City Girl (3 page)

       “No?” He ran a finger up one side of her face, collecting tears to show her. Her skin was silky and warm. He hoped his frost-roughened finger hadn’t hurt her. Damn, but she was petite. And vulnerable, seeming to lack the strength to fight off bullies, among whom he counted himself at the moment. “What’s this?” he asked, showing her his wet finger.

       She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and shook her head. “All right, so I’m crying. But not because I was scared or because you hurt my feelings. I always cry when I’m mad, and I lost my temper because of the blizzard coming up without warning, and the dirty house and the dangerous animals and that fat old lady sleeping down the hall with her hearing aids out and not hearing me honk and honk and . . . and . . . I was so sca-a-ared, Kirk! So damned scared that my b-babies . . . were going to die in the cold and . . .”

Instinctively his arms went tight around her, offering solace and protection and— He  shuddered at the delicate warmth of her, the soft press of her breasts against his chest, the scent of her dark hair, the silky feel of it under his chin. “Hush,” he murmured, “I know, I know. But you got here, Liss, you did it, and your children are warm and safe and the dog wouldn’t have hurt you. He’s noisy but gentle, and I didn’t tie him out there. It wasn’t me, I swear that. Everything will be okay. There, now, rest on me.”

Liss didn’t know why, but with a huge sigh, she leaned on him, burrowing closer and sliding her arms around his waist as he stroked her hair. The heavy, steady beat of his heart drowned the sound of screaming wind and hard snow pelting the window in an unending stream. Oh, heavens, it felt so good, being held like this, she thought dimly, her head swirling with weariness and sensual reaction.       

She was a sweet, warm armful, Kirk thought, feeling his exhaustion fade away as her heat penetrated his clothing. No, only half an armful. Lord, but she was little. His hand skimmed over her cheek, drying her tears, and he felt how small and delicate the bones were. He squeezed her shoulder through her thick sweater, then slid one thumb inside the ribbing at its neckline and stroked her skin. His index finger on her throat encountered a pulse point, and he felt the fluttering throb of her blood. He filled his hand with her soft, scented hair and tugged gently so she raised her head. She looked up at him with her damp, exotic eyes, and he bent low, his lips brushing hers. Need slammed into him, and without thinking he parted her lips with his tongue. The steady yet slightly accelerated pulse in her throat went wild under his touch. She returned his kiss with incredible sweetness, giving and trusting and coming with him as he backed up to that inviting bed behind him, eased them both down onto it.

Chapter Two

Suddenly, Kirk realized what he was doing, and with whom. He jerked erect and set her from him. No damn way! he told himself. Dammit, he’d had no intention of responding to Liss in that way. He refused to submit to any kind of from-the-grave matchmaking Brose might have intended. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what the old man had been up to and he wasn’t buying into it! Throwing a woman like Liss into his path, setting him up with a soft, feminine person to tempt him right under his own roof. Lotsa luck, Brose! he said silently. The ones I want, I bring in myself. And then I send them away when I’m done.      

Liss nearly groaned aloud with shame as Kirk pushed her away from him, away from the warmth she’d snuggled into as if she had a right to be there. He rubbed a hand over his heavy growth of beard, and the rasping sound sent a quiver through her insides. She’d even liked the way those whiskers had felt on her face.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly.

She lifted her gaze to his face. His expression was remote, his eyes hooded. His taut mouth had a pale circle around it, exactly the way it had when he’d learned she intended to move to the ranch.

She stepped back, wiping her hand over her mouth as if to erase the feel of him. “I apologize, too,” she said stiffly, “for falling apart.”

He blinked, looking startled, as if he weren’t accustomed to people apologizing to him. He ever sounded surprised. “You didn’t do anything to be sorry for. I—I came to tell you that I’ve scrambled a bunch more eggs. Would you like some? Yours burned.”

More than her scrambled eggs had burned, she thought. Her entire body burned from that one short yet extremely explosive kiss. She wanted to refuse his offer. She wanted to crawl into her bed and sleep for several months. Again, she became aware of the pellets of snow hammering the windows, of the wind whistling in the eaves. She shivered. Bears knew what they were doing, hibernating through winter. But in only a few hours, she’d have two active little boys needing her, to say nothing of a house so dirty it would take a team of workers a month to get it back in shape. Only she didn’t have a team. She had herself. She’d need her strength, and she wouldn’t get it starving herself because she was scared of a little bit of snow.

“Thanks,” she said, lifting her head. “I could use some food.”

* * * *

Liss eyed the big dog warily. Apart from getting up and gobbling the food Kirk emptied into bowl, though, it lay in the entry-cum-utility room, its chin on its paws, watching as she and Kirk cleared off the kitchen table and set places for their late supper.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

Kirk took a plate of toast from the oven and set it on the table, then poured hot chocolate from the potful Liss had made, slopping some on his thumb. She had to smile as he licked it off exactly as one of her children would have. “Marshal,” he said, “Marsh for short. Right from the start, he marshaled his littermates, even his mother, keeping everyone in order. He took on the geese on the ranch where he was born, too. Later, he did it with Brose and me and the hands, even before I trained him to herd cattle.” Kirk grinned. “Don’t be surprised to find him herding your kids. Just remember, he won’t harm them.”

She sat down, giving the dog another wary look. That remained to be seen, she thought. She wasn’t prepared to trust the animal for one millisecond. She had seen those teeth of his bare inches from her ankle, and had never forgotten the one time a dog sank its fangs into her. Well, one fang. She had a scar on her chin to prove it. “If you say so. How many hands—uh, workers—do you have?”

“We,” he said pointedly. “Remember, we’re in this together now. But at this time of year, I run the ranch alone. In March, when calving starts, we hire a full-time man and keep him on till fall roundup is over, and bring in part-timers as needed. “

She paused with a forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth. “Roundup? Really? Like in the movies?”

He grinned at her wide-eyed reaction. “Exactly. Horses, lassos, branding, the works. Do you ride?” Apprehension swept through her as she pictured herself on horseback, trying to rope a steer. His grin broadened as he appeared to read her mind, or maybe simply her face. “You don’t like horses?”

She shrugged and ate her eggs. They were deliciously fresh. “It’s not so much that I don’t like them. But they’re awfully big and, well, the only time I was ever aboard one, it put its head down to eat and I slid right off over its nose.”

He laughed, a warm and pleasant sound she found herself responding to much too readily. “I’d love to have seen that.”

In spite of herself, she laughed with him. “My dad thought it was pretty funny, too, but I didn’t. I was sure the horse was going to start chomping on me when I fell into its hay. I got up and ran like the blazes back to where we were camping, so my mother could save me from girl-eating equines. I was six.” She fixed a leery gaze on his face. “I won’t have to learn to ride, will I?”

He shook his head. “No, not unless you want to, but come spring, when we get ponies for the boys and they’re learning, you might change your mind. Remember,” he added before she could dispute his assumption that her boys would be learning to ride in the spring, “under the terms of Brose’s will, your concern is the house. I won’t call on you to do any ranching chores, like roundup or branding. “

Ah, yes, she thought. No ranching chores, just the cooking, the cleaning, the kids . . . Clearly, Uncle Ambrose had never come fully up-to-date in the division of labor, although Mrs. Healey, his former housekeeper and, Liss suspected, lover, had been given the task of keeping the books as her contribution to the three-way inheritance. “Who did the housework before?” she asked. “I mean, in the years between Mrs. Healey’s leaving and the present time?”

        “Brose, mostly.” She saw a flicker of emotion cross his face. Of course, she mused. He must miss his father. From what she’d learned in the lawyer’s office, Kirk hadn’t met Ambrose Whittier until he was thirty. Naturally, in the seven or eight years they’d been together, real affection would have united them. She wished she hadn’t asked about the housekeeping and sought a new topic of conversation. Unwillingly, she remembered something else Lester Brown had said when describing her contribution to the ranch, something she’d succeeded in putting out of her mind because she hadn’t wanted to think about it until she had to. All those eggs must mean . . . chickens.

She lifted her gaze to Kirk’s face. “Did Ambrose look after the chickens as well?”

Kirk looked up from his own meal and smiled slowly. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The chickens. Are you . . . ready to take them on?”

She chewed her lower lip. “I don’t know,” she said unhappily. “As I told Lester, I know nothing about them.”

“Mm-hmm.” He nodded. “I remember. I remember you almost turned green when he mentioned them. What’s the matter, city girl? Afraid of a few little chickens?”

She bristled at his light sarcasm and set her fork down with a sharp click. “Of course I’m not afraid. But all I know about chickens is that they appear already cut into serving pieces in the supermarket. What do they eat? And when? And what else do I have to do for them except feed them?”

“Not much,” he said, shrugging as he reached for the pot of chocolate to top off both of their mugs. “Chickens eat grain and mash, get fed twice a day, and have their water replenished at the same time. Whoever’s in charge collects the eggs, and every now and then kills a couple of the older ones for stew.”

Liss spurted a mouthful of hot chocolate back into her cup. “Kills?”

He nodded. “They get their heads cut off.” He piled scrambled eggs onto a slice of toast and took a huge bite, chewing appreciatively, eyes locked on her face. He swallowed and licked his lips. “You never heard of somebody ‘running around like a chicken with its head cut off’? They do, you know.”

As her face went blank, he added, “Run around, I mean. After.”

Liss looked down at her plate and knew she must be turning green all over again. Closing her eyes, she leaned back in her chair, then opened them again at the sound of a soft chuckle.

“Hey, don’t pass out on me,” Kirk said. “I was kidding. At least about your having to do that. I’m sorry,” he added, stroking the backs of her fingers. She jerked her hand away, annoyed with his teasing, yet undeniably relieved there were no chickens.

“We don’t keep chickens,” he went on. “These eggs come from the farm across the river that forms our southwestern boundary—and so do the chickens you’ll find in the deep freeze. Some are even cut up into serving pieces ready for you to cook.”

Embarrassed that he’d gotten the better of her, Liss briskly changed the subject again. “What kind of schedule are you used to keeping? I mean, for meals, since I’ll be in charge of them.”

“What I’m accustomed to—though if it doesn’t suit you, we can negotiate changes—is Monday through Friday, breakfast at six, right after I milk. Lunch when I get in from doing my chores around noon, and dinner somewhere between five-thirty and six-thirty. Weekends, at least this time of year, I sort of let the schedule go and milk when I feel like getting up, unless the cow’s bawling wakes me earlier.”

Breakfast at six? she repeated silently. It was unbelievable to her that anyone would want to eat at that hour. She’d have to be out of bed by five-thirty at the latest. But . . . how early must he get up, in order to do the milking first? “How many cows do you have?”

“A couple of thousand head right now.”

She gaped at him. “You milk two thousand cows before breakfast?”

It was his turn to gape. “No!” he said, and laughed as he spread strawberry jam on his toast. “This is a cattle ranch, not a dairy farm, city girl. I milk one cow for our personal use. We raise Simmental cows that we breed with Charolais bulls to produce beef. You know, roasts? Steaks? Hamburgers? The kind of stuff you find in the supermarket. It originates on the hoof.”

“I know that.” She reached for the jam.

“Of course you do. I’m sorry. I was teasing again.”

“And I’m sorry to be so ignorant about ranch life,” she said. “They don’t teach a lot about cattle in art school.”

“Art school?” He looked interested. “Are you an artist?”

“I have a master’s in fine arts, and I do paint now and then, but my preferred medium is photography.” She patted her smaller camera case, which sat on the next chair beside her. She refused to let that short but extremely explosive kiss knock all the sense out of her.

       “I’m sorry,” she said as he rolled to his feet and put two long paces between them. His face was remote, his eyes hooded. His taut mouth had a pale circle around it, exactly the way it’d had when he’d learned she intended to move to the ranch. “Sorry for falling apart, sorry for the way I overreacted.”

She tugged at her sweater, ran the back of her hand over her mouth, wiping away the taste of him. He blinked, looking startled, as if he weren’t accustomed to people apologizing to him. He even sounded surprised.

“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for. I—I came to tell you that I’ve scrambled a bunch more eggs. Would you like some? Yours burned.”

       More than her scrambled eggs had burned she thought. His entire body had burned against hers from that one, intense kiss, the close embrace. .She wanted to refuse his offer. She wanted to crawl into her bed and sleep for several months. She shivered. Bears knew what they were doing, hibernating all winter.