Date with a Cowboy: Iron Cowboy / In the Arms of the Rancher / At the Texan's Pleasure

“You have no idea,” he replied absently.

The door opened. Tony came in, flipping his phone shut. “Max needs to talk to you again. It’s going to take a while.”

“We’ll go home.” He got up, pausing to smile down at Sara. “Get better. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Thanks,” she said.

He shrugged. “We’re family.”

He went out with Tony and closed the door behind him.

Max was not happy to learn that Jared was keeping company with some sick girl in the little hick town.

“You need your head read,” she muttered on the phone. “You’ve got enough problems without adding a penniless, clinging cowgirl to them.”

“She’s not a cowgirl,” he replied. “She sells books.”

“An egghead isn’t much better,” she scoffed. “They want you to come back out here and let them give you around-the-clock security.”

“We’ll never catch the perpetrators if we hide in a fortress,” he said. “And we’ve had this damned argument before!”

“Somebody’s getting testy,” she purred. “No pillow talk down there, I guess?”

“What do you want?” he interrupted.

She hesitated. “I wanted to tell you that they’ve tracked three men as far as San Antonio. We’re not sure if they’re connected to the other, or not, but they’re the right nationality.”

“What’s their cover?”

“How should I know?” she muttered.

“I pay you to know everything,” he countered.

“Oh, all right, I’ll ask questions. Honestly, Jared, you’re getting to be a grouch. What’s this girl doing to you?”

“Nothing,” he said tersely. “She’s just a friend.”

“You’re spending a lot of time at the hospital.”

“Neither of us has family,” he said absently. “We decided we’d look after each other if we got sick.”

The pause was heated. “You know I’d take care of you if you got sick! I’d have doctors and nurses all over the place.”

Of course she would, he thought. She’d hire people to care for him, but she wouldn’t do it herself. Max hated illness.

“I’m tired and I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“I’m flying down there Monday,” she told him. “I’ll bring some contracts for you to look over. Need anything from the big city?”

“Nothing at all. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay. Sleep well.”

“Sure.” He hung up. Max was possessive of him. He hadn’t noticed it before, and he didn’t like it. She was sleek, elegant, aggressive and intelligent. But she did nothing for him physically. He did have occasional liaisons, but never with Max. He hoped she wasn’t going to come down to Texas and upset things. He knew that she wasn’t going to like Sara. Not at all.

Monday morning, Sara was on the mend. Dee had come twice, on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, bearing baskets of flowers and magazines for Sara to read. She absolutely forbade her to come back to work until the end of the next week. That made Sara feel a little better. She knew Dee was shorthanded when she wasn’t there.

Jared had been back to visit, staying for a few minutes at a time, with Tony always in the background. She wondered why he needed a full-time bodyguard. He changed the subject every time she asked.

Dr. Coltrain released her after lunch. She was wheeled out to the hospital entrance, where Jared was waiting in the big black pickup truck. He bent and lifted her like a sack of flour, putting her gently into the passenger seat and belting her in.

She didn’t expect the sudden rush of breath that escaped her lips when he paused in the act of fastening the seat belt and looked straight into her eyes at point-blank range. She felt the world shift ten degrees. His eyes narrowed and dropped to her blouse.

It didn’t take an expert to realize that he saw her heartbeat shaking the fabric and knew that she was attracted to him.

“Well, well,” he murmured in a deep, sultry tone. And he smiled.

Five

Jared’s green eyes burned into Sara’s, probing and testing. They dropped to her full mouth and lingered there until she caught her breath audibly. He only chuckled. It had a vaguely predatory sound.

He went around to his own side of the truck, climbed in, fastened his seat belt and started the engine. He was still smiling when he pulled out of the hospital parking lot.

Sara had liked the White Horse Ranch from her first close-up look at it, the first time she’d delivered Jared’s books to him. She admired the sprawling white ranch house with its hanging baskets of flowers and the white wooden fences that surrounded a well-manicured pasture. Jared ran purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle here, not horses. Sara enjoyed watching the calves. Pastures were full of them in spring, just in time for the lush new grass to pop up. Or, at least, that would have been the case if the drought hadn’t hit this part of Texas so hard.

“How do you have green grass in a drought?” she asked suddenly.

He smiled. “I sank wells and filled up tanks in every pasture,” he replied, using the Texas term for small ponds.

“Not bad,” she remarked. “Do those windmills pump it?” she added, nodding toward two of them—one near the barn and another far out on the horizon.

He glanced at her amusedly. “Yes. It may be an old-fashioned idea, but it was good enough for the pioneers who settled this country.”

“Your grandfather, was he born here?”

He shook his head. “One of his distant cousins inherited a piece of property and left it to him. He ranched for a while, until his health got bad.” His face seemed to harden. “He took a hard fall from a bucking horse and hit his head on a fence. He was never quite right afterward. He put a manager in charge of the ranch and moved up to Houston with his wife. One summer day, he shot my grandmother with a double-barreled shotgun and then turned it on himself.”

Her gasp was audible.

He noted her surprise. “My father brought him down here to be buried, although nobody knew how he died. None of the family ever came back here after that,” he said. “I guess we all have something in the past that haunts us. I shouldn’t have been so blunt about it,” he added, when he realized that she was upset. “I forget that you grew up in a small town, sheltered from violence.”

Obviously he considered her a lightweight, she mused. But it was too soon for some discussions. “It’s all right.”

He pulled up in front of the house, cut the engine and went around to pick Sara up in his strong arms and carry her up the three wide steps to the front porch. He grinned at her surprise.

“Coltrain’s nurse said to keep you off your feet for another day,” he mused, looking down into her wide, soft green eyes.

“So you’re becoming public transportation?” she teased, and her smile made her whole face radiant.

It made her look beautiful. He was captivated by the feel of her soft, warm little body in his arms, pressed close to his chest. He loved that smile that reminded him of a warm fire in winter. He liked the surge of excitement that ran through his hard body at the proximity. His eyes narrowed and the smile faded as he held her attention.

“Listen, don’t you get any odd ideas,” she cautioned with breathless humor. “He didn’t do that buttonhole surgery, he split me open at least six inches and sewed me back up with those stitches that you don’t have to take out later. We wouldn’t want my guts to spill out all over your nice clean floor, now, would we?”

The comment, so unexpected, caused him to burst out laughing.

“Good God!” he chuckled. He bent and brushed his hard mouth over her lips in a whisper of sensation that caused her entire body to clench. It was a rush of sensation so overwhelming that she felt her breath catch in her throat.

His eyebrows arched at her response. He pursed his lips and his green eyes twinkled. “What a reaction,” he murmured deeply. “And I barely touched you.” The twinkle faded. “Suppose we try that again …?”

She started to give him ten good reasons why he shouldn’t, but it was already too late.

His hard mouth crushed down onto her soft lips, parting them in a sensuous, insistent way that took her breath away. Her eyes closed helplessly. Her cold hands slid farther around his neck as his arm contracted and flattened her soft breasts against the wall of his chest. The kiss grew demanding.

“Open your mouth,” he bit off against her bruised lips.

She tried to answer that audacious command, but it gave him the opening he was looking for, and he took it. His tongue moved deep into her mouth, accompanied by a groan that sounded agonized.

He felt her shiver in his arms. His mouth roughened for an instant until he realized that she was just out of the hospital, and her side hadn’t healed. He lifted his head. His eyes were blazing. His face was set, solemn, his gaze intent on her flushed skin.

“Wh … why?” she faltered, all eyes.

An odd expression crept over his face. “When you smile, the emptiness goes away,” he said in a rough whisper.

She didn’t know how to answer that. But she didn’t have to. The door opened suddenly, revealing a tall, very attractive brunette in a blue business suit with a short skirt that stopped halfway between her knees and her panty line.

The brunette raised an eyebrow at the sight of Jared with Sara in his arms, and she didn’t smile. “Didn’t you expect me, darling?” she asked Jared in a honey-smooth tone.

Jared was still collecting his senses. “Max, this is Sara Dobbs. Sara, Max Carlton, my attorney.”

Sara had never seen an attorney who looked like that. The woman could have posed for a fashion magazine. She was sophisticated, beautiful and world-wise. Sara felt like a small child trying to play with adults.

“I have to get Sara to bed. Where’s Tony?”

Max shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. We have several contracts to go over.”

“We’ll get to them later,” Jared said, with an edge to his tone.

“Suit yourself, it’s only money. I like the house.”

The lawyer had yet to say one word to Sara. Jared noticed, and his irritation was obvious.

“Sara, you said?” Max asked, smiling at the woman in his arms. “Is something wrong with your leg?”

“She just had an emergency appendectomy and there’s nobody at her house to look after her while she heals,” Jared said shortly, turning toward one of the downstairs guest bedrooms.

“I see. Well, I’m sure you’ll feel better soon,” she told Sara as Jared carried her down the hall.

Jared ignored her. He turned into a pretty blue-themed bedroom with its own private bathroom and eased Sara down on the quilted coverlet.

He leaned over her, his big hands on either side of her head, and looked straight into her eyes. “Max is my lawyer. That’s all she’s ever been.”

“She likes you,” Sara replied.

His green eyes narrowed. “She likes my money.”

“She’s pretty.”

He bent and brushed his mouth softly over her lips, smiling as they parted for him now. “So are you,” he whispered, standing up straight. “I have to sign some contracts for Max. I’ll be back in a few minutes. TV control’s on the bedside table,” he indicated. “We have pay-per-view. Help yourself. I’ll have Mrs. Lewis bring you something to eat in a little while.”

“Mrs. Lewis? I thought she worked for the Hart brothers.”

“She did, but she had to retire just recently from doing heavy housework. Her arthritis got steadily worse and she had to leave them. But her doctor found a new drug that works. She still can’t do heavy work, but she cooks for me three days a week.”

She studied him curiously. “What do you do the other four days?”

He grinned. “I eat Italian.”

“We don’t have an Italian restaurant,” she began.

“Tony the Dancer can cook,” he told her. “He makes the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten.”

She laughed. “He doesn’t look like a cook.”

“He doesn’t look like a lot of things. Amuse yourself until I get Max out of here. I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay.”

He winked at her and closed the door on his way out.

“Are you out of your mind?” Max raged. “The girl’s poor! She’s just after your money!”

He slid his hands deep into his pockets and glared back at her. “And you discovered that after exchanging two sentences with her, did you?”

Her lips tautened. “You can’t get involved with the locals, Jared. You know that, and you know why.”

He cocked his head and stared at her intently. “Why are you here?” he asked abruptly. “I can sign contracts at your office in Oklahoma City if I have to. I can’t think of a single good reason for you to be underfoot.”

Her eyes avoided his. “You’re vulnerable right now. You might get involved with someone you’d walk away from if things were normal.”

“I pay you a king’s ransom of a retainer to look out for my business interests,” he said, emphasizing the business. “You start poking your nose into my private life and I’ll replace you with a man. After,” he added deliberately, “I send a letter of explanation to the Oklahoma Bar Association.”

Her anger was gone at once. She pulled herself together. “You’re right, I was out of line.”

“What contracts are we discussing, then?”

She seemed oddly disoriented. One hand went to her temple and she frowned. “You know, I can’t remember.”

“Then why don’t you go back to your office and think about it?” he suggested.

She sighed. “Okay. But it’s still not good sense to trust people you don’t know too far,” she added.

He didn’t reply.

She went into the living room and picked up her attaché case. She laughed self-consciously. “I really just wanted to see how you were,” she confessed.

“I’m fine.”

“Take care of yourself.”

He didn’t answer that statement, either. He just stared at her with dark, brooding eyes until she went toward the front door.

“You’ll call, if you need anything?” she asked at the door.

“If I need legal advice,” he emphasized, “I will.”

She grimaced. The door closed firmly behind her.

Jared stared into space as he wondered how he’d missed that possessiveness in Max. Had it been there all along, or was it just starting? She knew he didn’t want involvement. He’d said so. Why had she come? Had she been checking up on him and found out about Sara?

He turned toward his study, still deep in thought. She did have a point, about Sara. He knew almost nothing about her.

Tony the Dancer came in with a bag of groceries. He paused at the open study door.

“I met a stretch limo on my way back,” he told Jared. “Was it Max?”

He nodded.

“What was she doing here?” he asked.

“God knows,” Jared replied curtly. “Warning me off Sara, I guess.”

“I thought it would come to that,” Tony mused. “Max likes to live high, and she doesn’t make quite enough to suit her tastes.”

“Obviously. Her office had better be paying for that limo,” he added. “I’m not picking up the tab.”

“You should tell Arthur,” the other man advised, naming the elderly accountant who lived in and took care of the accounts.

“I will. You cooking?”

“Unless you want to try again,” Tony said warily. “I’m still trying to scrape the scrambled eggs off that iron skillet.”

“You didn’t say I had to grease it first,” he growled.

Tony just shook his head. “How’s the kid?” he asked, nodding toward the hall.

“She’s a grown woman,” Jared countered. “She’s fine.”

Grown woman? Tony wondered if his employer really thought that innocent in his spare bed was fair game. She put on a good front with Jared, but Tony could see through the camouflage, and he knew things that his boss didn’t. He wondered if he should mention what he knew to the other man, but the phone rang and Jared picked up the receiver. Tony thought it must be fate, and he went off into the kitchen to cook.

Sara fussed when Mrs. Lewis had to come all that way to serve her a bowl of soup and a salad.

“I can walk, honestly,” she protested gently. “You don’t have to wait on me.”

Mrs. Lewis just grinned as she slid the tray onto Sara’s lap. “It isn’t any trouble, dear. Tony will pick this up. I have to get back home. My sister’s coming over to visit.” She chuckled. “Tony’s making supper for you and the boss tonight. He walked in with enough Italian sausage and tomato sauce to float a battleship.”

Now Sara remembered that Tony cooked Italian dishes for his boss. The big man didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a chef. She said as much to the older woman.

Mrs. Lewis raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Danzetta is in a class of his own as a cook. I can do basic meals, but he has a flair for improvising. He saved me a plate of spaghetti just after I came to work here. It was the best I ever tasted.”

“I never thought of a bodyguard as being a cook,” Sara commented.

The older woman glanced at the open door and moved a little closer. “He wears an automatic pistol under his jacket,” she said softly. “I watched out the kitchen window while he was practicing with it. He stuck pennies in clothespins and strung the clothespins on an old wire that was used for a clothesline years ago. And in a heartbeat,” she added, “he’d picked off the pennies without touching the clothespins.”

Sara’s eyes grew wide. “I’m going to make sure that I never tick him off,” she murmured aloud.

“He’s pretty handy with martial arts, too,” Mrs. Lewis added. “He spars with Mr. Cameron.”

She hesitated with the soup halfway to her mouth in a spoon. “Mr. Cameron does martial arts?”

Mrs. Lewis nodded. “Tony said he’d never met a man he couldn’t throw until he started working here.”

“And here I thought Mr. Cameron hired Tony because he didn’t want to get his hands dirty.”

“Tony isn’t quite what he seems,” the older woman said quietly. “And neither is his boss. They’re both very secretive. And they know Cy Parks and Eb Scott.”

That was interesting, because Cy and Eb were part of a group of professional soldiers who’d fought all over the world. Several of the old group lived either in Jacobs County or in Houston and San Antonio.

“Well, that sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it?” Sara murmured as she sipped the hot liquid. “This is wonderful soup, Mrs. Lewis. I can’t make potato soup, but I love to eat it.”

The older woman beamed. “I’m glad you like it.”

Sara paused, thinking. “Mr. Cameron was in a huddle with Chief Grier at the symphony concert,” she recalled. “They looked very solemn.”

“Gossip says that a new group is trying to establish a drug smuggling network through here again.”

“That might explain the serious faces,” Sara replied. “Our police chief has solved a lot of drug cases, and made a lot of enemies to go with them.”

“Good for him,” Mrs. Lewis responded. “I hope they lock them all up.”

Sara grinned. “Me, too.” She shifted and groaned, touching her stomach under the floppy blouse she was wearing with jeans. “How can a little thing like an appendix cause so much trouble?” she wondered.

“You’re lucky you were able to get to a phone,” the older woman said gently. “People have died of appendicitis.”

Sara nodded. She looked around the pretty blue room. “Mr. Cameron and I agreed that we’d be each others’ families when we got sick, but I never expected to take him up on the offer this soon.”

“He’s a surprising person, isn’t he?” she asked. “He seems so cold and distant when you meet him. But he’s not like that at all when you get to know him. You wouldn’t believe what he did to Mr. Danzetta …”

“And you can stop right there while you still have work,” Jared said from the doorway. He sounded stern, but his eyes were twinkling.

Mrs. Lewis made a face at him. “I was only humanizing you for Sara, so she wouldn’t think you were really an ogre …” She stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth and blushed.

“It’s all right,” Sara assured her between mouthfuls of soup. “I did used to call him an ogre, but he improves on closer acquaintance.” She grinned at Jared.

He pursed his lips and looked pointedly at her mouth. She almost dropped her spoon, and he laughed softly.

“Well, if you don’t need me for anything else, I’m going home,” Mrs. Lewis told him. “Mr. Danzetta’s got stuff to make supper.”

“I saw the sack full of tomatoes and tomato sauce,” Jared replied. “He’s planted tomatoes out behind the house in what used to be a kitchen garden. Tomatoes, oregano, chives, sage and about twenty other spices I never heard of.”

“He doesn’t look like a gardener,” Sara commented.

Jared didn’t answer her. She didn’t need to know about Tony just yet.

“He planted poppies in the flower garden,” Mrs. Lewis said with obvious concern.

“He likes flowers,” Jared began.

“You don’t understand,” Mrs. Lewis persisted. “He didn’t plant California poppies. He planted the other kind.”

He frowned. “What’s your point?”

“We’re barely inside the city limits,” she said, “but the fact is, we are inside them. When they begin to bloom, Chief Grier will send one of his officers out here to pull them up.”

Jared didn’t mention that he’d like to see anyone do that with Tony watching. “Why?”

“They’re opium poppies,” Mrs. Lewis emphasized.

He whistled. “I’ll bet Tony didn’t realize it.”

“Better tell him,” Mrs. Lewis replied. “Before he gets in trouble with the law.”

He was going to say that it was way too late for that, but he didn’t dare. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Get better, dear,” Mrs. Lewis added with a smile for Sara.

“I heal fast,” Sara replied, grinning. “Thanks.”

Jared went out to make some phone calls and Sara finished her soup and dozed off. When she opened her eyes again, it was getting dark outside. She hadn’t thought about nightclothes, but it was obvious now that she’d arrived with only her purse and the clothes she’d had on when they transported her to the hospital. She didn’t have anything to sleep in.

There was a wonderful smell of spices drifting down the hall. Seconds later, Tony stuck his head in the door.

“You like spaghetti?” he asked.

“I love it,” she replied, smiling.

He smiled back. “I’m just about to take up the pasta,” he said. “It fell off the wall when I threw it there, so it’s got about two minutes left before it’s al dente.”

“Al who?” she asked.

He glowered at her. “Al dente,” he repeated. “Just right for the teeth. When you throw it at the wall and it sticks, it’s just right to …”

“What the hell have you done to my kitchen wall?” came a roar from down the hall.

“I have to check that the pasta’s ready!” Tony called to him.

Jared stomped down the hall, glaring at his bodyguard. “You’ve got streaks all over the damned paint!”

“They wipe off, boss,” Tony assured him. “Honest.”

“You couldn’t just stick a strand of it in your mouth and chew it to see if it’s ready?” Jared grumbled.

Tony’s eyebrows arched. “Who bit you?” he asked.

Jared’s face was like iron. He looked furious. “The bread’s burning.”

Tony rushed back down the hall without another word.

Jared glared at Sara. “Harley Fowler’s in the living room.

He stopped by to see about you.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Nice.” His green eyes were glaring. “I don’t have time to run a hospital complete with visiting hours,” he muttered.

She flushed with embarrassment. She hadn’t expected Harley to come looking for her.

Jared backstepped at her expression. She’d just had surgery and he was acting like a jealous boyfriend. He caught himself and tried to relax. It didn’t work. Harley was poaching on his preserves. “I’ll send him in. Don’t encourage him to stay long or drop in unexpectedly again without calling first.”

“I won’t,” she began, but he was already halfway down the hall before she got the words out. She felt terrible. She was imposing on him. She should never have suggested that they take care of each other when they got sick. It was apparent that Jared already regretted agreeing to it.