Kept by the Cowboy - Chapter One
Rachel
The floorboards of the old wooden porch creaked under her sandals. A fly buzzed the dog’s head and he flicked his ear without waking. Boisterous voices broke the quiet of the farmyard, cowboys in one of the other cabins, laughing and carrying on. An aroma of barbeque wafted past. Ranch work came to a slow stall on Friday afternoons as the men kicked back, relaxed and enjoyed the evening. The men and their families kept to themselves. Not once had she spoken to any of the cowboys or their wives.
Her life in the main ranch house centered on caring for her ailing grandfather. Nothing more.
For now.
She lifted her hand and rapped softly on the door. Her hand shook. She squeezed her fingers into a clammy fist as she waited. A few hours earlier she had interviewed for a teaching job in Colter Canyon. The entire school board sat around the table, firing questions at her, and she answered each one evenly and without a fraction of the worry that beset her now.
Now she felt bedraggled, and sure she looked that way too. But earlier, for her interview, she’d looked professional, and sharp. She’d spent extra time that morning working on her small-town-teacher-look, coaxing her curls into an elegant twist, and applying powder to the small spray of freckles on her nose. And she’d picked just the right dress, tight at the neck and loose around her form.
All that preparation did nothing for her now. The humidity and hard work of attending to her grandfather all afternoon had turned her hair into a tousled mass of ringlets. She was frazzled and probably looked like a disheveled fourteen-year-old.
Someone moved about the cabin. Had he heard her knock? Maybe he had company. Her face heated. Luke might be a little intimidating but there was no denying he was handsome and likely got plenty of female attention. They said he was some sort of horse whisperer, too. That he had skills.
She shook off the idea. What difference did it make if he had company? Or skills?
She was here to do a job. Her grandfather needed the cattle moved to the back pastures. Gramps struggled to make his wishes clear, and she cringed at the memory of him lying in his bed, pale and weak. As sick as he was, he still tried to run things. That afternoon, he’d tugged the oxygen mask from his mouth and rasped instructions about the cattle. And while she didn’t relish asking Luke to do anything, she couldn’t let her grandfather down.
Knocking again, this time louder, she straightened her shoulders. She was Jed Wilson’s granddaughter and would be running the Wilson Ranch soon. If Luke had a problem taking orders from her, then now was as good a time as any for him to change his ways.
Heavy footfalls drew nearer and the door opened. She wasn’t prepared to come face to face with Luke Hardeman, not now. Not ever, really. Standing a couple feet away from the ranch foreman, when he wore nothing but blue jeans and a sexy smirk, made her retreat several steps.
“Miss Wilson.” His tone was a bemused surprise. A what-do-we-have-here drawl. He crossed his arms over his bare chest and leaned against the doorframe. “How can I help you?”
Her mouth, dry as cotton, couldn’t form the words she needed to say. She marveled that he showed no sign of modesty, or embarrassment. Most men would excuse themselves and put on a shirt, or at least she figured most men would, but Luke wasn’t most men.
Not that she knew much about the subject.
Over the last few weeks, her girlfriends had texted to ask about life on the ranch, particularly the cowboys. Rachel had told them about the tall, sexy foreman and how she was gathering her courage to talk to him.
She hadn’t confessed to any of her girlfriends about the heated dreams she’d had about Luke. How every night he’d show up, whispering carnal things to her, making her wake in a cold sweat, her body gripped with heated desire.
Her dreams filled her with shame. She was supposed to be caring for a loved one who was gravely ill and yet she’d often linger near the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Luke.
She eyed his powerful build, allowing her gaze to linger on his biceps. They were massive. Even if she’d dared to touch him, she wouldn’t have been able to wrap her hands all the way around his upper arms, but God, she’d like to try.
He had tattoos too, partly covering his chest and upper back, and swirling down his arms just short of his wrists. She’d seen him without a shirt before, from a distance, so she knew about the tats, but seeing them up close mesmerized her for a second, like a deer in headlights.
“I came here to talk about the cattle,” she managed, finally.
“Go on,” he said gently.
“My grandfather wanted you to move them.”
“Yes, ma’am. I plan to.”
Ma’am… no one ever called her that. It sounded so respectful even though he said it with a touch of bemusement.
“He wanted you to do it today.”
“Today? No ma’am. It’s Friday. Five o’clock. I’m done for the day. Maybe tomorrow.”
He turned and went back inside his cabin, leaving the door open. Rachel watched in disbelief as he disappeared into another room, his boots thudding on the hardwood floor. Had she just been dismissed? Without thought, she found herself following him inside. She came around the corner of his bathroom to discover him smoothing shaving cream over his jaw.
She’d never seen Luke clean-shaven, and she’d been paying attention. The sight of him doing something so personal set off a peculiar awareness across her senses. Her skin prickled. Her breasts tightened. She stared unabashedly. Muscles rippled across his powerful shoulders as he stroked the razor along his jaw. He carried on as if she weren’t there.
“You going somewhere?” she asked.
He turned his head just enough to look at her with both eyes. His gaze held hers for a moment. “What makes you think that?”
“Because you’re shaving.”
She couldn’t help herself. Her imagination immediately saw everything. Somewhere in town a woman waited for him. That’s why he was shaving, and that’s why he didn’t want to carry out her grandfather’s wishes just then. But he still had a good three hours of daylight, plenty of time to move the cattle, she figured.
Luke rinsed the razor. “I’m going out.”
“I figured. When I tell Gramps you refused to move the cattle because you had some sort of social engagement, where should I tell him you’re going?”
She’d hoped that mentioning her grandfather would give her words more authority. That strategy might work with some of the other men on the ranch, but it had no effect on Luke. None. If anything, he smirked, but it was hard to tell with his face covered in shaving cream.
“If he asks, you can tell him, I’m eating dinner with Tanner Rusk. And after we’re going to the Magnolia Dance Hall to have a few beers.”
Jealousy speared her chest. Bastard. “You’re blowing off my grandfather’s request so you can have dinner and go to a dance hall?”
Her words sounded petulant even to her own ear.
He turned to face her, his face half-shaven. “I’m not blowing him off. I’m just not doing it now.”
“He’s dying,” she said softly. It was the first time she’d spoken the words aloud.
Luke lowered his razor and gazed at her for a long moment. “I know. And I’m sorry about that.”
A wave of bravado came from nowhere. “When he’s gone, you’ll have to take orders from me.”
He arched a brow and she thought he smiled, but with the shaving cream she couldn’t be sure.
“That so?” He drawled.
“Who else?”
“You’re a teacher, right?”
“That’s right.”
She didn’t tell him she didn’t have a job yet, and that she had never actually been employed as a teacher. She’d just graduated from college a few months before. She had the degree, and for her that was good enough to call herself a teacher. She didn’t need to explain herself to him.
He finished shaving, rinsed and dried his face, and took a chambray shirt from a nearby hook. She tried to keep her eyes locked on his while he pulled the shirt on and began buttoning.
“And you’re what? Twenty-two?”
“Almost.”
“Well, darlin’, I’m thirty-three and I’ve worked on a ranch half my life. What orders do you plan to give me, exactly?”
That was a good question. She knew about lesson plans and redirecting misbehaving children. What did she know about running a ranch? Not much.
“I don’t know. Maybe when to move the cattle, or sell them, or wash them.”
“Wash them? You’re going to work as a teacher in the Fall, right?”
“That’s my plan.”
Which was unlikely. Colter Canyon School District had almost no turnover. There was a single second-grade position open and they’d already told her they wanted to fill it with an experienced teacher if possible. The lack of a job might be a disaster, or it might be a non-issue. She had no idea how much money her grandfather might have or would leave her when he passed.
She barely knew her grandfather. He was dying, probably. She couldn’t fathom asking him about his holdings and he hadn’t offered much in the way of details.
“If you get a job as a teacher, you think you’re going to do that and run a 4,000-acre ranch, and manage a dozen or so cantankerous cowboys, in your spare time?”
“I don’t have a choice. He gave me a checkbook when I first got here and the account has about $7,000 in it. I’ll go through that in no time and I don’t know if he has other accounts.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah. Sounds like a problem.”
“You’re not exactly being helpful here. I would have imagined as foreman of the ranch you’d have a little more to offer than stating the obvious.”
The jumble of angry words spilled from her lips. His brow lifted at her vehemence.
Amid her irritation, she recalled her mother’s words. They were something her mom came up with somewhere between husband number three and husband number four. Men were trouble, she started saying, during the divorce proceedings. They were either at your feet or at your throat, and the only way to keep them down was to assert yourself right off. Once they lost respect for you, it was all over but the crying.
Rachel wasn’t sure if Luke respected her, but if she was going to hold onto the ranch, she’d need to step up her efforts. The ranch was more than her grandfather’s legacy. It was a new start for her, on land that had belonged to her family for generations. She was both humbled and awed by what the ranch represented.
“You could sell a few of the heifers. Beef prices are up,” he said.
She let out an unsteady breath. This was the type of specific advice she needed and it was what he should be helping her with.
“Right. How soon can I do that?”
“A few weeks from now, but we’re not selling anything if the herd is grazing in the back acreage. They won’t want to leave those pastures for anything. Not when they’re belly-deep in blue stem.”
She frowned. Belly-deep in blue stem? “Of course.”
“I’ll keep the cattle where they are for a few more weeks and then we’ll sell a trailer-full, and then I’ll move the cattle, like you want.”
“Thank you.”
For the first time since she’d arrived on her grandfather’s ranch, she was making decisions about the ranch business. She’d made plenty of decisions about his care, lining up nurses and making sure he had medicine and supplies, but she hadn’t ventured into anything to do with livestock.
Luke shook his head. “You don’t know the first thing about this ranch.”
Rachel turned away and headed for the door. “For a minute there, I was feeling like I’d done something productive. Made a plan. Thanks for reminding me how clueless I am.”
“You should sell now, while the ranch is in good shape. If you run it into the ground, it’ll lose value. You’ll get less a year from now than you would if you sold today.”
His words hit her hard. Sell the ranch? The idea made her heart squeeze with pain.
“It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my grandfather.” She stopped at the doorway. “Even when he passes, I won’t sell the one thing Jed Wilson ever gave me.”
That last bit made an involuntary shudder roll inside her. She tried not to speak of her grandfather in the past, but sometimes it crept into her words.
“What if I make an offer?”
She stared. The ranch had to be worth a great deal of money and it surprised her to think Luke Hardeman had that sort of wealth. “What kind of offer?”
His gaze turned sultry. “One you won’t be able to refuse.”
She blinked several times. She was way out of her depth here and he had to know. She had male friends and got along well with them but they’d always kept her firmly in the friend-zone, an area she liked very much. Luke looked at her like he’d love nothing better than to whisper dirty things in her ear along with an offer to buy her family’s land.
“I won’t discuss this. Not now. Not with you.”
“You’re going to have to discuss it sooner or later. You might get a few thousand dollars from selling cattle but you’ll need more than that. A lot more. Come winter, you’ll need to buy feed. Pay property taxes. The horse barn needs a new roof.”
His words hit her hard. She’d tried to look through past financial records, but hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of anything. Her grandfather refused to tell her more than the barest details. Last week the phone had been shut off and she’d had to beg him to tell her where he kept the bills and statements. He’d relented, directing her to the top drawer of his desk, but forbade her from looking through any other papers.
If her grandfather didn’t have a bank account somewhere with quite a few zeros, she’d have no choice but to sell everything.
She went to the door and stopped. “Thank you, Mr. Hardeman. This has been very enlightening.”
“Rachel,” he said quietly. “You’ve been in that house taking care of Jed since you got here. I saw you leave the house this morning, but other than that you’ve been with Jed, and I know what that’s like. Why don’t you come with me this evening? I’ll show you the Colter Canyon Dance Hall. You can let your hair down a bit.”
Rachel stared at him in disbelief. This was a test. She was sure of it. He didn’t think she really cared about Jed or the ranch. He thought she was some spoiled little rich girl who’d come just to grab her inheritance.
She shook her head. “I don’t care to socialize with my foreman, Mr. Hardeman.”
She’d hoped to burn him a little with that comment. Score a point or two, but he responded with a slow, lingering perusal of her. His gaze left a trail of awareness along her body. She turned on her heel and hurried away from his cabin.