California Romance (32 page)

Matt drummed his fingers on the table. “You do have a point, but…”

Sarah placed one hand over her husband’s. A glow filled her eyes. “Matt, I never had a chance for advanced schooling. Would you—could you hire a tutor to come to the ranch and teach both Dori and me? I feel so ignorant compared with you.”

“Ignorant? You’re the smartest person I know,” Matt argued. “There’s nothing you can’t do, even teach the Mexicans to speak English.”

“Pooh, Solita does most of the teaching,” Sarah scoffed. “Besides, I don’t mean ignorant about living, just about books and things.”

Humbled by Sarah’s frank admission of her shortcomings, Dori did likewise. “I know I don’t deserve it, but having a tutor and studying with Sarah would be wonderful.” She inwardly groaned at the thought of being cooped up doing lessons when Splotches and the entire great outdoors beckoned her. But it was better than having to tuck her tail between her legs and go back to school in Madera.

“The tutor will see to it that I make up what I’ll be missing at Brookside,” Dori added.
And it will not include ballroom dancing
, she silently vowed, wise enough to hold her tongue. She was already skating on the thinnest of ice.

Matt’s brows drew together in a straight line. “So where am I to get a tutor? Any teacher worth his salt will already be teaching this time of year.”

“Pray for one.” Dori clapped her hand over her mouth. Had she really said that?

Matt looked astonished. So did Sarah and Solita.

“I’m serious,” Dori told them, surprised to discover it was true. “Doesn’t the Bible tell us that if we ask, we shall receive?” Laughter bubbled out. “And if we seek, we shall find? Well, you need to seek a tutor.”

Matt tilted back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “It never ceases to amaze me how you can quote scripture when it’s to your benefit, sister dear. I have to admit, though, it’s a good idea.” He stretched. “Now if this discussion is over, I have work to do.” He stood, leaned down and kissed Sarah, and strode out.

“Dios will surely help Senor Mateo find the right person,” Solita observed. She smiled at Dori. “I will make your breakfast now.”

“Can I help?”

“No. You sit and talk with Senora Sarah.” The housekeeper disappeared into the pantry.

The postponement of Dori’s day of reckoning released her mischievous spirit. While Solita was out of the kitchen, Dori whispered to Sarah, “I wonder what kind of tutor God will send?”

Sarah laughed and patted her hand. “Who knows? God has such a sense of humor He will probably surprise us. Maybe even shock us.”

“I just hope the tutor has a sense of humor,” Dori flashed back. “If he’s anything like ‘dear Stancel,’ we’re sunk.”

For several days, it appeared there were no unemployed tutors anywhere near Madera. Dori conscientiously made it a matter of prayer, but when time went by with no success, despair set in. If no tutor could be found, she was doomed to return to school in Madera. She intensified her prayers.

Two full weeks after her return to the Diamond S, the tutor arrived. When the sound of buggy wheels halted in front of the wide front porch, Dori and Sarah rushed out. Sarah giggled. She pinched Dori’s arm and said, “I told you God might shock us. Now we’ll see if He has.”

Matt helped someone from the buggy. “Sarah, Dori, meet Miss Katie O’Riley, your new tutor.”

“I’m actually for bein’ a teacher and a governess,” Katie said.

Dori’s jaw dropped. Her new “tutor” had the reddest hair, the greenest eyes, and the most freckles on her tip-tilted nose that Dori had ever seen. She looked to be only a few years older than Dori and her accent was pure, lilting Irish when she said, “So you’re for bein’ Mrs. Sarah and Miss Dolores. Mercy me, but you’re two fine colleens.” A trill of laughter set Katie’s eyes asparkle. And as Dori’s grandmother used to say, “It warmed the very cockles of a body’s heart.”

Thank You, God
, Dori breathed—and stepped forward to welcome Katie O’Riley.

W
hoa, Copper.”

Late one Saturday afternoon, Seth Anderson reined in his sorrel gelding just outside the corral and wearily slid from the saddle. He’d been riding the range, looking for a small bunch of cattle that were either lost, strayed, or stolen—most likely stolen—without success. He glanced toward the ranch house. An assortment of riderless horses and a couple of buggies littered the front yard.

Seth scowled. His earlier predictions about life on the Diamond S never being the same once Dori Sterling turned up had been fulfilled. The coming of Katie O’Riley had added to the problem. With two attractive, unmarried females on hand, single and widowed men for miles around flocked to the ranch like honeybees to a clover field.

Seth snorted. “A bunch of lovesick pups, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never seen so many duded-up visitors or smelled so much hair tonic. I can’t tell yet how Katie feels about all this masculine attention, but anyone who isn’t blind can see that Dori glories in it. She holds court as if every male age eighteen and over is her private property.”

Seth unsaddled Copper and continued to grumble while he rubbed the sorrel down. “You’re the best listener on the ranch,” he said. Copper whinnied and nudged his soft nose against Seth’s shoulder as if to agree. His master went on with his complaints.

“Curly, Bud, Slim, and most of the outfit are just as bad. In all my born days I never heard such a passel of excuses for laying off work. Curly’s had more bellyaches lately than in all the time I’ve been here. Bud can’t ride ’cause his ‘rheumatics’—whatever that is—are acting up.”

Seth groomed Copper until he shone brighter than his name. “Slim takes the cake. I heard him tell Brett this morning that he reckoned he was just ‘too tuckered out to chase rustlers or cow-type critters today.’ Matt’s gotta do something and do it pronto, or we may as well kiss the rest of the herd good-bye.”

Disgusted and discouraged, Seth turned Copper loose in the pasture, got himself slicked up, and went to find Sarah. Maybe she could do something with Dori. To his amazement, he got little sympathy.

“Dori is still young, even though she’s eighteen,” Sarah told him over coffee in the kitchen. “Of course she has the bit in her teeth. She’s been penned up at school for two years. Although she won’t admit it, I suspect she hated every minute there but was too proud to come home. Don’t let her get under your skin, Seth. She’ll settle down.” Sarah smiled at him. “Katie is good for her. Even in the short time she’s been with us, she’s been rubbing off on Dori.”

A merry laugh floated through the open hall door and into the kitchen. “From what I can see, it’s the other way around,” Seth growled. “Sounds like Dori has Katie wrapped around her little finger.”

Sarah shook her head. “Don’t you believe it. Our Irish colleen is full of fun, but she’s a strict disciplinarian in the classroom. If Dori or I don’t have our lessons prepared to her satisfaction, she looks at us with those big emerald eyes and says, ‘You’ll be for doin’ this over—as many times as it takes for it to be done right and proper.’ ”

Sarah’s imitation of the new teacher brought a grin to Seth’s face. “I’m glad to see there’s someone on this ranch who Dori can’t push around. I would have thought she’d pitch a fit at having to be taught.”

“I’m sure she’d like to, but the alternative is spending spring term at school in Madera.” His sister raised one eyebrow and smirked. “By the way, I’d say there are two someone’s here on the ranch who Dori can’t push around.” Before Seth could answer, Sarah changed the subject. “Matt says there’s going to be a barn raising soon, followed by a barn dance. Are you taking anyone?”

Feeling he had been bested concerning Dori, Seth was in no mood for frolicking. “Probably not.”

“How about Abby?” Mischief lurked in Sarah’s blue eyes.

Seth stood and glared down at her. “As Katie would say, ‘Don’t you be for matchmaking.’ It beats all that when folks get married, all they can think of is getting everyone else hitched up.”

“So do you plan on spending your life in single blessedness?” Sarah teased.

“Better single blessedness than double cursedness,” Seth retorted. He got up and stalked toward the kitchen door, pursued by his sister’s mocking laughter. A moment later, her soft voice halted him.

“I’m sorry, Seth. Matt and I are so happy. I want you to be, too.” Her voice trembled.

Repentant for acting so cussed, Seth spun around. “I know. It’s just that I won’t marry until God sends the right girl and lets me know she is the right one. Stepping into double harness any other way is asking for a heap of trouble.”

Sarah flew to his side and hugged him. “Maybe He has already sent the right one.”

Seth blinked. Why should her remark set a vision of a dark-haired young woman in a velvet cloak as blue as her eyes dancing in his mind? His heartbeat quickened. “What do you mean?”

Sarah looked innocent. “You’ve paid attention to Abby, and she’s a good Christian girl. You like her, don’t you?”

Seth felt his muscles relax. “Sure. She’s pretty and fun.” He bent a stern gaze on Sarah. “Just don’t get ideas in that head of yours. Save the room for ‘book larnin,’ as Curly calls it.” He tweaked the red-gold braid wrapped around Sarah’s head. But she had the last word.

“Why don’t you invite Dori to the barn raising and the dance?”

With a mumbled protest against females, matchmaking sisters in particular, Seth fled. But the suggestion Sarah had planted in his mind took root. Half the countryside would be on hand to help replace the barn on the Rocking R that had caught fire and burned to the ground a few weeks earlier. Seth would be the envy of Madera if he took Dori to the raising.

How ridiculous to even consider such an idea. “Escorting a young lady in order to show off is not fit behavior, God,” he prayed. “Help me stay true to Your teachings and ‘do unto others.’ I sure wouldn’t want anyone to show up at a barn raising with me just to make other folks sit up and take notice.” Yet a feeling of regret nagged at him. If Dori were as innocent and good as she appeared, what a wife she would make. Seth sighed. Since she wasn’t, he would continue to keep his distance and not subject himself to her charm.

Fate and Matt Sterling tossed Seth’s carefully laid plans to the four winds. After Dori sneaked away from her studies for the second time and took off on Splotches, Matt sought out Seth. “Ride with me, will you?”

“Sure.” Seth laid aside the currycomb with which he’d been grooming Copper. The grim expression in his boss’s eyes warned of trouble.

Matt lost no time in confirming Seth’s suspicions. Once Copper and Matt’s buckskin, Chase, swung into an easy canter, Matt abruptly said, “You know what ‘fightin’ wages’ are, don’t you?”

What on earth? The feeling that rough water lay ahead made Seth wary. “Of course. Extra pay for hands who fight rustlers and other dangers.”

“I have a proposition for you. I’d hoped Dori would settle down. She hasn’t.” Matt spit the words out like bullets. “It’s bad enough having a herd of lovesick boys and men, including a couple bad eggs from town, hanging around all the time. What’s worse is that Dori believes she can ride as well as she did two years ago. She can’t, and she’s pushing Splotches too hard and too fast. I caught her trying to jump a fence the other day after I told her not to. The pinto hesitated long enough to break her stride, then nicked the top rail and took a nasty fall. Dori sailed over Splotches’ head. If it had been hardpan ground instead of pastureland, they could both have been badly hurt.”

A brooding look crept into Matt’s eyes. “What worries me most is that Dori is bound and determined to ride every horse on the ranch, even the mustangs that haven’t been broken.”

Pity for his boss and friend shot through Seth, but he remained silent. After a long moment, Matt continued. “This is no way to start married life. I need to be with Sarah, not keeping track of my sister twenty-four hours of the day. Seth, if you’ll take over for me, I’ll up your pay to fightin’ wages.”

Had the sky opened and sent a thunderbolt down on Seth, he couldn’t have been more shocked. “Me ride herd on Dori? Excuse me, Boss, but you must be out of your mind. Rustlers are one thing. Your sister is a heap worse.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’m desperate,” Matt confessed. “In addition to disrupting my schedule and driving me to the point where I’m about ready to fire the entire outfit, Dori is rapidly becoming the talk of Madera because she likes being popular and doesn’t care who knows it.” He sighed. “I’d hoped her narrow escape from being trapped on the train home from Boston would curb her high spirits. Or that making her study would help. Katie O’Riley is doing her best, but she can’t compete with this.” He waved across the flat land that rolled away to the foothills, with the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the distance.

Unwilling sympathy caused Seth to say, “I can understand that.” He found himself repeating what Sarah had said. “After all, Dori has been cooped up and away from all this for a long time.”

“I know, but she needs to learn self-control. That’s where you come in.”

Another ripple of shock went through Seth. He’d rather wrestle ornery cattle than be responsible for the wild girl. Besides, in spite of his scorn, he secretly admitted a powerful attraction hid deep inside him. It would be downright dangerous for him to spend the time in Dori’s company that would be necessary should he agree to Matt’s outlandish proposition. “I—”

Matt cut him off. “Wait until you hear what I have in mind. Before Dori went to Boston, she was a fine rider. Like I said, the trouble is, she thinks she’s as good as ever. On the surface she is. However, two years of occasional sidesaddle rides on Boston trotting paths have undermined her ability. She needs to restore the range skills you and I know are necessary to live here. This land is beautiful; it can also be harsh and unforgiving. Varmints both two-and four-legged roam the range. Splotches is a great horse, but she’s still young and relatively untried.”

A poignant light came into Matt’s troubled eyes. “Sarah and I would both feel better with Dori in your care. Take her out riding every day except Sunday. On school days, make it in the afternoon. Be sure Dori carries either a Colt .45 or a Winchester .73 carbine when she rides, and see to it that she can shoot as straight as a man. Teach her trick riding and roping, anything to hold her interest. If I know my dear sister—and I do—she will be on her mettle and determined to conquer whatever task you give her. Keep her at it, and wear her out until she’s too tired to think up mischief.”