His Forever Valentine. Marie Ferrarella
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at least a part-time job, turning over their meager paychecks to their father so that he could stay abreast of the mortgage and their late mother’s mountain of medical bills. That selfless act, the senior Rodriguez had said, was what entitled them to an equal share of the sprawling ranch.
As he drove his Jeep in closer, Rafe couldn’t take his eyes off her.
A woman like that looked completely out of place in a place like this. She had to be a figment of his imagination. But he’d already figured out that he wasn’t experiencing sunstroke and all he’d had to eat this morning were scrambled eggs and some coffee that could have been labeled as solid. The regular housekeeper was on vacation visiting her sister so it had been Miguel Jr.’s turn to cook, or do whatever it was that his oldest brother felt passed for cooking.
But Mike kept things simple, so it was safe to say that Rafe hadn’t ingested anything that would have caused a hallucination like this in the middle of his morning.
Steadily decreasing the distance between them, Rafe couldn’t help wondering when the woman was going to disappear. He couldn’t get over the feeling that she just might be a mirage created by his brain because he was currently without female companionship and Eli, Alma and Gabe were all either married or spoken for.
Was that why he was having this vision?
He’d driven out here to the northern region of the ranch for a reason. He was looking over the miles of fencing, searching for a hole or a break in it anywhere. At last count, they were short a few head of cattle. Since it was doubtful that anyone in the area would actually bother to rustle a meager five or six head, his father thought that the cattle might have just wandered off because of a break in the fencing, most likely caused by the spate of inclement weather they’d just experienced.
“Either that, or the coyotes around here have learned how to steal and use wire cutters,” Ramon—who preferred being called Ray—had cracked at the table this morning before breakfast.
Rafe had been quick to volunteer to be the one to drive the length of the fence, checking for a break. If he hadn’t he would have been stuck with kitchen cleanup. Given the choice, he would always rather be outdoors, even driving around for hours, than stuck washing and drying dishes. It wasn’t that he viewed that kind of work as “woman’s work,” just “indoor” work. Time out in the open won out every time.
But this vision was inexplicable. And she wasn’t vanishing.
The woman, with her needle-straight hair—hair the color of the sun’s first blush at sunrise—dipping halfway down her slender back, was still there.
Anticipation telegraphed through Rafe’s body, putting his pulse on high alert.
Now that he was getting close enough to discern details more clearly, Rafe saw that she was doing something other than taking in the view. She was preoccupied taking pictures with a camera that appeared way too large and sturdy for a typical tourist. She wasn’t just some outsider who’d lost her way and had decided to pause and take a few pictures of the land she’d wandered onto.
She looked to him to be a woman with a mission.
Part of him would have opted to stop driving and just watch her for a little while. Watch her moving about, looking as close to poetic as the photographs she appeared to be framing.
But just as he was considering shutting off his car engine and silently observing her, the slender woman with the flowing strawberry-red hair turned around to look at him.
She was even more striking from the front than she was from the back.
And she was looking straight at him.
Her smile was infectious. Rather than sound generic, the one-word greeting she offered him somehow seemed incredibly personal. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Rafe echoed. For a moment, he just sat there in his Jeep, looking at her. Unable to make a move.
Maybe she was a hallucination after all. The woman seemed completely unfazed at being discovered trespassing. There was no uneasiness or discomfort over the fact that he’d discovered her in a place she clearly didn’t belong.
In his experience, the few tourists that drifted through Forever eyed the local population a bit warily, as if they weren’t quite sure just how civilized these “natives” actually were—if they ate with utensils or still used their fingers when they were consuming their meals.
The thought had the corners of his mouth curving.
The woman, he noted, also, wasn’t making any breathless confessions as to why she was trespassing, nor was she launching into any kind of an elaborate explanation as to what she was doing here this far from town.
As a matter of fact, she wasn’t saying anything at all, which struck Rafe as rather unique. In his experience, women usually took charge of the conversation and, on the average, did a hell of a lot more talking than men.
At least his sister Alma made it seem that way.
Rafe turned off his vehicle’s engine as an afterthought and got out of the Jeep.
The woman had lowered her camera and was now watching him much the way he had been watching her. Except that she had what he could only call a bemused expression on her face.
Was there some joke he was missing, or was that just her way of trying to disarm him?
Whatever it was, it was working.
He started the conversation with the obvious by asking her, “You do know that you’re on private land, right?”
Her smile answered him before her words did. It was as if there was some silent communication going on.
Definitely a hallucination, he couldn’t help thinking one final time.
“Yes, I do,” she replied, still wearing that wide, inviting grin, “and I think that this is exactly what my boss is look for.”
So she was a real estate agent? It hardly seemed likely. He’d never seen her before and Forever was not exactly destined to become a thriving metropolis in the next decade or so. Everyone in town had at least a nodding acquaintance with everyone else who lived in or around the area—unless they were strangers, fresh from some other place.
Since he didn’t want the woman wasting her time and his, there was only one answer he could give her. “It’s not for sale.”
There was no way that anyone in his family would be willing to part with the ranch, or even the smallest section of the ranch. This land was far more than just square footage to them. It was their heritage, it was tied to their childhood and more importantly, it was their invisible connection with their mother. You didn’t sell something like that no matter what the offer turned out to be.
“Oh, he wouldn’t want to buy it,” the sexy woman informed him brightly. “If I’m right about this—and I usually am,” she added without the slightest bit of bravado or vanity, “he’ll be interested in renting it.”
Rafe’s deep brown eyes narrowed beneath his tan Stetson. He tried desperately to make sense out of what the redhead was telling him. He guessed that brains didn’t come along with the beauty. Such a shame.
“Renting it?” he questioned. That really wasn’t an option, either. “I’m sorry, but—”
Rafe didn’t get a chance to turn her down. Lowering her camera so that it now just hung from a strap, its lens pointing, unfocused, at the ground, she moved closer to him.
“Wait,” she requested, raising her voice just enough to register a tad louder than his. “Hear me out, please.” She gestured around the terrain with open enthusiasm. “This place is absolutely perfect.”
“And we intend to keep it that way,” he told her in no uncertain terms.
Gorgeous or not, he wasn’t about to let himself be turned around by the woman and make promises he had no right to make nor keep, even if he could—which