The Way To A Rancher's Heart

She sputtered a laugh. “Young girls like me?” she repeated, following him. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

He lifted a shoulder as he opened the screen door, then stepped back to let her enter the house first. “When I was younger, we called ’em jailbait. But I guess now I’d just call ’em trouble.”

“Trouble?” When he didn’t offer an explanation, she stopped in front of him, folding her arms beneath her breasts and arching a brow, stubbornly refusing to enter until he had clarified that last comment. His gaze dropped to her chest and breasts that strained against her tank top’s fabric. She bit back a smile as a blush rose to stain his cheeks.

“Trouble,” he repeated, emphasizing the single word, as if it alone explained everything, then gave her a nudge with his shoulder, urging her through the door ahead of him.

“Okay,” she said and crossed to the sink to wash her hands. “Granted I’m younger than you. Even I can see that. But what’s wrong with a young woman, and why do you consider one trouble?”

“Woman?” He snorted at her choice of word. “I said girl. I would hardly classify you as a woman.”

She snagged a dish towel from the hook above the sink and dried her hands as she turned to peer at him. “And what does a girl have to do,” she asked, placing emphasis on the word as he had, “in your opinion, before she is classified as a woman?”

He elbowed her aside and hit the faucet’s handle, then stuck his hands beneath the water. “Live. Get some years on her. Some experience.”

Enjoying the conversation, but unsure why when she knew she should be insulted by his chauvinistic attitude, she rested a hip against the counter and watched as he scrubbed his hands. “And what do you consider experience?”

He scowled and hit the handle with his wrist, shutting off the water. He stood, dripping water into the sink, and Annie pushed the towel into his hands. He shot her a look, his scowl deepening. “Live,” he repeated. “Life offers its own form of experience.”

She angled her body, watching as he crossed to the refrigerator. “Oh, really?” she posed dryly.

“Yeah, really,” he muttered, his reply muffled by the interior of the refrigerator. He pulled a gallon jug of milk from inside, closed the door, then lifted the jug, drinking directly from the container.

Clucking her tongue at his lack of manners, Annie pulled a glass from the cupboard, crossed to him and snatched the milk jug from his hand.

Scowling, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, removing a white moustache. “What did you do that for? I’m thirsty.”

She filled the glass and handed it back to him. “Unsanitary,” she informed him prudently and opened the door to replace the jug of milk. “And a bad example for the children. Now I know where Clay picked up the habit.” She pulled out a bowl and crossed to the table. “I hope you like pasta, because that’s what I made for lunch.”

Still frowning, he followed her to the table and sat down in his chair at the head of it, eyeing the bowl’s contents with distrust. “What’s in it?”

“Pasta curls, grilled vegetables, some herbs, a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.”

He reared back, curling his nose and eyeing the bowl warily. “I’m a meat and potatoes man, myself.”

“Really?” she asked, nonplused, and sat down in the chair at his right. “I’d think after working around those smelly old calves all morning that you’d have lost your taste for beef.”

He jerked his head up to glare at her. “I’ll have you know those smelly old calves help pay the bills around here.”

She lifted a shoulder and spooned a generous serving of pasta onto his plate. “If you don’t eat the merchandise, then that just means more profit, right?”

His thick brows drew together over his nose. “What the hell kind of thinking is that?”

She lifted a shoulder as she served her own plate. “Rational. The less you eat, the more beef you have to sell.” She lifted her shoulder again as she set the bowl back on the table. “Makes sense to me.”

He huffed a breath and picked up his fork, shaking his head. “Yeah. I guess to a girl like you, that would make sense.”

Heaving a long-suffering sigh, she turned to look at him. “Are we back to that topic again?”

He scooped up a forkful of pasta and shoveled it into his mouth. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

Stretching across the table for the breadbasket, she tore off a section of the still-warm loaf and dropped it onto his plate before tearing off a piece for herself. “If that’s all you can think to talk about, your conversational skills are lacking. You really should work on that.”

“Nothing wrong with my conversational skills,” he informed her and lifted his fork for another bite. ‘You’re just pissed because I called you a girl.”

She shook her head and sank back in her chair, watching him wolf down the pasta. And he’d said he was a meat and potatoes man, she thought, biting back a smile. “I’m not insulted because you referred to me as a girl. I am a girl. A female. And proud of it. But I am a bit surprised that you’d make an assumption on my level of experience, based on your definition of the term,” she added pointedly, “considering you know absolutely nothing about me.”

He cocked his head to peer at her, then waved his fork in her direction before returning his attention to his meal. “Okay. I’ll bite. Tell me about yourself.”

She reached for her glass of water and took a sip, then propped her elbows on the table, cradling the glass between her hands. “I’m a graduate of the University of Texas where I majored in art and minored in secondary education. I obtained my master’s degree in December.”

He lifted an eyebrow, obviously impressed. “A college graduate, huh? So what’s a woman with that much education doing working as a housekeeper and nanny?”

It was her turn to lift an indifferent shoulder. “I like to eat. When you graduate in December, teaching jobs are a little hard to come by.”

“You plan to teach?”

“Yes, and I hope to do some freelancing on the side.”

“What kind of freelancing?”

“Photography. I plan to supplement my income by selling photos, and possibly accompanying articles, to magazines and journals.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your future all planned out nice and tidy.”

“Yes,” she agreed, but was unable to resist the urge to dig at him a little. “So does that make me mature, more experienced? By your definition, a woman, rather than a girl?”

He snorted and laid down his fork, then reared back in his chair and leveled his gaze on her. “Experience comes with knocks. The hard kind. That’s where I got my degree. The school of hard knocks.”

“And what kind of knocks have you had in your life?”

His gray eyes, once intent upon hers and filled with something akin to humor, took on a hooded look, as if a black cloud had swept across them, hiding his emotions. He rose and carried his glass to the sink to rinse it out and refill it with water, then stood, staring out the window.

“My parents died in a car wreck when I was nineteen,” he said after a moment, his voice roughened by the memories. “I was a freshman at Texas A&M. Had to come home and take over the ranch. My sister, Penny, was thirteen. The courts appointed me her legal guardian.” He stood a moment longer, staring out the window, then angled his head to narrow an eye at her. “My wife died two years ago. Brain aneurysm. Gone like that,” he said, with a snap of his fingers. “Without any warning. Left me with three kids under the age of eleven to raise on my own.”

“You had Penny,” she reminded him, fighting back the swell of sympathy that rose.

Scowling, he turned to face the window again. “Had being the operative word.”

“You still have her,” she insisted. “Just because she chose to pursue her own life doesn’t mean that she’s extracted herself permanently from yours.”

He shot her a glare over his shoulder. “Sure you didn’t get that degree in psychology?”

She shook her head. “No. Art. But I’m a people watcher. It’s a hobby of mine. And do you know what I see when I look at you?”

“What?” he asked drolly.

“A man who feels sorry for himself.”

He slammed the glass down on the counter so hard that water shot above the lip like a geyser. He spun to face her, his face flushed with anger. “I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ve taken the cards I’ve been dealt and played them as best I could. Nobody can question that. Least of all you.”

She rose and crossed to him. “Maybe I don’t have the right, but I do think I’m correct in assuming you feel sorry for yourself. And now you’re blaming your sister for leaving you to take care of your children alone.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, his eyes boring into hers as he glowered down at her. “You listen to me little girl,” he grated out through clenched teeth. “I don’t blame Penny for anything, other than taking off without giving me any warning.”

Undaunted by his anger, by the dig of his fingers into her flesh, she met his gaze squarely, maybe a bit stubbornly. “She warned you she was leaving. You told me so yourself just this morning.”

He continued to glower at her, a muscle ticking on his jaw, then he released her, pushing her away from him as he turned back to face the window. “I didn’t believe her. She’d said before she was going to leave, but she never went through with it.”

“And you’re angry with her because this time she did what she said she was going to do.”

He whirled to face her, his gray eyes hard as steel. “The kids need her. They depend upon her. And she walked out on them.”

“They need you,” she argued. “Their father.”

He thrust his face close to hers. “And what makes you an authority on what a kid needs? Huh? What the hell makes you think you know better than I do what my own kids need?”

She drew in a long breath, never once moving her gaze from his. “Because I was a kid once myself. My father died of a heart attack when I was five. My mother never got over the loss. She committed suicide when I was six. I needed my father,” she said, and blinked back the unexpected tears that rose. “And I needed my mother, too. But she wimped out. Left me all alone.” She hitched a breath but refused to let the tears fall. “That’s how I know,” she said, her voice growing as steely as the eyes that met hers. “You want to talk about hard knocks?” She tapped a finger against his chest. “Mister, I’ll compare lumps with you any day of the week.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.