Porcupine Ranch

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Sally Carleen

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Copyright

“I noticed you haven’t been making my bed.”

Hannah seemed mystified by Clayton’s accusation. “Make the bed? Every morning?”

“Straighten the covers. Put the spread on top.”

“But—you sleep in that bed.”

“That’s true. But only at night. It can sit here made up the whole day while I’m working.”

“You should air it during the day so it’ll be fresh at night. What benefit do you derive from it being made while you’re gone? You’ll only see it at night before you unmake it.”

She stood beside his bed, inches away from him, looking at him tentatively. She was as wrong for him as any woman could be. But he wanted to pull her into his arms and sink into the unmade bed with her, and hold her all night and all day…

Dear Reader,

This April, let Silhouette Romance shower you with treats. We’ve got must-read miniseries, bestselling authors and tons of happy endings!

The nonstop excitement begins with Marie Ferrarella’s contribution to BUNDLES OF JOY. A single dad finds himself falling for his live-in nanny—who’s got a baby of her own. So when a cry interrupts a midnight kiss, the question sure to be asked is Your Baby or Mine?

TWINS ON THE DOORSTEP, a miniseries about babies who bring love to the most unsuspecting couples, begins with The Sheriff’s Son. Beloved author Stella Bagwell weaves a magical tale of secrets and second chances.

Also set to march down the aisle this month is the second member of THE SINGLE DADDY CLUB. Donna Clayton, winner of the prestigious Holt Medallion, brings you the story of a desperate daddy and the pampered debutante who becomes a Nanny in the Nick of Time.

SURPRISE BRIDES, a series about unexpected weddings, continues with Laura Anthony’s Look-Alike Bride. This classic amnesia plot line has a new twist: Everyone believes a plain Jane is really a Hollywood starlet— including the actress’s ex-fiancé!

Rounding out the month is the heartwarming A Wife for Doctor Sam by Phyllis Halldorson, the story of a small town doctor who’s vowed never to fall in love again. And Sally Carleen’s Porcupine Ranch, about a housekeeper who knows nothing about keeping house, but knows exactly how to keep her sexy boss happy!

Enjoy!

Melissa Senate

Senior Editor

Silhouette Romance

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Porcupine Ranch

Sally Carleen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Linda Steward and Sarah Reed

for letting me borrow their real ranch

SALLY CARLEEN

For as long as she can remember, Sally planned to be a writer when she grew up. Finally, one day, after more years than she cares to admit, she realized she was as grown up as she was likely to become, and began to write romance novels. In the years prior to her epiphany, Sally supported her writing habit by working as a legal secretary, real-estate agent, legal assistant, leasing agent, an executive secretary, and in various other occupations.

She now writes full-time and looks upon her previous careers as research and/or torture. A native of McAlester, Oklahoma, and naturalized citizen of Dallas, Texas, Sally now lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, with her husband, Max, their very large cat, Leo, and a very small dog, Cricket. Her interests, besides writing, are chocolate and Classic Coke.

Readers can write to Sally at P.O. Box 6614, Lee’s Summit, MO 64086.

Chapter One

Hannah Lindsay rubbed her sweaty palms down the sides of her cotton skirt. Yesterday, she’d lost her mind or she never would have let Samuel talk her into coming out here. Today, she’d lost control of her body. No matter how hard she concentrated, she simply couldn’t make her hand reach up and knock on the door in front of her.

She turned and looked wistfully back toward her small white car parked only a few yards away. The normally nondescript vehicle had been transformed into a bright, beckoning beacon against the dreary landscape. Tufts of grass, a few small cacti and several gnarled mesquite trees stabbed the flat, parched, brown earth, their green colors muted by the dust

Only forty-five minutes south of San Antonio, Clayton Sinclair’s ranch seemed light-years from her cozy condo in the heart of the city. If she drove really fast, she could make it home in forty minutes. Maybe thirty-five.

Behind her the door opened.

She spun around to see a huge cowboy standing in the doorway, glowering down at her.

Okay, maybe huge was an exaggeration, but he was definitely large, and he was definitely glowering.

She recognized Clayton Sinclair from the picture Samuel, his grandfather, had shown her. He was a younger, tougher, sun-bronzed version of his grandfather. Tall, like Samuel, but with much wider shoulders and a bigger chest, as if he wrestled two-ton steers before breakfast.

His hair was light, sun-streaked. Probably wrestled those steers after lunch in the midday sun, too. Squint lines fanned out from intensely blue eyes that seemed to burn from his deeply tanned face. Whoever said blue was a cool color? Hannah thought.

He wore faded blue jeans over a flat stomach and muscular thighs, and his faded denim shirt was open at the throat, allowing light brown curls to spring out. Clayton oozed virility and sexuality and he didn’t look like anybody’s grandson. This was going to be even worse than Hannah had anticipated.

“Can I help you?” he asked—demanded, actually—when she continued to gawk at him as if she were an idiot.

Things were getting worse by the minute. Talking to strangers wasn’t easy for Hannah under the best of circumstances, and talking, under false pretenses, to a stranger who oozed sexuality didn’t even rank in the top fifty percent of her list of possibilities. In fact, it was pretty darn close to the bottom. Right down there with the day she graduated from high school and was supposed to give the valedictorian speech…and froze in front of a thousand people.

She opened her mouth, but coherent words couldn’t fight their way past the tense muscles in her throat. She gurgled.

That should make a terrific first impression. He’d probably send her packing before she figured out how to make her vocal chords work again.

So? Wasn’t that what she wanted?

“Are you Hannah Lindsay?” he finally asked.

She had no idea what he’d expected, but she obviously wasn’t it. The disappointed look on his face knifed straight into her heart. Suddenly she was back in her adolescent years when everything she did was a disappointment to her parents.

She nodded in answer to his question, giving up the effort to verbalize. The movement was a little jerky, but she was pretty sure it was the right one. Up and down with the head. Up and down. Good girl.

“You’re applying for the job of live-in house-keeper?” He sounded resigned. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he knew all about her deficit in housekeeping skills.

She cleared her throat and straightened her spine. “Yes.” That was much better. A squeak instead of a gurgle. A recognizable word. She was becoming practically verbose.

“I’m Clayton Sinclair. Come in.” He stepped aside, holding the screen door for her.

She swallowed hard, took a deep breath and ordered her feet to take her into the big old ranch house. Right foot. Left foot. Breathe.

She almost lost cadence as she brushed past Clayton and the compelling scents of leather and open country overwhelmed her, painting a vivid mental picture of him on a horse, swinging a lariat and roping longhorn cattle. She’d better omit breathing from her walking sequence. One thing at a time.

With its high ceiling and drawn drapes, the large room was cool, shadowy, cavernous and ominous. She half expected a bat to fly out of a corner at any minute. Or out of her own personal belfry. Today’s events certainly proved she had a few up there.

“Have a seat.” Clayton indicated a looming, Victorian-style armchair patterned with large flowers on the back. Maybe the dim lighting was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see those flowers up close.

From long habit, she reached behind her to shove things aside before she sat down, but the chair was empty. No books, papers, computer disks, shoes. That was probably one of the things housekeepers did. Kept the chairs empty. She had no empty chairs at home, not even after her housekeeper came.

She perched on the edge. Ready to run…to escape.

Clayton sat on a long red sofa a few feet away. It was empty, too. Until he sat down, anyway. He filled up a good portion of it and looked totally out of place on the formal, feminine furniture.

“The position involves a lot of work,” he said, crossing one booted foot over the other knee with relaxed, unconscious masculinity.

The gesture added one more layer of tension to the mass already squirming in Hannah’s stomach. Nothing could make this ordeal easy, but it would have helped if Clayton had been short and pudgy.

She didn’t try to talk this time. Best to save her effort for when he asked her a direct question.

“Keeping this place clean isn’t an easy job,” he continued. “As you can see, my mother furnished it pretty elaborately. It’s not my style, but she comes back to visit every month or two, so I like to keep all her tables and vases and—” He waved a negligent hand around the room, and Hannah noticed lamps, statues, bowls…even a bird cage decorated with flowers. A lot of wasted space, it seemed to her. Nothing that served any practical purpose.

Her survey of the room ended with the painting over the fireplace. Samuel would be pleased to know it was still there. He was right. His wife had been a beautiful woman, but even in the portrait she looked frail.

“The floors are all hardwood and have to be polished, except the kitchen,” Clayton went on. “It’s linoleum and has to be waxed. Then there’s the laundry. I have five ranch hands who’ll be here through the spring roundup. They stay in the bunkhouse, so you don’t have to clean for them, but you will be expected to do their laundry as well as mine, and you’ll cook for all of us, three meals a day.”

He paused, peering at her intently. Unfortunately, her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and she could see his dubious expression quite clearly. He didn’t for one minute think she could do all those things.

Well, she couldn’t, so why did his attitude upset her? She could design complex computer programs as easily as most people wrote letters, but her cooking skills stopped with peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwiches or an occasional frozen dinner.

She ought to stand up, agree with Clayton, thank him for the interview and leave. She’d promised only to come out here and apply for the job. She could honestly tell Samuel she’d done her best. And she had warned him there was no way she’d actually be hired.

Stand! she ordered her legs. Up!

They ignored her.

She wasn’t surprised.

“Your former employer gave you a glowing recommendation,” Clayton continued.

“Glowing recommendation?” she repeated, her surprise conquering her nerves sufficiently to give her a voice.

Omni Software, Inc. had given her a glowing recommendation as a housekeeper?

That was impossible. Of course they hadn’t. He must be trying to let her know that he knew who she was and knew this whole thing was a hoax.

She dropped her head, letting her masses of unruly hair fall protectively forward. She should have felt relief that it was all over, but instead her cheeks flooded with embarrassment.

It wasn’t enough that she looked like a complete idiot in front of Clayton Sinclair, now she’d been exposed as a deceitful idiot.

“Yes, your employer said you were the best house-keeper he’s ever had.” Clayton’s tone was dry and unenthusiastic…a little angry, she thought. Not that she blamed him, considering the circumstances. “Actually I didn’t talk to Mr. Taylor directly.”

Hannah gasped, her head snapping upright at the mention of the surname Samuel had taken years ago when he’d awakened in a mental hospital in California, unable to remember his last name or how he got there. By the time he’d fully regained his memory, he’d already begun his business under that name and had kept it.

What had Samuel done?

Clayton frowned at her gasp, then continued. “Glen Ramsey, my banker, tells me that Mr. Taylor, who’s one of his major depositors, has given you a good reference and would really appreciate it if I’d hire you. This message comes from my banker who holds the note on this ranch—a man I really need to keep happy.”

Now she knew what Samuel had done. Pressured somebody at the bank to pressure Clayton. No wonder he’d been so unconcerned about her lack of skills! The game had been rigged from the beginning.

If she got out of there without having a stroke, she’d kill Samuel.

“I’m sorry he did that,” she mumbled, staring at the floor, again letting her hair fall forward around her face, embarrassed at her friend’s tactics.

She rose on shaky legs. Less shaky than when she’d come in, though. Now she had a purpose. Make it home to kill Samuel.

Clayton heaved a long sigh. “No, no. Sit back down. It’s all right. I don’t have applicants for this job lined up for ten miles down the road, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have time to interview them. I need a housekeeper, and I need one now.”

Hannah lifted her head. Surely he wasn’t saying what it sounded like he was saying.

He ran a hand through his hair, shifting the strands of light and shadow. She could almost feel the coarse texture, the warmth brought inside from days of working in the sunshine.

And sweating under a cowboy hat, she told herself in an unsuccessful effort to shut down her flight into fantasy. This was a real, working cowboy, not someone from a movie.

Somehow that thought made Clayton even more attractive.

“I don’t like being pressured, but, on the other hand, I really don’t care how I get a housekeeper as long as I get somebody who can do the job. Samuel Taylor assured my banker that you’re a very competent housekeeper and that you could handle the work with no problem.” A slight frown darted across his features, creasing his forehead between his eyebrows and making his jawline look even more square. “I just didn’t expect you to be so…” He spread his hands, moved them close together then far apart.

Hannah watched in tense fascination, wondering what he hadn’t expected her to be.

“My former housekeeper was fifty years old,” he said, “and, uh, sturdy. Mrs. Grogan could throw a hundred-pound sack of feed over her shoulder and carry it to the barn. Not that you’d be required to do that, of course.”

Hannah straightened her admittedly slim shoulders. Was he suggesting she couldn’t heft a hundred pound bag over her shoulder and carry it to the barn?

“You think I can’t?”

He looked at her dubiously, and her shoulders slumped.

Certainly she couldn’t. Why did it bother her that he had pointed out the obvious? She couldn’t cook or do laundry or polish floors, either, so why should she feel indignant and upset that he wasn’t going to hire her to do just that? Hadn’t she learned after all these years that it was pointless to try to succeed at activities for which she had no ability?

“We’ve been three weeks without a housekeeper,” he went on, ignoring her dumb question. “Mrs. Grogan left unexpectedly when her mother up in Oklahoma had a stroke. Last week she called to say she was going to have to stay there. My extra hands for the spring roundup came on two days ago, and the five of them have been complaining ever since about having to eat sandwiches after doing the work of ten men.”

He slapped one big hand on his denim-covered thigh, making her jump. “Okay, so you’re young and, uh, slim. I guess neither one of those problems is fatal. We’re in a financial crunch right now and I probably can’t start you at what you were making, but if the salary I mentioned in the ad is okay, you’ve got the job.”

Hannah fell back into the chair.

“The job?” she croaked. “I’ve got…?”

Chapter Two

Clayton studied his new housekeeper curiously. Her disjointed response to his job offer was the oddest he’d ever encountered. While he resented his banker’s pressure tactics, at the same time, he’d been relieved that his search was over. He was ready to hire the woman and be done with it.

His comment that he didn’t have time to interview a lot of applicants had been a gross understatement. This was the busiest time of the year as well as the most expensive, what with the extra hands. Every minute he spent interviewing cost him money—and money was something that was in short supply, especially with the continuing drought.

He hadn’t had any doubts about hiring Hannah Lindsay until he’d opened the door and seen her standing there, looking terrified and completely out of place.

She was a little taller than average, but so slim he was afraid the first strong west wind would blow her away. Big brown eyes peeked out from masses of shiny, dark brown, curly hair that almost hid the rest of her face. How was she going to keep that hair out of her eyes when she leaned over to scrub floors? Her clothes weren’t very housekeeperish, either—a blouse with long, puffy sleeves, a vest and a long flowing skirt. She looked like some kind of an artist, much too unworldly and fragile to handle the ranch.

She’d come into the stuffy old house trailing the scent of roses, and she had a look about her that made him think of a spiderweb with a drop of dew on it, quivering in the morning sunlight. He wanted to touch her, feel the translucent skin of her delicate face.

Clayton clenched his callused hands and mentally ordered them to keep away from that porcelain skin. He’d threaten the other guys within an inch of their lives if they got out of line with her, too. From the looks of her, he didn’t think she’d be able to deal with the rough characters he’d hired for spring roundup.

Nevertheless, this Mr. Taylor had given her a great reference, and, even if he had a choice after Glen Ramsey’s persuasive phone call, he was desperate.

“My banker said Mr. Taylor has already closed up his place and left for Europe, and you’ll be able to move in and start work immediately.” Those big eyes got bigger. Did she not understand what he meant? “Can you start work soon? Tomorrow? Today?”

“Tomorrow?”

He wasn’t sure if she was repeating something she didn’t comprehend or agreeing to start tomorrow. He elected to put the positive slant on it. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Morning?”

She really did have some major communication problems. Thankfully, cooking, washing and cleaning didn’t require a lot of communication. “As soon as you get up, you get dressed and then come on out here.”

He stood.

She stood.

“Would you like to see your room?”

She shook her head, the motion jerky but a definite negative.

“In the morning, then. I’m very pleased to have met you, Ms. Lindsay.” He offered his hand to shake and after a second’s hesitation, she took it.

Her hand was slim, smooth and soft in his. Again the word fragile came to mind. And tantalizing as that concept might be to Clayton’s male ego, it wasn’t a good one for a housekeeper on a ranch in Texas brush country. Out here, only the strongest survived.

Reluctantly Clayton turned her hand loose even as he fought an urge to pat it and smile and reassure her…and not hire her to take care of his house.

He moved to the door and opened it.

She came to life then and, with a wild-eyed look, darted out the door, across the yard, into her car and peeled away in a cloud of dust.

Clayton shook his head as he watched her go. Such a pretty girl. Too bad she was so odd. Maybe her mother didn’t take enough vitamins when she was pregnant.

He made a quick check to see if they had enough lunch meat and bread for dinner. Damn! They were running low on mayo. Thank goodness he could stop worrying about things like that come tomorrow.

So what if Hannah Lindsay was a little strange, a bit off center? She had great references.

From an elderly man who lived in a condo, not a crew of half-civilized cowboys on a completely uncivilized ranch.

Determinedly ignoring the nagging voice of doom, Clayton went out to continue vaccinating the hundred plus head of cattle they’d rounded up that morning. The men would work even harder knowing they’d soon have decent meals.

Hannah went straight to Samuel’s apartment, ignoring her own door across the hallway. She banged on the door with one fist while she repeatedly jabbed the doorbell with the other.

The older man opened the door almost immediately. “Did you meet him?” he asked before she had a chance to say anything. Just seeing him standing there looking so hopeful took the heat from her self-righteous anger.

His physical resemblance to her own grandfather was superficial, but the kindness in his blue eyes, his uncritical acceptance of her, his caring attitude were hauntingly reminiscent of the man who had been her world. She wanted to return his caring, to do everything she could for him, all the things she hadn’t been able to do for her grandfather because he’d died too soon.

“Come in and tell me about my grandson,” he said. “How did he look? What did he say?”

“How could you do this to me?” She tried to force indignation into her tone. “You called somebody at the bank and lied to him, and now I’ve got the job as your grandson’s housekeeper!”

“But Hannah, you agreed to do it for me.”

Hannah spread her hands in frustration. “I agreed to apply for the job, but I never dreamed I’d get it! I told you I wasn’t going to lie about my qualifications.”

“And that’s very admirable of you, but not very practical. That’s why I had to lie for you. If you didn’t get the job, how could you get to know my grandson? How could you smooth the way for me to meet him in person and not just in this cold, flat picture my detective took of him?”

Samuel looked so sad, so lonely. In the six months since he’d moved in across the hall from her, he’d become a dear friend, and she knew how much this meant to him. She wanted to help him.

But she couldn’t.

She’d already crumpled under the impact of Clayton Sinclair’s disapproval. She’d had more than enough disapproval in her life. Working as Clayton’s housekeeper guaranteed she’d give him plenty of occasions for more.