The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter (13 page)

“Right,” Jordan said. “And I suppose those bags you toted upstairs a little while ago don't indicate that you and Lucas intend to stay right here until morning, just so you can catch a glimpse of Janet Runningbear and her daughter. I'd be happy to describe her, if you'd like to turn right around and go back home. Tall, slender, mid-thirties, long black hair. Is that what you were wondering about?”

“It's a start,” Luke confirmed.

This was definitely a turn of events Harlan hadn't counted on. Janet was skittish enough around him without having to face his whole darn family. He scowled at Luke. “You're staying?”

“Just till dawn,” he said with a grin. “I'd hate to make that long drive back tonight. I might fall asleep at the wheel. Besides, you don't get to see nearly enough of Angela. She misses her granddaddy. Isn't that right, sweet pea?”

The toddler dutifully scrambled off her chair and ran around to be picked up so she could deliver sticky kisses to Harlan's face. “Miss you, grandda,” she asserted enthusiastically.

“Did you coach her to do that, just so I wouldn't toss you out on your ear?” Harlan grumbled.

Jordan glanced across the table at his wife. “Maybe we should stick around, too. What do you think?”

“I think Luke is perfectly capable of tormenting your father without any help from you,” Kelly retorted.

“Thank you,” Harlan said to her.

“But I want to stay,” Dani protested. The seven-year-old's expression turned wily. “I can help baby-sit Angela. Aunt Jessie says I'm really, really good.”

“Oh, for goodness' sake, the whole darn lot of you might as well move back in,” Harlan declared.

“Don't tempt us, Daddy,” Luke advised. “We just might do it, at least until we see where things between you and Janet Runningbear are heading. By the way, have you been locking up all the cars now that her daughter's around here all the time?”

Harlan groaned. He'd always wanted a tight-knit family. He'd always done his darnedest to make his
sons feel welcome at White Pines, even after they'd gone on to lives of their own. It appeared he was going to live to regret not booting them all into another state. For the second time in a little more than an hour, he reminded himself to be very, very careful what he wished for in the future.

* * *

Janet took one look at the assembled members of Harlan Adams's family as she drove up to the house on Monday and very nearly turned tail and ran. She didn't have a doubt in the world that she and Jenny were the main attraction that had drawn them onto the porch at daybreak. All of the family, she guessed from the size of the gathering, right down to the youngest grandchild. Even her intrepid daughter seemed a little awed by all the attention riveted on them.

“Who are all those people and why are they staring at us?” Jenny asked, regarding the bunch of them warily.

“Now you know how Custer must have felt when he made his last stand,” Janet said dryly, then added, “My guess is they're all here to try to figure out if we have designs on their father.”

“You mean like wanting to marry him or something?” Jenny asked, astonishment written all over her face.

“That would be my guess,” Janet confirmed.

Jenny's mouth gaped. “You don't, do you?”

“I don't,” Janet said emphatically.

She wished she could speak with as much certainty about Harlan's intentions. He was the first man in aeons who wasn't the least bit put off by her prickly,
independent nature. Even after she'd turned moody on him on Saturday, he'd remained flirtatious and placid.

In fact, if anything, the glint in his eyes burned even brighter in the face of her contrariness. He wanted her and that, in his opinion, was that. He clearly thought it was just a matter of time until he got his way.

Apparently his sons thought as much, too, or they wouldn't be here this morning trying to check out the woman who'd caught their father's eye.

“Go on and hop out,” she advised Jenny.

“You're going to leave me here alone with
them?
” her daughter protested, clearly aghast at the prospect. “I don't think so.”

“Jenny, I'm sure they're all very nice people.”

“Then why are you running away?”

“Because they obviously have an agenda I don't want to deal with,” she said.

She cast a quick look to see if she could turn her car around in this unoccupied corner of the driveway or if she was going to be forced to circle all the way around in front of the house, in front of all those fascinated, prying eyes.

Jenny folded her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. Defiance radiated from every pore. “I am not getting out of this car without you.”

“Sweetie, please,” she implored.

“No way.”

“You'll embarrass Harlan.”

“And your taking off won't?” Jenny flung back. “Get real, Mom. They're here to check you out even more than me. Maybe you should prepare a little
speech denying any interest in Mr. Adams. Maybe then they'd go away.”

Janet sighed and threw the car into park and shut off the engine. “Traitor,” she muttered at her daughter.

“Don't blame me. Blame Mr. Adams.”

Janet glanced in Harlan's direction. He looked every bit as miserable as she felt. “I seriously doubt that this was his idea of a good time,” she observed.

“Then he should have kicked them out,” Jenny retorted. “If he can't control his own kids, how come you think he's such a good influence on me?”

“It's hardly the same,” Janet replied.

“I don't see why. If I'm going to turn out all nosy like them, I'd think you'd want to get me away from here as fast as you could.”

Before Janet could come up with an adequate answer for that, Harlan was opening her door.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a hushed tone. “I didn't know they were coming yesterday and I sure as hell didn't know they were staying. I couldn't shake `em out of here to save my soul. I thought about starving them out, but my housekeeper would have fed them behind my back, I'm sure.”

His genuine discomfort relieved some of her own tension. “Jenny thinks you have a serious inability to control your own kids.”

He grinned. “I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm still not sure where I went wrong.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on. We might as well get this over with. Give it five minutes and you can swear you have a major client coming and that you have to get to town.”

She suddenly found his desire to be rid of her in such a hurry a little insulting. “Are you afraid to let them spend too much time with me?” she asked irritably.

His mouth gaped. “With you? Are you crazy? I'm scared silly you'll take one look at the lot of them and never show your face around here again.”

She grinned at his adamant tone. “I'm made of tougher stuff than that,” she declared. “So is Jenny.” She leaned back in. “Out, young lady.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right. But I'm not playing cute for anybody, okay?”

“There was little doubt of that,” Janet said dryly, exchanging a pointed look with Harlan, who looked as if he wanted very badly to burst out laughing.

As they approached the porch, three young women came down the steps to meet them.

“Hi, I'm Jessie,” the first one said. “We're sorry about all of this, but there's no controlling these guys when they get together to harass their father. We couldn't have gotten them out of here last night if we'd set off a canister of pepper spray in the house. Believe me, I thought about it. So did Kelly and Melissa.”

“I even had one in my purse,” Kelly said. “I bought it when I lived in Houston. Never had a need for it there, thank goodness, but I thought it might come in handy here last night.”

“Too many babies, though,” Melissa added. “I'm talking about the ones in cribs, not the ones we're married to. You'd think they hadn't learned to share, the way they've been carrying on about meeting the woman who's stealing their daddy's affection.”

Janet warmed to the trio of smiling women immediately. They clearly understood what it meant to hook up with an Adams man. “Believe me, I am not out to steal their daddy's affection or anything else, for that matter.”

“It's not entirely up to you,” Jessie declared with the kind of clear-thinking logic that cut straight to the heart of Janet's dilemma. “Our husbands may be the stubbornnest set of men in Texas. Not a one of them knows how to take no for an answer. Who do you guess they learned that from?”

“Hey,” Harlan protested. “Watch your tongue.”

“It's true, Harlan, and you know it,” Kelly and Melissa chimed in, laughing at his disgruntled expression.

Janet considered the teasing comments to be very discouraging news. Apparently Harlan detected her discomfort, because he slipped her arm through his.

“Come on,” he said. “We might as well get the rest of this over with. Ladies, go tell your husbands to be on their best behavior.”

“Don't expect us to accomplish what you couldn't,” Kelly teased.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “I told you, Mom.”

Harlan glanced at her. “What did you tell your mother?”

“That you must not be half so tough as you try to pretend, if your sons walk all over you.”

The sons in question hooted at that.

“Guess she has you pegged, doesn't she, Daddy?” Cody taunted.

“If her mama's half as smart, you're in for it,” Jordan agreed, grinning at Janet as he shook her hand.

Luke crowded in next, a sympathetic glimmer in his eyes. “Don't let all the fuss scare you to death. We're not half as intimidating as we sound.”

“A bunch of soft touches?” Janet asked doubtfully.

He nodded. “And Daddy's the easiest of all.”

“You start giving away all my secrets and that prize bull of mine you want to breed next year won't get anywhere near those cows of yours,” Harlan warned.

Luke held up his hands and backed off. “Not another word,” he vowed.

The teasing went on for another ten minutes, though, as the three oldest grandchildren raced around the yard. Jenny seemed thoroughly bemused by all the commotion. It made Janet wonder whether she'd been so wrong to insist to Barry that she wanted no more children. Left unspoken had been the fact that she didn't want them with him. Within months of Jenny's birth, she had already sensed that their marriage wasn't going to last the distance. It had taken her more than twelve years to finally cut the ties.

When Melissa shoved a baby into her arms, so she could chase after her daughter who was vanishing around the side of the house, Janet felt a stirring of maternal instinct that was so overwhelming it brought tears to her eyes. She quickly handed the baby over to Jessie, who was standing nearby.

“I have to get to work,” she announced to no one in particular.

Harlan was at her side in a heartbeat. “We'll talk later,” he said as he walked with her to her car. “I'll come up with some way to apologize for all this.”

“It's not like you threw me into a den of starving wolves,” she reminded him. “It wasn't that bad. They're nice people, all of them. And they clearly love you and worry about you.”

He grinned at that. “Do I look like a man who needs people fussing over him?”

She couldn't help smiling at that. “I doubt they see you the same way I do,” she said.

“Oh, really,” he said, sounding absolutely fascinated all of a sudden. “And how do you see me?”

“Never mind. Your ego's big enough as it is,” she said, and closed the car door in his face.

“We'll finish this discussion tonight,” he shouted as she drove away.

The challenge in his voice and the gleam in his eyes stayed with her the rest of the day. At least a dozen times, as she talked with the few potential clients who called, an image of Harlan's face popped into her head. His strength and compassion, along with that taunting, unmistakable desire, kept her from regretting the day she'd moved to Texas.

Too many of the calls were from people only interested in hiring her if she'd work free, or from people with ugly accusations to make about her being an uppity Indian. She found the atmosphere of bias and distrust both discouraging and infuriating.

By the time she returned to White Pines to pick up Jenny, she had a thundering headache and a chip on her shoulder the size of a longhorn. The sight of Harlan waiting on the porch for her, a pitcher of tea ready, along with more of Maritza's culinary treats, brought tears to her eyes. She lingered in the car for a moment for fear he'd see how despondent she was
and try to jump in and fix things for her. After a day like the one she'd just had, it would be too easy simply to let him.

Even though she'd taken the time to gather her composure, Harlan wasn't fooled. He took one look at her and reached out to gather her into his arms. She hesitated only an instant before accepting the comfort he offered.

“Bad day?” he asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

“To me, it is. Want to talk about it?”

She wrapped her arms a little tighter around his waist and rested her head on his chest. “No, but this is nice.”

Too nice, she reminded herself sternly. Too easy. It was a dangerous trap. With a sigh, she pulled away. “Thanks.”

“You could stay right where you are,” he said. “These are mighty broad shoulders. Might as well make use of ‘em, if you've got troubles.”

“Nothing I can't handle,” she said, and forced herself to step away from what he was offering.

When she would have turned away, his voice stopped her.

“Janet?” he said in little more than a whisper.

She lifted her gaze to his and felt her heart skip a beat at the blazing heat in his eyes. She swallowed hard. “Yes?”