style="font-size:15px;"> “You don’t know the first thing about running a ranch! You’ll lose everything before a year’s over.”
“I wouldn’t bet your last dollar on that, Miss Hallie,” he said, smiling tightly.
“What I’d bet is that you’ve never stuck with anything longer than a week,” Hallie said. Desperation began to spark the first twinges of panic in her. She couldn’t lose Eden’s Canyon. Especially not like this. Oh, Pa, how could you have done this? “Why would you even want to try?”
“One very good reason.” Gesturing to the porch of the saloon, he called over to one of the saloon girls. “It’s okay, Kitty, it’s over. He can come out now.”
The girl leaned inside the door, beckoning with her hand until a fair-haired boy, about seven or eight years old, came out onto the porch. He stood by one of the posts, looking at Jack and Hallie with a mixture of curiosity and defiance.
“He’s why I’m here,” Jack said.
Hallie’s face puckered in confusion. “Ethan Harper? What would you have to do with Ethan?”
“He’s my son.”
“Your—that’s impossible. You couldn’t be—I mean, when…how?”
“I do put the cards down once in a while, darlin’. And as to how, I’d demonstrate but I don’t think you want to give the boys at the Silver Snake another spectacle.”
Hallie flushed and opened her mouth to snap back at him, but Jack took a step closer so she could feel the heat of him. She faltered and stepped backward, uneasy with the expression in his eyes, which made her wonder if she’d misjudged his determination to suddenly become a rancher.
“Paradise is where Ethan’s grown up, so Paradise is where he stays,” Jack said. He looked straight at her. “And Eden’s Canyon is mine and it’s going to stay mine. Like it or not.”
Hallie stood by the window in the front room of the ranch house, her hands fisted at her sides, and forced herself to look at the stretch of fine grazing land beyond the knobby wooden corral fences. The brilliant sunshine hurt her eyes, but at least it distracted her from thinking about Ben and what his latest escapade had cost her.
Outside her window, grasses knee-high and thick rolled in green, gold and brown over the flat plains of the Rillito Valley. On either side of the valley, the mountains, painted in reds and browns, jutted up in crags and peaks, guarding the rich grassland. Her grandfather had left behind a dirt farm in Missouri to stake his claim on this piece of wild Arizona territory. He’d built the sprawling cedar-and-adobe house near the river, started breeding Mexican cattle and made a modest fortune before Paradise was even a thought.
Hallie couldn’t imagine living anywhere but here, or doing anything but ranching. She was good at it, if nothing else. She would never be the pretty, graceful, quiet kind of woman that men courted with their Sunday-best manners and sweet talk. But she told herself she didn’t care. She didn’t need nice ways and soft words to break a wild mustang or round up a herd of cattle.
She did, however, need Eden’s Canyon.
A timid knock at the door turned Hallie from the window. The girl who poked her head into the room was not much younger than Ben, with smooth pale hair and round blue eyes that dominated her thin face. Hallie had given Serenity Trent a haven and a job at Eden’s Canyon more than two years ago, and only regretted that the girl still crept around as if she expected someone to holler at her just for being in the room.
Hallie motioned her inside. “What is it, Serenity? What’s wrong?”
Chewing at her lower lip, Serenity glanced over her shoulder. “It’s—”
“Jack Dakota. Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, winking at Serenity as he pushed the door wide and walked inside as if he had a right to be there. “Miss Hal knows Ethan and me.”
Serenity, her face bright red, appeared ready to crawl under the rug. Ethan hung back, his face set in a sullen scowl as he clutched a ragged carpetbag close to his side. Only Jack smiled at Hallie, taking the whole mess in stride as if it were of no more consequence than an afternoon picnic. She ground her teeth together, feeling the itch to string him up the first opportunity she got.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Moving into my house.”
“It is not your house.”
“I thought we’d settled this.”
“We didn’t settle anything!”
“Well, the bank and I did,” Jack said. Becoming slightly annoyed at her stubborn refusal to face the truth, he held the deed papers in front of her nose. “These look familiar?” He pulled the papers back when she made to snatch them away. “I didn’t want to leave Ethan at the saloon any longer, and I didn’t fancy staying in town after my little misunderstanding with Redeye. So I’m here, to stay, at my house.”
They glared at each other before Serenity interrupted the charged silence by touching Ethan on the shoulder. “I’ve got some gingerbread in the kitchen. Would you like some?” She gave him a gentle prod in the right direction, and after a glance at Jack, Ethan left with her.
Jack nearly protested, but he didn’t like arguing with Hallie in front of the boy. “Who is she?” He nodded toward Serenity.
“My housekeeper. And before you say anything, she might be young but she works hard, and she knows more about this ranch than you ever will.”
“Is that a challenge, Miss Hal?”
“It’s Hallie, and the only challenge I have for you is to see how fast you can ride out of here. You can’t stay.”
“Well now, darlin’, I think it’s the other way around,” Jack drawled.
The color rose in her face and he smiled, slow and easy. She’d left behind her ugly hat, and her hair, a color somewhere between maple brown and honey, looked as if chickens had been scratching in it. He wondered if she knew it, let alone cared.
“If you just expect me to walk out of here and leave it all to you, you’d better be backing those papers up with a rifle,” Hallie said, fighting to keep her voice level, when inside she felt like screaming at him.
“That’s up to you. I came here ready to do some bargaining.”
“Bargaining? Ha! Why do I get the feeling your idea of a bargain is what’s best for you?”
Jack ignored her. “I’ve thought of a way you and your brother can stay at Eden’s Canyon.”
“You leave and sell my land back to me.”
“You stay and work with me.”
This time Hallie did laugh in his face. Work with him? Was he crazy? “I wouldn’t work for you if I was down to my last dollar and starving.”
“Good thing, because I’m not looking to hire you,” Jack said. Leaning back against the wall, he looked her up and down with that infuriatingly smug smile. “I’m
