Instant Husband

“Spring?” Nick looked shocked at her question. “The calves are born in the spring.”

“Oh?” Ann looked around. From the porch steps there wasn’t a bit of stock to be seen. “Where do you keep them?” she continued, hoping she didn’t sound as idiotic as she felt.

“Most of them stay in the fields with their mothers. If they have a problem, we keep them there.” Nick gestured toward the far barn. “Perhaps I ought to show you around the place before I get back to work.”

Success, Ann thought, feeling a sense of accomplishment lift her spirits.

“I’d very much like to see things.” Ann was careful to keep her voice matter-of-fact. She didn’t want him to think that she was trying to coerce him into anything. Or—a flush warmed her thin cheeks—that she was trying to come on to him.

“We can…” Nick paused as he caught sight of a cloud of dust moving down the dirt road from the highway to the house. He squinted, trying to get a better look, and was rewarded by a red gleam from the sun reflecting off the lights on top.

The sheriff’s car, he realized with a quick glance at Ann, who was also watching the car approach. Damn! Why did Sherrie have to come in person. A call would have sufficed to fill him in on the latest developments in the cattle disappearances. Ann was bound to already have a list of things wrong with ranch life. If she were to discover that there were cattle thieves running loose…

“Why don’t you go change into something more suitable,” he blurted out, using the first excuse he could think of to get rid of her.

Something more suitable! The words hit Ann with the force of a blow, dislodging bitter memories of her first husband’s caustic comments about her lack of fashion flair. Her feeling of pleasure at Nick’s willingness to show her the ranch was buried beneath the humiliating flood of memories, and she felt her skin tighten painfully, as if it were bracing for an additional blow.

“Yes, of course,” she muttered, escaping into the house. She closed the door behind her and leaned back against it. She took a deep breath to try to steady her racing heart.

Finally she straightened up and headed toward the stairs. You’re mixing up the past with the present, she told herself. Nick isn’t Bill. Nor is he responsible for anything Bill did. Judge Nick by what Nick does.

All Nick actually said was that you should change into something more suitable. She glanced down at her cream wool jacket. It really wasn’t a very practical outfit for exploring a ranch. It was too easy to soil and too hard to clean.

But even if his request was logical, why make it when someone was coming? Why not introduce her first? Was he ashamed of her? Don’t worry about it, she ordered herself as she pushed open the door to her bedroom. You can’t second-guess everything.

She hurriedly slipped out of her suit, carefully hanging it in the narrow closet. She knew she was right about not allowing her imagination to run riot. What she didn’t know was how to stop the past from coloring the present.

She sighed as she began to scramble into jeans. She could only try. Maybe when she knew Nick better, she’d find it easier to keep him separated in her mind from Bill. Because if she couldn’t…Ann shivered violently. If she couldn’t, then she would have allowed Bill to not only destroy her first marriage but her second.

A spark of anger flickered to life. She refused to give Bill that much power over her. She wasn’t that weak. She drew on the pair of jeans and jammed her feet into her new sneakers. She had more pride than that. She pressed her lips together in determination. She could make of this marriage anything she wanted.

Well, almost anything. She yanked a thick, green cableknit sweater over her head. She did have to take into account what Nick was willing to invest in the marriage. And at the moment what he was investing was a tour of the ranch—an opening she intended to take full advantage of.

Ann emerged from the house and paused in surprise when she realized that the car sitting in front of the house was a sheriff’s car. And the uniformed officer leaning against its hood talking to Nick was unlike any officer she’d ever seen. The woman was a petite, curvaceous blonde who couldn’t have been more than four-ten.

The woman looked up and, catching sight of Ann, gave her a wide smile that appeared genuine even to Ann’s critical eyes.

“Welcome to Wyoming, Ann. I’m Sherrie Bellington, the sheriff’s one and only deputy. I couldn’t believe it when Mabel said that Nick was going to get married again.” Sherrie chuckled, displaying perfect white teeth. “Truth to tell, I didn’t think old Snake’d let him do it.”

Ann shook the hand Sherrie held out. “He wasn’t any too happy about it.”

“So she wanted to come out and meet you,” Nick inserted with a glance at Sherrie that Ann couldn’t quite read.

Sherrie looked blankly at Nick for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course. And now that I’ve met you, I’d better be getting back. Things are kind of hectic with the sheriff laid up with his broken leg. Bye, Ann.”

“Goodbye.” Ann watched as Nick walked Sherrie around to the driver’s side and closed the car door behind her, muttering something through the open window that Ann couldn’t quite catch. Why had Sherrie come out here? Ann wondered, not believing for a minute her story about wanting to meet her. There was more to it than that. But what?

Jealousy made no sense. If Nick had been interested in Sherrie, he would have hardly married Ann. Could Nick be in some kind of trouble with the law? The appalling thought surfaced only to be dismissed. That look Sherrie had given Nick hadn’t been adversarial. It had been…conspiratorial, Ann finally decided. She stifled a sigh. Yet another thing she didn’t understand and didn’t feel free to ask about.

“Where shall we start?” she asked when Sherrie drove away.

Nick looked around, as if trying to decide, then said, “The barns, I guess. Other than the original cabin, there isn’t much else to see. I mostly raise breeding stock, not beef cattle.”

“How old?” Ann asked, her interest caught.

Nick blinked. “What?”

“How old is the original cabin? For that matter, how old is the ranch?”

“They’re both about 150 years, although the ranch hasn’t been worked continuously. The first settlers were starved out. The original cabin is over there.” Nick gestured toward his left as they rounded the first barn, a relatively new, perfectly repaired building. Ann studied it curiously. Clearly Nick had spent what funds he had had on the barns, which made sense. If the ranch was to prosper, the stock’s needs had to be met first.

Ann turned to look, her nose wrinkling in shock as an appalling odor slapped her in the face.

“Snake likes to grow vegetables.” Nick noticed her expression.

“That’s not any rotting veggie I’ve ever smelled. It’s more like…”

“Fertilizer,” Nick supplied. “Aging horse manure, to be specific.”

“There are limits to this back-to-nature kick,” Ann muttered.

That manure pile had been there for as long as he’d owned the ranch, and getting rid of it simply because she objected to the smell would be bound to give Ann the idea that she could induce him to make other changes. He decided to ignore the comment, thinking it was best to go on.

“I want to show you Silas.” Nick moved toward a fenced area behind the barn. Ann followed him.

“Is Silas another hired hand?”

“No.” Nick put his fingers in his mouth and emitted an ear-piercing whistle. “Silas is my prize bull. He’s very temperamental and is not to be upset under any circumstances.”

Ann instinctively stepped back as a huge black animal emerged from the open barn door and trotted toward them. She gulped. As far as she was concerned, it would take a confirmed masochist to bother that thing.

“Don’t feed him,” Nick continued. “And don’t let him out of the fence. Despite what he thinks, he’s not a pet.”

“Turning him into a pet never crossed my mind,” Ann said earnestly. “I can guarantee you that I’ll give him a wide berth. Do you have any animals on the ranch that are more manageable? Like chickens or ducks or pigs?”

“Pigs!” Nick repeated in horror. “This is a ranch. We don’t do pigs.”

“Anyone brave enough to do that thing—” she nodded toward Silas, who was pushing against the fence in his eagerness to reach them “—should be brave enough to do pigs.”

“Pigs are for farmers. I’m a rancher.”

Ann opened her mouth and then closed it in the interest of harmony. It sounded like rank bigotry to her, but pointing out the fact would not be helpful to her goal of getting to know Nick.

“Right, no pigs,” she said. “So what else do you have on a ranch besides oversized cows and manure piles?”

“Horses,” Nick offered, wondering if she were regretting her decision to marry him already.

He walked through an open door into the dim interior of the larger of the two barns with Ann right behind him. She sniffed curiously. The barn smelled of hay and animals and other more elusive scents. But they weren’t unpleasant scents, just different.