wake me when we get close to the ranch. The way you described it when we spoke over the phone, I’d love for my first glimpse of the valley to be from the top of the ridge.”
“I will,” he said, giving her a smile that curled her toes inside her new fur-lined snow boots.
She wasn’t entirely certain she was comfortable with feeling so attracted to her new husband so soon. It could be a plus if their marriage worked. It could spell heartache for her if it didn’t.
When Tori closed her eyes and tried to relax, she decided it would be in her best interest not to dwell on that right now. She had other, more important concerns.
If and when she did tell Eli about her father and her part in the scandal, how would he react to learning that he had married the pariah of Charlotte society? Would he understand that in her desperation to get as far away from the shame and humiliation that she had been driven to search online for an area of the country where the Bardwell name wasn’t as well-known?
Even though she held a master’s degree in financial planning and had been cleared of any involvement in the illegal transactions conducted at the now-defunct Bardwell Investments Agency, no one in the financial industry would hire her. She just hoped that Eli could overlook the fact that she hadn’t exactly been honest with him. And that he had married the daughter of the man who had helped to create the nation’s biggest financial fiasco in recent history.
Two
When he stopped his truck at the top of the ridge overlooking his ranch, Eli glanced over at his new wife. Tori had fallen asleep almost as soon as she’d closed her eyes, but it hadn’t been a restful nap. Several times during the past hour and a half, she had whimpered and murmured something. He hadn’t been able to understand what she said, but whatever it was it must have been extremely upsetting. He had even considered waking her when a tear escaped the corner of her eye to run down her smooth cheek. But she had seemed to rest peacefully after that, so he had let her be.
As he continued to watch her sleep, he couldn’t help but marvel at how alluring she was. He hadn’t anticipated that, or the protectiveness that seemed to accompany the pronouncement by the good reverend that she was his wife. Both were feelings he had hoped to avoid.
He had thought by advertising for a bride, listing his specific requirements and making his choice from the qualified applicants, he would remove the possibility of any kind of romantic entanglement. He had learned the hard way that when an emotional attachment was involved, it clouded a man’s judgment.
And truth to tell, after talking to her the first time, he had decided that she wasn’t suitable, and moved on to interview other, more qualified women. But each time he ended a conversation with one of them, his thoughts kept straying back to his phone call to Tori. There had been something about her soft, Southern voice as she told him about her time on the family farm that compelled him to choose her, instead of using his head to select one of the more obvious candidates to be his bride.
Now he had a beautiful wife who he would bet everything he owned had no experience at all with livestock. What she did have were the softest lips he’d ever had the privilege to kiss, as well as a voice that set his pulse to racing each time he heard it.
“So much for keeping a romantic attraction out of the equation, genius,” he muttered to himself.
Not at all comfortable with the direction his thoughts were taking, he decided to analyze his reaction to his new wife a bit later. He lightly touched her shoulder. “Tori, we’re home.”
Her long dark lashes fluttered once, then opened to reveal her extraordinary violet eyes. His lower body tightened as she gazed up at him. She looked soft, feminine and so damned desirable that he barely resisted the urge to release her seat belt and pull her into his arms.
“We’re here already?” She sat up in the bucket seat. “How long was I asleep?”
“About an hour and a half.” He forced a smile. “You wanted me to wake you when we got to the ridge above the ranch.”
He heard her soft intake of breath and knew the moment she caught sight of the Rusty Spur Ranch in the valley below. He forgot all about his lapse of judgment as a sense of satisfaction filled him at the expression of awe on her pretty face. She was clearly impressed by the size of the operation.
“How big is your ranch?” she asked, her voice filled with amazement.
“You’re looking at the ranch headquarters. There’s about ten thousand acres here and another twenty thousand of pastureland outside of the valley. I also lease another fifteen thousand acres from the Bureau of Land Management.” He pointed to the big log home his great-great-grandfather had built. “That’s where we’ll live, along with Buck. He tends to the house and cooks now that he’s retired from ranch work.”
“It’s gorgeous and so big,” she said, unbuckling the shoulder harness to sit forward for a better look out of the windshield. “I can’t tell from this distance. What are all those buildings behind the house?”
Her almost childlike enthusiasm and questions caused his chest to swell with pride. The Laughlins had settled in the valley over a hundred and twenty five years ago and each generation had made the ranch bigger and better than the last.
He pointed toward the buildings directly behind the house. “Those are the barns. There’s one for the work horses, one for storing grain and hay, another one for ranch trucks, tractors and other equipment. That one we use for treating sick and injured livestock and that big one is where we keep the tractor trailers we use for transporting cattle to market and to some of the farthest pastures.” Pointing to the far side of the valley, he added, “That smaller house over there is where the foreman and his wife live and the bigger one next to it is the bunkhouse where the single men stay.”
“There’ll be a woman I can talk to from time to time?” Tori asked, brightening even more.
“When she has time, you can. Sally Ann is usually pretty busy cooking for the men and she sometimes helps Buck take care of the ranch house when his arthritis is acting up.” He grinned. “She and her husband, Jack, have lived on the ranch for as long as I can remember. I’m sure she’ll enjoy having another woman around after having to deal with men all these years.”
“So she’s a bit older?”
“I don’t know exactly how old she is and I’m for damned sure not going to make the mistake of asking her,” he said, laughing. “But if I had to venture a guess, I’d say she’s somewhere in her early to mid-fifties.”
Tori seemed to digest that a moment before she pointed to the corral and holding pens. “Are those…” She stopped, and he could tell she was searching for the right word. “…corrals?”
“There are a couple of corrals for the horses when we let them out of their stalls for some fresh air and exercise, a round pen for breaking them to ride and about eight holding pens for the cattle,” he explained. “We use those when we bring the heifers in from the pastures at calving time and to separate the stock during roundup.”
As he watched Tori take in the vastness of his ranch, Eli couldn’t help but marvel at the difference between her reaction and the first woman that he’d brought home to see the ranch. That had been ten years ago when he brought his college girlfriend home for Thanksgiving and it had turned out to be the beginning of the end of their relationship.
The
