A Ranch to Keep. Claire McEwen
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was talking on the phone. She ran a hand through her tousled curls and tapped her pen impatiently while she listened to the person on the other end of the line.
She looked amazing and completely out of his league. Dark-framed cat’s-eye glasses, perfect for a 1950s librarian, rested on the bridge of her nose. He hadn’t known that he’d had librarian fantasies before, but he was pretty sure he’d just developed some.
Realizing that his current position bordered on stalking, Jack quickly got off the ladder. Grabbing the sides, he walked it carefully over to the next window and tipped it back against the wall, steadying the legs as best he could on the uneven ground. He climbed up with his crowbar, thankful this was the last round in his fight with Samantha’s windows.
As he pried, his thoughts returned to his new neighbor. More specifically, his new neighbor in a lacy black bra, with her hair tumbled and wild, playing in his creek pool.... Well, her creek pool, technically, but in all these years of renting land from Ruth, he’d never seen anyone else there. He’d come to think of it as his. But hell, if she was going to show up there and take a swim in her Skivvies, he was happy to share.
He still couldn’t believe he’d almost kissed her on her porch yesterday. And given a few more minutes by the creek he’d have figured out a way to kiss her there. Which would be completely stupid for a long list of reasons. But why such a strong reaction to her? It was frustrating that the first real attraction he’d felt for someone in years happened to be for a woman whose life was firmly entrenched in a city about six hours away.
But damn she was pretty...well, more than pretty. It was all her contradictions that had him so intrigued. With so much spirit in her green eyes and her dark, curly hair cloaking her pale, delicate face, she looked like some kind of otherworldly fairy queen. But as soon as she started talking it was obvious she lived very much in the real world: intelligent, tough and driven.
She had such a cool, controlled demeanor most of the time, but he’d seen that she could laugh at herself, and he liked that a lot. She was tough as nails in there working at the dining room table, or throwing his teasing right back at him, but he’d seen her face at the pool today as she’d watched Gideon. Her expression had been all gentleness and warmth. The controlled, collected woman she appeared to be at first glance was capable of melting, and that thought was making him crazy. He wanted to see what would happen if she truly started to thaw.
The last board was the messiest of all and had him picking splinters out of his eyes. With a choice epithet he tossed the offending board to the grass and climbed down the ladder with a sense of relief and a promise to himself to be more careful about what he volunteered for in the future. Even if the beneficiary of his altruism was the most beautiful and intriguing woman he’d ever met.
Well, none of it really mattered anyway. She wasn’t going to be hanging around the ranch much, he was sure of that, and he didn’t have a lot of free time to spend in San Francisco. So he’d just have to find a way to get all these thoughts of her out of his head. Lucky for him he had a new project starting tomorrow, and it was going to be an interesting one to put it mildly.
Jack usually worked with quarter horses, helping them learn everything from trotting to winning trophies. But a few weeks ago he’d started talking with a guy at the local bar. Over a beer, Todd had told him about the plight of the wild horses that had been living out in the high deserts for generations. Jack had never paid much attention to that particular cause, just because there weren’t any herds close by, but Todd had.
The herds were overpopulated so every few years a roundup took place and many horses were caught, and if new homes weren’t found for them, they were destroyed. Todd had finally broken down and adopted a handful of them. Now he had a bunch of wild horses in his paddock and no idea what to do with them. Which is where Jack came in. Though he didn’t know much about wild horses, either, he figured they were just the wild and crazy relatives of the horses he usually worked with. And he hoped that with enough patience, he’d be able to settle them down.
And now it turned out that Todd’s timing was perfect. Taming mustangs, on top of his usual commitments, wouldn’t leave much time for thoughts of Samantha Rylant.
He walked around the front of the house to return the crowbar. Just as he rounded the corner, Samantha shouldered through her front door, her arms laden with various bags. She didn’t see him, just clicked efficiently across the front porch and down the stairs, moving so lightly in the same heels she’d been out hiking in earlier. The memory of that made him grin, and forget his plan to forget her. She threw her belongings into the trunk and turned to go back to the house. That’s when she saw him standing there like a tongue-tied yokel trying to approach a princess.
Her face lit up in a wide smile. “Jack, I was just going to look for you! I wanted to thank you for taking the boards off the windows.”
“No problem.” She was all business now. In fact she vibrated with an impatient energy that made it hard to even connect her with the woman at the creek, or the woman on the porch yesterday.
He walked toward her and saw her expression change. A hint of laughter twitched at the corner of her perfectly lipsticked mouth, lit her green eyes with a golden light. There—that was the woman he’d been getting to know. “Okay, Samantha, what’s funny now?”
“It’s... I mean...I think you might have gotten a bit dirty. Would you like to come in and wash up?”
“It’s okay, thanks,” he answered. “I’m used to dirt.” And that was a perfect example of why he and Samantha would never work. She couldn’t handle a guy with a little dirt on him, and he spent most days being dirty.
Her mouth twitched a little more. “Well, okay, but...hang on.” She went back to the car and rummaged in one of her bags, bringing out a small mirror. “Here,” she said, handing it to him.
He peeked into the tiny mirror and instantly knew why she’d been laughing. His face was filthy. Layers of dirt, small wood chips, old paint, probably toxic with lead, had made a mask over his features. Glued there by sweat no doubt. His hair was gray with dust and there was a cobweb across one eyebrow. He grimaced. So much for making a good impression on his beautiful neighbor. He handed the mirror back. “Maybe I’ll take you up on your offer, after all.”
She opened the front door of the house and he was amazed to see how spotless it was. Everything gleamed and the room smelled fresh, like herbs. No way was he going to track a bunch of dirt across this pristine living room. “You don’t mess around, Samantha. How’d you get this place cleaned up so fast?”
“I don’t know...I just couldn’t stand the dirt, I guess. The upstairs is still a mess. Something came up last minute for work today and I couldn’t spend any more time cleaning.”
“I can’t come through here like this. I’ll meet you round back and wash up in the kitchen.”
She didn’t protest so he walked back around the house and up the rickety steps to the back porch. Part of him just wanted to take off running up the hill toward home, now that he’d seen how filthy he was. But he wasn’t a coward, and just because she was dressed to the nines and seemed to have secret housecleaning superpowers, didn’t mean he had to turn tail and run. Especially since he’d gotten dirty by way of helping her out.
He kicked his boots off at the back door, and when she opened it he went straight to the big, white farmhouse kitchen sink, turned on the faucet and put his head under. The cool water felt invigorating, and he scrubbed the layers of sweat off of his face and neck and the dust out of his hair. If the sink had been any bigger he would have stripped down and put his whole self in there, just to feel that cool water taking away the remnants of this too-hot day.
Samantha didn’t say a word, just handed him an old rough cotton towel when he was finished. He scrubbed himself dry, looked up and caught her staring. Her lower lip was caught in her teeth and her fascinated expression was heated by the desire he could see in her eyes, which had now darkened to the green of pine trees.
Something in his stomach twisted and something lower hardened—he held the towel in front of him just