The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter

“Looks right cozy,” he commented, his amused gaze fixed on his father. “Anything going on here I should know about?”

“Watch your mouth,” Harlan ordered. “Janet and Jenny, this tactless scoundrel is my youngest, Cody. Son, this is Janet Runningbear and her daughter Jenny.”

Cody winked at Jenny, who was regarding him with blatant fascination. “Don’t tell Daddy, but just so you know, I’m the brains behind White Pines.”

“If that were true, you’d have better control over your manners,” Harlan retorted.

Janet chuckled listening to the two of them. Talk about a chip off the old block. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that any trait Cody possessed, he had learned it at his father’s knee. That included everything from charm to arrogance. Still, she couldn’t help responding to that infectious grin and the teasing glint in his eyes as he squared off against Harlan. The squabbles around here must have been doozies.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful?” Harlan suggested. “Janet says the air conditioner in her car has gone on the blink. Do you have time to take a look at it?”

“Sure thing,” Cody said readily. “Let me get a beer and I’ll get right on it.”

“I could get the beer,” Jenny piped up eagerly.

Cody tipped his hat. “Thanks.”

Janet speared her daughter with a warning look, then said to Cody, “If one single ounce of that beer is missing when it gets to you, I’d like to know about it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cody said, winking at Jenny, who blushed furiously.

When they were gone, Janet turned to Harlan. “If he were giving the orders, I suspect Jenny would be docile as a lamb the rest of the summer.”

“But he’s not,” Harlan said tersely. “I am.”

“Jealous of the impact your son has on the Runningbear women?” she inquired lightly, just to see if the remark would inspire the kind of reaction she suspected it would.

Harlan’s expression did, indeed, turn very grim. “He’s married.”

She grinned. “I know. Heck, everyone in town heard about his courting of Melissa Horton. It was still fresh on their minds when I moved here. But last I heard, looking’s never been against the law. I ought to know. I read those big, thick volumes of statutes cover-to-cover in school.”

He scowled. “You deliberately trying to rile me?”

“I didn’t know I could,” she declared innocently.

“Well, now you know,” he asserted.

Janet couldn’t help feeling a certain sense of feminine satisfaction over the revelation. But hard on the heels of that reaction came the alarm bells. It was entirely possibly that she was enjoying taunting Harlan Adams just a little too much. She had a hunch it was a very dangerous game to play. He struck her as the kind of man who played his games for keeps.

Chapter Four (#ulink_00914b77-f400-5ca1-8a7c-b073359e134e)

Harlan hadn’t liked the gut-deep jealousy that had slammed through him when he’d seen the amused, conspiratorial look Janet and Cody had exchanged. Her comment that checking a man out wasn’t any sort of legal sin had grated on his nerves just as badly.

Even though he’d guessed that the woman was deliberately baiting him, his blood had simmered and his temper had bordered on exploding. It was an interesting turn of events. He hadn’t expected to react so strongly to a woman ever again.

Oh, he’d been attracted to Janet Runningbear the moment he’d set eyes on her. He’d been convinced, though, that he’d deliberately set out to settle her into a corner of his life just to relieve the boredom with an occasional feisty exchange. She was doing that, all right, and more. In spades.

She was stirring up emotions he’d thought had died the day he’d buried his wife just over a year ago. He wasn’t so sure he wanted that kind of turmoil.

Unfortunately, he was equally uncertain whether he had any choice in the matter. It had been his observation that when a man was hit by a bolt of lightning—literally or in the lovestruck sense of the phrase—there was no point in trying to get out of the way after the fact.

Given all that, he was almost relieved when Cody announced that the car’s air conditioner was working. Janet declined a halfhearted invitation to stay for supper, insisting that she and Jenny had to get home. Harlan waved them off with no more than a distracted reminder to be there at dawn again.

“Well, well, well,” Cody muttered beside him.

Harlan frowned at his son’s knowing expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that it’s downright interesting to watch a woman twist you this way and that without even trying.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cody grinned. “Then you’re in an even more pitiful state of denial than I imagined. Want me to call in Jordan and Luke? Among us we probably have enough experience with women to give you any advice you need. Goodness knows we denied our feelings long enough to drive just about everyone around us to distraction. No sense in you doing the same thing, when we can save you all that time.”

“Go away.”

“Not till I’m through watching the entertainment,” Cody shot back as he sauntered over to his pickup. “‘Night, Daddy. Sweet dreams.”

Sweet? Harlan could think of a dozen or more words to describe the kind of dreams Janet Runningbear inspired and “sweet” would be very low on the list. Provocative. Seductive. Steamy. Erotic. He had to go inside the air-conditioned house just to cool off from the images.

He consoled himself with the possibility that their first two meetings might have been aberrations. Boredom could play funny tricks on a man. The first thing that came along to relieve it might get exaggerated in importance.

Yes, indeed, that had to be it, he decided as he settled into a chair in his office with a book he’d been wanting to read for some time. A good, page-turning thriller was exactly what he needed tonight. That ought to get his juices flowing better than a leggy, sassy woman.

But the words swam in front of his eyes. His thoughts kept drifting to the enigmatic woman who presented such a placid, reserved facade. He’d enjoyed sparking confusion in those dark, mysterious eyes. He’d relished making a little color climb into her cheeks. Janet Runningbear wasn’t nearly as serene around him as she wanted desperately for him to believe.

He also had the feeling, virtually confirmed by her earlier, that there were secrets to be discovered, hidden reasons behind her decision to relocate to Texas.

As a kid he’d been fascinated by stories of buried treasure. He’d spent endless hours searching for arrowheads left behind by Native Americans who’d roamed over the very land on which White Pines had been built. Somewhere in the house, probably in Cody’s old room, there was a cigar box filled with such treasures.

If Janet Runningbear had secrets, he would discover them eventually. He’d make a point of it.

And then what? He wasn’t the kind of man who courted a woman just for sport. He never had been. He’d tried to instill the same set of values in his sons, tried to teach them never to play games with women who didn’t fully understand the rules.

Everything about Janet that he’d seen so far shouted that she was a woman deserving of respect, a single parent struggling to put a new life together for herself and her daughter. If he was only looking for diversion, would it be fair to accomplish it at the expense of a woman like that? It was the one question for which he had an unequivocal answer: no!

So, he resolved, he would tame his natural impatience and take his time with her, measuring his feelings as well as hers. It was the only just way to go.

But even as he reached that carefully thought-out decision, the part of him that leapt to impetuous, self-confident conclusions told him he was just delaying the inevitable. He’d made up his mind the minute he’d walked into her office that he wanted her and nothing—not his common sense, not her resistance—was going to stand in his way for long. “Where the devil have you been?” Mule asked in his raspy, cranky voice when Harlan finally got back into town on Saturday after four whole days of trying to keep Jenny Runningbear in line. “Ain’t seen you since that gal stole your truck.”

Mule’s expression turned sly. “Word around town is that you’ve got her working out at White Pines.”

Harlan tilted his chair back on two legs and sipped on the icy mug of beer Rosa had set in front of him the minute he sat down. “Is that what you’re doing with your time these days, sitting around gossiping like an old woman?” he asked Mule.

“It’s about all there is to do since you dropped out of our regular poker game to play nursemaid to that brat.”

Harlan accepted the criticism without comment. Mule grumbled about everything from the weather to politics. His tart remarks about Harlan’s perceived defection were pretty much in character and harmless.

Mule’s watery hazel eyes narrowed. “I don’t hear you arguing none.”