Cattleman's Heart. Lois Faye Dyer
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Jackson halted beside her, his gaze following hers to the map.
“I think old Eli’s grandfather drew that,” he commented. “He was a surveyor for the U.S. government before he came west and homesteaded this place.”
“Fascinating,” Rebecca murmured. “He would have been your great-great-grandfather?”
“Something like that.” Jackson shrugged. “Eli was my great-uncle, but I’m not sure exactly how the family tree shakes out.”
“Did you grow up here?” Her gaze found his name printed in neat black ink beneath the faded letters spelling out “Eli Kuhlman.” The expanse of land that surrounded the names appeared enormous.
“Hell, no,” Jackson said shortly. “I never knew about Eli or this ranch until I got a letter from an attorney telling me that he’d died and left it to me.”
“Oh.” She wanted to ask him why he hadn’t known that he had a great-uncle who owned an enormous property. She glanced sideways at him. His attention was focused on the big map, his eyes narrowed, the lines of his face taut and forbidding. Despite her curiosity, caution kept her from questioning him further.
His gaze left the map and met hers for a brief second before he looked away.
“The computer is new,” he said abruptly, gesturing toward the desk where several unopened boxes were stacked on the floor, the top one even with the desktop. “I haven’t unpacked it yet.”
He walked to the desk and Rebecca followed, noting that the brand name stamped on the boxes was a computer she particularly favored. Jackson pulled out the old-fashioned desk chair, the oiled casters rolling quietly over the scarred wooden floor.
“Have a seat.”
It was more an order than a polite invitation but Rebecca didn’t comment. Instead, she seated herself in the worn, brown leather chair while Jackson snagged a straight-backed oaken chair and dragged it nearer the desk. His scent surrounded her, an indefinable mix of soap and male. Awareness shivered up her spine, lifting the fine hairs at her nape.
“These are the ledgers for the last thirty years.” Jackson reached across the desk and picked up a stack of books, setting them squarely on the bare oak desktop in front of Rebecca. The hardcover green ledgers, worn from use and faded with age, had entries in a spidery, often illegible hand.
For the next hour, Jackson explained the handwritten bookkeeping system that the previous owner, Eli Kuhlman, had used. Reading the notes soon had Rebecca’s eyes aching from strain.
The greatest strain, however, came from being in such close proximity to Jackson. He straddled the chair, his forearms crossed along the square wooden back. On one occasion, he stood and leaned over her at the desk, pointing out and explaining an item in a ledger, his arm twice brushing against hers. Waiting for him to touch her again had her nerves strung taut until she wanted to scream with tension.
By the time Jackson left to make a last check of the barns and she climbed the stairs to bed, her nerves were jangling.
Chapter Two
J ackson stacked his hands beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling. Outside the bedroom window, one of the maples’ far-reaching branches scratched gently against the glass pane. The three-quarter moon threw leaf-shaped shadows across the white ceiling, the dark shapes shifting and changing with the faint breeze.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do about Rebecca Wallingford.
She represented a complication that he didn’t have time to deal with. He was up to his neck in work, putting in fourteen-hour days to finish upgrading the ranch’s buildings and fences. He hadn’t been too wild about the idea of having a representative of the investment company underfoot, but the unexpected offer of financing from the San Francisco firm had arrived after he’d been turned down by every bank within a five-hundred-mile radius of Colson. Eli Kuhlman had left him land worth millions but no cash assets, and the fences, buildings and machinery were all desperately in need of repair. He’d reached the point where he would have done anything short of a criminal act to get the money to develop the ranch. When he was told that the accountant would be a fifty-three-year-old man named Walter Andersen, he’d resigned himself to squeezing one more boarder into the house for a few months. He’d hoped that Walter could at least play a decent game of poker.
Then Rebecca arrived. One look at her green eyes and curvy body had his temperature rising.
“Hell,” he muttered. Two or three long months. Maybe it was a good thing he had enough work to keep him busy twenty-four hours a day, if needed. Because there was no way he was acting on his instinct to ignore the engagement ring on her finger and pursue her. He had a hard-and-fast rule—never date anyone you work with—and he never broke it. Never. He’d been down that road and lived to regret it. He wasn’t going there again.
Rebecca had difficulty falling asleep. Accustomed as she was to the sounds of traffic and the occasional siren from the street below her sixth-story apartment windows in downtown San Francisco, the complete silence surrounding the ranch house was unsettling. But if it was strangely quiet outside, inside, Rebecca’s thoughts were uncharacteristically chaotic.
What was she going to do about the impact Jackson Rand had on her senses? Despite her earlier confidence that she could control her body’s reaction to the rancher, she hadn’t been able to shut down her response to him in the office. Would she become more adept at ignoring him with time? Or less so?
Thank goodness I never have to worry about any of this with Steven, she thought. Life with Steven would be comfortable and placid, with no disturbing wakes and whitecaps, no turbulent waters to threaten the calm comfort of their life together.
She woke the next morning to the sound of water running in the bathroom next door and the muted sounds of men’s voices, followed by the thud of boots on stair treads. Disoriented, she lay still, staring at the ceiling for a moment before she remembered where she was.
She turned her head and squinted at her small alarm clock on the night table.
Five o’clock? Her body was still on San Francisco Pacific time, where it was only 3:00 a.m. She groaned aloud and rolled over, pulling the sheet and blanket over her head.
The maneuver didn’t help. Fifteen minutes later, she shoved the covers back and glared at the clock. The luminous dial glowed silently back at her.
It’s no use. She admitted finally and tossed back the covers. Groping for her ankle-length robe at the end of the bed, she pulled it on over her pajamas, shoved her feet into matching white terry-cloth mules and took her toiletry bag from the top of the dresser. If she couldn’t sleep, she thought, she may as well get up, get dressed and get to work.
The hall was silent when she stepped out of her bedroom. In the vacant bathroom, damp towels hung over the racks, droplets of water dotted the sink and the faint scent of mint toothpaste hung in the warm air.
She splashed her face, brushed her teeth, ran a brush through her hair and caught it up into a high ponytail, then left the bathroom.
She moved quietly down the stairs, drawn by the irresistible smell of brewed coffee, and paused to listen intently at the bottom of the steps. The house was quiet. Breathing a sigh of relief that she had the house to herself, she walked down the hall and was two steps into the kitchen before she halted abruptly. Jackson was seated at the table, a coffee mug cradled in his hand.
“Good morning,” she managed, her voice husky with sleep.
“Good morning.”
His deep drawl curled her toes inside her slippers and made her feel much too vulnerable in her half-awake state.
Caffeine. I need caffeine.
She crossed the room to the counter, took down a mug and filled it, grimacing at the first strong, black sip.
“Something wrong with the coffee?”
She