The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter

Janet grinned. “This is a cattle ranch. I think you can pretty much count on horses and cows.”

“Mo-om!” she wailed. Her gaze narrowed. “I’ll run away. I’ll steal a car and drive all the way home to New York.”

“And then what?” Janet inquired mildly. Jenny knew as well as she did that there was no room for her in her father’s life. Even though at the moment his selfishness suited her purposes, she hated Barry Randall for making his disinterest so abundantly clear to his daughter.

Jenny turned a tearful gaze on her that almost broke Janet’s heart.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” she asked.

“Afraid not, love. Besides, I think you’ll enjoy this once you’ve gotten used to it. Think of all the stories you’ll have to write to your friends back in New York. How many of them have ever seen a genuine cowboy, much less worked on a ranch?”

“How many of them even wanted to?” Jenny shot back.

“You remember what I always told my clients when they landed in jail?” Janet asked.

Jenny shot her a tolerant look and sighed heavily. “I remember. It’s up to me whether I make my time here hard or easy.”

“Exactly.”

A sudden gleam lit her eyes. “I suppose it’s also up to me whether it’s hard or easy for Mr. Adams, too, huh?”

Janet didn’t much like the sound of that. “Jenny,” she warned. “If you don’t behave, you’ll be in debt to this man until you’re old enough for college.”

“I’ll be good, Mom. Cross my heart.”

Janet nodded, accepting the promise, but the glint in her daughter’s eyes when she made that solemn vow was worrisome. The words had come a little too quickly, a little too easily. Worse, she recognized that glint all too well. It made her wonder if Harlan Adams just might have bitten off more than he could handle.

One look at him a few minutes later and her doubts vanished. This was a man competent to deal with anything at all. When he rounded the corner of the house in his snug, worn jeans, his blue chambray shirt, his dusty boots and that Stetson hat, he almost stole her breath away.

If she was ever of a mind to let another man into her life, she wanted one who exuded exactly this combination of strength, sex appeal and humor. His eyes were practically dancing with laughter as he approached. And the appreciative head-to-toe look he gave her could have melted steel. Her knees didn’t stand a chance. They turned weak as a new colt’s.

“Too early for you?” he inquired, his gaze drifting over her once more in the kind of lazy inspection that left goose bumps in its wake.

“No, indeed,” she denied brightly. “Why would you think that?”

“No special reason. It’s just that you struck me as a woman who’d never leave the house with quite so many buttons undone.”

A horrified glance at her blouse confirmed the teasing comment. She’d missed more buttons than she’d secured, which meant there was an inordinate amount of cleavage revealed. She vowed to strangle her daughter at the very first opportunity for not warning her. At least the damned blouse did match her slacks, she thought as she fumbled with the buttons with fingers that shook.

“Jeez, Mom,” Jenny protested. “Let me.”

Janet thought she heard Harlan mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, “Or me,” but she couldn’t be absolutely sure. When she looked in his direction, his gaze was fixed innocently enough on the sky.

“Come on inside,” he invited a moment later. “I promised you coffee. I think Maritza has breakfast ready by now, too.”

“Who’s Maritza?” Jenny asked.

Her tone suggested a level of distrust that had Janet shooting a warning look in her direction. Harlan, however, appeared oblivious to Jenny’s suspicions.

“My housekeeper,” he explained. “She’s been with the family for years. If you’re interested in learning a little Tex-Mex cooking while you’re here, she’ll be glad to teach you. She’s related to Rosa, who owns the Mexican Café in town.”

“I hate Tex-Mex,” Jenny declared.

“You do not,” Janet said, giving Harlan an apologetic smile. “She’s a little contrary at this hour.”

“Seemed to be that way at midday, too,” he stated pointedly. “Not to worry. It would be an understatement to say that I’ve had a lot of experience with contrariness.”

He led the way through the magnificent foyer and into a formal dining room that was practically the size of Janet’s entire house. Her eyes widened. “Good heavens, do you actually eat in here by yourself?”

He seemed startled by the question. “Of course. Why?”

“It’s just that it’s so…” She fumbled for the right word.

“Big,” Jenny contributed.

“Lonely,” Janet said, then regretted it at once. The man didn’t need to be reminded that he was a widower and that his sons were no longer living under his roof. He was probably aware of those sad facts every single day of his life.

He didn’t seem to take offense, however. He just shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

He gestured toward a buffet laden with more cereals, jams, muffins, toast and fruits than Janet had ever seen outside a grocery store.

“Help yourself,” he said. “If you’d rather have eggs and bacon, Maritza will fix them for you. She doesn’t allow me near the stuff.”

“How come?” Jenny asked.

“Cholesterol, fat.” He grimaced. “They’ve taken all the fun out of eating. Next thing you know they’ll be feeding us a bunch of pills three times a day and we won’t be needing food at all.”

“There are egg substitutes,” Janet commented.

“Yellow mush,” he contradicted.

“And turkey bacon.”

He shuddered. “Not a chance.”

Janet chuckled at his reaction. “I’m not going to convince you, am I?”

“Depends on how good you are at sweet talk, darlin’.”

Her startled gaze flew to his. Those blue eyes were innocent as a baby’s. Even so, she knew in her gut, where butterflies were ricocheting wildly, that he had just tossed down a gauntlet of sorts. He was daring her to turn this so-called arrangement they had made for Jenny’s punishment into something personal. The temperature in the room rose significantly.

Nothing would happen between them. Janet was adamant about that. She was in Texas to tap into her Native American roots, not to get involved with another white man. She’d tried that once and it had failed, just as her mother’s marriage to a white man had ended in disaster exactly as Lone Wolf had apparently predicted when her mother had fled the reservation.

She drew herself up and leveled a look at him that she normally reserved for difficult witnesses in court. “That, darlin’, is something you’re not likely to find out,” she retorted.

Jenny’s eyes widened as she listened to the exchange. Janet was very aware of the precise instant when a speculative gleam lit her daughter’s intelligent brown eyes. Dear heaven, that was the last thing she needed. Jenny was like a puppy with a sock when she got a notion into her head. If she sensed there were sparks between her mother and Harlan Adams, she’d do everything in her power to see that they flared into a blaze. She’d do it not because she particularly wanted someone to replace her father, but just to see if she could pull it off.

To put a prompt end to any such speculation, Janet forced a perfectly blank expression onto her face as she turned her attention to the man seated opposite her.