1
“SON OF A BUCK!” a grizzled old man declared in a gravelly voice. “Look what we got here.”
Blinking at the bright pool of light spilling from the open door, Tracy Campbell swatted at the raindrops on her eyelashes. Her long hair was plastered to her head and cheeks like strands of sticky seaweed. She felt like a drowned rat and had no doubt that she looked the part. She’d been driving around in circles for hours in a raging downpour that would have sent Noah heading back to the ark. Tired to the bone, she managed to ask, “Where am I?”
“On our front porch,” a younger man replied.
Great, she thought. Of all the ranch houses in Colorado, she had to end up on the doorstep of a comedian.
Tracy wasn’t in the mood for laughing. What she was in the mood for was a full-blown crying jag. However, she refused to turn into a blubbering idiot in front of these two men. They were already staring at her as if she’d landed from outer space.
The older man had a shock of white hair and piercing light blue eyes. He reminded her of Lloyd Bridges. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the younger man yet.
Gathering her composure along with the damp skirt of her denim dress—she figured everyone in Colorado wore denim—and without waiting for an invitation, she walked inside.
“I don’t care where I am,” she stated with a look that dared either man to cross her. “I’m not going out in that downpour again.”
“Nobody asked you to,” the younger man noted, his voice shimmying down her spine like a hot toddy.
“I got lost looking for the Best ranch,” she said.
“You’ve found it,” he replied.
Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, Tracy extended her hand before realizing the navy cotton sweater she was wearing over her dress had stretched until it limply drooped beyond her fingertips.
Yanking the saturated sleeve up to her elbow, she introduced herself. “I’m your new housekeeper.”
“Well, if that don’t beat all.” The older man slapped his thigh and chortled.
She sensed the younger man’s eyes gleaming with amusement as he surveyed her from dripping head to muddy feet.
“She probably cleans up pretty good,” the older man added with another chortle.
“Forgive my father, he has a peculiar sense of humor. I’m Zane Best.” His warm hand engulfed hers in a handshake that was startlingly powerful. Not that he squeezed her fingers too hard or anything like that. Still, her chilly fingers were humming with awareness.
This was Zane? Her rancher employer? He wasn’t what she’d imagined. She’d pictured him looking like J.R.’s father in the TV series Dallas—silver-haired, distinguished-looking, tall.
The only thing she’d gotten right was that last one. He had to be at least six-two and his ruggedly lean build was enough to make an advertising account executive like herself want to cast him in a jeans commercial.
But Tracy wasn’t an account executive any longer. She wasn’t an about-to-be-bride, either. That life was behind her, left back in Chicago along with the sterling-silver tea set and the Austrian crystal decanters. She was on her own now. On her own as a housekeeper, on a ranch in Colorado.
It had seemed like a good idea when her aunt Maeve had suggested it to her back in Chicago. Her aunt’s new husband, Herbert, had a dear cousin out west who was looking for a housekeeper. Hadn’t Tracy always wanted to live on a ranch?
At the time, Tracy’s first priority had been getting away from the nightmarish mess her heretofore wellplanned life had become, and to do that as quickly as possible. She’d jumped at the job, asking no questions. Maeve had offered to call ahead and tell them Tracy was coming.
Tracy had driven out west instead of flying and had spent more time behind the wheel of her beloved red Miata than she probably should have that day. But, after enduring a rough night in a no-name motel in the middle of Nebraska, she’d wanted to reach her destination by day’s end.
The car was packed to the gills. She imagined her ex-fiancé, Dennis, had noticed a few things missing by now, not the least of which was her.
Tracy’s frantic telephone conversation with her aunt had led her here to the wilds of Colorado and to this rugged man who was eyeing her with equal parts of amusement and wariness.
“You still awake in there?” he inquired dryly.
Despite the fact that they were inside, he still wore a cowboy hat so she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. He had a classic profile. Above his right ear, she could see a few inches of his hair—dark hair. He had chiseled cheekbones and a jaw that could have been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Altogether it made for a sexy and craggy face, like the guys that posed for those cigarette ads in the sixties. Back to advertising again? She closed her eyes.
This man was supposed to be a middle-aged widower, with two angelic children of indeterminable age—Aunt Maeve hadn’t been real clear on that detail. In her glowing description, her aunt had bestowed the mild and easygoing disposition of a saint upon Zane. Tracy was getting the feeling her aunt had exaggerated. Greatly.
THE WOMAN HAD “tenderfoot” written all over her—from the tips of her muddied beige suede boots to the top of her sopping wet blond hair. What kind of idiot wore suede boots to a ranch? Apparently the kind he’d hired, Zane noted with a sigh.
Beggars can’t be choosers. It wasn’t as if he’d received tons of applications for the position of housekeeper. Everyone in the county knew about his situation and they’d rather eat rattlers than work in his household—thanks to the wild stories put out by the two housekeepers he’d already gone through in the past month.
He hadn’t expected Tracy Campbell to just show up on his doorstep tonight. She was suppose to arrive tomorrow. He didn’t know exactly what relationship existed between himself and the woman dripping in his hallway. Her aunt had married his father’s favorite cousin, which made her... there was probably some word for it but he didn’t know what. Second cousin niece-in-law?
Who knew? Who cared? He needed a housekeeper and he needed her pronto.
His dad and his cousin Herbert, or Herb as he preferred to be called, talked on the phone all the time, and Buck had told Herb about the trouble they’d been having keeping household help. Still, Zane didn’t know much about Herb’s new wife. When he’d gotten the call saying that she had a niece who was coming to fill the job of housekeeper, he’d been too relieved to question his luck, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth.
This woman’s mouth was worth looking at, even if it was a little blue aground the edges from cold or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure which. Her long hair was beginning to dry at the ends, and as it did so it turned a warm gold. Her denim dress clung to a body that was curved in all the right places. And she had eyes as green as grass.
“You should get out of those damp clothes before you catch a chill.” The image of her without those clothes was enough to make him take a step back, as if she’d just zapped him with a cattle prod. “Uh, did you bring your luggage with you?”
“In the car,” she said.
“You don’t look so good,” Buck stated bluntly. “Maybe you better sit down.”
“You know what I could really use? A bathroom.”
“It’s over there,” Zane said, nodding his head toward the door beneath the staircase leading upstairs. “It’s not real big, but it should suit your needs.”
After brushing her hair and drying her face with towels that could give sandpaper a run for its money, she felt only marginally more presentable.
“Appears to me, son, that a good wind would knock her over. She looked like a crazy wild woman, pounding on the door that way.”
“She’s not crazy. She’s just tired from the trip.”
Hearing Zane’s words through the bathroom door, Tracy decided that exhaustion was as good an excuse as any. The truth was that she definitely was not at her best, but then who would be after what she’d been through the past few days? Being an unemployed runaway bride would make any woman look crazy and wild. “You’re allowed,” she assured her reflection in the tiny mirror.
From the other side of the door, she heard Buck’s bellowing voice saying, “Son, she’s in the john talking to herself! Maybe you should check on her.”
“I’m fine,” Tracy shouted back. “I’ll be out in a second.”
It took her several tries to undo the lock on the bathroom door, which probably dated back to the last century. She was just about ready to admit defeat when the lock finally gave way, and she nearly tumbled into the hallway, where Zane and his father stood waiting for her.
Gathering her battered dignity around her, she straightened her shoulders and said, “I think I’ll go rest now, if you don’t mind. It was a long drive out here.”
“I’ll take you up to your room,” Zane said. He already had two of her bags in hand, the damp patch on his shirt indicating that he’d been out in the rain to get them from her car, which she’d left unlocked.
“Thanks.” Tracy followed him up the stairs that creaked with every step they took. Zane was two steps above her, which put his denim-clad behind right about at her eye level. His jeans fit him like a second skin. He had a narrow waist and lean hips to go with his long legs—thirty-four waist and thirty-six inseam, if she wasn’t mistaken. Not that she was paying attention to such things. Not anymore. Still, she couldn’t help noticing that he moved with the cowboy swagger of the guys on Bonanza.
She should know, she’d seen every episode of the classic western TV show. She’d always had this secret desire to live on a ranch, and during the long drive west she’d told herself that maybe Dennis’s cheating had been fate’s way of guiding her here to live out her ranch dream. She just hoped this didn’t turn into a nightmare the way her dreams of a life with Dennis had.
“The housekeeper’s quarters are being...uh... being remodeled. So for the next few days you’ll have to stay in the guest room,” Zane said, kicking the door open with his booted foot.
The bed was big and looked comfortable, even if it was old. It had a quilt of some kind on it instead of a bedspread. There was a nightstand and a chest of drawers along with a straight-backed chair. Not exactly The Ritz, but it would do.
“I’ll just put your bag here,” Zane said, placing the smallest carry-on bag onto the bed, where it bounced several times on the creaky mattress.
Looking at it, Tracy longed for her own luxury mattress in storage back in Chicago. “Do you have a bathtub?” she asked Zane.
“Sure. But the hot-water heater is out of commission right now. Sorry,” he said regretfully, with a tug on the brim of his hat. “It should be working again by morning.”
“That’s okay,” she murmured, her hope of taking a hot bath gone.
“I’ll turn up the heat for you. If you don’t have any other questions, I’ll let you get some sleep. We get up early in these parts. Breakfast is at five-thirty.”
“Fine,” she mumbled around a yawn, not really hearing him. “I’ll see you then.”
“The kitchen is at the back of the house downstairs,” Zane added. “You can’t miss it.”
“Mmm, good night.”
As she closed the door in Zane’s face, the last thing she saw were his eyes. Finally she was close enough to see their color. They were blue.
TRACY WAS DREAMING that she was being rocked by gentle waves in the Caribbean. She and Dennis were on their honeymoon. They had the beach all to themselves. The ocean was getting rougher. A storm was coming. She could hear the thunder. It rumbled over her as she bounced like a cork in the rough seas.
“Wake up!” the thunder rumbled.
She tried to call out but couldn’t.
“Wake up!” the thunder rumbled again.
Tracy opened her eyes to find a man looming over her in the semidarkness. Her scream was automatic.
Afterward, she didn’t know which of them was more unnerved.
“Damn it, you scared ten years off my life!” the man grumbled as he retrieved his hat, which had gone flying when she’d let loose her startled yodel. “All I was trying to do was wake you up. You were supposed to have breakfast ready ten minutes ago. I’ve got hungry ranch hands downstairs waiting to be fed.”
Completely disoriented, Tracy blinked at him, trying to place her surroundings. Where was she?
Then it came rushing back to her. She was at a ranch in Colorado. The one her aunt told her would be the perfect place for her to recover from the mayhem of her life. But no one could recover from anything at this ungodly hour! And the man staring with interest at the thin spaghetti straps of her nightgown was Zane.
“What are you doing in here?” she demanded, pulling the sheet up to her chin.
“I told you. I was just trying to wake you up.”
“It’s too early. Come back later,” she moaned.
“Listen, lady,” he growled as he hit the light switch on the wall, “I’m not running a health spa here. Last I heard, I’m the employer and you’re the housekeeper and cook. Which means you’re supposed to be downstairs making breakfast, not up here under the covers.”
She groaned, then sat up in bed. “I guess this means breakfast in bed is out, huh?” Seeing his expression darken, she added, “I’m only kidding. I’m awake now. I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”
Tracy waited until Zane left before crawling out of bed, only to stub her toe on one of her still-unpacked suitcases. Tears sprang to her eyes as she grabbed her foot and did a one-footed hop.
This wasn’t how she’d planned on starting her new life. She felt like a fish out of water, a very sleepy, tired fish, and she didn’t like it Anger washed over her, mixed with the pain of betrayal. Dennis had cheated on her, and Zane had stolen several hours of sleep from her. The two crimes might not be at all equal in seriousness, but for the moment they marked both men as guilty in her mind. Guilty of being men too used to having their own way.
“They should ban all males from this planet,” she declared darkly. “Now where did I pack my jeans?”
In the end, Tracy had to wear beige linen slacks and a coral silk blouse. It was either that or risk having Zane come ranting back into her room. Her jeans must be in one of the bags still in the car.
She found the kitchen with no difficulty. Turning on the stove did not prove to be as easy, however. Whenever she turned the knob, all she got was hissing gas.
The moment Zane walked in the kitchen, she told him, “Your stove is broken.”
“It’s not broken, you’ve got to light it with a match.” When she gave him a blank look, he swore under his breath and lit it himself. “Just make a batch of scrambled eggs this morning and some bacon.” He handed her a bowl of eggs and what looked like a pound of bacon.
“Do you know what this does to your cholesterol level?” Tracy said in disapproval.
“Just cook it,” he growled.
She did, but not very well. The eggs were runny on top and burned on the bottom, while the bacon looked like cinders. Who could have guessed that making scrambled eggs and bacon would be so tricky? It was a good thing she’d brought a few cookbooks with her.
She didn’t dare go out and ask the men how they liked the meal she’d made for them. So she stayed in the kitchen, trying to decide where she’d put the gourmet appliances she’d brought with her. She heard some muttered complaints from the other room, but didn’t pay any attention to them.
There was no ignoring Zane when he strode into the kitchen. His face was as stormy as the sky had been last night.
“I was told you could cook,” he said with remarkable calm, given his expression.
“I can cook,” Tracy righteously maintained. One thing. Shrimp de Jonghe with angel-hair pasta. As for breakfast, Tracy rarely had anything more elaborate than coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. And she’d always bought that from a deli around the comer from her place.
There was nothing around the comer in this neck of the woods, thought. Okay, so her first morning hadn’t turned out as she’d thought it would. No big deal. She had an MBA. She could figure this out. How hard could being a housekeeper and cook be?
Turning her attention from Zane to the kitchen, she surveyed the mess she’d made. Bacon grease was spattered in a two-foot radius from the stove. Some of it had even hit her hand. She absently rubbed the spot while belatedly noticing that the eggs she’d broken into the bowl had left a slimy trail from the countertop to the kitchen sink four feet away.
She’d looked for, but hadn’t yet found, the switch for the garbage disposal. Opening the window had gotten rid of most of the smoke caused by the burning bacon. For a minute there, she’d been afraid she’d set the place on fire.
Seeing her wandering attention, Zane was hard-pressed not to yell at her in frustration. The kitchen hadn’t been in great shape when she’d started cooking, but now the place looked as if a bomb had hit it. He was on the verge of shipping her back to Chicago, when he reminded himself that he didn’t have a bunch of applicants standing in line. It was her or no one.
Telling himself to be patient, Zane was about to speak when a new storm crashed in, banging the swinging door against the wall.
Ten seconds later, the damage was awesome. The bowl from the countertop had flown across the room before smashing on the floor. The canisters Tracy hadn’t even noticed before now lay beside the ruined bowl, their contents strewn all over the kitchen.
The air was filled with flour dust, making Tracy cough even as she asked, “What was that?”
“My two kids,” Zane ruefully replied.