxed for a man who’d just shown up where he wasn’t wanted and knew it.
Or maybe he didn’t know it.
In any case, he held his phone to his ear, and when he saw her looking at him, he smiled with that mouth that had once nearly made her orgasm from just a kiss, and waved the phone at her.
Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself upright. He looked good and wicked to the bone, which unfortunately she’d learned was a terrible weakness on her part. She had no idea how it was possible to both hate and lust after someone at the same time, but with Jake, she’d always managed it.
Mud dripped off her red tank top, the one she’d put on that morning with a smile and anticipation of the spring ahead. Her fresh, dark blue jeans were now brown. She shoved the phone back onto her belt and put her filthy hands on her equally filthy hips.
To add insult to injury, the last little piglet ran right up to his pen and stood still, waiting to be let in. “I’m feeling hungry for bacon,” she hissed at it, then straightened and looked at Jake.
He slid his phone into his pocket and shoved his sunglasses to the top of his head, eyeing her with a gaze that made her want to squirm.
She held her breath and waited to hear him say, “I’m selling the Blue Flame.”
Instead, his smile was pure sin.
And slowly, slowly, she let out her held breath, trying to remain unmoved.
Maybe he really was just here for a visit, just like those other two times since Richard’s funeral.
Maybe just like then, he’d stay holed up in his room with whatever woman he had with him, appearing only to eat, looking rumpled and sated and far too sexy for his own good.
And then he’d go away, far far away, until she had enough money saved that she could get herself a big, fat loan and try to buy Blue Flame herself.
That was her dream, and no one could take that from her.
Except him.
Nothing but pure stubborn pride kept her from throwing herself at his feet and begging him to wait to sell until she had enough money to buy.
Instead, casual as she could, she opened the pig pen, let the errant piglet in, then carefully latched it.
Then she walked over to him and thrust out her hand.
He stared at it, then smiled. “Formal, given what we’ve done, don’t you think?”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“Okay…” Instead of giving her his right hand, he leaned in and kissed her cheek.
She jerked back. “What was that for?”
“A polite hello. For two people who’ve—”
“Don’t. Don’t you dare say it.”
He grinned, and she turned away from the sight because it scraped at her tummy uncomfortably. Like ulcer-inducing uncomfortably. “So you need a room for two?”
“Two?”
She looked back. “Don’t you have a woman with you?”
Jake lifted a brow.
“Last time you had a blonde with you,” she reminded him. “And the time before that, a different blonde.”
“I didn’t have a blonde with me the first time I came up here.”
No, no, he hadn’t. He’d had her. A redhead.
His smile spread as he pushed away from the truck and came toward her. “Sweet of you to concern yourself with my social life, but sorry. I’m solo. Unless you’re offering—No? Well, then, count me as one.”
“So you’re here to what? I know it’s not to camp, you hate to camp.”.”
He had his right hand hooked in his front pocket and lifted his left shoulder. “Like I said, I’m up for some pampering.”
“The Blue Flame specializes in camping expeditions, hiking, and ranching activities. Not pampering. You know that.”
“You have a hot tub. Food. A massage therapist on call—Macy, if I recall. That’ll add up to enough pampering for now.
” His gaze traveled slowly down her mud-covered body, and then back up again, making every square inch tingle with an awareness that pissed her off.
“You’re looking a little tense, Callie.”
“Oddly enough, I’m feeling a little tense.”
“Why?”
“Why?” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Come on, Jake. You’re not that thick.”
Uninsulted, his lips curved. “Do you greet all the guests so friendly-like?”
Only the ones who made her world feel like a roller coaster.
Damn, she wished she could look at him without remembering what had happened between them on one dark, drunken, foolish night.
“I’m sorry.” She sounded stiff to her own ear, and lifted her hands to indicate the mud she wore.
“Let me take you inside. I’ll change, see what accommodations we can find for you, even though I can tell you we really are booked. ”
“Great.”
Great. She told herself she wasn’t going to worry. She wasn’t going to waste energy thinking about him or what he could do to her life—such as ruin it.
They stepped onto the grass, and with a loud, aggressive honk, Goose waddled toward them, head down, picking up speed as she went.
Jake stopped short.
Goose charged him anyway.
“Goose!”
At Callie’s sharp voice, the goose let out one more honk, but slowed. Glared at Jake.
He shook his head. “You haven’t eaten that thing yet?”
“She’d be too tough to eat.”
His laugh said that he agreed, but he eyed the goose with a healthy mistrust as they walked by her.
Callie tried not to think about why his laugh had somehow softened her, or why his being afraid of a silly goose made her want to hold his hand. Clearly, she had hormonal issues today. Nothing a good hard day of work couldn’t cure.
They headed toward the big house, Jake moving with a natural grace that reminded her she dripped mud with every stiff step she took. She’d never felt more unfeminine or unattractive in her life.
There. Hormonal issue resolved.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
A safe enough question, and one that didn’t surprise her. “Eddie and Stone are most likely in town enjoying their day off.” Stone was probably drinking too much, too, she thought with a flicker of worry that she kept to herself.
“Tucson?”
“Tucson’s too far for a day run. Three Rocks.”
“Three Rocks isn’t a town. I blinked on the way in here and nearly missed it.”
“Not every place is as big as San Diego.”
He lifted a brow in agreement. “Okay, so the Motley Crew is out on the ‘town.’”
Callie smiled at the nickname for Stone and Eddie McDermitt.
The brothers might have been hell on the myriad of other ranches they’d been fired from because monotony bored them, but the Blue Flame catered to their guests’ whims, which always varied, so there was no monotony.
She’d known when she’d hired the brothers that she wouldn’t be sorry.
They had a good work ethic, were fast on their feet, and delighted their guests with their “real cowboy” charm.
In fact, she couldn’t have managed without them.
That they had some personal problems was another story.
“You know Kathy left us last week. I just hired a new cook. Amy Wheeler. I emailed you her employment form? She’s probably in town today too.
Marge left yesterday to take a break from cleaning and preparing bedrooms, but if I know her, she’s at her mother’s house doing more of the same, and Lou’s looking for work as he just got laid off from his full-time job in town. ”
“Lou?”
“You remember Marge’s husband? He works for us on an as-needed basis doing all our mechanical stuff?”
“Right. But I guess when I said others, I meant Tucker.”
Now that did surprise her. “His day is his own today as well.”
Jake nodded, and she couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.
“So why are you here today?” he asked. “Don’t you ever take time off from this place?
” He looked around as if he couldn’t understand why one would choose to spend their free time out here.
That insulted her, and since she couldn’t come up with something nice to say, she took a lesson from Thumper’s mother and said nothing at all.
They stepped onto the porch that might have needed some refinishing, but did he have to look at it like it wouldn’t hold their weight?
She kicked off her muddy boots, not wanting to ruin the clean floors inside.
Opening the door, she gestured him in ahead, but he stopped in the doorway with her and put his hand on her arm.
She looked down at his fingers on her skin, then up at his face. He was crowding her, darn it. Please, God, don’t let him say he was selling. Not yet. She wasn’t ready yet—
“I saddled you with him,” he said quietly. “Is it working out?”
It took a moment for her brain to shift gears. “You mean Tucker?”
He nodded, and she let out a low laugh. “You ‘saddled’ me with him nearly two years ago. You’re just now asking?
” She shook her head. “Tucker is amazing with the horses. This place is better for having him here. You should know that. You would know that if you’d looked around at all on your last two visits. ”
Jake’s steely gaze searched hers. “I’m just making sure. He’s stubborn as hell, and hard-headed to boot.”
“And brooding and moody too. All traits that run in the family, I’m taking it.”
“He’s only my half brother.”
She knew this, of course. She knew far too much about this man who stood too close.
“Look, make yourself at home, okay?” He would anyway.
He had every right to do so, more often than he did.
She needed to remember that, and be grateful this was probably no longer a visit than his others had been.
“I’ll be back in a few.” She turned to go back out, but they were still in the doorway together, too close in her opinion, and she accidentally bumped into him, making him hiss out a breath.
“Sorry,” she said, a little surprised at his reaction.
His expression shuttered. “No problem.”
She looked him over, trying to figure out what she was missing, but he gave off no clue. “When I get back, I’ll try to figure out where to put you for a few nights—”
“More than a few.”
“So…three or four?”
“Yeah, three or four. Months.”
And he turned and walked into the living room.