Mindy closed her bedroom door and leaned against the wall enjoying the tactile sensation of cold plaster against her skin and the soft sounds of George the cat playing with whatever toy he had found.
Nothing was going right. Maybe she should just leave, letting Bret take whatever he wanted. So what if he cheated her out of her half of the ranch? Compared to where she was a month ago, she hadn't lost anything.
Or had she? She wasn't naive enough to believe her reaction to Bret was entirely one of anger and frustration.
A faint metallic click interrupted her thoughts before she could go totally maudlin on herself. She stepped over to see what trouble George had gotten into.
Her cat had uncovered a small ring hanging from a recess behind the fireplace.
"What did you find there, kitty?" Mindy moved George out of the way and grasped the ring. To her surprise, though, it seemed firmly attached. An entire section of fireplace moved about an inch, then stuck.
She thought back. Hadn't Sharon mentioned something about a secret passage between the master bedroom and Bret's room? She'd laughed off the idea at the time. But what else could this be?
If she needed a sign, this was it. She would use the passage to get a look at those ledger books, which surely must be hidden in Bret's locked room. Since he hadn't discovered the passage himself, Bret'd never guess how she got hold of the information.
The thought of getting ahead of Bret excited Mindy more than she thought appropriate, but then again, sneaking into a man's bedroom certainly wasn't appropriate either. Her heart raced at the idea.
Mindy tugged on the ring again, but the false wall squawked loudly. She'd have to get some sort of oil to lubricate it before going further.
Sharon headed Mindy off on the way to the pantry, asking her to peel some potatoes and chop some onions, but finally Mindy made it back to her room, a carefully secreted bottle of peanut oil in her possession.
A couple of generous applications of the lubricant solved the squeaky-hinges problem, and Mindy opened the door wide enough to squeeze through and climbed into the narrow passageway.
Within a few feet, the passageway grew dim but, fortunately, it appeared completely straight with no turn-offs. Mindy ran her hand along the unfinished joists that lined the passage, keeping her other hand in front of her.
To her surprise, she didn't run into any cobwebs. Perhaps the passage was sealed off to the point where no flies got in and the spiders got bored and went away. An apt metaphor for her current situation, she decided. If she didn't let Bret catch her in his webs, eventually he'd have to yield and give her what was rightfully hers.
Her arm abruptly banged up against a dead end. When she stopped, she noticed a faint glow in front of her.
Although Bret's room was shuttered and dark, it was lighter than the passageway. Apparently the tunnel ended in a two-way mirror because Mindy found if she strained, she could actually see into his room.
Fortunately, the only visible sign of Bret was a neatly folded pile of clothes. If the past few days were any guide, she'd have hours before he returned.
Still, no point in wasting time. She pushed on the mirror for a moment, but it didn't give an inch. After a few anxious seconds of searching, she found a small hook that held the mirror in place.
It released with the slightest click. She'd be in and out before anyone could know the difference.
Bret's room seemed to have soaked up some part of his essence. Although Mindy had fully intended to dart in and out, instead she stood there for a few moments, drinking it in. Japanese prints decorated the walls and handcrafted wood carvings and a few leather bound classics lined a bookshelf. The strangely pleasant smell she had come to associate with Bret lingered in the room like a ghost.
Bret's neatly made bed, a single pillow at the top, showed no signs of being disturbed. She looked under the pillow, finding nothing.
She threw the pillow back on the bed, then, bending to an irrational urge, patted it carefully back into place.
The large mahogany bureau dominated one wall, so she tackled it next.
In her mind, Mindy conjured up an image of the missing ledger book buried under neatly folded leather g-strings. The truth proved more mundane. No book and no g-strings. A mix of white and paisley boxer shorts and multi-colored socks shared the top drawer.
She slammed the drawer shut and opened the next. T-shirts and thermal underwear. Hot as it was, she couldn't imagine that it ever got cold enough in Texas to require long underwear, but Bret's looked utilitarian. Maybe he wore them skiing.
The entire bottom drawer was filled with trophies, silver and gold medals, and fancy belt buckles. Each proclaimed Bret winner of a bull riding events in cities from San Francisco to Bangor Maine. Her knowledge of rodeo was limited, but she did know that they didn't give prizes like that for good looks. Once, at least, Bret had worked hard at something, tried to make something of himself. Why had he given it up?
Maybe attention from rodeo groupies had distracted him and persuaded him to seek an easier fortune? Still, shouldn't a gigolo have his medals hanging around the house to remind Lucy what a hot number she'd caught?
A faint noise caught Mindy's attention and she whirled around. Had George followed her? She couldn't see him.
She closed the drawer and scanned the room. Only two doors appeared to be viable locations for the hidden diskettes. One, judging from the old lock on the handle, led to a bathroom; the other evidently was a closet.
Mindy couldn't visualize Bret hiding ledger books in the bathroom: she tried the closet.
A strong scent of leather greeted her as she entered the closet. The dim light was enough for her to spot the cord that hung from a bare lightbulb and she gave it a tug, filling the small space with light.
Four pair of boots, one pair of black dress shoes, and two pair of running shoes all sat in alcoves. Something about the neat arrangement troubled her, but it took a repeat of the earlier sound to resolve the problem.
Every one of the alcoves was filled. Either Bret had bought another pair of boots, or he was somewhere in the room.
She yanked the cord to turn off the closet light and peered out the partially opened closet door. If Bret found her, he'd never believe that she merely wanted to find the most recent ledger book.
As she watched, Bret strode, naked, from the bathroom.
She told herself that she couldn't afford to avert her eyes. She had to know when he returned to the bathroom so she could make a dash for the passageway. Still, she didn't know if she could have looked away even without that excuse.
Clothed, Bret had seemed the essence of male. Naked, he was even more so. The setting sun cast long stripes of light through the closed shutters, alternately highlighting and hiding his hard muscles. The thick dusting of hair covering his chest tapering off to leave his hard, muscled, abdomen nearly bare. Fortunately, he turned away from her before she had too much time to dwell on what she saw below that hard stomach.
His back formed a perfect V, tapering down from broad shoulders to a narrow waist. Even his buttocks, white against the dark tan of covered the rest of his body throbbed with hard muscle.
****
Bret tried to ignore the pain. It didn't help.
Rationally, he couldn't blame it on Mindy. He'd been the careless one, not her. It was his problem he'd let a woman distract him when he should have been working.
Ultimately, of course, it didn't matter who he blamed. The barbed wire hadn't cared why he was careless or why he'd grabbed it with no more protection than his leather gloves. The sharp barbs had ripped through the glove as easily as it had his flesh underneath.
He pressed the bloody rag more tightly against his hand, trying to stop the bleeding. The last thing he needed now was more medical bills.
A sharply drawn intake of breath could have been his own. Could have, but wasn't.
He grabbed a towel from his bed and wrapped it around his waist, then turned toward his closet. Had Mindy's cat snuck into his room?
He affected a scowl, something made far easier by the pain in his hand, and threw open the closet door.
Mindy, who evidently had been holding the doorknob from the inside, tumbled out.
What the hell?
"I suppose you have some explanation for this?" He couldn't imagine what excuse she could come up with, but he knew she'd come up with something that made sense to her peculiar mind. Trying to guess what it might be helped keep his mind off the pain.
"Uh--" Mindy waved her hand ineffectually in his direction and stared at him, but no more words came out.
He looked in the direction of her gaze. He'd tied the towel around his waist so he was decent. Evidently Mindy was so insulted by the sight of a male body that this protection wasn't enough for her.
"Sorry I'm not dressed to your satisfaction. Somehow I thought I'd be safe in my own room. Now what are you doing here?"
"What happened to you?" she finally managed to squeak.
"I got careless."
"Let me take a look at that hand." Without waiting for his response, she grabbed it.
Her soft touch felt good, but not good enough to distract him from his questions.
She started to pull back the rag but a spurt of blood dissuaded her from that. "This looks bad. We'd better see a doctor, get you some stiches."
"Doctor, hell. It'll be all right."
Mindy muttered something and pressed the rag against his hand. It felt a lot better when she did it than when he had.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I said, 'typical man.'"
"I don't want to waste a lot of money on unnecessary medical care, so I'm being a typical man?" It wasn't easy staying mad at her when she stroked his hand, but he gave it an effort. What business did she have telling him how to lead his life?
"Did you put anything on those cuts?"
"I wanted to stop the bleeding first."
"Here. Let me help." Without waiting for an answer, she led him to his bathroom.
As he walked, the towel began to slip. With a frantic grab, he caught the pesky thing, holding it in front of him.
Mindy's glare indicated that she thought he was trying to flash her or something. He needed both hands to get the meager covering around him again, but she wouldn't let go of his injured arm.
"I'll do it," she said, her voice hard and controlled. Without releasing her grip on his wound, she grabbed the end of the towel and pulled it around him.
With a minimum of fumbling between his left hand and her right hand, they managed to get his towel tied back around his waist. Her fingertips running over the skin covering his lower abdomen excited him. Things could get embarrassing. And were.
"Do you have any medical supplies?"
"Look behind the mirror."
Mindy stared at him for a moment, her face a picture of shock and surprise. "You mean--oh. The bathroom mirror."
"What did you think I was talking about?"
"Nothing. I'm just bothered by blood."
He didn't believe that line. Before he could pursue the issue, however, Mindy opened the medicine cabinet, nodded curtly in satisfaction, then grabbed a bottle of iodine.
"This might hurt a bit."
The understatement of the year. She poured the chemical directly over the rag he'd used to stop the flow of blood. It burned worse than any acid, far worse than the pain from the wound.
"Are you all right?"
"Wonderful. I like pain."
"You men are so stupid that sometimes I wonder how our species manages to survive."
Maybe she was trying to distract him from his pain by getting him mad. Her touch was far more distracting, and a whole lot more pleasant.
"I'm going to take off this cloth now and take a look," Mindy told him.
For just a moment, he thought she meant the towel. His mind really was in the gutter. "I can manage."
"You couldn't manage to tie a towel around your waist. I'm sure you'd do great with bandaging."
He'd done fine before she had come in and grabbed his hand. Still, no point in turning down her assistance.
"I appreciate your help."
"Bret, I think you just said something nice. Is the pain getting to you?"
"I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. I've got some butterfly bandages in the second drawer."
She opened the drawer, then stopped.
His eyes followed hers. The bandage box sat directly next to a box of condoms. "It's the box on the right," he told her.
"I know that."
He couldn't understand why an ancient and unopened box of condoms should offend her, but Mindy's voice made her disapproval clear. Was he supposed to be a Monk?
The iodine made the hand look even worse than it really was. Pressure had slowed the flow of blood to a slow seep, but the cuts were deep. He'd have a few more scars to add to his collection.
"You're pretty banged up."
Her eyes, he noticed, had shifted away from his hands to the rest of his body.
"It's a miracle anyone in the rodeo survives. Especially bull riders. Pure idiocy."
"So why did you do it?"
Why had he done it? Because he had been an idiot, he supposed. He'd needed the money to help his mother and then to send his younger brothers to school, and he hadn't been able to earn enough as a ranch hand. "I guess you just get caught up in the thing. You win a few events and make some money and all of a sudden you think you can do it again. Like any sixteen year old I thought I was immortal."
"The kids I teach are younger than that, but they think the same way."
She pulled open a butterfly bandage packet with her teeth and laid the strip to the deepest of the cuts. Moments later, she applied two more bandages.
"You'd better take it easy for a couple of days," she told him. "I'll go into town and get some Neosporin. It hurts a lot less than iodine."
He gave her a half-grin. "Second shelf."
"Oh." The tube of ointment was clearly visible, directly next to the iodine. "I was a little distracted."
He supposed her choice of medicine had been a good thing. That towel routine had pushed his self-control to the limit and a man just doesn't have a lot of control over one particular body function. The pain of the iodine had put an end to that. Still, she'd done a capable job of patching him up.
"You're a good caregiver," he said grudgingly.
"Polite again. Maybe you should get hurt more often."
"Believe me, I do."
That wiped the start of a smile off her lips. Smart, Bret.
"Do you think you can get yourself dressed?"
"What if I can't?"
Mindy blushed through her tan. "I guess I'll have to get one of the cowboys in here to help you with your trousers, won't I?"
With that, she turned, walked to his door, unfastened the bolts, and walked out.
Bret stared after her for a moment, then stepped over to the closet where Mindy had been hiding. If the bolts locking his door were still fastened, how had she gotten in?
He pushed his boots out of the way and pulled up the false floor. The safe looked untouched.
Moments later, after checking inside, he gave a sigh of relief. Cowboys expect to get paid and like to get paid in cash. If Mindy'd taken the payroll, the ranch would be finished right then.
His hand felt like he was wearing a baseball glove as he struggled into a clean pair of jeans. He couldn't let it stop him. He had to follow Mindy. Incredibly, he'd let her go without explaining what she was doing in his closet.
****
Mindy washed her hands again, scrubbing at both the brown iodine stains and the memory of touching Bret's skin. The iodine stains were nearly gone. The memories hadn't even started to fade.
What, exactly, had she managed to accomplish? She'd discovered that Bret looked even better with no clothes on than he did dressed, and that he'd once worked the rodeo circuit. She hadn't even asked for the ledger books. Bret probably thought she'd slipped into his room to check out his underwear. That extra-large box of condoms was a handy warning sign. He'd want sex that way, she imagined. Neat, professional, and frequent.
Despite the summer heat, she pulled on another long sleeved T- shirt and pair of jeans, then set out in search of Bret. This time, she'd confront him openly. She rehearsed her words mentally. She'd need to be sure that whatever tricks he'd learned in gigolo school didn't confuse her again. She'd tell him that he couldn't keep using his body to distract her from her questions.
She started down the hall and--
"You can't keep swishing your hips and think it'll distract me forever."
Bret's accusation met her before her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the hallway.
Somehow he'd managed to put her on the defensive again, beating her with almost her own words. "My hips? There's nothing wrong with my hips. I need some answers, Mr. Sanders," she shot back.
"Fine. Maybe we can take turns then. Would you mind if I went first?"
Numbly she shook her head.
"This may take a while so why don't we sit in the library?"
He led her into the old-fashioned library, then sat in a leather chair and gestured to another across the table from him.
She couldn't imagine a better place to have it out. With the solid wooden table between them, she wouldn't have to worry about her traitorous body reaching for him. Back in his room, she'd as good as run her fingers over his rock-hard stomach.
"Your time is running out," she told him. "I've got questions that won't wait."
"What were you doing in my room?" Bret demanded.
"I suppose you think I was throwing myself at you."
"That isn't what I was asking. I keep the ranch payroll in the safe in my room. That's why I have a lock on my door. I didn't expect to see you in there, and I'd like to know what you were doing."
"Do you seriously think I'd steal money from the hands?" Maybe the table between them was a bad idea. She'd like to throttle the man.
"I don't know what to think, except that you still haven't answered my question."
"You told me to look through the ledgers, then conveniently managed to forget to give me the most recent records. I knocked on your door and when you didn't answer, I went looking for them."
"You seriously expect me to believe that?"
"I think you're out of turn, Mr. Sanders."
"I thought we'd agreed on first names."
"Very well." Calling him by his last name hadn't even begun to diminish the heat being near him generated throughout her body. "I want to know what you've done with the most recent ledger."
"Think how much time we would have saved if you'd just asked. We're in the middle of quarterly taxes. They're at the accountant's office."
Now it was Mindy's turn to feel stupid. If, in fact, Bret was telling the truth. "As I already said, I knocked. I'll need to look at them as soon as they get back, and I want to talk to the auditor to make sure that you haven't pulled any funny business."
"Unfortunately, there's nothing particularly funny about this business lately. The only good news is that we won't have a big income-tax bill."
"I'll look forward to seeing the evidence of that."
He nodded. "All right. How did you get into my room?"
"I presume that this is your next question."
"It most certainly is. If you can get in, someone else could. Just because you're honest doesn't mean everyone is."
He was kind enough not to rub in her face that he didn't want her sneaking in on him in the middle of the night. Not that she'd actually do anything like that. Still, the idea was more than a little tempting.
"Exactly how sure are you that you locked your bedroom door when you got back this morning?"
"Surely you aren't implying that I forgot."
"You were injured."
"I have a routine. I always lock the door, coming and going."
Mindy didn't know exactly why she didn't tell him the truth. Still, she needed every advantage that she could find. She might be able to use the passage again, so long as she kept her secret.
"You have to watch your habits then. Just when you start to count on one, it can twist and betray you, Bret." She smiled as sweetly as she could. "I think it's my turn for questions now."
Bret looked ready to pick up the table and throw it out of the way, so he could get his hands around her neck. "Go ahead."
She wanted to ask him about that box of condoms. Who, exactly, was he planning on using them with? She also wanted to know what he really intended to do with his money once they sold the ranch. She didn't think she'd get an adequate answer to either question. Besides, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how horrible she found the idea of him with another woman, pressing his body against hers, kissing her lips like he'd kissed her the previous day. Not that she had any real use for him. Her hormones were playing games with her good sense. Mindy figured she would survive: she just couldn't figure out how.
"Well,” he demanded. “Are you going to ask something?"
He put his large hands on the table drawing her gaze to his bandaged hand, then up his muscled arms. Why couldn't he be pretty like gigolos in the movies. It would be easy to hate a man who looked like that. Hating Bret was getting harder and harder.
"Why do you hate me?" The question popped out before she could prevent it. If only she could stop saying stupid things like this!
Bret looked at her as if she had gone completely insane and he wanted to know if he was in immediate danger. "I don't hate you, Mindy. You're doing what you were brought up to do--look out for yourself no matter who gets hurt in the process. I suppose a lot of beautiful women never have to learn to consider other people."
"Beautiful?" He thought she was beautiful? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
"They go through life expecting everyone else to get out of their way," Bret continued. "You don't hate them for it."
She quickly recovered her wits. He was insulting her, not complimenting. "As opposed to you, who is always looking out for the next guy?"
"I'd be the first to admit that I have a hard time with abstract do-goodism. But yes, I do feel a responsibility to the hands."
"So you want to cheat me out of my half for the greater good?"
"Is that another question?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. I don't think you've given me an honest answer on my last one."
"And I don't think you've given me an honest answer since you arrived here, Mindy. So I guess that makes us just about even."
The sound of the dinner bell interrupted Mindy's half-baked notion to throw herself across the table and grab Bret around the neck and do something to him--kiss or kill she hadn't decided.
"Let's go to dinner," Mindy told him.
"Just a minute." Bret held up his bandaged hand like a traffic cop at a busy intersection.
"What?"
"I'm still having a hard time believing that you happened to walk into my room on the one day out of the hundreds, when I accidentally left the door unlocked."
"You think I picked the lock or something?" Or something. Maybe she better not fight this one too hard.
"Tomorrow morning," Bret went on as if she hadn't interrupted, "I, along with most of the cowboys, are leaving to herd the cattle north. There's a little more grass up there and we should be able to keep a few more of them alive.
"Since I can't trust you here, you have two choices. You can either leave, or you can come along with us. We'll be gone for at least a week so I recommend that you leave. You have my word that I'll send you the ledgers as soon as I get them back from the accountant."
"I have your word? You're joking, aren't you?"
"I've never been more serious."
"In my wildest dreams, I can't imagine trusting anything less than your word. I'll go along on your camping trip or whatever you call it."
"We don't call it a camping trip. I know you have a problem with this concept, but we call it work. Right now, we've all got to work to save as many of the cattle as we can. If you come along, you'll eat your share and so you'll do your share of the work."
"You think you can get a free hand, do you?"
"I'll pay you as much as I pay myself. How does that sound?"
"If it includes graft and theft, Bret, I suspect that it's way too much."
Bret snarled, then pushed back from the table. "Mindy. Every time I think we're having a rational conversation you pop out with something like that. I'm going to eat. If you think of anything you absolutely need to tell me over dinner, wait until later anyway. I don't want to spoil my appetite."
Bret looked awfully good as he strode out. The hard muscles in his arms bunched as if he were mentally choking her.
Mindy sat for a few moments, trying to gather her strength. A week on the trail with Bret would give him plenty of chances to arrange an accident. But she couldn't run now.