Honeymoon Ranch
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Celeste Hamilton
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19,6K
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Chapter 1
Paige McMullen felt like a virgin with the vapors.
Though she had never experienced a Victorian-era swooning attack, she knew no other way to describe her current muddy-headedness. She could have blamed her sinking feeling on the sparse breakfast she had eaten six hours earlier. Or on the suddenly overheated air here in the Amarillo Rancher’s Supply. But the real reason was the six foot three of solid Texas male standing right in front of her.
The weathered skin around True Whitman’s bluebonnet blue eyes crinkled with his smile. “Hey there, Slim.” He pulled the nickname out of their shared childhood history as easily as he doffed his worn cowboy hat.
“Hey, yourself’ was all she could manage. In her fantasies, this meeting with True didn’t take place between sacks of feed, with her in tattered jeans, misshapen sweater and no makeup, her hair scooped back in a ponytail. In her dreams, she was coiffed and perfumed and sophisticated looking, and her legs felt stronger than two limp pieces of baling twine.
True didn’t seem to notice her swaying on her feet. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?” Before Paige could divine his intent, he swept her close. The hug felt natural and unplanned, the gesture of one old friend for another, an indication he was experiencing none of the awkwardness she felt.
She realized then that she didn’t really have the vapors. For if she was going to faint, it would have been while she was being held tight against True.
Instead, her head cleared, and she savored the details of True’s embrace. The way the January cold clung to his faded denim jacket. How he smelled pleasantly of earth and hard work, so different from the expensive aftershaves of the men who had populated her world for the past decade. How his face had hollowed out into interesting angles, losing the roundness of youth. The way his voice sounded familiar and yet new, deeper than she remembered, with his West Texas drawl all the more pronounced. And how she let herself cling to him for one long, sweet moment.
He drew back before her equilibrium could tilt again. His expression went from lighthearted to serious. “How’s your dad?”
“Fine,” she replied, but looked away. Lying to True had never been possible. That had been part of her downfall where he was concerned and why she had dreaded seeing him again. She was terribly afraid he might be able to look into her heart and see feelings she had denied, even to herself.
True touched her chin with two calloused fingers and made her face him again. “Is there something wrong? Has Rex had a setback?”
She shook her head. “No setbacks, True. No real improvement, either. Dad’s the same. Just the same.”
Those blue eyes of his gave her a long look. “And that’s the problem.”
She nodded, not really surprised True had read her thoughts. Her father, Rex McMullen, had been felled by a stroke in September, some four months ago. A strong and stubborn man, Rex had fought his way back from death’s door. His stay at a rehabilitation facility in Dallas had restored his speech and some mobility, but the doctors said it was likely his right arm and leg would never function fully again. Though he was beginning to walk with a cane, some days he didn’t make it out of his wheelchair. The man who could rope and ride with the finest, who had built the Double M into one of the most successful cattle and dude ranches in the Amarillo area, was forever changed. Sometimes the reality of those changes threatened to carve a new hole in Paige’s heart. She adored her father and hated what the stroke had done to him.
“So you’re home for a while?” True asked. “To help your father get settled after being in the hospital?”
She was surprised that he didn’t know her news. “I’m home for good.”
That rocked him back on the heels of his scuffed boots.
Paige laughed. “I can’t believe the gossips hadn’t already told you. I brought Dad home from the hospital a few days ago, and I’m staying.”
“Tired of the good life in California?”
“It’s hard for a Texas girl to find a good cut of beef in sushi heaven.” -
True raked a hand through hair as dark and thick as it had been twelve years ago, when he was twenty-one and she was nineteen and he had been marrying someone else.
Paige turned her thoughts back from that dangerous trail. “I’m going to run the ranch for Dad. Jarrett’s still in college, and there’s no reason why he should interrupt his studies when I’m free to come home, when I want to come home. My brother’s got no interest in being a rancher, anyway.”
“And you do?”
She bristled. “Obviously.”
“This won’t be much like running that fancy resort where you worked out on the coast.”
Her temper spiked at his skepticism. “Of course it won’t. Out there, I managed a thirteen-hundred-room luxury hotel with a full complement of resort features, four pools, a beachfront club, two golf courses—”
“Hold it, hold it,” True protested, holding his hat in front of him as if to ward off an attack. “Damn, Slim, your temper’s still as quick as a rattler’s strike.”
“And you’re still quick to mistakenly treat me like a foolish kid sister.” Their gazes met and held, and Paige wondered if he was remembering the last time she had reminded him she was neither a fool nor his sibling. She doubted it. On that long-ago night, when she had as much as offered herself to True, he had never realized what she was trying to tell him.
He continued talking about her running the ranch. “I’m not saying you can’t run the Double M. But I never thought you’d want to. You’ve been gone for a long time. To hear Rex and your brother tell it, you had the cushiest job imaginable. And the times you’ve been home, you never said... You never acted...” He paused and shrugged. “I just never thought you wanted to come home.”
He had little basis for reaching that conclusion. They hadn’t talked in years. Since leaving Amarillo, first to attend college and then to work, she had visited many times, but hadn’t seen much of True, even though he owned the spread next to the Double M. When they had run into each other, he had been with his wife or his children, and Paige had been accompanied by friends and family, as well. There had been no opportunities for heart-to-hearts, even if either of them had been interested in such conversations, which she wasn’t and he didn’t appear to be.
Since October, Paige had shuttled between the hospital in Dallas and her former home and job in Southern California. True had called the hospital to check on her father, just as other friends and neighbors had done, but he and Paige had never exchanged more than a few words.
As for her plans to move home, even her closest friends and family had been surprised. For years she had denied to herself her need to return. Her father’s stroke had brought her to her senses. She wanted to be here, in this largely flat and sometimes unforgiving land. West Texas dirt ran in her veins as sure as McMullen blood. This was where she belonged.
True should be able to understand her feelings. He had never wanted to do anything but carry on the ranching tradition begun by his great-grandfather. So Paige just. smiled and said, “This is home, you know.”
He grinned and nodded his agreement. The unspoken communication between the two of them ended, however, as another rancher passed by and offered a greeting.
Paige glanced at her wristwatch. “Lord, look at the time. I’d better go. Tillie’ll have lunch ready, and I have to talk to Dad about these—” She stopped herself before explaining that the sheaf of papers she held were unpaid bills she had just finished going over with the supply store’s account manager. There was no need for True to know the Double M was undergoing some financial strain.
“Can’t I buy you lunch?”
The invitation surprised her.
“Come on,” True cajoled. “It’s almost noon now, and in my memory your infamous housekeeper has never been one minute late putting a meal on your table. You’ll be late, and she’ll fuss. And Lord, how that woman can fuss.”
Paige grimaced in agreement. “Tillie can be a pill, all right. When she gets wound up like that, I wonder why Dad has kept her on all these years.”
“Most likely because she makes the best chocolate cream pies in West Texas. The dudes go home talking about Tillie’s pies and come back for more.”
“Forget the guests. Dad is the pie fiend.”
“He also knows Tillie loves you and Jarrett as much as if you were her own.”
“My doctor-to-be baby brother is her favorite. I’ve always been a disappointment to Tillie. She sets such store by appearances.”
“And you’re just a pesky, skinny tomboy.”
Once more Paige wished she had thought to put on some mascara and lipstick and wear something other than her barn clothes. True would probably never believe Paige had grown used to sleek hairdos, manicures and smart little business suits. Being home always threw her back into old habits. Bad habits, Tillie would say.
To underscore the point, True reached up and tugged at the reddish-blond ponytail that curled over her shoulder. The action left her feeling about ten. Angry heat rose in her cheeks, and she stepped away, intent on leaving.
“Come to lunch,” True invited again.
Paige tightly repeated her need to get home. She’d be damned if she would go anywhere with True looking as she did now. It was clear he still regarded her as something less than a woman, but she would prefer not to reinforce his misconception. The next time she saw him—
She reined in her runaway thoughts. When she’d made the decision to come back to Amarillo, she had promised herself she wouldn’t be seeking True out or indulging in pointless wishful thinking about him. She had anticipated a meeting like today’s, and she knew there would be no way to avoid him as she had on her visits in the past. She figured she would eventually get used to seeing him around. Just because the death of his wife had left him a free man was no reason for Paige to fantasize about him. Just because every man she met had been measured against True and found lacking was no call for her to think he would ever see her as anything but plain, old freckle-faced Paige Martha McMullen, his childhood buddy.
“I really have to go,” she told him.
True let her pass, but he trailed her to the front door. He pulled on his hat when they stepped out into a gray and cold January day. “The temperature’s dropping like a rock out here. Where’s your coat, Slim?” He moved closer, as if to shield her from the raw wind.
Unsettled by his sudden movement, Paige almost dropped the papers she held. True leapt to grasp the tumbling stack before the wind could catch and carry them away. He stuffed them awkwardly back into Paige’s struggling, clutching arms. The two of them swayed toward each other. In the process, his big hands skimmed over her sweater-covered breasts. Skimmed and, for one breathless moment, seemed to linger before pulling away.
Tillie had been right all these years, Paige thought with a dizzy sense of dismay. Ladies should wear bras.
But when Paige dared look at him, True didn’t even blink, didn’t betray in any way that he realized where and how he had touched her. Which was either a gentlemanly act or a comment on just how asexual she was to him.
Paige didn’t pause to thank him for rescuing her paperwork. Turning toward a white pickup emblazoned with two entwined red M’s, she said goodbye in an even tone that was a triumph of will over pique.
“Mind if I come over tonight?”
True’s question brought her to a halt beside the truck. Her brain started to whirl.
“I’d like to see your dad.”
That quiet sentence set her head back on straight. “Sure.” She wrenched open the door of the truck and slid under the steering wheel. “You’re welcome anytime.”
True stepped up to the truck and caught the edge of the door. “Slim, if there’s anything you need help with on the ranch, you let me know.”
Like hell, she thought. But she managed, “I’ll do that,” before pulling the door closed with a bit more force than necessary.
She drove away, determined not to check the rearview mirror to see if True was watching. But she couldn’t resist, and a quick glance showed he was watching, standing in the middle of the gravel parking lot, his strong legs braced apart and his arms folded across his middle, as if he was in a deep study about something.
Certainly not about her, of course. Not her.
True thought about Paige all afternoon.
He spent several hours repairing fences in the south pastures. While he kept his hands busy, he tried to pretend his preoccupation with Paige was the normal interest of one old friend in another.
But his mind always went back to the moment his hands accidentally skimmed across her breasts. There had been just enough contact for him to form a fleeting impression of soft, womanly and unencumbered curves. His heightened awareness had been unexpected. And damned pleasant, as well. Surprisingly pleasant.
Of course, he had hidden his reaction. This was Paige, after all. Slim. His pal for the first half of his life. Oh, she had been gone a long time, and just before she left, things hadn’t been the same between them. But nothing could erase the memories they shared. The horses they had raced over the flat, dry land. The wiener roast camp-outs conducted down by the creek. The swimming. The childish arguments. The fun.
The night Paige’s mother had died, she had run away and True had found her. He let her cry it out against his thirteen-year-old chest before he took her home. They were bound by that night and a hundred others.
He hadn’t. wanted her to leave today. He had invited her to lunch because he wanted to talk about what she had been doing, about her plans for the ranch. Funny how he hadn’t known how he missed her until he came around a corner in the store and saw her standing there. The years and the distance had been erased when she looked at him.
His wife had always insisted Paige thought of him as more than a friend, but True had chalked that up to Marcie’s highly developed romantic nature.
Marcie.
A brief, yearning smile crossed True’s face as he climbed into his truck. Nearly three years after his wife’s death in an automobile accident, he was able to think of Marcie without a crushing stab of sadness. She would be proud of that, he decided. She would have wanted him to get on with his life.
That earned a smirk. What life? He worked his land and raised his kids, end of story. Not that women hadn’t made themselves available. In the past year, every eligible female in West Texas had been trotted out for his perusal. The matchmakers and the mamas and the women themselves had done their level best to get his attention, but he had dated few women more than once.
True shook his head, thinking of the seductive lengths gone to by some of these women. The slinky dresses. The candlelight dinners. A few had stooped to trying to win over the kids, as well, with gifts and flattery and all sorts of nonsense. He appreciated their efforts, and he truly wanted to marry again. But he couldn’t imagine one of them sharing his life, making a home in a ranch house that admittedly could use some work, or mothering two children who would be ten years old next month. Furthermore, he didn’t have the time or the patience for courting anyone, for hearts and flowers and all that stuff.
If the truth be known, he was damn sick and tired of the effort, of dealing with the whole process. And he didn’t want to put the kids through it, either. He had gone the romantic route when he was younger, with Marcie. Now he would just as soon cut to the chase, find a companionable person and get married without all this fuss and bother.
He wondered what Paige would say about the women who were vying for the position of his wife. No doubt she would find them pretty funny. At least the old Paige, the tomboy hellion, would have laughed at them. She had laughed about Marcie at first, too. Laughed when True said he was going to marry a city girl and bring her to the ranch to live. They had argued about Marcie, he remembered. Nothing had been quite the same after that, and then Paige had left.
But now she was home. True grinned. He was pleased that she was back. Paige had been a good friend, something he had missed the past few years. Perhaps they could recapture their old camaraderie.
It was possible. Especially if he could set aside this unseemly curiosity he had developed about the curves beneath his old friend’s baggy clothes.
Grumbling at his foolishness, True set off toward home. He turned his thoughts from Paige and noted with pride the tidy state of his ranch. The fences were in order, the barns and outbuildings in good repair. His herd was healthy, and a record number of births were anticipated in the spring. In recent years he had even branched out a little, breeding some horses for sale as well as cattle. Since his father’s death two years before Marcie’s, every extra dollar had been poured into additional breeding stock, building improvements and new equipment.
The Circle W didn’t have the acreage or high profile of the Double M, but True and his father had brought the spread back from near bankruptcy to a healthy bottom line. This year there might even be enough money to make those much-needed renovations to the ranch house. Best of all, in True’s opinion, their success had been achieved without becoming a dude ranch.
Not that there was anything wrong with opening your ranch to guests. As Paige’s family had proven, there was good money in the tourist trade, but True was proud that his was still a purely working ranch. He planned to keep it that way.
He stopped at the ranch office and checked in with his foreman, who reported the other hands were still out repairing other fence breaks. As True headed for the house, he cast a knowing look up into the gray, leaden sky. The wind was no longer as fierce as before, but he smelled bad weather coming, snow or sleet. That wasn’t too unusual for early January, and they were ready for a storm if it hit.
It was the daily storm True found raging in the ranch house that he hadn’t a clue how to fight.
His Becca, a chubby almost ten-year-old with True’s blue eyes and Marcie’s gorgeous chestnut hair, was locked in a verbal battle with her twin, Billy, a skinny version of his father.
“You think you’re so smart,” Becca yelled, tossing a cookie cutter at Billy. “Everyone knows you’re dumb as dirt.”
Billy dodged the cutter and taunted, “And you’re fat and ugly.”
“You take that back!”
“If you’ll stop acting like a jerk.”
“You’re the jerk.”
“You are!”
In a move be had perfected over the past year, True moved between the twins and rescued another cutter before it could be launched at Billy’s head. “Stop it, you two. What’s the problem this time?”
The explanation came from both youngsters at once, but True managed to figure out that Billy had ruined half of the cookies Becca had been baking for their dinner dessert. A quick look around the kitchen revealed the two kids had done their best to dirty every bowl, dish and baking pan in the place.
“Where’s Aunt Helen?” True asked with a tired sigh.
“Hiding out” came a voice from behind him.
True turned to see his aunt coming slowly from the back hall. One hand held an ice pack to her head, the other rubbed at her back. “You kids,” she admonished, her tone weary. “I asked you to wait before you started those cookies. Just look at this mess.”
Becca’s blue eyes filled with tears. “I was just trying to help you with dinner.”
“Sure you were.” True stroked his daughter’s soft hair. “But when you’re asked to wait, please—”
“All right!” Becca wailed as she took off toward the stairs at the other end of the room. “See if I try to help again.”
Billy, who only moments before had been hurling insults at his twin sister, gave Helen and True a reproachful look. “Did you have to make her cry?” He disappeared up the stairs after Becca.
Helen lowered her stocky frame into a kitchen chair. The room was suddenly silent.
“I’ll clean up this mess,” True said, patting the plump shoulder of the woman who had raised him. “You’ve got another of your headaches.”
She looked up at him. “It isn’t my head that’s the problem. I can’t do this anymore, True. I can’t keep up with them.”
“They’re going through a phase, that’s all. Pretty soon—”
“Pretty soon you’ll have to send me off to a padded cell,” Helen interrupted. “The kids are out of control. They need a firm hand, and I can’t do it anymore.”
“I’ll do more. I’ve been too busy with the ranch, and I’ve left too much to you.”
“You’re damn straight.”
The gray-haired woman’s saucy reply didn’t surprise True. Helen Parks never had any qualms about speaking her mind. As a young woman, she had defied her parents and left this ranch to follow her husband on the rodeo circuit. Her Jake, as she called him, had been a champion roper, a hard drinker and a one-woman man. He died in the ring, trampled by a steer, leaving her with a nice nest egg and no desire to marry again.
Helen came home to the ranch just before True’s mother died giving birth to a stillborn daughter. She stayed to help her brother raise True. Over the years, her duties had ranged from housekeeping to bunkhouse cooking to cattle branding. She had a fierce love for True and the kids, but she was now seventy-two. She didn’t have the energy or patience she used to.
“You’ve got to get hold of these children,” she repeated. “If you don’t, you’re going to have serious problems.”
True opened the oven to rescue a tray of burning cookies. “I think they’re normal kids. They make messes. They get into mischief.”
“And you make excuses for them.”
He shrugged and raked scorched circles from the cookie tray to the sink. “I try to cut them some slack. They miss Marcie.”
“Me and your dad didn’t cut you much slack, and you didn’t have a mother, either.”
“It wasn’t the same. Mother died when I was four. I can’t even remember her.”
Helen sniffed. “There’s no difference at all. Why, Marcie would have spanked their behinds if she had come in on a mess like this one.”
“It’s just some dirty dishes.”
“Which you are cleaning up for them.”
“Aunt Helen—”
“I’m leaving,” she announced.
True had heard that before. “You don’t mean that.”
“This time I do.” She pushed herself up from the table and crossed the big kitchen to the sitting area around the smoke-stained brick fireplace. From her sewing basket, she withdrew some papers, which she brought back and smacked down on the counter next to him. “Just look at this.”
He found a brochure on a new retirement community in Lubbock, as well as a lease for an efficiency apartment.
Stunned, True looked up at his aunt. “What have you done?”
Her generous mouth was set in a firm line. “I’ve made a decision. One of my friends from the rodeo days, another roper’s widow I’ve stayed in touch with, is moving in there, as well. We’re both retiring. For good.”
“But how can you afford—”
“For nearly thirty years, neither your father nor you has let me touch my Jake’s nest egg. Even when you could have used the money, you wouldn’t let me help. I’ve got enough put away to live out my golden years just fine.”
He could only stare at her.
“Now you’re going to have to deal with the kids.”
“Aunt Helen, I don’t want you to stay here just for them. I’ll do more for them, I promise. I’ll take a firmer hand. I want you to stay because this is your home.” He swallowed, emotions nearly choking off his words. “Without you...it...it just won’t be home.”
Her fierce expression softening, she lifted a wrinkled, heavily veined hand to pat his cheek. “Oh, True. My boy. I’m going to miss you like the devil. You and those rascals upstairs. But Lubbock’s just down the road a piece. We’ll visit all the time. And it’s high time I left this place to you and you alone. I stayed after you married Marcie, though perhaps I should have gone.”
“Stop that,” he said stoutly. “Marcie loved you. She never resented that you were here.”
With a practicality born of a life too busy for regrets, Helen shrugged. “It’s true me and Marcie never got in each other’s way. But I’m leaving now. And maybe that’ll get you moving toward matrimony again. Speaking of which...” She turned back to the kitchen counter and picked up a pad of paper. “You had a few calls today.”
True surveyed the list she proffered, reading, “Janice, Linda, Mary Beth and Tiffany.”
His aunt cocked an eyebrow. “Tiffany’s new. Who is she?”
He had a vague recollection of a redhead in a tight dress with long, lethal-looking nails, introduced to him by a well-meaning old friend. He shuddered.
“Doesn’t look promising,” Helen said. “Maybe you’re being too picky.”
“Aunt Helen, I’d just as soon not talk about this now.”
Helen brushed his protest aside. “You need a wife, True. You’re too young to be alone.”
“But even if I do get married again, and that’s a big ‘if’ considering the candidates I’ve seen—”
“You’re just not looking in the right place,” the older woman retorted, with a slow, mysterious smile that left True wondering what she was up to.
He knew from experience that she’d never say.
Sternly, she added, “At any rate, I don’t want you getting married too soon. It’ll do you and those children good to have to deal with one another alone.”
Since marriage was nowhere in his near future, True didn’t bother to comment. He was more concerned with her leaving. “My getting married has nothing to do with you living here. This is your home. If you want to take it easy, you can do it right here.”
“I’m too old and stubborn to sit back while you take over my duties. I’m looking forward to just one room to clean, to napping when I want, eating when I want, maybe playing bridge when I want.”
True cocked an eyebrow.
She chuckled. “All right, so poker’s really my game. I’m sure I’ll find some partners in Lubbock.”
She really was leaving, True realized with a pang. This was no bluff. What was he going to do without her? Not in a practical sense, but emotionally. She had been his ballast in every storm. Already missing her, he caught his aunt close for a long, hard hug. For the second time today, he was embracing a female who had played a large role in his early life. First Paige. Now Helen. One was coming back into his life. One was leaving. He couldn’t help but think both were significant events.
Later, after cleaning up the kitchen and himself, getting dinner and smoothing things over with the twins, he set off for the McMullen ranch. He told Helen he was going to visit with Rex. He did intend to see his ailing fellow rancher, but in all honesty, it was Paige he was thinking about as he drove through the cold dusk.
The lights of the rambling Double M ranch house were welcoming beacons in the darkened winter landscape. A long stucco and brick structure, the McMullen home was larger and far more elaborate than True’s two-story house. A lighted courtyard served as the formal entry, but as had been his habit since he was a kid, True headed for the kitchen door around back. He found Tillie Bass straightening an already immaculate room.
Like Helen, Tillie had spent most of her life tending a home and children that were not her own. Except for their huge capacities for love, the two women were quite dissimilar. Tillie was more than a decade younger. Thin where her neighbor was heavy. Proper and undemonstrative where Helen was raucous and melodramatic. Yet the two of them were the best of friends.
As she hung his coat on a peg near the door, Tillie eyed True with interest. “Has Helen told you her big news?”
True laughed. “I should have known she’d tell you first.”
Tillie’s thin face looked more pinched than ever. “I’m going to miss her.”
Taken aback by what was for Tillie a supremely emotional statement, True didn’t notice anyone else enter the room. Even when he saw the woman who paused in the doorway, it took a moment for him to recognize Paige.
In dark blue wool pants and soft matching sweater, her strawberry blond hair loose about her shoulders, her face just touched with makeup, Paige didn’t look like herself. At least not like the Paige he remembered. Or even the Paige he had run into at the supply store today. Those curves he had imagined had been no illusion. She was still slender enough to keep her nickname, but she had developed in plenty of interesting ways and places. Even her face had filled out, caught up with her big, brown eyes. Now why hadn’t he noticed that this morning?
He gaped at Paige until Tillie cleared her throat. Even then, all he could say was her name.
She smiled. “I should have known you’d come in the back door. What are you doing, trying to wheedle pie out of Tillie, just like old times?”
Filling the silence left by True’s failure to reply, Tillie said, “He just got here.”
Paige turned to lead the way from the kitchen. “You’ll want to see Dad.”
True nodded mutely, but didn’t move.
With an uncharacteristic chuckle, Tillie gave him a gentle push toward the door. “What’s the matter, True? I haven’t seen you at such a loss for words since the time you tried to ride Mr. Rex’s horse and wound up with a busted rib.”
That was exactly how he was feeling, True realized. Like a would-be bronco rider flung flat to the ground. This Paige, so like herself and yet so intriguingly different, had thrown him, but good.
Paige heard Tillie’s comment and couldn’t suppress a smile. When she had changed for dinner, she had tried telling herself her clothing choice had nothing to do with True. What a lie. She had hoped he would come over to visit her father and see her in a more flattering light than this morning. The stupefied look on his face showed she had succeeded.
“Daddy,” she called as she entered her father’s mahogany paneled study. “Look who’s here.”
Rex McMullen, who was propped up on a leather-upholstered sofa in front of a cheerful fire, smiled as True came forward with a hand outstretched. The right side of Rex’s smile didn’t quite match the left, and he reached out with his left hand, keeping his right beneath the afghan spread over his legs. He was thin, his normally weather-bronzed skin pale, but his shoulders were still broad and held straight. His red-gold hair had gone mostly silver. Paige thought the gray enhanced his ruggedly handsome features. She was prejudiced, of course, and she’d had time to adjust to the changes in him. She looked quickly at True, wondering how he would react.
If True found anything amiss about Rex’s appearance, he didn’t show it. Looking natural as could be, he sat down in the wing chair next to the sofa. “It’s damn good to see you at home, Rex.”
The older man’s reply was a bit slow, but still hearty. “It’s good to be here.”
Relieved, Paige left them talking about beef prices and winter feeding programs and went back to the kitchen, where Tillie was preparing a coffee tray.
“You read my mind.” Paige opened the refrigerator and took out one of Tillie’s famous cream pies.
The older woman set a stack of dessert plates on the table. “Reading your mind’s not so hard.”
The dry comment begged a reply, but Paige chose to ignore it. She concentrated instead on placing pie slices on the plates. “Do we need cream and sugar?”
Tillie snorted as she added forks to the tray. “Since when would True Whitman be the kind of man who waters down good coffee?”
Paige said nothing, always the wisest course of action with Tillie.
“True’s the kind of man a lot of women want,” Tillie added.
Paige nodded.
“But so far he hasn’t been interested in any of the women who have been after him.” The older woman paused long enough for Paige to comment, but plunged ahead when she didn’t. “Helen says he’s had all kinds of chances to get married again. She worries about him and the kids. Especially now that she’s leaving.” Over dinner Tillie had told Paige and Rex about Helen’s retirement plans.
Paige settled two of the pie plates on the tray and carefully avoided looking at Tillie. “With all the talking you and Helen do, how come she hadn’t told True I was home to stay?”
Tillie made a great show of wiping her hands on her starched white apron. “You know I don’t talk about this family’s business. Even to Helen.”
Paige knew nothing of the sort. Disagreeing with Tillie would, however, be a pointless exercise. Paige just picked up the coffee tray. “Grab those other pie plates, will you?”
The housekeeper obeyed. As the two of them exited the kitchen, Tillie murmured, “That blue outfit was a good choice for tonight, Paige. You’re real pretty when you try.”
Coffee cups rattled as Paige stumbled. Compliments from this woman were as rare as snow in July.
Tillie clucked her disapproval. “Land sakes, child, be careful of your mother’s best china. You’ll be wanting to use it after you’re married.”
For the better part of twenty years, Tillie had been telling Paige she would never land a man. So her quiet comment that Paige would be needing her mother’s china came as another big surprise. What was this—a belated attempt at instilling some confidence in Paige’s womanly wiles?
Questions were forgotten, however, when the women reached the study. True leapt to his feet and took the heavy tray from Paige, just as if he had been watching for her return. He was flatteringly attentive as she served coffee and pie. When she mentioned the room had grown cool, he was quick to add another log to the fire and draw the curtains against a cold draft.
He kept looking at her. Studying her, Paige thought, as if she were a stranger, When she tucked the afghan more securely over her father’s legs, True was watching. When she folded the linen napkins and placed them back on the tray, his gaze followed her every move. When she laughed at Tillie’s description of a dude’s encounter with a stubborn mare, True was silent, his jaw propped against the heel of one hand as he scrutinized her.
Paige’s reaction to his interest wavered somewhere between pleasure and panic. What was he thinking?
Once the coffee and pie were gone, Rex announced he was tired. While Paige gave him a hand getting to bed, True carried the coffee tray to the kitchen. Paige expected True to leave from there, but when she returned to the study, he was gazing thoughtfully down at the fire.
He suited the room, she thought. Just like her father. Both of them were big men. Simple in their tastes. The polished wood, leather upholstery and muted reds and golds of the study’s decor were the right background for confident, completely masculine men. But then, she couldn’t imagine a setting where they wouldn’t be at ease, because they were at ease with themselves, first and foremost. Maybe that was why she was struggling so with the changes in her father. Because he was still adjusting to his new capabilities and problems.
She wavered for a moment in the doorway before True turned to face her. “You’re here,” she said, rather unnecessarily.
“You want me to leave?”
“Of course not. I just thought you were with Tillie.”
“She threw me out of her kitchen, said I might break your mother’s china.”
“She’s awfully worried about those dishes tonight.”
True looked puzzled.
“Never mind,” Paige told him with a wave of her hand. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I think so.”
His hesitation was uncharacteristic. Once again his steady blue-eyed gaze was centered on her. To keep from fidgeting under his regard, Paige folded the afghan and straightened magazines on the coffee table. After that there was nothing left to do but sit down. Still True watched her, and her patience wore thin. “What are you looking at?”
He blinked. “Looking at?”
“Do I have chocolate pie on my chin or something? You just keep staring at me.”
His smile was slow and somewhat sheepish. “I’m staring because I never knew you were this pretty.”
Her protest was automatic. “I’m not pretty.”
“Are, too,” he teased, just as he might have when they were kids. “When did it happen?”
“Pardon me?”
“I missed you growing up.”
“I’m thirty-one years old, True. I grew up a long time ago.”
“But when you left here you were a kid. All skinny arms and legs. Freckles and pigtails. Just a little girl.”
“That’s just the way you saw me,” Paige said. “I wasn’t a little girl at all.”
True frowned, looked as if he was about to protest, then reconsidered. “You’re right, I suppose. I wasn’t very good at seeing you had grown up. And when you came home on visits—”
“You were busy with your family, as you should have been.” She settled back into the corner of the sofa and played with the tassels on a pillow instead of looking at True. “That reminds me of how rude I’ve been in not asking about the twins.”
His smile was immediate. “They’re a handful at times, but they’re good kids, all in all.”
She spared him a glance. “I’m sure you’re doing a fine job with them.”
“With Aunt Helen’s help. God knows what I’ll do without her.”
She nodded, and her next comment flew out of her mouth without any thought. “Tillie says every eligible woman in the county is offering to give you a hand.”
He laughed, stepping away from the fire. “A few who aren’t eligible have come around, as well.”
Paige wasn’t sure where her flirtatious giggle came from. “I guess they consider you quite a catch.”
“What about you?” True asked, a roguish gleam in his eyes. “Do you think I’m a catch?”
Suddenly nervous, she again focused on the pillow tassel.
“What if I wanted you to think I was a catch?”
The question was spoken in such low tones Paige wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly.
He didn’t help her out by repeating it. Instead, he asked another question that took her by surprise. “How come you’re not married, Paige?”
She blinked. “What kind of thing is that to ask?”
“I just wondered. Don’t you want to be married?”
None of your business, she thought before evading the question. “Right now I just want to get the ranch shaped up.”
His eyebrows drew together in concern. “Is there a problem?”
“Nothing that having someone firmly in control won’t solve. Dad’s been gone for four months, and from the looks of things, he wasn’t feeling his best before then. The ranch foreman has been given too much freedom and responsibility, and we’ve got a lot of work to do if we’re going to be ready for the guests we expect this spring.”
True pursed his lips, his expression thoughtful. “Are you sure you’ve done the right thing coming back here?”
Paige pushed herself to her feet. “What is this? The West Texas version of the Spanish Inquisition?”
“You’re biting off a big job here.” He held up his hand when she started a protest. “Now don’t get all riled up like you did this morning. I’m not implying it’s a job you can’t do.”
Sure that’s what he was implying, she managed to hold on to her temper. “Look here, True. I’ve been dreaming of home for a long, long time. I’m never leaving again, if I can help it.”
Again True’s slow grin appeared. “So if you get married, it better be someone who respects your love of this place.”
“I suppose,” she snapped. “But I’m not thinking of getting married anytime soon.”
“Not even to me?”
His question hit her like a streak of lightning. The room went all blue and white and electric.
And suddenly True had left the fire and was standing beside her, taking her hand, looking down at her with his expression serious and intense.
“I think we ought to get married, Paige. I think it makes a whole lot of sense.”
Sense? For the life of her, Paige couldn’t figure out what a crazy man was doing talking about sense.
She snatched her hands back and demanded, “What kind of damned fool joke are you pulling, William True Whitman?”
“No joke, Slim.” Sure enough, his gaze was steady and solemn, as far from teasing as you could get. So was his voice when he asked, “Will you marry me?”
