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Passion Flower
Diana Palmer
As a successful New York interior designer, Jennifer King led a hectic, fast-paced life. So when a sudden illness cost her her job, she jumped at the chance of a working vacation at a Texas ranch.But life with Everett Culhane, the brooding, dark-eyed owner of the Circle C Ranch, was not easy. According to him, their lives were two worlds apart. But when he took her in his arms and branded her lips with his, Jennifer knew that she must make this headstrong cowboy her own.
As a successful New York interior designer, Jennifer King led a hectic, fast-paced life. So when a sudden illness cost her her job, she jumped at the chance of a working vacation at a Texas ranch.
But life with Everett Culhane, the brooding, dark-eyed owner of the Circle C Ranch, was not easy. According to him, their lives were two worlds apart. But when he took her in his arms and branded her lips with his, Jennifer knew that she must make this headstrong cowboy her own.
Passion Flower
Diana Palmer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One (#u9442ecbd-2033-5f2d-a807-ad3de0340abb)
Chapter Two (#u98a46f37-00a5-5a75-90a5-0c84f214dca0)
Chapter Three (#u15336c83-4f2d-5e05-8a03-1d1842c074da)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
JENNIFER KING eyed the closed hotel room door nervously. She hadn’t wanted this assignment, but she hadn’t had much choice, either. Her recent illness had left her savings account bare, and this job was all she had to hold on to. It was a long way from the brilliant career in interior decorating she’d left behind in New York. But it was a living.
She pushed back a loose strand of blond hair and hoped she looked sedate enough for the cattleman behind the door. The kind of clothes she’d favored in New York were too expensive for her budget in Atlanta.
She knocked at the door and waited. It seemed to take forever for the man inside to get there. Finally, without warning, the door swung open.
“Miss King?” he asked, smiling pleasantly.
She smiled back. He was much younger than she’d expected him to be. Tall and fair and pleasant. “Yes,” she said. “You rang for a temporary secretary?”
“Just need a few letters done, actually,” he said, taking the heavy portable typewriter from her hand. “I’m buying some cattle for my brother.”
“Yes, Miss James at the agency told me it had to do with cattle.” She sat down quickly. She was pale and wan, still feeling the after-effects of a terrible bout with pneumonia.
“Say, are you all right?” he asked, frowning.
“Fine, thank you, Mr. Culhane,” she said, remembering his name from Miss James’s description of the job. “I’m just getting over pneumonia, and I’m a little weak.”
He sat down across from her on the sofa, lean and rangy, and smiled. “I guess it does take the whip out of you. I’ve never had it myself, but Everett nearly died on us one year. He smokes too much,” he confided.
“Your brother?” she asked with polite interest as she got her steno pad and pen from her large purse.
“My brother. The senior partner. Everett runs the show.” He sounded just a little jealous. She glanced up. Jennifer was twenty-three, and he couldn’t have been much older. She felt a kinship with him. Until their deaths three years back, her parents had pretty much nudged her into the job they thought she wanted. By the sound of it, Everett Culhane had done the same with this young man.
She dug out her pad and pen and crossed her thin legs. All of her was thin. Back in New York, before the frantic pace threatened her health, she’d been slender and poised and pretty enough to draw any man’s eye. But now she was only a pale wraith, a ghost of the woman she’d been. Her blond hair was brittle and lusterless, her pale green eyes were dull, without their old sparkle. She looked bad, and that fact registered in the young man’s eyes.
“Are you sure you feel up to this?” he asked gently. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m a little frail, that’s all,” she replied proudly. “I’m only just out of the hospital, you see.”
“I guess that’s why,” he muttered. He got up, pacing the room, and found some notes scribbled on lined white paper. “Well, this first letter goes to Everett Culhane, Circle C Ranch, Big Spur, Texas.”
“Texas?” Her pale eyes lit up. “Really?”
His eyebrows lifted, and he grinned. “Really. The town is named after a king-size ranch nearby—the Big Spur. It’s owned by Cole Everett and his wife Heather, and their three sons. Our ranch isn’t a patch on that one, but big brother has high hopes.”
“I’ve always wanted to see a real cattle ranch,” she confided. “My grandfather went cowboying out to Texas as a boy. He used to talk about it all the time, about the places he’d seen, and the history...” She sat up straight, poising her pen over the pad. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get off the track.”
“That’s all right. Funny, you don’t look like a girl who’d care for the outdoors,” he commented as he sat back down with the sheaf of papers in his hand.
“I love it,” she said quietly. “I lived in a small town until I was ten and my parents moved to Atlanta. I missed it terribly. I still do.”
“Can’t you go back?” he asked.
She shook her head sadly. “It’s too late. I have no family left. My parents are dead. There are a few scattered relatives, but none close enough to visit.”
“That’s rough. Kind of like me and Everett,” he added. “We got raised by our aunt and uncle. At least, I did. Everett wasn’t so lucky. Our dad was still alive while he was a boy.” His face clouded, as if with an unpleasant memory. He cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, back to the letter...”
He began to dictate, and she kept up with him easily. He thought out the sentences before he gave them to her, so there were few mistakes or changes. She wondered why he didn’t just call his brother, but she didn’t ask the question. She took down several pages of description about bulls and pedigrees and bloodlines. There was a second letter, to a bank executive in Big Spur, detailing the method the Culhane brothers had devised to pay back a sizeable loan. The third letter was to a breeder in Carrollton, outlining transport for a bull the man had evidently purchased from the Culhanes.
“Confused?” he murmured dryly when he stopped.
“It’s not my business...” she began gently.
“We’re selling off one of our best bulls,” he said, “to give us enough down payment on another top breeding bull. Everett is trying for a purebred Hereford herd. But we don’t have the cash, so I’ve come down here to do some fancy trading. I sold the bull we had. Now I’m trying to get a potential seller to come down on his price.”
“Wouldn’t a phone call to your brother be quicker?” she asked.
“Sure. And Everett would skin my head. I came out here on a bus, for God’s sake, instead of a plane. We’re just about mortgaged to the hilt, you see. Everett says we can’t afford not to pinch pennies.” His eyes twinkled. “We’ve got Highland Scots in our ancestry, you see.”
She smiled. “Yes, I suppose so. I can see his point. Phone calls are expensive.”
“Especially the kind it would take to relay this much information,” he agreed, nodding toward what he’d dictated. “If I get it off today, he’ll have it in a day or two. Then, if he thinks it’s worth giving what the man wants, he can call me and just say a word or two. In the meantime, I’ve got other business to attend to.”
“Shrewd idea,” she murmured.
“Just a couple more,” he continued. He leaned back and studied a magazine. “Okay, this one goes to...” He gave her a name and address in north Georgia, and dictated a letter asking if the breeder could give him a call at the hotel on Friday at 1:00 p.m. Then he dictated a second letter to a breeder in south Georgia, making the same request for 2:00 p.m. He grinned at her faint smile.
“Saving money,” he assured her. “Although why Everett wants to do it the hard way is beyond me. There’s a geologist who swears we’ve got one hell of a lot of oil on our western boundary, but Everett dug in his heels and refused to sell off the drilling rights. Even for a percentage. Can you beat that? We could be millionaires, and here I sit writing letters asking people to call me, just to save money.”
“Why won’t he sell?” she asked, curious.
“Because he’s a purist,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t want to spoil the land. He’d rather struggle to make the cattle pay. Fat chance. The way things have been going, we’re going to wind up eating those damned purebreds, paper and all.”
She laughed helplessly at his phrasing and hid her face in her hand. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”
“It is kind of funny,” he confessed. “But not when you’re cutting corners like we are.”
She got up and started to lift the typewriter onto the desk by the window, struggling with it.
“Here, let me do that,” he said, and put it onto the flat surface for her. “You’re pretty weak, little lady.”
“I’m getting back on my feet,” she assured him. “Just a little wobbly, that’s all.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’m going down to get a sandwich. Can I bring you something?”
She’d have loved a sandwich, but she wasn’t going to put any further drain on his resources. “No, thank you,” she said, politely and with a smile. “I just had lunch before I came over here.”
“Okay, then. See you in a half hour or so.”
He jammed a straw cowboy hat on his head and went out the door, closing it softly behind him.
Jennifer typed the letters quickly and efficiently, even down to the cattle’s pedigrees. It was a good thing she’d taken that typing course when she was going through the school of interior design in New York, she thought. It had come in handy when the pressure of competition laid her out. She wasn’t ready to handle that competitive rat race again yet. She needed to rest, and by comparison typing letters for out-of-town businessmen was a piece of cake.
She felt oddly sorry for this businessman, and faintly sympathetic with his brother, who’d rather go spare than sell out on his principles. She wondered if he looked like his younger brother.
Her eyes fell on the name she was typing at the bottom of the letter. Robert G. Culhane. That must be the man who’d dictated them. He seemed to know cattle, from his meticulous description of them. Her eyes wandered over what looked like a production record for a herd sire, and she sighed. Texas and cattle. She wondered what the Circle C Ranch was like and while she finished up the letters, lost herself in dreams of riding horseback over flat plains. Pipe dreams, she thought, smiling as she stacked the neat letters with their accompanying envelopes. She’d never see Texas.
Just as she rose from the typewriter, the door opened, and Robert Culhane was back. He smiled at her.
“Taking a break?” he asked as he swept off his hat and whirled it onto a table.
“No, I’m finished,” she said, astounding him.
“Already?” He grabbed up the letters and bent over the desk, proofreading them one by one and shaking his head. “Damn, you’re fast.”
“I do around a hundred words a minute,” she replied. “It’s one of my few talents.”
“You’d be a godsend at the ranch,” he sighed. “It takes Everett an hour to type one letter. He cusses a blue streak when he has to write anything on that infernal old machine. And there are all the production records we have to keep, and the tax records, and the payroll...” His head lifted and he frowned. “I don’t suppose you’d like a job?”
She caught her breath. “In Texas?”
“You make it sound like a religious experience,” he murmured on a laugh.
“You can’t imagine how much I hate the city,” she replied, brushing back a strand of dull hair. “I still cough all the time because of the pollution, and the apartment where I live has no space at all. I’d almost work for free just to be out in the country.”
He cocked his head at her and pursed his boyish lips. “It wouldn’t be easy, working for Everett,” he said. “And you’d have to manage your own fare to Big Spur. You see, I’ll need a little time to convince him. You’d barely get minimum wage. And knowing Everett, you’d wind up doing a lot of things besides typing. We don’t have a housekeeper...”
Her face lit up. “I can make curtains and cook.”
“Do you have a telephone?”
She sighed. “No.”
“Kind of in the same boat we are in, aren’t you?” he said with a sympathetic smile. “I’m Robert Culhane, by the way.”
“Jennifer King,” she said for the second time that day, and extended her hand.
“Nice to meet you, Jenny. How can I reach you?”
“The agency will take a message for me,” she said.
“Fine. I’ll be in town for several more days. I’ll be in touch with you before I go back to Texas. Okay?”
She beamed. “You’re really serious?”
“I’m really serious. And this is great work,” he added, gesturing toward the letters. “Jenny, it won’t be an easy life on the Circle C. It’s nothing like those fancy ranches you see on the television.”
“I’m not expecting it to be,” she said honestly, and was picturing a ramshackle house that needed paint and curtains and overhauling, and two lonely men living in it. She smiled. “I’m just expecting to be needed.”
“You’ll be that,” he sighed, staring at her critically. “But are you up to hard work?”
“I’ll manage,” she promised. “Being out in the open, in fresh air, will make me strong. Besides, it’ll be dry air out there, and it’s summer.”
“You’ll burn up in the heat,” he promised.
“I burn up in the heat here,” she said. “Atlanta is a southern city. We get hundred-degree temperatures here.”
“Just like home,” he murmured with a smile.
“I’d like to come,” she said as she got her purse and closed up the typewriter. “But I don’t want to get you into any trouble with your brother.”
“Everett and I hardly ever have anything except trouble,” he said easily. “Don’t worry about me. You’d be doing us a big favor. I’ll talk Everett into it.”
“Should I write you another letter?” She hesitated.
He shook his head. “I’ll have it out with him when I get home,” he said. “No sweat. Thanks for doing my letters. I’ll send the agency a check, you tell them.”
“I will. And thank you!”
She hardly felt the weight of the typewriter on her way back to the agency. She was floating on a cloud.
Miss James gave her a hard look when she came back in. “You’re late,” she said. “We had to refuse a call.”
“I’m sorry. There were several letters...” she began.
“You’ve another assignment. Here’s the address. A politician. Wants several copies of a speech he’s giving, to hand out to the press. You’re to type the speech and get it photostatted for him.”
She took the outstretched address and sighed. “The typewriter...?”
“He has his own, an electric one. Leave that one here, if you please.” Miss James buried her silver head in paperwork. “You may go home when you finish. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night,” Jennifer said quietly, sighing as she went out onto the street. It would be well after quitting time when she finished, and Miss James knew it. But perhaps the politician would be generous enough to tip her. If only the Texas job worked out! Jennifer was a scrapper when she was at her peak, but she was weary and sick and dragged out. It wasn’t a good time to get into an argument with the only employer she’d been able to find. All the other agencies were overstaffed with out-of-work people begging for any kind of job.
The politician was a city councilman, in a good mood and very generous. Jennifer treated herself to three hamburgers and two cups of coffee on the way back to her small apartment. It was in a private home, and dirt cheap. The landlady wasn’t overly friendly, but it was a roof over her head and the price was right.
She slept fitfully, dreaming about the life she’d left behind in New York. It all seemed like something out of a fantasy. The competition for the plum jobs, the cocktail parties to make contacts, the deadlines, the endless fighting to land the best accounts, the agonizing perfecting of color schemes and coordinating pieces to fit fussy tastes... Her nerves had given out, and then her body.
It hadn’t been her choice to go to New York. She’d have been happy in Atlanta. But the best schools were up north, and her parents had insisted. They wanted her to have the finest training available, so she let herself be gently pushed. Two years after she graduated, they were dead. She’d never truly gotten over their deaths in the plane crash. They’d been on their way to a party on Christmas Eve. The plane went down in the dark, in a lake, and it had been hours before they were missed.
In the two years since her graduation, Jennifer had landed a job at one of the top interior-decoration businesses in the city. She’d pushed herself over the limit to get clients, going to impossible lengths to please them. The outcome had been inevitable. Pneumonia landed her in the hospital for several days in March, and she was too drained to go back to work immediately after. An up-and-coming young designer had stepped neatly into her place, and she had found herself suddenly without work.
Everything had to go, of course. The luxury apartment, the furs, the designer clothes. She’d sold them all and headed south. Only to find that the job market was overloaded and she couldn’t find a job that wouldn’t finish killing her. Except at a temporary agency, where she could put her typing skills to work. She started working for Miss James, and trying to recover. But so far she’d failed miserably. And now the only bright spot in her future was Texas.
She prayed as she never had before, struggling from one assignment to the next and hoping beyond hope that the phone call would come. Late one Friday afternoon, it did. And she happened to be in the office when it came.
“Miss King?” Robert Culhane asked on a laugh. “Still want to go to Texas?”
“Oh, yes!” she said fervently, holding tightly to the telephone cord.
“Then pack a bag and be at the ranch bright and early a week from Monday morning. Got a pencil? Okay, here’s how to get there.”
She was so excited she could barely scribble. She got down the directions. “I can’t believe it, it’s like a dream!” she said enthusiastically. “I’ll do a good job, really I will. I won’t be any trouble, and the pay doesn’t matter!”
“I’ll tell Everett,” he chuckled. “Don’t forget. You needn’t call. Just come on out to the ranch. I’ll be there to smooth things over with old Everett, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you!”
“Thank you, Miss King,” he said. “See you a week from Monday.”
“Yes, sir!” She hung up, her face bright with hope. She was actually going to Texas!
“Miss King?” Miss James asked suspiciously.
“Oh! I won’t be back in after today, Miss James,” she said politely. “Thank you for letting me work with you. I’ve enjoyed it very much.”
Miss James looked angry. “You can’t just walk out like this,” she said.
“But I can,” Jennifer said, with some of her old spirit. She picked up her purse. “I didn’t sign a contract, Miss James. And if you were to push the point, I’d tell you that I worked a great deal of overtime for which I wasn’t paid,” she added with a pointed stare. “How would you explain that to the people down at the state labor department?”
Miss James stiffened. “You’re ungrateful.”
“No, I’m not. I’m very grateful. But I’m leaving, all the same. Good day.” She nodded politely just before she went out, and closed the door firmly behind her.
Chapter Two
IT WAS blazing hot for a spring day in Texas. Jennifer stopped in the middle of the ranch road to rest for a minute and set her burdens down on the dusty, graveled ground. She wished for the tenth time in as many minutes that she’d let the cab driver take her all the way to the Culhanes’ front door. But she’d wanted to walk. It hadn’t seemed a long way from the main road. And it was so beautiful, with the wildflowers strewn across the endless meadows toward the flat horizon. Bluebonnets, which she’d only read about until then, and Mexican hat and Indian paintbrush. Even the names of the flowers were poetic. But her enthusiasm had outweighed her common sense. And her strength.
She’d tried to call the ranch from town—apparently Everett and Robert Culhane did have the luxury of a telephone. But it rang and rang with no answer. Well, it was Monday, and she’d been promised a job. She hefted her portable typewriter and her suitcase and started out again.
Her pale eyes lifted to the house in the distance. It was a two-story white frame building, with badly peeling paint and a long front porch. Towering live oaks protected it from the sun, trees bigger than anything Jennifer had seen in Georgia. And the feathery green trees with the crooked trunks had to be mesquite. She’d never seen it, but she’d done her share of reading about it.
On either side of the long, graveled driveway were fences, gray with weathering and strung with rusting barbed wire. Red-coated cattle grazed behind the fences, and her eyes lingered on the wide horizon. She’d always thought Georgia was big—until now. Texas was just unreal. In a separate pasture, a mare and her colt frolicked in the hot sun.
Jennifer pushed back a strand of dull blond hair that had escaped from her bun. In a white shirtwaist dress and high heels, she was a strange sight to be walking up the driveway of a cattle ranch. But she’d wanted to make a good impression.
Her eyes glanced down ruefully at the red dust on the hem of her dress, and the scuff marks on her last good pair of white sling pumps. She could have cried. One of her stockings had run, and she was sweating. She could hardly have looked worse if she’d planned it.
She couldn’t help being a little nervous about the older brother. She had Everett Culhane pictured as a staid old rancher with a mean temper. She’d met businessmen like that before, and dealt with them. She wasn’t afraid of him. But she hoped that he’d be glad of her help. It would make things easier all around.
Her footsteps echoed along the porch as she walked up the worn steps. She would have looked around more carefully weeks ago, but now she was tired and run-down and just too exhausted to care what her new surroundings looked like.
She paused at the screen door, and her slender fingers brushed the dust from her dress. She put the suitcase and the typewriter down, took a steadying breath, and knocked.
There was no sound from inside the house. The wooden door was standing open, and she thought she heard the whir of a fan. She knocked again. Maybe it would be the nice young man she’d met in Atlanta who would answer the door. She only hoped she was welcome.
The sound of quick, hard footsteps made her heart quicken. Someone was home, at least. Maybe she could sit down. She was feeling a little faint.
“Who the hell are you?” came a harsh masculine voice from behind the screen door, and Jennifer looked up into the hardest face and the coldest dark eyes she’d ever seen.
She couldn’t even find her voice. Her immediate reaction was to turn around and run for it. But she’d come too far, and she was too tired.
“I’m Jennifer King,” she said as professionally as she could. “Is Robert Culhane home, please?”
She was aware of the sudden tautening of his big body, a harsh intake of breath, before she looked up and saw the fury in his dark eyes.
“What the hell kind of game are you playing, lady?” he demanded.
She stared at him. It had been a long walk, and now it looked as if she might have made a mistake and come to the wrong ranch. Her usual confidence faltered. “Is this the Circle C Ranch?” she asked.
“Yes, it is.”
He wasn’t forthcoming, and she wondered if he might be one of the hired hands. “Is this where Robert Culhane lives?” she persisted, trying to peek past him—there was a lot of him, all hard muscle and blue denim.
“Bobby was killed in a bus wreck a week ago,” he said harshly.
Jennifer was aware of a numb feeling in her legs. The long trip on the bus, the heavy suitcase, the effects of her recent illness—all of it added up to exhaustion. And those cold words were the final blow. With a pitiful little sound, she sank down onto the porch, her head whirling, nausea running up into her throat like warm water.
The screen door flew open and a pair of hard, impatient arms reached down to lift her. She felt herself effortlessly carried, like a sack of flour, into the cool house. She was unceremoniously dumped down onto a worn brocade sofa and left there while booted feet stomped off into another room. There were muttered words that she was glad she couldn’t understand, and clinking sounds. Then, a minute later, a glass of dark amber liquid was held to her numb lips and a hard hand raised her head.
She sipped at the cold, sweet iced tea like a runner on the desert when confronted with wet salvation. She struggled to catch her breath and sat up, gently nudging the dark, lean hand holding the glass to one side. She breathed in deeply, trying to get her whirling mind to slow down. She was still trying to take it all in. She’d been promised a job, she’d come hundreds of miles at her own expense to work for minimum wage, and now the man who’d offered it to her was dead. That was the worst part, imagining such a nice young man dead.
“You look like a bleached handkerchief,” the deep, harsh voice observed.
She sighed. “You ought to write for television. You sure do have a gift for prose.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Walking in this heat without a hat. My God, how many stupid city women are there in the world? And what landed you on my doorstep?”
She lifted her eyes then, to look at him properly. He was darkly tanned, and there were deep lines in his face, from the hatchet nose down to the wide, chiseled mouth. His eyes were deep-set, unblinking under heavy dark brows and a wide forehead. His hair was jet-black, straight and thick and a little shaggy. He was wearing what had to be work clothes: faded denim jeans that emphasized long, powerfully muscled legs, and a matching shirt whose open neck revealed a brown chest thick with short, curling hair. He had the look of a man who was all business, all the time. All at once she realized that this man wasn’t the hired hand she’d mistaken him for.
“You’re Everett Culhane,” she said hesitantly.
His face didn’t move. Not a muscle in it changed position, but she had the distinct feeling that the sound of his name on her lips had shocked him.
She took another long sip of the tea and sighed at the pleasure of the icy liquid going down her parched throat.
“How far did you walk?” he asked.
“Just from the end of your driveway,” she admitted, looking down at her ruined shoes. “Distance is deceptive out here.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of sunstroke?”
She nodded. “It just didn’t occur to me.”
She put the glass down on the napkin he’d brought with it. Well, this was Texas. How sad that she wouldn’t see anything more of it.
“I’m very sorry about your brother, Mr. Culhane,” she said with dignity. “I didn’t know him very well, but he seemed like a nice man.” She got up with an odd kind of grace despite the unsteadiness of her legs. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“Why did you come, Miss King?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now in the least.” She turned and went out the screen door, lifting her suitcase and typewriter from where they’d fallen when she fainted. It was going to be a long walk back to town, but she’d just have to manage it. She had bus fare back home and a little more. A cab was a luxury now, with no job at the end of her long ride.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Everett Culhane asked from behind her, his tone like a whiplash.
“Back to town,” she said without turning. “Good-bye, Mr. Culhane.”
“Walking?” he mused. “In this heat, without a hat?”
“Got here, didn’t I?” she drawled as she walked down the steps.
“You’ll never make it back. Wait a minute. I’ll drive you.”
“No, thanks,” she said proudly. “I get around all right by myself, Mr. Culhane. I don’t need any handouts.”
“You’ll need a doctor if you try that walk,” he said, and turned back into the house.
She thought the matter was settled, until a battered red pickup truck roared up beside her and stopped. The passenger door flew open.
“Get in,” he said curtly, in a tone that made it clear he expected instant obedience.
“I said...” she began irritatedly.
His dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t mind lifting you in and holding you down until we get to town,” he said quietly.
With a grimace, she climbed in, putting the typewriter and suitcase on the floorboard.
There was a marked lack of conversation. Everett smoked his cigarette with sharp glances in her direction when she began coughing. Her lungs were still sensitive, and he seemed to be smoking shucks or something equally potent. Eventually he crushed out the cigarette and cracked a window.
“You don’t sound well,” he said suddenly.
“I’m getting over pneumonia,” she said, staring lovingly at the horizon. “Texas sure is big.”
“It sure is.” He glanced at her. “Which part of it do you call home?”
“I don’t.”
The truck lurched as he slammed on the brakes. “What did you say?”
“I’m not a Texan,” she confessed. “I’m from Atlanta.”
“Georgia?”
“Is there another one?”
He let out a heavy breath. “What the hell did you mean, coming this distance just to see a man you hardly knew?” he burst out. “Surely to God, it wasn’t love at first sight?”
“Love?” She blinked. “Heavens, no. I only did some typing for your brother.”
He cut off the engine. “Start over. Start at the beginning. You’re giving me one hell of a headache. How did you wind up out here?”
“Your brother offered me a job,” she said quietly. “Typing. Of course, he said there’d be other duties as well. Cooking, cleaning, things like that. And a very small salary,” she added with a tiny smile.
“He was honest with you, at least,” he growled. “But then why did you come? Didn’t you believe him?”
“Yes, of course,” she said hesitantly. “Why wouldn’t I want to come?”
He started to light another cigarette, stared hard at her, and put the pack back in his shirt pocket. “Keep talking.”
He was an odd man, she thought. “Well, I’d lost my old job, because once I got over the pneumonia I was too weak to keep up the pace. I got a job in Atlanta with one of the temporary talent agencies doing typing. My speed is quite good, and it was something that didn’t wring me out, you see. Mr. Culhane wanted some letters typed. We started talking,” she smiled, remembering how kind he’d been, “and when I found out he was from Texas, from a real ranch, I guess I just went crazy. I’ve spent my whole life listening to my grandfather relive his youth in Texas, Mr. Culhane. I’ve read everything Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour ever wrote, and it was the dream of my life to come out here. The end of the rainbow. I figured that a low salary on open land would be worth a lot more than a big salary in the city, where I was choking to death on smog and civilization. He offered me the job and I said yes on the spot.” She glanced at him ruefully. “I’m not usually so slow. But I was feeling so bad, and it sounded so wonderful...I didn’t even think about checking with you first. Mr. Culhane said he’d have it all worked out, and that I was just to get on a bus and come on out today.” Her eyes clouded. “I’m so sorry about him. Losing the job isn’t nearly as bad as hearing that he...was killed. I liked him.”
Everett’s fingers were tapping an angry pattern on the steering wheel. “A job.” He laughed mirthlessly, then sighed. “Well, maybe he had a point. I’m so behind on my production records and tax records, it isn’t funny. I’m choking to death on my own cooking, the house hasn’t been swept in a month...” He glanced at her narrowly. “You aren’t pregnant?”
Her pale eyes flashed at him. “That, sir, would make medical history.”
One dark eyebrow lifted and he glanced at her studiously before he smiled. “Little Southern lady, are you really that innocent?”
“Call me Scarlett and, unemployment or no unemployment, I’ll paste you one, cowboy,” she returned with a glimmer of her old spirit. It was too bad that the outburst triggered a coughing spree.
“Damn,” he muttered, passing her his handkerchief. “All right, I’ll stop baiting you. Do you want the job, or don’t you? Robert was right about the wages. You’ll get bed and board free, but it’s going to be a frugal existence. Interested?”
“If it means getting to stay in Texas, yes, I am.”
He smiled. “How old are you, schoolgirl?”
“I haven’t been a schoolgirl for years, Mr. Culhane,” she told him. “I’m twenty-three, in fact.” She glared at him. “How old are you?”
“Make a guess,” he invited.
Her eyes went from his thick hair down the hawklike features to his massive chest, which tapered to narrow hips, long powerful legs, and large, booted feet. “Thirty,” she said.
He chuckled softly. It was the first time she’d heard the deep, pleasant sound, and it surprised her to find that he was capable of laughter. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who laughed very often.
His eyes wandered over her thin body with amused indifference, and she regretted for a minute that she was such a shadow of her former self. “Try again, honey,” he said.
She noticed then the deep lines in his darkly tanned face, the sprinkling of gray hair at his temples. In the open neck of his shirt, she could see threads of silver among the curling dark hair. No, he wasn’t as young as she’d first thought.
“Thirty-four,” she guessed.
“Add a year and you’ve got it.”
She smiled. “Poor old man,” she said with gentle humor.
He chuckled again. “That’s no way to talk to your new boss,” he cautioned.
“I won’t forget again, honestly.” She stared at him. “Do you have other people working for you?”
“Just Eddie and Bib,” he said. “They’re married.” He nodded as he watched her eyes become wide and apprehensive. “That’s right. We’ll be alone. I’m a bachelor and there’s no staff in the house.”
“Well...”
“There’ll be a lock on your door,” he said after a minute. “When you know me better, you’ll see that I’m pretty conventional in my outlook. It’s a big house. We’ll rattle around like two peas in a pod. It’s only on rare occasions that I’m in before bedtime.” His dark eyes held hers. “And for the record, my taste doesn’t run to city girls.”
That sounded as if there was a good reason for his taste in women, but she didn’t pry. “I’ll work hard, Mr. Culhane.”
“My name is Everett,” he said, watching her. “Or Rett, if you prefer. You can cook meals and do the laundry and housekeeping. And when you have time, you can work in what passes for my office. Wages won’t be much. I can pay the bills, and that’s about it.”
“I don’t care about getting rich.” Meanwhile she was thinking fast, sorely tempted to accept the offer, but afraid of the big, angry man at her side. There were worse things than being alone and without money, and she didn’t really know him at all.
He saw the thoughts in her mind. “Jenny Wren,” he said softly, “do I look like a mad rapist?”
Hearing her name that way on his lips sent a surge of warmth through her. No one had called her by a pet name since the death of her parents.
“No,” she said quietly. “Of course you don’t. I’ll work for you, Mr. Culhane.”
He didn’t answer her. He only scanned her face and nodded. Then he started the truck, turned it around, and headed back to the Circle C Ranch.
Chapter Three
TWO HOURS later, Jennifer was well and truly in residence, to the evident amusement of Everett’s two ranch hands. They apparently knew better than to make any snide comments about her presence, but they did seem to find something fascinating about having a young woman around the place.
Jennifer had her own room, with peeling wallpaper, worn blue gingham curtains at the windows, and a faded quilt on the bed. Most of the house was like that. Even the rugs on the floor were faded and worn from use. She’d have given anything to be robust and healthy and have a free hand to redecorate the place. It had such wonderful potential with its long history and simple, uncluttered architecture.
The next morning she slept late, rising to bright sunlight and a strange sense that she belonged there. She hadn’t felt that way since her childhood, and couldn’t help wondering why. Everett had been polite, but not much more. He wasn’t really a welcoming kind of man. But, then, he’d just lost his brother. That must account for his taciturn aloofness.
He was long gone when she went downstairs. She fixed herself a cup of coffee and two pieces of toast and then went to the small room that doubled as his office. As he’d promised the day before, he’d laid out a stack of production records and budget information that needed typing. He’d even put her electric typewriter on a table and plugged it in. There was a stack of white paper beside it, and a note.
“Don’t feel obliged to work yourself into a coma the first day,” it read. And his bold signature was slashed under the terse sentence. She smiled at the flowing handwriting and the perfect spelling. He was a literate man, at least.
She sat down in her cool blue shirtwaist dress and got to work. Two hours later, she’d made great inroads into the paperwork and was starting a new sheet when Everett’s heavy footsteps resounded throughout the house. The door swung open and his dark eyebrows shot straight up.
“Aren’t you going to eat lunch?” he asked.
More to the point, wasn’t she going to feed him, she thought, and grinned.
“Something funny, Miss King?” he asked.
“Oh, no, boss,” she said, leaving the typewriter behind. He was expecting that she’d forgotten his noon meal, but she had a surprise in store for him.
She led him into the kitchen, where two places were set. He stood there staring at the table, scowling, while she put out bread, mayonnaise, some thick ham she’d found in the refrigerator, and a small salad she’d made with a bottled dressing.
“Coffee?” she asked, poised with the pot in her hand.
He nodded, sliding into the place at the head of the table.
She poured it into his thick white mug and then filled her own.
“How did you know I wanted coffee instead of tea?” he asked with a narrow gaze as she seated herself beside him.
“Because the coffee cannister was half empty and the tea had hardly been touched,” she replied with a smile.
He chuckled softly as he sipped the black liquid. “Not bad,” he murmured, glancing at her.
“I’m sorry about breakfast,” she said. “I usually wake up around six, but this morning I was kind of tired.”
“No problem,” he told her, reaching for bread. “I’m used to getting my own breakfast.”
“What do you have?”
“Coffee.”
She gaped at him. “Coffee?”
He shrugged. “Eggs bounce, bacon’s half raw, and the toast hides under some black stuff. Coffee’s better.”
Her eyes danced as he put some salad on her plate. “I guess so. I’ll try to wake up on time tomorrow.”
“Don’t rush it,” he said, glancing at her with a slight frown. “You look puny to me.”
“Most people would look puny compared to you,” she replied.
“Have you always been that thin?” he persisted.
“No. Not until I got pneumonia,” she said. “I just went straight downhill. I suppose I just kept pushing too hard. It caught up with me.”
“How’s the paperwork coming along?”
“Oh, I’m doing fine,” she said. “Your handwriting is very clear. I’ve had some correspondence to type for doctors that required translation.”
“Who did you get to translate?”
She grinned. “The nearest pharmacist. They have experience, you see.”
He smiled at her briefly before he bit into his sandwich. He made a second one, but she noticed that he ignored the salad.
“Don’t you want some of this?” she asked, indicating the salad bowl.
“I’m not a rabbit,” he informed her.
“It’s very good for you.”
“So is liver, I’m told, but I won’t eat that either.” He finished his sandwich and got up to pour himself another cup of coffee.”
“Then why do you keep lettuce and tomatoes?”
He glanced at her. “I like it on sandwiches.”
This was a great time to tell her, after she’d used it all up in the salad. Just like a man...
“You could have dug it out of here,” she said weakly.
He cocked an eyebrow. “With salad dressing all over it?”
“You could scrape it off...”
“I don’t like broccoli or cauliflower, and never fix creamed beef,” he added. “I’m more or less a meat and potatoes man.”
“I’ll sure remember that from now on, Mr. Culhane,” she promised. “I’ll be careful to use potatoes instead of apples in the pie I’m fixing for supper.”
He glared at her. “Funny girl. Why don’t you go on the stage?”
“Because you’d starve to death and weigh heavily on my conscience,” she promised. “Some man named Brickmayer called and asked did you have a farrier’s hammer he could borrow.” She glanced up. “What’s a farrier?”
He burst out laughing. “A farrier is a man who shoes horses.”
“I’d like a horse,” she sighed. “I’d put him in saddle oxfords.”
“Go back to work. But slowly,” he added from the doorway. “I don’t want you knocking yourself into a sickbed on my account.”
“You can count on me, sir,” she promised, with a wry glance. “I’m much too afraid of your cooking to ever be at the mercy of it.”
He started to say something, turned, and went out the door.
Jennifer spent the rest of the day finishing up the typing. Then she swept and dusted and made supper—a ham-and-egg casserole, biscuits, and cabbage. Supper sat on the table, however, and began to congeal. Eventually, she warmed up a little of it for herself, ate it, put the rest in the refrigerator, and went to bed. She had a feeling it was an omen for the future. He’d mentioned something that first day about rarely being home before bedtime. But couldn’t he have warned her at lunch?
She woke up on time her second morning at the ranch. By 6:15 she was moving gracefully around the spacious kitchen in jeans and a green T-shirt. Apparently, Everett didn’t mind what she wore, so she might as well be comfortable. She cooked a huge breakfast of fresh sausage, eggs, and biscuits, and made a pot of coffee.
Everything was piping hot and on the table when Everett came into the kitchen in nothing but his undershorts. Barefooted and bare-chested, he was enough to hold any woman’s eyes. Jennifer, who’d seen her share of almost-bare men on the beaches, stood against the counter and stared like a starstruck girl. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on that big body and he was covered with thick black hair—all over his chest, his flat stomach, his broad thighs. He was as sensuously male as any leading man on television, and she couldn’t drag her fascinated eyes away.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, his eyes faintly amused at what he recognized as shocked fascination. “I thought I heard something moving around down here. It’s just as well I took time to climb into my shorts.” And he turned away to leave her standing there, gaping after him.
A minute later he was back, whipping a belt around the faded blue denims he’d stepped into. He was still barefooted and bare-chested as he sat down at the table across from her.
“I thought I told you to stay in bed,” he said as he reached for a biscuit.
“I was afraid you’d keel over out on the plains and your horse wouldn’t be able to toss you onto his back and bring you home.” She grinned at his puzzled expression. “Well, that’s what Texas horses do in western movies.”
He chuckled. “Not my horse. He’s barely smart enough to find the barn when he’s hungry.” He buttered the biscuit. “My aunt used to cook like this,” he remarked. “Biscuits as light as air.”
“Sometimes they bounce,” she warned him. “I got lucky.”
He gave her a wary glance. “If these biscuits are any indication, so did I,” he murmured.
“I saw a henhouse out back. Do I gather the eggs every day?”
“Yes, but watch where you put your hand,” he cautioned. “Snakes have been known to get in there.”
She shuddered delicately, nodding.
They ate in silence for several minutes before he spoke again. “You’re a good cook, Jenny.”
She grinned. “My mother taught me. She was terrific.”
“Are your parents still alive?”
She shook her head, feeling a twinge of nostalgia. “No. They died several months ago, in a plane crash.”
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
“Very.” She glanced at him. “Are your parents dead?”
His face closed up. “Yes,” he said curtly, and in a tone that didn’t encourage further questions.
She looked up again, her eyes involuntarily lingering on his bare chest. She felt his gaze, and abruptly averted her own eyes back to her empty plate.
He got up after a minute and went back to his bedroom. When he came out, he was tucking in a buttoned khaki shirt, and wearing boots as well. “Thanks for breakfast,” he said. “Now, how about taking it easy for the rest of the day? I want to be sure you’re up to housework before you pitch in with both hands.”
“I won’t do anything I’m not able to do,” she promised.
“I’ve got some rope in the barn,” he said with soft menace, while his eyes measured her for it.
She stared at him thoughtfully. “I’ll be sure to carry a pair of scissors on me.”
He was trying not to grin. “My God, you’re stubborn.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“I’ve had lots of practice working cattle,” he replied. He picked up his coffee cup and drained it. “From now on, I’ll come to the table dressed. Even at six o’clock in the morning.”
She looked up, smiling. “You’re a nice man, Mr. Culhane,” she said. “I’m not a prude, honestly I’m not. It’s just that I’m not accustomed to sitting down to breakfast with men. Dressed or undressed.”
His dark eyes studied her. “Not liberated, Miss King?” he asked.
She sensed a deeper intent behind that question, but she took it at face value. “I was never unliberated. I’m just old-fashioned.”
“So am I, honey. You stick to your guns.” He reached for his hat and walked off, whistling.
She was never sure quite how to take what he said. As the days went by, he puzzled her more and more. She noticed him watching her occasionally, when he was in the house and not working with his cattle. But it wasn’t a leering kind of look. It was faintly curious and a little protective. She had the odd feeling that he didn’t think of her as a woman at all. Not that she found the thought surprising. Her mirror gave her inescapable proof that she had little to attract a man’s eyes these days. She was still frail and washed out.
Eddie was the elder of the ranchhands, and Jenny liked him on sight. He was a lot like the boss. He hardly ever smiled, he worked like two men, and he almost never sat down. But Jenny coaxed him into the kitchen with a cold glass of tea at the end of the week, when he brought her the eggs before she could go looking for them.
“Thank you, ma’am. I can sure use this.” He sighed, and drained almost the whole glass in a few swallows. “Boss had me fixing fences. Nothing I hate worse than fixing fences,” he added with a hard stare.
She tried not to grin. With his jutting chin and short graying whiskers and half-bald head, he did look fierce.
“I appreciate your bringing in the eggs for me,” she replied. “I got busy mending curtains and forgot about them.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t much,” he murmured. He narrowed one eye as he studied her. “You ain’t the kind I’d expect the boss to hire.”
Her eyebrows arched and she did grin this time. “What would you expect?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, the boss being the way he is...an older lady with a mean temper.” He moved restlessly in the chair he was straddling. “Well, it takes a mean temper to deal with him. I know, I been doin’ it for nigh on twenty years.”
“Has he owned the Circle C for that long?” she asked.
“He ain’t old enough,” he reminded her. “I mean, I knowed him that long. He used to hang around here with his Uncle Ben when he was just a tadpole. His parents never had much use for him. His mama run off with some man when he was ten and his daddy drank hisself to death.”
It was like having the pins knocked out from under her. She could imagine Everett at ten, with no mother and an alcoholic father. Her eyes mirrored the horror she felt. “His brother must have been just a baby,” she burst out.
“He was. Old Ben and Miss Emma took him in. But Everett weren’t so lucky. He had to stay with his daddy.”
She studied him quietly, and filled the tea glass again. “Why doesn’t he like city women?”
“He got mixed up with some social-climbing lady from Houston,” he said curtly. “Anybody could have seen she wouldn’t fit in here, except Everett. He’d just inherited the place and had these big dreams of making a fortune in cattle. The fool woman listened to the dreams and came harking out here with him one summer.” He laughed bitterly. “Took her all of five minutes to give Everett back his ring and tell him what she thought of his plans. Everett got drunk that night, first time I ever knew him to take a drink of anything stronger than beer. And that was the last time he brought a woman here. Until you come along, at least.”
She sat back down, all too aware of the faded yellow shirt and casual jeans she was wearing. The shirt was Everett’s. She’d borrowed it while she washed her own in the ancient chugging washing machine. “Don’t look at me like a contender,” she laughed, tossing back her long dark-blond hair. “I’m just a hanger-on myself, not a chic city woman.”
“For a hanger-on,” he observed, indicating the scrubbed floors and clean, pressed curtains at the windows and the food cooking on the stove, “you do get through a power of work.”
“I like housework,” she told him. She sipped her own tea. “I used to fix up houses for a living, until it got too much for me. I got frail during the winter and I haven’t quite picked back up yet.”
“That accent of yours throws me,” he muttered. “Sounds like a lot of Southern mixed up with Yankee.”
She laughed again. “I’m from Georgia. Smart man, aren’t you?”
“Not so smart, lady, or I’d be rich, too,” he said with a rare grin. He got up. “Well, I better get back to work. The boss don’t hold with us lollygagging on his time, and Bib’s waiting for me to help him move cattle.”
“Thanks again for bringing my eggs,” she said.
He nodded. “No trouble.”
She watched him go, sipping her own tea. There were a lot of things about Everett Culhane that were beginning to make sense. She felt that she understood him a lot better now, right down to the black moods that made him walk around brooding sometimes in the evening.
It was just after dark when Everett came in, and Jenny put the cornbread in the oven to warm the minute she heard the old pickup coming up the driveway. She’d learned that Everett Culhane didn’t work banker’s hours. He went out at dawn and might not come home until bedtime. But he had yet to find himself without a meal. Jenny prided herself in keeping not only his office, but his home, in order.
He tugged off his hat as he came in the back door. He looked even more weary than usual, covered in dust, his eyes dark-shadowed, his face needing a shave.
She glanced up from the pot of chili she was just taking off the stove and smiled. “Hi, boss. How about some chili and Mexican cornbread?”
“I’m hungry enough to even eat one of those damned salads,” he said, glancing toward the stove. He was still wearing his chaps and the leather had a fine layer of dust over it. So did his arms and his dark face.
“If you’ll sit down, I’ll feed you.”
“I need a bath first, honey,” he remarked.
“You could rinse off your face and hands in the sink,” she suggested, gesturing toward it. “There’s a hand towel there, and some soap. You look like you might go to sleep in the shower.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I can just see you pulling me out.”
She turned away. “I’d call Eddie or Bib.”
“And if you couldn’t find them?” he persisted, shedding the chaps on the floor.
“In that case,” she said dryly, “I reckon you’d drown, tall man.”
“Sassy lady,” he accused. He moved behind her and suddenly caught her by the waist with his lean, dark hands. He held her in front of him while he bent over her shoulder to smell the chili. She tried to breathe normally and failed. He was warm and strong at her back, and he smelled of the whole outdoors. She wanted to reach up and kiss that hard, masculine face, and her heart leaped at the uncharacteristic longing.
“What did you put in there?” he asked.
“One armadillo, two rattlers, a quart of beans, some tomatoes, and a hatful of jalapeño peppers.”
His hands contracted, making her jump. “A hatful of jalapeño peppers would take the rust off my truck.”
“Probably the tires, too,” she commented, trying to keep her voice steady. “But Bib told me you Texans like your chili hot.”
He turned her around to face him. He searched her eyes for a long, taut moment, and she felt her feet melting into the floor as she looked back. Something seemed to link them for that tiny space of time, joining them soul to soul for one explosive second. She heard him catch his breath and then she was free, all too soon.
“Would...would you like a glass of milk with this?” she asked after she’d served the chili into bowls and put it on the table, along with the sliced cornbread and some canned fruit.
“Didn’t you make coffee?” he asked, glancing up.
“Sure. I just thought...”
“I don’t need anything to put out the fire,” he told her with a wicked smile. “I’m not a tenderfoot from Jawja.”
She moved to the coffeepot and poured two cups. She set his in front of him and sat down. “For your information, suh,” she drawled, “we Georgians have been known to eat rattlesnakes while they were still wiggling. And an aunt of mine makes a barbecued sparerib dish that makes Texas chili taste like oatmeal by comparison.”
“Is that so? Let’s see.” He dipped into his chili, savored it, put the spoon down, and glared at her. “You call this hot?” he asked.
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