Wyoming Born and Bred

“Whether your contract is legally binding or not, it’s lucky for you that I’m a man of my word. Looks like you’ve got yourselves a prisoner, boys.”

Wondering exactly what she’d let herself in for, Pat contemplated Cameron’s use of the word lucky. It was obvious that Johnny and Kirk were fascinated by the rough-and-tumble cowboy who looked like he’d just stepped off the set of their favorite television series. That phony line about him being a man of his word certainly sounded like a load of typical Hollywood hype to her. Pat’s cynical thoughts were interrupted by her youngest son’s most frequently uttered complaint.

“I’m hungry.”

“I just fed you,” she responded with a telltale sigh.

“But that was hours ago.”

It was at that precise moment that the baby decided she had been ignored long enough. Flinging her bottle out of the playpen, Amy protested her prolonged captivity with an ear-splitting wail intended to let anyone within a mile radius know of her unhappiness.

Cameron watched Pat’s eyelids drift shut in weariness. “Go get your sister, boys,” she instructed, “and I’ll get started on dinner.”

It wasn’t every day a real live cowboy landed on their front steps, and certainly not one who appeared willing to indulge them in a game of make-believe. Consequently, Johnny delegated the mundane chore to his little brother.

“Kirk, you go get Amy while I take the prisoner to the hoosegow.”

Pat graced Cameron with an amused smile. “You can take that to mean the house. Hopefully you and I will be able to have a calmer discussion about terms of your new job over dinner.”

Proud of the way she uttered the words as smoothly as if she were looking at the man’s résumé instead of the hard plane of his chest, she added as an afterthought, “That’ll give me a chance to thank you properly for saving me from breaking my neck earlier.”

Although Cameron could think of a variety of ways that this fiery little number could show her appreciation, he doubted whether any of them were what she had in mind. He tried bridling those wayward thoughts, but his lazy smile nonetheless made Pat remember for the first time in a very long while that she was a woman as well as a mother.

Chapter Two

Hoping to stop the boys’ squabble over who was supposed to be in charge of the baby, Cameron paused on his way to the “hoosegow” to emancipate the squalling toddler from her playpen. There was no benevolence in the act; he wanted only to put an end to the tot’s deafening howls for attention. It was little wonder her mother was crazy. In his opinion, anyone forced to endure that kind of nerve-grating caterwauling for more than one solid minute just might have a right to be.

To his complete and utter surprise, the baby stopped crying the instant he picked her up. Grateful for small miracles, Cameron mutely bore the fruit-stained kiss she planted upon his cheek as she nestled against his chest with a satisfied coo. Her actions only confirmed his theory that women were genetically programmed from birth to manipulate men. A femme fatale at this tender age would undoubtedly turn a mother prematurely gray and a father bald.

Which, by the way, made him wonder where the heck the man of the house was, anyway. Cameron was anxious to see what kind of elusive louse expected a woman to reshingle a house all by herself. He hadn’t noted a ring on Pat’s finger, but then again Cameron wouldn’t exactly expect her to wear one while doing such physically exacting work.

“For crying out loud!” he exclaimed, shaken from his errant thoughts by a growing wet spot down the front of his clean, new shirt.

One didn’t have to be Dr. Spock to discern the cause to be a leaky diaper. Loosening the baby’s sticky hands from around his neck, Cameron thrust her from him as if she were a package of nitroglycerin. As far as he was concerned, all children should come wrapped in cellophane with detailed warning labels attached.

“Keep on moving, mister,” Johnny directed him at the end of his plastic barrel.

Cameron gritted his teeth as he foisted the baby into Kirk’s thin arms. Not used to being bossed around by anyone, it was especially galling to bend his will to a ten-year-old’s. As he took his first faltering steps toward captivity, Cameron could have sworn that big goofy-looking bird in the corral winked at him.

Pat paused to watch her children interact with her new foreman. Considering his overtly hostile reaction to her, he was actually being a pretty darned good sport—or prisoner, rather—as Johnny directed him at gunpoint up the back steps. Pushed back at a rakish angle, Cameron’s black felt cowboy hat allowed his hair to fall carelessly across his forehead. Pat couldn’t help but notice how the dark blond color was shot through unevenly with streaks of sunshine. Suddenly he looked far less a broad-shouldered ruffian than a charming grown up version of her own two little imps.

Albeit an incredibly virile version.

Startled by the womanly reaction that curled her stomach up in a tight ball and sent handfuls of tingles racing through her body in a flash of heat, Pat was amazed that some stranger could waltz into her front yard, pluck her in midair like a pop fly and simultaneously make her wish she was wearing something soft and sexy. She thought she had buried those feelings with her husband, and it terrified her to think of them resurfacing. As a mother and businesswoman, she had more than enough to handle with a clear head, let alone one filled with the stuff and nonsense of romantic fairy tales.

Once upon a time, Pat had been young and naive enough to fall for such balderdash—and had spent the duration of her life paying for it. Ignoring her parents’ repeated warnings that Hadley Erhart’s pockets were as empty as his promises, she had eloped at eighteen, pledging herself one hundred percent to each of her husband’s successive ventures. Unfortunately, Hadley had a habit of expending more energy in the engineering of his next get-rich-quick scheme than in the arduous process of making any of them actually work. As his stern father-in-law commented at his funeral, Hadley was a whole lot better at starting things than finishing them.

It was less allegiance to her late husband’s memory than a commitment to abandon the gypsy life they had lived, hopping from one risky endeavor to another that kept Pat so stubbornly rooted to this place. The moment she’d laid eyes upon it, she had fallen in love with this run-down old ranch. It had as much character as the mountain range just outside her back door. Life in the shadows of those larger-than-life mountains was hard, no question about it But, isolated from the problems of more populous areas, the soil in Wyoming was good for growing happy, healthy children.

Even though the local naysayers were laying bets against her chances of surviving just one winter, Pat was determined to make a real home for her family right here. And if that meant having to humble herself by making dinner for some obnoxious cowboy who openly regretted saving her neck, then so be it.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said, clearing off a spot for Cameron on the sofa and casting an embarrassed look at the abandoned toys cluttering the room, “while I get started on dinner.”

Short of declaring it a national disaster area, there was nothing she could do about the state of disarray of her house. Fixing supper was the priority of the moment. Simple fare like peanut butter sandwiches or macaroni and cheese generally sufficed for their evening meal, but one look at those long legs stretched across her living room floor sent that idea skittering away like a sunbeam upon rushing water. It was highly unlikely that a man as big as Cameron would be satisfied with her usual laissez-faire attitude toward food.

Pat would have liked to have impressed her new employee with her culinary talents. Unfortunately, the empty pantry was a reflection of her checkbook. She could only hope that her new foreman was handier with a hammer than Hadley had been. The last thing she needed around here was another helpless man with an appetite to match his impressive frame.

As if worried Cameron might attempt an escape, Johnny and Kirk took their places on either side of their prisoner on the couch and settled in for their favorite television program. It was an animated version of an old Western, underscored by the timeless theme of good versus bad. The last time he’d watched a show where the heroes and villains were so easily identified by the color of their hats, he’d been no older than the two boys who held him captive.

Cameron glanced uncomfortably at his own dark hat resting on the edge of the sofa. Like a dog trying to rid itself of a pesky flea, he tried shaking the feeling off. It wasn’t as if God had personally assigned him to this family’s troubles. He had more than enough of his own to handle. Cameron reminded himself that his primary objective was to ascertain just how cheaply he could buy back the old place. And do so before he became emotionally attached to the “squatters” who were presently attached to it. He knew that anything more would simply be tempting fate.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cameron caught a glimpse of the woman working in the kitchen. He snapped his head around in a double take. It looked like she was attacking an avocado with a hammer. A second look determined that it was in fact the biggest, greenest egg he had ever seen. While green eggs and ham might be a suitable meal for Dr. Seuss, the very thought made Cameron’s stomach quiver.

Ten minutes later he found himself seated before the world’s largest omelet. Milk, home-canned apples, and garden-fresh salad accompanied it. Ever vigilant, Johnny and Kirk flanked him on both sides. Amy sat beside her mother in a high chair that had been mended too often with great gobs of duct tape.

Despite the growling in his stomach, Cameron was about to beg off the main course when a familiar voice echoed through his mind. “People whose manners are absent probably are missing more than just their manners. No matter how old you get, son, or how important you might think you’ve become, just remember your mother raised you right and act accordingly.”

Rose Wade had been dead for almost fifteen years, but Cameron felt her presence in this house as surely as when she had taught him respect at her table. A lump formed in his throat. As inexplicably as a moth is drawn to a flame, Cameron’s memories had led him back home in search of that which had been stolen from him. Was it innocence, he wondered, or pride?

An obedient son, he complied with his mother’s ghostly command. Sectioning off a tiny piece of omelet, he took a hesitant bite. To his astonishment, it was quite tasty.

He lifted his gaze from his plate to discover Pat waiting for his reaction. She looked so anxious and so lovely sitting there that his heart swelled up in his chest like an overinflated balloon.

“Not bad,” he commented, taking another mouthful.

Cameron watched the hardness around her eyes soften. He was on the verge of encouraging her to use that dynamite smile of hers a little more often when a handful of egg drilled him square in the forehead.

“Amy!” her mother cried out in horror.

Undaunted, the tot launched her spoon into space where it did a double somersault before landing in the middle of their guest’s dinner plate.

The boys roared as Amy clapped her hands in glee.

“I’m so sorry,” Pat stammered, coming at Cameron with a napkin.

“No harm done, ma‘am,” he said, stopping his red-faced hostess in her tracks with a careless wave of the hand. “It isn’t the first time I’ve had egg on my face, and I doubt it’ll be the last.”

Pat was impressed by this gruff cowboy’s tact. She knew few men who would have handled the incident half as graciously. The instant the poor man had stepped onto her property, he’d been beset by calamity—from women dropping from the sky into his arms, being captured by the infamous Erhart Boys, to being ambushed at the dinner table. Watching him wipe the splatters from his once clean Western-cut shirt, she could hardly blame Cameron for his lack of enthusiasm about signing on at Fort Bedlam.

Inwardly railing against the formal “ma’am” which made her feel like her own world-weary mother, she suggested, “Why don’t you just call me Pat? Everybody does.”

A candid appraisal glittered in Cameron’s eyes. “If you don’t mind my saying, Patricia suits a pretty woman better.”

The blood in her veins began to bubble under the heat of the glance that took her in head to toe. A hot blush crept up her neck. It was silly how pleased she was by the offhanded compliment

Lordy, had she completely forgotten what it was like to have a man flirt with her? Having done both a man and a woman’s job for so very long, she had almost come to think of herself in androgynous terms. The gentle reminder that she had another name besides Mom made her suddenly feel as giddy as a teenager.

Smoothing a wisp of stray hair back from her face, she tossed him a disarming smile. “Patricia’s just fine with me. Now if you have any questions about the job, this would be a good time to ask them.”

Unfortunately the question uppermost in Cameron’s mind was not one he thought should be asked in front of children. Over the years on the rodeo circuit, he’d had more than his fair share of made-up, coifed tarts bat their mascaraed eyelashes at him. Why none of them made him feel as overtly sexual, as purely animalistic as his new boss did with a simple smile was beyond him. He wondered exactly what it was about this unpretentious woman masquerading as a teenager in those baggy overalls that was so unbelievably sexy it set his heart ticking like an overwound five-dollar watch.

“Just one,” he said, giving voice to the question that he had been wanting to ask ever since this woman had tumbled from the roof into his arms like some fallen angel.

“Where’s your husband?” And doesn’t he know he’s a fool to leave you here all alone?

Patricia glanced quickly at the children. She was not yet comfortable discussing their father’s death in front of them. It was a wound still too raw to the touch. Though far from being a good provider by society’s standards, Hadley had seldom raised his voice let alone a hand to his children. They missed him terribly.

“I’m a widow,” she said softly.

Cameron’s fork clattered against his plate. His eyes looked everywhere in the room but at her.

His embarrassment was almost audible. Patricia hadn’t meant to make him squirm. After all, he had no part in the cruel hand fate had dealt her. She asked the boys to get more milk from the refrigerator and, once they were out of earshot, plunged into an abbreviated version of Hadley’s death with the swiftness of a surgeon working without anesthesia.

“A little less than a year ago my husband was killed in a car wreck. The roads were icy, he’d been drinking and the guardrail didn’t hold. The coroner assured me his death was instantaneous.”

A lump lodged itself sideways in Cameron’s throat. He couldn’t imagine a single mother attempting to run this ranch all by herself while raising three tiny human tornadoes. The only sound he could hear in the deaf ening silence that followed her account was that of his own heartbeat.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

It was inadequate, but he could think of nothing else to add as the boys slid back into their seats beside him. When he had impetuously signed that contract back in the hospital, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might actually come to give a tinker’s damn about the people he intended running off this place. He had expected to be greeted by some rich, hobbyist rancher. Not a vulnerable, young widow with spunk enough to put a chink in his well-polished emotional armor.

Cameron didn’t fancy himself a sentimental man, but he figured he’d have to be blind not to notice how bare the cupboards were, how thin the children were, how desperate the woman was. He would have had to have been made of granite not to want to kiss away the furrows worrying her lovely brow. To sample the sweetness of those full, inviting lips...

Criminey! He had no more control of his thoughts than of a wild mustang roaming the range. Good sense warned him to get out while the getting was good. The very thought of working on a bird ranch was an insult to his dignity. No self-respecting cowboy would be caught dead eating one of these overgrown chickens let alone acting as foreman for what was certain to be the most unpopular ranch in the county. The jeers and jibes were already ringing in his ears. Some of the announcers on the circuit had taken to introducing him as the Big Man. Cameron wasn’t particularly eager to trade in that moniker for the Bird Man.

“So can I count on you staying the next three months?” Patricia asked, naming the time frame outlined in the contract she’d drawn up.

Cameron twisted uncomfortably in his seat. Darned if the whole family wasn’t looking at him like he was Saint Michael himself sent to rescue them from Satan’s clutches. He hoped that Patricia had registered her children’s big ol’ pleading eyes as lethal weapons down at the local police station. He hadn’t felt this much pressure in the arena with thousands of eyes trained on his performance.

“Pleeeeeease stay,” Kirk begged.

“On the cowboy trail, a promise made is a promise kept,” Johnny interjected with all the solemnity of an old-time hanging judge.

Cameron signaled capitulation with a heavy sigh.

“Three months and not a day longer,” he grumbled. “And there are a couple of things we need to set straight right from the get-go.”

Raising her eyebrows, Patricia waited patiently for him to continue.

“You can count on me to do the dirtiest, hardest work you need done—without complaint. Fencing, roofing, painting. It doesn’t much matter to me. I’ve even been known to fix a broken-down motor or two, but I’m telling you right up front, I’m no bird wrangler.”

A smile played on Patricia’s lips. “You wouldn’t happen to be afraid of them, would you?”

At the affront, Cameron puffed up like a blowfish. Each word was a single, crisp word as it came from his mouth. “No, I wouldn‘t”

Johnny irreverently tucked his hands beneath his armpits and flapped his elbows in comic relief. Kirk joined in.

“Cluck, cluck, cluck...”

Cameron glared threateningly from one to the other. A menacing sneer twitched beneath his mustache, and the last cluck died a tortured death.

“Boys, I’m sure Mr. Wade is no chicken,” Patricia chided gently before turning her attention upon the bird in question. “And you can rest assured that the children and I are more than capable of tending to the emus ourselves. If you would just be so kind as to take care of some of the major repairs around here, you will more than meet your contractual obligations.”

The fire illuminating those chocolate-colored eyes of hers led Cameron to believe that the lady was definitely a survivor. Having spent years being pursued by a bevy of buckle bunnies, he’d all but forgotten that there might actually be honest women left in the world. Those prolific bunnies earned their name by chasing after the trophy buckles worn by big-name rodeo winners on the circuit. Cameron knew it was more than their prize money these women sought. There was also vicarious prestige in associating with a champion. After being worked over by their veritable queen two summers ago, Cameron had become impervious to their charms. He had, in fact, become so disillusioned with all women after Bonnie had shown him the indisputable facts of life that his number-one rule for dating thereafter had been to use them before they could use him.

“I’ll tackle your roof first thing in the morning,” he said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Now, why don’t we discuss the particulars of our living arrangements while I give you a hand with the dishes?”

Because I can’t afford to break every dish in the house! Patricia thought to herself in a sudden rush of panic. The mere thought of telling this virile cowboy where to bed down made her quiver like a jackrabbit lippety-lopping across the rifle range on the opening day of hunting season. Unfortunately, her protests that he didn’t need to help with the dishes were to no avail. Though patently old-fashioned enough to believe that the most physically demanding tasks on a ranch belonged solely to the male of the species, Cameron had been well schooled early on by his mother that there simply was no such thing as “women’s work.”

Chapter Three

Patricia became even more flustered when Cameron rolled up his sleeves to reveal a pair of strong, muscled forearms. Wielding a clean dishcloth with the potency of a ninja warrior, the man somehow managed to look as sexy in the kitchen as she imagined he would in the bedroom. Remembering how safe and secure she had felt earlier in the day, wrapped in the embrace of those masculine arms, was almost enough to make her drop the plate she was holding. Up to her elbows in soapy water, Patricia tried washing away the disturbing feelings that close proximity with this man evoked in her.

Since Hadley had been even less help in the kitchen than he had been outdoors, she was unaccustomed to having a man underfoot in her strictly feminine domain. Cameron, on the other hand, seemed completely at ease in his surroundings, rummaging through drawers and putting things away with minimal fuss. Before being excused to do their homework, the boys helped clear the table, and though the expediency of completing this mundane daily chore broke all previous records, Patricia couldn’t quite bring herself to feel grateful for Cam eron’s assistance. Not when simply brushing against his thigh while handing him a cleanly rinsed glass sent a wave of electrical current dancing across her skin.

It was crazy. Never had a man had such a completely befuddling effect upon her. If an accidental touch could make her feel this way, she wondered what effect his kisses might have. The guilt of such a thought weighing heavy on her mind, Patricia attacked the dirty dishes with all the determination of a gladiator.

“You’re going to rub the pattern right off that plate.” Cameron commented with a knowing smile.

The water in the sink was growing hotter by the minute. Patricia knew it had less to do with the temperature of the water flowing out of the tap than with the traitorous hormones turning the blood in her veins to molten lava. Perturbed that Cameron was so obviously aware of her discomfort, she hoped some light conversation would help lessen the tension lodged squarely at the base of her neck.

“Did you say that your grandfather was somehow connected with this place?” she ventured.

Cameron harrumphed so loudly that it made Patricia jump.

“Connected to it, hell! He owned it.”

Anger ignited his eyes with blue fire as he continued. “Showed up here one day on a stallion he called Midnight with nothing more than a Colt .45 strapped to his hip. Staked out a claim as far as the eye could see and said ”This is mine.’”

Unable to understand why her question had upset him so, Patricia expressed her dismay. “Without compunction to how the Native Americans who were here first might have felt about that?”

Cameron merely guffawed at the naïveté of her inquiry. “Spencer Wade wasn’t the kind of man to take such things into consideration. By all accounts he was a tough, old bird, weathering freezing winters and hostile renegades with the same unflinching resolve. There was a good reason he kept that .45 well oiled and within reach. Any sleazy snake-oil-selling banker ever had the gall to try holding him hostage with a little piece of paper would have met with a blaze of gunfire.”

The pride was unmistakable in Cameron’s voice. The silence that followed this cryptic outburst was as heavy as a fog bank. Patricia drove through it blind.

“Is that why you answered my ad? Are you on some kind of nostalgia trip?”

“Something like that,” he retorted with a strange look in his eye.

“I take it then that Grandpa didn’t exactly want to sell the ranch?”