Winning The Rancher's Heart

Chapter One (#ue35c056c-4cff-5d8a-ab32-d5237e52bae2)

“Is this it?” T.J. asked, his left elbow brushing her own as her son wiggled on the old Ford’s front bench seat.

Naomi Jones stared at the sign hanging above the dirt road, clenching her palms against the sweat that formed.

Dark Horse Ranch.

“Yes.” She sighed. “This is it.”

“It doesn’t look like much of a ranch,” said her other child from her shotgun position. Samantha sounded about as enthusiastic as a dental patient about to undergo a root canal, but these days her teenage daughter didn’t sound enthusiastic about anything.

She had a point, though, Naomi admitted, but she knew from experience you couldn’t see much of the place from the road. Just a bunch of valley oaks dotting the acreage and the needle-straight line of a road, one that headed toward some low-lying foothills not too far in the distance. It was dusk and the sun had just started to set behind the hills. The dew point had risen and it released the scent of herbs in the air.

New life, new beginnings, she reminded herself.

Goodness knows she’d made a mess of the old one. Not at first. At first it had been heaven on earth. But then Trevor had died and everything had changed, and not for the better. These days Samantha was either a perfect princess or perfectly horrible. It was clear she needed to rein her in. And T.J. Poor T.J. had been bullied since his first day of elementary school. She hoped like heck the move would help.

Here we go.

Her old truck rattled forward. Someone had hit her pickup in the back and taken off without leaving a note. She didn’t have the money to fix it, so duct tape held parts of the bumper together. She should probably have it fixed before it flew off on the freeway or something, but that was what this move to California was all about, too. A good-paying job. A place to live—for free. And, once she sold her home in Georgia, money in the bank.

“Wow,” T.J. said.

She’d been so deep in thought she hardly noticed their surroundings. She looked up at her son’s gasp of amazement and spotted it. Beyond the oak trees, nestled into a craggy hillside, stood a house. A very big house.

“I know, right?” she said, guiding the old truck toward the redwood-and-glass monstrosity. It should look out of place in the middle of the country and yet the home seemed to have sprouted from the very rocks it sat upon. She’d watched enough shows about architecture on television to know it’d been designed by a naturalist, someone who wanted it to look indigenous to the landscape, and had probably cost a small fortune.

“Is that where we’re going to live?” T.J. asked with a tone of reverence.

She glanced at Samantha to gauge her reaction, but as usual, her thirteen-year-old had her head buried in her phone. Then again, in her present frame of mind, they could probably pull up to Buckingham Palace and Sam would pretend indifference.

“We’re actually living around the left side. In the maid’s quarters.”

Sam snorted. Her daughter hated her new job title: housekeeper. One of many things Sam had given her grief about when she’d learned they were moving.

“Can we go inside?” T.J. asked. He pushed his thick-framed glasses up on his nose.

“Not the big house,” Naomi said, smiling when she spotted the way his red hair stuck up on one side. They’d had the window down at one point. “We need to settle Janus into his new digs.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror. The Belgian Malinois must be lying down because Naomi couldn’t see his head between the bars of the plastic crate.

“He’s going to love it here,” T.J. said, wiggling on his seat.

At least one of them was happy with the move, although they weren’t completely free of Georgia just yet. She still needed to go back and arrange for all their furniture and belongings to be stored and/or sold. And she’d have to move some of it out west, which meant another long drive.

“I thought you said there would be horses,” Sam grumbled as they pulled up in front of their new home.

“They’re here.” Somewhere. According to the owner’s sister, Lauren Danners, they’d built the horse facility out back. Lauren had been the one to hire her because her brother, Jaxton Stone, was always out of town. Hooves for Heroes was a therapy center for soldiers with PTSD, although she’d never seen it. A state-of-the-art facility. New, she’d been told. Very expensive.

She pulled up to housekeeper’s entrance on the left side of the main house. Slipping out of the truck, she tucked her cell phone in her back pocket and took a deep breath of the chamomile-scented air. It had rained recently; that was the reason for the moisture in the air. She could smell the earth and the wild oats that grew between the trees. The moisture had settled on the granite stones that ringed the base of the house, turning them a dark rose color. A door had been placed in the middle of the wall—an ornate maple door with a fan-shaped paned window set into the top of it. Narrow windows sat on either side of that door, a small deck with redwood steps leading to the entrance. She wanted to buy some plants for the railings when she had some extra money.

“It doesn’t look like much,” Sam said.

“Wait until you see the inside.”

Lauren had shown her around the fully furnished apartment when she’d flown out for the interview. Three bedrooms. A kitchen. Even a family room that overlooked a back patio with a pool right outside. Not her own pool, of course, but the owner’s. She’d been told her kids could use it, though, as long as she checked with Mr. Stone first.

“Why don’t you let Janus out?” she asked T.J. “He can check out our new place, too.”

Her son dashed to the back of the truck, dodging suitcases and boxes to get to the beige-colored kennel. Poor dog had been cooped up for at least three hours.

“Use the leash,” she warned. The last thing she needed was her husband’s ex-military dog running off and getting lost. That would be a disaster.

“Can’t we, you know, find a place of our own to live?” Her daughter’s face was a mask of distaste as she stared around her. “I don’t want to share a house with someone I don’t know.”

Naomi resisted the urge to make her own face. “We’re not sharing a house, kiddo. We have one right here.” And it’s free. And furnished. And requires no commute.

Sam flicked her long brown hair over a shoulder. “Yeah. The servants’ quarters.”

Was it illegal to spank kids in California? She doubted anyone would blame her if she did. “Sam, please. Give this a try.”

“Whatever.” She flounced off, heading for the front door.

T.J. came up beside her, Janus by his side, the dog’s dark eyes catching on something near the front of the house, although what she couldn’t tell. He was forever looking for trouble, compliments of his military training.

“Don’t worry, Mom. She’ll get over it.”

The fact that her ten-year-old son tried to console her shouldn’t surprise her. He’d been doing that for the past two years, ever since Trevor had died.

“I hope so, bud,” she murmured.

She’d been told the front door would be open, and it was. The apartment, which took up a whole corner of the owner’s mansion, was just as spacious as she remembered.

“Wow,” T.J. said again.

Definitely bigger than their place in Georgia, not that Sam would admit it. She just slumped down on the couch to their right, eyes glued to her phone.

“I’m going to go meet my new boss.” Naomi tried to inject perky self-confidence into her voice. “Sam, can you and T.J. try to unload some of our stuff?”

Sam didn’t answer, just kept clicking buttons.

“Sam.”

Her daughter eyed her from above the top of her phone. “Fine.”

She winced inwardly. The whole journey out to California, she’d tried to convince her daughter that the move was for the best. They’d be near the kids’ grandparents once they made the move out west, too. They’d be living on a ranch. They could even have their own horses down the road once she sold the house. Sam had always loved horses. But Sam hated to leave her friends. She didn’t like California, although she’d never been there before. She hated that her mom would be a housekeeper. Why couldn’t she do something different? Why couldn’t they stay in Georgia? And on and on it’d gone.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment. At least T.J. was happy. Her son was going from room to room, sounds of “wow” and “cool” being emitted periodically.