Cowboys And Cradles

“I think Lucky can take care of himself,” she said dryly, tapping a finger tipped with red on the steering wheel. “Now, I suggest you get back to work. That is, if you work for this ranch and aren’t just trespassing.”

“I work for it, all right,” he muttered. He didn’t seem any happier about that fact than her earlier claim of ownership.

Great. Just what she needed: another disgruntled employee. The ranch cook she’d met yesterday afternoon upon her arrival could give lessons in how to be a grouch. Yes, she’d shown up unexpectedly, but she hadn’t meant to. Signals had gotten crossed somehow, and her lawyer in Dallas hadn’t contacted the broker in Tucson who had handled the sale. Letting the people here know she was coming would have been the courteous thing to do. Still, whether they liked it or not, she was the boss, and she had to make it crystal clear that she wouldn’t take any guff from anyone.

Especially when they discovered her plans for the Creedence Creek Ranch.

Eve shifted into reverse. “Well, I’ll leave you to do…whatever you were doing.” With that, she shot back a few feet, then made a swift U-turn and headed back the way she’d come. She thought about looking in the rearview mirror to see if he watched her departure. Or maybe to get another look at him, Eve, something inside her said. She didn’t look, didn’t so much as glance. Bad-tempered cowboys were not on her agenda—no matter how good a sight they made.

The man she’d left in a rush stared after her, squinting into the brilliant sunshine seldom absent for long periods in southern Arizona. A trailing cloud of dust faithfully followed the Jeep until it and the dust disappeared, leaving a view of flat desert and rolling hills, with the jagged-peaked Santa Catalina Mountains looming in the distance. Some would call it a picture-postcard setting. He called it home.

She’d taken him for one of the ranch hands. Which was hardly amazing, he told himself. After all, he’d put on his oldest pair of jeans and an equally beat-up denim shirt when he’d given in to the urge yesterday morning to do something he hadn’t done in years. Checking fences, as tiresome as it could be, meant miles of open spaces and some solitary time to decide what he’d do next.

Stay or go?

Even after a wakeful night stretched out on a narrow bedroll under a wide sky crowded with stars, he hadn’t come up with a firm answer. Reason told him to get on with his life and leave behind what fate, or maybe sheer bad luck, had placed out of his reach. Yet a stubborn streak in him that had nothing to do with reason said stay, anyway.

The outcome of that inner war remained in doubt. But one thing was dead certain: the ranch’s new owner was in for a surprise. Those smoke-gray eyes, as big as they’d seemed, could well get bigger. Those elegantly arched eyebrows, dark in contrast to burnished-gold hair worn in a mannish cut shorter than his own, just might take a hike up a silky smooth forehead. Those full lips, shaded a soft red, might even drop open.

He could only hope. Leaning forward, he gave the stallion a brief pat on the neck. “We’ll at least stick around long enough to enjoy the moment, friend.”

Snorting, Lucky nodded his agreement.

HANK SWENSON didn’t look like one of the most successful real estate brokers in the Southwest, Eve decided, viewing him across a large knotty-pine desk that took up a major portion of the ranch’s modest-size office. A small man, he was inches shorter and probably pounds lighter than she was. Yet beneath that deceptively slight frame, she knew, lurked a huge dose of business savvy.

“Sorry about the mix-up, Hank.” They had already progressed to first names. “You should have been told I was coming.”

He nodded a balding head rimmed with gray and settled back in a scuffed leather chair. Like most of the office furnishings, it had seen better days. Only a personal computer and other business machines set up against one wall could be considered even close to new.

“No problem,” Hank replied mildly, “although I have to admit I was a little surprised when you didn’t come to look things over before the final papers were signed.”

Eve’s lips quirked in a faint smile. “I didn’t need to. Several years ago I visited this area and saw the ranch from the main road. By the time I learned it was for sale, I was already certain I wanted to buy the place.”

She could still recall her first sight of the house, its large adobe exterior stark white against a backdrop of desert green and sandy beige, its wide terra-cotta tile roof warmed to a glaze of orange by the sun, high overheard. Far from being new and firmly linked with the present, it was old and rooted to the past…and somehow that made it perfect in her eyes.

But the desire to own the ranch was only one of the results of that brief visit. In many ways it had been a life-altering experience.

“You could have made a better deal by bargaining with Amos Cutter’s heirs,” Hank commented.

Her smile widened. “If that’s a diplomatic way of telling me I paid too much, I’m well aware of what the property is actually worth.”

The figure she named sparked a gleam of respect in Hank’s shrewd gaze. “Which is almost exactly what Ryder Quinn offered.”

Eve leaned forward, propped her elbows on the desk. “But he didn’t get it. I did.”

“True, but can you run it without him?”

“No,” she admitted bluntly. “Or at least not without someone like him. Do you think he’ll leave?”

Hank’s expression turned thoughtful. “Maybe. I’ve known him on a casual basis for a long time, ever since Amos hired him on as a lanky ranch hand. He filled out over the years, took on the job of foreman when it opened up, then went to college nights and became a surprisingly shrewd business manager when Amos’s health started to fail. During all that time, he never made any secret of the fact that he’d be interested in buying if Amos ever chose to sell. More than interested, it always seemed to me. I believe Quinn wanted this property very badly. Why, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Hmm.” Eve absorbed that information. “And Amos Cutter never chose to sell?”

“I think he was seriously considering it toward the end, before that last stroke took him suddenly. Under the terms of a will he’d made out as a young man, his only living relatives—two daughters back East—got everything. Amos hadn’t seen them since his wife left him and took the kids with her nearly forty years ago. They had no interest in the ranch and didn’t waste any time contacting me to put it up for sale.”

“And how did Ryder Quinn feel about it being sold to someone else?”

Hank shrugged a bony shoulder. “He didn’t have much to say. Still, he must have been disappointed. Of course, my friend Amos wouldn’t have said much, either, if he’d been able to see you walk through the front door yesterday.” Hazel eyes took on another gleam, this time of amusement. “He would have been too busy swallowing his tough-as-jerky tongue.”

It was Eve’s turn to be amused. “I didn’t know I was such a dreadful sight.”

Thin lips curved in a wry smile. “On the contrary. You’re a mighty fine sight, Eve.” He paused. “But you are a woman.”

She lifted a brow. “So?”

“The last female to cross that threshold was Amos’s disgruntled wife, and she was on her way out.”

After a startled moment Eve said, “Now it’s clear to me why Pete Rawlins’s mouth worked like a guppy’s when I dropped my luggage on the doorstep and introduced myself. Apparently Amos Cutter had no fondness for women, and I wouldn’t be at all amazed if the ranch cook feels exactly the same way.”

Nodding, Hank straightened a bola tie looped under the collar of a checked shirt worn with a suede vest and corduroy slacks. “Pete’s got about as much regard for the opposite sex as Amos had.” A sudden twinkle in his eyes belied the fact that he was probably close to seventy. “Now, myself, I enjoy every glimpse I can get of a good-looking woman.”

Eve cocked her head. She liked this man. He was certainly the only one who’d made her feel welcome since her arrival. “Are you by any chance flirting with me, Hank?”

His smile was wily as a fox. “I’m trying, ma’am.”

“Sorry to interrupt this party,” a low voice said.

The swivel chair creaked softly as Eve made a half turn to see a tall figure standing in the doorway. Her eyes widened as recognition hit. It was him—the ticked-off male she’d confronted hours earlier. As she’d concluded, his features were attractive minus a layer of dust. But he wasn’t, as she’d assumed, a ranch hand. No ranch hand could afford this man’s wardrobe.

Eve knew fabrics. Quality told. So did expert tailoring. While the Western cut of the charcoal-brown suit that she quickly ran her gaze over might be more casual than a Manhattan banker’s three-piece pinstripe, it was every bit as impressive. The clothes didn’t make the man, though. Not this one. He made the outfit.

No, he wasn’t a ranch hand. But he was a cowboy. And he didn’t need a horse under him to prove it. From polished brown boots emphasizing a solid stance, to glossy dark hair worn just long enough in the back to brush the collar of his ivory shirt, he had a distinct air about him. Rugged. That was the word, she decided. It had taken rugged men—and women—to tame the West and make it theirs.

Oh, yes. He was a cowboy.

Suddenly aware that her lips had parted of their own accord, Eve snapped them shut and looked straight into his green eyes, firmly refusing to let her gaze falter. Something told her that was the best way to deal with this man. Head-on. And she’d have to deal with him. He was Ryder Quinn. All at once she was as sure of his identity as she was of her own.

Hank’s brief introduction confirmed it. “Eve, I’d like you to meet Ryder Quinn. Quinn, this is Eve Terry, the new owner.”

Deciding not to mention that they’d already run into each other, almost literally, she rose to her full height and issued a polite greeting. “I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Quinn.”

RYDER TOOK A DEEP BREATH, filling his lungs full, and tried not to look as though he’d just been punched in the gut, which was exactly how he felt. Stubborn horses had thrown him, wild-eyed steers had done their best to trample him into the dirt, a surly bull had even gored him on one memorable occasion. Never in all of his thirty-three years, though, had a woman threatened to bowl him over. Until now.

Earlier, he hadn’t been able to see much more than her face. Now he had a top-to-toes view. And it was quite a sight. Every bit as shapely as he’d always preferred a woman to be, with plenty of soft flesh to cover strong bones, Eve Terry was a curvy goddess decked out like a cowgirl. An urban cowgirl.

Not for a minute did he believe the fitted jeans hugging well-rounded hips or the stylishly embroidered denim shirt outlining full breasts had so much as brushed against a dusty corral fence. And if those cream-colored boots with the elaborate carving had ever come within sniffing distance of a mound of cow dung, he’d eat the fancy leather belt circling a nipped-in waist—glittering silver buckle and all.

Yet, beneath the sophisticated exterior, there was something earthy about the woman that stirred his blood. Quite simply, she made his mouth water.