Mail Order Cowboy (Harlequin American Romance) (10 page)

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Authors: Pamela BAUER

BOOK: Mail Order Cowboy (Harlequin American Romance)
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Hannah could see the disappointment in Wood’s eyes at the realization that their kiss had ended not by choice, but by an intruder. When he looked as if he wasn’t about to let her go, Hannah pushed at his chest.
“We’re out here,” she called out just seconds before Jeremy appeared.
“You’ve got a phone call. It’s Red Murphy.” He handed her the portable phone.
Hannah glanced at Wood and realized that she had been kissing the man that she wanted Red to investigate. Only this morning she had called Red and left a message with the intention that he check Wood’s background.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said to Wood, walking back toward the barn. “Red, hi. Look, this isn’t a good time for me. How about if I call you later?”
After as brief a conversation as she could possibly make it, Hannah ended the phone call. Jeremy had returned to the house, leaving Wood alone in the pasture, petting Wilbur. A warm fuzzy traveled down Hannah’s spine. Dressed in Big Fred’s cast-off coveralls, he should have looked ridiculous. But he didn’t. He looked good. Damn good.
And that was a problem. Only twenty-four hours ago she had wanted to kick him off the farm; now she was trying to figure out how not to be attracted to him.
Hannah was well versed in the art of putting men in their places. She’d had enough practice. It was time to nip this little attraction right in the bud. So they were curious about each other—that was normal and to be expected. But that was all that was going to happen.
She cleared her throat and said, “If you’re going to work for me, I think it would be best if we both forgot what just happened.”
“Yes, ma‘am.” Wood nodded at her and started for the bunkhouse. Then he turned around and speared her with a heated look. “Just to be sure, ma’am, which part do you want me to forget? The part where I kissed you or the part where you kissed me back?” As a wry smile creased his cheeks, he walked away.
 
WOOD HAD A RESTLESS NIGHT, most of it spent tossing and turning on the metal bed. Only twenty-four hours ago he hadn’t been able to stay awake. Now he couldn’t sleep.
But then what man would be able to rest after discovering he had been saved from death by a strange quirk of time. For that’s what it had to have been. He still wasn’t convinced it was the lightning, despite what Jeremy had told him.
If only he could remember what had happened after the noose had tightened around his neck. Over and over he replayed the details leading up to his hanging and his subsequent leap to the twentieth century. None of it made any sense. Why had he traveled through time and why had he ended up at the Davis farm?
The thought of not being able to return and never seeing his sister again he didn’t want to contemplate. Not knowing whether she had wasted her life with an outlaw or returned to Missouri to live the life of a lady was a punishment he couldn’t bear.
He punched his pillow for the hundredth time. If only he knew what had propelled him through time. Was it the something that old crone had given him? He remembered her pouring dirt into his hands and calling it the sand of salvation.
If it was the sand, he was in big trouble. Any traces of dirt that might have been on his hands had been washed away in Hannah’s tub. At the memory of the bath, he felt a stirring in his loins. He smiled as he recalled the look on Hannah’s face when she had pulled back that curtain. And the color that had been in her cheeks when she had seen the effects on his body caused by her therapeutic massage. And then there was that kiss.
With a great effort he pushed thoughts of Hannah from his mind. What he didn’t need to do right now was complicate his predicament by taking a fancy to his hostess. Not that it was a fancy, exactly. More like a need to scratch an itch. She bothered him in a way no woman had bothered him in a long time. All that talk about there being no man’s work or woman’s work, just work. And those tight trousers.
He should never have kissed her last night, yet he hadn’t been able to resist her invitation. For it had been an invitation. She had looked at him with the same wanting in her eyes that he had been feeling in his gut. The first time he had set eyes on her he had thought that she could be someone special. Then he had discovered that she belonged to 1998 and he belonged to 1876.
He rolled over, grimacing as he scraped his bruised back against the mattress. He wished he had Hannah to rub more of that liniment on his back. He smiled as he remembered how soothing her fingers had been as they had caressed his flesh.
He wondered if all women of the twentieth century were like Hannah. Bold enough to walk in on a man while he bathed yet shy enough to blush at the sight of his arousal.
Heavy breathing alerted him to the fact that Outlaw had crept closer to his pillow.
Wood scratched the dog behind his ears. “I’m in a pickle, aren’t I?”
The dog moaned in agreement.
“If I go back to 1876 I’ll never see Hannah again—not to mention I could hang. Yet if I stay, I’ll never see my sister again.”
Outlaw rolled onto his back, spreading his legs in a shameless request for Wood to scratch his belly. Wood complied.
Footsteps echoed on the wooden steps of the bunkhouse, and Wood noticed that the first rays of morning sun were peeking over the horizon. Outlaw jumped off the bed and ran to the screen door, barking excitedly.
“Wood?” Jeremy called out tentatively.
Wood swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Come on in. I’m up.”
As soon as the door opened, Outlaw pounced on the boy, his tail wagging, his tongue bathing him with a wet welcome. “Mom said to tell you that if you want to take a shower before breakfast, you’d better hurry.”
“I bathed yesterday.”
“I know. Me, too. If mom had her way, I’d have to take a bath every day.” He shivered at the thought.
Wood knew there was no point in upsetting his hostess. The path of least resistance—that’s how he saw his role at the Davis farm. Until he found a way to alter time, it would be wise to do whatever necessary to please Hannah. “If she doesn’t mind me using up the water, I guess I could take another one.”
“Don’t you have school today?” Wood asked, slipping his arms through one of the shirts Gabby had given him yesterday.
“The bus doesn’t come until seven-thirty.” Jeremy moved closer to the bed and glanced at the nightstand. He picked up Wood’s pocket watch and studied it. “I’ve never seen a clock this small.”
“It’s called a pocket watch.” Wood took it from him and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “It belonged to my father.”
Also on the table were several coins he had had in his pocket at the time of the hanging. Jeremy eyed them curiously.
“I’ve never seen money like that. Is it foreign?”
Wood scooped up the coins from the table and shoved them into his pocket. “Nope, just old. Like the watch.”
“Are you a coin collector?”
Wood didn’t answer him. “You ask a lot of questions.” He ruffled Jeremy’s hair affectionately. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
With Jeremy and Outlaw in tow, Wood headed for the house. As he crossed the dirt drive, his heart skipped a beat. He could see Hannah through the kitchen window, her blond curls falling about her face in disarray.
“Something smells good,” he said to Jeremy, dragging his eyes away from the window.
“It’s sausage. You’re gonna like living here. Mom’s a good cook. She wins all sorts of blue ribbons at the county fair every year.”
Wood didn’t know about how good a cook Hannah was, but she was definitely a sight for sore eyes. Again this morning she wore the tightest pair of trousers he had ever seen on a woman. Jeans was what Gabby had called them. Man teasers was what Wood would nickname them. Tucked into the waistband was a bright green shirt that emphasized every curve on her torso. Wood felt parts of his anatomy respond in a purely physical way. He quickly looked away.
Just as Wood was about to climb the porch steps, he felt a tug on his arm. In a whisper-soft voice Jeremy asked, “Did you kiss my mom last night?”
Wood saw no reason to lie. “I did.”
“I thought so,” he said with a satisfied grin. “I guess Gabby was right.”
“Right about what?”
“About the—” he looked anxiously toward the house, as if worried that his mother might be able to hear. “You know.”
Puzzled, Wood said, “I’m afraid I don’t know, Jeremy.”
He pulled Wood by the arm around to the side of the house. “The mail-order thing.”
“The mail-order thing,” Wood repeated.
Jeremy nodded vigorously. “I told Gabby I didn’t think it would work, but she said it’s worked for lots of people, including my great-great grandfather. That’s where Gabby got the idea to send for you. Of course, he sent for a girl, not a guy.”
As far as Wood knew, Gabby had advertised for farm help. So why did Jeremy refer to it as a mail-order
thing?
Before he could pursue the subject, Hannah’s voice rang out on the still morning air.
“Jeremy, get in here for breakfast or you’re going to miss your bus.”
As Jeremy scrambled into the house, Wood could only shake his head. This twentieth-century jargon confused him almost as much as the modern appliances. Apparently hired help was a mail-order thing in 1998.
So why did he have an uneasy feeling that Gabby and Jeremy knew something they weren’t telling him?
Chapter Seven
“O
kay, Wood. If you’re going to stay, you might as well come out on the gleaner with me,” Hannah told Wood after breakfast.
She could see by the look on his face that he had no idea what she was talking about.
“The gleaner is the combine. We’re going to test the soybeans.”
He nodded, but she doubted it was in understanding. “I thought Gabby said you had worked crop farms?”
“Not soybeans.”
She sighed. “Half of my crop is soybeans.”
“Then you better show me what needs to be done. I’ve always been a quick learner.” He gave her a look that could only be classified as flirtatious. She didn’t like it one bit.
When she snatched a pair of brown coveralls from a hook on the wall and started to unsnap them, Wood said, “You’re not going to put those on, are you?”
What did he think, that she was going to strip in front of him? “I’m just slipping them over my jeans.” She tugged on the garment. “Don’t you have anything on underneath yours?” She eyed his coveralls suspiciously.
She realized from the sheepish grin that he didn’t.
Again he had the upper hand. She was the one who broke eye contact, not wanting to notice how the coveralls clung to his frame, emphasizing his muscles and calling to memory what his naked body looked like.
When she went to climb the metal steps of the combine, Wood was right there at her side ready to give her a hand. “I don’t need any help,” she told him, then proceeded to miss a step and bump her knee. There was no way she would release the “ouch” on the tip of her tongue. With lips clamped shut, she climbed up the combine and perched herself behind the steering wheel.
“If you’re going to ride along, you’re going to have to sit on the armrest.” She patted the cushion beside her. Wood climbed inside, folding himself to fit into the tight quarters. His nearness did funny things to Hannah’s sense of equilibrium, and she wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake telling him to come along this morning.
In the narrow confines of the cab, elbows bumped, thighs rubbed and no amount of effort was going to put any more distance between their two bodies. As Hannah drove down the dirt road, she tried to focus on explaining the operating instructions to Wood in a businesslike manner, but every time she caught a glimpse of his mustache she thought about what it had been like to have his mouth on hers last night and to feel those hairs gently brushing her skin in a most delectable way.
She pushed aside the pesky thought and concentrated on work. “We call this the eighty.” She gestured to the rows of leafless plants on the north side of the road. “There are eighty acres of beans planted here.”
“Plants look healthy,” Wood commented and Hannah felt the sense of pride she always experienced whenever she drove the combine into the fields. To her left was an ocean of corn, the tassels rippling in the sun.
“As soon as we’re finished harvesting the beans, we’ll do the corn.” Hannah nodded toward the tall stalks nearly ready for harvest.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful,” Wood stated quietly. “It’s like a rainbow of gold.”
Hannah met his gaze and felt an odd little catch in her chest. He had voiced her sentiments exactly. “That’s why I love combining. How could I ever tire of looking at that?”
“How long have you been farming here?”
“Jeremy and I moved back seven years ago, but I only took over running the place after my grandfather died two years ago.”
“When Gabby told me you were responsible for planting all that corn out there, I didn’t believe her at first.”
“You don’t believe women can operate a farm?” she tried not to sound defensive, but he was dangerously close to hitting one of her buttons.
“I don’t know anyone who runs a farm this large,” he answered. “And yes, most women I know are too busy worrying about what dress to wear for which party to even consider there could be work needing to be done in a field somewhere.”
She groaned. “Don’t tell me. You like women to wear dresses.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“This is 1998, Wood. Most of us are smart enough to wear clothes that suit the jobs we do.”
His eyes drifted to the coveralls covering her from neck to ankle. “Nothing wrong with being smart.”
Just for one fleeting moment Hannah didn’t want to be smart. She wanted to be chic—which was a joke. Most of her wardrobe came from mail-order catalogs purchased for practical purposes, not for style. Until now, it hadn’t bothered her that most of her time was spent wearing men’s coveralls.
She mentally chastised herself. And it didn’t matter now, either. She was a farmer and would show him what a damn good farmer she was.
She turned the wheels of the gleaner so that the front end was aligned with the planted rows. “We’ll do a round and get the beans in the hopper. Then we’ll use that bucket behind you to scoop some out and test them.”
Wood glanced at the empty ice-cream pail and picked up the flashlight sized electronic instrument inside. “What’s this used for?”
“That’s the tester. It’ll measure the amount of moisture in the beans. Before we use it, we’ll test them the old-fashioned way.” She motioned for him to climb down.
He waited for her at the bottom, offering her his hand as she followed him down the metal steps. She ignored the gesture. As she headed toward the back of the combine, she stumbled over a rut in the road. Wood steadied her with a pair of hands at her waist.
“Thanks,” she murmured, sliding out of his grasp. During the instant his hands had been on her waist, her body had tingled with pleasure. She tried not to think what those hands might feel like on other parts of her body.
“Here’s how my grandfather would test the crop.” She reached for a bean stalk and pulled off one of the pods. “You squeeze this, then crack it at the top and bottom.” She snapped the pod in two. “It should snap in your hand. Then you chew.” She popped the bean into her mouth.
After only a few seconds, she spat the bean out. “Not ready.”
“You can determine that by chewing?”
She nodded. “It has to do with how hard it is. But just to make sure I’m right, we’ll do a round with the combine, then use the tester.”
Back they went into the cab of the combine. When they had done a row of beans, she stopped. “Think you can climb up into the hopper and scoop me out a bucket of beans? All you have to do is use those two steps right next to the door.”
Carefully, Wood did as she instructed, getting an ice-cream bucket full of shelled beans which he gave to Hannah. She unscrewed the cap on the electronic tester, filled it with beans, then poured them into the tester. She pushed a button and waited for the digital readout.
A number flashed in red across the minuscule screen. “See? Eighteen. We need a moisture content of thirteen before we harvest.”
“Why is that?”
“We can’t dry beans like we do corn,” she explained. “We’ll have to wait until the stalks dry off.”
When they were back at the barn Wood reached into his pocket and pulled out a bean pod. He squeezed it, cracked it at the top and bottom, then snapped it in his hand. Next he put the bean into his mouth and chewed for a couple of moments before spitting it out.
“I hope nobody’s going to eat these for breakfast.” He gave her a smile that could only be called cocky.
Hannah didn’t want to smile, but automatically her lips curved into a grin. She turned away so he wouldn’t see, but it was too late.
“There’s no reason why you can’t smile while you work, is there?”
She faced him once more. “No.”
“Good because you’re pretty when you smile.”
Hannah was no stranger to men’s compliments, but this one made her extremely self-conscious. Not one to appreciate chivalry, she didn’t want any man treating her as if she were a piece of china. She was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense, work-the-land kind of woman, not a hothouse flower.
She had no time to waste on flirting or small talk...even if Wood Dumler did have a pair of brown eyes that could make a woman’s insides feel like scrambled eggs. He was her employee and she his boss.
“Look, we both agreed to forget what happened yesterday. We had a curiosity about each other, it was satisfied. Now if you plan to work for me, you’d better trash the pick-up lines,” she advised him.
Again he gave her that dumb look she had seen so often in the past two days. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“I do want to work for you,” he said sincerely.
“Okay, then no more looking at me as if I’m some bimbo on a barstool waiting for you to make my day.”
“Is that how you think I look at you?”
“Sometimes. And I don’t need you to do the gentleman number on me, either.”
“What gentleman number?”
“Holding doors, putting your hand on my elbow, helping me up the steps...that kind of stuff.”
“Where I come from, men treat ladies with respect. I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t open your doors for you. It’s the proper thing to do.”
Hannah sighed and blew her bangs out of her eyes. Of all the men for Gabby to find, why did it have to be an old-fashioned one?
“There’s a time and a place for that kind of behavior, it’s just not here. I’m not a lady, I’m your employer, and I want you to treat me like your employer. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a woman or a man.”
“It matters to me.”
The look in his eyes echoed that sentiment and Hannah felt her body grow warm. “It shouldn’t.”
“What are you saying? That because I work for you I’m not supposed to have any manners?”
“This isn’t about manners. You act as if I need you to watch out for me, like you’re doing the manly thing watching out for the little lady. I told you, I’m no lady.”
Before she could say one more word to the contrary, he pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth with his. Hannah clung to his broad shoulders as her body weakened in a most delicious way. Shivers of pleasure and a sigh of delight encouraged him to deepen the kiss. She knew she should push him away, yet she couldn’t. It felt too good. She pressed her body closer to his in an instinctive invitation to intimacy. To her dismay, he was the one who pulled back.
“There’s where you’re wrong, Hannah. And if I weren’t the gentleman I am, we’d be doing a whole lot more than kissing.” His voice dropped into a husky, intimate tone that told Hannah that no matter how much she protested, she would always be a woman to him.
 
HANNAH WAS RELIEVED when Gabby offered to ride to town with them. The thought of sitting with Wood in the cab of the pickup was more than she could bear. Now at least Gabby could sit between them.
“Now where do you suppose he is?” she asked when they reached the truck and Wood was nowhere in sight. “I told him to meet me by the garage.”
“I’ll check out front.” Gabby disappeared around the side of the house only to reappear a few minutes later with Wood in tow. “He was wandering around the other side of the house,” she said in an aside to Hannah who simply shook her head in frustration.
Wood watched Hannah and Gabby climb up into the cab of the pickup truck, his face that same mask of suspicion he had worn the first time Hannah had seen him. Gabby slid across the bench seat and patted the dark upholstery.
“Come on up, Wood. There’s plenty of room.”
When he didn’t move, Gabby asked, “Are you all. right?”
Although he nodded and climbed inside, Hannah had her doubts. His face was pale and it suddenly dawned on her that the reason he didn’t drive could have something to do with a traumatic car accident in his past.
“You better buckle up,” Gabby told him. “Hannah’s got a lead foot.”
Wood sat perfectly still.
Hannah whispered to Gabby, “Better show him.”
Gabby reached across his shoulder and pulled on the safety harness. “It hooks into this piece here.” She latched it to the buckle extending from the seat.
When she started the pickup and backed it out of the garage, all the color drained from Wood’s face. Had it not been for Gabby clutching his arm, Hannah didn’t doubt for one minute that he would have leaped from the moving vehicle.
Hannah pulled out of the drive and onto the dirt road leading to the county highway. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Wood sitting as straight as a board, his knuckles clenched as his fingers clung to the seat belt.
Gabby kept up the conversation, rattling on about the neighboring farms and doing what Hannah thought was a first-rate job of selling the Stanleyville area. Wood didn’t say a word.
When they reached town, Hannah parked the truck in front of the video store. Again Gabby had to help Wood with the seat belt, this time to unfasten it.
“You can take him to Carl’s,” Hannah told Gabby when all three were standing on the sidewalk. “I need to see Ed at the co-op. I’ll meet you back here in say—” she paused to glance at her watch “—twenty minutes?”

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