The Cattleman And The Virgin Heiress

Spinning on his heel, he muttered, “I’ll go dig ’em out. You can figure it out for yourself.”

Hope frowned at the tone of his voice. Why, he’d sounded almost angry. Remorse hit her very hard. She was an intrusion in the man’s life and routine, for heaven’s sake. Why wouldn’t he be irritated over a request that obviously had sent him back out into the rain?

But she couldn’t go back to bed and do nothing, she just couldn’t. In the first place there was no reason for her to act like an invalid. Sore muscles and a bit of headache certainly weren’t anything to cause alarm.

Hope’s eyes narrowed slightly as she pondered that conclusion. Perhaps sore muscles and a headache weren’t cause for alarm, but what if they were clues to last night’s events? And maybe her clothes were also clues. No, she hadn’t been wrong in asking to see her things. If Matt had taken umbrage over it, then he’d either have to get over it, or not. Did it really matter to her how he or anyone else she might meet took anything she did or said when she felt so hopelessly adrift in a completely unfamiliar, even alien world? She had to follow her instincts; they were all she had.

Matt walked in with an armload of dark green fabric, which he placed on the table in front of her. “Have at it,” he said gruffly. “I think I managed to save your shoes. I’ll get them.”

Hope began taking apart the many pieces of fabric. Matt returned with a pair of black leather shoes, and she took them from his hands and frowned.

“They’re very…bruised,” she murmured.

“Scuffed,” Matt said.

She looked up. “Pardon?”

“People get bruised, not shoes. Yours are badly scuffed and the leather is gouged in places. Rough usage, I’d have to say.”

“Like maybe I had walked over some very rough terrain?”

“Yeah, that’d do it, but not if it was only a short walk. Then, too, these could be old shoes. They might have walked many miles before last night.”

Hope had no grounds for disagreement, although she somehow felt that the condition of her shoes was immutably connected to whatever had brought her here in the night.

She began looking through the pieces of wet fabric, and almost immediately noticed something strange. “It’s terribly snagged.”

“I told you it was tattered and torn.”

“Yes, there’s a tear right here. But there are so many snags.”

“Like what?”

“Look at the piece I’m holding. See all those little—uh, bumps, I guess you’d call them, where a thread has been pulled by something?”

Matt bent over for a closer look. “Do those snags mean anything to you?”

“If you’re asking, do I remember how my clothes got so badly snagged, the answer is no, they don’t mean anything to me. But what would cause such devastating wear and tear on one’s clothing?”

Matt shrugged. “Beats me. Unless you fought your way through a bunch of prickly mesquite brush.”

“Is there some of that around here?”

“Lots of it. Also scrub cedar and oak, and both of those can scratch the living daylights out of a person dumb enough to tangle with them.”

She shot him a dirty look. “Other reasons beside stupidity might have caused me to tangle with some prickly plants, you know.”

Her flare of defensive temper surprised him. “I wasn’t even talking about you,” he retorted.

“Who were you talking about then, the man in the moon? Let me ask you this. Wasn’t I wearing underwear or were you too squeamish to bring it back inside with the rest of this mess, which I might add, was mostly caused by your scissors?”

“Women’s underwear does not make me feel squeamish,” he said coldly. “For your information, I took a brassiere and a pair of panties off your wet, shivering body, and once you were bathed, dressed in my sweats and warming up under the best blankets in the house, I rinsed the mud out of your delicacies and hung them in the laundry room to dry.”

Hope’s jaw dropped. “You bathed me?”

“Don’t you dare use that indignant tone on me, lady. You were covered with mud. I suppose I should have put you to bed in that condition?”

Heat suffused Hope’s face. “Bathing someone is just so—so intimate.”

“Under this morning’s conditions, it wasn’t even close to being intimate.” It was a lie but Matt managed to sound totally and innocently sincere.

Hope tried to steer this uncomfortable conversation in another direction. “I knew these huge sweats I’ve got on had to belong to someone very tall.” And very handsome? He was handsome; it was simply a fact of her present limited life. Not that she wanted to expand on that fact. Goodness, she could be married, or engaged, or living with a man she loved madly.

“I rolled up the legs, but I could cut them off, if you prefer,” Matt said.

“I wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Suit yourself, but I can see that you’re swimming in loose material.”

“Which is just fine for now.”

“Are you finished with those pieces of cloth?”

“I guess so. Oh, wait a sec. I see a label.” Hope studied the label of a hunk of fabric, then sighed because it meant absolutely nothing to her. “I was hoping…” she said in a husky little voice.

“Look, I’m going to go down to the bunkhouse and see how the men are making out. I’d feel better about leaving you alone if you were in bed again.”

“Fine,” Hope said dully. Matt was instantly at her side to help her up from the chair, and he held her arm all the way back to the bedroom and the bed. She told herself to forget that he was a tall, deliciously sexy, good-looking man—who seemed to get better looking every time they talked—but his big hand clasped around her arm made that impossible to do. She was glad when she was finally under the covers again and Matt had left the room.

She heaved a long, helpless sigh. This was not a game, and she really must be demented to be noticing a man’s good looks under such trying circumstances.

But then, maybe that was the kind of woman she was. Maybe she slept around. Maybe any sexy guy was fair game. Maybe she was a—a tramp!

Tears rolled down her temples. Matt McCarlson had not only undressed her, he’d given her a bath. Maybe she should be worrying about what kind of person he was. After all, she had been unconscious and entirely at his mercy!

Matt stayed away from the house for a couple of hours. He talked to the men at the bunkhouse and they weren’t a bit shy with their complaints.

“Danged if we ain’t out here trapped like rats in their hole.”

“We can’t hardly stand to look at each other anymore, Matt.”

“Hell, I’d take backbreaking work over being stuck in this bunkhouse with these yahoos any day of the week.”

“Matt, have you been listening to the radio for weather reports? The radio out here ain’t working worth a damn. We’ve been getting mostly static, probably because of the storm.”

“It’s the same in the house, Joe, but I did manage to catch one weather report and it looks like we’re in for more rain.”

The grousing went on, and Matt drank a cup of strong bunkhouse coffee and let them vent. They had a right, he felt. Cowboys were used to being outdoors. The bunkhouse probably felt like a prison to them, just as the house would’ve felt to Matt if his time and thoughts hadn’t been so taken up by Hope LeClaire.

It occurred to Matt then that no one had said anything about her. There’d been no teasing comments and no tongue-in-cheek innuendo, which wasn’t at all like a bunch of cowhands, particularly cowhands with nothing to do but gripe about the weather.

He caught Chuck’s eye and could tell then from the foreman’s expression that there’d been no conversation between him and any of the men about the ranch’s unexpected guest. Giving his head a slight nod at Chuck, he indicated appreciation of his reticence. Chuck nodded back, and that was the end of it.

The bunkhouse had a kitchen and a bunch of tables and chairs. Most of the men could cook a little—a pot of chili or beef stew, red beans and rice, fried steak and potatoes—plain fare but filling, and there was a big pan simmering on the stove today. Matt rinsed his cup at the sink and noted that the men might be edgy as a hive of bees, but they planned to eat well that evening.

That thought raised the question of what he would feed Hope for dinner. Alone, he would come out here and eat whatever the men had cooked in that big pot, but not today. Like it or not, he had a responsibility in his guest room that he could not ignore.

He was suddenly irritated and exasperated over fate playing such a dirty trick on him as to actually deliver a Stockwell almost to his front door, and to do it in a storm that isolated the ranch and everyone on it from the rest of the world. His hands were tied as far as Hope went. He couldn’t even phone someone—the doctor, Hope’s mother or any of the Stockwells—and get rid of her through one of those avenues.

He was as stuck as the ranch hands were, he thought disgustedly, only all they had to worry about was being cooped up with each other until the storm passed. His worries could be measured in miles, and that road seemed to be getting longer with each passing day. Wearing a disgruntled expression, he told the men he’d see them later and then braved the rain once again to trudge through the mud for the return trip to the house.

He didn’t look in on Hope. Instead, after kicking off his muddy boots, he walked stocking-footed to the living room, plopped down into his favorite old recliner chair and pushed it back. The gray light in the room bothered him almost at once, and he reached out to turn on the lamp next to the chair. The switch clicked, but nothing happened.

Cursing a blue streak, Matt leapt to his feet and tried other lights. None came on, and for a moment Matt felt like tearing out his own hair. Now the ranch was without electricity, and just how long would that inconvenience go on?

“This miserable damn storm,” he muttered as he went to a window and looked out at the bunkhouse. The lights that had been on only minutes ago were no longer burning.

Matt walked back to his chair and sank onto it. The loss of electricity seemed like a final straw. There would be no heat, no cooking, no lights.

Plus he had an amnesiac on his hands. How in hell was he going to deal with it all?

Chapter Three

T he room had an inert, pewterlike quality that dulled distinctiveness and distorted perspective. Worse for Hope was its frightening unfamiliarity.

Her heartbeat was so hard and fast that she could hear it. She had just woken up, and not recognizing the bedroom she was in was so terrifying that she felt paralyzed. In the next instant she came fully awake and remembered the hours before she’d fallen asleep, and while the paralysis relaxed its grip on her system, the fear did not.

The house seemed eerily quiet. Where was Matthew McCarlson? Light, she decided as her pulse rate kept time with her pounding heart. Some light in the room might help calm her nerves. Reaching out to the lamp next to the bed, she located and then pushed the switch.

“Oh, no,” she whispered when no light came on. Was the bulb burned out? Her hands clenched into fearful fists as she forced her bewildered and disoriented brain to concentrate on the problem. Maybe the lamp wasn’t plugged in. Or maybe it was plugged into one of those outlets that required the use of a wall switch.

But she would have to get out of bed to find out. The room seemed to be getting darker by the minute, and she couldn’t tell if there were wall switches anywhere.

She could hear rain; it was still coming down. And, obviously, night was falling. She’d slept away the day. She must have been exhausted, or maybe it had simply been easier to sleep than to stay awake and face her situation.

Her situation, she thought with a heavy sigh that was a combination of fearful desperation and incredulity. How could so many awful things happen to one person at the same time? She was in a strange place in a stranger’s home and knew nothing about herself except for the little information she’d gotten from a purse—her purse, even if she didn’t recognize it.

On top of her amnesia was the storm, which had isolated this ranch to the point of no possible means of communication with the rest of the world. It was all so…so bizarre…so Hollywoodish. More like a plot in a movie than a real-life experience.

Or was it? Hope frowned in the deepening darkness. Since she knew nothing about herself, perhaps this sort of adventure—or misadventure—was the norm for her. She sighed again over such a repugnant prospect, and then felt slightly better because the idea of living on the edge of a precipice was repugnant.

And then she gulped uneasily and wondered if amnesia altered victims’ personalities so drastically that they became different people than they’d been. Maybe the way she saw things now wasn’t even close to her normal point of view on anything and everything. Moaning in anguish over that horrifying possibility, Hope whispered, “God help me.”

After lying in a heap of utter misery for a while, she realized that the more she pondered her plight, the worse she felt. It would be very easy to just let go and scream her throat raw, but would it change anything? Would the telephone suddenly start working—or the lights? That was the problem with her lamp, of course. The storm had wreaked havoc with the area’s electricity.

Screaming would accomplish nothing. Neither would crying herself sick. What she needed to do was to get out of this bed.

Wouldn’t a shower feel wonderful? Or a long soak in a hot-water bubble bath?

Hope slid off the bed and made her way to the door in the pale shards of daylight still available. But the hallway was much darker than the bedroom, and the house suddenly felt ominously silent. Her nerves began jangling.

Standing with her hand on the frame of the door as though it were some sort of safety line, she called, “Matt?” Almost immediately a light appeared at the end of the hall and began growing in intensity. In a moment she saw the dark silhouette of a man behind the glowing light of a lantern, both of which were coming toward her. “Matt?” she repeated, because she honestly couldn’t tell if the silhouette was him or someone else.

“I’m here. You had quite a sleep.”

Relieved that it was Matt and not another stranger to deal with, she answered. “Yes. Apparently the electricity is off now, as well as the phone.”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“I was hoping for a shower or bath. Guess that’s out of the question.”

“Not necessarily. The hot water tank is full, and I’m sure the water in it is still hot. If the power stays off all night it won’t be hot by morning, so someone might as well use it. Are you sure you’re up to it, though?”

“I’m very sure.” She wanted to wash her hair in the worst way—naturally she would be careful about the cut on her head—and soap every inch of her. She didn’t even want to think about Matthew McCarlson bathing the mud from her nude body, so she certainly wasn’t going to question him about the method he’d used to undress and cleanse an unconscious woman. Anyhow, whatever his technique, it hadn’t been all that adequate because she felt more gritty than clean.

“If you’re that certain, then fine. Take this lantern with you. I have others. Leave the bathroom door unlocked, in case you’re not as strong as you think you are and need some help. Don’t let modesty prevent you from calling for me if you get into trouble. When you’re done, you’ll probably want some supper. I’ve already set up my propane camp stove on the back porch and can do a little cooking on it. We’ll decide later what sounds good.”

He was holding out the lantern, and Hope took it from him. So, she thought, he would rush to her rescue again, should she call out from the bathroom. Was he hoping for another peek at her bare skin, or hadn’t her nudity before bothered him? Maybe he’d barely noticed. Maybe her body wasn’t worthy of notice. For some reason that idea stung Hope’s pride. She hadn’t taken inventory of her figure yet, but she would, she decided.

Ignoring his offer of help, she said, “After all you’ve done for me, I shouldn’t have the gall to ask for one more thing. But these sweats I’m wearing are uncomfortably large and I was wondering if you had some old ones that you wouldn’t mind my cutting inches off the legs and arms.”

“As a matter of fact I do. I’ll get them and bring them and the scissors to the bathroom.” He walked off, vanishing in the darkness right before Hope’s eyes.

Her stomach turned over. She didn’t like being alone in the dark in this strange house, even with a lantern in her hand. It threw light, but it also created shadows, and Hope wondered if she’d always been leery of the dark or if this was just another perturbing side effect to amnesia.

Making her way to the bathroom door, she went in and set the lantern on the sink counter. Leaning forward until her nose was only a few inches from the mirror, she peered at her face in the lantern’s glow. She realized after a few moments that she had no base of information on which to judge her own looks. Was she pretty or plain? Her eyes were blue—quite a vivid blue, actually—but she’d noticed that Matt’s eyes were brown, and perhaps brown eyes were considerably more desirable than blue eyes.

Her dark hair might be appealing when shiny clean and curled—or something. How did she ordinarily wear it?

Hope had left the door open, and Matt walked in without preamble. “Here are several things you can cut up,” he said while placing a stack of clothes on the other end of the counter from the lantern. “Sorry I don’t have anything smaller, but I haven’t been your size since I was in the fifth grade.”

“You are…quite tall,” Hope murmured.

“Six foot three.” Matt walked to the door, but didn’t leave immediately. “Remember what I said about calling out if you need any help. In fact, if you’d leave the door ajar an inch or so, I’d feel a lot better about hearing you.”

“I…guess that would be all right.” She could detect the hint of an amused grin on his lips in the lantern light and became defensive. “Maybe I’m accustomed to bathing with the bathroom door open, but something inside me rebels at the idea so I can’t help doubting it,” she said sharply.

Realizing that no part of her predicament was funny to Hope, Matt erased all signs of amusement from his expression and said solemnly, “I doubt it, too. Take your bath and don’t worry about me peeking through the crack of the door. In the first place, I wouldn’t see anything I haven’t already seen, and in the second, I’m not in the habit of preying on healthy women, let alone one who’s in such sad shape.” He walked out, and pulled the door shut, leaving about a three-inch opening.

Hope’s jaw had dropped in painful surprise. Why, he’d practically come right out and said she was a pitiful specimen of womankind! No wonder he’d been able to undress and bathe her without emotion.

Oh, the shame of it, she thought, completely mortified over being so utterly undesirable. She hurried through a bath and a cautious shampoo, and never once really looked at her body. After all, why would she or any other woman want to inventory something so—so pathetic?

Later, Hope and Matt dined on grilled cheese sandwiches—prepared in an iron skillet on his propane camping stove—and small bowls of canned fruit. The lantern light softened Matt’s features, Hope noticed, and wondered if it did the same with hers. Not that his features needed softening. In spite of the constant concern gnawing at her over her long list of personal grievances, she admired Matt McCarlson’s masculine good looks. It seemed almost insane to be aware of a man’s looks under the circumstances, but Hope really couldn’t help herself.

Not that she expected or even fantasized anything coming of her admiration. She was, after all, so out of Matt’s league in the looks department that even if she was a hundred percent healthy, with a perfect memory and some decent clothes that actually fit, he would be no more affected by her than he would be by a great-grandmother sharing his house and table.

Hope sighed quietly and spooned a bit of canned peach to her mouth. Something flashed through her mind, something about peaches that she couldn’t hold on to or read clearly.

“You’re very quiet,” Matt said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, and I think I just had a glimmer of a memory.”

“You did? What was it?”

“It was nothing earthshaking, so don’t get excited. It had something to do with peaches.”

Matt sat back. “With peaches? Why in hell would your first memory be about peaches? I doubt there are very many peach trees in Massachusetts.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to get excited?” she said dryly. “Believe me, if I had any say in the order in which I might recall my past, my first memory would not have been about peaches. Besides, it wasn’t even a full memory. I mean, I don’t know if I was eating peaches, buying them or picking them off a tree.” Hope paused for a short breath and added, “Maybe I was throwing them at someone, possibly an irritating man.”

Matt’s eyebrows went up. “So you think I’m irritating.”

“Did I mention you?”

“Since I’m the only man you know at the present, you didn’t have to identify who you’d like to throw peaches at.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hope muttered.

“You’re angry. Not only that, you’re angry with me. What happened? What’d I do?”

Hope fell silent, did some thinking and realized that he was right. She was hurt and so angry that she would love to throw something at him. Yes, he’d rescued her from the storm—and only the good Lord knew what else—but then he’d found her so unappealing, so unattractive, that she might as well have been a mangy stray dog instead of a woman.

But she could not explain herself on that score, and she resorted to a lie. “Sorry, but you’re dead wrong. I’m not a bit angry with you. Why would I be? You probably saved my life, pathetic as it apparently is.”

Matt frowned. “Why would you think you have a pathetic life?” Should he go and get that newspaper article for her to read? The information in it sure didn’t read to him like Hope LeClaire led a pathetic life. An heiress to millions, possibly billions of dollars? And she was no slouch in the looks department, either. In truth, he’d never seen a more perfect body. Full, rounded breasts with gorgeous rosy nipples that looked as though they’d been created specifically for a man’s mouth. Oh, no, Hope’s assets weren’t all in banks or safes, not by a long shot.

“Have you seen anyone out here looking for me?” she retorted. “Wouldn’t you think your life was pretty pathetic, too, if no one gave a damn about where you were, or what horror might have befallen you?”

“No one can get out here. I told you that. It might be days after the rain stops before the roads are repaired enough to drive on.”

“But if someone I cared about was missing, I wouldn’t leave a stone unturned to find him or her, and I wouldn’t let a storm or washed-out road stop me,” she snapped.

Matt was beginning to hear a note of hysteria in Hope’s voice, and the last thing he needed in the isolation everyone on the ranch must bear until things returned to normal was a hysterical amnesiac. No, he would not show her that article. In fact, he would do anything he could think of to get her thoughts away from her own admittedly wretched situation.

“You didn’t eat much of your sandwich. Would you like something else?” he asked.

“You deliberately changed the subject,” she said, suddenly weary of it herself. “It’s okay, I’m bored with my problems, too. Scared spitless, let me add, but harping on the same old know-nothing theme is nothing but wasted energy. You know, I bet that you’d give anything you own not to have found me today.”

You’ve got that right, baby! “Don’t be silly,” Matt said out loud in a soothing tone of voice. “Tell you what. You sit there while I clear these dishes away, then I’ll walk you back to your bedroom.”

“Fine,” she said listlessly. Could he say or do anything that would take away her blues? Her self-pity? Lord above, what was she even doing in Texas? Was her mother, Madelyn, worried about her, or had Hope left Massachusetts for an extended trip, gotten in this mess somehow, and no one was worried about her?