Cattleman's Heart

“Maybe not.” She narrowed her eyes, determined to squelch the urge to lose her temper. “But I’m sure there are other things unique to the area and unavailable in the city that I’ll find here.”

He looked unconvinced. “I’m sure there are, but I doubt you’ll like any of them.”

Rebecca forced a small smile. “I have no doubt I’ll find them fascinating. In any event, I won’t be here forever. Two or three months is longer than my usual assignments but the time will pass quickly enough.”

“You don’t usually stay at a company for three months? Why so long this time?”

His question seemed casual, but Rebecca didn’t miss the intensity with which he watched her.

“I don’t know.” She was suddenly aware that everyone at the table had stopped eating, their attention wholly focused on her. She chose her words carefully. “As far as I know, this is the first time Bay Area Investments has made a loan to a rancher. Perhaps the company is being cautious because this is a trial project in a new area.”

“Maybe.” Jackson was unconvinced. Gut instinct told him that she was holding something back. She sipped water, and her gaze met his without evasion over the rim of the glass. He didn’t think she was lying, but doubted she was telling him everything she knew.

Rebecca glanced around the table. “This steak is excellent,” she said politely, changing the subject without worrying about subtlety. “Is it from beef raised here on the ranch?”

Hank hooted. Jackson’s mouth twisted with wry humor.

“I wish I could say yes. The few cattle left on the place when I took over were wild and tough as raw-hide.” He gestured at the steak on her plate. “This came from a neighbor. I traded him a side of beef for some repair work I did on his barn roof.”

“So you don’t raise beef? I thought I read in the report that you raised cattle?”

“I raise purebred bulls for breeding. A bull-breeding operation can be very profitable, if done right, but the start-up costs are prohibitive because of the high price of investing in good stock.”

“Ah. I see.” Rebecca sipped her ice water and thought about his words. “So the initial investment is high, but the return is equally high?”

“It can be. If you’re lucky. And careful.”

“I understand that caution is important to any business, but how is being lucky important for profit in breeding bulls?”

“Because there are a hundred problems that can keep a bull from being able to reproduce—if the owner is unlucky enough to have a sick bull, the profit is zero.”

“I see.” Jackson’s comments brought home to Rebecca the inherent risk of investing in a business based on living animals. Once again, she wondered why her mother had gambled company money on the Rand Ranch.

“And a purebred bull can be downright touchy about procreatin’,” Hank interjected. “No matter what the BSE report says, he might have problems.”

“What’s a BSE report?” Rebecca inquired, curious.

“It stands for Breeding Soundness Examination and it’s an exam by a vet to verify that the animal is healthy,” Jackson explained.

“Oh.” Rebecca wasn’t sure just how much information she wanted him to explain to her about the breeding problems of bulls.

Jackson pushed back his chair and stood, gathering up his plate and utensils.

“When you’re done eating, I’ll show you the computer and the books.”

“I’m finished.” She stood, too, and carried her plate and utensils to the sink.

“It’s Gib and Mick’s night to wash the dishes.” Jackson took them from her. “You helped cook dinner, they’ll clean.”

“All right.” Not about to argue, Rebecca tucked a strand of hair that had escaped from her ponytail holder back behind her ear. “If you’ll show me where the office is, I’ll be glad to get acquainted with the computer and your bookkeeping system.”

“It’s down the hall, first door on the left.”

He stood back, waiting for her to precede him, and Rebecca nodded to the others and left the room.

The office was tucked between the kitchen and the stairway; Jackson pushed the door open and stood back to let Rebecca enter. Twice the size of her bedroom, the office had two tall sashed windows without curtains, white-painted walls, an old-fashioned oak desk and a bulky leather-covered sofa and chair. She took several steps into the room and paused, diverted by the large map that took up much of the wall behind the desk. A rough wood frame edged the glass that covered the yellowed hand-drawn map. The county was divided into ranches, heavy black lines marking the boundaries, while Colson and other towns were inked in with a lighter hand and set apart with a lopsided star.

The door clicked shut and Jackson halted beside her, his gaze following hers to the map.

“I think old Eli’s grandfather drew that,” he commented. “He was a surveyor for the U.S. government before he came west and homesteaded this place.”

“Fascinating,” Rebecca murmured. “He would have been your great-great-grandfather?”

“Something like that.” Jackson shrugged. “Eli was my great-uncle, but I’m not sure exactly how the family tree shakes out.”

“Did you grow up here?” Her gaze found his name printed in neat black ink beneath the faded letters spelling out “Eli Kuhlman.” The expanse of land that surrounded the names appeared enormous.

“Hell, no,” Jackson said shortly. “I never knew about Eli or this ranch until I got a letter from an attorney telling me that he’d died and left it to me.”

“Oh.” She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t known that he had a great-uncle who owned an enormous property. She glanced sideways at him. His attention was focused on the big map, his eyes narrowed, the lines of his face taut and forbidding. Despite her curiosity, caution kept her from questioning him further.

His gaze left the map and met hers for a brief second before he looked away.

“The computer is new,” he said abruptly, gesturing toward the desk where several unopened boxes were stacked on the floor, the top one even with the desktop. “I haven’t unpacked it yet.”

He walked to the desk and Rebecca followed, noting that the brand name stamped on the boxes was a computer she particularly favored. Jackson pulled out the old-fashioned desk chair, the oiled casters rolling quietly over the scarred wooden floor.

“Have a seat.”

It was more an order than a polite invitation but Rebecca didn’t comment. Instead, she seated herself in the worn, brown leather chair while Jackson snagged a straight-backed oaken chair and dragged it nearer the desk. His scent surrounded her, an indefinable mix of soap and male. Awareness shivered up her spine, lifting the fine hairs at her nape.

“These are the ledgers for the last thirty years.” Jackson reached across the desk and picked up a stack of books, setting them squarely on the bare oak desktop in front of Rebecca. The hardcover green ledgers, worn from use and faded with age, had entries in a spidery, often illegible hand.

For the next hour, Jackson explained the handwritten bookkeeping system that the previous owner, Eli Kuhlman, had used. Reading the notes soon had Rebecca’s eyes aching from strain.

The greatest strain, however, came from being in such close proximity to Jackson. He straddled the chair, his forearms crossed along the square wooden back. On one occasion, he stood and leaned over her at the desk, pointing out and explaining an item in a ledger, his arm twice brushing against hers. Waiting for him to touch her again had her nerves strung taut until she wanted to scream with tension.

By the time Jackson left to make a last check of the barns and she climbed the stairs to bed, her nerves were jangling.

Chapter Two

J ackson stacked his hands beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling. Outside the bedroom window, one of the maples’ far-reaching branches scratched gently against the glass pane. The three-quarter moon threw leaf-shaped shadows across the white ceiling, the dark shapes shifting and changing with the faint breeze.

He still didn’t know what he was going to do about Rebecca Wallingford.

She represented a complication that he didn’t have time to deal with. He was up to his neck in work, putting in fourteen-hour days to finish upgrading the ranch’s buildings and fences. He hadn’t been too wild about the idea of having a representative of the investment company underfoot, but the unexpected offer of financing from the San Francisco firm had arrived after he’d been turned down by every bank within a five-hundred-mile radius of Colson. Eli Kuhlman had left him land worth millions but no cash assets, and the fences, buildings and machinery were all desperately in need of repair. He’d reached the point where he would have done anything short of a criminal act to get the money to develop the ranch. When he was told that the accountant would be a fifty-three-year-old man named Walter Andersen, he’d resigned himself to squeezing one more boarder into the house for a few months. He’d hoped that Walter could at least play a decent game of poker.

Then Rebecca arrived. One look at her green eyes and curvy body had his temperature rising.