judgment Nathan said, “Sure. A cup of coffee sounds good.”
“I don’t have things very organized,” Harry apologized.
Nathan soon realized that was an understatement. Harry took him in through the back door, which led to the kitchen. What he saw was chaos. What he felt was disappointment. Because despite everything he had already seen of her, he’d been holding out hope that he was wrong about Harry Alistair.
The shambles he beheld in the kitchen of the tiny cabin—dishes piled high in the sink, half-empty bottles of formula on the counters, uneaten meals side by side with stacks of brochures on the table, several bags of garbage in one corner, and a lamb sleeping on a wadded-up blanket in the other—confirmed his worst fears. Harry Alistair needed a caretaker. This wasn’t a woman who was ever going to be anyone’s equal partner.
Harry had kicked off her galoshes when she came in the door and let them lie where they fell. Her down vest warmed the back of the kitchen chair, and she hooked her Harley’s Feed Store cap on a deer antler that graced the dingy, wooden-planked wall.
Poor woman, he thought. She must have given up trying to deal with all the mess and clutter. He hardened himself against feeling sympathy for her. He was more convinced than ever that he would be doing her a favor by buying Cyrus’s place from her.
While he stood staring, Harry grabbed some pottery mugs for the coffee from kitchen cupboards that appeared to be all but bare. He was able to notice that because all the cupboards hung open on dragging hinges. As quickly as she shoved the painted yellow kitchen cupboards closed, they sprang open again. And stayed that way. She turned to him, shrugged and let go with another one of her smiles. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets to keep from reaching out to enfold her in his arms.
Not the woman for me, he said to himself.
The walls and floor of the room consisted of unfinished wooden planks. A step down from “rustic,” he thought. More like “primitive.” The refrigerator was so old that the top was rounded instead of square. The gas stove was equally ancient, and she had to light the burner with a match.
“Darned thing doesn’t work from the pilot,” Harry explained as she set a dented metal coffeepot on the burner. “Make yourself at home,” she urged, seating herself at the kitchen table.
Nathan set his Stetson on the table and draped his sheepskin coat over the back of one of the three chrome-legged chairs at the Formica table. Then he flattened the torn plastic seat and sat down. The table was cluttered with brochures. One title leaped out at him—“Sheep Raising for Beginners.” He didn’t have a chance to comment on it before she started talking.
“I’m from Williamsburg, Virginia,” she volunteered. “I didn’t even know my great-uncle Cyrus. It was really a surprise when Mr. Wilkinson from the bank contacted me. At first I couldn’t believe it. Me, inheriting a sheep ranch!
“I suppose the sensible thing would have been to let Mr. Wilkinson sell the place for me. He said there was a buyer anxious to have it. Then I thought about what it would be like to have a place of my very own, far away from—” She jumped up and crossed to the stove to check the coffeepot.
Nathan wanted her to finish that sentence. What, or whom, had she wanted to escape? What, or who, had made her unhappy enough that she had to run all the way to Montana? He fought down the possessive, protective feelings that arose. She didn’t belong to him. Never would.
She was talking in breathless, jerky sentences, which was how he knew she was nervous. It was as though she wasn’t used to entertaining a man in her kitchen. Maybe she wasn’t. He wished he knew for sure.
Not your kind of woman, he repeated to himself.
“Do you have a place around here?” Harry asked.
Nathan cleared his throat and said with a rueful smile, “You could say I have a place that goes all around here.”
He watched her brows lower in confusion at his comment. She filled the two coffee mugs to the very brim and brought them carefully to the table.
“Am I supposed to know what that means?” she asked as she seated herself across from him again.
“My sheep ranch surrounds yours.” When she still looked confused he continued, “Your property sits square in the center of mine. Your access road to the highway runs straight across my land.”
A brilliant smile lit her face, and she cocked her head like a brown sparrow on a budding limb and quipped, “Then we most certainly are neighbors, aren’t we? I’m so glad you came to see me, Nathan—is it all right if I call you Nathan?—so we can get to know each other. I could really use some advice. You see—”
“Wait a minute,” he interrupted.
In the first place it wasn’t all right with him if she called him Nathan. It would be much more difficult to be firm with her if they were on a first-name basis. In the second place he hadn’t come here to be neighborly; he had come to make an offer on her land. And in the third, and most important place, he had absolutely no intention of offering her any advice. And he was going to tell her all those things…just as soon as she stopped smiling so trustingly at him.
“Look, Harry-et,” he said, pausing a second between the two syllables, unable to make himself address her by the male nickname. “You probably should have taken the banker’s advice. If the rest of this cabin looks as bad as the kitchen, it can’t be very comfortable. The buildings and sheds are a disgrace. Your hay fields are fallow. Your access road is a mass of ruts. You’ll be lucky to make ends meet let alone earn enough from this sheep ranch you inherited to enjoy any kind of pleasant life. The best advice I can give you is to sell this place to me and go back to Virginia where you belong.”
He watched her full lips firm into a flat line and her jaw tauten. Her chin came up pugnaciously. “I’m not selling out.”
“Why the hell not?” he retorted in exasperation.
“Because.”
He waited for her to explain. But she was keeping her secrets to herself. He was convinced now that she must be running from something…or someone.
“I’m going to make a go of this place. I can do it. I may not be experienced, but I’m intelligent and hardworking and I have all the literature on raising sheep that I could find.”
Nathan stuck the brochure called “Sheep Raising for Beginners” under her nose and said, “None of these brochures will compensate for practical experience. Look what happened this afternoon. What would you have done if I hadn’t come along?” He had the unpleasant experience of watching her chin drop to her chest and her cheeks flush while her thumb brushed anxiously against the plain pottery mug.
“I would probably have lost both lambs, and the ewe, as well,” she admitted in a low voice. She looked up at him, her brown eyes liquid with tears she was trying to blink away. “I owe you my thanks. I don’t know how I can ever repay you. I know I have a lot to learn. But—” she leaned forward, and her voice became urgent “—I intend to work as hard as I have to, night and day if necessary, until I succeed.”
Nathan was angry and irritated. She wasn’t going to succeed; she was going to fail miserably. And unless he could somehow talk her into selling this place to him, he was going to have to stand by and watch it happen. Because he absolutely, positively, was not going to offer to
