The Rancher's Baby

“Well, thank God for the housekeeper,” he said, his tone dry. “Living all the way out here by yourself, if you didn’t have someone taking care of you you’d be liable to die beneath a pile of your own clothes.”

She huffed. “You don’t know me, Knox.”

“Oh, honey,” he said, “I do.”

A long, slow moment stretched between them and her olive skin was suddenly suffused with color. It probably wasn’t nice of him to tease her about her propensity toward messiness. “Well,” she said, her tone stiff. “I do have a guest room. And I suppose it would be unkind of me to send you packing back to Wyoming on your first night here in Royal.”

“Downright mean,” he said, schooling his expression into one of pure innocence. As much as he could manage.

It occurred to him then that the two of them hadn’t really spent much time together in the past couple of years. And they hadn’t spent time alone together in the past decade. He had been married to another woman, and even though his friendship with Selena had been platonic, and Cassandra had never expressed any jealousy toward her, it would have been stretching things a bit for him to spend the night at her place with no one else around.

“Well,” she said, tossing her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “I am a little mean.”

“Are you?”

She smiled broadly, the expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “It has been said.”

“By who?” he asked, feeling instantly protective of her. She had always brought that out in him. Even though now it felt like a joke, that he could feel protective of anyone. He hadn’t managed to protect the most important people in his life.

“I wasn’t thinking of a particular incident,” she responded, wandering toward the kitchen, kicking her shoes off as she went, leaving them right where she stepped out of them, like fuchsia afterthoughts.

“Did Will say you were mean?”

She turned to face him, cocking one dark brow. “Will didn’t have strong feelings for me one way or the other, Knox. Certainly not in the time since the divorce.” She began to bustle around the kitchen, and he leaned against the island, placing his hand on the high-gloss marble countertop, watching as she worked with efficiency, getting mugs and heating water. She was making tea, and she wasn’t even asking him if he wanted any. She would simply present him with some. And he wouldn’t drink it, because he didn’t like tea.

A pretty familiar routine for the two of them.

“He put you pretty firmly off of marriage,” Knox pointed out, “so I would say he’s also not completely blameless.”

“You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Or the undead, in Will’s case.”

He drummed his fingers on the counter. “You know, that does present an interesting question.”

“What question is that?”

“Who died?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There were ashes in that urn. Obviously they weren’t Will’s. But if he’s not dead, then who is?”

Selena frowned. “Maybe no one’s dead. Maybe it’s ashes from a campfire.”

“Why would someone go to all that trouble? Why would somebody go to that much trouble to fake Will’s death? Or to fake anyone’s death? Again, I think this has something to do with those letters. With all of the women in his life being made beneficiaries of his estate. And this is why I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

“Because you’re a high-handed, difficult, surly, obnoxious...”

“Are you finished?”

“Just a second,” she said, taking her kettle off the stove and pouring hot water into two of the mugs on the counter. “Irritating, overbearing...”

“Wealthy, handsome, incredibly generous.”

“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “But I prefer beautiful to handsome. I mean, I assume you were offering up descriptions of me.”

She shoved a mug in his direction, smiling brilliantly. He did not tell her he didn’t want any. He did not remind her that he had told her at least fifteen times over the years that he did not drink tea. Instead, he curled his fingers around the mug and pulled it close, knowing she wouldn’t realize he wasn’t having any.

It was just one of her charming quirks. The fact that she could be totally oblivious to what was happening around her. Cast-off shoes in the middle of her floor were symptoms of it. It wasn’t that Selena was an airhead; she was incredibly insightful, actually. It was just that her head seemed to continually be full of thoughts about what was next. Sometimes, all that thinking made it hard to keep her rooted in the present.

She rested her elbows on the counter, then placed her chin in her palms, looking suddenly much younger than she had only a moment ago. Reminding him of the girl he had known in college.

And along with that memory came an old urge. To reach out, to brush her hair out of her face, to trace the line of her lower lip with the edge of his thumb. To take a chance with all of her spiky indignation and press his mouth against hers.

Instead, he lifted his mug to his lips and took a long drink, the hot water and bitterly acidic tea burning his throat as he swallowed.

He really, really didn’t like tea.

“You know,” she said, tapping the side of her mug, straightening. “I do have a few projects you could work on around here. If you’re going to stay with me.”

“You’re putting me to work?”

“Yes. If you’re going to stay with me, you need to earn your keep.”

“I’m earning my keep by guarding you.”

“From a threat you don’t even know exists.”

“I know a few things,” he said, holding up his hand and counting off each thing with his fingers. “I know someone is dead. I know you are mysteriously named as a beneficiary of a lot of money, as are a bunch of other women.”

“And one assumes that we are no longer going to inherit any money since Will isn’t dead.”

“But someone wanted us all to think that he was. Hell, maybe somebody wanted him to be dead.”

“Are you a private detective now? The high-end health-food grocery-chain business not working out for you?”

“It’s working out for me very well, actually. Which you know. And don’t change the subject.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

He was genuinely concerned about her well-being; he wasn’t making that up. But there was something else, too. Something holding him here. Or maybe it was just something keeping him from going back to Wyoming. He had avoided Royal, and Texas altogether, since his divorce. Had avoided going anywhere that reminded him of his former life. He’d owned the ranch in Jackson Hole for over a decade, but he, Cassandra and Eleanor hadn’t spent as much time there as they had here.

Still, for some reason, now that he was back, the idea of returning to that gigantic ranch house in Wyoming to rattle around all by himself didn’t seem appealing.

There was a reason he had gotten married. A reason he and Cassandra had started a family. It was what he had wanted. An answer to his lifetime of loneliness. To the deficit he had grown up with. He had wanted everything. A wife, children, money. All of those things that would keep him from feeling like he had back then.

But he had learned the hard way that children could be taken from you. That marriages crumbled. And that money didn’t mean a damn thing in the end.

If he’d had a choice, if the universe would have asked him, he would have given up the money first.