“YOU need boots for riding,” Shane mused as he walked with Rachel over to the corral, where Hank was seeing to the horses that had arrived a bit later than expected. “Those shoes are too slippery.”
“No, I’m okay. I’m not…I’m not riding,” Rachel said, her voice sounding slightly strained. Shane couldn’t help glancing down at her. Was she looking a little pale?
“Rachel? Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine. Just great. Shane, your horses are so amazing. They’re beautiful,” she said, just as if everything was, indeed, all right. But something was slightly off here. Shane blinked at that. He’d only known the woman a few days. Why was he having thoughts like that? How would he know when something was right or wrong with Rachel? Why would he care?
In some ways, everything seemed perfectly normal. She had opened the case on her camera and was lining up a shot already, but when she’d finished taking the picture she didn’t move closer to the horses.
He approached the fence, whickered softly, and a pretty chestnut mare tossed her head lightly and moved up to him. “Rachel, this is Lizzie. She’s very gentle.” He held his hand out and Lizzie nudged up against him.
“She knows you,” Rachel said.
“Well, I don’t know if she still does. We haven’t seen each other in a long while. But Lizzie was always a friendly horse. You can touch her if you like. She’ll stand still for you.”
When he looked at Rachel, her brown eyes were glowing. “I’ve never touched a horse before.” But she looked eager enough. And even though she approached Lizzie tentatively, she did manage to make contact.
Lizzie pressed up against Rachel’s palm.
“Oh, you are a sweetheart,” Rachel said.
By now Hank and Tom, another new hand, had brought a couple of the other horses over. “This one’s a stranger to me,” Shane said. “And this is Rambler.” Rambler was a big, spirited bay.
“If you’ve been gone ten years, your horses must have been very young when you left,” Rachel said, her voice soft and tentative.
“Some of them like Lizzie, yes. Some died during that time and others were born. The horses are my one regret about leaving the ranch, but my lifestyle doesn’t allow for pets. I should have sold them already.”
“Leaving…things behind is difficult.”
He glanced at her. Her voice had dropped. She looked pensive, a little sad, but then she shook her head and looked up at him.
“Are you going to sell them with Oak Valley?”
“I’m not sure. They’re more window dressing right now. Setting the stage.”
“Actors?” she suggested. “Lizzie looks like she’d like to be a star.”
He chuckled. “She’s a show off and yes, she’s a star. Now—” he hesitated “—are you ready to ride?”
Rachel took a full step back. As if he’d just suggested that she wear a python for a necklace. “I—no. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that.”
She was fidgeting in a way he’d never seen before, her fingers twisting up against each other.
As if she’d just realized what she’d said, her eyes opened wide. She looked horrified. “Maybe I should rephrase that,” she began.
He shook his head. “Shh, it’s okay. Just take your photos and then I’ll drive you to the other sites.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No need to be.”
“You said that it was difficult to get to those other places with a car.”
“I’ll dig out the ATVs. Ever ride one?”
“No.”
“Are you okay with trying it?”
“Totally fine with it.”
Which sounded much more Rachel-like. She had already volunteered to learn how to drive a stick shift and change the oil and spark plugs in a car without a second glance. She’d been uncomfortable with cooking and cleaning, but in spite of that she’d tackled those tasks without flinching. And clearly she was enchanted with Lizzie and the horses, just not with riding one. Shane couldn’t help wondering what had happened to her.
He scowled. From the beginning he’d known it wasn’t wise to get too close to Rachel. That hadn’t changed. In fact it had been more than obvious when he had been on the verge of giving her a full-on kiss the other day. He should just drop the horse issue.
Yeah, he really should do that. What difference did it make that Rachel would go through life without experiencing the joy of riding a horse? Not everyone in the world had to know that kind of pleasure.
“Why are you frowning at me?” she asked.
Shane blinked. “I wasn’t frowning at you. Just thinking ahead to something I need to do, a problem I need to work out. Let’s go find that ATV. I’ve got one with a rack for your equipment.”
A short time later they were racing across the fields on ATVs, Rachel’s dark mane flowing out behind her.
Shane stopped to show her the field where they were making hay. As the mower cut through the field, Rachel breathed in deeply of the cut grasses.
“It smells wonderful,” she said. “What happens to it next? You just scoop it up into one of those hay baler things?”
“Eventually we bundle it up with the baler. But first we have to make sure that the moisture content is right, so once it’s cut we leave it in windrows to dry. Then it’s raked to help with the drying, and finally it’s baled and stored until it’s needed for the animals in winter.”
“That’s…nice.”
He looked at her.
“No. I mean it. There must be something very satisfying about growing the feed for your animals all by yourself.”
He tilted his head. “I grew up like this. Hadn’t given it much thought. I never was much of a rancher.”
“But you know how to do that?” She pointed toward the mower.
Shane shrugged. “I started this morning at first light and then turned things over to Tom when I went up to the house.”
“Because you had to meet me?”
“Because you and I had things to do.” But he couldn’t deny that he’d felt a sense of anticipation waiting for Rachel to arrive. “Come on. Do you have some shots we might use?”
“I think so. Where to next?”
She was like a kid at a five-star amusement park. He led her around the ranch to a cabin meant as a winter shelter, and she entered the place as if it was some sort of treasure cave.
“I can imagine some pioneer woman cooking soup over a fire here, making candles, fighting the elements.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t think it’s quite that old, but, yes, the basic original idea was to protect a rider from the elements if he should get caught on the far side of the ranch. Not sure this one was ever used for anything more than a getaway.”
She stopped to marvel at a field of yellow balsam-root and blue lupines. “I’ve never seen so many flowers in one place. There must be thousands of them.” There were, but although he’d appreciated their beauty in the past, he’d never thought of them as anything special. They bloomed every year. On the ranch, they became just some pretty flowers he passed as he went about his chores.
“Let’s move on,” he said, not wanting to analyze his reaction too closely. It didn’t matter, anyway. Soon the ranch would belong to someone else.
They made their way past grazing land, over hills and into valleys, until he stopped beside a clear, cold creek tumbling over rocks.
Rachel knelt and picked up a flat stone. “What a pretty pink! May I? Ranch souvenir?” she asked.
He laughed. “Be my guest. But it won’t look nearly as nice once it dries.”
“You sound so…adult,” she said with a laugh. “But I’ll bet you and…I’ll bet you collected your share in your day.” A guilty look came over Rachel’s face at her stumble.
She was right. He and his brother had filled their pockets with stones, Eric always sure that the next stone would still be bright once it dried.
The familiar and still fresh pain flowed through Shane, but he wasn’t going to have Rachel feeling guilty just for making a casual comment. Guilt was a cruel master, as he well knew.
“I ripped the pockets of plenty of jeans with the weight of those rocks. I used to camp by this stream in summer,” he said. No need to mention that on one or two of those occasions it was because he’d run away from home.
“That sounds very romantic. The cowboy, his horse and a campfire beside a stream. The stuff that entices people to read Westerns and dream of coming to places like this.”
It had never been that way for him. He’d been on the run…until duty had called him home. “Hey, I thought you were a Maine girl.”
She smiled. “I am. I will be. But even a Maine girl isn’t immune to the lure of a campfire under the western stars.”
“I could see you here,” he said suddenly. Because it was true. In a world gone dark, under a sky full of stars stretching from horizon to horizon, he could imagine Rachel looking up with those brown eyes that filled with wonder whenever she witnessed something new or exciting.
“Am I wearing a cowgirl hat and boots in your imagination?” she teased. “You told me today that I needed boots.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far,” he admitted. “I wasn’t imagining clothing.” Although now that she’d brought it up and now that he’d said it in that ill-conceived way, he was definitely imagining her without clothes, wrapped up in a blanket with him. He wanted to groan.
“What were you imagining?” she asked, stepping closer.
“It’s probably better not to say,” he told her.
And there it was. The blush.
“I’ve never met a woman who blushes the way you do,” he said. And then, as if he didn’t have an ounce of sense in his head, he slid one hand beneath her hair and kissed her cheek, where the rose-pink blush had taken up residence. He tracked it down, kissing the delicate line of her jaw, her neck, where he could feel her pulse fluttering.
She was clutching his shoulders, trembling beneath his hands, and for a moment he forgot all reason. He touched his lips to hers, and his senses exploded. She was honey and cinnamon, woman and sunlight. He wanted more of her. Much more. Now. This second.
Rachel leaned into him when the kiss ended. She returned the kiss and the heat climbed. But soon he felt her hands against his chest. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “I shouldn’t, because…because…”
She didn’t have to explain. And she was right. So very right. He released her immediately. “Because you’re a girl from Maine and I’m a man on his way out of Montana.”
“And you’re my boss and I’m your housekeeper. And because I promised myself that this wouldn’t happen,” she said.
And so had he. He was a man who never made promises. This was just another reason why. “I apologize for stepping over the line.”
Rachel shook her head. “I knew what I was doing. I’d been warned. Numerous times. I’d told myself not to do something like this. More than once. You might have kissed first, but I kissed last.”
What could he say to that? She’d been warned about him, and with good reason. And now he had broken her trust. He wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t happen again, but he no longer trusted himself. “I’d better get you back to the house” was the best that he could do.
She sighed. “I’m sorry this messed up the workday. I don’t think you meant to finish this soon.”
Finally he found a reason to smile. “Rachel, if you think this messed up the workday…there are millions of men who wish their workdays could end like this.” But he was sorry. She’d been enjoying the day and now she wasn’t. There was no way to fix that. The only good thing was that now he knew just how risky being close to Rachel was. He needed to be more careful. He needed to work faster. It was more important than ever that he finish with Oak Valley quickly. Maybe he should try to speed up the process.
Rachel felt as if twin storms were having a battle inside her chest the next morning. Shane had kissed her…and she had kissed him back.
What was I thinking? The question ran through her mind in a continuous loop. But why even ask that question, anyway? Because she hadn’t been thinking. She’d just been feeling, reacting in that whole mindless man-woman way that had never worked out in her family. She’d sworn she would never let go that way. And she never had.
But, darn it, the man could kiss.
“Grr,” she said beneath her breath.
“Rachel? Everything okay? You need help?” Shane’s voice came from outside and Rachel jumped, banging her knee into the corner of a cabinet and biting back the pain to keep from yelling.
“No, I’m fine,” she said quickly. “What are you doing out there?”
She got her answer when he came inside carrying a ladder. “I was just on my way to repair the molding around the window in the dining room and…why is your knee bleeding?”
Rachel looked down, and sure enough there was a thin trickle of blood seeping from a small cut, tracing a path down toward her sandal. The edge of the cabinet had been sharp, but she hadn’t noticed the cut. She’d been so intent on avoiding contact with Shane. Now that they’d been intimate—or as close to intimate as they were ever going to get—she felt awkward in his presence.
“It’s nothing,” she said as casually as possible. “Go fix your molding. I’ll just wash it off.”
He frowned. “It’s not nothing. It could get infected. Infection is dangerous. Sit down. We’re taking care of this right now.”
He was going to touch her? Touch her knee? With those big hands that had been touching her in her dreams last night? When both of them had been naked? She cursed her decision to wear shorts today. If she’d been wearing jeans, none of this would be happening.
“No, really, I can do it,” she began.
“Rachel, stop it. I’m not going to do anything intimate.” There was that word again. “I’m just going to make sure you’re okay. You’re on my watch right now. I can’t have you getting injured. I’ve seen…I know what can happen if a person doesn’t take care of something small and it becomes major. All right?”
She nodded slowly. Because while his words were asking permission, those stormy eyes of his told her that she didn’t have a choice.
Rachel sat. Shane disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a first aid kit. He washed his hands, then pulled up a stool in front of Rachel. He took a cloth he had dampened, leaned forward and gently dabbed away the blood.
She tried to keep breathing normally. So far there was cloth between his skin and hers. “Um, how is your work going?” she asked, trying to appear nonchalant.
A trace of a smile appeared on his lips as he continued to work. Had he noticed the tremor in her voice?
“Got a lot done. The barn is finished, I have a small crew on fences. There’s still a lot to do. Repair work on at least one of the tractors, some major windmill issues, other outbuildings that need work and some dead trees that need to be removed. But we might finish up sooner than later.”
“Sooner?” So she had less time than she had thought. For some reason a sense of sadness pulsed through her. Probably just because she wasn’t nearly as far along as he was, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the fact that she and Shane would be finishing their time together sooner. After all, her whole life had been about leaving places. She was good at it.
“I’d better pick up the pace, too. I’ve done at least the surface cleaning of all of the rooms. That is, I mean, most of the rooms.” She faltered and took a breath. Why had she said that? It was just…Shane was touching her and she wasn’t thinking clearly. And, okay, yes, she couldn’t help worrying about the fact that Shane was clearly still in pain if he couldn’t face his brother’s belongings yet, and she—darn it, she’d always been a fixer type of person. Or at least she’d tried to fix the unfixable.
“I can work faster.” She ended in a whoosh.
Shane paused. “Rachel.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. Not the working faster. The other.”
“I know what you meant,” he said, his blue eyes dark, masking his thoughts. “I don’t want you to worry about it. When the time comes I’ll handle it, but…not yet.”
She nodded tightly.
“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“I won’t be. I’m not.” Which was such a total lie. With Shane’s hands still on her they were kissing close, even if no kissing was going on. And she was worried about him.
“Don’t worry about the room.”
“No. I won’t.”
He looked unconvinced. She didn’t want to give him anything else to worry about. “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. All that decorating to do,” she said. “And if we’re finishing sooner than expected, I’d better start thinking about where I go from here.” She did her best to inject some cheer into her voice. “Maine’s a big place.”
Shane was looking down. He had resumed cleaning her cut, but now his hand stalled in his task. He had moved from the cloth to a much smaller disinfectant pad. His fourth and fifth fingers rested on her knee. He pinned her with his gaze. Rachel tried to keep breathing.
“You’re telling me that when you leave here you have no specific place to go?”
“Well, I have a general area. But not one place, no. I should start looking.”
“And how are you going to do that?” he asked, a bit too carefully, as he took a bandage out of a box and began to ready it.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe, Rachel ordered herself. “I’ll just do a general internet search. There are places where people list their apartments and you just contact them.”
“Might not be safe.” He gently smoothed the bandage into place, turning every nerve in her body to the on position. “You should only contact people you know you can trust.”
What should she say to that? Not that there was no one she trusted that much, or that there was no one she would allow to help her with this important a decision. “Well, it’s been a while since I was there last.”
His hands were both resting on her leg now. He was staring into her eyes. “I know people in the business. They’re very good at what they do. Let me put you in touch with them.”
And now, with his hands against her, his voice rumbled through her body. She slugged in a deep breath, nodded fiercely. “All right. Yes. Thank you.” Anything to end this before she leaned forward, grabbed his lapels, yanked him to her and repeated yesterday’s kiss.
As if he knew what she was thinking, he released her. He stood. “Tonight,” he promised. “If you don’t mind staying a little later than usual?”
Oh, no. Ruby was going to have a field day with this, she thought, followed immediately by her own admonitions.
Stop worrying about Ruby. You just behave yourself. No more thinking about kissing Shane. Not unless you actually want your heart broken so badly that you’ll never recover.
Not a chance. Ever.
“Tonight will be fine,” she agreed.
No problem at all. She could handle anything.
Rachel tiptoed into the inn. Ruby always left the kitchen light on in case a guest needed a glass of water in the middle of the night. Pale light filtered out of the kitchen into the neighboring rooms, so Rachel had no trouble seeing her way through the house.
She breathed a sigh of relief that Ruby had already gone to bed. There would be no questions about what she’d been doing hanging around with Shane after dark.
And if Ruby was asleep she wouldn’t be up until the next morning. Rachel’s landlady slept the sleep of the contented. Nothing disturbed her once she was down for the night.
Slipping her shoes off and padding toward the staircase, Rachel was nearly to the first step when Ruby’s voice stopped her. “Good, you’re home. You were out pretty late tonight, weren’t you, hon?”
Rachel turned. She was surprised to hear genuine worry in her landlady’s voice. She wasn’t used to anyone caring when she came home and guilt slipped through her. Dropping to the steps, she sat down. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I wasn’t coming back to the inn at my usual time. But it’s only nine-thirty. I thought you were asleep.”
“At nine-thirty?”
“Ruby, you just implied that it was late,” Rachel pointed out with an exasperated smile.
“For young women cavorting with men who radiate testosterone. Not for old ladies waiting to hear what happened.”
Uh-oh. There was too much interest in Ruby’s voice. Rachel reminded herself that in Moraine nothing much happened. Little incidents made bigger splashes than they would in a larger town. Even when those little splashes didn’t mean a thing.
“Nothing happened,” she told her friend. “Shane was just helping me look for a place to stay when I get to Maine.” And in truth, that was all that had happened. They had circled each other carefully at first, but eventually Shane had pulled up two chairs in front of the computer, brought out two glasses of wine, and they had discussed the pros and cons of different areas of Maine. He’d been there often in the past, even though his business hadn’t taken him to that part of the country in recent years.
“So you like the tang of the salt air, the rocky coasts and picturesque little Cape Cod houses? Lobster traps and lighthouses?” he’d asked.
She’d laughed. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“Not at all. It’s a beautiful part of the country. Any reason why Maine is your choice?”
Rachel had run her thumb over the stem of the wine glass. “I spent several years there growing up. It was the best time of my life.”
He’d tilted his head in acquiescence. “Then Maine it is.”
After that, they’d moved on to specific areas and he’d pulled out some ideas a former colleague had emailed him earlier in the day. By the time she’d gone home, Rachel had had a much better idea of where she might like to move and put down roots. That should have been one of the brightest moments in the past few weeks, but for now…
Something very close to sadness rippled through her. She felt as if she’d crossed something off on a list of things to do, but there was no satisfaction in the accomplishment. It was probably just because she was tired. Tomorrow the anticipation would finally kick in.
“Hello? Rachel?” Ruby snapped her fingers and Rachel opened her eyes wide.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about a house.”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“You spent the night sitting knee to knee with Shane and all you can think about is a house? Rachel, I’m twenty years too old for the man, but if I’d been closed up with him after dark my mind wouldn’t have been on houses.”
“It’s not like that with us,” Rachel protested. Except when it was.
“Okay, I’ll stop pestering you. When are we going to get to see him again?”
“You want me to bring him here?”
Ruby grinned. “Hon, I’d like nothing better, but I was talking about convincing him to come back to town. The man has been here for a week but he’s barely touched foot in Moraine and he’ll be leaving soon. People would like to see him. He grew up here. He’s Moraine family to us.”
Uh-oh. If there was one thing Rachel knew, it was that Shane didn’t want to go to Moraine. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was so.
“He’s really busy and…I’m not a miracle worker, Ruby.”
“You’re a woman. Use your wiles.”
Rachel should have laughed at that, but the truth was that it occurred to her at that moment that the only reason Shane was kissing her was because there were no other single women around. But there had to be single women in Moraine…which he was avoiding.
“Ruby, why do you think a man like Shane wouldn’t want to go back to his hometown? What happened here? What did people do to him?”
Ruby shook her head. “I don’t know. I know that Shane lost his mother at a young age, that he and Frank didn’t get along and that Eric died in a ranch accident. But there’s nothing anyone in town did or said to him that I can think of. Not a thing. But, believe it or not, I don’t know everything. Maybe you should ask Shane. And if you can’t get him there by using your wiles, maybe remind him that those are his potential customers.”
That was a hoot. Wiles again? Rachel had none. Never had, never would. And she didn’t want them. Wiles never got you anything good…or lasting.
But she did think that Ruby had a point about Shane going to town to meet his customers. If he really wanted to sell Oak Valley quickly—and he had made it clear that he did—and if he was a good businessman—and he apparently was—then why wasn’t he using his networking skills with the people who might help him spread the word and sell the ranch?
Rachel didn’t have a clue. Maybe Shane wasn’t thinking clearly because he was still mourning Eric. Maybe she should just mind her own business, stay out of things, keep quiet.
But she’d never been especially good at any of those things. Besides, Shane had stepped over a personal line when he’d opted to help her find a place in Maine. He was helping her. What kind of a person would she be if she didn’t try her best to help him, too?