9 Out Of 10 Women Can't Be Wrong

The dog caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and flung his great head, drool flying as he did so. Harrie leaped back to avoid her suit being splattered by dog spit.

It was a nice suit. Extremely professional, gray silk, tight enough to be feminine. She had worn it to travel in, with flat-heeled loafers.

Okay, the skirt was a little shorter than it should have been, and she could have done up one more blouse button, and it would have made more sense to show up in slacks, but still—

The dog let out a sudden deep bay. She was completely unprepared for the power of the beast as he leaped to his feet and charged toward a cow and calf that had come out from behind a shelter and were now nosing the new spring grass in the pasture adjoining the driveway.

Harrie felt her shoulder jerk and the leash burn through her hand. She caught the loop of the leash at the end of it and held on for dear life.

Stacey had told her, laughing, after their visit to the ranch, Ty was amazed you didn’t stampede the cattle.

Playfully he had called her Lady Disaster. She was not going to have this stupid dog stampede the cattle within minutes of her arriving this time—this time when everything was going to be so different.

Off balance, as the powerful dog charged toward the cattle pen, baying with excitement, she lost her footing and fell forward. Undeterred, but slowed down, the huge animal continued forward grinding her knees and face, not to mention her beautiful silk suit, into the dirt and grass.

Ty leaped, grabbed the lead, planted his heels and jerked back hard.

The dog came to an instant halt, glanced back and hung his head remorsefully.

“Are you all right?” Ty asked with irritation, rather than compassion. He was at her elbow now, yanking her to her feet.

“I’m fine,” she snapped, jerking her arm away from him, looking down at her ruined suit.

“You’re hurt.”

He was crouched down in front of her, but nothing prepared her for the touch of his hand on her knee. A knee now devoid of nylon.

He looked up at her.

And she sighed. This was an omen. Five minutes in his presence, and catastrophe had already struck. Never mind that she had him exactly where she wanted him—on bended knee.

It was for the wrong reasons. He was looking at her knee with about the same expression she was sure he would use on an injured cow. Detached. Competent.

“I’m fine,” she said tersely. “It’s a scratch. I have a Band-Aid in my bag.”

“The problem with a cut out here,” he said, putting his hands on his knees and rising to his feet, giving the dog a quick jerk on the lead to let him know he was still there, “is that we have a lot of livestock around. We can have all kinds of nasty little things wriggling around in the soil. I’ll have to put antiseptic on it.”

No. No. No.

This was not how she had planned things. At all. “It’s fine,” she said.

“Humor me.” Still controlling the dog, he opened the passenger side of her car and settled the straps of her carry bag over one shoulder, the strap of her huge camera bag over the other.

“I can take that,” she said.

He stepped away from her easily. “I’ll get it.” It was said with a certain firmness that set her teeth on edge. How had Stacey become so independent in the presence of such old-fashioned male arrogance? Maybe Stacey rebelled against his arrogance. Her boyfriend appeared to be Ty’s polar opposite: long-haired, liberal, artistic, sweet-tempered.

He led the way up to the house, giving the dog’s leash a snap every time it lunged forward.

The walk gave Harriet an unfortunate view of the back of him. Broad back, a certain angry stiffness in the set of his shoulders, his fanny gorgeous nonetheless in those faded jeans, his legs long and lean and strong. By the time they arrived at the back door, she felt as if she was practically panting, and not entirely because of the length of Ty’s powerful stride.

The dog was walking quietly at his side, sending him upward glances as though longing for his approval.

“I was going to put you in the bunkhouse,” he said, opening the door and standing back from it. “But I can see that won’t work. Cringle said you’d be here a week. Would you say that’s a fair estimate?”

“I don’t mind the bunkhouse,” she said tersely. “A week maximum. If everything goes right.”

Why did she feel so unsure of that, suddenly? Everything on her photo shoots always went right. Because of her news photography background she had become adept at getting wonderful pictures without great lighting, without a huge team, without makeup artists.

She could just imagine what Ty Jordan would have to say about a makeup artist.

“And the guys surely wouldn’t mind you sharing the bunkhouse, either, but you can have my little sister’s room.” This was said with the quiet authority of a man who didn’t expect to be questioned.

She was sorely tempted to insist on the bunkhouse. She could tell him she had bunked with guys before. That war zones had a way of blurring lines and stripping modesty. But something about the tiny chink in his armor when he said “little sister” stopped her.

This was the side of him she wanted to capture on camera. The personal side. And she would have far more chance of doing that if she was camped out under the same roof as him.

He tied the dog to the outside of the door handle before he followed her into the house.

“Bathroom’s through here,” he said, dropping her bag on the floor. “If you want to slip off those things, I’ll get the first-aid kit.”

She said thank-you when what she really wanted to say was “go to hell.” She retrieved her bag, went into the bathroom and closed the door. She took off the ruined pantyhose, looked down at the ragged scrape across her knee.

She’d been a war correspondent for two years with nary a scratch.

She looked in the mirror. Her suit was ruined. Her face was smudged. Her hair was standing on end. She took off the suit and opened her suitcase. The all-important first impression had been made. Hopefully the first thirty seconds of it had more impact than the second thirty, but she doubted it. She put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. If she was taking her power back, she certainly wasn’t going to fix her hair, or refresh her make-up for him.

She did remove the smudge from her face before marching back out of the bathroom.

When she came out he was in the kitchen, rummaging through a white metal box with a red cross on the side of it. He didn’t even glance up at her.

The kitchen was unchanged, she thought looking around. Plain, a utilitarian room that served a function.

But it held memories, too—her and Stacey making a mess creating homemade pizza, him coming in, dirty from work, sexy as sin, and giving them hell. Then he’d softened the blow by saying how good it smelled, and he couldn’t wait to try it. She remembered playing cards at that scarred kitchen table with Stacey. He’d been tired, physical weariness bowing his shoulders, but when Stacey had pleaded, he had joined them, reluctantly, and ended up showing them how to play poker. Losing his reluctance a little later, he’d showed them a game called Blind Baseball.

She could not remember the rules or the point of the game, only that they had held the cards up on their foreheads where the other players could see them but they couldn’t see their own.

She could remember the laughter that had filled that room, that had chased that faint weariness from his face. His laughter had made him seem younger and more human. Incredibly, it had made him even more handsome than he had seemed before, and that had been plenty handsome. The moment had shone with a light almost iridescent, had stolen her breath from her lungs, and the joy of other good moments in her life had paled before the perfection of that one.

“Are you all right?”

He was looking at her closely.

“Yes,” she said. “I told you it was just a scratch.”

But she knew what a scratch could do. Four years ago he had scratched the surface of an uninitiated heart.

And that scratch had festered and grown to a wound.

“Have a seat over here, Miss Snow.”

“Call me Harrie.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Pardon?” She sat down at the chair he’d pulled out for her.

“I just can’t look at you and call you Harry.” He knelt down in front of her, completely unself-conscious, the medical kit on the ground beside him. He rolled up the leg of her jeans, without apparently noticing she had changed outfits. She found herself holding the side of the chair as if she was getting ready for takeoff.

“Fine by me, Mr. Jordan. Do you think you could make that Ms. Snow?”

He shrugged, indifferent, and didn’t invite her to call him Tyler, or Ty, as she had called him last time she was here. Looking at the top of his head, his dark hair shiny as silk, she wondered if there was any of that laughter-filled boy left in him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, his eyes flicking over the white of her knuckles on the edge of her chair.

“Thank you. I know.” He hadn’t even touched her yet, for God’s sake.

The touch, when it came, was everything she had feared, everything she had braced herself for.

It was strong, infinitely competent, as he carefully cleaned the area around the scrape on her knee. The skin of his palm brushed her lower knee as he swabbed her cut, and it was leather tough, the hand of man who worked outdoors in extreme weather and handled shovels and reins and newborn calves. The hand of a man who drove big trucks and chopped wood and fixed fences.

And yet there was none of that toughness in his touch. He was careful and extremely gentle, a man, she reminded herself, who had looked after scraped knees before. And broken arms.

“There, I think I’ve got the grit out,” he said, inspecting it carefully. His breath whispered across the dampness of the skin surrounding her scrape, and she had to close her eyes against the sensation that tingled through her tummy, the insane desire to lean forward and ask him to kiss it better.

He dabbed iodine on with a cotton swab on a wand that came out of the bottle. Thankfully the application required no direct contact, and allowed her to marshal her defenses.

But then he carefully cut a square of gauze, held that over the scrape, the warmth of his hand encircling her kneecap. With his other hand he juggled the medical tape, cutting off pieces, then pressing them firmly into place, his fingertips trailing liquid fire down skin she had not really been aware was so sensitive until now.

“All done,” he announced, and Harrie wasn’t sure if she was safe or sorry. He rolled her pant leg down and got to his feet.

It was about the sexiest thing that had ever happened to her, which probably summed up her pathetic luck with the opposite sex, including her ex-husband, quite nicely.

“Thank you,” she said, and clambered to her feet, wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “I’m fine. That was completely unnecessary. Nice. But unnecessary.”

She could feel herself getting red. Why had she said nice? “I meant kind,” she stammered, “not nice.”

She could tell he found her making the distinction amusing. Harrie could feel herself becoming exactly the same bumpkin she had been four years ago. She had to get this situation under control.

“I was just looking out for myself, Ms. Snow. I’m not real anxious to have you getting sick on the place. I don’t want to be doing any baby-sitting.”

It had been about him. She had the sudden feeling that coming back here had not been a great idea after all. He was going out of his way to make himself unlikable.

“Well, then let’s get to work, Mr. Jordan. As you know, my challenge will be to create the illusion of four seasons over the next week. I was hoping we could use the fireplace for the December shot. Hang a few stockings.”

“How do you know I have a fireplace?” he asked.

She should have known this would happen sometime. That she would let it slip that she was more familiar with him and this house than she should be.

“Your sister told me,” she lied brightly. “We tossed around the idea of how to create the seasons a little bit at the office.”

Wasn’t that just the problem with little white lies? She saw the faintest flicker in his eyes. He didn’t like that he had been discussed at the office.

Harriet had always been an absolutely terrible liar, and she could see by the long look he gave her she had not improved in that department. “I’ll just follow you around with the camera,” she said brightly. “Whatever you normally do, go ahead and do it. You won’t even know I’m there.”

“I usually have a shower right now,” he drawled, watching her.

She stared at him and gulped. She could feel a horrible wave of heat moving up her neck to her face.

“In the middle of the day?” she managed to challenge him, her voice a squeak.

“Just making sure your limits are the same as mine,” he said. “I’m a private man, Ms. Snow. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to take pictures.”

She begged herself to challenge him, to not let him back her down. She lifted her chin and said, “I don’t know, Mr. Jordan, a nice steamy shower shot would probably sell a whole pile of calendars.”

Then she spoiled the effect entirely by blushing. She gulped and looked at her feet.

She saw his booted feet move into her range of vision. She refused to look up, and then she felt that hand, so familiar to her after the knee episode, touch her chin ever so lightly.

She lifted her face to him and didn’t look away when he scanned her quizzically.

“Don’t play with fire, Ms. Snow.”

What could be more embarrassing than a full-grown mature woman being embarrassed by something so innocuous?

Something changed in his eyes. A puzzled look came into them.

She was almost sure he recognized her, or if he didn’t, something had tickled his memory, troubled him.

“They should have sent the man,” he said.

She bristled. “I happen to be very good at my job. And for your information, I’ve been a war correspondent. I’ve lived in close quarters with men in very rough conditions.”

“Really?” he said, his eyes narrowed as if he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Really,” she said coolly. “Besides, women get better shots of men, for obvious reasons.”

“I don’t find them obvious. Could you explain?”

“It’s the male preening thing. ‘Little lady, let me show you how big and strong I am.”’

He stared at her, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. He gave his head a shake. “Is there any chance we could have you out of here in less than a week?”

“Cooperating would help.”

“Can you ride a horse?”

Now this was the question she’d been dreading. She’d fallen off a horse last time she’d been here. It had been the first time she had ever ridden, and it hadn’t been the horse’s fault at all.

Ty had been riding in the lead, Stacey behind him.

And Harrie, last in line, had been leaning way too far out, mesmerized by the way he looked in the saddle, her first cheap 35 mm raised to her eye, wanting that photograph so badly.

She’d fallen and broken her arm, ending her visit.

The humiliation had led her to take riding lessons the following year while on assignment in England. She had never really got the feel for it. She could manage walk, trot, canter, stop, but the instructor had told her what she already knew.

She repeated it to him. “I can manage the basics, but I don’t have a good seat.”

She saw his eyes flick to the area in question, and she saw the comeback flash through his eyes, knew she had left herself wide open to it.

But apparently he had decided making her blush was not that amusing, because he said nothing for a moment. He was still watching her, puzzled, and she had a feeling he was a breath away from figuring that puzzle out when a loud noise ripped through the house, a banshee wail of nails being pulled from wood, of hinges parting. The noise was followed by a crash and a splinter.

Ty raced to the kitchen window, and she followed.

Basil was racing across the yard, straight toward the cattle pen that had intrigued him before. Ty’s back door, still attached to the leash, skidded along behind him.

Ty said three words in a row that would have made a sailor blush, then hurtled toward the door. She picked up her camera, but had to stop and put her shoes on. Then she went in hot pursuit. This was more like it. The war zone she could handle.

Chapter Three

If there was a feeling that Ty Jordan hated more than any other in the world it was this one: he did not like being out of control. He was aware of that dislike bubbling away briskly inside of him as he bolted after the dog.

A dog she had brought with her.

The she who should have been a he.

Male preening. As if he was some peacock put here for her entertainment.

She had better figure this out real quick: the Bar ZZ was Ty Jordan’s property, his domain, and he had already decided he wasn’t rearranging anything about his lifestyle to accommodate the stupid calendar.

He had been made a promise—by Cringle himself and by his sister—that his life would not be disturbed or disrupted in any way.

That blinking dog was heading right for the cow and calf pen. With a burst of speed Ty caught up to the door that was twisting and turning and flopping on the lead behind the dog. He threw himself on top of it, hoping at least to slow the dog down.

Ms. Snow, whom he could not think of as Harry, even in his mind, yelled something at him, but he didn’t quite catch what it was.

Two hundred and three pounds landing on the door did slow the dog down—minutely. Ty was now bouncing along behind the dog, riding the door on his stomach, like a surfer on a board. He found the door handle and unraveled the leash where it was tied to it.

“Watch your face,” she yelled, and he realized that was what she had yelled the first time.

He cast her one brief scornful look before he managed to unknot the leash from the door handle. He pulled it free, rolled from the door, got to his feet and hauled in Basil, who came to him happily, his big tongue lolling out of his mouth, his tail flagging.

“Kiss me and your days are numbered,” he warned.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” He bent over at the waist, breathing hard. He became aware of the click and whir of a camera, straightened and glared at her.

She lowered the camera, studied him and then nodded, satisfied. “I was worried about your face,” she said. “A black eye or a bruise could make things complicated.”

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