The Tycoon's Tots

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Books by Stella Bagwell

About the Author

Dear Reader

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Copyright

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

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Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

To Lloyd,
for all those inspiring speeches
you used to give me.
Love always.

C
hloe Murdock galloped the chestnut around the track a second time, then slowed him to a trot. He wasn't ready to quit their run, and Chloe had to strain against the reins to remind him who was boss.

She'd just gotten the horse in check when she noticed the man standing at the top of the hill, a few yards away from the stable. He was looking in her direction, his hand shading his eyes, even though he was wearing a pair of dark glasses.

It wasn't unusual for a man to visit the ranch. Men often stopped by to inquire about buying a horse or bull. The Bar M had always been known for its good stock and that hadn't changed even though her father, Tomas, had died and no longer ran the place.

Yet even from this distance, Chloe got the impression that this man in his khaki slacks and expensive leather jacket was not here to buy or sell stock. At least not the four-legged kind she was familiar with.

By the time she reached the top of the hill, the chestnut was still dancing with the urge to run. His sides were heaving
and his flared nostrils blew streams of vapor into the crisp morning air. The man on the ground kept a careful distance from the woman and the fired up thoroughbred.

“Hello,” she said to him. “I'm Chloe Murdock. Can I help you?”

Not certain he could trust her or the horse, Wyatt remained several steps away.

“I'm Wyatt Sanders. The woman up at the house told me I would find you down here.” Innate good manners had him pulling off his sunglasses and slipping them inside his shirt pocket.

Chloe was a woman who'd never been that impressed with men, good-looking or otherwise, but she had to admit this one was quite striking. His hair was as black and shiny as a crow's wing and slicked straight back from a wide forehead. His hooded gray eyes were a cool and startling contrast against his darkly tanned skin. Though his lips were compressed in a thin line at the moment, she got the impression of chiseled fullness. There was money and city polish written from the toes of his brown Italian loafers to the top of his expensive haircut.

“If you're looking for a racehorse, I'm not inclined to sell. A few months ago, I did let a five-year-old go in a claiming race, but the ten I have now are all young and,” she flashed him a charming smile, “fast.”

Wyatt hadn't been ready for the sight of this woman, nor the sexy tilt of her berry colored lips. He'd been expecting a cowgirl of course—what else would one find on a ranch?—but all the cowgirls he'd ever seen in Houston wore skin-tight blue jeans, overdone makeup and big hairdos.

But this girl, or more rightly this slip of a woman, sitting astride the nervous thoroughbred was nothing like that. She was wearing jeans all right, but they were black and loose fitting with the hems tucked into a pair of brown western boots that had intricate stitching on the tall tops.
An old gray rugby shirt served as her blouse. In spite of the cool air, the neck was unbuttoned and the sleeves were pushed up to her elbows to show a pair of slender but strongly muscled forearms. Her straight hair was the color of rich burgundy wine. White the crown was covered with a red baseball cap, the cape of it lying against her back shone like red silk in the morning sun.

There was no makeup or artificial color to be found on her face, yet she looked anything but pale. The wind had blushed her cheeks and lips and her deep green eyes glittered like twin emeralds as she looked down at him from her lofty perch on the horse's back.

“Actually,” he said, “I'm…not looking to buy a racehorse.”

Her winged brows arched at him. “Oh. Then you're here about a bull. Well, you'll have to see my sister, Rose.”

“I'm not here about a bull, either. I'm here…” He paused as he realized all the things he'd planned on saying, all the questions his mind had dwelled on these past weeks, were fast slipping away as he looked up at Chloe Murdochs face. She was nothing like the woman he'd thought he'd be dealing with, and the difference had thrown him.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“I'm here to talk to you.”

The chestnut was hot and if Chloe didn't keep him moving while he cooled down, his muscles would be stiff tomorrow. She had no intention of letting that happen, no matter what business this man wanted to discuss.

“You'll have to let me put Banjo on the walker.”

She reined the horse away from him and headed over to the stable. Wyatt followed, carefully stepping around piles of horse manure as he went.

At the stable, Chloe jerked off the small racing saddle, tossed it over the fence, then led the tall chestnut over to
where three other horses were being mechanically led around a large circle.

After she'd fastened Banjo's lead rope to one of the free arms and put the horses in motion again, she walked over to the stranger and extended her hand to him.

“Sorry about the interruption, er—Mr. Sanders, is it?”

Wyatt hadn't planned on shaking Chloe Murdock's hand, but he found it impossible to rebuff her. The genuine warmth he sensed about her compelled him to remain a gentleman.

“Yes,” he answered. “It's Sanders. Wyatt Sanders.”

She had a healthy grip for someone with such a small hand. He could feel calluses on her palms, something he'd never encountered on a woman before. But then he'd never known any woman who actually did manual labor such as this one obviously did.

“Well, Mr. Sanders, what can I help you with today? Are you looking for land in this area?”

Her assumption put a quirk of amusement on his lips. “What makes you think that?” he found himself asking.

Chloe shrugged as she once again eyed him with open curiosity. “You're obviously not from around here. I thought you might be in real estate.”

The wind was playing with her shoulder length hair, whipping a few strands across her face. She had pale golden skin, he noticed, with one freckle a fraction above the edge of her upper lip.

He forced himself to drop her hand, but his eyes refused to leave her face. Incredibly, she was the sexiest woman he'd ever seen. “I'm an oilman from Houston, Texas,” he told her.

She smiled at that and Wyatt felt something inside him jerk as though he'd been stung by an arrow.

“A Texas oilman,” she repeated with faint amusement. “What are you doing out here in New Mexico? Looking to buy or lease the mineral rights in this area? I wasn't
aware this part of the state had petroleum resources. ‘Course, I know there's the big Conoco field over by Eunice and there's oil down at Lordsburg, but you're talking at least a couple of hundred miles from here. And that's all desert land. You're in the mountains now.”

So Wyatt had noticed. One minute he'd been in the desert, then before he'd realized it the terrain had changed, and he'd been winding through forested mountains and lush green valley floor. The change in landscape had surprised him almost as much as the sight of Chloe Murdock. “I'm not here looking for oil. It's something more personal.”

Her eyes narrowed at his evasiveness. “Personal? Dear God, I hope you're not going to tell me it has something to do with my father Tomas,” she said without preamble.

“It does. In a way,” he said and was struck by how much he wanted to avoid the issue that had brought him to this ranch and this woman. It would have been pleasant to simply talk to her a few more minutes.

“Look, Mr. Sanders, my father has been dead for several months. I'm not trying to make excuses, but whatever he owes you, we didn't know about it. We've been trying to pay off his debts, but for right now, all I can say is you'll just have to stand in line and wait your turn.”

The memory of Belinda's coffin being lowered into the ground suddenly flashed through Wyatt's mind. “What your father owes me could never be repaid.”

“I beg your pardon?”

His gray eyes clashed with the spark of her green ones. “You heard what I said. Your father took something from me that can't be compensated.”

Chloe was fast losing her patience with this man. He'd obviously come here for money. Why didn't he just spit it out and be done with all this dallying around?

“I've always heard Texans go at things at a slower pace, but do you think for this one time you could speed things
along and get to the point? I have lots of work waiting on me and the morning is already half gone.”

His jaw clenched. “Your father can't give my sister back to me,” he said tightly.

Chloe drew in a sharp little breath. “Who are you?”

He took a step closer. “I told you who I was.”

Her full lips twisted at his response. “An oilman from Houston. So what connection do you have with me or this ranch?”

Her voice, which up until a moment ago had been warm and lilting, was now sharp-edged and demanding. “My sister was Belinda Waller and your father killed her,” he said flatly.

The first spill Chloe had taken on the galloping track had knocked the wind from her lungs and scrambled her senses. For several minutes she'd been unable to tell if the ground was really the sky or visa versa. Hearing Belinda Waller had a brother left her feeling as though she'd just taken another walloping fall.

“My father didn't kill anybody,” she finally managed to say. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do.”

Turning, she left him standing on the muddy hillside. She knew he would follow her. He hadn't come all this way to let things go at that. But Chloe was too shaken, too stunned to simply stand stock-still while the man bored holes in her with those cold gray eyes.

“I'm not going to be put off, Ms. Murdock. We have things to talk about.”

She glanced over her shoulder to see he'd joined her in the long, dim stable. For a moment all Chloe could think was that he looked like an alien standing there on the wood shavings in his crisply ironed cotton and softly worn leather. He wasn't from this world, so why had he come here?

With a flip of her wrist, she jerked the baseball cap from
her head and shook her hair back from her face. “Then talk. Who's stopping you?”

His teeth ground together as he watched her slap the cap back on her head, then toss a shovel into a wheelbarrow and push it into an empty stall.

“I'd think you'd have the courtesy to go up to the house and give me your undivided attention.”

Chloe didn't bother to look at him. Instead, she scooped up a shovelful of dirty wood shavings and horse manure. “I don't have time to go through social niceties with you. And even if I did, I wouldn't.”

Oilmen, even the ones like himself who worked in plush offices and drove Mercedeses, were used to blunt, rough talk interspersed with a wide range of four-letter words. It went with the business. But that was from his male counterparts. The women he encountered were always full of sugar and ready to give him all the attention he wanted. He couldn't believe Chloe Murdock was dismissing him as though he were no better than the stuff she was tossing into the wheelbarrow.

“I didn't come here to fight with you,” he said, trying his best to hold onto his temper.

“After what your sister did to my family, I can't believe you had the gall to come here at all.”

Wyatt didn't know what had come over him. Any other time, he would have taken hold of her shoulder and physically made her turn and face him. Instead, he found himself staring, fascinated by her rounded behind as she bent over the shovel, the fluid movements of her body as she pitched another scoopful.

“Flinging accusations at each other isn't going to get us anywhere,” he said.

“I can't say I
want
to get anywhere with you,” she said with a strained grunt as she forced the shovel point down through the packed shavings.

“You're not making this any easier for either of us.”

Anger surged through Chloe, but she tried to take it out on the shovel instead of him. “Believe me, Mr. Sanders, nothing has been easy since my father died. And as for anyone killing anybody, I'd say your sister was the major contributor to the heart attack that killed Tomas. She was blackmailing him, you know. Milking him of his money, and his self-respect. What kind of woman would do that?”

“I think—”

Before he could say more, Chloe flung the shovel to the ground and whirled on him. Her eyes were shooting sparks as hot as her auburn hair. “Tell me, Mr. Sanders, what sort of woman would leave two little helpless babies on a porch and never look back? She didn't care if they lived or died, so don't come here whining about the loss of your sister. You'll not get sympathy from me or anyone else on this ranch!”

Since he'd learned of Belinda's death, Wyatt had been full of outrage and pain. He hadn't stopped to think the Murdock family might be feeling as injured as he.

“I'm not looking for sympathy. Especially from you. I'll be the first to admit that Belinda had her problems. I didn't know about the twins or anything. Not until—” he paused and drew in a heavy breath “—it was already too late. But whatever her faults, she didn't deserve to die in a mental hospital for criminals!”

Chloe could see real grief on Wyatt Sanders's face and it touched her in spite of who he was and all that Belinda had done to her family. “I didn't want your sister to die. None of my family wanted any such thing to happen.”

“Maybe not. But your father was the reason she was in trouble with the law in the first place.”

Chloe's jaw dropped. The man was obviously as crazy as his sister had been. “How could you possibly think such a thing? Your sister was a dangerous, unstable woman. I'm sorry if that pains you, but that's the way it was.”

Tight-lipped, he said, “My sister would never have been
prompted to do the things she did if your father hadn't seduced her and ruined her life.”

Chloe had always been cursed with a quick temper. Growing up, she'd often been punished for her angry outbursts. Ladies don't fight, her mother had gently scolded Chloe when she'd come home one afternoon from grammar school with a fat lip. It hadn't made any difference to Lola when Chloe'd tried to explain she'd punched the playground bully in the face because he'd been calling her best friend ugly names.