Authors: Linda Warren,Marin Thomas,Jacqueline Diamond,Leigh Duncan
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Series, #Harlequin American Romance
Emma canted her head and gave him a worried look. “You feeling all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. Must’ve swallowed a bug or something.” He cleared his throat while he worked to get his feelings under control. What would it be like for Bree to grow up without a dad? No one to take her to the father-daughter dance. To eventually walk her down the aisle. His stay on the Circle P was a short one, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t be fair—to Emma or Bree—if he got too close, too involved in their lives when he knew he’d be moving on.
For the next while, he mostly stuck to his job as tour guide, though he couldn’t help tackling a few small problems along the way. When he pointed out the long rolls of silage they’d feed the cattle over the winter, he made quick work of taping a few holes in the blue plastic covering. At the cement watering trough, he paused again, this time just long enough to adjust the guide wire on the solar panel array.
“Ready to see the cattle?” he asked and smiled when Bree clapped her hands. In the north quarter section, most of the herd had spread out on the other side of a fence. He drove until he found a shaded spot before he stopped to let everyone stretch their legs.
“Who’s up for a snack?” he asked, pulling a small cooler and an old quilt from the storage area.
“Are there cookies?” Bree asked expectantly.
Colt tugged on one of the little girl’s pigtails. “Nah, I’m not a good cook like your mom.” He sent Emma an approving look. The breakfast she’d rustled up that morning was more in line with the Circle P’s traditions. “It’s just cheese and crackers and sweet tea,” he said. He unrolled the blanket under the tree. “You want some?”
“Uh-huh.” Bree plopped down beside him while Emma helped him dole out the snacks. “Mr. Colt,” Bree asked, “why do the cows have earrings?”
Colt looked up from the thermos to study the herd. The little girl was right. The bright orange tags hanging from each ear did sort of look like jewelry. He cracked a smile. “Cows don’t have names. Their tags are how we keep track of them.”
“They have to have names,” Bree declared. “Look, Mrs. Wickles. That one’s Spotty. There’s Blackie. That’s Red.” After asking permission, she took her doll closer to the fence, where she continued assigning pet names to every cow in sight.
Colt slanted a look at Emma. “You know we raise
beef
cattle, right?” For her benefit, he added, “The tags contain microchips that hold detailed records for every head—parentage, birth weight, how much they’ve grown at certain milestones, vaccinations. If we need data on a single cow, we run a scanner over the tag and download the info straight onto the computer.”
“That sounds like a lot of paperwork,” she said, pointing out the obvious. “Who handles it?”
“My dad did it all.” The cattle shimmered. A hard knot formed in his chest. “I’ll never be the man he was,” he said, his voice ragged, “but I’ll do my best.”
“I remember the first time I wanted to hang a picture after Jack died. It’s tough, doing things that were always someone else’s responsibility.”
“Yeah.” He let his gaze drop to a pair of dark eyes, where understanding glistened. Emma’s fingers stroked his wrist. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, tracking the cattle, that’s one of my jobs now. We used to jot everything down by hand. It’s easier with the scanners. ’Course you still spend hours pulling your hair out over it.”
Smile lines deepened slightly around Emma’s mouth. She reached up and tugged on his hat brim. “Looks like you’ve got plenty.”
Colt stretched out, munching on a cracker. “I imagine it’ll be a might gray around the edges by the time Royce and Randy take over. The day-to-day operation is enough to keep us all busy, but we’re already startin’ to plan the winter cattle drive. Birding tours, too. The folks from
Beaks and Wings
said they might be interested in doing a feature article.” Bird-watchers all over the world subscribed to the glossy magazine.
“It’s beautiful here.” Emma waved a hand. “Restful. You must love it.”
He swept his gaze over the familiar scene and tried to see the place through her eyes. Like cotton balls, white clouds dotted a sky that was more turquoise than blue. Distant trees provided the only break in perfectly flat land that rolled to the horizon. Wind danced across the field of fresh tall grass. He heard the cattle pulling and eating, and suddenly it hit him: this was home, his home. In all his travels, there’d never been another sight or smell or sound exactly like it.
“I do now,” he managed.
She paused, a small frown niggling her perfect lips. “Why did you leave?”
“Chalk it up to being young and foolish, I guess.” Colt helped himself to another cracker. “Then Dad died and...and things changed. Suddenly, what I was doing didn’t seem so important anymore.”
“But you don’t see yourself staying on permanently?”
Was that a wishful look in her eyes? Colt leaned back on his elbows, his boots crossed at his ankles. There was a test hidden somewhere in her questions. He wasn’t sure he could pass it, or that he wanted to, so he stuck to honest answers. “I’ve thought about getting my own place. Raising bulls for the rodeo. Maybe I will...one day.”
“You’re a natural for this kind of work, Colt.”
“Because I’m big and strong?” Teasing, he flexed his arm.
Emma shook her head. “I had no idea there was so much work involved. Here you’re giving me a tour of the ranch, but you haven’t stopped working from the time we left the barn.”
After making sure the cattle still captured Bree’s attention, Colt leaned down to steal a kiss. “I wouldn’t exactly call this work.”
She placed her hands flat against his chest. “Hmm, nice. But I’m onto your ways. You’re trying to distract me.”
“Am I doing a good job?”
Cicadas buzzed, their low drone providing a pleasant background to the quiet sounds of cattle chomping on the thick grass. It felt right, slipping his arm around Emma’s waist while Bree stood at the fence. Soon, a calf wandered over to investigate the visitor and, for the next few minutes, the two youngsters entertained each other. The opportunity was too good to pass up, and Colt stole another kiss. Okay, maybe it was three.
All the while, he told himself he should get moving. The thousand and one responsibilities he’d shouldered as manager of the Circle P waited for him back at the ranch house. He needed to check up on the workers, make sure they were doing the jobs he’d assigned them. Instead, he held Emma a little closer, enjoying the feel of his hand round her waist, her slim legs pressed against his own.
For the life of him, he couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be.
Chapter Nine
They had to stop. Now, before things went too far and she lost her heart to the man with the tumbleweed existence. The one who shared too many traits in common with her late husband, her father. The one whose goals in life didn’t include the house, the family, the roots that were so important to her.
Yes, there was more to Colt than she thought at first, and his kisses—oh, how they made her ache for more. But, summoning a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Emma reluctantly pulled away.
“I think we’d better head back. I hear people expect dinner on the table at six each night.” She traced the inside of his arm and silently begged him to deny it when she added, “They tell me the boss is a stickler for tradition.”
Much to her chagrin, he offered no resistance. His mesmerizing eyes lost their dreamy quality. He pushed himself to his feet, rounded up the remains of their snacks and stuffed the trash into a garbage bag, which he slung into the back of the ATV
Dusting off his hands, he turned to her. “If we leave now, we’ll have time to swing by the little house. The boys say it’ll be ready for you and Bree by tomorrow.”
Emma stood, still holding the blanket where she and Colt had recently traded kisses. Moving out of the main house meant no more wandering down the stairs on a sleepless night to wind up on the couch with Colt. Not having his scent waft out at her every time she opened the closet. An end to the dreams that came from her head on his pillow. While the promise of a place of her own had drawn her to the Circle P, the little house couldn’t make up for all the advantages of staying right where she was.
But moving was the smart thing to do. The only thing to do, since letting herself get closer to Colt would only lead to heartbreak when he realized they had different goals for the future. Ignoring the little voice inside her heart that argued maybe she should have thought of that before she kissed the man, she summoned Bree from the fence where her daughter had spent the past fifteen minutes making friends with the calf.
“Hey, sweetie, let’s go.”
“I can’t, Mommy. Baby Girl needs me to feed her.” Bree held out a handful of freshly torn grass.
Any thought of arguing with her died when Colt swept Bree high into the air. “Baby Girl, huh? That
bull
calf has to learn how to eat all on his own. Next time we come back to check on him, you’ll see. Soon, he’ll be bigger than you are.”
“Tomorrow? Can we come back tomorrow?”
Colt lowered the little girl to her feet and tickled her belly. “Maybe not tomorrow, Little Bit. I have work to do.” When Bree’s features clouded over, he sank to his knees. “Next, we’re gonna see your new house. Tomorrow after supper, if it’s okay with your mom, I’ll take you for a ride on a horse.”
Her daughter’s body slammed into Emma’s thighs. “Please, Mommy. Please, please, can I?”
Nodding, Emma turned away so neither of them would notice the sheen of tears in her eyes. The man might be bossy and arrogant, but Colt, with his kind heart and solid values, would make a wonderful influence in her daughter’s life. But the man who could steal her heart just as easily as he’d stolen her breath was leaving. After the first of the year, he’d return to his rootless life with the rodeo. A life she wanted no part of.
Taking the coward’s way out, she left Colt to cajole her daughter into the Rhino while she finished folding the blanket. Her thoughts were still a jumbled mess when she slipped onto the front seat. The vehicle dipped to the side as Colt slid behind the wheel. While he drove, she drank in the stark beauty of land that rolled to the horizon broken only by the occasional palmetto or pine tree. In less than a week, she’d fallen in love with the Circle P. And if she were honest with herself, she’d admit she’d fallen for the man on the seat beside her, too.
* * *
E
MMA
DIDN
’
T
SAY
much on the ride back, but Colt wasn’t worried. From the horror stories his married friends told of house-hunting trips, he supposed she was two parts excited and one part anxious about her new home. Not that she had anything to worry about. The sturdy cottage had been his parents’ before they moved into their spacious suite in the main living quarters. Built from concrete blocks, it had survived countless hurricanes with barely a scratch.
“It’s not the Taj Mahal,” he admitted, pulling onto the driveway that was little more than a flattened strip of crabgrass. A carport jutted out from the house like one of the horn buds on the calf Bree called her new, bestest friend. He stopped beneath the awning of corrugated fiberglass, where he let the engine idle just long enough to treat himself to a glance of Emma’s shapely legs.
“Don’t worry ’bout the yard. I’ll have one of the guys throw down some seed.” He lifted his gaze to study bare patches of gray sand. It’d take a ton of fertilizer before his cows would bother busting a fence to get at the so-called grass. “On second thought, we’ll sod it. I bet Sarah will part with some of her orchids and other flowers when she gets back. Won’t be long before the place is fixed up all pretty.”
To his surprise, Emma waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t bother. I doubt I’ll spend enough time here to justify the effort.”
His stomach knotted. “Leaving so soon?”
An odd look flitted across her face. After a pause that lasted a split second too long, she gave her head a shake that was only somewhat reassuring.
“Most mornings, I’ll need to be in the kitchen by sunup,” she explained. “It’ll be dark before I get back. It doesn’t make sense to waste time and materials on a yard when no one’s going to be here to enjoy it.”
He’d have sworn there was more to her story but she had a point. A quarter mile from the main building, the little bungalow really wasn’t much more than a place to lay her head at night. When the thought of Emma in bed stirred an entirely different interest, he pictured them walking home hand in hand at the end of the day, then hanging out for a few hours before they disappeared down the hall to the bedroom. But something about the image didn’t work, and he stopped himself. A long trek after an exhausting day in the Circle P’s kitchen? Yeah, that was exactly what the doctor hadn’t ordered. Especially when it meant slapping mosquitoes and dodging the local wildlife along the way.
Besides, there was Bree to consider.
Troubled, he swept his hat from his head and shoved a hand through his hair. Once school started, all the youngsters on the Circle P would catch the bus at the end of the road each day, but what about summers and holidays? He’d never spent much time around kids, but even he knew that leaving a four-year-old alone in the house wasn’t a good idea. And wrenching Bree from her bed before dawn every morning didn’t sound much better. Stuck with a plan he wouldn’t have chosen, he stretched his legs as he got out of the Rhino.
“This house is yours for as long as you want. The boys have worked hard all week to get it ready.” He thought it best not to mention the years’ worth of spare equipment, tools and supplies they’d hauled out of the place.
Falling behind as they reached the uncovered patio not only let him slip his arm around Emma’s waist, but gave her an unobstructed glimpse of the interior. With Bree trailing in their wake, they stepped into the freshly painted living room.
“Whew!” Even he had to admit the paint fumes and the heat were a bit much. He strode to the thermostat, where he moved the selector to a spot somewhere between frigid and bone-chill. Outside, the ancient air handler Garrett had tinkered with roared to life. From the vents in the ceiling came the faintest breath of overheated air. A stink of mildew swirled into the room.
A curse formed on Colt’s lips but he caught it before it spilled into little ears. He crossed to the windows and pried them open.
“It’ll be better when the house airs out some,” he apologized.
Emma swiped a light sheen from her forehead. “How hot does it get in the summer?” she asked with a half laugh. She brushed a few flecks of blown insulation from a rickety end table.
“I had the guys bring some stuff out of storage.” He frowned at a lumpy couch that didn’t look nearly as inviting as the leather sofa where he and Emma had traded kisses that morning. Down a short hall, he grimaced when Bree’s bedroom door squeaked open.
The little girl peered tentatively from the doorway. “I like my room now better.” She slipped her hand into Emma’s.
Out of the mouths of babes.
Colt scanned four bare walls that held all the appeal of a prison cell. His shoulders sagged.
Clearly trying to make the best of the situation, Emma broke in. “How ’bout if we paint the room a different color? Maybe pink? Or yellow?”
Bree’s thumb found its way into her mouth.
His confidence flagging with every step, Colt showed Emma her room, noting the swallow she took before she pronounced it
great.
There wasn’t enough elbow grease in the world to completely strip fifty years’ worth of wax from the worn linoleum.
“Can we see the rest?” Blinking rapidly, she backed out of the room.
The Formica-topped table in the breakfast nook had to be forty years old if it was a day. Though Emma did her best to conceal it, he caught her quick, dismayed gasp when she spotted dials on an electric stove manufactured long before the digital age. Frost clung to the icebox in an ancient refrigerator. Suddenly parched, he started to get himself a drink of water. Rust stains in the sink convinced him to come up with a better idea.
He squared his shoulders, his decision made. No matter what his parents’ intentions, or what Ty and Sarah had in mind, they’d put him in charge of the Circle P. As such, he had a say in who lived where. And this—he took in the kitchen that needed far more than a lick and a promise—wasn’t fit for Emma and Bree.
“You know what?” He swung Bree up in his arms. “Now that my brothers have gone, there are plenty of spare rooms in the main house. You two should stay there. When Ty and Sarah come back, I’ll talk to them about making different arrangements.”
Relief spread over Emma’s face. It disappeared almost before Colt registered it.
“We can’t put you out like that, Colt. For better or worse, this is what I agreed to when I accepted the contract your dad sent me.”
“You deserve better,” he growled. Balancing Bree on his hip, he pulled Emma close. “Let me make sure you get it. Till then, you can stay right where you are.” A half dozen small houses dotted the Circle P property. He’d pick the best one and give it a major overhaul.
“In your room?” Emma struggled out of his grasp. “That’s not right, either.”
He shrugged. “It’s only temporary. I can move into Mom and Dad’s suite, or even—” he gestured “—here.”
When he thought about it, moving to the little house wasn’t such a bad idea. Being around Emma stirred an itch he wouldn’t be able to deny for very long. Unless he was seriously mistaken, she felt the same way, too. Which meant, sooner or later, they’d wind up in bed together. But that was something he figured she didn’t want any more than he did. Least ways, not until they knew where they were headed.
No, he shook his head, it’d be better for all of them if he was the one to move.
Refusing to argue the point, he shepherded them back through the living room and out the door. Once they were safely away from the house, he whipped out his phone. “Josh, let’s get that air-conditioning guy out here this afternoon. Have him install a whole new unit in the little house.”
He could deal with the rickety furniture, the rust-stained water, the bare white walls. But if he was going to move in, he needed ice-cold air. Thinking about Emma—in his bed or not—already had him in a sweat. He couldn’t deal with that and the heat, too.
* * *
“A
RE
YOU
SURE
this is what you want?” Emma gave in to a last-minute shiver of doubt. “You don’t have to.”
Bree gazed up at her as if her mom had suddenly sprouted an extra head. “I been wanting to do it my
whole
life.”
“All four years of it, huh?” Kids. Who knew they could be so dramatic. Or patient, for that matter. While Emma had prepared dinner this afternoon, Bree had only asked how long it would take Colt to finish his chores a dozen times. Or was that two? She’d lost count somewhere around one o’clock. After that, moving Bree into a room of her own had helped. Her daughter had spent at least an hour arranging her dolls
just so
on a shelf in what used to be Randy’s room. Still, it had taken all her parental tricks and then some to keep the child occupied until Colt finally knocked on the kitchen door at sunset.
“Yes, Mommy.” The brim of Bree’s miniature Stetson bobbed up and down in time with her solemn nod. “I’m gonna be a
real
cowboy.”
“Cowgirl,” Emma corrected. She grinned at the shiny red boots Colt had unearthed from a trunk in the attic. “Sounds like you’re ready, then.”
As Colt led Star from the barn, the four-year-old scrambled to the top rail. Emma slipped an arm around her daughter’s waist to keep the little girl from bolting into the corral. Beneath her hand, Bree’s body practically throbbed. Not that Emma could blame her. She felt a little anxious herself. Well over six feet tall and solidly built, Colt had always impressed her with his strength and size. Yet, Star’s long head rose above his. Four large hooves, perfect for kicking little girls, plodded through the sand. The idea of letting her baby get anywhere near the big animal suddenly didn’t seem like the smartest move. Torn, she swung back to Bree.
Canceling the child’s first horseback ride would break her daughter’s heart. But what if her little girl fell? What if she kicked and screamed and started a stampede?
A stampede? It was only one horse. Now who was being dramatic?
Emma swallowed past the lump in her throat.
Take a breath,
she told herself. To steady her nerves, she focused on the rancher who’d sworn he’d keep her daughter safe. Colt had earned a powerful physique through years of hard work and bull busting. More important, the man didn’t make idle promises. If he said he’d keep Bree from harm, he would. Pure and simple.