Bachelor Cowboy

“No, thanks.” He bent to pick up his tools.

Shannon gaped at him. “Excuse me?”

“I said no, thanks. I can handle it on my own.” He nodded toward the door. “Close that behind you when you leave, would you?” He turned to the tack room attached to the building.

It took her a few seconds to realize she’d been dismissed. She stared after him in stunned amazement, then she hurried behind him.

“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Farraday,” she insisted as she watched him put away tools and pick up a pair of gloves. “I’m here to help you. We would like you to participate in a project we’re doing.”

He didn’t even bother to turn around. “No, thanks. I don’t have the time. I told that to the guy who called last week.”

“The guy who . . .” Wiley, she thought, rocking to a stop. Irritation made her clench her fists at her sides. The same Wiley who had told her no one had contacted Luke. Well, it wasn’t the first lie Wiley had told her.

Luke turned, and his gaze raked over her again. “Did they think that sending a beauty queen out would get me to change my mind?”

She stiffened. Sexism in the raw, she thought, infuriated. “I am a scientist, Mr. Farraday. I’ve worked in this field for three years now. I was born and raised in this county. Just on the other side of that mountain, in fact,” she said, nodding toward Randall Peak. “I know what I’m doing. My looks have absolutely nothing to do with my abilities as a professional.”

He gave her a skeptical glance. “You’ve never used them to get what you want? Never batted those eyelashes of yours over those deep blue eyes?” His voice dropped to a gritty, intimate level that, to her horror, sent shivers up her spine. “Never used those full, sweet lips to whisper promises into eager ears? Promises you never intended to keep?”

“Certainly not!”

He snorted. “Right.”

Appalled, Shannon stared at him. He was the most insulting, insufferable man she had ever met. She fought the urge to tell him so. Instead, she used her most clipped, professional voice as she said, “I’m sorry you can’t get past my looks and accept me as a person who is here to help you. I would like to be able to take credit for my looks, but I can’t. It’s nothing I achieved on my own. I happen to come from a couple of good-looking parents,” she informed him in a tight voice. Never mind that she didn’t look very much like either one of them. They were both blondes.

Her father had said her long black hair, almond-shaped midnight blue eyes and high cheekbones were a throwback to her French great-grandmother. Her full lips had come straight from her mother.

“Whatever,” he said, as if the subject bored him. “I’m not interested in participating in any study, or project, or anything else. I want to be left alone. I have a blocked stream I need to see to, so why don’t you leave?”

He couldn’t have made it any more clear, but Shannon wasn’t going to give up. She had dealt with pigheaded men before, though not ones who had insulted and infuriated her on their first meeting.

She ignored his invitation to depart. Instead, she plastered a cool smile on her face and said, “Water problems happen to be my area of expertise, among others. Why don’t I come along and help you solve it.”

“Because I don’t want you, Miss, uh, Kipper.”

“It’s Kelleher,” she corrected, speaking through her teeth. “Shannon Kelleher. Range conservation specialist.” She withdrew her card from the little pocket attached to the front of her clipboard and handed it to him.

“Kelleher,” he said quietly, as if he recognized her name. Reluctantly, he took the card she offered, his rough, callused fingers brushing hers as he did so. Shannon felt the warmth and texture of him, and for some reason, her eyes flew to his.

His gaze met hers with a steady assessment that she was startled to see was a little less disinterested than it had been a few minutes ago. For an instant, she thought he was seeing her as a person rather than a pretty face or an annoyance, but his eyelids flickered down, hiding his thoughts.

She couldn’t have explained the intense disappointment she felt.

Luke tucked the card into his pocket. “Fine. If I ever need a range management specialist, Miss Kelleher, I’ll be sure to call you,” he said in a when-hell-freezes-over tone of voice.

“How do you know you don’t need one now?” He started from the barn and she stalked after him.

“I’ve been ranching since before you were born. I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.”

Shannon seriously doubted the first part of that statement. In spite of his weathered skin and the lines that rayed out from the corners of his eyes, he didn’t appear to be much more than five years past her own twenty-seven. In the strong sunlight of the barnyard, she could see that his hair was a deep, rich brown, almost as dark as hers. It was thick, in need of a trim but untouched by gray. He ran his hand through it and settled his hat on his head.

“I’m not here to tell you how to ranch, but am I right in assuming you’re new to southern Colorado?”

He looked at her for a second as if weighing her question for hidden traps, then he nodded. “That’s right. I’m from Arizona. Near Tucson.”

She opened her hands wide. “There you go, then. We have different terrain, different climate, different plants, different water problems. I can help you learn about all of those things.”

He shook his head. “You’re as persistent as fleas on a dog’s belly, aren’t you?”

Shannon tucked her chin in and lifted her eyes to him ruefully. “Well, I’ve never heard it put quite that way, but I guess so.”

As they had been walking across the barnyard, he had been slapping his gloves across his palm. Now he tucked them into his waistband as he reached to untie a big roan gelding tethered to the corral fence. “Since it doesn’t look like I’m going to get rid of you, you can tag along.” He swung into the saddle. “But you’ll have to catch and saddle your own mount.” He gathered the reins and headed the gelding out of the yard.

“Aren’t you going to wait . . . ” she asked, then realized she was talking to the air. He spurred his horse with his heels and galloped away.

She slapped her clipboard against her thigh. “Of all the . . . ” He thought she wouldn’t catch and saddle her own mount, she thought furiously. He thought she couldn’t.

The light of challenge sparked in Shannon’s eyes. Little did he know. She watched to see which direction he had taken, then she whirled and raced to the tack room. She was dressed for riding in the clothes she usually wore to work, jeans, soft and snug from many wearings and washings, a long-sleeved shirt of pale yellow cotton, her sturdy boots and a woman’s cowboy hat. Nothing was going to stop her from following him.

In the tack room, she picked out a saddle blanket and a saddle and bridle, hoisted them onto her shoulder and started for the corral.

The swiftness of her movements made her head spin, and she had to stop for a second and catch her breath when dizziness swirled through her. Cursing the lingering infection that was still slowing her down, she picked out a nondescript brown mare with a wide chest and powerful legs. Bridle in hand, she eased into the corral and moved slowly and steadily forward. She spoke in the soft, quietly crooning tone her father had taught her and cornered the animal quickly.

She slipped the bit into the mare’s mouth, complimenting her on what a well-mannered young lady she was. “Unlike your owner,” Shannon muttered to the horse. “What is that man’s problem, anyway?”

The horse tossed her head as if to say she didn’t know, either, and Shannon laughed. Within a few minutes, she was mounted and heading across the fields after her reluctant host. She concentrated on the ride and quickly caught onto the mare’s smooth gait. Shannon was pleased with her choice. The horse’s easy stride didn’t jostle her head, which would have increased her dizziness. Leaning over the mare’s head, she urged her into a run.

It wasn’t long before she found Luke at the stream where it crossed over from his neighbor’s spread. It was a pretty spot, with a small line cabin nearby. Luke stood with his mount’s reins in his hand as he gazed across the fence.

He didn’t even turn when Shannon approached. She dismounted and led the mare to stand beside him. It wasn’t necessary to ask what the problem was, she could see it for herself.

They’d had a heavy rain the week before, along with lightning. A bolt must have hit a cottonwood tree that stood on the bank of the creek. It had been blasted in half. Branches had fallen into the creek, blocking the narrow channel. Water spread over the land, much of it evaporating in the heat before it could trickle into the path that fed water into Luke’s pond.

“That’s easy to fix,” Shannon said.

Luke glanced at her. “I have to wonder why it hasn’t been fixed before. Do you think my neighbor was hoping to keep all the water for himself?”

Yet again, Shannon stared at him. It was gradually dawning on her that this man’s rudeness to her wasn’t personal. He didn’t seem to like anybody.

“Your neighbor is Violet Beardsley. She’s a nice lady, a good neighbor. If she’d known about this blockage, she would have cleared it.” Shannon placed her foot on the bottom strand of barbed wire and grabbed the second strand, stretching a gap in the fence. “We can go through and clear it now. She won’t mind at all.”

Luke lifted a skeptical brow at her. “I have your word on that?”

“Certainly!”

He reached to hold the barbed wire. “Ladies first, then.”

His direct, challenging gaze made her wonder if he thought she was afraid to get dirty. Shannon took off her hat and tossed it lightly over the fence, where it landed rakishly on a sagebrush.