The Rancher and the Redhead (11 page)

Her expression softened, became almost tender. “That's very thoughtful of you, but I'm okay, really. And don't you have work to do?”

His voice was dry. “Honey, there's always work to do on a ranch.”

She laughed. “I'm beginning to understand that.”

“I guess I should check the water level in the north pond before we move those yearlings.”

“Then I'm sure Jessie would love to go with you for the ride, and a few hours' uninterrupted time would give me a good start on her room.”

“Then it's settled. Come on, Little Bit,” he said, chucking Jessie under her double chin. “Want to go for a ride with Dad?”

Jessie babbled enthusiastically, making them both laugh. Sam turned toward the door, reaching for his hat on its peg.

“We'll be back after a while,” he said.

“Fine. Have fun.” Hands stuck in the rear pockets of her jeans, Roni followed him. “Be sure to take the diaper bag.”

“Gotcha.”

“And by the way, I hope you don't mind if Jessie and I bunk in with you for a couple of nights.”

“Huh?” Sam's head snapped around with almost comical swiftness, and he nearly dropped the diaper bag. “In my bed, with me? Again?”

“Because of the paint smell.” Roni's eyes were wide and guileless. “You wouldn't want Jessie to breathe all that, would you? It wouldn't be good for her.”

“No, of course not.” Sam nearly strangled on the words. But didn't Roni have any inkling what she was suggesting? How the devil was he supposed to keep his promise to himself not to rush her if she was curled up practically naked next to him all night long? Sweat popped out under his arms and his loins tightened.

She continued. “And it's useless to set up my bed again until I'm finished in there, right?”

“Uh—” She was so absolutely reasonable and unconcerned that there was no logical way for him to refute the idea. “I guess.”

“Thanks, Sam.” She bobbed on her toes and gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. “I knew you'd understand.”

What choice did she give him? He was trapped, with no way to avoid the pure torture of having her close and yet still untouchable. One would almost think...

He shot her a sharp, suspicious look, but her expression was perfectly innocent. No, Curly wasn't devious like other females, so he'd better not read anything into this that wasn't there. His only option was to be a good sport, and grin and bear it.

He hoped he'd survive.

T
he man was made of cast iron. Cold, unfeeling cast iron.

It was the only explanation, Roni decided, bending over the edge of the tub to give Jessie's yellow duck a squeeze. While Jessie splashed and squealed her delight at her morning bath time, the rubber duckie gave a dejected whistle that mirrored Roni's mood exactly. After all, she and Sam had spent four nights in the same bed, she'd worn everything from a sophisticated black satin slip to frilly baby-doll pajamas, and all the man had done was snore. Did she have to come to bed buck naked to get noticed? It was downright humiliating.

Of course, to be fair, there had been a one-year-old in the room with them, and Sam had a lot on his mind, what with the ranch's current financial pinch.

Yeah, but he's not dead.

Roni made a face. Maybe he just wasn't interested anymore. And, short of actually painting over everything and starting again, she'd drawn out the project in Jessie's room as long as she could. She wasn't going to be able to use that excuse to bunk with Sam much longer.

Actually, in her opinion, the mural was turning out rather well, all her frustrated energy pouring out in a creative furor that had produced a whimsical Western landscape with gnomelike gophers, playful cacti and a family of lovable coyotes. To keep Jessie entertained while she worked, Roni had made up stories about the creatures that weren't half bad. In fact, with a bit more work, there just might be a kid's picture book in the offing, and any profits could be socked away for Jessie's college fund. The idea gave Roni a lot of pleasure.

But in the meantime, her feminine self-esteem was at an all-time low. Maybe she should just tell Sam she'd changed her mind about the physical side of their marriage. But what if he turned her down? The mental picture made her cringe in hot embarrassment. She'd never be able to look him in the eye again!

No, she valued their friendship too highly to put him on the spot, but it appeared he was immune to the apparently inept subtleties of her seduction techniques. It was enough to make a woman bite nails—ten-penny ones!

“Ready to get out, honey?” Roni reached for the baby, but Jessie laughed and did a belly flop in the four inches of bathwater, a clear indication that she still wanted to play.

“Well, just a minute more, but the water is stone cold. Here, let's warm it up a little.”

She twisted the hot water knob, finding it stubborn, as usual—then suddenly everything happened at once. The entire knob assembly gave way in her hand and hot water spewed out of the wall pipe. Scalding liquid splashed her arm and she screamed, not so much out of her own pain, but out of terror for Jessie. Desperately, she grabbed the baby, pulling her out of the tub and away from the dangerous flood. Jessie gave a horrifying howl that chilled Roni's core.

“Oh, God—Jessie!”

Sam burst through the bathroom door, still clutching his morning coffee mug. “What? What the hell's wrong?”

Her face white, Roni frantically examined Jessie's tender skin for burns. Thankfully, no blisters or red marks marred her translucent redhead's hide.

“She's all right,” Roni said, her relief vast and dizzying. She cuddled the screaming, wet child to her breast, not caring that her silk robe, now soaked, clung to her, as revealing as a second skin. “Just scared. The water—turn it off! Where's the cutoff valve?”

Sam look around, befuddled. “Uh—it's an old setup. There may not be one. I'll have to turn it off at the pump.”

As Roni's own fear abated, it was replaced by a fury that was as scalding as the water still pouring from the wall. “Well, that's just great. No water at all now. Didn't I ask you to fix this thing?”

“I was getting to it....”

“Getting to it!” Roni shrieked. “Your daughter could have been badly burned! Don't you even care?”

Sam was dumbstruck. “Now wait a minute, Curly! Of course I care.”

“Well, you sure have a way of showing it.” She was crying, the emotional floodgates opened by shock and fright and pure frustration. “I told you this could happen. But no, you're so busy fiddling with your damn cows, you can't even take care of your wife's and daughter's most basic needs. This whole house is falling apart around our ears and you aren't concerned in the least.”

“If I don't
fiddle
with those damn cows, we can't afford to fix anything,” he said in a tight voice.

Roni whipped a towel from the rack and wrapped Jessie in it. “Well, if you weren't so filled with stubborn pride, you could find a way.”

“There are more important things than money.” His voice turned bitter. “I thought you knew that, but maybe you're more like Shelly about the subject than I supposed.”

She sucked in a breath that was pure pain. Blood drained from her face, leaving her pale as milk, but her eyes were flames.

“You bastard,” she whispered. Lip trembling, head high, she stalked past him.

“Oh, hell, Roni!” Sam caught her arm, and she gave a gasp of pain. Scowling, he pulled up the sleeve of her robe, revealing an ugly red splotch on her forearm just forming blisters. Air rushed between his teeth in an angry hiss. “Why didn't you tell me you were hurt?”

She jerked free, glaring at him with haughty dignity through lashes spiky with tears. “I can take care of myself. I've been doing it a long time.”

Sam's jaw worked with tension. “I'll get the first-aid spray—”

“You just figure out a way to turn off that water before it floods the entire house,” she snapped. “I'm going to dress Jessie before she gets sick again.”

No thanks to you.

The words hung in the air, as palpable as though she had spoken them aloud.

Reaching under the torrent, he pulled the tub's drain plug. “Fine. Suit yourself.”

“Thank you, I will.” Roni stormed past him.

She heard him slam out of the house moments later. Before she finished dressing Jessie, the gurgle of the water cutoff echoed from the pipes all over the house, and then she heard the ill-tempered sound of Sam's truck spewing gravel as he peeled out of the driveway.

Fine. She didn't want his sorry company anyway, not after the things he'd said. Roni wiped away a new stream of tears, then sniffed in determination.

Someone had to take care of things, and it looked as though that someone was her. Buttoning Jessie's playsuit, she pressed a kiss on her daughter's damp russet curls.

“Come on, sweetie. Mommy's got some work to do.”

* * *

He owed her an apology.

Some men would bring roses as a peace offering, but Sam had something better. He glanced at the sack marked with a prominent hardware store logo that sat on the truck seat beside him. Plumbing parts might not be the most romantic gift in the world, but he was sure Roni would appreciate the practicality as well as the symbolism. And maybe it would get him out of the doghouse at the same time.

A glance at the angle of the sun and the empty rumble of his belly told him it was long past noon. It was probably just as well that it had taken him and Angel longer than expected to pick up Buck Dawson's trailer. After the morning's explosion, he and Roni both needed some time to cool off.

It was the heat, that was all, he told himself. That's why they'd blown up like a thunderstorm over a near accident that should have left them clinging together in thanksgiving instead of yelling things at each other they didn't mean.

Yeah, sure.

It was heat all right, Sam acknowledged. A pure sexual heat, a hunger that gnawed at him, made him crazy, kept him from concentrating on more important things—like how to keep the Lazy Diamond afloat. You couldn't sleep in the same bed with a woman, smell her unique perfume night after night, hear the soft sounds she made when she dreamed and not go a little mad. Something had to give—and soon. He only hoped it wasn't his sanity.

There was a white van parked in the yard when Sam drove up. And men climbing up and down his porch steps. And a stained bathtub perched like a beached whale atop a pile of debris in his yard.

“What the hell—?” Climbing out of his truck with his sack of supplies, he paused long enough to read the lettering on the side of the van. Cutler's Plumbing/No Job Too Big Or Too Small.

The pulse in his temple pounded, and he scowled. Damn her. He met Steve Cutler coming out the door.

“Hey, Sam. Look, don't worry about the mess. We'll haul everything off when we finish, okay?”

Ever cheerful, Steve clapped Sam on the back and went off whistling toward the van, not even noticing Sam's lack of response.

Inside, the activity and noise were deafening. Sam found Roni standing in the parlor with Jessie on her hip, happily watching the demolition of the bathroom and the kitchen. She didn't even realize he was home until he touched her shoulder and she jumped.

“What the devil is this?” he growled.

She tilted her chin, her expression belligerent. “What's it look like? They're replumbing the house.”

Fury darkened Sam's features, and his voice was low and dangerous. “I can't pay for this.”

“
I
can.” She turned back to watch the bustle. “Consider it a wedding present.”

Her contemptuous words slammed into his solar plexus, tore through his gut, emasculated him. Only a woman could zero in on a man's most vulnerable spot and then flay it unmercifully. Somehow, he'd thought Curly was different. Now he knew he'd been wrong, but he would be damned if he would show her the power she had to hurt him.

“Tell them to stop,” he ordered hoarsely.

“No.”

“Then
I
will.”

She caught his wrist, and her fingers, though slender, artistic and very feminine, had a grip like steel. “I said
no.
You accuse me of being a grasping bitch like Shelly, but I'm giving you—us—something we need. Aren't you man enough to accept the gift?”

He looked at her hard. Pulling free of her grasp, he dropped the hardware bag at her feet. “I guess not.”

Turning on his heel, he stomped out of the house, ignoring her when she called his name.

He didn't stop when he got to the barn, didn't stop as he saddled Diablo, didn't stop as he galloped over Lazy Diamond land that, for the time being at least, was still his. It seemed to him in that moment that he had very little else.

After an hour, he found himself negotiating the little hillock that bounded the stock pond on the north section. He didn't recall much of his route, but Diablo was blowing and they were both tired, so it seemed as good a place as any to rest until his thoughts and his pride reestablished themselves into some sort of order. It was pretty here, with a shady stand of young willows on one side and a lush meadow of grass, still green and unwilted by the late-spring dryness. The group of cream-colored Brahma yearlings his crew had moved in earlier in the week dotted a tree-lined rise in the distance.

Dismounting, Sam let Diablo drink, then threw himself down on the embankment and stared at the water while the animal grazed. After a while, the horse pricked his ears and Sam roused enough to stand to meet the intruder.

It was Roni under that Western hat, sitting tall on a sorrel mare, with Jessie peeping over her shoulder from a perch in an aluminum-framed backpack. Roni's pert backside was encased in tight jeans that accentuated every curve, and the backpack harness stretched her red cotton shirt over her full breasts in a manner that left nothing to the imagination.

Hiding his surprise that she'd followed him, he watched her approach, his features stony. There was no way on God's green earth he was going to continue the conflict, not while his anger and chagrin were still simmering so close to the surface. But damn Curly, anyway. It looked as though she wasn't giving him much choice. Crossing his arms over his chest, he set his jaw and waited for her.

Roni reined the mare to a halt beside Sam. Though her expression was calm, there was uncertainty behind her dark eyes.

“Go home,” he said.

A sultry wind loosed a tendril of dark hair from the clip at her nape and blew it across her lips. With exaggerated care, she drew it free from the corner of her mouth with a fingertip and lifted her chin. “No. And don't just stand there, help me with Jessie. She weighs a ton.”

Before he could protest, she was shrugging out of the backpack, and he had no choice but to take the contraption or risk Jessie falling. Holding a child who smiled at him in delighted recognition from beneath a pretty bonnet certainly made it hard to remember why he was mad, but Sam felt obligated to make another attempt.

“I'm not in the mood for this, Curly.”

“Tough.” Dismounting, she dragged a bulging sack off the saddle horn. She chose a shady spot, spread a tablecloth, pulled off her hat and plopped down on her knees. “Have a seat. It's lunchtime.”

Bewildered, Sam stared as she unloaded her sack of goodies, spreading out an assortment of fruit, sandwiches and cookies.
A picnic?
After what had just happened between them, she wanted to have a gol-danged picnic?

She pulled out two plastic cups and a bottle of champagne that had been sitting in the refrigerator since the wedding. “Let's drink this while it's still cool.”

“Are we celebrating something?” he growled, standoffish and suspicious.

A small “pop” sounded as she released the cork, and she raised the bottle in a mock salute. “Insanity, I think. Sit. I'm starved.”

Jessie spotted the cookies at that point, so Sam had to lift her out of the carrier and set her down to play on the cloth. He stretched his own length out beside the child as she chortled and cooed and tried to catch blades of grass in her chubby fists.

“Here.” Roni passed him a cup of champagne. “And try to remember it's not the usual rotgut you drink.”

“Thank you for the warning.”