been able to get back to Los Angeles fast enough. She hadn’t liked the stark beauty of the mountains, didn’t like the smell of the pines surrounding the valley and couldn’t believe anyone would want to live in something as primitive as a log home. Never mind that the house had all the latest conveniences, as well as satellite hookup to television and the internet. She hadn’t even appreciated that at night the stars looked brighter and seemed almost close enough to touch. Or that there were so many they couldn’t be counted. All she could do was complain about how dark it was at night and question why his father didn’t consider selling off the land to a developer. He’d tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but that was before he found out about her lies and the scheme that would have eventually parted him from a good chunk of the Laughlin fortune.
“How many people live on the Rusty Spur?” Tori asked, bringing him back to the present.
Eli started the truck and began to navigate the snow-packed road leading over the ridge to the valley floor below. “Counting me, you and Buck, there are ten of us that live on the ranch year-round. But during the summer months, I usually hire another five to ten men to help out with cutting and storing hay and mending fences, as well as working during fall roundup.”
“I would have thought you’d need more than that from the size of this place,” she said, her soft voice still filled with amazement.
“Contrary to popular belief we don’t do everything on horseback or we would need more hired hands.”
“Really?”
She sounded almost disappointed and confirmed his suspicion that she had little, if any, knowledge of how a modern ranch or farm operated. But he wasn’t going to call attention to the fact. For one thing, they were already married—he had taken the plunge and planned to give it a shot. And for another, he wanted to see just how long it was going to take before she admitted that she knew nothing about rural life and what excuse she was going to give him for misrepresenting herself.
Her false claims might have been cause for concern, were it not for the iron-clad prenup they had signed before the wedding ceremony. That was his insurance. It not only protected his assets—the one-month get-acquainted period also gave him the time to figure out why she had answered his ad when she clearly wasn’t qualified, as well as why he couldn’t seem to bring himself to confront her about it.
“We use pickup trucks and four-wheel ATVs for a lot of the things that we used to have to do on horseback,” he explained, noticing that she was paying extremely close attention to what he said. “But we do ride horses to move some of the herds to the summer pastures in the upper elevations. Most of those are areas that can’t be reached on wheels.”
“Herds?” She looked intrigued. “How many cows do you have?”
He laughed out loud. “I have four herds of cattle—two of registered Hereford and two of Black Angus. And since we raise our own working stock, I have a herd of quarter horses, as well.”
“I meant cattle.” Her cheeks colored a pretty pink and he knew she realized she had slipped up.
When he stopped the truck at the side of the house, Eli got out to open the passenger door. Placing his hands at her waist, he lifted her down from the truck. He had no idea why he kept picking her up, other than the fact that he liked the way she felt in his arms.
After he set her on her feet, she continued to hold on to his biceps as she stared up at him. It took monumental effort on his part to keep from drawing her to him for another kiss. “Why don’t you go on inside out of the cold while I get your luggage?” he finally asked.
She stared at him a moment longer before nodding and turning to walk up the steps.
As he watched her cross the back porch to open the door, Eli exhaled, then took in a deep breath of sharp winter air. Why was he so damned turned on by Tori? She had clearly lied to him about her qualifications when she applied to be his wife. But the strangest part was that he didn’t mind. Somehow it didn’t seem nearly as important to him that the woman he chose be able to help around the ranch as it had been when he’d posted the ad online.
Reaching into the bed of the truck, he pulled out the two suitcases he had placed there when he’d picked her up at the airport, and started toward the house. There was something about Tori—a vulnerability, and quite possibly even a desperation—that had him overlooking her deception and making him want to shelter her from whatever she was running from. And he had no doubt there was something that compelled her to dive headfirst into the uncertainty of being an email-order bride.
Why else would a beautiful woman, who was obviously born and bred to a more genteel life—a woman who could easily have just about any man she set her sights on—answer an online ad to marry a stranger and live on a remote ranch in the mountains of Wyoming?
He had a basic background check run on all of the applicants before starting the interview process and nothing had turned up in Tori’s that had raised a red flag. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something there and luckily he knew exactly whom to contact if he decided he needed to know more. Blake’s older brother, Sean, had been an FBI agent for years before retiring to open his own private-investigation agency. One phone call was all it would take and within a week or so, he would know all about Tori.
Then, with whatever information Sean Hartwell was able to gather on her, he could decide if he wanted to try to make the marriage work or have it annulled and resume his search for a suitable wife.
As Tori walked toward the house, she chastised herself for her slipups. Since the FBI had confiscated her laptop, she’d had to make a special trip to the library to do extensive research on the Western way of life and the terminology used on a ranch. Calling a herd of cattle “cows” was the kind of mistake she couldn’t afford to make again. Otherwise, Eli would realize she was a fraud and send her back to Charlotte faster than she could blink.
Glancing up at the Welcome to Our Home sign beside the back door, she sighed. It reminded her that she no longer had a home to go back to. Her father was dead, his business no longer existed and her so-called friends had abandoned her at the first sign of the scandal. If that hadn’t been enough to convince her to change her name and relocate, the death threats from some of her father’s former clients had. Even though she hadn’t been involved in any of his illegal practices, her last name alone had been enough to incite hatred in people who didn’t know her.
Then there was the matter of supporting herself. Her name was a huge strike against her, of course. But the fact that she had worked at her father’s agency kept anyone in the banking-and-investments industry from considering her for a job, even though she had actually been instrumental in bringing down his house of cards.
With exactly four hundred and seventy-two dollars between herself and living in a cardboard box beneath a bridge, not to mention the chilling threats to her life, she’d had no other choice. She hadn’t wanted to tell Eli so many fibs, but when she stumbled across his online ad while searching for an area of the country that might be safe, she had not only been intrigued, she had been desperate. Even her condo and car, which had been owned by the Bardwell Investments Agency, were about to be confiscated by the authorities to be sold in order to help with the reimbursement of her father’s clients. Within a few weeks, she would have been homeless and with no means of transportation to go elsewhere.
Opening the door, she walked into a small mudroom and looked around. A built-in log bench had been constructed along one wall with cubbyholes beneath for boots and shoes. When she glanced at the opposite wall, she had to smile at the use of horseshoes turned sideways and attached to the wall to create hooks for coats and
