The Rancher's Rules. Lucy Monroe
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Givens was any the wiser. The hamster’s exercise wheel squeaked as Bud’s short rodent legs trod a constant rotation on the plastic device. Princess, one of Zoe’s cats, watched with a hungry look. Zoe tapped the acrylic cage and smiled. Even Princess could not get into the hamster’s haven.
Just to be safe, she shooed the cat out of the bathroom and shut the door. The doorbell rang and Snoopy let out a shattering series of barks. She hushed the dog before opening the front door, and almost fell backward as she came face-to-face with Grant’s imposing six-foot-two-inch frame.
He reached out to steady her. “You okay?”
“Sure.” She’d just been expecting a rather short, rather round older lady rather than his well-muscled, ultra masculine person. She’d done a pretty good job of sublimating her body’s response to Grant since that awful night when she’d been nineteen, but every so often feelings she’d rather not acknowledge leapt past her defenses. Like now.
“What are you doing here?” Her breathless voice gave her away, but if Grant followed past patterns he wouldn’t notice.
Sometimes she wondered if he thought she was as sexless as he wanted her to be. Not that she wasn’t, but she shouldn’t be, darn it. And that wasn’t going to change any time soon. Not as long as her body still thought Grant was the one, even if her mind and her heart now knew better.
“I have come for my truck.”
“I thought one of your hands would come for it.” She frowned in consternation. She hadn’t been mentally prepared for a confrontation with Grant right now, even a pleasant one. Not when she needed all her wits to make nice with her increasingly annoyed landlady.
“Still mad I called your boyfriend a clown?”
“I’m not mad, just busy.” She forced a smile.
She hadn’t been angry the other night either. Not really. Grant couldn’t help being overprotective. Besides, she wasn’t really dating Tyler, just trying to fix him up with a friend of hers from school. They were both skittish. “Mrs. Givens is coming for tea.”
Grant leaned down and scratched the silver fur on her cat’s neck. His lean, tan fingers moved in a mesmerizing rhythm, a rhythm Zoe had an overwhelming desire to experience herself. She tamped down the feeling, just like she’d been doing with similar desires for the past four years—longer if you counted how long she’d wanted Grant before The Night.
He straightened and dropped a set of keys in Zoe’s hand. “She’ll be happy I brought back her son’s car.”
His fingers brushed her palm and she jerked her hand back at the contact. Darn. She needed to get some perspective here. She turned around too quickly and nearly went sailing when her feet got tangled with Alexander, Princess’s brother. She yelled. Grant gripped her shoulders and pulled her toward him. She landed against his chest. Still standing, but barely.
Snoopy’s barking, the parrot’s screeching and Grant’s laughter faded as Zoe became aware of the feel of Grant’s hard chest against her back. What would he do if she turned around and kissed him?
Would he open his lips over hers and let her taste his tongue like he had that one time when she’d discovered passion included a whole lot more than the rather innocent dreams she’d been weaving around Grant since she was sixteen? More likely he’d think she’d gone nuts. And she had if she was contemplating giving Grant another run at her heart.
She trusted him with her life, and always would, but her emotions were a different matter entirely.
The sound of another voice alerted Zoe to her landlady’s arrival; she jumped away from Grant. This time she watched where her feet landed and managed to stay upright. “Mrs. Givens. Grant was just returning your son’s car.”
The elderly woman smiled and patted Grant’s cheek with her fleshy pink fingers. “Dear boy. You are so very thoughtful. I’m sure we would not have missed the car if you had waited until the weather improved before returning it.”
Grant turned his smile on Mrs. Givens and Zoe was able to collect herself enough to find his truck keys. “Here.” She handed him the keys. “We won’t keep you. I know you have better things to do than stay and have tea with us.”
For whatever reason, her hormones were in overdrive today, and no way could she handle Grant’s presence at her tiny dinette table. Mrs. Givens frowned at Zoe.
Grant just winked. He really wasn’t fond of Zoe’s landlady. “As always, my schedule is full.”
She knew it was true, and didn’t understand why he had come to bring the car back himself. “Then I guess you had better go.” Zoe pushed him out the door. “I’ll talk to you later.”
She closed the door on his rather astonished expression and turned to Mrs. Givens, who was trying to avoid stepping on one of the cats and frankly doing a better job of it than Zoe had earlier.
She smiled at Zoe. “That Grant Cortez is such a nice boy. I remember we all worried when his daddy put him in charge of the ranch at such a young age, but he’s certainly made a success of it.”
“Yes, he has.” Not to mention his other business interests. She often marveled at the fact that their friendship had survived childhood.
Zoe wasn’t in a league with the Cortezes of the world any more than she was with the famous actors who now made up a good part of the winter and summer population of Sunshine Springs. It was the new Vale—only more exclusive in some ways, since many of the families had lived in the area for generations and land was hard to come by.
Grant had been forced to pay her father premium rates for the ranch when it had been sold because an actor, a rock star and another cattle conglomerate had all been bidding on the property at the same time.
“Still, a young man at twenty-two should have been dating, not running a spread the size of the Double C.” Mrs. Givens tsked her disapproval.
Zoe agreed, knowing better than anybody what it had cost Grant to take over the ranch at age twenty-two, leaving his dad and stepmother free to move to Portland like Lottie had wanted. He’d given up his plans for a career on the east coast and lost his fiancée all in one devastating blow.
He’d resurrected the career, on his own playing field…but not the relationship. And he hadn’t had another serious one since.
“Not that he hasn’t done his share of dating these past six years. He’s very photogenic.” Which was the older woman’s way of alluding to Grant’s many pictures in the press with the supermodels and actresses who graced his arm socially.
Linda was the daughter of an aging rock star who’d breezed into town and thought nothing of dating the area’s most eligible bachelor…until he’d gone into “protect Zoe” mode.
Mrs. Givens smiled conspiratorially with Zoe. “I’m sure you know more than the tabloids even…”
The woman was an inveterate gossip, and Zoe had no intention of responding to the thinly veiled hint to share what she knew of Grant’s lovelife.
“It’s to be expected, I suppose.” She ushered her landlady to the table, where she had already laid out the tea things. “I’m trying a new apricot blend tea. I hope you like it.”
“That sounds lovely, dear.” Mrs. Givens was a true tea connoisseur. She went to sit down and an ear-splitting yowl assaulted Zoe’s ears. Alexander must have been sitting on the chair again.
Mrs. Givens shot up from the chair, stumbled one step forward, and fell over Princess. She gasped and crashed to her knees on the carpet. Her blond wig went askew and her thinning gray hair stuck out on all sides. Her polyester dress rode up so that the tops of her knees were exposed, and nausea climbed up Zoe’s throat.
Not today. The tea had been an attempt to stay on the good side of her landlady, but now disaster loomed darkly on Zoe’s horizon. Feeling doomed, she rushed to the woman’s side and lifted Mrs.