Her Italian Millionaire (42 page)
Read Her Italian Millionaire Online
Authors: Carol Grace
"This is Women's Week," Abby explained.
Quincy gave her an inquisitive look. Women's Week? What did that mean?
"At the Rustic Hills Retreat, we have a different theme every week," she explained.
And a different name, Quincy thought. His eyes wandered to the vast fields of tall grass. "Nice place you've got here."
"Thank you." A proud smile lighted her face as she surveyed the vast expanse of land. "I love it," she said simply.
"Love it?" he echoed, surprised at the passion in her voice. "How long have you been here?"
She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear. "About a year or so. I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it. Then I had to figure out how to pay for it."
Quincy noted the determined tilt of her chin, the full lips pressed tightly together. So it was love at first sight, was it? This wasn't going to be as easy as he'd hoped. She had a faraway look in her eyes that made him wonder where she'd gone. Suddenly she was back.
"Are you from around here?" she asked.
"Yep. I knew it when it was the Bar Z. A long time ago."
"Well, it was nice meeting you. We've got to be getting back."
Quincy's pulse raced. He couldn't let her get away so fast and yet he didn't know how to make her stay. "Just one thing," he said, stuffing his hands into his back pockets. "You don't really believe in love at first sight, do you?"
"If s happened to me only once, when I saw this land."
"Uh-huh."
"You're not a cynic, are you, Mr. McLoud?"
"Not me." Why should he be cynical? His wife had sold his ranch out from under him, and sent him a check for half the amount along with a copy of the divorce papers she'd filed. Maybe this woman did love the place, but not as much as be did, or even as much as his old foreman. "Pop still here?" he asked.
"You know Pop?"
"We're old friends."
"Come back and say hello before you leave," she said.
"I'll do that." He touched the tip of his hat and nodded to the women. "Ladies," he said, and loped down the hill to his truck.
Abby stood staring after him, vaguely aware that the women had jumped back into the flatbed and were trying to decide whether the cowboy looked more like a young Clint Eastwood or the Marlboro Man. Abby couldn't say. The only thing she recognized was his attitude. The "I can do anything better than you" attitude. She'd been married for five years to a man with an attitude just like that. It had been five years of feeling that nothing she did was ever quite good enough.
For five years she'd played the role of the perfect wife. Three years of mind-numbing office jobs while Grant finished law school, two years of being a corporate wife and all-round doormat while he rose to full partnership. And then, when he'd gotten to the top she'd found that she'd been playing her role all wrong.
As the wife of a law student, she was acceptable, but as the wife of a full partner, she didn't quite measure up. Something about the way she wore her hair, the way she
didn't play bridge or shop at the right places, or didn't get pregnant on schedule to produce an heir.
Her ex-husband's new wife, his former secretary, would do better. She already had a head start on the pregnancy part. Bitter? To say that Abby was bitter was only part of it. She was bitter, but she had also been hurt, angry and completely devastated. It had taken her months to recover. But she had recovered and she wasn't about to let herself have a relapse. So the sooner Mr. Cynical left, the better.
She got back into her truck and started the engine. She had to get back to the ranch house with these women before the day was a total loss. They'd had trouble this morning giving the cows their shots, the cattle had spooked and broken a fence and the women had panicked. And now this. She'd planned to restore their confidence by letting than unload the truck and feed the cattle and then he had come along. The kind of man she was trying to avoid. Who was trying to help by doing her work and taking away her confidence. Not on purpose, of course. The man wasn't malicious. Just devilishly attractive and overly helpful.
After a bumpy ride back to the house, she saw he'd arrived ahead of than and was standing in front of the house staring at the front porch. If she hadn't noticed it before, she saw now that he was a real Western man, his body all angles and planes, his face shadowed by his broad-brimmed hat so that it was impossible to see the expression in his eyes.
She walked up to him, her hands in her pockets, wondering how the place looked to him. If he knew Pop, he'd probably been here before, and if he'd been here before he'd probably seen it in its heyday.
He stared at the sign over the door. "What does Rustic Hills Retreat mean? What are you retreating from?''
I'm not retreating from anything. I'm offering people a retreat to the peace and quiet of the country, the solitude of the prairie, to a kind of renewal of the spirit " She took a deep breath. Once she got started on the purpose of the ranch she had a lot to say, but one of the women interrupted her.
"We're going in for some coffee, okay?"
She nodded without taking her eyes from Quincy's suntanned face. "It looks a little run-down in spots," she said, following his gaze to the pen the cattle had broken through that morning. "But I have made improvements, a hot tub and... would you like to see the new bunkhouse?"
"Why not?"
He walked with her to the two-story building behind the main house. He'd taken his hat off and the sun shone on his face, highlighting his straight nose, wide mouth and firm jaw. He was tall, towering over her five feet ten inches. She opened the door of the bunkhouse, wondering what he'd think of the new carpeting, the walls painted a pale yellow. Preceding him into the bunkhouse she told herself firmly that it didn't matter what he thought. She was on her own now, making her own decisions, subject to no one's approval.
"Is this where the ranch hands stay?"
"There are only two left, Rocky and Curly. They're out mending fences these days. We were losing cattle. But when they're here, they stay in the old blacksmith's cabin."
"How do you manage?"
"The guests do the work, or they will as soon as we get organized. You know how guest ranches work, don't you? We've been written up in several newspapers. I've even got a waiting list. Not everything works perfectly, of course...." She didn't mention the water heater breaking down, or the cook quitting, or the one woman who'd left before she'd even unpacked.
"Of course not," he said absently after a long silence during which his eyes took a tour of her body. Suddenly she was conscious of the smudges of dirt on her sweater and the tear in her jeans. She thought she saw a look in his eyes that said she wasn't up to the challenge. He wasn't the only one who thought that. But she'd show him and everyone else she could run this ranch and make a go of it.
She returned his scrutinizing look. He was attractive, if you liked the weather-beaten look, the eyes with a down
ward tilt, the spare frame that probably made women want to bake hot biscuits for him. He obviously belonged on a ranch, somewhere. Where, he hadn't said. He hadn't said much of anything. Just asked questions.
While she was studying his wide, expressive mouth and gray eyes, he reached out and removed a piece of hay caught in her hair. She gasped at the unexpected gesture. There was a strange look in his eyes. What was he thinking about? He snapped the piece of hay between his fingers, breaking the tension between them.
"Actually, I'm looking for a job," he said.
Her eyes widened. "Here?"
"Why not?"
"I told you there are only two hands and that’s because I can't afford to hire any more. I wish I could." She didn't say that even if she could afford to hire someone, it wouldn't be him. He had too much of everything—looks, confidence and know-how. "If you want to work, you could try the other ranches around here. You shouldn't have any trouble. You seem able-bodied enough." That was putting it mildly. Yes, he was able-bodied, and then some. She wished he'd take his able body and head down the road. She didn't need this kind of a distraction and neither did the other women who were her guests this week.
"You've had experience?" she asked to fill the silence. Smooth, Abby. Did one ask Clint Eastwood if he'd had experience?
"Some. Sure you couldn't use me here?"
Her mouth fell open in disbelief. What did she have to do, spell it out for him? "I'm sorry," she said.
Sorry? She couldn't be more sorry than he was. She didn't know it, but she was sitting on his land. It wasn't her fault. She'd bought it from his ex-wife free and clear, not knowing it wasn't hers to sell. Oh, Corinne had had power of attorney. He'd given it to her when they'd called up the reserves for the Gulf War and he'd had to go. He'd been standing there in the middle of the Sahara Desert, the sun
beating down on his head and the sand stinging his eyes when he'd got the check and the divorce papers.
"Well, thanks for the tour," he said. "I'll go say hello to Pop."
"You'll find him in the shed over by the barn. That's all his now." She held the screen door open for him and he turned toward the barn. She watched him go, relief flowing through her body like warm honey. She hadn't realized how tense he made her until he disappeared around the corner of the old building. She hoped he understood why she didn't have enough money to hire more help. If he knew anything about ranching, he'd know how hard it was to make it pay.
Her gaze drifted to the tall grass in the distance. Either people hated the prairie, thought its endless, tall, undulating grasses boring, or they read between the lines, finding beauty in the dense stands of bluestem, wild rye and prairie larkspur. She was in the latter group and she thought Quincy was, too. Fine, let him stay among the tall grass, but somewhere else, far enough so that she wouldn't run into him.
She turned abruptly and went to the kitchen entrance, banging the door closed behind her, unable to shake the image of his broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs as he strode away from her. She had a ranch to run, guests to feed, and she couldn't afford a distraction.
The kitchen committee was waiting for her, three new arrivals from Chicago, oohing and aahing over the huge, old, cast-iron stove and the walk-in freezer with sides of beef hanging from hooks. This was what he didn't understand, the cowboy who knew everything, that with volunteers-guests who'd come to get in touch with nature—she didn't need a cook and so many ranch hands. That was not to say, however, that the women would be content to stay in the kitchen for very long.
"When do we learn to rope?" one of than asked, "and will it be from that big, tall hunk I saw outside?"
"We don't actually do much roping here," Abby explained, handing out bunches of spinach to wash and drain. "We move cattle in different ways. I'll explain it to you after dinner." She cracked fresh brown eggs into a bowl. "It’s in my lecture on cow psychology."
"What about breaking wild horses?" a fresh-faced young woman asked eagerly. "Is that what he teaches?"
"No, he doesn't," Abby said firmly, cutting chunks of butter into the flour. "That man doesn't teach anything. Our horses have already been broken and they're ready to ride. Tomorrow we'll saddle up and round up the cattle for inoculations. But there are always regular chores to be done, too, like gathering eggs, putting out feed and mending fences. I'll pass out sign-up sheets later."
Abby was glad to see they looked reasonably enthused by the lineup of activities she proposed. She'd never advertised breaking horses or roping cattle. She didn't know where they got those ideas, probably from the movies, or from men like Quincy McLoud who looked like he could do them all with his eyes closed. She fluted the crusts in the glass pans and preheated the ovens. Then she looked out the window above the sink and wondered if he'd left yet.
Quincy rapped on the door to the shed and Pop yelled at him to come in. When the older man looked and saw who it was, he sprang from his cot in the corner with an exuberance that belied his age and his arthritis and pumped Quincy's hand enthusiastically.
"By God, I had a feeling in my bones you'd turn up one of these days," he said, his grin showing the gold tooth in the middle of his mouth.
"It's either your arthritis or ESP," Quincy said. "How are you doing?"
Pop waved his hand around the shed at the whitewashed walls and a new, extra large TV in a cabinet on the far wall. "Can't complain," he said. "Where ya been all this time, anyway? I been looking for ya ever since the war's been over. Shortest damn war I ever seen."
"Seemed long enough to me," Quincy remarked, taking his hat off. "I didn't exactly feel like coming back when it was over. Not after what happened. So I've been working for other people. Here and there. Until one day I couldn't take it anymore. Not until I at least saw the Bar Z again."
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