“You sore?” Dulcy asked, stepping out of the shadows.
Noah Campbell turned from where he’d been currying Doofus with slow, almost hypnotic strokes. “I think ‘rode hard and put up wet’ about covers it.”
Dulcy had no idea what she was doing here. She had bills to pay, feed orders to place, hay to begin harvesting. She had a sore back, sorer legs and another day just like today scheduled for tomorrow, which meant she should at least have been in a hot bath. Instead she found herself right back in the barn as if she hadn’t already spent her entire day with animals.
He was her boss, she rationalized. In charge, in control of their small lives. It had nothing to do with the fact that she swore she could have sensed him a mile away in a snowstorm, or the fact that she kept wanting to see him smile just one more time.
“The rest of the ranchers were pretty darned impressed today,” she admitted, shoving her hands into jeans pockets. Digging her toe into the dirt like a shy teen. “Not to mention the hands here. You know, of course, that they expected Doofus to dump you within ten minutes.”
“I figured as much. Guess I’m lucky that I’ve always seemed to get along with horses.”
Get along wasn’t the expression Dulcy would have used. She’d seen him work the buckskin with hands and knees and heels. Gentle, insistent, never once letting the horse get his head.
Doofus was a good horse. One of the best. But Doof could smell an amateur at fifty paces and leave him in the dust every time. He’d never so much as twitched the whole day.
Dulcy should have told Noah that. She couldn’t manage more than a rather lame, “You handled yourself well for a—”
“Greenhorn?” He grinned, and she could feel it without looking up. “I’m hardly that.”
He was, though. An outsider. He should have been more uncomfortable with the animals, more tentative looking, seated atop a horse. He’d looked like a myth though, all unconscious grace and power, as if he’d been the one born in this valley instead of her.
“Even so…”
“Even so,” Noah admitted, “I’m going to feel like hell in the morning. I promise.”
Dulcy looked up in surprise. “You’re going out again?”
Why couldn’t his eyes have been darker? Why couldn’t he have been soft and small, an anonymous banker in razorpressed jeans and L.L. Bean’s best?
His clothes had arrived, though, soft, well-worn cotton shirts and battered boots, and a Stetson that had seen as much action as hers.
And his jeans. The quickest way to spot an outsider was his jeans. Ranchers wore Wrangler jeans, because the seams were on the outside of the leg where they wouldn’t chafe when you rode. Outsiders never worried about chafing.
Noah Campbell’s seams ran down the outside of his leg, and the knees and backside of his jeans were pale with wear. And they fit so well, not too tight, showing off powerful thighs and a butt that would have made the cowboy hall of fame. Dulcy caught herself looking, imagining…
“Dulcy?”
She blinked…blushed, furious that she’d been caught drifting when she hadn’t allowed so much as a stray thought since Hannah had been born. “I’m sorry. I’m a little tired myself. What did you say?”
Noah looked amused, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. God, she hoped not. If he did, she’d be out of a job fast. He would realize that she had known exactly where he’d been all day, simply by feeling the electricity that seemed to build as he got closer.
“I said,” he repeated, putting down the curry comb and patting Doof on the rump, “that I don’t consider this ranch a ride at Disneyland. If it’s a working ranch, then I work when I’m here.”
Dulcy dared a direct glance and found herself almost short of breath. “Well, you’ll get your money’s worth on this trip, then,” she managed to say, wondering how she could sound so unaffected. Her palms were sweating, and he was still ten feet away.
This was not going to be the breeze she’d thought it would be when all she’d had to worry about was impressing the boss with the size and health of his herd.
“I do have one question,” Noah said, leading Doofus back into his stall and shutting it.
Dulcy concentrated on the bits of hay at her feet. “Shoot.”
“My tour. When am I going to get it?”
She looked up again to find him closer, too close. She could feel that odd shimmer along her skin, as if he gave off static charge. “Tour?”
“Tour.”
Tour. Tour. Dulcy nodded abruptly. “Sure. I can show you around the buildings after supper. The rest of the ranch will have to wait till we brand and get the herd up to summer pasture. Okay?”
“And the computer?”
The computer. The core of the operation, where all data was kept and updated every day on the running of the ranch: how many head of cattle, weight, growth, price, cost, lineage.
Numbers.
Where the truth lay. The last place Dulcy wanted the boss playing around, until she had everything straightened out.
She did her best not to react. “How ‘bout at the end of the week when I’m not so bone tired.”
He nodded, his own hands in his jeans pockets, his own posture just a little stiff. “Did you say supper?”
That quickly, Noah was grinning, a deprecating light in his eyes that made Dulcy want to laugh.
“Oh, supper. Sure. That’s why I came to get you.”
He made her feel like an idiot. Dulcy did not like feeling like an idiot. She wanted to hate him for it, to run his ranch in spite of him.
She had the most horrible feeling it wasn’t going to turn out like that at all.
“Well, let’s go,” he urged, waving her ahead of him. “Besides being sore, I’m so hungry I was beginning to size Doofus up for the grill.”
Dulcy found herself chuckling as she preceded him out into the dusk. “Oh, Lord, don’t do that. Hannah would never forgive either of us.”
“She really likes him, huh?”
“Like never came into it. When he was a colt I used to catch her out in his stall sleeping next to him.”
“Not anymore?”
She grinned. “That’s baby stuff, now. Now she has—”
As if on cue, there issued from the house a blat of noise that made both of them cringe to a halt.
Noah looked up as if expecting the noise to be followed by an explosion.
“What was that?” he demanded.
Dulcy spent a fraction of a second thinking that she could distract him by pointing out the magnificent colors of the sunset, the hawk that was circling in silhouette, the soft mist seeping over the hills to diffuse the remaining light.
Then the noise happened again, and she knew she had no choice.
“Hannah,” she said.
Noah stared at her. “You’re going to tell me she has a pet elephant tucked up there somewhere?”
“Worse,” she admitted. “A trumpet.”
That seemed to bring him to a full stop, just at the edge of the yard. Overhead the cottonwood was whispering in the last breeze, and birds chattered in annoyance.
“A trumpet,” he said with a scowl.
Dulcy almost closed her eyes. “She’s very passionate about it.”
Bl-a-a-a-t—blaaat.
“Uh-huh.”
Dulcy sighed. “I’ll have her practice somewhere else.”
“Like where, Utah?”
Against her better judgment, Dulcy grinned. Hannah would never understand their gentle mocking. She’d never survive if she heard about it. But Dulcy couldn’t help it.
“No. Utah threw us out.”
Blaaat-blaaat-bla-a-a-a-a-t.
“I bet.” Still neither of them moved, even though the mouthwatering smell of dinner was drifting down the hill like the mist. “Isn’t she a little young for something that…loud?”
“Yes, she is. But she’s already mastered the violin, and she’s taken the piano as far as she can go until she gets a little better fingerspan on her. She’s been playing since she was four.”
“I thought she was four now.”
“Six. Almost seven.”
“Ah.”
“Hannah needs challenges. Music seems to come so easily to her that she has to keep escalating things to keep committed.”
“Oh, God,” he groaned. “That means that by the time I leave again, she will have worked her way up to tuba.”
“I keep praying she discovers the harp. I’ve heard that’d keep her busy for years.”
He sighed. “The trumpet.”
“I’ll have her stop.”
“No. Don’t be silly. This is her home. I’ll just…I’ll…uh, figure out when she practices and make sure I’m out exercising one of the horses or something.”
Dulcy nodded, relaxing just a little. “Good idea. And thank you.”
“Mo-o-o-om,” Hannah yelled from the front porch. “Aunt Sally says the meat’s gettin’ cold, the Jell-O’s getting hot, and she wants to go home!”
“Coming, honey!”
They resumed their journey, more companionable than they’d been in the barn.
“I thought Sally lived here, too,” Noah said.
“No. She lives with her husband. That’d be Bart Bixby, my cousin from the other side of the family. He’s sheriff.”
“Of course he is. I thought nepotism went out of style.”
“Maybe in Philadelphia. Not here.”
“Hey, Dulcy.”
Dulcy startled like a kid caught with her hand in the drawer. She hadn’t even heard Josh approach. She hadn’t heard anything but the soft drawl of Noah’s voice, and that wouldn’t do at all, especially around Josh.
She did the only thing she could and turned deliberately away from Noah to face another one of the problems they’d managed to keep from him. “Yes?”
Noah was sure he should have heard the other man approach. Once again, though, the minute Dulcy had shown up, he’d completely lost direction. Instead of watching the carmine glow of the sunset, he’d been noticing how the red-gold tendrils of her hair tended to curl when they got damp, especially alongside her ears. Delicate ears. Soft hair, escaping that utilitarian braid so that it clung to her throat. Delicate throat.
There was nothing soft about her now, though. She’d gone right on point the minute the man had appeared out of the dusk to face off with them.
“I’m goin’ to town,” he challenged from ten feet away, his voice tight and raspy. “Okay with you?”
This undercurrent Noah couldn’t miss. The man seemed to be Dulcy’s age, but his good-looking blond features lacked the kind of defining edge Noah had grown accustomed to in the people of the valley. His chin was a little weak, his eyes a little close together. They were hot eyes, shifting and unsettled as he challenged a woman whom he outweighed by at least sixty pounds.
Dulcy straightened, her jaw working almost imperceptibly. “Your work done for the day, Josh?”
“You’re not going to fault me on my work” was the only answer she got.
Dulcy just nodded. The ranch hand spun on his heel and stomped off. It was only then that Noah realized he was the same man who had made the crack that morning about what Dulcy really wanted to do. The one Hank had shut up with no more than a look.
The man, come to think of it, who had most frequently taken Noah up on drink offers the night before.
Dulcy had already turned back to the house.
“He a long-time hand?” Noah asked quietly.
Dulcy looked over at him, and he could see how hard she was fighting to remain calm. “You could say that,” she said. “Sorry I didn’t introduce you, but he isn’t any happier to see you here than he is to see me.”
“Why?”
She grinned, but Noah saw the sadness, the stress, the wearing at her edges of what had gone on in this valley. “You bought the ranch from Cordelia Winters.”
Noah nodded. “Yes.”
“Josh is her son.”
Ah. “And she didn’t sell it to him?”
Dulcy shrugged. “He couldn’t afford it. He worked for her just like any of the other men. Aunt Cordelia has never believed in coddling her children.”
He should have known. “Aunt Cordelia?”
A grin, even a small one, eased the strain on her face. “Guess we forgot to mention that one too, huh?”
“I guess you did. How did you get the job?”
Dulcy shrugged, kept walking. “I’m a lot tougher than Josh.”
“Age of Innocence,” Sally announced with a sweep of her hand.
Dulcy couldn’t believe her eyes. In all the years she’d either visited the ranch or worked there, she’d never once broken bread in the dining room. Until the day she’d sold out lock, stock and barrel and moved to the big city—that being Billings—Aunt Cordelia had evidently lived her entire life without meeting someone worthy of her dining room table, because all meals had been prepared and eaten in the kitchen. Sally had obviously decided to change history.
“Sally, we’ve been branding cattle,” Dulcy protested, wiping her hands against her pants in a futile gesture to press her rumpled clothing into service.
Sally was, as usual, completely unruffled. “And you changed your clothes an hour ago. I know, because I have them in my wash machine. And I’m sure you’re hungry.”
With that, she set the steaming roast on the table and turned back through the kitchen door for more food. That left Dulcy staring at her aunt’s high-walled dining room with no little ambivalence. The faded rose wallpaper was familiar, the gleaming mahogany clawfoot table and chairs and lowboy. What made it surreal were the ivory linen tablecloth and silver candlesticks and good china that had gone with the sale of the house.
Another man’s inheritance now. Another man’s treasures.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Hannah demanded from where she already stood by a chair, her brown eyes bright. “I set the table.”
Noah pulled off his hat and grinned. “Looks great.”
“We never eat here,” Hannah confided, patting at the table as if it were a well-trained pet. “I think we should celebrate. I’ll play for you.”
Dulcy almost laughed out loud at the look on Noah’s face. “The piano, maybe?” she asked, ruffling her daughter’s hair.
Hannah’s face fell for an instant, and then, ever practical, she nodded. “The violin,” she announced. “Because my fingers still aren’t long enough for something appropriate on the piano.”
Noah smiled. “I would be honored.”
“It’ll be just like Age of Innocence,” Sally reasserted, reappearing to set out the potatoes.
“It will be nothing like Age of Innocence,” Dulcy assured her, standing in the door to the hallway as if she were still ten and had to be invited into the adults’ presence.
Alongside, Noah stood silently, hat in hand, a hand up to rub at his still-dusty hair. The high sun had begun to bronze his face, and there were a few new lines at the corners of his eyes. Laugh lines, squint lines from looking hard into a flat, glaring afternoon. Honest lines.
“Of course it is,” Sally challenged, handing off a steaming platter of carrots and turning back into the kitchen. “They ate a lot on good tables, and so are we. And since we can’t have Daniel Day-Lewis, we’ll just have to settle for Noah.”
Dulcy laughed at Noah’s nonplussed expression.
“Sally speaks in ‘movie,’” she said simply. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Oh, by the way,” Sally announced on the run. “Noah, your business manager called. Everything’s arranged. That make sense to you?”
Noah nodded. “It means I can devote my full attention to the ranch.”
Dulcy hoped he missed the look she and Sally shared. She hoped he didn’t hear her heart start up.
“Well, it’s not a postcard,” Sally urged with a push to Dulcy’s rump. “Come on, Hannah. Teach these adults how to enjoy dinner.”
Hannah stood with her head cocked and her hands on her hips. “Nobody eats at my table without washing their hands first,” she said in perfect imitation of her mother.
“Young lady—”
“Cleanliness is next to godliness, my mother used to say,” Noah answered with a grin. “Wanna show me where, Hannah? And you can tell me where to hang my hat, too.”
The two walked out the door together, Noah in his worn work clothes and battered boots, hat in hand like a gentleman caller, Hannah in her very best ruffled cotton blouse and Sunday skirt, her hair brushed into a gleaming riot. Dulcy felt like the dowdy stepsister.
She almost forgot that Sally was watching alongside. “Makes me think reading about movie stars is a waste of time.” Sally all but sighed.
Dulcy shot her a look of surprise.
Sally just grinned. “Cameron Ross may be nice to fantasize about, but this guy’s the real thing, Dulcy. And although I will deny I said it if I’m ever in Cameron Ross’s presence, this guy’s also better looking.”
“This guy’s the boss.”
“And the boss is single, handsome, sweet and hardworking. Kind of like Forrest Gump with a post-grad degree and better bone structure. Life could be worse.”
“It’ll get worse if he finds out I’ve been lying to him.”
“Make sure you don’t. Otherwise, Hannah’s going to be washing her hands back in Billings. Now, come on. Eat your dinner. I missed ‘Entertainment Tonight’ to cook it.”
Finally Dulcy could grin. “Life as we know it may cease to exist.”
Sally refused to be intimidated. “I’ll have you know that there’s some very interesting news afoot, speaking of Cameron Ross. He has gone to his island.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Alone. Don’t you want to find out why?”
“No.”
“Of course you do. No man who’s just gotten engaged to the sexiest French actress since Catherine Deneuve goes off alone to do six weeks of Robinson Crusoe.”
“I thought you said he always did this.”
“Sure. Twice a year, without fail. It gets him away from all the attention. Nothing like your own island to keep away the riffraff. The helicopters spotted him yesterday. Maybe in the nude.” Sally’s eyes lit with imagination.
“What’s nude?” Noah asked, on them before Dulcy could react. Face gleaming, hair damp, eyes bright.
“Cameron Ross,” Sally informed him with some consideration. “You tell me. If you were engaged to Isabelle Renoult, would you go off on your own for six weeks?”
His reaction was microscopic. A tiny tremor along his jaw. A subtle dimming of the spark in his eyes. And yet, it was there, and suddenly Dulcy realized just what it was that had made Noah Campbell late to get there.
Evidently so did Sally. “Food’s getting cold,” she announced with another abrupt shove in the right direction. “And my own dinner’s waiting for me. Let’s go.”
There was a certain amount of uncomfortable shuffling around the room and a second or two of taut silence, before Hannah commanded everyone’s attention by waiting alongside her chair for the services of a gentleman.
“You may seat me,” she informed Noah with demure eyes. “I hear that’s how it’s done.”
“Not in this house,” Dulcy informed the girl in a mother’s tone.
“My house,” Noah retorted with an easy smile. “My rules. And I think Hannah’s right. Dining rooms deserve good manners.” He gave Dulcy an assessing glance that edged her temperature up a couple of degrees. “Seems to me you haven’t washed your hands yet, young lady.”
Dulcy was feeling more disoriented by the minute. This new, very disturbing man in this old, very familiar room. Her muchtoo-adult and tomboy daughter dressed up as if for the White Rabbit’s tea party, and Dulcy thinking of buns and thighs for the first time in almost seven years.
It was going to be a very long six weeks. Maybe the longest of her life.
She went and washed her hands.