The Rancher's Unexpected Family

He shook his head slowly, almost sadly. “Kathryn, Kathryn, I’m a businessman. I can’t just take your word on things.” Even though he did that every day. But she couldn’t know that. And anyway, he didn’t really know her. There was a good chance she might bolt and he would be left with a mess on his hands.

“And this project will take time away from my ranching duties. I might have to set a few things aside. Like …”

He paused.

“Like …” she prompted.

“Well, like Blue here. He’s used to me having time to put him through his paces. What if I don’t have time for that stuff?”

She raised one pretty brow. “You’re telling me that the only thing holding you back is that you’re worried you won’t have time to exercise Blue?”

The dog moaned when she said his name as if he’d been waiting for her to do that all his life.

Holt gave him the evil eye. Which Blue ignored.

“A man’s dog is his best friend.”

“You have friends, then?” she asked, still in full tigress mode.

Holt looked taken aback. “That seems like a snotty thing to say to a man when you’ve asked him to do you a favor.”

She blushed that pretty pink that started somewhere beneath her clothing, and Holt swallowed hard. “You’re right. Of course,” she agreed. “What if—if you get bog down and can’t take care of Blue, I could, er, put him through his paces?”

“And you think it’s my duty to the town to take care of getting this clinic?”

“Just to help. I’ll be doing a lot of it, too.”

“Ah.”

“Are you trying to intimidate me?”

He shrugged. “Is it working?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I was really just testing you to see how dedicated you are. So you’ll do a lot of the work, you’ll walk my dog and you’ll—what?”

Kathryn raised herself up to her full height. Despite being shorter than him and very pregnant, she somehow managed to look down her nose at him. “I’ll make sure that your town has a first-rate clinic, Mr. Calhoun.”

He nodded, then turned to the dog. “What do you think, Blue?”

The dog turned sad eyes on Kathryn and nudged closer, obviously hoping for more of that rubbing. Then to Holt’s surprise, Blue gave a little woof. That wasn’t like him. He was well trained, and he didn’t bark unless there was a reason to bark.

Kathryn crossed her arms. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that Blue doesn’t think the clinic is a good idea.”

Holt wanted to smile, but he managed to refrain. Kathryn Ellis was pretty cute when she was miffed. Why had he never noticed that before?

“Not at all. Blue thinks I should sleep on what you’ve said and then I’ll give you my reply tomorrow.” If they were going to work together, he was going to call the shots. He wasn’t going to risk a repeat of Lilith.

“I see.”

She didn’t, of course, but he had to give her credit for being a good sport about the whole thing.

“This isn’t a joke,” she said quietly.

She was right. “No, ma’am, it isn’t. I’ll be in touch. Real soon. That’s a promise.” And for some reason he couldn’t fathom, he held out his hand. It was, possibly, the dumbest thing he’d done in a long time.

Kathryn placed her hand in his and he closed his big palm around her much smaller one. As her skin slid against his, he was more aware of her as a woman than he’d been when he was undressing other women.

Quickly, she pulled away. Good idea.

Not like this business of him and Kathryn working together, he thought after she’d gone. That had bad idea written all over it. Unfortunately, he was already in. Now all he had to do was tell her. For real this time. Maybe he’d be lucky and she would decide he was a crazy man and find someone else to ask her favors for her.

But he knew that that was a long shot. Kathryn was determined to get her clinic, even if she had to put up with a man like him to get it.

Still, he bet it would be a long time before she would let him shake her hand again. That was a shame. And a blessing. At least one of them was thinking straight. It sure wasn’t him. Or Blue.

A short time later his phone rang. It was his sister Jess. His other sister Meg and his brother, Nate, would probably have been in on the call, too, but Meg was living in California now and Nate was still overseas with the army.

“I heard that Kathryn Ellis went out to the ranch today,” Jess said. “What did she want?”

He hesitated. “Mostly I think she just wanted to pet my dog.”

“I doubt that,” Jess said, laughing. “Secretive as ever, Holt? Are you going to help her with that clinic?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Did she give you her reasons for wanting to build it?”

Oh, no, he wasn’t going there. Jess didn’t know exactly how much their father had suffered or about the nightmares that kept him awake at night about their father’s last days. She certainly didn’t know the horrors that his friend Hank had faced and she knew nothing at all of what had gone on between himself and Lilith. “We discussed a few things,” he said.

Jess sighed loudly. “You are the most frustrating man. Some day someone is going to get you to open up and talk.”

“I talk.” They saw each other frequently. But he also kept things to himself, kept things from the rest of the family, as he always had. That was his duty and right as the eldest. He knew that, just as he knew that Kathryn Ellis was not a part of his destiny.

That didn’t mean he could keep her waiting forever. By tomorrow she would be pacing the floor and she wouldn’t care two hoots about why he was going to help her. She’d just be glad that he was finally saying yes. He hoped.

CHAPTER THREE

THE next day after work Kathryn returned to her house with the almost-peeled-away white paint and the tilting porch where some of the boards were rotted through. Her parents hadn’t been able to find a buyer for the house when they divorced so it had sat here neglected and forgotten. She supposed she should be grateful that neither of them was interested enough to object to her staying here. Otherwise, she’d be out on the streets.

She freelanced at the local newspaper and did odd jobs around the clinic a few afternoons a week, but this afternoon she had nothing. The inactivity unnerved her. Not having a full-time job or any solid plan for the future scared her to death, so after lunch she tried to dredge up a positive outlook, donning her I’m-planning-for-the-future attitude. She sent off a few résumés the way she did every day even though she hadn’t gotten any nibbles.

Still, she was determined to move forward. So after lunch, she moved out onto the rickety porch swing with a pen and paper and began work on her doctor/clinic list. She tried not to think about the fact that Holt had promised her an answer today and that the answer might be no. She also tried not to remember how it had felt when he’d held her hand. Sensation had ping-ponged through body. And it had been much hotter than anything she’d felt in high school.

“The man is impossible,” she muttered. He could have given her his answer yesterday. That made her think that the answer was going to be no and he was just trying to come up with a way to let her down easy. This was almost like a repeat of high school, with her wanting something from him she couldn’t have. The only difference was that this time she didn’t daydream about him bending her back over the hood of his car and kissing her with wild abandon.

I don’t, she insisted as a hot sizzle went through her. “Because that would be completely inappropriate for an about-to-burst pregnant woman.” Not to mention stupid and totally disastrous for someone like herself. She’d learned a lot of lessons during these past few years of being married to a man who was controlling, judgmental and inclined to bursts of cruelty, but the most important went something like this. Don’t get too close to imposing, hard-to-deal-with men like Holt. James was a larger-than-life, brooding type just like Holt. People admired him and told her that still waters ran deep, but what she’d found was that behind that tough, quiet facade was a man with no soul and a lot of pent-up anger. Faced with that kind of man again, she knew to run. A woman who had been naive enough to fall for a man who hurt her would have to be ten kinds of stupid and something not very admirable if she did it again. But she wouldn’t let that happen.