The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter
Read The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter Online
Authors: Sherryl Woods
Fatherhood is filled with all kinds of unexpected surprises in this acclaimed Adams Dynasty story from
New York Times
bestselling author Sherryl Woods.
Widower Harlan Adams had plenty of experience with childrenâmale children, anyway. So when a rebellious teenage girl stole his truck and went for a joyride, Harlan was baffled. Then he confronted her intriguing, sassy mother and was totally thrown for a loop. While he might not know anything about girls, he thought he knew everything about women. Trouble was, Harlan had no experience with a woman who told him noâ¦
THE RANCHER AND HIS UNEXPECTED DAUGHTER
SHERRYL WOODS
Chapter One
H
arlan Adams walked out of Rosa's Mexican Café after eating his fill of her spicy brand of Tex-Mex food just in time to see his pickup barrel down the center of Main Street at fifty miles an hour. In the sleepy Texas town of Los Piños, both the theft and the speed were uncommon occurrences.
“Ain't that your truck?” Mule Masters asked, staring after the vehicle that was zigzagging all over the road, endangering parked cars and pedestrians alike.
“Sure as hell is,” Harlan said, indignation making his insides churn worse than Rosa's hot sauce.
“That's what you get for leaving your keys in plain sight. I've been telling you for months now that times have changed. The world's full of thieves and murderers,” Mule said ominously. “They were bound to get to Los Piños sooner or later.”
Given the time it was wasting, Harlan found the familiar lecture extremely irritating. “Where's your car?” he snapped.
Mule blinked at the sharp tone. “Across the street, right where it always is.”
Harlan was already striding across the two-lane road before the words were completely out of his friend's mouth. “Come on, old man.”
Mule appeared vaguely startled by the command. “Come on where?”
“To catch the damned thing, that's where,” he replied with a certain amount of eagerness. The thought of a good ruckus held an amazing appeal.
“Sheriff's close by,” Mule objected without picking up speed.
Harlan lost patience with the procrastinating that had earned Mule his nickname. “Just give me your keys,” he instructed. He didn't take any chances on Mule's compliance. He reached out and snatched them from his friend's hand.
Before the old man could even start grumbling, Harlan was across the street and starting the engine of a battered old sedan. That car had seen a hundred thousand hard miles or more back and forth across the state of Texas, thanks to Mule's knack for tinkering with an engine.
Harlan pulled out onto Main Street, gunned the engine a couple of times, then shifted gears with pure pleasure. The smooth glide from standing stock-still to sixty in the blink of an eye was enough to make a man weep.
In less than a minute his truck was in sight again on the outskirts of town and he was gaining on it. He was tempted to whoop with joy at the sheer exhilaration of the impromptu race, but he had to
keep every bit of his energy focused on his pursuit of that runaway truck.
The chase lasted just long enough to stir his ire, but not nearly long enough to be downright interesting. Not a mile out of town, where the two-lane road curved like a well-rounded lady's hips, he caught up with the truck just in time to see it miss the turn and swerve straight toward a big, old, cottonwood tree. His heart climbed straight into his throat and stayed there as he watched the drama unfold.
He veered from the highway onto the shoulder and slammed on his own brakes just as the truck collided with the tree. It hit with a resounding
thwack
that crumpled the front fender on the passenger side, sent his blood pressure soaring, and elicited a string of profanity from inside the truck that blistered his ears.
“What the devil?” he muttered as he scrambled from the borrowed car and ran toward the truck. Obviously the thief couldn't be badly injured if he had that much energy left for cursing.
To his astonishment, when he flung open the driver's door, a slender young girl practically tumbled out into his arms. He righted her, keeping a firm clamp on her wrist in case the little thief decided to flee.
She couldn't be a day over thirteen, he decided, gazing into scared brown eyes. Admittedly, though, she had a vocabulary that a much older dock worker would envy. She also had a belligerent tilt to her cute little chin and a sullen expression that dared him to yell at her.
Taken aback by her apparent age, Harlan bit back the shouted lecture he'd planned and settled for a less
confrontative approach. He could hardly wait to hear why this child had stolen his pickup.
“You okay?” he inquired quietly. Other than a bump on her forehead, he couldn't see any other signs of injury.
She wriggled in a game effort to free herself from his grip. He grinned at the wasted attempt. He'd wrestled cows ten times her weight or more. This little slip of a thing didn't stand a chance of getting away until he was good and ready to let her go. He didn't plan on that happening anytime soon. Not until he had the answers he wanted, anyway.
“Must be just fine, if you can struggle like that,” he concluded out loud. “Any particular reason you decided to steal my truck?”
“I was tired of walking,” she shot back.
“Did you ever consider a bike?”
“Not fast enough,” she muttered, her gaze defiantly clashing with his.
“You had someplace to get to in a hurry?”
She shrugged.
Harlan had to fight to hide a grin. He'd always been a big admirer of audacity, though he preferred it to be a little better directed. “What's your name?”
She frowned and for the first time began to look faintly uneasy. “Who wants to know?”
“I'm Harlan Adams. I own White Pines. That's a ranch just outside of town.” If she was local, that would be plenty of explanation to intimidate her. If she wasn't, he could elaborate until he had her quivering with fear in her dusty sneakers for pulling a stunt like the one that had ended with his pickup wrapped around a tree.
“Big deal,” she retorted, then let loose a string of expletives.
She either wasn't local or it was going to take a lot more to impress her with the stupidity of what she'd done. “You have a foul mouth, you know that?” he observed.
“So?”
“I'll just bet you don't talk that way around your mama.”
The mention of her mother stirred an expression of pure alarm on her delicate features. Harlan sensed that he'd hit the nail on the head. This ragamuffin kid with the sleek black hair cut as short as a boy's, with the high cheekbones and tanned complexion, might not be afraid of him, but she was scared to death of her mother. He considered it a hopeful sign. He was very big on respect for parental authority, not that he'd noticed his grown-up sons paying the concept much mind lately.
“You're not going to tell her, are you?” she asked, clearly trying to keep the worry out of her voice and failing miserably. For the first time since she'd climbed out of his truck, she sounded her age.
“Now why would I want to keep quiet about the fact that you stole my truck and slammed it into a tree?”
A resurgence of belligerence glinted in her eyes. “Because she'll sue you for pain and suffering. I'm almost positive I've got a whiplash injury,” she said, rubbing at her neck convincingly. “Probably back problems that'll last the rest of my life, too.”
Harlan chuckled. “Imagine that. All those problems and you expect to blame them on the man
whose truck you stole and smashed up. You and your mother have a little scam going? You wreck cars and she sues for damages?”
At the criticism of her mother's ethics, her defiance wavered just a little. “My mom's a lawyer,” she admitted eventually. “She sues lots of people.” Her eyes glittered with triumphant sparks as she added, “She wins, too.”
An image suddenly came to him, an image of the new lawyer he'd read about just last week in the local paper. The article had been accompanied by a picture of an incredibly lovely woman, her long black hair flowing down her back, her features and her name strongly suggesting her Comanche heritage. Janet Something-or-other. Runningbear, maybe. Yep, that was it. Janet Runningbear.
He surveyed the girl standing in front of him and thought he detected a resemblance. There was no mistaking the Native American genes in her proud bearing, her features or her coloring, though he had a hunch they'd been mellowed by a couple of generations of interracial marriage.
“Your mom's the new lawyer in town, then,” he said. “Janet Runningbear.”
She seemed startled that he'd guessed, but she hid it quickly behind another of those belligerent looks she'd obviously worked hard to perfect. “So?”
“So, I think you and I need to go have a little chat with your mama,” he said, putting a hand on the middle of her back and giving her a gentle but unrelenting little push in the direction of Mule's car. Her chin rose another notch, but her shoulders slumped and she didn't resist. In fact, there was an air
of weary resignation about her that tugged at his heart.
As he drove back into town he couldn't help wondering just how much trouble Janet Runningbear's daughter managed to get herself into on a regular basis and why she felt the need to do it. After raising four sons of his own, he knew a whole lot about teenage rebellion and the testing of parental authority. He'd always thoughtâmistakenly apparentlyâthat girls might have been easier. Not that he would have traded a single one of his boys to find out firsthand. He'd planned on keeping an eye on his female grandbabies to test his theory.
He glanced over at the slight figure next to him and caught the downward turn of her mouth and the protective clasping of her arms across her chest. Stubbornness radiated from every pore. The prospect of meeting the woman who had raised such a little hellion intrigued him.
It was the first time since a riding accident had taken his beloved Mary away from him the year before that he'd found much of anything fascinating. He realized as the blood zinged through his veins for the first time in months just how boring and predictable he'd allowed his life to become.
He'd left the running of the ranch mostly in Cody's hands, just as his youngest son had been itching for him to do for some time. Harlan spent his days riding over his land or stopping off in town to have lunch and play a few hands of poker with Mule or some other friend. His evenings dragged out endlessly unless one or the other of his sons stopped by for a visit and brought his grandbabies along.
For a rancher who'd crammed each day to its limits all his life, he'd been telling himself that the tedium was a welcome relief. He'd been convinced of it, too, until the instant when he'd seen his truck barreling down Main Street.
Something about the quick, hot surge of blood in his veins told him those soothing, dull days were over. Glancing down at the ruffian by his side, he could already anticipate the upcoming encounter with any woman bold and brash enough to keep her in hand. He suddenly sensed that he was just about to start living again.
* * *
Janet Runningbear gazed out of the window of her small law office on Main Street and saw her daughter being ushered down the sidewalk by a man she recognized at once as Harlan Adams, owner of White Pines and one of the most successful ranchers for several hundred miles in any direction. Judging from the stern expression on his face and Jenny's dragging footsteps, her daughter had once more gotten herself into a mess of trouble.