Wyoming Born and Bred

Since Hadley had been even less help in the kitchen than he had been outdoors, she was unaccustomed to having a man underfoot in her strictly feminine domain. Cameron, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease in his surroundings, rummaging through drawers and putting things away with minimal fuss. Before being excused to do their homework, the boys helped clear the table, and though the expediency of completing this mundane daily chore broke all previous records, Patricia couldn’t quite bring herself to feel grateful for Cam eron’s assistance. Not when simply brushing against his thigh while handing him a cleanly rinsed glass sent a wave of electrical current dancing across her skin.

It was crazy. Never had a man had such a completely befuddling effect upon her. If an accidental touch could make her feel this way, she wondered what effect his kisses might have. The guilt of such a thought weighing heavy on her mind, Patricia attacked the dirty dishes with all the determination of a gladiator.

“You’re going to rub the pattern right off that plate.” Cameron commented with a knowing smile.

The water in the sink was growing hotter by the minute. Patricia knew it had less to do with the temperature of the water flowing out of the tap than with the traitorous hormones turning the blood in her veins to molten lava. Perturbed that Cameron was so obviously aware of her discomfort, she hoped some light conversation would help lessen the tension lodged squarely at the base of her neck.

“Did you say that your grandfather was somehow connected with this place?” she ventured.

Cameron harrumphed so loudly that it made Patricia jump.

“Connected to it, hell! He owned it.”

Anger ignited his eyes with blue fire as he continued. “Showed up here one day on a stallion he called Midnight with nothing more than a Colt .45 strapped to his hip. Staked out a claim as far as the eye could see and said ”This is mine.’”

Unable to understand why her question had upset him so, Patricia expressed her dismay. “Without compunction to how the Native Americans who were here first might have felt about that?”

Cameron merely guffawed at the naïveté of her inquiry. “Spencer Wade wasn’t the kind of man to take such things into consideration. By all accounts he was a tough, old bird, weathering freezing winters and hostile renegades with the same unflinching resolve. There was a good reason he kept that .45 well oiled and within reach. Any sleazy snake-oil-selling banker ever had the gall to try holding him hostage with a little piece of paper would have met with a blaze of gunfire.”

The pride was unmistakable in Cameron’s voice. The silence that followed this cryptic outburst was as heavy as a fog bank. Patricia drove through it blind.

“Is that why you answered my ad? Are you on some kind of nostalgia trip?”

“Something like that,” he retorted with a strange look in his eye.

“I take it then that Grandpa didn’t exactly want to sell the ranch?”

“The Wades never sold out. This land was stolen from us plain and simple.”

The sponge that Patricia was holding fell into the sudsy water with a plop. Had she heard him right?

“Stolen?”

“Legalized theft.”

The words came out of Cameron’s mouth like bullets. Hard and fast. “About twenty years ago the economy around here took a dive. The president called it a recession at the time, but things weren’t nearly as bad as the banks wanted folks to believe. They took advantage of the situation to call in the loans on several ranches. The Triple R was one of them.”

He didn’t have the heart to expound further. The memory of his father, a kind and gentle man by nature, broken by the greed of a few unscrupulous opportunists could bear no more contemplation than the last two decades had already born. The thought of his father now confined to a cubicle in a retirement home brought a familiar tightness to his chest. Personally he thought the Eskimos’ tradition of setting their old people adrift on icebergs was preferable to the sterile, drawn-out death his father had so selflessly chosen for himself. The last time Cameron had visited him, he had apologized repeatedly for letting “the old man” and his own boys down.

Even from the grave, Spencer Wade threw a long shadow over his only son who, despite a lifetime of trying, had never been able to live up to his legendary expectations. Cameron was torn between love of his father and pride of the gruff grandfather who had taught him how to ride his first horse. Just as soon as the Triple R was back in his hands, he vowed to bring his father back home and lay away the ghosts of the past.

Once and for all.

Patricia felt a tiny shudder of foreboding at the determined look on Cameron’s face. “Do you fancy yourself a little like your grandfather?” she asked hesitantly.

The question was astute enough to coax a lopsided smile from him. “Well, I’d wager we’d both feel the same way about turning this ranch into a foul playpen for the ugliest flock of chickens I’ve ever seen.”

A smile danced in Patricia’s eyes. “Fowl play did you say?”

Cameron groaned at the tortured pun. Patricia giggled. And just as quickly as the sun bursts though the clouds on an overcast day, melancholy reminiscences turned to light, easy banter.

As Patricia went about the business of getting two seemingly inexhaustible little boys tucked into their respective beds, Cameron sank into a worn, comfortable recliner and closed his eyes—for all of ten seconds before Amy Leigh’s sudden and shrill cry brought him upright in his chair. He was tempted to call upstairs for Patricia to “do something” with the child but knew how unnecessary that would be. Had she been in the farthest corner of the attic, Patricia would have been able to hear her baby wailing.

Cameron had told his new boss in no uncertain terms that he was no bird wrangler. He thought it went without saying that he was not a baby-sitter. Figuring that if he ignored her bid for attention those little lungs would surely give out sooner or later, he leaned back and closed his eyes again. This particular strategy served only to incense the child, and the volume of her cries increased several decibels. His nerves crackling with the force of her renewed intensity, Cameron felt his blood pressure rise. He pulled a cherished watch fob out of his pocket and checked the time.

Swallowing the curse scalding the tip of his tongue, he hoisted himself out of the comfort of the sagging recliner and made his way over to the mechanical swing into which the child was securely strapped. According to Patricia, this was the best way of putting Amy Leigh to sleep.

He’d hate to see how her other methods worked.

“Stop it,” Cameron said firmly in the same tone of voice that had proven effective in training any number of dogs over the years. “Stop it right this instant!”

Eyelashes glistening with tears, Amy stopped only long enough to hold out her pudgy arms to him.

Upstairs, Patricia listened to the boys’ nighttime prayers with only one ear. The other one was attuned to Amy’s usual prebedtime petulance. Cameron didn’t exactly strike her as the patient type with children, so when Amy’s cries stopped in the middle of the boys’ “God-blesses” just as abruptly as they had begun, she grew worried. Would she come downstairs to find her youngest gagged and trussed up like some unlucky steer?

What Patricia actually found upon her return to the living room was enough to make her shake her head in disbelief. Cameron was dozing in the big chair while her daughter sat in the middle of the floor teething on what appeared to be a genuine solid gold pocket watch.

“Just who is putting whom to sleep?” she asked, coming down the last three creaky steps.

Cameron opened his eyes to regard her with a lazy, insolent gaze. He hadn’t been anywhere near asleep but didn’t dare say so for fear Patricia would have him running a day care for every toddler in the area tomorrow. Likely she’d claim it was written somewhere in small print in that fool contract he’d signed.

Besides, it had been his experience that women interpreted any attention toward their kids as an open invitation for them to start calling him Daddy. He shuddered at the thought.

The sentimentality that simply being back in this house evoked in him was disturbing to say the least. Why, he’d almost been tempted to pick the little dickens up and rock her to sleep! Cameron blamed this momentary lapse of sanity on the fact that he’d overheard his own name included in the prayers which had floated down the stairs like sweet perfume.

“God bless Cameron.”

“And make him stay...”

What a rotten trick, he thought to himself. Cameron wondered if they would still pray for him if they knew he’d come here with the express intention of buying their home out from under them.

Gathering her daughter into her arms, Patricia attempted to take the girl’s latest “toy” away from her. The toddler wailed and swatted at her mother’s hands, but the deft substitution of a more traditional teething ring quickly pacified her.

Patricia held the watch out to Cameron by its golden chain. It was covered in drool. Wiping it on the hem of her apron, she took the opportunity to study it more closely. Elaborately scrolled into the back were the initials S.W. and below them a date—1909.

“Your grandfather’s?” she asked, handing it over with due reverence. Amazingly it was still ticking. She had to bite her tongue to keep from asking if he was crazy. Would anyone but a man let a baby play with such a valuable keepsake?

Cameron nodded, noting that the antique was none the worse for wear. He figured if it could pull through gunfights and prairie fires, the old timepiece should be able to survive a teething little girl. Before putting it back in his pocket, he wound it once for good measure.

“If you’ll wait here, I’ll put Amy down for the night and be right back.”

The intimacy of Patricia’s promise wrapped itself around Cameron like sweet cotton candy. That voice of hers was pure magic.

Black magic, he’d wager.

Whatever magic this stranger had worked on her little fusspot, Patricia was grateful. When Amy was born, the nurses in the maternity ward had pronounced her colicky. As time passed and the baby refused to outgrow her demanding disposition, Patricia resigned herself to the fact that her daughter was simply going to be dif ficult to raise. Boys, she had heard, would wring a mother’s heart through the years. Girls, they said, would rip it out.

She pulled a blanket over Amy and kissed her softly on the cheek. Patricia couldn’t help thinking how different their evening routine had been just because of Cameron’s presence. How obvious it was that the boys needed a male role model in their lives. How nervous she was around his overt brand of sexuality....