3
IT TOOK A GOOD TWO HOURS to get the kitchen back in shape, even with the twins’ so-called assistance. Most of the time the kids were more of a hindrance than a help, but Tracy figured that the work was good for their character. At the end of the exercise she had a newfound appreciation for the maid service that she’d had come in twice a week back in Chicago.
The silver lining was that she’d burned enough calories that she wouldn’t have to do her aerobic workout. Who knew housework could be so tiring? And there was still the living room to be done.
But first she had to make lunch. She found a bottle of spaghetti sauce in the walk-in pantry along with several boxes of pasta. She warmed the sauce in the countertop microwave but forgot to put a lid on it, so tomato paste spattered all over. By the time she got that cleaned up, the pot of boiling water that held the spaghetti was frothing over.
Since the twins were doing nothing but laughing at her, she sent them into the dining room to set the table. She didn’t have time to instruct them on how to lay a proper place setting, so she just gathered the silverware and stuck it in a nice looking ceramic pot big enough to hold it.
Tracy had worked as a waitress one summer in college, so she knew how to efficiently transport as many plates in one trip as possible. The table was set, the big bowls of spaghetti and sauce set in the center, when the men came in at noon. In the blink of an eye, the food had been consumed and they were outside again, heading back to do whatever it was cowhands did on a ranch. Things had no doubt changed some since the Cartwrights ran their Ponderosa ranch on Bonanza, where they’d had an excellent Chinese cook, as she recalled.
Which got her to thinking what she wouldn’t give for an order of pot stickers and Szechuan chicken.
Zane made no comment about her spaghetti lunch, but he did eat it. He even brought his own dish, now empty, into the kitchen. He set it on the counter just as she was turning from the sink. Their bodies collided midstep.
Her startled gaze met his as awareness shot through her system. Did he feel it, too?
Zane looked into her green eyes and recognized trouble when he saw it, or felt it. And feel it he did, clear to the soles of his feet. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman’s soft body pressed against his, or smelled the citrusy freshness of a woman’s hair. Her hands were city-girl soft, her perfume expensive.
She didn’t belong here. It was as obvious as the spaghetti stain on her ritzy silk shirt. So what if her eyes were the green of a mountain meadow or her lips just made for kissing. She wasn’t for him. He’d already learned his lesson by getting hitched up with a city girl. His ex-wife, Pam. She lacked staying power and had run off when the twins were little.
Look but Don’t Touch. That was his motto where city girls were concerned. Taking a step away from Tracy, he beat a retreat out of the kitchen, remembering that line about those not being able to take the heat, staying out of the kitchen. That was one piece of advice he aimed on taking.
“Is the hot water heater fixed?” she asked him before he could reach the door.
Hot water? That’s what he’d be in if he hung around her much longer. “Not yet. But it should be fixed by tonight.”
That was the extent of his conversation before he left the room.
Tracy watched Zane through the kitchen window as he strode toward the horse corral near the barn. Actually he was doing that cowboy amble she’d found so sexy the night before. Men are pond scum, she reminded herself and set to work on the sinkful of dishes. She broke two nails with her scrubbing. The continued lack of hot water made the washing more difficult and had her hands looking like prunes by the time she let the dirty water out of the sink.
Definitely the first thing she had to do was to go check out Bliss and get some 20th-century appliances.
No, she corrected herself, looking down at her clothing. First she had to change clothes. Her linen pants and coral silk shirt were goners. No wonder Zane had stared at her so strangely. It was because she was a mess, not because he was attracted to her.
Leaving the twins in Buck’s care, she went upstairs and managed to find her jeans and a denim shirt as well as a pair of designer athletic shoes in her luggage. Her suede boots had not recovered from the mud and rain the night before. She wasn’t sure they ever would. She’d only been in Colorado twenty-four hours and already she’d ruined three hundred dollars’ worth of clothing. At this rate she’d be broke and naked in no time—not really a lifetime goal of hers.
She would have liked to redo her hair into something fancier but she was running out of time, so she left it loose around her face. Some sunscreen and lipstick and she was ready to go.
It wasn’t until she was downstairs that it occurred to her that both kids wouldn’t fit in her two-seater Miata, something she hadn’t considered at the time she’d made the offer earlier to give them a ride, so Buck told her to use the pickup truck out front.
Tracy had never driven a truck before, but at least it had an automatic transmission and not a stick shift. The thing was huge. It felt like she was driving a tank the size of a small country.
After making sure the twins had fastened their seatbelts in the passenger seats directly behind her, she drove out the long gravel driveway that led to the main highway. Looking out her rearview mirror she got her first real look at the exterior of the ranch house. It was painted white and had a wraparound porch that showed signs of sagging. Or maybe it was the mirror that was crooked. The two-story building was reminiscent of the farmhouses that she’d occasionally glimpsed while speeding along the interstate in Iowa and Nebraska—big rambling structures from a time when no one worried about fuel conservation or heating bills.
Which reminded her, she sure hoped someone had fixed the hot water heater by the time she returned from Bliss. She was about ready to kill for a hot shower.
At the end of the drive, right before it joined the highway, she slowed as the truck rumbled over something embedded in the road—a set of rails laid side by side and several inches apart.
“Somebody should fix that,” she muttered.
“It’s a Texas gate to keep the cattle from crossing over from the ranch to the road,” Lucky loftily informed her. “Everybody knows that.”
Stung, Tracy retorted, “We don’t have cattle in Chicago, aside from the Bulls, and they play basketball.”
“Grandpa said it was a load of bull that you’d ever done any cooking before.” This charming comment came from Rusty.
“Your grandfather is a real character.” Tracy just wished he was more like Ben Cartwright and less like Rodney Dangerfield.
IT WAS A HALF-HOUR DRIVE to the town of Bliss. Town may have been an overambitious description of the place 159 people called home, as was proudly displayed on the wooden sign with the town’s name neatly printed on it. Bliss—the Little Town That Could. But Didn’t, someone had scrawled beneath it.
Bliss had one main street, appropriately named Main Street. There were no traffic lights at the two intersections, but there was a stop sign at both First Avenue and Second Avenue. The town apparently didn’t have a third avenue but just sort of petered out with a bunch of trailers set back from the road. Tracy was relieved to see that she wouldn’t have to parallel park, something she’d finally mastered in her compact Miata but had no desire to even attempt in this tank. Instead the pickup trucks were parked head-in and at an angle. She had no trouble finding an empty space right in front of the Roxy Movie Theater, a throwback to the days when a box of popcorn was a dime and names like Clark Gable and Cary Grant headlined the fancy marquee.
Walking down the sidewalk with the twins at her side she passed an insurance office, the post office, an American Legion, and two bars—one of which had a sign on the door proclaiming No Knives Allowed on Premises.
It had obviously been a while since Zane had gone appliance shopping, as the catalog outlet store had a sign up in its window saying that it had gone out of business. It was dated six months ago, and there was a For Rent sign beside it.
Tugging her pocket-size computerized memo minder out of her purse, she punched in the name of a nationwide appliance store that she’d done work for a few months back. Sure enough, their headquarters were in Colorado Springs. A moment later she had her cellular phone in hand and was speaking to her contact.
As luck would have it, there was a warehouse in Denver and two discounted appliances could be trucked in for the five-hundred-dollar budget she’d agreed to. It paid to have connections.
Feeling confident now that she’d taken care of that bit of business, she decided to explore the rest of Bliss—as in the other side of the street. So she crossed back to check out the few stores. The twins were utterly disgusted that she insisted that they hold her hand while crossing the street.
“We’re not babies,” Lucky declared.
“Humor me,” Tracy retorted, aware of curious looks from passersby—all three of them. In the end she barely hung onto the twins as they rushed her across the street.
The first establishment she stopped at, a dry-goods store with everything from cigarettes to china in the window, was closing as she arrived, the clerk hurriedly turning over the Welcome sign to its Sorry We’re Closed side just as she reached the door.
Glancing at her watch, Tracy noted that it was only a little after three. Rather early to be closing up. Moving on to the next store, she was surprised to find their door already locked. The third place, a combination grocery-and-hardware store, was open but claimed they were about to close once Tracy and the twins were inside. The clerk gave them the bum’s rush and Tracy found herself standing on the sidewalk facing yet another Closed sign.
She’d heard of places that didn’t welcome outsiders, but this was ridiculous. It was as if they saw her coming and locked their doors and pulled down their blinds. Why? Why would they be so unfriendly?
Tracy didn’t even realize she’d said the words aloud until Rusty answered them.
“Because we’re accident prone. We broke something the last time we went in there,” Rusty said with more pride than remorse.
“What did you break?” she asked.
“The front window.”
She gulped. These Best twins didn’t seem to do anything on a small scale. When they went after glass, they skipped the bottles and headed right for the bigticket items. “How did you manage to do that?”
Rusty shrugged. “I hit it just right with my slingshot. I used a walnut in it.”
“The window didn’t really break,” Lucky added. “It just got a big ol’ crack in it.”
“Pa wasn’t happy when we did that,” Rusty said in a hushed voice. “We’re not allowed to play with our slingshots in town anymore.”
“Or in the house,” Tracy added for good measure.
“Or in the house,” Lucky agreed before fixing her with a haughty stare. “But not because you said so. Because Pa did.”
“Your father is a wise man.”
“Well, actually I’m the wise one in the family,” a man wearing a badge stated as he strolled up to join them.
“Uncle Reno!”
The twins launched themselves at him. Apparently he was used to it because he scooped one child up in each arm and twirled around, giving Tracy a good view of yet another good-looking denim-clad cowboy. He was taller than Zane and younger. Where Zane projected a raw power, this man was more easygoing.
“And who’s this lovely lady with you?” he asked the twins.
“Our new housekeeper,” Lucky replied. “She’s not staying long.”
Taking matters into her own hands, Tracy introduced herself before tacking on, “And I am staying, for the summer at least.”
Reno’s eyes actually twinkled as he drawled, “You’re a courageous soul.”
Oh, yeah, this one was the charmer in the family.
“She can’t cook,” Lucky told Reno.
“Darlin’, she doesn’t have to cook,” Reno murmured with a meaningful glance.
Unlike Zane’s dark looks, Reno’s charm did nothing for her, which meant he was less of a threat to her peace of mind than his older brother was. When Reno shook her hand, there had been no humming in her fingers and her heart hadn’t even skipped a beat.
“Uncle Reno is the sheriff,” Rusty informed Tracy. “He can arrest you if you do something wrong. Like feed us broccoli.”
“Rusty here hates broccoli, but feeding him some isn’t a hanging offense.”
“It oughta be,” Rusty muttered.
Tracy couldn’t help it. She grinned. “We just came into town to get some groceries and take a look around, but it seems that the twins’ reputation precedes them.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to civilize them,” Reno suggested.
“That could happen. Let’s just say that I can be as stubborn as they are and leave it at that.”
“The stubbornness they got from Zane.”
“I had gathered that much. He told me that he’d had a hard time keeping a housekeeper.” A little late, she noted to herself, but he had finally told her.
“Yeah, the twins have a way of putting the fear of the devil into you while looking at you with the eyes of an angel. Look, they’re doing it right now even as Lucky just tied your shoelaces together.”
Tracy looked down to see that he was right. It appeared that she still had a thing or two to learn about dealing with the terrible twosome.
BY THE TIME Tracy found her way to the supermarket over in Kendall, where the twins weren’t as well-known and therefore banned from the store, it was already five. Kendall actually had two traffic lights, both of which stayed red for five minutes while Tracy fumed behind the wheel. She’d never get back to the ranch in time to make dinner now.
“You’re speeding,” Lucky announced ten minutes later, jabbing an accusatory finger into Tracy’s right shoulder. “I’m gonna tell Pa.”
“You do and I’m making broccoli for dinner for the rest of the week.”
Okay, so she was lowering herself to their level, not a good negotiating technique, but she was tired and hungry. She hadn’t eaten her own cooking, which meant she hadn’t eaten anything, aside from a granola bar in her suitcase, all day.
The broccoli threat seemed to work, for the twins stayed quiet. But the momentary peace was soon broken by the sound of a police-car siren.
“I told you you were speeding.” Lucky gloated.
Suffice it to say that the policewoman from Kendall was not as charming as Reno had been, citing Tracy not only for speeding nine miles above the speed limit but also for driving with a defective taillight. The fact that it wasn’t her truck carried no weight with the policewoman at all.
“That was Sally,” Lucky said after the policewoman had departed. “She used to date Pa.”
“She gives him tickets, too.”
Tracy aimed on giving him more than a ticket. She aimed on giving him a piece of her mind for sending her out on a wild-goose chase without taillights. It didn’t matter that Buck was the one who told her to use the truck or that Zane hadn’t been keen to have her go into Bliss in the first place. All that mattered was that Zane was a man who made her hand, not to mention the rest of her body, hum at a time when she wanted nothing to do with the male species.
TRACY’S BAD MOOD was tempered by the delicious smell of barbecued ribs wafting from the ranch house. Her mouth watered. Her nose led her through the house and beyond the kitchen to the backyard, if a ranch had such a thing. There she found Buck, master of all he surveyed, a big white apron covering him from shoulders to knees as he leaned over a smoking hot grill. He handled the pair of large tongs the way Wyatt Earp handled a gun, twirling it in his right hand before stashing it back in place.
“Will that taste as good as it smells?” Tracy asked.
“Son of a buck, it tastes even better than it smells.” Buck added a chortle for good measure.
He was right. It did taste even better than it smelled. It was quite simply the best barbecued ribs she’d ever tasted. And she told him so.
“The secret is in the sauce,” he confided. “It’s an old family recipe.”
Tracy helped herself to another delicious rib. “I don’t see why you need a cook when you can make something this good yourself.”
“My father’s barbecue is great,” Zane acknowledged, “but it’s the only thing he cooks.”
Tracy knew all about being a one-trick pony. The only thing she cooked was Shrimp de Jonghe.
“You should bottle this and sell it,” she told Buck even as she licked the sauce from her fingertips.
“Pa, you’re staring at Tracy.” The accusation came from Lucky.
Turning her head, Tracy noted that Zane’s sexy craggy face was now a shade of red not unlike that of the barbecue sauce.
“Is it because she got a ticket?” Lucky had an eager look in her eyes. “I told you she got a ticket, right?”
“Only about a hundred times,” Zane muttered.
“So is that why you were staring at her?”
“I wasn’t staring at her. I was just surprised that she talked about Grandpa selling his barbecue sauce.”
“Why should that surprise you?” Tracy asked. “I was in advertising before I came out here and I worked with focus groups on a variety of products, including foods. Gourmet food items are very hot right now.”
“Grandpa’s sauce isn’t hot,” Rusty said. “You should taste Pa’s salsa. It’ll burn your mouth out.”
“By hot I meant that they are very popular,” Tracy explained.
“Our Pa is poplar,” Lucky said, for the first time sounding like a kid.
“Popular,” Zane automatically corrected her.
“A poplar is a tree, dummy.” Rusty elbowed his sister.
“I’m not a dummy!” She elbowed him right back.
“I think these ribs would taste wonderful with broccoli.” Another cheap shot at least but it ended the shoving match between the twins.
Returning her attention to Buck, she said, “I really think you should seriously consider bottling your barbecue sauce and selling it.”
“Selling it where?” Buck countered. “Here? We don’t get many visitors to these parts.”
“Selling it in gourmet food catalogs. There are a number of them that specialize in products from the West and Southwest. Many of them have Web sites on the Internet as well.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” Buck said, but looked doubtful.
“Maybe you could be more famous than Cockeyed Curly, Grandpa.” Rusty looked pleased by the idea.
“As long as you don’t choke on any steak.” This bit of advice came from Lucky. “Or ribs.”
“Or broccoli,” Rusty added with a dire look in Tracy’s direction.
She ignored it. “Where are the rest of the cowhands?” Although she hadn’t been formally introduced to any of them yet, she knew there had been half a dozen of them at lunch.
“They have Monday night off so they head into town,” Zane replied.
“Into Bliss?”
Zane laughed. It was the first time she’d heard his laugh and she liked it. His voice might shimmy down her spine like a hot toddy but his laugh had more of a ripple effect.
“No, not into Bliss. They head over to Red Deer or Kendall.”
“Tracy got a ticket outside of Kendall,” Lucky piped in yet again.
“We know!” The words were spoken in unison by Zane, Buck and even Rusty.
Lucky’s glare told them that she was not amused.
Join the club, kid, Tracy thought, still brooding over her reaction to Zane’s laugh.
Her mood was only slightly improved after doing another sinkful of dishes—the hot water heater had finally been repaired, thank heaven—while Zane put the twins to bed. Buck asked about her ideas for his barbecue sauce while she worked. When Zane came back downstairs he passed by the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker she’d been told to keep brewing at all times.
“Would it be okay if I took a shower now that the hot water heater is fixed?” she said, not wanting to do anything that would make it break down again.
He looked at her as if she’d just asked him if she could dance nude on the kitchen table.
She frowned. “Is there a problem?”
“No, no problem.” His voice was rough and a tad curt. “You can take a shower, just don’t spend all day in it or the hot water will run out.”
“I’ll be sure to save some hot water for you.” The thought of him in the shower—minus the jeans, shirt and boots, with droplets of water rolling down his bare body—was enough to make her eyes widen. And to make her wonder if that’s why he’d looked at her so strangely a moment ago. Because he’d been imagining the same thing about her?
Or maybe he was just aggravated by her lack of ability in the housekeeping department. It was getting pretty bad when she couldn’t tell whether a man’s look was aggravated or aroused. She’d gotten out of practice while she’d been engaged to Dennis. He’d chased her from the first moment he’d met her at a professional function. He’d swept her off her feet. It had been intoxicating. She’d found him compatible and their lifestyles and interests meshed, so she thought he must be the man for her.
She’d only been interested in him. Sappy though it sounded, she hadn’t even noticed other men.
Which was one of the reasons why her response to Zane worried her a bit. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much a response as an awareness. Yes, she liked that term. It didn’t sound as serious. Awareness was okay. After all, she was a free woman now. It was perfectly normal for her to appreciate a good-looking man.
After her quick shower she retired to her room to use her cell phone to call her aunt.
“I’m so glad to hear from you!” Aunt Maeve had a booming voice. Wincing, Tracy moved the phone a little further from her ear. “Did you get to the ranch safely? Were Herbert’s directions helpful?”
Herbert was Aunt Maeve’s third husband. Growing up, Tracy had been convinced that the movie Mame was based on her Aunt Maeve. When her own parents had died right after she’d graduated from high school, Aunt Maeve had stepped in—or swept in and taken over, to be more accurate. Aunt Maeve was like a bird of paradise, all bright colors and showy moves. She had a heart of gold and the memory of a sieve. “You didn’t give me Herbert’s directions.”
“Surely I did.”
“No, you gave me your directions.”
“How could you tell the difference?” Maeve demanded.
“Because Herbert’s directions would have been more specific than ‘you take the little road after the big road.’”
“Did you get lost?”
“I found it in the end,” Tracy replied, stretching out on the bed after pulling back the covers to make sure there was no mouse hidden underneath the sheets.
“Well, then, my directions weren’t so bad after all. And how are you settling in?”
“Okay, I guess.” She gingerly explored the shadowy foot of the bed with her toes, still not one hundred percent confident she was alone. “It wasn’t exactly what I expected.”
“Why is that?”
Tracy curled up and bent over to take a peek under the bed before replying to her aunt’s question. “Because you told me that Zane was a middle-aged widower with two angelic children.”
“And?”
“And I come here to find out that the twins are hellions and Zane is...”
“Yes?” Maeve’s voice perked up.
“No more middle-aged than I am. Oh sure he may be a few years older, but not by many.”
“Funny, one would expect that having twin hellions would age a person,” Maeve noted dryly.
“It hasn’t aged him. He’s got this cowboy swagger... Anyway, I was expecting J.R.’s dad from Dallas and instead he’s...”
“Mel Gibson in Maverick?” Maeve suggested.
“Only harder.”
Maeve’s earthy laughter was positively wicked.
“I mean darker,” Tracy stammered, feeling like a teenager. “Jeez, you’re making me blush, Aunt Maeve.”
“I told you that heading for the ranch would be good for you after your broken engagement.”
“I know you did.” Feeling restless, Tracy got up and started pacing the room. “The ironic thing is that I went to see Dennis that afternoon to tell him that I had doubts about us getting married. After finding him in bed with another woman, I could understand where my doubts were coming from,” she ended tartly.
“You suspected that Dennis might be cheating on you?”
“No,” Tracy admitted. “It wasn’t that I had doubts because I thought he was cheating on me. I had doubts about whether or not I loved him. Or whether or not he really he loved me.”
“And now?”
“Now I know he never loved me, at least not the way I want to be loved. As for my feelings, I think I wanted to love him rather than really loving him. I felt anger at his betrayal but a bit of relief as well now that I had a bona fide reason for calling off the engagement. He was very convincing in the beginning of our relationship in the way he chased after me.” She paused in front of the window, the mountain range out beyond the large cottonwood tree reminding her once more that she’d come a long way from Chicago. “I’m certainly relieved that I found out what kind of man he was before I married him, glad that I trusted my instincts and went to see him when I did. Did I tell you that when I informed Dennis that our engagement was off, he didn’t believe me?” She resumed her pacing. “He kept saying he could explain. He even tried to justify his behavior by telling me that she was a client and he was just trying to keep the client happy. When that didn’t work he threatened to fire me if I didn’t marry him. That’s when I told him that not only was I breaking off our engagement but I was quitting my job as well.”
“Good for you.”
“And that’s when I checked into a hotel and called you telling you that I needed to get away.”
Maeve immediately picked up the story from here. “And I told you about Zane needing a housekeeper. You see how things all work out in the end? You had a need, he had a need, together you fulfill each other’s needs.”
The image Maeve’s words created had more to do with sexual needs than practical ones. Tracy shifted, feeling incredibly warm all of a sudden. “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you make it sound like we’re...” Tracy’s voice trailed away as an erotic image took hold.
“Yes?” Maeve prompted.
Shaking her head, she booted the forbidden picture from her mind. “Nothing. I have to tell you that I still can’t quite believe that I just packed up and came out here.”
“Believe it, dear. And enjoy it”
THAT NIGHT Tracy didn’t dream about Dennis at all. Instead she dreamt that just like Gulliver who had been tied down by the Lilliputians, she too had been tied down with incredibly tough ropes except hers were made of burned bacon, and her little tormentors were named Lucky and Rusty. Somehow she was wearing Dorothy’s red shoes from The Wizard of Oz and wasn’t able to click them to get back home again.
You’d better wake up or you’re going to get a crick in your neck. The thought permeated her foggy dream. Unless you want to stay here all tied up.
It’s just a dream, she sleepily thought. I want to see what happens next.
The sound of pounding woke her up. She blinked owlishly. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the darkness of her room. Was it time to get up? She tried, only to be stopped in her tracks.
“Damn it, Tracy,” Zane growled from the other side of her bedroom door. “You’re late again.”
“I’m all tied up at the moment,” she shouted back.
“Just get yourself downstairs, pronto.”
“Can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“I think you should come in and see for yourself,” she said.
Zane walked into her bedroom to find Tracy’s bed completely covered with twine crisscrossing just a few inches above her body, effectively pinning her in place.
“It would appear that your little darlings were busy last night,” she noted tartly. “Unless you find it necessary to tie all your housekeepers to their beds to keep them from running off?”