“Check the fridge, then we’ll run to the store,” Lavonda said with a patient smile.
He sneezed. Damned cat.
* * *
BY THE TIME they got back to the ranch, he was so tired that even the dusty ground in front of the house looked comfortable. On top of the jet lag, the medicine had made him drowsy and a little dizzy. Though that may have been from lack of food. He should have let her talk him into stopping at the caravan parked beside the road in town. She’d said it had the best tamales and fry bread. He’d just been too tired. He wanted a bed now. “Which is my room?”
“Any, really. They all have linens—”
He didn’t wait for her to finish, going to the nearest room and dropping his duffel on the floor, followed by his shirt, shoes, stockings and kilt. He should take a shower. He had a rank odor of travel and competition about him. Tomorrow. He’d do that tomorrow. He stepped forward, looked down and stopped.
“Lavonda.” He choked out the name, totally awake now. “Ms. Leigh.” His voice finally reached an adequate volume.
“Yes,” she said tentatively as she knocked on the door. “What did you need?”
“Come in, please.” He didn’t take his eyes from the creature on his foot.
“Did you forget to get something at the store? It’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Damn,” she said suddenly with feeling. “It didn’t get you, did it?”
“No.”
“Good. The sting won’t kill you, but it hurts like heck. Let me think a second.” She stepped completely into the bedroom.
His foot twitched all on its own, and the mammoth insect moved. “It would seem logical that the job of caretaker include ensuring all vermin have been eliminated?” Good, Jones, upset the one person who can help you. Maybe he could just kick out his foot, except now the beast had scrambled onto his ankle.
* * *
LAVONDA STARED AT the nasty, pissed-off bug as the TV news crawl flashed through her mind: Scottish professor killed by rogue scorpion as caretaker does nothing. She could stamp on it. No. It had moved up his leg toward—she’d keep her gaze from moving farther up his almost naked body. “Don’t move.”
“I had not planned to. Maybe you could swat it away with a stick?”
That was a good suggestion. She looked around the room. Nothing here. “I’ll be right back.”
“Certainly.”
He was pale, though she wasn’t sure if that was a usual lack-of-sun complexion or the bug on his foot. She had to admit it took balls—no, that was wrong. It took courage to stand still like that. She looked at the courage in question... What was her problem? The man could die... Okay, probably not from a scorpion, but still. She had started out of the room, when Cat came streaking in, howling like an animal possessed.
“What the bloody—”
“Cat,” she yelled as the animal landed on his foot, batting the bug away and then pouncing on it like the puma she apparently thought she was. With a triumphant meow, she squashed the scorpion. The professor sneezed. Cat sat, looking regal and pleased above the mess of bug innards.
“I guess I don’t need that stick,” Lavonda said lamely. “Cat saved you.”
She looked up from Cat and her prey. Jones stood in just his underwear, limned in gold from the last rays of the setting sun as it sparked off the hairs on his arms and legs, all of him very fit and substantial.
“Perhaps...” He sniffed loudly, then sneezed.
“Of course,” she said, and as she lunged forward to get Cat, she brushed against—oh my, that wasn’t his thigh. That was his courage. She looked up into his watering and surprised eyes. “Sorry?” Only she wasn’t. Crap. The body part in question seemed to be ignoring the fact that he had just narrowly avoided death. She scurried back. He turned and groped on the floor for his kilt. He wrapped it around his waist and buckled it on. He didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about...
She snatched up Cat. “I’ll be back to clean up the mess,” she mumbled as she hurried from the room. She wasn’t a blusher, but she knew her face was flaming.
Cat yowled and Lavonda loosened her death grip on the animal as she entered the dimness of the barn. It’s where Cat usually hung out with Reese, the miniature donkey. And now that Cat had found her inner killing machine, she could take care of the mice that were eating their weight in grain.
“Cat, stay here,” she told the soccer ball–shaped feline. “Professor McNerdy can’t take you, so you need to hang here, which you like better anyway.” Cat walked away, her tail straight up in the air and swaying slowly in contempt.
The three horses popped their heads over the stalls, hopeful for a treat, and Reese brayed loudly, smacking his stall with a tiny hoof to get some feline love. Cat ignored him and sat licking her paws. The poor miniature donkey didn’t understand that cats did what they wanted, when they wanted, and the more you wanted them to do something the less likely they were to do it.
How long did she need to wait out here until she and the professor could both pretend that she hadn’t felt up his bucking bronc, accidental or not. Awkward with a capital A. She should think about how to make him feel welcome after this disaster. She cared for the property and the animals in exchange for staying rent free at the ranch. Humans were animals, after all, so it was her job to take care of him. She’d get back to writing press releases and taking calls from MSNBC soon enough. She might even be missing the pressure cooker of corporate work.
“Yowl,” Cat said, looking at her accusingly with her slightly crossed Siamese-blue eyes. She nosed an empty food bowl into Lavonda’s foot. Good distraction. She focused on Cat. “If I feed you this time, you promise to take care of the mice and stay away from the professor, right?”
Cat meowed again and batted the food bowl. Lavonda should’ve been the one promising to leave the professor alone. She dug out the plastic container where she kept the cat’s kibble. A big hole had been chewed in it and a mouse looked up from the bottom, holding a piece of food with a mousy laugh.
“Damn it,” Jones said into his mobile two days after landing at the ranch from hell. “What do you mean you can’t make it for another month?”
“Just what I said,” replied the experienced guide, the one who had his payment in full.
“What about the money?”
“I’ll return it.”
“I had bloody well better see that money back in my account within the week.”
“Seeing as how that account is in England—”
“Scotland.”
“Whatever. It may just take extra time. No reason to blow a gasket.”
“I
