The Cattleman And The Virgin Heiress

Watching Matt move from table to sink, it struck Hope that he was all she had. Until she regained her memory—she would regain it, wouldn’t she?—Matt McCarlson was the only person she knew face-to-face in the entire world.

And yet she had snapped at him, admitted anger at him—if only to herself—and pretty much blamed him for this mysterious fiasco. Well, it wasn’t that she blamed him for everything, but one would think a rancher living miles and miles from civilization would be better prepared for a damn storm.

So that’s it, she thought with narrowed eyes. She blamed him for living a lackadaisical lifestyle that didn’t include emergency communication.

“How come you don’t have some way to contact…uh, the town, for instance…in case of an emergency?” she asked.

Matt heard the distinct disapproval in her voice, the judgment, and it raised his hackles. “I’m like a lot of ranchers,” he said flatly. “I’m not particularly fond of people, especially city dwellers, and I’d rather wait out a storm by myself than have a horde of do-gooders descending on my land under the guise of neighborly generosity to rescue me, when I never needed rescuing in the first place.”

“And I suppose the men who work for you feel the same?”

“My men are seasoned ranch hands. They know the table stakes and when they’re dealt a bad hand, they take their lumps without complaint.”

“As you do.”

“Have you heard me complaining? Let me say it like it is, Hope LeClaire. You’re the only person on this ranch who’s done any complaining about being landlocked, so to speak. Now, I have to concede your right to a few complaints, but—”

Hope broke in. “How big of you,” she said with drawling sarcasm. “I wonder what you’d do if you woke up in a strange place with no memory.” She got to her feet. “I’m going back to bed, and I don’t need your help in getting there, so please just let me leave without offering the support of your big, manly arm.”

“Hey, my arm is big and manly, and your sarcasm doesn’t make it any less than it is. Take the lantern so you don’t fall flat on your ungrateful face!”

“Ungrateful? Ungrateful? How would you like me to express my gratitude, by kissing your feet? I’ve said thank you repeatedly, which you’ve either obviously forgotten or were too dense to register at the time.”

“I’m not dense, lady,” Matt growled. “And since you are, I would think that dense is a word you’d try real hard to avoid.”

“You jerk!” she shouted, then turned herself around, plucked the lantern from the table and did her best imitation of royalty sweeping from a room filled with ignorant peasants.

“Yeah, I’m a jerk,” Matt mumbled while lighting another lantern for his use. “And you’re just as spoiled and overbearing as every other pampered princess I’ve known.”

Matt went to bed about an hour later. Lying in the dark he listened to the rain, which had slowed to a barely discernible drizzle. The storm was passing, but at this stage it was hard to forecast its final gasp. It could drizzle and mist like this for days, it could start pouring again at any time, or it could stop completely without a dram of warning.

And when it did stop, the work would begin. Cleaning up after a storm like this one was an enormous job. Washed-out roads, flooded creeks and mud everywhere. Yeah, every rancher in the storm belt and even some townsfolk were in for a lot of backbreaking labor.

Matt was visualizing the ravages to his land and worrying about the cost of restoring everything to its prestorm condition when a bloodcurdling scream made his hair stand on end.

Jumping out of bed, he ran down the hall to Hope’s room. His first thought had been that someone had gotten into the house and was trying to throttle her. But since she’d left the lantern burning on low, he could tell at once that she was only having a dream.

She was thrashing around in bed, not screaming anymore but making almost inhuman sounds that all but curdled Matt’s blood. No one deserves a nightmare that terrifying, Matt thought and hurried over to the bed where he lay down next to her.

“Hope…Hope…” he said as he pulled her into his arms, held her tightly against himself and stopped her from throwing herself around. “It’s only a dream, Hope, just a dream. I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”

She opened her teary eyes and heard Matt’s quiet voice. His arms were around her, and her face was nestled against his bare chest. She felt warm and comforted and, as he’d just told her, safe, and she did nothing to alter their positions.

“I had a nightmare,” she whispered tremulously. “An awful nightmare.”

“I know. I was in my room and you screamed so loudly that I thought a monster was gnawing on your big toe.”

She smiled weakly. “You’re trying to make me feel better.”

“Did it work?”

“Something’s working.”

Something was “working” for him, too, but it wasn’t a corny joke. It was Hope and the fact that she was plastered against him and his body could feel every delicious curve of hers. He shut his eyes and groaned inwardly. It was only natural for a man to become aroused while holding a beautiful woman, but this particular woman was not one he should be fooling around with. He’d sworn an oath to never again get involved with a woman who had more money than he did, which, at the present time, pretty much eliminated the entire female population of Texas. Thus, it was a rare day—or night—when he so much as paid for a lady’s hamburger or movie ticket. In truth, he hadn’t done any real dating since Trisha’s death, and he’d never felt as though life was passing him by because of it, either.

However, things were starting to look a little different to him. Lying in bed with a luscious lady wrapped around him sort of took the guts out of that well-intentioned oath, which, he realized, should probably make him resent the hell out of Hope. He had enough worries and problems with the ranch without piling on the heartache of an intimate relationship that couldn’t possibly go anywhere. Still, regardless of commonsense arguments against any such liaison, he was about to toss that earthshaking oath over the edge of the bed when she said, “The man in my dream had tied me up and he was…he was—”

“He was what?” Matt prompted when she left him hanging and he already had some bad feelings about what that dream had really been about.

“How strange,” Hope murmured uneasily. “I don’t know if he was trying to seduce me or I was trying to seduce him. Wouldn’t you think I’d know the difference?”

“Uh, seduction comes in many disguises.” Even the word seduction increased the aching desire Matt was suffering. He had to get out of this bed and back in his own. If he didn’t he was going to do something he’d be sorry for when he regained his senses. “Are you okay now? Is it all right if I leave?”

Sudden panic nearly choked Hope, and she lifted her arms and locked her hands behind his head. “Please don’t leave me alone…please!”

Matt knew that she was not offering him anything to stay with her; she was only clinging to him because she was panicky and scared out of her wits.

Gritting his teeth, he tore his thoughts away from sex. “I’ll stay,” he said, “but I need a little more room.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll move over.” Hope released her death grip on him and moved over about two inches. “Is that better?”

“That’s…fine.” Her head was still on his arm and her hand on his chest. He slid his other arm away from her waist and laid it down his side on his own torso. “Let’s try to get some sleep now.”

“Yes, of course.” But after a moment she said, “I think that dream was symbolic of something that really happened.”

“Symbolic?” He was trying to get sleepy by pretending he was in his own bed and not lying close enough to Hope to feel the warmth emanating from her body. A state of pretense would be much easier to achieve if she would stop talking.

“I’d hate to think it wasn’t just symbolic. I mean, what if some horrible man really did tie me up?” Hope’s hands were free now, and she absentmindedly rubbed her wrists. “Matt, my wrists have rope burns! I was tied up!”

He’d seen the marks on her wrists, and wondered about them, but he couldn’t add to her horror by telling her about his own misgivings concerning those bruises.

“You shouldn’t let your imagination run wild,” he said flatly, keeping even compassion out of his voice and telling himself that it was for her own good. Until she recalled everything about herself for herself, speculation on her part and suggestions from him or anyone else who might eventually get wind of this drama would only make her more fearful, and she was scared enough already.

“These sore spots around my wrists are not imagined, Matt. And the man in the dream wasn’t conjured up by a troubled mind, either. He’s a real-life, flesh-and-blood person who wants to do me harm.” Hope paused to ponder her own conclusion. “But why?” she murmured, speaking more to her confused inner self than to Matt.

Her determined logic startled Matt. After all, she hadn’t gotten so far off the beaten path all by herself. Someone must have brought her here, or, at least, brought her to a spot within walking distance. And then what’d that someone do, throw her out of his car? Or had she made a run for freedom and her first opportunity for escaping some warped bastard had happened on McCarlson land? Maybe the guy didn’t know the area well and hadn’t realized he was on private property.

But the theme of that newspaper article was that Hope was missing. Maybe she’d gone off with a boyfriend and he hadn’t been the nice guy she’d thought he was. This whole muddle of facts and guesswork could be nothing more than a romantic tryst getting out of hand. And if Hope hadn’t lost her memory for some damned reason then there wouldn’t be anything at all mysterious about her delivery to this part of Texas.

“Can you remember what the guy in your dream looked like?” Matt asked, because now he was thinking that if there was a man involved with the fright she’d received last night, she just might know him.

A shudder passed through Hope’s body. “No, but I know he was a horrible person.”

“How can you be so sure about that, Hope? I’m not trying to be cruel, but without memories to back up your assumptions, can you be certain of anything?”

She hesitated a few moments, then she raised herself to her elbow, looked down at him and said, “I guess I’m relying on basic instinct, which we all have, don’t we, memory or no memory?”

Her eyes, even in the soft glow of lantern light, were as blue as Texas bluebonnets. She wasn’t just pretty, she was sexy. At least she was making him think of sex again. She had on an old shirt of his, and coincidentally it was almost as blue as her eyes. She was as enticing in that worn-out old shirt, with her head of thick, lustrous dark hair in appealing disarray, as any woman he’d ever seen.

“Instinct is…uh, usually a good barometer to, uh, to go by,” he stammered, making a stab at reassurance when his mind was stuck on the ache in his groin. He almost told her about it. He came very close to saying, “Hope, if I stay in this bed for the rest of the night, I’m not going to be able to keep my hands off you. Can you deal with that? Are you having similar ideas about me?”

Hope couldn’t read his mind, but there was something in his eyes that made her heart beat faster. You’re letting your imagination run wild! If the man thought of you as attractive, you’d have sensed it before now. Good Lord, go to sleep before you make a complete fool of yourself!

She lay down again and turned her back to him. “I’m suddenly very tired. Good night,” she said.

Matt heaved a quiet sigh of relief. Things would be better in the morning, he told himself, praying it would be true. Once the phones were working again, he could let the Stockwells know that Hope was safe. She wasn’t so sound, true, but with the Stockwells’ money they could hire the best specialists the medical profession had to offer to cure her amnesia.

As for him, he’d get over the yen he had for her, that itch he didn’t dare scratch. What choice did he have but to get over it?

Hope’s eyes simply would not shut. She hadn’t deliberately lured Matt into her bed, but that’s where he was, and every cell in her body was aware of it. He was, after all, wearing nothing but undershorts, and the sensation of being held in his arms, pressed tightly to so much masculine bare skin, would not leave her. Her skin seemed to tingle every time she thought of it, and, much to her dismay, she kept thinking of it until she could just barely manage to breathe without Matt hearing her. She would be humiliated beyond words if he should catch on that she was lying there pining for…for…

Hope frowned. What, exactly, was she pining for? Some kisses? Being held by strong, manly arms again? For some reason, even with that erotic ache in the pit of her stomach, she couldn’t envision herself under a man and making love. Why not, for heaven’s sake? She had no trouble recalling ordinary things, such as eating, bathing and dressing. And even kissing.

So how come she couldn’t recall the act of lovemaking? Her lips pursed almost angrily. Say it like it is, dodo, how come you can’t recall sex? It’s not because you’re a cold fish, by any means, not when you’re lying here sweating and yearning for Matt McCarlson to touch you!

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