The Way To A Rancher's Heart

He reared back, curling his nose and eyeing the bowl warily. “I’m a meat and potatoes man, myself.”

“Really?” she asked, nonplused, and sat down in the chair at his right. “I’d think after working around those smelly old calves all morning that you’d have lost your taste for beef.”

He jerked his head up to glare at her. “I’ll have you know those smelly old calves help pay the bills around here.”

She lifted a shoulder and spooned a generous serving of pasta onto his plate. “If you don’t eat the merchandise, then that just means more profit, right?”

His thick brows drew together over his nose. “What the hell kind of thinking is that?”

She lifted a shoulder as she served her own plate. “Rational. The less you eat, the more beef you have to sell.” She lifted her shoulder again as she set the bowl back on the table. “Makes sense to me.”

He huffed a breath and picked up his fork, shaking his head. “Yeah. I guess to a girl like you, that would make sense.”

Heaving a long-suffering sigh, she turned to look at him. “Are we back to that topic again?”

He scooped up a forkful of pasta and shoveled it into his mouth. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

Stretching across the table for the breadbasket, she tore off a section of the still-warm loaf and dropped it onto his plate before tearing off a piece for herself. “If that’s all you can think to talk about, your conversational skills are lacking. You really should work on that.”

“Nothing wrong with my conversational skills,” he informed her and lifted his fork for another bite. ‘You’re just pissed because I called you a girl.”

She shook her head and sank back in her chair, watching him wolf down the pasta. And he’d said he was a meat and potatoes man, she thought, biting back a smile. “I’m not insulted because you referred to me as a girl. I am a girl. A female. And proud of it. But I am a bit surprised that you’d make an assumption on my level of experience, based on your definition of the term,” she added pointedly, “considering you know absolutely nothing about me.”

He cocked his head to peer at her, then waved his fork in her direction before returning his attention to his meal. “Okay. I’ll bite. Tell me about yourself.”

She reached for her glass of water and took a sip, then propped her elbows on the table, cradling the glass between her hands. “I’m a graduate of the University of Texas where I majored in art and minored in secondary education. I obtained my master’s degree in December.”

He lifted an eyebrow, obviously impressed. “A college graduate, huh? So what’s a woman with that much education doing working as a housekeeper and nanny?”

It was her turn to lift an indifferent shoulder. “I like to eat. When you graduate in December, teaching jobs are a little hard to come by.”

“You plan to teach?”

“Yes, and I hope to do some freelancing on the side.”

“What kind of freelancing?”

“Photography. I plan to supplement my income by selling photos, and possibly accompanying articles, to magazines and journals.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your future all planned out nice and tidy.”

“Yes,” she agreed, but was unable to resist the urge to dig at him a little. “So does that make me mature, more experienced? By your definition, a woman, rather than a girl?”

He snorted and laid down his fork, then reared back in his chair and leveled his gaze on her. “Experience comes with knocks. The hard kind. That’s where I got my degree. The school of hard knocks.”

“And what kind of knocks have you had in your life?”

His gray eyes, once intent upon hers and filled with something akin to humor, took on a hooded look, as if a black cloud had swept across them, hiding his emotions. He rose and carried his glass to the sink to rinse it out and refill it with water, then stood, staring out the window.

“My parents died in a car wreck when I was nineteen,” he said after a moment, his voice roughened by the memories. “I was a freshman at Texas A&M. Had to come home and take over the ranch. My sister, Penny, was thirteen. The courts appointed me her legal guardian.” He stood a moment longer, staring out the window, then angled his head to narrow an eye at her. “My wife died two years ago. Brain aneurysm. Gone like that,” he said, with a snap of his fingers. “Without any warning. Left me with three kids under the age of eleven to raise on my own.”

“You had Penny,” she reminded him, fighting back the swell of sympathy that rose.

Scowling, he turned to face the window again. “Had being the operative word.”

“You still have her,” she insisted. “Just because she chose to pursue her own life doesn’t mean that she’s extracted herself permanently from yours.”

He shot her a glare over his shoulder. “Sure you didn’t get that degree in psychology?”

She shook her head. “No. Art. But I’m a people watcher. It’s a hobby of mine. And do you know what I see when I look at you?”

“What?” he asked drolly.

“A man who feels sorry for himself.”

He slammed the glass down on the counter so hard that water shot above the lip like a geyser. He spun to face her, his face flushed with anger. “I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve taken the cards I’ve been dealt and played them as best I could. Nobody can question that. Least of all you.”

She rose and crossed to him. “Maybe I don’t have the right, but I do think I’m correct in assuming you feel sorry for yourself. And now you’re blaming your sister for leaving you to take care of your children alone.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, his eyes boring into hers as he glowered down at her. “You listen to me little girl,” he grated out through clenched teeth. “I don’t blame Penny for anything, other than taking off without giving me any warning.”

Undaunted by his anger, by the dig of his fingers into her flesh, she met his gaze squarely, maybe a bit stubbornly. “She warned you she was leaving. You told me so yourself just this morning.”

He continued to glower at her, a muscle ticking on his jaw, then he released her, pushing her away from him as he turned back to face the window. “I didn’t believe her. She’d said before she was going to leave, but she never went through with it.”

“And you’re angry with her because this time she did what she said she was going to do.”

He whirled to face her, his gray eyes hard as steel. “The kids need her. They depend upon her. And she walked out on them.”

“They need you,” she argued. “Their father.”

He thrust his face close to hers. “And what makes you an authority on what a kid needs? Huh? What the hell makes you think you know better than I do what my own kids need?”

She drew in a long breath, never once moving her gaze from his. “Because I was a kid once myself. My father died of a heart attack when I was five. My mother never got over the loss. She committed suicide when I was six. I needed my father,” she said, and blinked back the unexpected tears that rose. “And I needed my mother, too. But she wimped out. Left me all alone.” She hitched a breath but refused to let the tears fall. “That’s how I know,” she said, her voice growing as steely as the eyes that met hers. “You want to talk about hard knocks?” She tapped a finger against his chest. “Mister, I’ll compare lumps with you any day of the week.”

Two

Annie experienced a brief stab of remorse for the sharp words she’d exchanged with her employer…but, thankfully, it didn’t last long. She dispensed with it by assuring herself that he’d deserved the tongue-lashing she’d given him.

Calling her a girl, she reflected irritably as she stripped the sheets from the children’s beds. And carrying on as if he were the only person in the world who had suffered any losses. Well, she had suffered her share of losses, too. But she had dealt with her losses, accepting them as natural occurrences in life, situations totally out of her control, and had gone on living, which was more than she could say for Jase Rawley. Instead of dealing with his grief, it appeared he had dug himself a hole and climbed inside where he continued to lick his wounds, shutting out his children and anyone else who tried to get too close.

But his children needed him, she thought, feeling the frustration returning. Couldn’t he see that? She certainly could and she’d only been living in his home for a week. Well, he was going to have to climb out of that hole, she told herself as she stuffed the linens into the washing machine. Even if it meant her throwing a stick of dynamite into the hole he’d dug for himself and blasting him out.

Pleased with the image that thought drew, Annie started the first load of laundry, then went to the master bedroom to remove the sheets from Jase’s bed. Though she’d been in his room several times during the week, she hadn’t entered her employer’s private quarters since his late-night return. She noticed immediately the changes his presence made in the room. The sharp, spicy scent of aftershave lingered in the air, as did the faint odor she’d learned to associate with the corral and the livestock herded in and out of it almost daily.

She stooped to pick up a pair of socks from the floor and held her nose, grimacing, as she deposited them in the hamper in the master bath where she noticed more signs of her employer’s presence. A wet towel lay on the floor, discarded after his morning shower, she was sure. A toothbrush was angled over the edge of the sink and an assortment of coins were scattered over the tile countertop where he’d obviously emptied his pockets before dropping the jeans to the floor. She nudged a fingertip through the pile of loose change, finding a rusty nail and a crumpled receipt amongst the coins, as well as a tattered package of antacids.

Shaking her head at the odd accumulation, she picked up the jeans and dropped them in the clothes hamper before returning to the bedroom. She frowned slightly as she noticed that the bed, though rumpled, was already made. Had he made it up himself? she wondered, then snorted a laugh when she noticed the imprint of his body on the comforter and realized that he hadn’t even bothered to turn down the bed when he’d arrived home, but had opted to sleep on top of the covers instead.