The Cattleman And The Virgin Heiress

“Look, I’m going to go down to the bunkhouse and see how the men are making out. I’d feel better about leaving you alone if you were in bed again.”

“Fine,” Hope said dully. Matt was instantly at her side to help her up from the chair, and he held her arm all the way back to the bedroom and the bed. She told herself to forget that he was a tall, deliciously sexy, good-looking man—who seemed to get better looking every time they talked—but his big hand clasped around her arm made that impossible to do. She was glad when she was finally under the covers again and Matt had left the room.

She heaved a long, helpless sigh. This was not a game, and she really must be demented to be noticing a man’s good looks under such trying circumstances.

But then, maybe that was the kind of woman she was. Maybe she slept around. Maybe any sexy guy was fair game. Maybe she was a—a tramp!

Tears rolled down her temples. Matt McCarlson had not only undressed her, he’d given her a bath. Maybe she should be worrying about what kind of person he was. After all, she had been unconscious and entirely at his mercy!

Matt stayed away from the house for a couple of hours. He talked to the men at the bunkhouse and they weren’t a bit shy with their complaints.

“Danged if we ain’t out here trapped like rats in their hole.”

“We can’t hardly stand to look at each other anymore, Matt.”

“Hell, I’d take backbreaking work over being stuck in this bunkhouse with these yahoos any day of the week.”

“Matt, have you been listening to the radio for weather reports? The radio out here ain’t working worth a damn. We’ve been getting mostly static, probably because of the storm.”

“It’s the same in the house, Joe, but I did manage to catch one weather report and it looks like we’re in for more rain.”

The grousing went on, and Matt drank a cup of strong bunkhouse coffee and let them vent. They had a right, he felt. Cowboys were used to being outdoors. The bunkhouse probably felt like a prison to them, just as the house would’ve felt to Matt if his time and thoughts hadn’t been so taken up by Hope LeClaire.

It occurred to Matt then that no one had said anything about her. There’d been no teasing comments and no tongue-in-cheek innuendo, which wasn’t at all like a bunch of cowhands, particularly cowhands with nothing to do but gripe about the weather.

He caught Chuck’s eye and could tell then from the foreman’s expression that there’d been no conversation between him and any of the men about the ranch’s unexpected guest. Giving his head a slight nod at Chuck, he indicated appreciation of his reticence. Chuck nodded back, and that was the end of it.

The bunkhouse had a kitchen and a bunch of tables and chairs. Most of the men could cook a little—a pot of chili or beef stew, red beans and rice, fried steak and potatoes—plain fare but filling, and there was a big pan simmering on the stove today. Matt rinsed his cup at the sink and noted that the men might be edgy as a hive of bees, but they planned to eat well that evening.

That thought raised the question of what he would feed Hope for dinner. Alone, he would come out here and eat whatever the men had cooked in that big pot, but not today. Like it or not, he had a responsibility in his guest room that he could not ignore.

He was suddenly irritated and exasperated over fate playing such a dirty trick on him as to actually deliver a Stockwell almost to his front door, and to do it in a storm that isolated the ranch and everyone on it from the rest of the world. His hands were tied as far as Hope went. He couldn’t even phone someone—the doctor, Hope’s mother or any of the Stockwells—and get rid of her through one of those avenues.

He was as stuck as the ranch hands were, he thought disgustedly, only all they had to worry about was being cooped up with each other until the storm passed. His worries could be measured in miles, and that road seemed to be getting longer with each passing day. Wearing a disgruntled expression, he told the men he’d see them later and then braved the rain once again to trudge through the mud for the return trip to the house.

He didn’t look in on Hope. Instead, after kicking off his muddy boots, he walked stocking-footed to the living room, plopped down into his favorite old recliner chair and pushed it back. The gray light in the room bothered him almost at once, and he reached out to turn on the lamp next to the chair. The switch clicked, but nothing happened.

Cursing a blue streak, Matt leapt to his feet and tried other lights. None came on, and for a moment Matt felt like tearing out his own hair. Now the ranch was without electricity, and just how long would that inconvenience go on?

“This miserable damn storm,” he muttered as he went to a window and looked out at the bunkhouse. The lights that had been on only minutes ago were no longer burning.

Matt walked back to his chair and sank onto it. The loss of electricity seemed like a final straw. There would be no heat, no cooking, no lights.

Plus he had an amnesiac on his hands. How in hell was he going to deal with it all?

Chapter Three

T he room had an inert, pewterlike quality that dulled distinctiveness and distorted perspective. Worse for Hope was its frightening unfamiliarity.

Her heartbeat was so hard and fast that she could hear it. She had just woken up, and not recognizing the bedroom she was in was so terrifying that she felt paralyzed. In the next instant she came fully awake and remembered the hours before she’d fallen asleep, and while the paralysis relaxed its grip on her system, the fear did not.

The house seemed eerily quiet. Where was Matthew McCarlson? Light, she decided as her pulse rate kept time with her pounding heart. Some light in the room might help calm her nerves. Reaching out to the lamp next to the bed, she located and then pushed the switch.

“Oh, no,” she whispered when no light came on. Was the bulb burned out? Her hands clenched into fearful fists as she forced her bewildered and disoriented brain to concentrate on the problem. Maybe the lamp wasn’t plugged in. Or maybe it was plugged into one of those outlets that required the use of a wall switch.

But she would have to get out of bed to find out. The room seemed to be getting darker by the minute, and she couldn’t tell if there were wall switches anywhere.

She could hear rain; it was still coming down. And, obviously, night was falling. She’d slept away the day. She must have been exhausted, or maybe it had simply been easier to sleep than to stay awake and face her situation.

Her situation, she thought with a heavy sigh that was a combination of fearful desperation and incredulity. How could so many awful things happen to one person at the same time? She was in a strange place in a stranger’s home and knew nothing about herself except for the little information she’d gotten from a purse—her purse, even if she didn’t recognize it.

On top of her amnesia was the storm, which had isolated this ranch to the point of no possible means of communication with the rest of the world. It was all so…so bizarre…so Hollywoodish. More like a plot in a movie than a real-life experience.

Or was it? Hope frowned in the deepening darkness. Since she knew nothing about herself, perhaps this sort of adventure—or misadventure—was the norm for her. She sighed again over such a repugnant prospect, and then felt slightly better because the idea of living on the edge of a precipice was repugnant.

And then she gulped uneasily and wondered if amnesia altered victims’ personalities so drastically that they became different people than they’d been. Maybe the way she saw things now wasn’t even close to her normal point of view on anything and everything. Moaning in anguish over that horrifying possibility, Hope whispered, “God help me.”

After lying in a heap of utter misery for a while, she realized that the more she pondered her plight, the worse she felt. It would be very easy to just let go and scream her throat raw, but would it change anything? Would the telephone suddenly start working—or the lights? That was the problem with her lamp, of course. The storm had wreaked havoc with the area’s electricity.

Screaming would accomplish nothing. Neither would crying herself sick. What she needed to do was to get out of this bed.

Wouldn’t a shower feel wonderful? Or a long soak in a hot-water bubble bath?

Hope slid off the bed and made her way to the door in the pale shards of daylight still available. But the hallway was much darker than the bedroom, and the house suddenly felt ominously silent. Her nerves began jangling.

Standing with her hand on the frame of the door as though it were some sort of safety line, she called, “Matt?” Almost immediately a light appeared at the end of the hall and began growing in intensity. In a moment she saw the dark silhouette of a man behind the glowing light of a lantern, both of which were coming toward her. “Matt?” she repeated, because she honestly couldn’t tell if the silhouette was him or someone else.

“I’m here. You had quite a sleep.”

Relieved that it was Matt and not another stranger to deal with, she answered. “Yes. Apparently the electricity is off now, as well as the phone.”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“I was hoping for a shower or bath. Guess that’s out of the question.”

“Not necessarily. The hot water tank is full, and I’m sure the water in it is still hot. If the power stays off all night it won’t be hot by morning, so someone might as well use it. Are you sure you’re up to it, though?”

“I’m very sure.” She wanted to wash her hair in the worst way—naturally she would be careful about the cut on her head—and soap every inch of her. She didn’t even want to think about Matthew McCarlson bathing the mud from her nude body, so she certainly wasn’t going to question him about the method he’d used to undress and cleanse an unconscious woman. Anyhow, whatever his technique, it hadn’t been all that adequate because she felt more gritty than clean.

“If you’re that certain, then fine. Take this lantern with you. I have others. Leave the bathroom door unlocked, in case you’re not as strong as you think you are and need some help. Don’t let modesty prevent you from calling for me if you get into trouble. When you’re done, you’ll probably want some supper. I’ve already set up my propane camp stove on the back porch and can do a little cooking on it. We’ll decide later what sounds good.”

He was holding out the lantern, and Hope took it from him. So, she thought, he would rush to her rescue again, should she call out from the bathroom. Was he hoping for another peek at her bare skin, or hadn’t her nudity before bothered him? Maybe he’d barely noticed. Maybe her body wasn’t worthy of notice. For some reason that idea stung Hope’s pride. She hadn’t taken inventory of her figure yet, but she would, she decided.

Ignoring his offer of help, she said, “After all you’ve done for me, I shouldn’t have the gall to ask for one more thing. But these sweats I’m wearing are uncomfortably large and I was wondering if you had some old ones that you wouldn’t mind my cutting inches off the legs and arms.”

“As a matter of fact I do. I’ll get them and bring them and the scissors to the bathroom.” He walked off, vanishing in the darkness right before Hope’s eyes.

Her stomach turned over. She didn’t like being alone in the dark in this strange house, even with a lantern in her hand. It threw light, but it also created shadows, and Hope wondered if she’d always been leery of the dark or if this was just another perturbing side effect to amnesia.