Killer Cowboy Charm

“You’re right, of course. Stupid as it sounds, I keep hoping for a miracle so I can buy it back before that happens.”

“Into lottery tickets, are you?”

“Yeah, I do that.”

She thought of George Forester, a paunchy guy she’d met once at a cocktail party. For him this ranch was mere financial speculation, a chance to increase his considerable fortune if he timed the sale correctly. But for Clint, this was about hanging onto his heritage. She wanted Clint to win the lottery.

“You getting cold?” he asked.

“Why?”

“You shivered.”

“I guess I am a bit chilly.” But sitting here talking with Clint, she’d ignored the cold so that they could stay on the porch a little longer. Purple and blue shadows crept over the valley, and even though she wouldn’t want to spend a whole lot of time looking at them, they were kind of pretty.

“Let’s go in. José will be starting supper any minute, and I need to get the fire ready.”

“José cooks on a wood stove?” If so, she should get Jamie up here on the double, to take footage of that happening.

Clint laughed. “Nope. My grandmother used to, but we’ve had electricity for a long time. Dinner and the fire aren’t connected, except that I like to have a fire in the evenings, and if I set it up now, all I have to do is light it later.”

“Oh.” She had the insane desire to hang around and watch him build the fire, maybe because the cowboys in her dad’s beloved Westerns were forever building fires. It seemed like such a manly chore. “Then maybe I’ll go in my room and start working on my script for tomorrow.”

“What time will you do the first broadcast?”

“Early. We have time on the bird at seven-thirty.”

He laughed. “That’s not early, but what in God’s name is time on the bird?”

She pointed skyward. “Satellite. We only get so long to beam up there from the live truck, or as Jamie loves to call it, the nest. We can’t miss that time, or we’re screwed. But we’ll try not to disturb you.”

“You won’t. I’m up by five.”

“Why? I thought your foreman ran things around here.”

He looked like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “Uh, I’m just an early riser.”

Yes, he was definitely playing games with her and hiding significant information. Okay, girlfriend or no girlfriend, he deserved to get zinged for that. “I like that in a man,” she said. “Someone who’d be up and ready for anything.” Then she waited for him to blush, the way he had earlier.

Instead his eyes darkened, his nostrils flared, and his voice dropped to a sexy drawl. “You might want to be more careful how you use that tongue of yours. It could get you into trouble.”

Her pulse hammered. He was flirting with her! That might mean he didn’t have a girlfriend. That would be a very exciting discovery. She decided to push the envelope a little more. “Maybe I like a little trouble now and then.”

His smile was slow and full of meaning. “Lady, nothing around here qualifies as little.”

She gulped. Maybe she’d underestimated this guy. But she was determined to have the last word. “I’m delighted to hear it. I’m a girl who likes her thrills super-sized. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to do some work before dinner.” Then she whisked through the front door and hurried down the hall.

Back in her room, she closed the door and stood there breathing hard. Good grief. She’d imagined herself in control of the situation, and then wham! Tables turned. She’d better decide for sure how she wanted this to go between them before he stole the decision right from under her…on top of her…and behind her. Damn.

3

CLINT DIDN’T FOLLOW Meg into the house right away. He didn’t trust himself not to go down that hall after her. He shouldn’t have said what he had, but she brought out that side of him and made him think along dangerous lines. What a spitfire. An exciting, arousing bundle of woman. He wondered if she’d meant any of it, or if toying with guys was what she did for amusement.

Probably the latter. He’d be well advised to keep away from someone who had Manhattan by the tail. Hell, he’d seen her picture on the front of one of those celebrity magazines at the barber shop the other day. The last thing he wanted was to get mixed up with someone who had that kind of visibility.

He shouldn’t be fooled because she’d sat on the porch with him and shared some conversation over a cup of coffee. She didn’t have anything else to do at the moment. Still, she got his blood pumping more than any woman had in a long while.

She was also starting to see right through him. He didn’t know if she’d figure everything out before she left, but she already had a pretty good idea that a business degree wasn’t the whole story with him. He hadn’t counted on her being this sharp.

Apparently he’d made the mistake of watching her for five minutes on TV and thinking he had her pegged. She was more complicated than that, more fascinating in person than she had been as an image on a television screen. But no matter how attracted he was, he’d be better off leaving well enough alone.

He had enough troubles without making matters worse. No telling how George would react if he found out Clint had been fooling around with the TV lady. And that was assuming she’d allow any fooling around. She might have no intention of following through on any of her suggestive comments.

But he wasn’t sure about that, and it drove him crazy, wondering. Ah, to hell with it. This would all be over in two days, and he’d be back to helping Tuck with Gabriel, renting horses to greenhorns and buying lottery tickets every week. With that thought firmly in mind, he went around to the side of the house, gathered an armload of firewood, and took it in through the kitchen door.

José, a guy who clearly liked his own cooking way too much, was already slicing and dicing for what looked like his famous enchiladas. Hired when Clint’s mother couldn’t handle the job anymore, José had been in charge of the Circle W kitchen for enough years that he felt the kitchen was his to command.

He glanced up from the cutting board. “Where’s the TV lady?”

“In her room working on her script for tomorrow.”

José’s dark eyes shone with excitement. “Do I get to meet her?”

“Sure, you can meet her. I thought you’d be having dinner with us, like you always do.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to do that. I know myself. I’d dump my food in my lap while I was busy staring at her.”

“Aw, no, you wouldn’t. She’s not that scary.”

“Boss, she was in People magazine. I’ve never come face-to-face with anyone who was in People. I wouldn’t know how to act. I’d embarrass myself, for sure. I’d—”

“You’d better stop chopping that tomato. It’s mushed into a pulp already.”

José glanced at the chopping board. “See? Just thinking about her I murdered this poor tomato. No, just introduce me before you start eating, and I’ll go back in the kitchen and quiver for ten minutes.”

Clint laughed. “Okay. Your decision. But I really don’t think—”

The kitchen door opened and Tuck poked in his head. “Jed and Denny have voted to eat down at the bunkhouse tonight instead of up here. So give us a call when the food’s ready and I’ll come get it.”

José nodded. “I’ll bet I know why. They’re all nervous about the TV lady and don’t think their manners are good enough.”

“I guess so.” Tuck shook his head. “Me, I couldn’t care less one way or the other, but they made me promise to stay down there with them and act like we do this all the time. They’re scared, but they don’t want her to know it.”

Clint was having trouble comprehending it. Jed, an accomplished steer wrestler, was a bull of a guy who’d never seemed afraid of anything. Redheaded Denny always had girls hanging around and he’d been the first to sign up for the contest. “Are you saying that José, Jed and Denny are all too nervous to be in the same room with her?”

“Seems like,” Tuck said. “Now, the cameraman, he’s a different story. They’re real tight with him already. He’s eating with them tonight, too, by the way.”

“So it’s only Meg and me having our meal here in the house?” Clint pictured the two of them at a table big enough for eight. He’d imagined all the hands there, as they usually were, along with Tuck, and the cameraman. Just two of them at that big table would look silly.

José gave him a pleading glance. “You can handle it, boss. You’ve been to college and everything. The rest of us are country boys.”

“But Jed and Denny are entering the contest! Don’t they want to get to know her better? They’d have a head start over the guys who won’t show up until tomorrow morning.”

“I tried to tell them that, too,” Tuck said. “They’re sure they’ll just ruin their chances. They’d rather wait until tomorrow, when they’ll be showing off their cowboying skills. They’re afraid to have a meal with her, where table manners and such would come into play.”

Clint groaned. “This is getting more ridiculous by the minute.”

“I know,” Tuck said. “But that’s the situation.”

Clint had a mental picture of him sitting at one end of the long dining table and Meg at the other. Even sitting across from each other width-wise would leave an awful lot of empty space. She’d want to know if he usually ate by himself at that table and he couldn’t explain without saying that his hands were too chicken to join her for dinner.

“Tell you what, José,” he said. “Meg and I will set up in front of the fireplace instead of the dining room.”

“Okay, boss. You want me to bring out the card table? It’s a little rickety, though.”

“No.” Clint was making this up as he went along. A rickety card table was not what he wanted, either. Somewhere in the past couple of hours he’d started worrying about Meg Delancy’s opinion. That wasn’t a good thing, but it was true.

“We’ll use the coffee table,” Clint said. “That round slab of oak will hold anything.” He’d stood on it a few times when he needed to reach something taller than he was.

“And you’ll make a royal mess,” José said. “It’s enchiladas tonight, don’t forget, and that’s a long way from the plate to your mouth. Not that you’re sloppy, boss, but I can see enchilada sauce all down your shirt if you’re sitting on the couch and eating off the coffee table.”

“Then sit on the floor,” Tuck said. “Take a couple of cushions off the couch and sit on the floor. Like they do at those ethnic restaurants.”

José grinned. “Good idea! Yeah, that’ll be real cozy.”

“I’ll help you set it up.” Tuck headed for the living room.

Clint had obviously lost control of the situation and didn’t know how to get it back. But cozy was way more intimate than he’d had in mind. Eating at the big table would have looked ridiculous, which was why he’d thought of eating in front of the fire. He hadn’t worked out the details, though, and all of a sudden he was stuck with cozy.

Although he could countermand Tuck’s idea, he wouldn’t. The guy had become a substitute father, and Clint had never felt like Tuck’s boss. He respected his foreman more than anyone he knew.

So, instead of objecting, he followed Tuck into the living room to supervise and make sure it wouldn’t be too damned cozy. He was already worried enough about how this shared lodging would work out and what the possible repercussions would be.

By the time Clint arrived in the living room and dumped his load of firewood on the hearth, Tuck had already moved the couch back from the coffee table. The little guy had amazing strength for his size.

“Okay, we’ll take this cushion, here, and put it right here.” Tuck pulled a square seat cushion from the couch and plopped it on the braided rug right behind the coffee table.

“Now it looks like we’re camping,” Clint said. “Maybe I should just invite her to the Steak Out and be done with it.”

“You can’t do that.” Tuck pulled another cushion from the couch and positioned it on the floor right next to the first cushion.

“Why not?” Clint leaned down and moved the second cushion so it was a good three feet from the first one.

“Because you would break José’s heart, that’s why. He’s been planning his specialty enchilada dinner ever since he found out the TV lady was coming. You know he’s mighty proud of his enchiladas.” Tuck moved the first cushion again so it was touching the second.

“I hadn’t realized he planned the menu just for her.” Clint moved his cushion around the table so it was another three feet away.

“Well, he did.” Tuck surveyed the arrangement and moved the first cushion up next to the second one again.

Clint moved his cushion again too. “Then it looks like we’ll eat here in front of the fire.”

“Looks like, although I can’t figure out what you’re doing with these two cushions.” Tuck moved his so it followed the other around the table. “We started out with them facing the fire, and now you’ll be sitting with your backs to it. I don’t get the point of that.”

Clint reached for both cushions, hauled them up and brought them back around behind the coffee table. “One of us is sitting here.” He dropped the cushion. “And the other one w-a-a-a-y over here.” He walked around the table and dropped the other cushion.

“Why? Does she smell bad?”

“I hope not.” Meg walked into the room. “I took a shower this morning, and my deodorant should still be working.”

Tuck turned scarlet. Clint had never seen his foreman blush before, and he was so fascinated that he forgot his manners.

Meg walked forward, hand outstretched, smile at the ready. “I’m Meg Delancy. Feel free to tell me if I need to hit the showers. I don’t get insulted easily.”

Tuck’s throat worked, but he was speechless.

Clint understood the reaction. Up close, she was damned impressive. A jolt of sexual awareness hit him every time she came near.

“You smell fine,” he said. Wonderful, in fact, he realized. He hadn’t thought about it earlier because he’d been too absorbed in how she looked, which was also wonderful. “Meg, this is Tucker Benson, my foreman.”

Tuck cleared his throat and shook her hand. “Meased to pleet you. Uh, what I mean is—”

“I’m pleased to meet you, too, Tucker.” She sailed right past his awkwardness. “Clint says you run the operation here at the Circle W. He made it very clear that he doesn’t know one end of a horse from the other.”

“Uh, yeah, well…I do my best.” Tuck glanced over at Clint.

Clint returned the look, silently warning Tuck not to get him into any trouble.

“And I’m sorry about the smart remark,” Tuck continued. “I was teasing Clint about the cushions.”

“Cushions?” Meg glanced over at the couch and then down at the floor. “Are you two looking for loose change or something?”

Clint sighed. He never should have suggested eating in front of the fire, because he didn’t have the right setup for it. If he could think of a logical explanation for the cushions on the floor, they could go back to the concept of eating at the huge dining table. It was the lesser of two stupidities.

“Clint thought it’d be nice for the two of you to eat in front of the fire,” Tuck said.

“Or maybe not,” Clint said. “Maybe the dining room is the best choice. Wherever you’d be the most comfortable.”

Meg looked confused. “I heard you tell Jamie dinner was at six. So I thought he’d—”

“Jamie’s having a great time down at the bunkhouse,” Clint said. “So he’s joining the rest of the boys down there tonight.”

“Oh.” Meg’s hesitation was so slight as to be almost unnoticeable. “Was there…anyone else you wanted to invite to dinner?”

Clint didn’t know if she’d asked because the setting was too dorky or because she was worried about spending more time alone with him. “Like who?”

“Um, maybe your girlfriend?”

Oh, God, did she want him to have a girlfriend? If so, she was out of luck. “No current girlfriend,” he said.

“Well, then, let’s eat in front of the fire. Sounds fabulous.”

Maybe he was projecting, but he thought she sounded nervous or something about the idea. After all, she’d been taunting him and now she might be worried that he’d expect her to follow through. He expected zip from her, but he couldn’t very well say that now.

Between José’s hopes for his enchiladas and the bunkhouse gang wimping out, it looked as if Clint would be eating in front of the fire tonight, alone with Meg. He would have to look and not touch. And he wanted to touch…everything. But he would behave himself, even if it killed him.

“IS THERE ANYTHING I can do to help?” Meg doubted it, but the manners her mother had drilled into her prompted her to ask. Meanwhile she was digesting the news that Clint had no girlfriend. Clear sailing. Her heart raced as she contemplated the possibilities.

“I think everything’s under control,” Clint said, though he didn’t look as if he really thought so. “I’ll clean out the old ashes before I build the fire.”

“Then I’ll, um, watch.” Meg felt a little shaky, so she settled down on the one remaining couch cushion.

“And I’ll get on out to the bunkhouse,” Tuck said. “I think the poker game’s about to start.”

“Just don’t keep Jamie up too late.” Meg had to remind herself of her purpose in being here. “We have to be on the bird at 7:30.”

“The what?” Tuck frowned in obvious confusion.

Clint interrupted his shoveling of the ashes. “The bird’s the TV satellite,” he said. “They rent time on it so they can do a remote broadcast from the live truck, which is that white van they came in.”

Meg suppressed a smile. Clint seemed quite proud of his newfound info. And he was about twenty times more appealing now that she knew he wasn’t involved with someone.

“Interesting.” Tucker acted as if he wanted to hang around a little longer. “So tomorrow, when you broadcast from here, are you planning to have anybody besides you on camera?”

Forcing herself to concentrate on her job instead of Clint, Meg made a spur-of-the-minute decision. “I would love to interview you for a couple of minutes, Tucker. Would you be willing to do that?” She’d originally planned to interview Clint, but he didn’t seem to own the right outfit for the broadcast. Tucker was too old to qualify for the contest, but he’d add some great color to the first segment.

The foreman looked quite pleased with the prospect. “You can call me Tuck, and I expect I could work that in. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’ll ask you a few questions about ranching, how you got into this line of work. I’m trusting Jamie to set up the shot and the lighting, so tell him I want to interview you and he’ll decide the best location. If you could be ready about seven, we can do a little practice run.”

“All right.” Tuck’s smile gleamed white against his tanned skin. “Sounds good. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

After he left, Meg glanced toward the fireplace where Clint was shoveling the last of the ashes into a bucket near the fire. He looked terrific doing it, too. And he had no girlfriend. “I hope you don’t mind if I interview your foreman. Maybe I should have asked you before I suggested it to him.”

“That’s fine. Tuck’s the one to talk to about the ranch.” He tapped the last of the ashes from the shovel and replaced it in the holder with the rest of the fireplace tools. “Like I said, I’m no expert. He is.”

Something about this scenario didn’t add up. “I’m curious as to how you fill your time here, if you don’t spend it on ranch chores?”

He stood, but he didn’t turn around. His answer was a little slow in coming. “I keep the books. We run a boarding and training stable here. We also offer trail rides.”

“I see.” She couldn’t imagine an accounting system that would require a full-time effort. But she could imagine this man naked, and the concept made her drool.

He turned toward her. “And I, um, do a little consulting.”

“Oh, really? On what?” Maybe she could get him to consult with her on this little problem of sexual deprivation.

“Business. Business consulting, for the merchants around here.”

Considering the number of merchants she’d noticed on the way here, that wouldn’t occupy him for long, either. “Sounds like a nice relaxed life.”

“Yep. Relaxed, that’s me.” He stood and hooked his thumbs through his belt loops.

That stance was all it took for her to be convinced. Instantly she pictured him in jeans and a yoked Western shirt, boots and a worn Stetson. This man was a cowboy, her fantasy man. And he didn’t want her to know.

“You must even have time for hobbies,” she said.

“Some.”

“Such as?”

“Oh…birdwatching.”

If he was a birdwatcher she was Jay Leno. But she pretended to believe him. “I’ve always thought that would be fun, hiking in sensible shoes with a pair of binoculars around my neck. But I don’t have the time. What’s the most unusual bird you’ve ever spotted?”

He met her gaze. “I can’t believe you’re interested in birdwatching.”

“I can’t believe you are, either.” But she would be thrilled if he could be interested in her for the next couple of days.

“Maybe I made it up because I don’t want you to know I’m a lazy son-of-a-gun who whiles away the day on the front porch with a can of beer in his hand.”

“Try again.” She’d glimpsed great muscle definition under his white shirt. “You’re too fit for me to believe you lounge around drinking beer all day. I say you’re a working cowboy, and for some reason you don’t want me to know that. I’m assuming it has to do with the contest. Trust me, if you don’t want to be in it, I won’t coerce you. And I won’t sic George Forester on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He stood there looking at her, his blue eyes giving away nothing. “I’d better go get the cook, José. He wanted to meet you.”

“You’re going to keep me guessing, aren’t you?”

“Yep.” Then he walked out of the room.

She felt like throwing something. She would smoke him out, though. On the job she was known for her ability to coax people into spilling their secrets. Clint was going to tell his, even if she had to seduce them out of him. And she could consider that option without guilt now…because he had no girlfriend.

4

AS CLINT WALKED through the dining room into the kitchen in search of José, he felt no sense of victory. She was winning this game of hide-and-seek, and they both knew it. When he’d planned to fool her, he’d forgotten that she interviewed people for a living. She was trained to dig until she found the truth.

If she hadn’t figured out that he was lying to her about his cowboying skills, she would know it very soon. And maybe it didn’t matter. His half-ass disguise succeeded in sending the message that he didn’t want to be part of her ridiculous contest without him having to say it out loud.

When he walked into the kitchen, José spun away from the oven where he’d been checking his enchiladas. “She’s out there, huh?”

“Yep, she’s out there.” Really out there. He’d never known a woman this bold and sassy. He liked it too much. “Ready to go meet her?”

José gulped. “Now?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, but I need…a mission. I can’t parade out there without a reason.”

Clint heaved a sigh. “She’s just a woman.”

“That’s like saying my triple-chocolate layer cake is just a dessert. If she’s half as gorgeous in person as she is on TV, then—”

“You’ve watched the show?” Although Clint had seen it once, for research purposes, he wouldn’t have thought anybody else on the Circle W had bothered.

“Are you kidding? Every weekday morning! That woman is hot. I watch it live. The other guys watch the tape.”

Clint stared at his cook and waited for him to start laughing at the little joke he was playing on his boss. “You’re making this up.”

“Nope. I watch it here or down in the bunkhouse, wherever I happen to be. I’m usually the one that sets up the VCR down there for the other guys, and sometimes I go down at night so I can see it again. We don’t pay much attention to the program. Just her. Do you think her red hair is real or dyed?”