Wyoming Born and Bred

Ten minutes later he found himself seated before the world’s largest omelet. Milk, home-canned apples, and garden-fresh salad accompanied it. Ever vigilant, Johnny and Kirk flanked him on both sides. Amy sat beside her mother in a high chair that had been mended too often with great gobs of duct tape.

Despite the growling in his stomach, Cameron was about to beg off the main course when a familiar voice echoed through his mind. “People whose manners are absent probably are missing more than just their manners. No matter how old you get, son, or how important you might think you’ve become, just remember your mother raised you right and act accordingly.”

Rose Wade had been dead for almost fifteen years, but Cameron felt her presence in this house as surely as when she had taught him respect at her table. A lump formed in his throat. As inexplicably as a moth is drawn to a flame, Cameron’s memories had led him back home in search of that which had been stolen from him. Was it innocence, he wondered, or pride?

An obedient son, he complied with his mother’s ghostly command. Sectioning off a tiny piece of omelet, he took a hesitant bite. To his astonishment, it was quite tasty.

He lifted his gaze from his plate to discover Pat waiting for his reaction. She looked so anxious and so lovely sitting there that his heart swelled up in his chest like an overinflated balloon.

“Not bad,” he commented, taking another mouthful.

Cameron watched the hardness around her eyes soften. He was on the verge of encouraging her to use that dynamite smile of hers a little more often when a handful of egg drilled him square in the forehead.

“Amy!” her mother cried out in horror.

Undaunted, the tot launched her spoon into space where it did a double somersault before landing in the middle of their guest’s dinner plate.

The boys roared as Amy clapped her hands in glee.

“I’m so sorry,” Pat stammered, coming at Cameron with a napkin.

“No harm done, ma‘am,” he said, stopping his red-faced hostess in her tracks with a careless wave of the hand. “It isn’t the first time I’ve had egg on my face, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”

Pat was impressed by this gruff cowboy’s tact. She knew few men who would have handled the incident half as graciously. The instant the poor man had stepped onto her property, he’d been beset by calamity—from women dropping from the sky into his arms, being captured by the infamous Erhart Boys, to being ambushed at the dinner table. Watching him wipe the splatters from his once clean Western-cut shirt, she could hardly blame Cameron for his lack of enthusiasm about signing on at Fort Bedlam.

Inwardly railing against the formal “ma’am” which made her feel like her own world-weary mother, she suggested, “Why don’t you just call me Pat? Everybody does.”

A candid appraisal glittered in Cameron’s eyes. “If you don’t mind my saying, Patricia suits a pretty woman better.”

The blood in her veins began to bubble under the heat of the glance that took her in head to toe. A hot blush crept up her neck. It was silly how pleased she was by the offhanded compliment

Lordy, had she completely forgotten what it was like to have a man flirt with her? Having done both a man and a woman’s job for so very long, she had almost come to think of herself in androgynous terms. The gentle reminder that she had another name besides Mom made her suddenly feel as giddy as a teenager.

Smoothing a wisp of stray hair back from her face, she tossed him a disarming smile. “Patricia’s just fine with me. Now if you have any questions about the job, this would be a good time to ask them.”

Unfortunately the question uppermost in Cameron’s mind was not one he thought should be asked in front of children. Over the years on the rodeo circuit, he’d had more than his fair share of made-up, coifed tarts bat their mascaraed eyelashes at him. Why none of them made him feel as overtly sexual, as purely animalistic as his new boss did with a simple smile was beyond him. He wondered exactly what it was about this unpretentious woman masquerading as a teenager in those baggy overalls that was so unbelievably sexy it set his heart ticking like an overwound five-dollar watch.

“Just one,” he said, giving voice to the question that he had been wanting to ask ever since this woman had tumbled from the roof into his arms like some fallen angel.

“Where’s your husband?” And doesn’t he know he’s a fool to leave you here all alone?

Patricia glanced quickly at the children. She was not yet comfortable discussing their father’s death in front of them. It was a wound still too raw to the touch. Though far from being a good provider by society’s standards, Hadley had seldom raised his voice let alone a hand to his children. They missed him terribly.

“I’m a widow,” she said softly.

Cameron’s fork clattered against his plate. His eyes looked everywhere in the room but at her.

His embarrassment was almost audible. Patricia hadn’t meant to make him squirm. After all, he had no part in the cruel hand fate had dealt her. She asked the boys to get more milk from the refrigerator and, once they were out of earshot, plunged into an abbreviated version of Hadley’s death with the swiftness of a surgeon working without anesthesia.

“A little less than a year ago my husband was killed in a car wreck. The roads were icy, he’d been drinking and the guardrail didn’t hold. The coroner assured me his death was instantaneous.”

A lump lodged itself sideways in Cameron’s throat. He couldn’t imagine a single mother attempting to run this ranch all by herself while raising three tiny human tornadoes. The only sound he could hear in the deaf ening silence that followed her account was that of his own heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

It was inadequate, but he could think of nothing else to add as the boys slid back into their seats beside him. When he had impetuously signed that contract back in the hospital, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might actually come to give a tinker’s damn about the people he intended running off this place. He had expected to be greeted by some rich, hobbyist rancher. Not a vulnerable, young widow with spunk enough to put a chink in his well-polished emotional armor.

Cameron didn’t fancy himself a sentimental man, but he figured he’d have to be blind not to notice how bare the cupboards were, how thin the children were, how desperate the woman was. He would have had to have been made of granite not to want to kiss away the furrows worrying her lovely brow. To sample the sweetness of those full, inviting lips...

Criminey! He had no more control of his thoughts than of a wild mustang roaming the range. Good sense warned him to get out while the getting was good. The very thought of working on a bird ranch was an insult to his dignity. No self-respecting cowboy would be caught dead eating one of these overgrown chickens let alone acting as foreman for what was certain to be the most unpopular ranch in the county. The jeers and jibes were already ringing in his ears. Some of the announcers on the circuit had taken to introducing him as the Big Man. Cameron wasn’t particularly eager to trade in that moniker for the Bird Man.

“So can I count on you staying the next three months?” Patricia asked, naming the time frame outlined in the contract she’d drawn up.

Cameron twisted uncomfortably in his seat. Darned if the whole family wasn’t looking at him like he was Saint Michael himself sent to rescue them from Satan’s clutches. He hoped that Patricia had registered her children’s big ol’ pleading eyes as lethal weapons down at the local police station. He hadn’t felt this much pressure in the arena with thousands of eyes trained on his performance.

“Pleeeeeease stay,” Kirk begged.

“On the cowboy trail, a promise made is a promise kept,” Johnny interjected with all the solemnity of an old-time hanging judge.

Cameron signaled capitulation with a heavy sigh.

“Three months and not a day longer,” he grumbled. “And there are a couple of things we need to set straight right from the get-go.”

Raising her eyebrows, Patricia waited patiently for him to continue.

“You can count on me to do the dirtiest, hardest work you need done—without complaint. Fencing, roofing, painting. It doesn’t much matter to me. I’ve even been known to fix a broken-down motor or two, but I’m telling you right up front, I’m no bird wrangler.”

A smile played on Patricia’s lips. “You wouldn’t happen to be afraid of them, would you?”

At the affront, Cameron puffed up like a blowfish. Each word was a single, crisp word as it came from his mouth. “No, I wouldn‘t”

Johnny irreverently tucked his hands beneath his armpits and flapped his elbows in comic relief. Kirk joined in.

“Cluck, cluck, cluck...”

Cameron glared threateningly from one to the other. A menacing sneer twitched beneath his mustache, and the last cluck died a tortured death.

“Boys, I’m sure Mr. Wade is no chicken,” Patricia chided gently before turning her attention upon the bird in question. “And you can rest assured that the children and I are more than capable of tending to the emus ourselves. If you would just be so kind as to take care of some of the major repairs around here, you will more than meet your contractual obligations.”

The fire illuminating those chocolate-colored eyes of hers led Cameron to believe that the lady was definitely a survivor. Having spent years being pursued by a bevy of buckle bunnies, he’d all but forgotten that there might actually be honest women left in the world. Those prolific bunnies earned their name by chasing after the trophy buckles worn by big-name rodeo winners on the circuit. Cameron knew it was more than their prize money these women sought. There was also vicarious prestige in associating with a champion. After being worked over by their veritable queen two summers ago, Cameron had become impervious to their charms. He had, in fact, become so disillusioned with all women after Bonnie had shown him the indisputable facts of life that his number-one rule for dating thereafter had been to use them before they could use him.

“I’ll tackle your roof first thing in the morning,” he said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Now, why don’t we discuss the particulars of our living arrangements while I give you a hand with the dishes?”

Because I can’t afford to break every dish in the house! Patricia thought to herself in a sudden rush of panic. The mere thought of telling this virile cowboy where to bed down made her quiver like a jackrabbit lippety-lopping across the rifle range on the opening day of hunting season. Unfortunately, her protests that he didn’t need to help with the dishes were to no avail. Though patently old-fashioned enough to believe that the most physically demanding tasks on a ranch belonged solely to the male of the species, Cameron had been well schooled early on by his mother that there simply was no such thing as “women’s work.”

Chapter Three

Patricia became even more flustered when Cameron rolled up his sleeves to reveal a pair of strong, muscled forearms. Wielding a clean dishcloth with the potency of a ninja warrior, the man somehow managed to look as sexy in the kitchen as she imagined he would in the bedroom. Remembering how safe and secure she had felt earlier in the day, wrapped in the embrace of those masculine arms, was almost enough to make her drop the plate she was holding. Up to her elbows in soapy water, Patricia tried washing away the disturbing feelings that close proximity with this man evoked in her.