The Rancher and the Redhead (2 page)

“And then there's baby-sitters and day care. Other people do it. I can, too.”

Jessie had fallen asleep at last, and Roni set the unfinished juice bottle aside. When she transferred the sleeping infant to her shoulder, Jessie's tiny sigh of contentment tugged at her heartstrings in a way that was as powerful as it was unexpected. Stroking the baby's curls and inhaling the sweet scent of her skin evoked maternal instincts Roni hadn't even been aware she possessed.

“Being a parent takes more than just meeting a child's physical needs, Sam,” she said softly.

“I know that. But the little kid's already been through more hell than most people face in a lifetime! Besides, I can't turn my back on blood kin. I always regretted that Shelly and I didn't have a kid or two. Well, Jessie needs a family, so I figure God's giving me a second chance to be a father.”

His words made Roni swallow hard with sudden emotion, part genuine admiration for his determination and willingness to take on such a commitment, part pure envy that he should have such a rare opportunity to explore the trials and joys of family love. To cover an unexpected prickle of tears, Roni glanced down at the sleeping child. “Have you got a bed made for her?”

Sam pulled his hands free of his pockets and gestured toward the hall. “I put her playpen in my old room.”

Nodding, her composure restored, Roni rose carefully and followed him into the cluttered bedroom next door. The small lamp on the bedside table illuminated wall-hung bookshelves filled with high school athletic and rodeo trophies won by Sam and his brother. Sam's parents had never really recovered from Kenny's death. They were gone now, too, and apparently not even Shelly's brief occupancy had made an impact on this old room. Now an ancient, but still-prized saddle sat on the desk and Sam's rodeo and cattle breeding journals lay strewn on the twin bed and floor.

Roni laid the baby in the playpen, covered her with a crocheted blanket, then stood back. “She's a beautiful child, Sam.”

Sam placed an arm around Roni's shoulder in a familiar, companionable gesture. The heat of his body and the fresh scent of soap enveloped her as they gazed down at the sleeping infant.

“Yeah, she's a heartbreaker, all right, and I'll admit I'm smitten. I want to do what's right for her, Curly.”

“I know you will.” Twisting the knob on the lamp, she led him from the room, leaving the door cracked behind them. Pausing in the hall, she gave him a mock-serious look. “You're going to have to do something about that decor, you know. Little girls need frills and lace, bonnets and patent-leather shoes, baby dolls and kittens.”

“As I recall, Miss Tomboy, you never did.” Now that things were back under control—at least for the moment—Sam shot her a glance sparked with a glimmer of his usual laid-back mischief and gave a lock of her unruly hair a teasing tug. “Blue jeans and horses and hauling it around hell-bent-for-leather after the rest of us boys was the only thing that ever interested you coming up.”

“Could I help it if I was the only girl in a ten-mile radius? Besides, there's an exception to every rule.” Despite their close friendship, there was a thing or two Sam Preston didn't know about her and her intimate likes and dislikes. Inwardly amused, she made her tone mild. “And you might be surprised what catches a girl's fancy.”

“I know I've got a lot to learn.”

“Oh, yes, indeed.” Roni counted items off on her fingers. “Ballet lessons, hair bows, kissing scratched knees, wiping tears, not to mention those talks when she hits puberty, buying her first bra and warning her about what boys are really after—”

“Good God.”

The dismay on Sam's face was so comical, Roni laughed aloud. Impulsively, she laid a hand on his bare shoulder and came up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You're a good man, Sam Preston, and I'm a fiend to tease you when you're so exhausted. I'll go, but I'll check on you first thing in the morning, okay? Maybe Krystal can recommend some names for the housekeeper's position.”

“Uh, Curly?”

“Yeah?”

“You want a cup of coffee or something? Or how about a beer?”

Roni frowned. “Do you know what time it is?”

“We could turn on the late show and shoot the breeze for a while. Anything happen down at Rosie's I should know about?”

“I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm going home to bed.”

“Uh...do you have to?”

Brown eyes narrowed, Roni gave Sam a searching look. Could what she spied darting behind his brilliant blue gaze be...fear? Not Sam Preston, the man who could coolly face down a maddened Brahma bull and never bat an eyelash. Not strong, silent Sam, the bulwark of the community, the man who'd taken his wife's walking out on him because she couldn't stand small-town life with such quiet dignity, he'd earned the admiration of the whole county.

Roni's lips quirked, and her respect for little Jessie's feminine wiles went up several notches. Was that really big, bad Sam Preston quaking in his bare size twelves at the thought of being left at the mercy of one tiny little girl?

“You don't really want to watch the late show, do you?” she asked, holding back her laughter with difficulty.

“Have a little pity, will you, Curly?” His lean cheeks heated with consternation. “What if I don't hear Jessie cry? You know what a hard sleeper I am. And what if she gets sick during the night? I'd just have to call you again.”

Inspecting her paint-stained nails, Roni gave an airy reply. “I could always take my phone off the hook.”

Sam's expression turned sour. “You're going to make me beg, aren't you?”

She did laugh then. “No, I think I'll reserve that pleasure for when you're really desperate.”

“Then you'll stay? Just for tonight? So I can find my sea legs?”

Having already made an emotional connection with Jessie, Roni's answer was a foregone conclusion, but she wouldn't let Sam off that hook that easily. “Well...if it'll make you feel better.”

“Oh, it will.” Relief made his deep voice husky. “You don't know.”

“I can guess.” She chuckled. “I'll even take the bed in her room. There's one condition, though.”

“Anything.” At her devilish look, he added hastily, “Within reason.”

“You know, Sam,” she mused, running a goading finger down his hair-dusted breastbone, “another woman might try to take advantage of this situation. Having you over a barrel could be very...profitable.”

He caught her wrist, shaking his head in warning, his own grin twitching the corners of his mouth as the familiar give-and-take of their usual teasing reasserted itself.

“If you play with fire, lady, you might get burned. So spit it out. You want a trade? Okay, I'll pick up the tab at Rosie's for a month. How's that?”

“Penny ante,” she scoffed. “Up the stakes a little, you cheapskate.”

“I'll see that the fence down on the south boundary line between our places gets patched.”

“You were going to do that anyway.”

He shook her arm gently, growling, “So what do you want?”

“Diablo.”

Thunderstruck, Sam stared, his sandy eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Hell, I'm not going to give you my prize stallion!”

“I just want to ride him.”

“Uh-uh. No way. He'll break your neck.”

“I ride as well as you do!” she protested, tugging free of his grasp. “Well, almost.”

“Look, Curly, I value your hide too much to risk it atop that devil.” Sam perched his fists on his lean hips and glowered down at her. “And don't tell me all those years in New York art school and then working out in L.A. didn't take the edge off your skills, because I won't buy it. You've got to have a little common sense about such things.”

“Any second now,” she warned darkly, “I'm liable to burst out in a chorus of ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.'”

“Curly, I swear—”

She laughed suddenly at his exasperation. “Relax, Sam, I won't press you if you feel that strongly, but one of these days, me and Diablo...” She winked at him. “Until then, I'll just have to make my own fun getting you riled up.”

“And one of these days I'm going to throttle you.”

“No, you won't,” she retorted, smug. “Who else'll baby-sit for you for free? You're going to have to think about these things now.”

“You may have a point.” He stifled a yawn.

“Go to bed, Sam,” she said kindly. “I know where you keep your linens, and I can help myself. Remember, little children have a tendency to get up with the sun.”

“I don't need a second invitation. Good night.” He turned toward his room.

Roni tugged at her damp shirt and wrinkled her nose. “Have you got something I can sleep in?”

“In the bathroom cupboard. Watch out for that hot water spigot. It's loose and cantankerous.”

“I remember.”

“And, Roni?”

She paused at the bathroom door. A peculiar little stirring fluttered in her chest at both the solemnity and the affection she saw in his dark blue eyes. “Yes, Sam?”

“Thanks.”

Smiling, Roni shrugged. “Hey, what are best friends for?”

* * *

There was a newborn calf bawling outside, and sooner or later Sam was going to have to get up and see to it. He pulled his pillow over his ears and groaned.

But not yet, damn you.

One eye flew open. The angle of the morning sun falling through his bedroom window was a lot higher than it should have been. And there was something he ought to remember...
Jessie!

Sam jackknifed out of bed. He was leaning over the empty playpen in the next room before the sleep cleared from his groggy brain, and for an awful moment of panic and guilt he thought he'd misplaced her. Then he heard baby gurgles and Roni's soft laughter floating from the direction of the kitchen.

He took only a second to pull on jeans, then came up short in the doorway of the large country kitchen. Stretched out on the rag rug underneath the trestle table was a pair of long, long feminine legs and a shapely behind. She was decent only by the length of a man's shirttail.

“Peekaboo, Jessie. Where's Jessie?”

Roni peered around a chair leg at the little girl, who clapped and bounced on her diaper-clad bottom in delight at the game, then took off scrambling on all fours around the opposite side of the table. Roni came to her knees, too, stalking her prey with a mock ferocity that made the child squeal—just like a calf stuck in a fence, Sam thought.

Leaning his shoulder against the door frame, he grinned, remembering times past when he and Kenny and Roni had played much the same kind of game in this very kitchen, building imaginary forts and corrals in and among the chair rungs, fighting off savage Indians and rustlers with their trusty six-guns. Of course, at that time none of them had sported anything like the provocative candy-pink lace he glimpsed peeking from beneath the hem of the old white dress shirt Roni had slept in.

After an instant's honest masculine appreciation, he dragged his gaze reluctantly to a more respectful perusal of the rich brown sleep-tousled curls spilling down the middle of her back. Though she liked to keep her mop ruthlessly clipped back and tidy these days, it was still more than clear why she'd earned her nickname. He'd teased her unmercifully about her mane one summer—at least until she'd bloodied his nose with an uppercut that had laid him out flat and taught him a valuable lesson about women.

Chuckling at the memory, he watched Roni creep after Jessie, poking her way through a litter of oat cereal “O's” and discarded paper napkins. It was an amazement and a miracle to him that his childhood playmate was still such an important part of his life. He was selfishly glad she'd finally had the good sense to break things off with that no-good jet-setting scoundrel she'd been involved with and come home to Flat Fork where she belonged.

The mess he'd made with Shelly had made him gun-shy when it came to matters of the heart, and if it hadn't been for Roni Daniels bullying him back into life, he surely would have become a hermit. Instead, over their Friday-night beers at Rosie's, she'd cajoled him and talked him into reentering life while nursing her own bruised heart.

Sam didn't know what he would have done without her, and now, here she was again, pitching in like the true pal she was, giving him her unequivocal support to a decision that no doubt half the county would consider as cracked as the Liberty Bell.

And, on top of that, she'd taken the early shift.

“Morning, you two.”

Jessie's russet curls bobbed at the sound of Sam's sleep-husky voice, and her blue eyes widened in recognition. Forgetting the game, she scrambled madly across the floor toward him with a squeal. “Da!”

She was irresistible. Sam bent and scooped the tyke into his arms as Roni sat back on her heels and eyed the duo.

“So what am I now, chopped liver?” she mock complained.

Sam grinned. “Sorry, Curly. Can I help it if women of all ages find me fascinating?”

Roni gave an indelicate snort. “You wish, cowboy.”

Hauling herself to her feet, she flicked her dark hair over her shoulders and straightened the oversize shirt. From the stains on the front, Jessie's first breakfast in her new home had been a challenging experience. Ocher and peach-colored splatters dotted the fabric, but not quite enough to obscure the faint dark shadows of Roni's nipples showing beneath the white cotton.

Sam frowned to himself. Now why had he noticed that? Roni was his buddy, like the sister he never had. Still, he wouldn't have been much of a man not to appreciate the way the crests of her full bosom poked against...

“Ready for a taste?” Roni sashayed to the counter and lifted a cup in an invitation that slid in under Sam's defenses and landed hot in his belly.