The Rancher's One-Week Wife

Karly was surprised by his grudging admission that he thought he should protect her. There hadn’t been anyone who’d cared about her safety since her mother passed away several years ago. But as nice as it was to have someone worry about her well-being again, she needed to remember that Blake was only doing it because he felt it was his obligation. He’d signed the divorce papers. He must be as ready to undo their mistake as she was.

Sighing heavily, she tried to decide what to do. Everything about this trip had gone awry. Her flight from Denver to Cheyenne had been delayed for over two hours due to a dangerous storm front moving through, the drive to the ranch had taken three times as long as she had anticipated due to the car the rental agency had provided and her meeting with Blake hadn’t gone as quickly as she’d thought it would. The way her luck had been running, it was very likely that she’d end up in one of the disastrous scenarios he mentioned.

“Eagle Fork is only twenty miles away,” she said, glancing at the sun rapidly sinking behind the mountains to the west.

“It takes a little over an hour in the daylight to drive down the mountain to get there. How long do you think it would take you to get back at night?” Blake pointed toward the road. “Do you really want to drive on unfamiliar, rough mountain roads in the dark? At least stay tonight.”

“If I take it slow, I shouldn’t have a problem,” she hedged. Sleeping in the same house with Blake—even if it was in different rooms—wasn’t a good idea. He was six feet two inches of male temptation that had proved almost impossible for her to resist in the past. It had taken going all the way back to Seattle for her to realize the effect he’d had on her good sense. What crazy decisions would she make if she stayed here with him?

“And what happens if you have a deer or elk run across the road in front of you?” he persisted, oblivious to her inner battle. “I’ve got news for you, sweetheart. If you hit one of those in that little toy car, you’re going to lose.”

Karly stared at him as she weighed her options. Driving up through the mountains during the day with all the switchbacks and ninety-degree curves had been a challenge. And of course, there had been the last several miles to the ranch, which had become a dirt-and-gravel road pitted with more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. But at night?

She hated to admit it, but her choices were extremely limited. Since she didn’t know another soul in Wyoming, she either had to risk going down the mountain in the dark to find a motel room in Eagle Fork, or stay with Blake.

As she watched the evening shadows begin to overtake the high mountain valley, she decided she had run out of time. There simply wasn’t enough daylight left to make it back to town before it got completely dark.

“I suppose I could spend the night here and then drive back down to Eagle Fork tomorrow to get a room for however long it takes the strike to be resolved,” she said, talking more to herself than to Blake.

“Then it’s settled,” he said, walking to the back of the car. “I’ll carry your luggage inside.”

“I wasn’t expecting to spend more than two nights away from home and only have an overnight case,” she said, using the keyless remote to open the trunk as she walked over to take the small bag from him. “I can bring it inside.”

He shook his head as he lifted it from the trunk. “Grandma Jean would have my hide if she got wind of me letting you carry your luggage yourself.”

“Does she live close by?” Karly had never known what it was like to be close to a grandparent. Three of hers had passed away before she was born and her paternal grandmother had lived so far away, she’d only seen her a handful of times.

“She lives down in Eagle Fork,” he said as he placed his hand at the small of her back to guide her into the house. “There were several of us who lived with her during the winter when we were still in school.”

“Because of all the snow?” she mused as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. If the roads were so difficult to navigate in the summer, she couldn’t imagine trying to get around in a heavy snowfall.

“It was easier to stay down there where we could get to school than have to miss and make up all of the schoolwork when we were finally able to get back to class,” he said, nodding as he stepped back so she could enter a bedroom. When he set her small suitcase on the bed, he hooked his thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “While you get settled, I have to drive over to the main house to see about a few things the owner needs me to take care of.”

“Was that the huge log home I passed just before I got here?” she asked, unzipping the overnight case to remove her flip-flops. She loved wearing heels, but she had been in them all day and her feet were beginning to hurt.

Blake nodded. “The owner had that built a couple of years ago. Right after he bought the ranch.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said, removing the heels to put on the flip-flops. “And it’s perfect for the rugged surroundings.”

He stared at her a moment before he turned and walked out into the hall. “I guess I’d better go on over to the main house. Make yourself at home. I won’t be long.”

As she heard him descend the stairs, she began to realize just how little she knew about the man she had married. In Las Vegas, Blake had literally swept her off her feet and charmed her into a fairy-tale week of romance, lovemaking and a wedding. But as idyllic as their time together had been, they hadn’t talked about their families or jobs, their hopes or their dreams.

“It would have never worked between us,” she murmured as she sat down on the side of the bed.

The realization was not a new one. So Karly had no idea why the words made her feel so sad. This was what she’d chosen—the way it had to be. She wasn’t about to make the same mistakes her mother had made. She wasn’t going to give up everything—her home, her lifestyle, her job—for a man and then resent him for her choices.

No matter how beautiful it was here or how cherished and safe Blake made her feel when he took her in his arms, she couldn’t live on this ranch with him any more than he could live with her in Seattle. And the sooner she accepted that truth, the better off she would be.

Two (#ulink_d14a8d85-9c67-5f10-806c-486f9e1d573c)

Blake glanced over at his backpack, the thermal food carrier and the jug of iced tea on the truck seat beside him as he drove away from the main ranch house. His house.

He had never lied to Karly, not eight months ago and not today.

But he hadn’t been completely honest with her, either.

When they met in Las Vegas, he’d told her that besides competing in rodeo, he was the boss at the Wolf Creek Ranch in Wyoming. She had assumed that meant he was the foreman and he hadn’t bothered to set her straight. For one thing, they’d been so hot for each other, they hadn’t talked at length about their jobs or much of anything else. And for another, he didn’t go around flaunting the fact that he owned the Wolf Creek or that he was a multimillionaire.

He had firsthand knowledge of how the lure of money could influence people and he intended to avoid that kind of shallowness at all costs. He didn’t want the money to affect his relationships, and he’d been especially careful about what he’d shared with the woman he’d married so quickly. In the past, both he and his father had seen the ugly side of women hell-bent on getting their hands on a hefty bankroll and once had been enough to leave Blake more than a little cautious.

But he was fairly certain Karly had no knowledge about the size of his bank account. She had fallen for him—without the influence of his money. He had figured that when she joined him at the ranch it would be a nice surprise to let her know that they would never have financial worries like a lot of other couples starting out. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had the chance to tell her the truth because she’d decided that living in a big city without him was preferable to living on the ranch with him. She’d made that decision without the influence of his money, too.

In hindsight, he wished he’d told her right after they got married in Vegas. He didn’t want her thinking that he had been trying to hide his assets because of their pending divorce. That wasn’t the case at all. And he had every intention of telling her the truth, as well as providing her with a nice settlement for the very brief time they’d been married. He just needed to figure out the right time and way to go about doing that.

He could have told her about his wealth when she called from Seattle to tell him she thought they’d made a mistake and that ending the marriage would be for the best. But he’d decided against that because she might have assumed it was a desperate attempt on his part to get her to reconsider their divorce, to give them a chance. Him begging for a second chance was something that would never happen. Even if his pride had allowed it, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. She’d had her mind made up and nothing he could have said would have changed it.

So he’d kept his secret and signed the papers. But he could have told her the truth today, too, when she’d mistakenly assumed the foreman’s cottage was his house and that the main house and ranch belonged to someone else. But he’d held back without really knowing why.

All he knew was that his ego had taken enough of a hit eight months ago, when he’d learned that while she might have been the woman of his dreams, he obviously hadn’t been the man of hers. And if he was perfectly honest with himself, there had probably been a little fear holding him back, as well. He hadn’t wanted to tell her he was rich and end up finding out that he’d been wrong about her—that Karly could be swayed by the temptation of his money.

As he steered his truck up the lane leading to the foreman’s cottage, he reached up to rub the tension building at the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure how something that had originally felt so right had gone so wrong. When he’d married Karly after only knowing her a week, the decision had seemed as natural as taking his next breath. Their whirlwind wedding carried on the Hartwell family tradition. Blake’s Grandma and Grandpa Hartwell had been married three days after meeting and his father and mother tied the knot two weeks after their first date. Both couples had successful marriages until death separated them and Blake had been sure it would be that way with himself and Karly. It was obvious now that he had been wrong.

Parking his truck beside the little red sports car, Blake took a deep breath and reached for his backpack, the thermal carrier full of food and the gallon thermos of iced tea he’d had his cook pack for their supper. There was no sense in trying to figure out how he could have misjudged Karly’s commitment to their relationship. He had and there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. Besides, he’d never been one to dwell on his mistakes.

As he walked toward the cottage, she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. His breath caught and his heart thumped against his ribs. He felt the same pull that had drawn him to her the first time he’d laid eyes on her in Vegas. He forced himself to ignore the feeling. She might be the most exciting woman he’d ever known, but the sting of her rejection and her disdain for his lifestyle told him in no uncertain terms just how unimportant he was to her. She’d walked away from him once. He wouldn’t give her another chance to do it again.

Distracted by his turbulent thoughts, it took him a moment to notice the frown on her pretty face. “Is something wrong?” he asked as he climbed the steps.

“Where do you keep your food?” she answered his question with one of her own as they entered the house. “I was going to make something for dinner, but the refrigerator and pantry are both empty. If you live here why isn’t there anything in the house to eat?”

“I usually eat down at the bunkhouse with the single men or over at the main house,” he said truthfully as he set the cooler and jug of iced tea on the kitchen island, then turned to hang his hat on a peg by the door. He did eat with his men at the bunkhouse occasionally, just not as often as he ate what his cook made for him in the main house.

She looked doubtful. “Even in the winter when you’re snowed in?”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her erroneous assumption. “Sweetheart, there’s no such thing as getting snowed in around here. A ranch is a twenty-four-hours, seven-days-a-week operation. It never shuts down because the livestock are depending on us to take care of them. If it rains we get wet. If it snows we wade through it no matter how deep it gets or how cold it is.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Looking a little sheepish, she shook her head. “I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about ranching.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He motioned toward the thermal carrier. “And don’t worry about cooking. I had the cook over at the main house pack up what he made for supper. Why don’t you set the table while I go wash up?”

He didn’t mention that he’d had to endure an interrogation and a stern lecture before old Silas finished loading the carrier with containers of food. A retired cowboy turned cook after his arthritis prevented him from doing ranch work, Silas Burrows had some definite ideas on how Blake should conduct his life and he didn’t mind sharing them every chance he got. Having a wife show up unexpectedly, one that Blake hadn’t told Silas about, definitely got the old boy started. As sure as the grass was green, Blake knew he hadn’t heard the end of what Silas had to say on the matter, either.

“I’ll have dinner on the table by the time you return,” she said as she started removing the food from the carrier to set it on the butcher-block island.

Blake watched her for a moment before he gritted his teeth and left the room. Karly had changed into a pair of khaki camp shorts and an oversize T-shirt while he was gone. She shouldn’t have looked the least bit appealing. But he’d be damned if just seeing her in the baggy shorts, shapeless shirt and bright pink flip-flops didn’t have him feeling as restless as a range-raised colt.

Disgusted with himself, he marched up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. How could he want a woman who had rejected him? Who had rejected his way of life and the land he loved?