Bret stopped about half way back to the truck. "I meant me," he explained. "I thought that would be obvious."
"What are you talking about?"
"I was careless. You don't know the first thing about cattle and are doing just great. I'm supposed to be the big expert and I just leave you alone with a bunch of young steers who could get spooked by a colorful butterfly."
"I guess I just--"
"Come on now. Let's get these animals on the trucks."
That proved easier said than done. He'd never yet seen a steer that wanted to get on a truck, and these animals were even more stubborn than most. Maybe they had some premonition that good things didn't truly await them in the fattening yards of the north. Still, he didn't feel any remorse. Nothing could be worse than starving to death in west Texas. For the animals or for his cowboys.
It took over an hour, but finally he, Mindy, along with a couple of hands, pushed, cajoled and prodded the animals into the truck.
The lead driver, who'd been sitting in his air conditioned cab, signed Bret's receipt and the three trucks headed off. As the roar of the trucks faded, the silence settled down on them with a sticky feeling like a warning. He decided he'd better break the silence before it got worse.
"I don't suppose you've looked at any colleges in west Texas?" he asked.
"What? No."
"I didn't think so. It was just a thought." An irrational thought, he told himself. He'd already decided she wouldn't stay. Why did he torture himself?
"Do you have colleges out here?"
He couldn't keep from laughing. "Colleges, shopping centers, even McDonald's. We've got it all."
"I didn't mean to belittle your state."
"You can't belittle this." He nodded toward the horizon. "It's kind of a be-big place."
She looked at him as if she thought he might be going crazy, then laughed at his sorry joke. "You really do love the country, don't you?"
"It's what I know." But it was more than that and they both knew it. He could no more give up this stark but powerful country and move to the city than one of his steers could. Like the steer, the only way they could get him to the city for more than a brief visit was as dead meat. While Andresson might be trying to push him in that direction, he didn't intend to go without one hell of a battle. "Let's get back to camp. I have to record this sale in the books.
"Oh, you brought the ledgers?"
Talk about a turn in conversation. Evidently his apology hadn't been enough. "Yeah. They came back yesterday from the accountant. You're free to study them." He led her back to the camp ignoring her feeble attempts at small talk.
Earlier he'd set up some lawn chairs outside his tent underneath one of the few shade tree within fifty miles. Right now, they looked pretty good.
He reached into his pack and retrieved his account books, then he sat down and gestured to Mindy to do the same.
Once she had followed his lead, he quickly entered the money he'd received for the steers he'd just sold, then subtracted out the cost of shipping. Most of the credit would simply go to pay off the loan against their value, of course. This was one fine way to run a ranch.
Finally he handed the ledger to Mindy. "I think you'll find everything in order." Unless she thought he'd been rustling cattle from his own ranch. Those lost cattle numbers were way out of line with standard. And his cowboys never seemed to turn up the carcasses either.
She gave him a funny look as she took the books, then wrapped one leg under herself and squinted slightly as she read his penmanship.
Rather than watch for her approval, Bret stood and opened the Styrofoam ice chest and retrieved a couple of sodas.
"Want one?" he asked.
"Do you have sugar-free?"
Mindy needed a diet drink like a kick in the head. If she had any fat ounces on that body, she definitely wore them in the right place.
He returned the second can and dug around until he found a diet cola.
"Catch," he called out.
She snagged his toss and looked at the can. "Thanks," she told him. Her voice sounded less than thrilled.
"Welcome."
She stared at the can for a moment, then, "Would you mind opening it for me?"
"What?"
"I don't want to break a nail."
He retrieved the can, popped the flip top, then handed it back to her. This little episode proved once again just exactly how different they were. Her nails, the little outfits she wore, her antique car, even her indoor cat. None of them belonged on a ranch. He'd been crazy to entertain such a notion, even briefly. He was crazier yet not to put it out of his mind forever.
He thought about that for a moment, but decided he'd have to live with it. So he was crazy? He wasn't going to give up.
"Thanks," she told him.
"No problem."
He stared at Mindy for a few moments. She'd pretty much rejected his suggestion that she think about a local college. Maybe he could be a little more persuasive. Last night had certainly put a lot of things into perspective. In fact, last night had given him an idea regarding a possible financial arrangement that he was half afraid to run with, but still couldn't get out of his mind.
"If you went to college here in Texas, you could live in the house," he said, almost too casually. "That would cut your expenses. You wouldn't need all of the cash from the sale of the ranch right away."
She looked up from the accounts, her blue eyes peering into him as if trying to peel back the layers of a particularly smelly onion. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Doesn't it matter to you that your aunt gave a good part of her life to make this ranch a success?"
She shook her head slowly. "I'm not Lucy. She moved out here to get away from Houston and the life that she apparently hated. I'm still moving toward my goals."
"What goals?" He hoped he could find an opening here, something that he could use to either kick off, or possibly avoid, his crazy idea.
"I've told you. Get my teaching credential, become a better teacher."
"Nothing more personal?"
"You mean like getting married and having babies and all of that stuff?"
"All that stuff," Bret agreed.
"I learned a long time ago not to count on that."
The sadness in her voice caught him by surprise. He bit back his immediate response and waited.
"You know my parents split up when I was little."
Bret nodded slowly and waited some more.
"I never saw a very good example of a marriage. Not one that worked, anyway. Besides my parents, Lucy was the only relative even somewhat close to me. You know that she didn't exactly set a good example, either."
He thought Lucy set one heck of a fine example, but this didn't sound like the right time to go into Mindy's relationship with her late aunt. "So you think you're doomed to be a family failure?"
Mindy shrugged, but Bret didn't miss the glint in her eye.
****
She blinked a couple of times. Where had this line of questioning come from? And why was it making her throat feel so tight? "Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it."
Bret pulled off his hat and took a long swallow from his soda can. He started to say something, then stopped. If she hadn't known better, Mindy would have guessed he was nervous. Mr. Cool Bret Sanders being nervous about anything at all didn't quite seem possible. Even if she could stretch her mind around that one, the idea that little Mindy Russell could scare Bret was laughable. Except he really did appear nervous.
Maybe last night had gotten under his skin the way he had gotten under hers.
She took a sip of her own soda. She could use a little cooling off.
Bret looked at his hat for a moment as if wondering how it had ended up in his hands, then stuck it back on his head. "I was thinking that getting married would be a solution to our problem."
Mindy spewed soda over the ledger book and herself. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You've made it pretty clear that you don't trust me."
"Thanks for the explanation. You think if I could get someone to marry me, maybe I wouldn't want the ranch so bad, is that it? Or were you talking about you getting married?"
"Actually, I was talking about both."
"So where are we going to find willing partners for a worn out gigolo and a woman who brings nothing to the table but student loans and half a ranch?"
"Let me start over. I think maybe the two of us should get married to each other."
Beyond a little sweat on his forehead, he looked normal. Perfectly rational. Which meant she was the one who had gone crazy.
"That's insane. You just said we don't trust each other."
"I think it's the only answer to our problem."
"How do you think this bizarre offer is going to help?" Mindy objected, even as her heart doubled its pace. If he told her he loved her, what would she do then?
"Think about it. We're both worried that the other one will sell their half of the ranch and disappear, right? Because the second half the ranch wouldn't be worth the paper the deed's printed on by the time Henry and his partners got their legal fingers all over it."
"So?"
"Texas is a community property state. If we were married, either of us would need the other's approval before we could sell anything. You wouldn't have to worry about me and Rio. Your investment would be safe. Of course so would mine and I could stop worrying about Andresson."
Mindy knew that she was in trouble--she was actually thinking about his argument.
Bret looked at her intently.
She hadn't expected anything like this. Then again, Bret hadn't succeeded in marrying Lucy and getting the ranch that way. Maybe this was a new strategy. Two things were certain. First, he hadn't said anything about love. And second, this wasn't a play to get her back into bed. It wouldn't take this much effort on his behalf to talk her into sex. He certainly didn't have to promise marriage.
"What if I wanted to go to college somewhere else?"
Bret shrugged. "You'd still have to sign the paperwork before I could sell. You'd be protected."
Like a soap bubble Mindy felt her dreams pop. No wonder he hadn't said anything about love. Bret wasn't talking about a marriage: he was talking about a legal fiction. What kind of an idiot was she to expect anything else, even to want anything else?
She shut her eyes, but she couldn't get rid of the image. A little blonde girl and a handsome dark haired boy stared at her. She recognized them, of course. They were the children she and Bret would never have.
"It sounds like an ideal solution to me. Besides, Lucy wanted you to have half the ranch," Bret argued. His voice softened as he mentioned her aunt's name.
She stared at him for a moment, then looked back at the soda-covered ledger books Bret had handed her. She'd finally figured him out. He might have started out as a gigolo, but he'd fallen in love with her aunt. That's why he'd stuck around so long for so little pay. That's why he'd cared for Lucy when she'd been ill. That was why his voice cracked sometimes when he spoke of her.
Even Sharon, who wanted to believe the worst of Bret, admitted he'd treated Lucy kindly. It explained too much.
"I don't think you're going to find the answers in those books," Bret said softly.
Bret was right, of course. She'd just figured out the answer to the only question that mattered and it had nothing to do with either dollars or sense. She was in love with a man who wanted her for exactly half a reason.
Still, she ran her fingers down the ledger, intending to complete this chore although she no longer believed Bret had stolen anything.
Entry after entry told the story. Her aunt's final months had been more expensive than anything Mindy had imagined. Repeated surgeries had cost tens of thousands of dollars. Chemo- therapy treatment had added thousands more.
As before, neatly labeled receipts matched the numbers in the accounts.
"Didn't she have health insurance?" Mindy asked.
"You mean Lucy?"
"Who else?"
"She did at first. When she got sick, the company found a way to cancel it."
Mindy nodded. She knew that things like this happened.
"Do you need more time to think about my offer?" Bret really seemed to want to go through with this.
Her throat choked shut. She had to tell him that she couldn't marry him. She could never marry someone who couldn't love her.
And she loved him. The neatly laid-out financial statements proved she had sadly underestimated his intelligence early on. She admired and respected the way he dealt with people. He treated the cowboys with respect and they looked up to him with affection and something akin to hero-worship. Falling in love with him had been easy. What wasn't easy, what twisted her heart into a knot, was that Bret didn't love her. Spending years with him, wanting him, tricking him into marrying her to preserve her Aunt's legacy would hurt him and destroy her.
Everything fell into place. A man like Bret couldn't really be a gigolo. No man with as much self-respect, as much self-reliance, and as much power, could ever consent to such a role. If he hadn't been her aunt's gigolo, though, he must have been her lover. It must have hurt him terribly to let the town think of him as a money grubbing slut. Mindy had come onto the scene too late. As if she ever could have competed with her vibrant, beautiful aunt.
"I'm not interested in a marriage of convenience." Her voice sounded hoarse. At least she didn't cry.
Bret stared at her, his eyes grabbing her attention, compelling her despite her need to pull away. "Look, Mindy. The ranch is the most important thing in my life right now. I've lived for this and I'd sacrifice anything for it. I've already made more sacrifices than you can imagine. All I'm asking is an arrangement that allows both of us to get what we deserve."
"I know." If he told her he loved her now, she'd know he was lying. Was it too much for a woman to want to be the most important thing in a man's life? Maybe it was, but it didn't matter to her. She couldn't settle for a man who wanted to marry her for her half a ranch. Not even if he was Bret. Especially if he was Bret. "I won't ask you to make the sacrifice of marrying me."
"That wasn't what I meant."
"I know what you meant."
"I don't think you do. What I'm trying to tell you is that I've lived my life for a chance to own a ranch like this. That doesn't mean that I see marrying you as a bad thing."
****
This was not, Bret decided, going as well as he had hoped.
He'd never been married, of course. He'd joined the rodeo circuit while in high school, gotten his college degree, then moved into ranching, finally ending up as foreman and ranch manager. Still, he'd always figured he'd marry when he finally got his ranch and got ahead of the game. It wouldn't take too much, once he had the ranch back on its feet. But he needed to get enough saved to make sure whatever family he was lucky enough to have wouldn't go needy if anything happened to him. He remembered too many nights of terrible, stomach clenching hunger to give up that need. And being married to Mindy wouldn't be any terrible sacrifice.
His proposal might be putting things in the wrong order but the physical attraction he felt for Mindy was so strong he could almost see the tension lines through the air between them. Hell, he certainly wouldn't complain if they explored the sexual part of the relationship. As long as they were careful.
"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that marrying me is not the most unpleasant thing in your universe," Mindy told him. She was making an effort to keep her temper under control. From what he'd seen in the past, her control never lasted as long as her temper.
"This isn't working exactly like I planned," he explained.
"You mean you planned this? Here I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you'd just had a moment's insanity."
It was, Bret decided, time to recharge the batteries. He stood, opened the ice chest, and dug around. Another soda wouldn't do the job. He fished out a beer.
He flipped the pull-tab, threw back his head, and took a deep draught, followed by another.
He felt a little better when he sat down again. Until he looked at Mindy.
If she didn't look so blasted mad, he'd have told her she was the sexiest thing he had ever seen. Even her anger made her look attractive, flushing color into her face. She breathed fast, each breath raising and lowering her breasts.
He wanted to pick her up, carry her into his tent, and spend the rest of the day making love to her. Fighting with her wasn't part of his plan at all and it certainly didn't seem like nearly as much fun.
"Why don't you think about it?" he asked again. "I can be a pretty reasonable man."
"Now that one I can't buy," she replied. "You are the most unreasonable, stubborn, arrogant, stuck up man I've ever met."
"Besides that." he laughed.
A brief twinkle in her eye let him hope, for a moment, that she'd lighten up.
Her frown snuffed that hope.
"All right, I'll think about it. Now why don't you go back to whatever you have to do? I'll spend some more time looking over these ledger books."
"I wasn't doing anything more important than this."
Mindy gave him an indecipherable look, not that any of her looks were that easy to read.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
She waved him away. "I can't think with you here."
"Right. Try to give me the benefit of the doubt when you consider my offer."
He knew the previous night's thunderstorm hadn't been hard enough, or lasted long enough, to do the ranch any real damage. And of course he'd instructed the hands to check things out and get back to him. Still, another inspection gave him something to do.
He mounted his horse and spurred toward the north, away from the camp.
"What did you say to Mindy?" Hector's voice surprised him half an hour later.
"I thought you told me you knew how to drive," Bret shot back, changing the subject.
"Hey. You asked me if I knew how to drive, not if I knew how to drive something out of ancient history. But Ms. Mindy sure looked mad back there."
"Ms. Mindy spends a lot of time being mad. It makes her who she is," Bret answered. He wondered, though, whether anger was part of who Mindy was, or whether it was something he brought out in her. She certainly seemed friendly enough with everyone else.
Hector shook his head. "I don't think that's it, boss."
"I want your advice on my love life, I'll ask for it," Bret told him.
Hector's eyes widened. "Oh. Love life. I was wondering if that was what it was." He spun his horse away.
"Now I've put my foot into it," Bret grumbled to himself. Once Hector spread word of his slip of the tongue, he'd never hear the end of this. And the odds of Hector keeping his mouth shut were longer than those of winning the state lottery.
Since Hector rode east, he headed west. Probably some stragglers out that way, he decided.
****
The ledger book swam in front of Mindy's eyes. No matter how quickly she blinked, she couldn't make the numbers stay in focus.
As she had seen in her cursory scan earlier, the figures told the grim story of Lucy's rapid physical decline, as well as Bret's increasingly desperate attempts to keep her alive even if it cost him the ranch he loved. He'd obviously been completely devoted to her, loyal to the end.
It must have hurt his pride to have to go, hat in hand, to men who held him in contempt and ask them for loans to pay the hospital bills. No wonder he'd reacted so badly to her suggestion that he see a doctor about his hand.
The financials told her something else as well. The ranch was fundamentally sound. It had continued to create a stream of income even when Bret was distracted. In periods when he had dedicated his full attention to it, the ranch was a very profitable business. The mortgage papers detailed several comparable ranches, each of which made much less.
The evidence was as plain as the dark suntan on Bret's chest. Bret made the difference. With him at the helm, the ranch could actually turn out the profits necessary to pay off its debt and make things grow. Without Bret, they'd have nothing left after the mortgage.
She blinked her eyes again, closed the book, then stepped into Bret's empty tent.
Empty except Bret's clean scent.
She pulled up her T-shirt and wiped her eyes, then tucked the book into his sleeping bag taking the time to smooth out the two head prints in the pillow.
She'd told Bret that she would think about his offer. She would. She'd think about it for the rest of her life. In fact, she knew she'd regret her decision for eternity, but what choice did she have? She loved Bret too much to hold him to a marriage that he proposed because it was the only way he could protect the ranch he cared for and the memory of the woman he'd loved.
Hector's earnest gaze met her when she stepped out of Bret's tent.
"I was just returning something," she blurted out before she realized that it wasn't just Hector. Almost the entire camp had gathered around to watch her.
"Don't you have anything to do?" she asked. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this was a working ranch, not a summer camp."
"We're just having lunch," Hector answered. "Can we get you something?"
"Oh. Thanks." Offending the hands was about the only stupid thing she hadn't done since she'd arrived. Now she'd done that.
Her stomach felt so tightly knotted that she couldn't imagine putting anything into it, but she needed to eat. She'd need the strength for later.
"We picked up some fruit," Bert offered, holding out a can.
The cowboys' thoughtfulness touched her. Canned fruit cocktail wasn't exactly what she had been hoping for, but it looked better than the mess of barbecued pinto beans the cowboys were chowing down on. She accepted the open can and a spoon and reclaimed her lawn chair. Hector sat down beside her.
"Isn't Bret going to be joining us?" she asked with her mouth full.
"Um. Well, he looked pretty busy when I saw him last," Hector answered.
The grins and snickers from the other cowboys, together with Hector's quick turn to avoid her eyes let her know that something was going on. What, she wasn't sure.
"Shouldn't we be doing something to help him?" she asked.
"I don't rightly know if it's something he'd appreciate any help on, ma'am," Sam told her. "Leastwise, I know enough to keep my nose out of it."
"Got it," she told them. Somehow the hands had gotten wind of Bret's offer. She shouldn't be too surprised. On this ranch, everyone seemed to know everyone else's business.
She couldn't think of any clever way of defusing the situation, so she decided to ignore it. "Thanks for the fruit, guys. I guess I'll try some of the beans too."
"Sure," Hector told her, quickly fetching her a plateful that would have satisfied a small army.
They all seemed to be waiting for something, some sign from her. Well, if she planned on making Bret wait, she certainly didn't have a problem with the rest of them waiting as well.
"So is there anything I can help out with this afternoon?" she asked.
Her innocent question created consternation in the assembled cowboys. None seemed anxious to risk Bret's wrath by taking his woman, the one who'd shared his tent, out on a ride with them.
"Fine. I'll do the dishes," she told them.
She hated doing dishes but didn't figure that any of the rest of them liked it any more than she did.
A couple of them looked ready to argue with her, so she smiled in their direction. "I'd be happy for any help if you fellows aren't doing anything else," she offered. Then she peeled off her T-shirt and tossed it into Bret's tent.
Her aerobics top wasn't especially revealing, but it was more than any of the cowboys seemed willing to contemplate. They muttered something about fences and headed for their horses.
Mindy actually whistled to herself as she gathered up the plates and bowls and poured boiling water, from the kettles that always hung over the fire, into the galvanized tub they used for doing dishes.
Scrubbing dishes would certainly distract her mind from everything she had to worry about, and the solitude wasn't bad.
After half an hour of dishes, she switched to her shortest pair of shorts and a bikini top. Might as well get a little tan before she headed back to Nebraska.
Then she poured another kettle of boiling water into the tub and went back to work. She'd been feeling guilty for not doing her share of the washing. From what she found now, no one else had bothered to wash anything from the earlier meals. She scrubbed dishes from the lunch they'd eaten on the trail yesterday, last night's dinner, this morning's breakfast, as well as the lunch they'd just finished.
"I don't think those dishes appreciate what a treat they're getting." Bret's voice interrupted her concentration.
"Nothing like getting clean," she agreed.
"Nothing like getting rubbed by a beautiful woman who is wearing just about nothing," he corrected.
"It's better than a hundred degrees and this wash water makes it even hotter," she told him. "I'm certainly not going to feel guilty for what I'm wearing."
"Now, I don't believe I suggested that you'd done anything untoward," he answered. "I just think a man like myself could appreciate the scenery a little better than the plates and pots and pans."
"In your dreams," she told him.
"Too true," he agreed. "My mother always told me to chase my dreams, though."
He plucked the last plate from her hand, dropped it into the water, then twirled her into his arms.
"Just what do you think--"
His lips cut off her protest.