The Rancher and the Redhead (8 page)

Reaching for the handle of the screen door, Sam came up short as a flutter of bright-colored fabric caught his eye. Mouthing a curse of pure frustration, he glared at the short line strung between two porch posts and the delicate feminine laundry clothes-pinned to it—silky teddies and little scraps of lacy panties and a heart-stopping array of mysterious female undergarments guaranteed to drive a man slap out of his mind. Which is where he was going—fast.

Good God, who would have ever guessed that Curly hid all that fancy, female livery under her jeans every day? Shaking his head, Sam went inside. Every other problem in his life paled when compared to the fact that he had the hots for his own wife—and there was nothing he could do about it.

For the moment.

Setting his hat on a peg, he used the bootjack to shuck out of his boots, ripped open the snaps on his grease-stained work shirt and tugged it free of his waistband. From somewhere in the house, he could hear water running, and there was an aroma coming from the oven that made his empty belly rumble.

There were other evidences of feminine occupation creeping into his house, too. Ruffled pot holders with cows' faces on them by the stove. A teal rug at the back door. Some kind of strange-looking modern statue on the coffee table in the parlor, and a pile of art books nestled up beside his stacks of
Western Horseman
and
Hoof and Horn.

They were finding a routine with Jessie, too, from bathing to naptime to a bout of real restlessness just the night before that had kept Roni hovering to the wee hours. Despite those demands, Roni had already managed to rough out her cover illustration in her new studio. Yeah, his and Roni's everyday lives were meshing okay. If only they could get this relationship thing figured out as easily.

What had seemed so sensible when first discussed had turned out to be a Pandora's box as far as Sam was concerned. He couldn't quite explain, even to himself, how a couple of kisses—surprising as they were—had changed the way he looked at Roni. All he knew was that she was his now, legally and morally, and—dammit—all he could think about was taking her to bed!

Too bad Roni wasn't of the same mind. Every time he'd come near her over the past seven days, she'd shied away from him like a skittish mare scenting a stallion. She wasn't hard to read—she just wasn't ready for that step. Maybe she wouldn't ever be. The thought made Sam groan. Was it too much for a husband to expect conjugal rights? Or was he just an oversexed SOB with gonads for brains and no self-control?

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Sam opened the refrigerator for a beer, letting the cool air waft over his sweaty chest. At least she'd gotten her wedding flowers out of the food crisper. And as hard as it was for him to reconcile how quickly his thinking about Roni had changed, no doubt she was having the same kind of difficulty. Any more displays of passion on his part were likely to scare her off permanently, and that was the last thing he wanted.

The trick was patience, a little wooing, some time for her to get used to the idea. She wasn't indifferent to him, that much was clear, so he could take some solace in that. And although patience had never been his strong suit, he was man enough to control his impulses until she was ready, considering what his reward could be—a hot physical relationship with a woman he admired and trusted. Not a bad return for the investment, he figured.

Taking a slug from his beer, he grimaced at the faintly bitter taste. Yeah, he could back off, keep his distance until Curly gave him some indication she was ready to pursue what had begun with a wedding kiss. And damned if he wouldn't do it, or die trying. It was just going to be hard waiting for it to happen, that was all. But since he had been in that physical state most of the past week, what else was new?

He headed for the parlor, thinking about flipping through some channels for some news and taking a load off his feet for a few minutes, then came up stock-still. “What the hell—?”

Someone had rearranged the furniture.
Someone
had shifted things around in a room that hadn't been changed in forty years. Plumped fat, flowery pillows and quilts on the old spring-weary sofa, tossed around baskets of silk flowers and greenery with an indiscriminate hand, and put a dad-gum Japanese paper fan in the fireplace, for gosh sakes! But worse than anything, someone had
taken his chair.

His favorite chair. The old recliner he'd just in the past few years gotten perfectly broken in for his backside. Why, he and that chair had a
history,
a relationship, and it was gone! Vanished, banished, booted without so much as a by-your-leave, replaced by a dinky Queen Anne contraption that wouldn't hold up a flea, much less a hundred-eighty-pound rancher. Frustrations that had been simmering for a full week bubbled over like erupting lava.

“Curly!” He roared the name of the perpetrator of this final indignity in the voice of an enraged lion. “By God, woman, this time you've gone too far.”

Sam stormed down the hall, pounded on the bathroom door and tried the knob. To his mild surprise, it flew open, startling Roni into an attitude of frozen incredulity as she leaned across the basin to smooth concealer under her tired eyes. She wore French-cut panties and a brief little scrap of nothing for a bra, both crusted with stretch lace and as red as Eve's apple. Neither left much to the imagination, cupping and molding her supple form like a lover's hand.

The sight of her tanned thighs pressed against the edge of the white porcelain sink, the scarlet lace, the innocent “O” of her surprised mouth, all struck a match to the smoldering bonfire of Sam's overstretched nervous system, flaring his temper out of control.

“Where the hell is it?” he shouted.

Bewilderment widened her eyes. “Where's what?”

“You know damn well what! By God, Curly, some things in a man's home are sacred—don't you know that?” Whipping a towel off the rack, he tossed it at her. “And put on some damn clothes. Are you trying to drive me crazy?”

Indignation sprouted bright color high on Roni's cheekbones as she caught the towel and draped it around herself. “I didn't ask you to come barging in here like a rodeo bull. And for your information, Mr. Preston, it isn't exactly a picnic for me to see you parading around at all hours of the day and night in just your skivvies.”

“What—” Her counterattack made Sam splutter. “Hell, I live here.”

Her chest heaved with righteous anger. “Well, so do I.”

Frustratingly, there was no argument to that. “Just tell me what you did with my chair,” he growled.

“Your—? You mean that old plaid relic taking up space in front of the hearth?”

“You know perfectly well which one.”

Something devilish glinted in the depths of her brown eyes. “What if I told you Angel took it to the dump?”

“What?” Sam squawked, and his face went dark as thunder. “How long ago? Hell, now I'll have to go after it—”

Roni crossed her arms and gave him a bland look. “Only as far as the back porch.”

Halfway to the door, Sam's head snapped around. “Huh?”

“Jessie wet the seat, so I pushed it out there to sun.” Exasperation and anger sparked her voice with acid. “Don't you think I know what that stupid, ugly chair means to you, you lunkhead?”

“Uh.” Robbed of his full head of steam, Sam rubbed his neck in consternation. “Jeez, Curly—”

“Now what have you done to yourself?” She grabbed his hand to inspect the bloody scrapes on his knuckles.

The gentleness of her touch contrasted with her sharp tone and left Sam feeling faintly unbalanced. “Uh, whacked it on the carburetor. It's nothing—”

“Shut up and get over here.” Dropping the towel, she flung open the medicine cabinet and grabbed a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Holding his hand over the basin, she doused the wound, ignoring his indrawn hiss at the sting. “I haven't got time for you to be such a baby.”

Sam grimaced at the burning sensation on his skin. He was burning elsewhere, too, as his body responded to her semiclad and utterly delectable female form. He had a brief mental vision of himself bending her over the sink, slipping his fingers under the scarlet silk at her hips to explore an even silkier place. And her breasts, velvety globes nearly slipping from the sexy bra as she bent over his hand. All he'd have to do was reach out and... With a shudder, he searched for control, but Roni's next sentence jarred him out of the fantasy.

“I've got to get Jessie to Dr. Hazelton's before his office closes.”

A chill of alarm raced up Sam's spine. “Jessie? Why? What—?”

Finishing her first aid, Roni wrapped his hand in a towel. “She's been cranky all day, and now she's running a fever.”

“A fever! How much? What's wrong with her?”

“Hundred and one. And that's what I'm going to find out, just as soon as I can get on some clean clothes.”

Roni's pointed look made Sam feel like a jackass who'd just had a temper tantrum. He dared one last glance at the seductive curve of her cleavage, then began to back out of the bathroom.

“Oh. Yeah, sure. Sorry. I'll go with you.”

“Why? Don't you think I can handle it?”

“Well, I guess...”

“Guess?” She lost her temper. “Don't you think I can manage a simple trip to the doctor by myself? Are you telling me you don't trust me to be a good mother?”

Her instantaneous transformation to fury amazed him. “No, of course not. I mean, sure you are—”

“Well, then, get the hell out of my way and let me do my job.” With that, she kicked the door shut in his face.

Sam stared at the wood and cursed himself for being every kind of fool. Yes, sir, all he had to have was a little patience, do a little wooing.

And he was off to a hell of a good start.

* * *

“Come on, sweetie,” Roni begged. “Tell me what you want.”

Jessie's whimper bounced off the walls of the examination cubicle, and she squirmed on Roni's lap, pushing aside the proffered pacifier. Her skin was burning up and her eyes looked glassy. She'd rejected a bottle, her blanket and her favorite rag doll in quick succession, and Roni was feeling frazzled and a little desperate.

“I know you don't feel well,” she crooned, smoothing Jessie's thick russet curls. The baby arched against her grasp and whined softly, the sound breaking Roni's heart. There was a real talent to keeping a sick child distracted until the doctor showed up. Roni grabbed a tattered personality magazine from a basket beside her chair. “Look, let's read a story.”

The rattle of paper and the colorful pictures caught Jessie's attention. Roni turned the pages, pointing out the doggies and the diamonds and the devilish smiles of the rich and famous. Roni turned another page of the magazine, and her mouth twisted sourly. “Oh, look, Jessie, here's a Hollywood snake.”

Her finger tapped Jackson Dial's handsome features. A slinky blond starlet graced the filmmaker's arm as he made an appearance at some swank Los Angeles night spot. Roni pushed her hair out her face, feeling frumpy and tired and inadequate.

She turned the page with a resentful snap. There was another failure to live down. Despite all her love and loyalty, she'd never won a commitment from Jackson. Now she had made a commitment with Sam, but couldn't lure him to her bed. One hand tugging at her ear, the other tangled in a lock of Roni's hair, Jessie settled against her new mother, and they both gave tired sighs.

A sleepless night and disrupted day in which she hadn't accomplished one stroke of work on her cover illustration hadn't done much for Roni's frame of mind, but it was the strange and stilted confrontation with Sam that had really put her into a state of blue funk. For a thrilling moment when he'd first burst into the bathroom, she'd thought all the tiptoeing and circling that they'd done the past week was finally at an end—and then he'd started shouting about his stupid chair.

Roni groaned and mentally kicked herself yet again for panicking on her wedding night and refusing what Sam had so willingly offered. There she'd been, possessed of a man whom most women would agree was a stud, whose touch excited her incredibly, a man whom she knew would never hurt her, and one who'd made a public commitment to her—and she'd turned him down? On sober reflection, it was Roni's opinion that she'd been a fool. A monumental one, at that.

But it was a woman's prerogative to change her mind, right? Only from the way he kept his distance, it appeared Sam had exercised that right, too. Okay, so maybe he'd decided that consummating what was for all practical purposes a business relationship was a bad move. She couldn't fault him for listening to an argument she'd advocated.

But things had changed. You couldn't live intimately with someone without at least
thinking
about what it would be like to make love, could you? And the thought of making love with Sam left her breathless. Surely he felt the same tension? So why didn't he do something about it? For God's sake, she'd been standing in the bathroom practically naked, and he hadn't even made a pass at her! In fact, he'd even shuddered at her touch.

Did she repulse him to such an extent? Roni wondered miserably. What was the matter with her, anyway? Maybe she was simply missing some vital aspect as a woman, maybe she had some deficiency that kept her from attracting the right kind of man. Her spirits sank another notch.

She had to accept that she'd blown what might be the only chance she was going to get with Sam. Well, so be it, then. If she was finding their agreement harder to live with than she'd planned, then that was her cross to bear. What she was going through was obviously a period of adjustment. Sooner or later, the heat she felt would die back down to the warmth of pure friendship. In the meantime, she wouldn't embarrass Sam by panting after him like some moonstruck schoolgirl.