Her Man On Three Rivers Ranch

“Thanks, Mom.” Grinning as though he was already certain she’d conceded, he hugged her waist, then rushed from the room.

Katherine washed her hands at a deep double sink, before entering the kitchen to get the evening meal ready. As she walked toward the refrigerator to pull out a casserole dish filled with lasagna, she decided to detour to the cabinet counter to check her phone. Normally, she didn’t get many calls, but she did receive a few texts from coworkers.

Seeing a notification that she’d missed a call, she punched a button to see the caller identity and immediately let out a small gasp.

Blake! Blake Hollister had called her!

Yes, she’d given him her phone number the morning they’d had coffee, but she’d never expected him to use it. In fact, once she’d walked away from him in front of the bank, she’d pretty much decided she’d never hear from the man again.

What was she going to do now? She’d missed his call and he’d not left a voice mail.

The smart thing to do, Katherine, would be to put down the phone and forget the man. So what if he did call you? So what if he did take you out on a date? That’s as far as things would ever get with a man like him. You’d only be wasting your time.

Disgusted with the cynical voice going off in her head, she placed the phone on the far end of the cabinet and went about getting the lasagna heated for their supper.

By the time she and Nick had eaten the meal and finished it off with chocolate ice cream for dessert, she’d decided to forget about Blake’s call. If he’d wanted to talk to her that badly, he would have left a message. Besides, she had plenty of other things to think about. Like vacuuming the living floor and putting a load of towels in the washer.

“Mom, can I watch one of your Tarzan movies?” Nick asked as he helped her carry the dirty dishes to the sink. “I want to see the one with the elephant stampede. You know, the one where the bad guys are trying to get ivory from the sacred elephant graveyard.”

Katherine smiled to herself. She’d always loved the Tarzan movies made back in the 1930s and 1940s, yet the first time Nick had watched one with her, he’d promptly described the whole thing as dorky.

“I thought my Tarzan movies were too cheesy for you,” Katherine said as she began to scrape food scraps into the garbage disposal.

“I guess I got to liking them. The animals are neat and so is Boy.”

Smiling, she glanced at him. “You think it would be fun to live in a tree house?”

“Yeah. But only for a few days. There wouldn’t be any TV.”

Since she made sure to limit her son’s time in front of the TV, he appreciated the chance to enjoy his favorite programs. “Oh, well, that would be awful. You’d have to get a stick and draw pictures in the dirt for entertainment.”

A bewildered look came over her son’s face. “Mom, are you feeling sick or something?”

Katherine chuckled. “No. Just feeling my age. And you have my permission to watch the movie. Just make sure you put the DVD back into its case when you’re finished.”

“Thanks, Mom!”

Nick hurried out of the kitchen and Katherine finished washing and drying the last of the dishes. She was hanging the dishtowel on a rack when her phone rang. The sound caused her to jump as though a firecracker had exploded beneath the table.

Could Blake be calling again? The number illuminated on the face of the phone wasn’t familiar, but the prefix was local.

Bracing herself, Katherine snatched up the phone and accepted the call with a simple hello.

“Katherine, this is Blake. Do you have a moment to talk?”

His low, masculine voice caused goose bumps to erupt along the backs of her arms and suddenly her heart was pounding so hard and fast, she felt dizzy. “Uh, yes, I can talk. How are you, Blake?”

“Fine, thanks. You sound surprised to hear from me.”

Her legs shaking, she walked over to the kitchen table and eased into one of the wooden chairs. “To be honest, I wasn’t expecting you to call.”

After a pause, he said, “I was giving you time to think about our date.”

She gulped and glanced over her shoulder. Thank goodness Nick was occupied with the movie. Having her son within earshot of her conversation would have made it even more difficult.

“Our date?” She repeated the words in the form of a question. “We don’t have a date.”

“We will. As soon as you say yes.”

Katherine looked around her simple kitchen and wondered if she was dreaming. “I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do, Blake,” she said as politely as she could manage.

“Why?” he asked. “You don’t like me?”

She practically spluttered into the phone. Like him? What would he think if he knew she’d spent most of her teenage years mooning after him? Probably laugh himself silly, she thought. “Of course I like you. Very much. It’s just that I’m... Well, since Cliff died, I haven’t exactly put myself back in the dating scene. I’d probably be very boring company.”

Another long pause and then he said, “The dates I’ve had in the past couple of years can be counted on one hand. So you see, I’m just as rusty about this as you are. As for being boring, my family’s nickname for me is Judge.”

Katherine could hardly imagine a man of Blake’s status going without dates. Besides being handsome and wealthy, he was warm and personable and a far cry from boring. He could have any woman he set eyes on. Had he stayed away from the dating scene because his engagement hadn’t worked out? She wondered. If so, he must have been crazy in love with his ex-fiancée. The thought was more than off-putting.

“I have my son to consider,” she hedged. “He’d have to go to a sitter.”

“My mother or sister would be happy to take on that chore.”

She absently rubbed her fingertips across her forehead. “Thank you, but I have a neighbor who watches Nick whenever I have to be out at night.”

“Then I don’t see a problem. What about Friday evening? Say about six? We’ll have a nice dinner in Prescott.”

The mere idea of sitting at a candlelit dinner table with Blake was enough to make her tremble all over. “I’d rather keep it casual...if you don’t mind,” she added, then realized she’d just given in without really meaning to.

“I don’t mind at all. We can make it as casual as you want,” he assured her. “So where do you live? Your father’s place?”

When she’d returned to Wickenburg to care for her father, she’d not been surprised by the dilapidated condition of the home where she and her brother had grown up. The roof had leaked in several places and in most of the rooms the linoleum had worn down to the subflooring. The air-conditioning had gone kaput, and with no window screens, it was impossible to open the house for any kind of relief from the heat. Her father had refused to move anywhere, so she’d been forced to make enough repairs to make the house livable for her and Nick.

Blake had thought she was still living there and yet that hadn’t stopped him from asking her for a date. The whole notion amazed her.

“Uh, no. After Dad died, I sold the property. I’ve moved to the west side of town in a white brick house with green shutters.” She gave him the address. “My little car is red and you’ll see it parked beneath a carport on the right side of the house. It’s easy to find.”

“No problem. I’ll find it.”

A few awkward moments of silence passed and then she asked, “Are you really sure you want to do this, Blake? If you’re having second thoughts, don’t worry about it. I’ll understand.”

“Would you understand? Because I wouldn’t,” he said bluntly. “Listen, Katherine, I’ve asked you out on a date because I want to spend time with you. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

Her spine stiffened to a straight line. There was no point in skirting around the issue, she thought. “Surely you can’t be that blind. You’re a Hollister. You have no business going out with someone like me.”

“Someone like you? Since when is it wrong for a Hollister man to want to spend time with a lovely, intelligent young woman?”

Did he honestly see her in that way? “We hardly travel in the same social circle, Blake.”

“I don’t travel in any social circle. And from what you tell me, you don’t, either.”

He was making sense. Or did she simply want to believe the two of them could meet on common ground.

“I apologize, Blake. I’m insulting both of us, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You are.”

She bit down on her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I really do want to see you again.”

“Good. That’s all I needed to hear. So I’ll see you Friday evening.”

She could hear a smile in his voice and the sound warmed her far more than it should have. “Friday. Yes. See you then.”

He ended the call with a quick goodbye, and with a shaky hand, Katherine placed her phone on the table.

Right or wrong, she was going on a date with Blake Hollister.

Chapter Three

Friday afternoon Blake called Katherine to confirm their date, and before their brief conversation ended, she asked if he’d mind dropping off Nick at the sitter’s on their way out of town. Blake had readily agreed and had even felt a bit flattered that she wanted him to meet her son.

But now as Blake walked to the front door of Katherine’s brick house, he wondered how Nick was going to react to his mother going on an outing with a strange man. Blake loved children, but that didn’t mean Katherine’s son would like him. It would make for an awkward start with Katherine if the boy took an instant dislike to him.

Trying not to dwell on that possibility, Blake punched the doorbell and after a moment he could hear footsteps racing through the house. When the door partially opened, he found himself staring at a tall, thin boy with dark hair and clear gray eyes. There was no doubt he was Katherine’s child. Her features were stamped all over his face.

“Hello,” he said as he warily eyed Blake. “Are you Mr. Hollister?”

“Hello,” Blake said, returning the greeting. “And I am Mr. Hollister.”

Continuing to study Blake with open curiosity, he opened the door wide and thrust out his hand.

“I’m Nick,” he said, introducing himself. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

Blake gave the boy’s hand a firm shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Nick. And it’s fine with me if you call me Blake.”

“Mom says I have to be respectful of my elders. But you don’t look all that old to me,” he said. “You want to come in, Blake?”

Blake smiled to himself. At least the boy wasn’t sulking. “That would be nice.”

Nick stepped to one side and Blake entered a short foyer.

“Mom is still getting dressed,” Nick announced as he closed the front door behind them. “She’s always slow.”

“That’s okay. I don’t mind waiting.”

The boy motioned for Blake to follow him out of the foyer. “Come into the living room. I’ll go tell Mom you’re here.”

With Nick leading the way, Blake entered a cozy room furnished with a dark red couch and matching stuffed armchair. A glass coffee table was covered with books and DVDs, while a television spanned a far corner of the room. Beyond a picture window framed with cream-colored drapes, a view of the desert almost made him forget the house was situated on the edge of a residential area.

“You can sit anywhere you want,” Nick instructed before he disappeared through an open doorway.

After taking a seat in the armchair, Blake settled back and allowed his gaze to wander around the room. Almost immediately his attention was caught by several framed photos resting on a wall table off to his left. With only a span of a few feet between him and the photos, Blake could see the majority of the images were of Nick captured at different stages of his young life. There was also an enlarged snapshot of Paulette Anderson with another woman, most likely her sister. He also recognized one small photo of Katherine’s brother, Aaron. The fact that there were no images of her late father or husband stood out like a weed in a rose garden.

Considering what Joseph had told him about Avery Anderson, Blake could understand why she might not want to be reminded of her father. But what about her husband? Was losing him still so painful she didn’t want to look at his image?

The sound of footsteps had him glancing around to see Nick entering the room.

“Mom says she’ll be ready in five minutes,” he announced. “But if I was you, I’d be ready to wait another ten. She’s just now doing something to her hair.”

The boy walked over to the couch and plopped onto the end cushion. Blake noticed he was wearing a black T-shirt with his school’s name printed across the front, along with blue jeans and high-top basketball shoes made of black canvas. In a few short years, he was going to be a very good-looking teenager, Blake decided. No doubt Katherine would have her hands full trying to keep him on the right path. Unless she married in the near future and then Nick would have a stepfather to help guide him into manhood.

Shoving away that uncomfortable thought, he asked, “What grade are you in, Nick? The fifth?”

He nodded. “I’m ten. I’ll be eleven in three months, though.”

“Hmm. I liked being eleven,” Blake commented. “It’s a fun age.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m not eleven yet.”

Before he could stop it, Blake was laughing and the sound must have eased something in Nick, because he suddenly laughed along with him.

“Are you really a cowboy? Mom says you run a big ranch that has lots of cows and horses.”

“That’s right. It’s called Three Rivers Ranch.”

His interest piqued, Nick squared around on the cushion so that he was directly facing Blake. “I guess you know how to ride a horse and all that kind of stuff. Can you rope a bull?”

“I can. But it’s not something I do very often. It’s pretty dangerous. Especially when they have long horns.”

Nick thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, guess it would be. Those long horns are pretty scary. When Gold Rush Days was going on, Mom took me to the rodeo. It was exciting. I liked the bucking horses best.”

“Then you’d like my brother Holt. He rides bucking horses practically every day.”

Nick was clearly impressed. “Really? Wow, he must be a tough guy.”

“As tough as they come,” Blake agreed.

“You have brothers and sisters?” he asked.

“Three brothers and two sisters.”

“Gosh, that must be great. I don’t have a brother. Or a sister. I wish I had some. But I don’t think I ever will.”

Blake had expected Katherine’s boy to utter a few stilted words, then disappear into another part of the house. The fact that Nick seemed to want to talk, especially about such personal things, touched a soft spot in him.

Doing his best to sound casual, Blake asked, “Why do you think that?”

Exasperation twisted Nick’s young features. “Because Mom don’t like men much. She don’t even like to talk about my dad.”

Blake wasn’t sure what Nick meant by that statement and he was hardly going to pump the boy about Katherine’s private life.

“Well, she must like some men,” Blake reasoned. “She agreed to go on a date with me.”

Nick scooted up on the edge of his seat and leaned closer to Blake. “Yeah. And that’s got me stumped. I’ve been thinking she’s gotten sick or something. When Mom walks in here, you take a real close look and see if anything looks funny to you.”

Struggling to keep a straight face, Blake said, “Don’t worry. I’ll study her close.”

Nick started to make some sort of reply when his mother suddenly appeared in the open doorway to the living room.

As Blake slowly rose to his feet, he realized his promise to Nick was going to be mighty easy to keep. Dressed casually in a red-and-white-flowered sundress with skinny straps and her long hair pinned behind one ear, she looked like an exotic flower in the middle of a jungle.

“Good evening, Blake. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”

“No problem,” he assured her. “Nick and I have been using the time to get acquainted.”

Her skeptical gaze traveled back and forth between him and her son. “Really? Nick isn’t much of a talker around strangers.”

“We’re not strangers now, though, are we, Nick?” Blake looked over at the boy and winked.

Grinning, Nick immediately jumped to his feet. “Gosh, no!” He turned his attention to his mother. “Blake’s been telling me about his ranch. And he has lots of brothers and sisters. Did you know that, Mom? And one of his brothers rides bucking broncos! Isn’t that something?”

Katherine’s brows inched upward as she darted a look of surprise toward Blake. “It’s something, all right,” she told him, then gestured over her shoulder. “Go get your backpack. And be sure you have your toothbrush and pajamas.”

After Nick disappeared from the room, Blake said, “I hope you’re not making Nick stay overnight at the sitter’s on my account. We can be back early if you need to pick him up before bedtime.”

Katherine shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s no problem. Nick is staying with his best friend, Shawn. His dad, Lash, loves for Nick to stay overnight. And Shawn stays with us quite often. Lash is a single parent like me, so it helps both of us to switch off with the babysitting duties. The Ralstons live just down the street, so it’s not out of the way.”

A single dad with a son the age of Nick? Blake wondered if he should be jealous of Katherine’s neighbor, then promptly scolded himself for being such an idiot. Just because she’d agreed to have one date with him, didn’t mean he had exclusive tabs on the woman. She had the right to go out with whomever she pleased.

Shoving away that disturbing thought, Blake said, “It’s good you have someone so trustworthy to watch Nick. And by the way, your son is quite a boy. You must be incredibly proud of him.”

A faint smile touched her face. “He’s everything to me. Without him...well, these past years would’ve been even harder to get through.”

Blake expected her to make a comment about Nick taking after his father in certain ways, or how she hoped he’d grow up to be like the man she’d married, but she didn’t. And suddenly Blake was wondering if Nick had been right about his mother not wanting to talk about her late husband.

Before Blake could think of a suitable reply to her remark, Nick bounced into the room with a backpack hooked around both shoulders.

“I got everything, Mom. And don’t worry. Lash will make sure we brush our teeth. He doesn’t let us get by with anything.”

Chuckling, Katherine picked up a clutch bag from a nearby end table. “That’s why he’s the best babysitter you’ve ever had.”

Blake picked up his cowboy hat from where he’d left it by the armchair and levered it onto his head. “Are we ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready,” Katherine answered, then with a gentle scruff to the top of Nick’s head, she urged her son toward the door.

Blake followed them onto the front porch, and while she dealt with locking the door, he wondered what might have happened if he’d dated Katherine twelve years ago before she’d left Wickenburg. Perhaps she and Nick would be living on Three Rivers now as his family. But at eighteen, she might’ve been too immature for a serious relationship between them. Especially one that would last. Either way, he couldn’t change the past, he realized. But starting tonight, he was definitely going to try to change the course of his future.

* * *

“Since you said you wanted to keep things casual, I didn’t make dinner reservations,” Blake said as he braked for a stop sign. “Have you thought about where you’d like to eat? Or what you’d like to do?”

Katherine glanced over at him. For Blake, dressing casually meant a pale blue Western shirt that had most likely cost more than her monthly grocery bill, dark blue jeans and a pair of brown, square-toed alligator boots. With his black cowboy hat lying on the console between them, she had a full view of the dark tousled waves of hair edging over the tops of his ears and onto the collar of his shirt. He looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and, once he got it, wouldn’t hesitate to fight to keep it. To say the man was attractive would be like calling a hurricane a gentle breeze.

She clasped her hands together on her lap as though she needed to prevent herself from reaching across the seat and touching him. “This is probably going to sound silly to you, but I’d like to take a drive through the mountains toward Prescott and eat at some little spot on the side of the road. Is that okay with you?”

He looked over at her and she noticed one corner of his lips was curved faintly upward. The expression was hardly a smile, she decided, yet it was as sexy as heck.

He said, “That sounds absolutely okay with me.”

Relieved, she felt compelled to explain her choice. “I’m not much for fancy, Blake. That’s probably hard for a man like you to understand.”

His grunt was a mocking sound. “A man like me? I’m hardly black-tie-and-tails, Katherine.”

A blush stung her cheeks. “No. But, well, you know what I’m getting at. I wasn’t raised like you.”

With his gaze fixed firmly on the highway, he said, “Look, Katherine, I thought we’d hashed out all of that. Sure, I remember your parents’ little house, where you were raised as a kid. Nobody had to tell me that your family didn’t own much. But that has nothing to do with you as a person. Besides, you’ve grown above all of that. Seems to me, you’ve been doing very well for yourself and your son.”

She smoothed a hand over the hem of her dress. “Yes, things are much better now. Financially speaking, that is. But with Dad gone, my mother too bitter to really enjoy life and my brother keeping his distance, I can’t help but wish things had been different. For them and for me and Nick.”

“I’m sure you wish things had been different for your late husband, too.”

A chill settled over her. Clearly, he’d noticed she’d left Nick’s father off her list. “Talking about Cliff isn’t something I want to do tonight,” she said stiffly.

“Hmm. Nick says you never want to talk about his father.”

She stared at his profile. “Nick told you that?”

He glanced in her direction. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I’m curious as to why you want to avoid the subject of your late husband. Is it because you loved him so much that remembering hurts?”

Katherine groaned. This was supposed to be a date, not a question-and-answer session, she thought crossly. “It’s not that. And I’m not trying to keep Nick from learning about his father. Well, maybe I am in some ways,” she glumly admitted. “You see, I’d rather Nick only know about the good parts of his father. It would only hurt my son to learn how his father changed from a loving husband into a man driven by an obsessive need for money.”

She paused and waited for him to make some sort of reply. When he remained silent, it was obvious he was expecting her to explain further.

“I had hoped that having a child would help,” she went on in a strained voice, “but my getting pregnant actually made things worse. By the time Nick was born, Cliff hardly noticed he had a child. It’s no wonder Nick says he can’t remember his father. Cliff never spent enough time with his son to make any memories. He was too busy making money.”

Blake steered the truck onto Highway 93, and as they headed north, Katherine couldn’t help but wonder what he must be thinking about her and her marriage. No doubt he was probably telling himself this was the first and last date he’d have with Katherine O’Dell.

She was about to apologize for sounding so sharp, when he suddenly spoke.

“If my math is correct, Nick must have only been about three when his father died. That’s too young for a child to remember much of anything.”

Sighing, she looked at him. “Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know anymore. I expect when Nick gets a little older, he’s going to start asking more questions about his father. I dread that time, because I can’t lie to him. It wouldn’t be right.”