Reuniting With the Rancher (3 page)

So he really should keep his attention on driving. But just as she had done all those years ago, Holly drew him. The windows were open, thank goodness, otherwise he’d be assailed by her scents, and if there was one thing he knew for certain, he hadn’t forgotten them. She still used the same shampoo; she still had the same enticing scent of femininity. Not strong, as it had been after they made love, but enough to remind him.

So here he was, stupidly walking into hell again. She’d only be here two weeks, long enough to get him all knotted up again, but completely lacking any kind of future. He hoped he had the sense to help her plant the tree and then go his way. Oh, he’d be a good neighbor and offer to keep an eye on the house when she left, but keeping an eye on a house wasn’t anywhere nearly as dangerous as keeping an eye on Holly.

He wished her thinness, her evident fatigue, would turn him off. Instead, all it was doing was turning his insides into protective mush. He couldn’t have this.

Inwardly he cussed himself for a fool, and warned himself to raise his guard. Do the minimum, stay away and turn his fullest attention to his own ranch, which had been all that had saved him all those years ago. Hard work was the answer.

Then she surprised him. She hadn’t made a single friendly gesture, but now she did. Damn it.

“How’s the ranch and business?”

Well, that ought to seem like a safe, casual question. Coming from her it felt freighted. “Okay,” he said. Then realizing how abrupt he sounded, he added, “Leasing the acreage from your aunt has been a great help. It allowed me to expand.”

“I heard cattle were getting more expensive to raise.”

“Out of sight. We’re transitioning to sheep. The wool market is still good.”

“Good.”

Clearly she wasn’t really interested in his life. If he was honest, she hadn’t been all that interested years ago, either. He might have found it easier to excuse her self-interest as youth if she hadn’t followed it up with the coup de grâce.

Then, “Are sheep more difficult to raise?”

“Troubles come in all sizes and all degrees of fuzziness.”

She surprised him with a laugh. “What a description!”

“It’s true.” He hated himself for wanting to smile. This was a demilitarized zone, not a party. “I traded one set of problems for another not so very different. The thing is, the sheep do better grazing on my land, and the wool comes every spring without me having to reduce my flock to make some money. Renewable resource.”

“I like that.”

He volunteered some more, testing her interest. “I also have a small herd of angora goats. They’re a bit more susceptible to parasites, but their wool brings a higher price, so naturally it’s more expensive to get going. Of course. So I’m growing my herd nature’s way.”

“It sounds like you have a plan.”

“I hope so. Independent ranchers are in danger of becoming an extinct species. But I’m actually doing pretty well.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, Cliff. So the sheep and goats get along well?”

“Well enough. My main headache is that the goats are more independent and adventurous. Keeping track of them can be a pain sometimes, and they need dietary additives. But when all is said and done, I like their antics.”

Oh, well,
he thought. He was going to have to deal with her at least some over the next couple of weeks. Greasing the skids with some superficial chitchat and courtesy ought to be safe enough. But no way was he going to fall into her honeyed web again.

Still, despite all the ugliness that had once happened, he couldn’t help a twinge of concern.
Way too thin,
he thought as he glanced at her again. The bones in her face had become prominent, and her skin appeared stretched tightly across them. Not good.

But he didn’t know how to ask without crossing into territory where she didn’t want him to walk. Of that he was certain. He had begun to suspect that the past was no more buried for her than it was for him. Some things, it seemed, hurt forever.

He sought something else to say, and the question came out without thinking. “You married? Kids?”

“No and no.”

It was a short answer, making it clear there were indeed limits to how personal she wanted to get with him. Hell, he thought, who was it who had taken out the scythe at their last meeting? Certainly not him.

“I tried it,” he said finally, and waited.

Presently she asked, “And?”

“And it stank. Big-time. We couldn’t shake the bottle hard enough to mix the oil and vinegar.”

He waited, then heard a smothered laugh escape her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but your description...”

In spite of himself, he laughed, too. “Well, I can’t think of a better one. Martha warned me.”

“Really?”

He sensed her turn toward him for the first time. “Yeah. She said... Well, she was Martha. She asked me which head I was thinking with, and said that it would make more sense to ride my horse off a cliff than marry that woman. She was right.”

“What happened?”

“Let’s just say I went off the deep end for one woman and woke up to find myself married to a different one.”

“Ouch.”

“My ego needed some bandaging, but that was about it. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be.”

She fell silent, and he let the subject go. It hadn’t been right with Lisa, and chances were it wouldn’t have been right with Holly, either. Not back then, for sure. Time to man up and admit it. He and Holly had been horses pulling in different directions, and if he’d been older and wiser he would have recognized it.

Well, he had learned his lessons. He hoped. All he needed to do was get that tree planted, see if Holly needed any other assistance and go back to his ranch, his sheep and his goats. It would take a special woman to want a life like that, and he couldn’t afford to forget it.

They finally jolted up to Martha’s house. “I need to get this road graded,” he remarked. “It always goes to hell over the winter and spring, and that little car of yours is going to bounce like a Ping-Pong ball.”

She didn’t say anything, and he wondered if he’d trespassed by taking possession of the problem. He didn’t know whether to sigh or roll his eyes. Oh, this was going to be fun.
Thank you very much, Martha.

He braked without turning off the engine. “Where do you want to plant it?”

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how big it’s going to get, how much sun it needs.” She screwed up her face in the way he had once loved. “City girl here.”

How could he forget that?

“Southwest corner,” he suggested. “It’ll get enough sun, keep the house cooler in the summer and lose all its leaves so it won’t keep you colder in the winter.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Slowly he rolled the truck around the house. “It’s going to need a lot of water the first month. And that’s going to be a drag. Martha doesn’t have an outside tap, so no hose.”

“Really? I never noticed that before.”

Why would she? She’d never been here long enough to really learn anything, although she had been here long enough to cause him a peck of trouble.

“I’ll have someone see to it after you go home.” That’s as far as he would go. Or so he told himself.

“Thank you.”

Damn it, he could almost hear Martha laughing and asking, “When did you turn into a chicken, boy?”

Then Holly said, “Martha always had such a big vegetable garden. She had to water it somehow.”

“That’s where the hand pump comes in. Come on, you were here lots of times. Surely you saw.”

She paused. “My God, I’d forgotten. Of course I remember. I used to love to do it for her.”

“Right. She planted in rows and pumped until the water filled the space between them. Every couple of days. The last few years it got harder for her, so I put in a motorized pump for her. Maybe you missed it.”

“I guess so. My job gives me only short vacations.”

“Well, it won’t help with the tree regardless. It’s going to be buckets.”

“I can do that,” she said stoutly.

He had his doubts, but maybe she was stronger than she looked right now.

The truth was, and he readily admitted it, he couldn’t imagine her life in Chicago, nor how she could want to go back to it. Gunshots on the streets? The crushing poverty? Gang culture? Like so many, he had only a vague idea of how some people had to live. She volunteered to face that every day. From his point of view, it had certainly taken a toll on her.

Even so, when she walked ahead of him to pick out the exact spot for the tree, he couldn’t help noticing the way her hips swayed. Or that when she turned her breasts were still full. A beautiful woman. A desirable woman.

Too bad.

When she’d chosen a spot, he headed for Martha’s shed to get a shovel. While he did that, Holly disappeared inside, then returned with two tall glasses of iced tea.

“I seem to remember you liked sugar,” she said, handing him one.

“Still do,” he admitted. “I know it’s a vice, but I work it off.”

The corners of her mouth edged up a bit. “I guess you do. I can help with this.”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dig this ground around here, but we’re going to be lucky if we don’t need a backhoe.”

That drew another small laugh from her. Angling the spade, he stood on it with one foot and penetrated the ground by about six inches. Good, the spring rains hadn’t completely dried up yet. Dirt instead of concrete.

“Being in the house is difficult,” Holly said quietly.

He looked up after tossing another shovelful of dirt to the side. “It is?”

“I keep expecting to hear Martha. To see her come around a corner. Even when it was just her and me, it never, ever seemed so silent in there.”

He hadn’t thought about that. He paused and looked back at the two-story clapboard house. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess it would be quiet.”

His gaze returned to Holly and he saw a tear rolling down her cheek. Whatever else he thought of her, he’d never doubted that she loved her aunt.

But talk about putting a man in an impossible bind. The thing to do would have been to hug her and comfort her. With anyone else, that’s exactly what he would have done. But Holly was so far off-limits he couldn’t even offer the most common act of sympathy. Finally he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

She dashed the tear away. “Eventually. I just miss her so much. Damn, Cliff, I can’t even call her anymore. That keeps striking me over and over. I’ll never hear her voice again.”

He deepened and widened the hole with a few more spadefuls, then leaned on the handle and glanced at her.

“You can hear her voice,” he said. “She’s in your mind and heart now. Just give in to it and listen. If I know Martha, she’s probably whispering something outrageous in your ear right this instant.”

He finally got the hole big enough and put the tree in it. Kneeling, he tested the soil near the bottom and found it still held some moisture.

“Get a bucket of water,” he told Holly. “Just flip the switch on the side of the pump and it’ll start coming. There’s a bucket in the shed.”

She hopped to obey. It occurred to him he might have to prime the pump, so he was checking it out as she returned.

“Okay, it’s ready. Put the bucket under the spout, hook it here.” Like all good pumps, it had a nipple to hold a bucket handle. He showed her how to turn it on, then waited with her while it filled.

“There you go.”

To his surprise, she lifted the five-gallon bucket and with both hands carried it over to the tree. Layer by layer, they watered lightly and refilled the hole. When he was done, he ridged the dirt in a ring around the tree. “Now fill this ring and just let it soak in. You’ll probably need to do that every day.”

He pulled off his work gloves, leaving her to it, and put the spade away. When he returned from the shed, he found her standing with an empty bucket, staring into space.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“It’s just so peaceful out here. I wish some of my kids could experience life like this, even if only for a short time.”

Then he said the stupidest, most idiotic words to ever cross his lips. “So why don’t you bring some of them out here?”

She looked at him then.
Really
looked at him, her blue eyes wide and almost wondering. His groin throbbed a warning. Had he really just suggested she come back here?

Man, he needed to finish up and get out of here
now
.

Chapter Three

C
liff left shortly after the tree was properly planted and watered. He’d even staked the slender trunk with bands in three directions so the wind wouldn’t tip it over, or make it grow crooked, at least for now.

But then he was gone, and empty prairie winds blew around her. She stood looking toward the mountains, still dark green and gray in the early-afternoon sunlight, but soon the sun would sink behind them and the light would paint them purple.

She couldn’t remember ever having felt so alone. Well, except for one night in Chicago, on a dark street when she had been attacked. She had felt alone in the world then, and it had seemed like forever before the cops had arrived. Someone in the poverty-stricken area had taken a huge risk calling them. She never knew who, and she didn’t want to because she feared for the caller.

She had mostly gotten used to the conditions she worked in. When she wasn’t making home visits, she was working with various programs designed to keep youngsters busy and off the streets. She was used to hearing random gunfire, though, used to the screeching of tires as some gang blew by, showing off their disdain for traffic laws and any unfortunate person who might be trying to cross a street.

Never alone, whether surrounded by good people or troublemakers. Except that one night. And now.

After the attack, she’d been given a few weeks off and had come here to recover. The contrast had really struck her then, and it was striking her now.

Except this time Martha wasn’t here to listen, to advise, to sympathize. Another thing struck her right then: for all the tea, sympathy and advice, Martha hadn’t even hinted that she should find a safer job. Not once.

She lifted her eyes to the sky and asked, “What’s it all mean?”

Of course there was no answer. She turned from the tree and stared at the house. She could stay here. Martha had left her more than enough money that if she was careful she needn’t ever work again.

But that didn’t seem like something Martha would want for her, a dead-end existence without purpose. Martha had always been doing something for someone. A giver by nature.

And a great example.

So why don’t you bring some of them out here?
Cliff’s question came back to her. Why not? She could imagine the red tape. Taking kids across state lines to spend a few weeks with her here? Not likely.

It was all too easy to imagine the hoops, then the structure she’d have to build. She couldn’t do it alone. She’d need help with the kids, trained help. She’d need things for them to do. Would they stay in the house or should she build a bunkhouse?

The next thing she knew, she was sitting in Martha’s rocker on the front porch, rocking steadily, staring out over wide-open spaces, feeling an oddly healing touch in the emptiness of the world around here.

Those kids deserved a taste of this, she thought. An opportunity to live for a short while without the hunger and fear that filled their lives. To be able to fall asleep at night to quiet instead of gunshots.

She tried to dismiss the idea as utterly impractical. The amount of work in just getting it rolling, all the obstacles and roadblocks she’d run into. And while she was working on that, how could she keep up with her job?

Nor did she want to be so close to Cliff. He’d been pleasant enough today, she gave him credit for that, but her tension around him was almost as bad as her tension on a dark city street. It was an incautious, overwhelming desire for him, every bit as strong as it had been all those years ago when she’d given in to it and caused some serious pain.

And while she had never let Cliff know, leaving him behind hadn’t been easy for her, either. No, she hadn’t wanted the commitment he was offering. Hadn’t been ready for it. Had been set on her goal to help kids to the point that she couldn’t imagine any other life.

So she had gotten what she really wanted, and now life had brought her full circle to deal with all the unanswered questions.

How could she best help those kids? And why did she still want Cliff?

Why don’t you just bring some of them out here?

Why had he asked that question? What had he been thinking? His face had revealed nothing, but he’d been quick to leave after that, as quick as he could.

Could she stand being this close to him for any length of time, which bringing kids out here would require? But as soon as she asked herself, she felt selfish. If there was some way to help kids with her legacy, then she needed to do it, Cliff or no Cliff.

But maybe bringing those kids out here for even a few weeks or months might not be kind at all. To give them a taste of a different life and then plop them back into their old messes? It would help only if she could make them see possibilities to work for when they got home. Dreams they could believe in.

Propping her chin in her hand, unaware that the afternoon was fading into twilight, she twisted the idea around in her head, half wishing Cliff had never mentioned it, half wishing she could find a useful way to do it.

The chill of the night penetrated finally, and she went inside to make herself a small supper. Once again the empty silence of the house hit her hard, making her eyes sting and her chest tighten.

Live here alone forever? No way. Somehow there had to be another way. A better way. A useful way.

* * *

Damn memory, Cliff thought. He’d given up all hope of sleeping. Again. Since he’d heard that he was going to have to see Holly again, he’d been an insomniac, and now the insomnia had grown to devour most of the night hours.

As for memory...there were all kinds of it, he was discovering. He wasn’t remembering the way Holly had looked all those years ago. No. Mental pictures had nothing to do with it.

Instead his mind was plaguing him with the sounds she made during passionate sex. His hands, indeed his entire body, were resurrecting the way her skin had felt against him, the way she felt beneath him. His palms itched with the certain knowledge of how it felt to caress her, how her breasts felt in his hands, the hard way her nipples pebbled, the dewiness of her womanhood.

And scents. They filled his nostrils almost as if she were right there, sated and content.

He even remembered exactly,
exactly,
how it had felt to plunge into her warm depths.

Much as he tried to banish the thoughts, they planted themselves and stayed like unfinished business. He couldn’t see Martha’s house from his place, but it didn’t matter. There weren’t enough hundreds of square miles in this county to make him comfortable when she was in it.

His body ached with a need to take her again, to touch her again, to fill her again. Not even his wife had ever awakened such a craving in him.

Damn Holly, damn Martha and, God, he hoped that she didn’t take that stupid thought of his seriously. Bring those kids here? He couldn’t imagine the scope of the undertaking, but even less could he imagine life with Holly nearby. This county wasn’t big enough for both of them.

He shoved out of his bed impatiently, aware that if he didn’t watch it he was going to make love to Holly in his mind. Maybe that had been part of the problem in his marriage with Lisa. Maybe at some unconscious level he had considered Lisa second best.

He didn’t know, but if so, he ought to despise himself. Staring out the window at a night as dark as pitch, he wrestled his internal demons.

Ten years later, even after the awful way she had treated him, he still wanted her as much as the very first time. Did that make him sick? He didn’t know that, either.

He just knew that seeing her had fueled a fire that had never quite gone out. Now what the hell was he going to do about it?

He’d thought he’d finally learned to roll with life, the good and the bad, but now he wondered. That woman out there had the ability to turn him into a kid again. He was randier than a goat, and it didn’t please him.

Sometimes, on rare, restless nights, he’d go saddle up Sy and take a ride. The gelding seemed to enjoy those nighttime rambles. He let Sy choose the course and the pace, and sometimes that gelding would open up his throttle wide and gallop hell-for-leather.

But it was a moonless, dark night, not safe for riding, and besides, he had a feeling that if he mounted up, he’d end up at Martha’s place like a lovesick dog.

So he stood there aching, remembering, knowing it had been a dream that could never happen again. He needed to get a grip.

But the grip kept slipping away, lost in dizzying sensual memories.

* * *

A few miles away, Holly wasn’t doing much better. She had fallen asleep only to wake twisted in her sheets and drenched in perspiration. She had dreamed of Cliff, which she hadn’t done in years, but it had gotten all twisted up in her dream with the guys who had attacked her last year.

How could she want something that still frightened her? That overlayering of the attack ought to be a warning. She’d avoided dating since then, because she couldn’t quite erase the memory of stinking breath and pawing, filthy hands. Any time a guy got too close, she headed for the door.

But she’d done the same to Cliff before then, and for the first time she wondered who she really was and what might be going on inside her.

All she knew was that Cliff still drew her as he had from the first. At least the years had made her considerably less self-centered. She’d hurt the man badly, and she wasn’t going to risk doing it again, whether she craved him or not.

She just wished she knew what it was about him. Nobody had ever gotten to her the way he had.

She took the teddy bear from the chair and pulled it over to the window. Even with the curtains open, she couldn’t see much, but she didn’t care. She lifted the sash just a bit, letting some chilly air into the room, hoping it would cool her down. Then she hugged the bear and sat, watching the impenetrable night.

Thinking about Cliff was the ultimate waste of time, she told herself. She’d hurt him badly, and while he’d been civil and even pleasant today, that had been common courtesy. It had been obvious to her at their first meeting that he ranked her somewhere near rat poison on his list of things he liked. Nor could she blame him. She had burned that bridge herself.

She tried instead to think about the little kernels of an idea he had planted today, but her mind remained stubborn. Even as her body dried off and began to feel chilled, Cliff persisted in dominating her thoughts.

A decade had passed and she still wanted him. That was surely crazy.

Then she saw movement outside. She leaned toward the window and strained her eyes. Horse and rider?
What the—
Jumping up, she pulled off her damp nightgown, pulled on a dry and much more modest one, then headed downstairs.

She was sure of one thing: only one person would be riding up to this house in the middle of the night.

She reached the front door just as he came riding around the corner of the house. He wasn’t even looking in her direction, just kind of ambling along. She grabbed a jacket off the coat tree, pulled it on and stepped out.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He drew rein and turned his mount in her direction. “Curing insomnia,” he said. “We shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

“You didn’t. I was awake.”

“Sorry I didn’t bring a horse for you.”

Oh, that was a mistake, she thought as memory slammed her again. They’d gone riding together so many times during that summer, laughing and carefree until passion would rise again. They’d made love on a bed of pine needles, once on a flat rock in the middle of a tumbling mountain stream, another time...

Clenching her hands, she forced memory back into its cage. “Does it help the insomnia? Riding?” It seemed like a safe question.

“I don’t think anything’s going to help tonight,” he said bluntly.

Even though she could barely see him, she could feel his eyes boring into her. The quiet night settled between them, disturbed only by the jingle of the horse’s bridle as it tossed its head a little.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll just move on.”

She knew what she should have done, but before she could act sensibly, words popped out of her mouth. “Want some coffee? I know it won’t help you sleep...”

“It’s almost dawn. No point in sleeping now.” For a few seconds it seemed he was going to continue his ride, but then he swung down from the saddle. “Coffee would be great.”

She turned quickly and headed back inside, partly to avoid getting too close to him, and partly to warm up. Late spring? The nights still got chilly.

She wished she’d grabbed a robe, but the long flannel nightgown she had put on was probably almost as concealing. Which led her to another question as she made the coffee. Why had she been in such a rush to get down here when she had been certain it was Cliff riding by?

She shook her head at her own behavior. Maybe this house just felt too empty with Martha, but it was pretty sad that she was reaching out to Cliff.

So there she was, missing Martha even more because she ought to be here, hundreds of miles from home, troubled by a weird nightmare that had somehow combined Cliff with the attack on her when the two were totally unrelated. She wondered if she was losing it.

Or maybe grief had just scrambled her thinking. It was certainly possible.

She heard Cliff come through the house to the kitchen, and it seemed his steps were slow. Evidently he wasn’t really looking forward to having coffee with her. Well, why should he? But he could have just refused.

“Have a seat,” she said. She remained where she was, staring at a coffeemaker that seemed to be taking forever and a window that stared back at her blackly, showing her more of the kitchen behind her than the world outside.

It was a big country kitchen. Martha had once talked about the days when the family was big, when they had hired help and everyone would gather here for the main meal of the day. At home she had an efficiency, with barely enough room for a narrow stove, small sink and tiny refrigerator. If she wanted to cook, she had to do the prep on her dining table in the next tiny room.