Contents

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter One

       T he kitchen cat twirled around Tess’s legs and almost tripped her on her way to the oven. She smiled at it ruefully and made time to pour it a bowl of cat food. The cat was always hungry, it seemed. Probably it was still afraid of starving, because it had been a stray when Tess took it in.

      It was the bane of Tess Brady’s existence that she couldn’t resist stray or hurt animals. Most of her young life had been spent around rodeos with her father, twice the world champion calf roper. She hadn’t had a lot to do with animals, which might have explained why she loved them. Now that her father was gone, and she was truly on her own, she enjoyed having little things to take care of. Her charges ranged from birds with broken wings to sick calves. There was an unbroken procession.

      This cat was her latest acquisition. It had come to the back door as a kitten just after Thanksgiving, squalling in the dark, rainy night. Tess had taken it in, despite the grumbling from two of her three bosses. The big boss, the one who didn’t like her, had been her only ally in letting the cat stay.

      That surprised her. Callaghan Hart was one tough hombre. He’d been a captain in the Green Berets and had seen action in Operation Desert Storm. He was the next-to-eldest of the five Hart brothers who owned the sweeping Hart Ranch Properties, a conglomerate of ranches and feedlots located in several western states. The headquarter ranch was in Jacobsville, Texas. Simon, the eldest brother, was an attorney in San Antonio. Corrigan, who was four years younger than Simon, had married over a year and a half ago. He and his wife Dorie had a new baby son. There were three other Hart bachelors left in Jacobsville: Reynard, the youngest, Leopold, the second youngest, and Callaghan who was just two years younger than Simon. They all lived on the Jacobsville property.

      Tess’s father had worked for the Hart brothers for a little over six months when he dropped dead in the corral of a heart attack. It had been devastating for Tess, whose mother had run out on them when she was little. Cray Brady, her father, was an only child. There wasn’t any other family that she knew of. The Harts had also known that. When their housekeeper had expressed a desire to retire, Tess had seemed the perfect replacement because she could cook and keep house. She could also ride like a cowboy and shoot like an expert and curse in fluent Spanish, but the Hart boys didn’t know about those skills because she’d never had occasion to display them. Her talents these days were confined to making the fluffy biscuits the brothers couldn’t live without and producing basic but hearty meals. Everything except sweets because none of the brothers seemed to like them.

      It would have been the perfect job, even with Leopold’s endless pranks, except that she was afraid of Callaghan. It showed, which made things even worse.

      He watched her all the time, from her curly red-gold hair and pale blue eyes to her small feet, as if he was just waiting for her to make a mistake so that he could fire her. Over breakfast, those black Spanish eyes would cut into her averted face like a diamond. They were set in a lean, dark face with a broad forehead and a heavy, jutting brow. He had a big nose and big ears and big feet, but his long, chiseled mouth was perfect and he had thick, straight hair as black as a raven. He wasn’t handsome, but he was commanding and arrogant and frightening even to other men. Leopold had once told her that the brothers tried to step in if Cag ever lost his temper enough to get physical. He had an extensive background in combat, but even his size alone made him dangerous. It was fortunate that he rarely let his temper get the best of him.

      Tess had never been able to understand why Cag disliked her so much. He hadn’t said a word of protest when the others decided to offer her the job of housekeeper and cook after her father’s sudden death. And he was the one who made Leopold apologize after a particularly unpleasant prank at a party. But he never stopped cutting at Tess or finding ways to get at her.

      Like this morning. She’d always put strawberry preserves on the table for breakfast, because the brothers preferred them. But this morning Cag had wanted apple butter and she couldn’t find any. He’d been scathing about her lack of organization and stomped off without a second biscuit or another cup of coffee.

      “His birthday is a week from Saturday,” Leopold had explained ruefully. “He hates getting older.”

      Reynard agreed. “Last year, he went away for a week around this time of the year. Nobody knew where he was, either.” He shook his head. “Poor old Cag.”

      “Why do you call him that?” Tess asked curiously.

      “I don’t know,” Rey said, smiling thoughtfully. “I guess because, of all of us, he’s the most alone.”

      She hadn’t thought of it that way, but Rey was right. Cag was alone. He didn’t date, and he didn’t go out “with the boys,” as many other men did. He kept to himself. When he wasn’t working—which was rarely—he was reading history books. It had surprised Tess during her first weeks as housekeeper to find that he read Spanish colonial history, in Spanish. She hadn’t known that he was bilingual, although she found it out later when two of the Hispanic cowboys got into a no-holds-barred fight with a Texas cowboy who’d been deliberately baiting them. The Texas cowboy had been fired and the two Latinos had