Branded with his Baby. Stella Bagwell
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into his mouth and washed them down with a long drink of the soda before he walked over to the table and took a seat across from her.
“I still have a stretch of fence to finish before it gets dark,” he explained. “I don’t want my arm to get too stiff to work.”
There was no way he needed to be straining his arm using post-hole diggers or wire stretchers, but she wasn’t going to bother pointing that out to him. He was a grown man and his well-being was not her responsibility. Besides, being a nurse had taught her that there wasn’t a man alive who wanted a woman to hamper him with limitations.
“So this is where you’ve been doing all this work that Abe talks about,” she commented. “As I drove up I noticed the new barn. It looks nice.”
“Thanks. The barn is taking a lot more work and twice as much money as I’d first anticipated. But I think it’s turning out okay.”
He must have removed his hat when he’d come into the house to attend his cut, she thought. It was only the second time she’d seen him without the battered felt atop his head. The other being when he’d sat down at Abe’s dinner table. But that occasion hadn’t lasted long enough for him to get the chair warm. Now, as quiet moments ticked by, she couldn’t help but notice the thick, rusty wave dipped across one corner of his forehead, the unruly strands curling around his ears.
His face and arms were tanned as dark as a coffee bean, but the glimpses she’d had of his bare chest told her he wasn’t into lounging around in the sun without his shirt. She doubted he was into lounging around anywhere. From the looks of his lean, hard muscles, the man worked tirelessly.
Her carnal thoughts brought her up short. The two of them were entirely alone and with the letter delivered and his arm bandaged, she no longer had any good reason to remain in Quint Cantrell’s house.
Quickly rising to her feet, she said nervously, “Well, I’m glad that I didn’t interrupt your work—though I guess the injury to your arm had already done that. But I won’t keep you any longer. I promised Abe I’d be back to Apache Wells before it got too late.”
Quint rose to his feet also. “You haven’t finished your soda.”
“I’ve had enough. Thank you.”
She started out of the kitchen and as she did, she could feel Quint’s presence following close behind her. The idea made her heart thump at a rapid pace and she drew in a deep breath in an attempt to calm it.
“I’m not in that big of a hurry to get back to work, Maura. Why don’t you let me show you around before you leave?”
His suggestion caught her by surprise and she dared to glance over her shoulder at him. “Do you really want to?”
He suddenly chuckled and Maura was amazed at how different he looked with humor softening his features.
“I don’t make offers unless I want to.”
Something about the husky tone of his voice, the warmth in his eyes, sent prickles of excitement racing through her. She could feel her cheeks growing warm and pink and she suddenly felt like a foolish teenager instead of a thirty-six-year-old woman who’d been married and divorced.
But just for this once, she wasn’t going to think about the dangers this man represented to her peace of mind. Tomorrow she would remind herself that she was behaving like an idiot. Today she was going to let herself enjoy the pleasure of being in the presence of a very sexy man.
“In that case,” she said, “I’d love to have a look around.”
Moving forward, he touched a hand to her back and Maura felt her senses splintering in all directions.
“Good,” he murmured. “Just let me get my hat and we’ll be on our way,” he told her.
Chapter Three
Once they stepped onto the porch, Quint dropped his hand from her back and Maura was finally able to draw in a normal breath. But as they moved into the yard, he immediately wrapped a hold around her upper arm.
“Let’s go to the barn first,” he suggested. “I need to let Jake, my ranch hand, know I’m okay.”
Nodding, she looked away from him and tried not to dwell on his warm, rough fingers pressing into her flesh.
The afternoon was all bright sunshine, while a soft west wind carried the scent of sagebrush and juniper. A lone aspen shaded one corner of the house, but that was the only bona fide tree that she could see for miles around. The rest of the vegetation growing beyond the ranch yard amounted to a few spindly pinyon pines, some twisted snags of juniper and a sea of jumping choya cactus and sagebrush. It was a stark, yet beautiful sight and Maura instinctively knew it would be even more so in the late evening when the sun fell from the sky and twilight purpled the nearby mountains.
“How many men do you have working for you?” she asked.
Now that they were walking abreast, he dropped his hold on her arm and Maura didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Either way, just being this near him left her shaky and nothing like the practical, no-nonsense nurse that had dealt calmly with all sorts of men. She kept remembering the way he’d looked without his shirt and how the warmth and scent of his body had filled up the little bathroom and stifled her breath.
“The contractor working on the barn and storage sheds has several men working with him. But as far as the ranch goes, I only have two hands. Once I start putting livestock on the place, I’ll hire more. Though my grandfather deeded over the land a few years ago, I only started full-time here about two years ago.”
She kept her gaze on the rocky ground in front of her. “Do you have plenty of land here to support cattle?”
“Ten thousand acres. Not that much, but enough to do what I want to do.”
Glancing over at him, she asked curiously, “And what is that?”
He shrugged and not for the first time, Maura couldn’t help thinking how serious and driven he was for a man his age. Abe had commented one day that his grandson wasn’t yet thirty so that meant he was either twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He certainly didn’t look any older than that, Maura thought. Yet he seemed older, as though the years he’d been on this earth had pushed his soul to manhood long before his body had caught up.
“My plans aren’t anything grand. Just raise a few purebred cattle and a few horses.”
“What about the old gold mine—the Golden Spur—that your ranch is named after?”
She’d not meant to ask that question. It had just slipped out on its own. The same way her heart seemed to jump into a crazy jig each time she looked at his face.
Frowning, he glanced her way. “What about it?” he asked curtly.
Knowing she’d touched on a tender spot, she shrugged in an effort to appear casual. “Nothing really. Except that I couldn’t help noticing the letter Abe asked me to deliver to you. The return address was Red Bluff Mining Company. And your grandfather doesn’t make any secret about wanting to reopen the old thing.”
His footsteps paused on the barren ground and Maura came to a stop with him. As he looked at her, she could see frustration edging his features.
“Gramps thinks the mine could be profitable again. But I don’t want anything to do with it. Having a bunch of trucks and men and equipment going across the ranch is the last thing I need.”
“If it turned out to be profitable, the extra money might come in handy,” she suggested. “Especially when you start buying stock for this place.”
“I don’t need the money,” he said flatly. “Nor do I want it. I’m a rancher, not a miner.”
He picked up his stride again, only this time it was much longer and purposeful as he covered the last few yards to the barn. Maura quickened her steps