clutter, to the simplicity.
She glanced, covertly, at the four movies lined up under the televison, wondering what they would tell her of the man who lived here. Toy Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dances with Wolves and Chris Irwin, Horse Whispering Demystified. Gumpy shuffled over and sat on the couch, looking peaceful and unperturbed, but she felt driven to apologize anyway.
“I’m sorry, Gumpy,” she said softly, “I never should have let it go this far.”
He just smiled, that wise and knowing smile she had come to like very much.
They heard a drawer slam in the kitchen.
“Where the hell are my keys?”
From a different part of the house, Lacey heard breathless giggles.
Ethan must have heard them, too. Because the silence was suddenly very silent. She could hear the fridge motor.
“Doreen?” he called. “Danny?”
Silence.
“Where are my keys?”
Hushed giggles.
Lacey turned to Gumpy and widened her eyes. She mouthed, “The toilet?”
He nodded and she waited for an explosion, but none came.
Ethan came back into the living room. He sank down on the couch and closed his eyes for a long moment. He looked tired and discouraged, much, she thought, how she must have looked when Gumpy found her at the airport.
“You probably can’t even cook,” he muttered in her direction.
“You haven’t eaten until you’ve had my vegetarian chili,” she told him proudly.
“Vegetarian?” he said with flat dislike.
Even loyal Gumpy was looking at her with distress. “Vegetarian?”
They heard a toilet flush and then flush again, followed by childish laughter.
“My life,” Ethan said, slowly and deliberately, “could not possibly get any worse than it is at this moment.”
She felt it was wise to say nothing. Apparently so did Gumpy.
“Miss?” Ethan said, opening one gray eye and looking at her.
“Ms.,” she corrected him.
His sigh of long suffering said his life had just gotten worse. “You’re on a cattle ranch,” he told her, reclosing his eyes. “As in beef. We promote the edibility of red meat.”
“Oh.”
The phone rang, and for a long time it seemed as if both men planned to ignore it.
“You know who that is, don’t you?” Ethan asked Gumpy.
“Not a clue.”
“It’s a hopping-mad fifty-seven-year-old woman who has successfully raised four children on a diet of meat and potatoes.” Except for the hopping-mad part, he sounded distinctly wistful.
He unfolded himself from the couch and went and got the phone.
Chapter Two
The phone was wall mounted in the hallway. Ethan picked it up and looked back at the pink suit settling herself on his sofa. She crossed one long, slender leg over the other one. That suit really said it all.
This was no nanny.
This was trouble. Capital-T trouble.
He deliberately turned his back on her, but was annoyed that the picture of her did not leave his mind. He tried to concentrate on what Derrick Bishop was telling him.
His mother, Mrs. Bishop, was in the hospital in Ottawa. Something about a bad spill on some ice on the sidewalk outside the airport that had left her with a broken hip.
Knowing he was being a selfish SOB, all Ethan could think was that the cavalry was not coming after alL
Unless you counted her. He hung up the phone and turned back, using the darkness of the hall to study her.
The cavalry she was not.
Cavalries did not come in that particular shade of pink. Her skin was faintly golden, and the suit was lightweight. He figured she did not come from a Northern climate. The suit really was an engineering marvel. It looked businesslike, but it also clung and hinted.
Ethan Black had pictured Betty-Anne Bishop to be the approximate size and shape of a refrigerator. Nothing had prepared him for this.
He deeply resented the flash of heat he felt deep in his belly when his lovely intruder flung a heavy tress of wayward hair over a softly rounded shoulder, even though it confirmed the absolute wisdom of getting rid of her. Fast.
The truth was he’d had lots of experience with beautiful women. Win a few buckles, ride a few bulls, and you were suddenly irresistible. Barbie doll beauty hadn’t impressed him all those years ago, and it didn’t impress him now, or at least not the part of him he listened to.
Now, brains, he thought, that impressed him in a woman.
And he could tell this girl—make that Ms. Woman—was short in the smarts department. Who else would get in a truck with a toothless old man they knew nothing about?
He hoped to God she wasn’t a hooker.
He considered that, watching her with narrowed eyes. The suit was very expensive looking and very proper. If it weren’t for the color—and for the fact he knew she’d taken a ride with a stranger to an unknown destination—he might think high-powered executive type. She smiled at something Gumpy said. The smile was warm and open.
But that didn’t alter the fact she was an impostor. She had lied to Gumpy.
Expensively dressed. Beautiful. Desperate. A woman in trouble.
He did not need any more troubles. Not of his own or anybody else’s, either. Double trouble had arrived here two weeks ago, and Danny and Doreen were his absolute limit. She had to go. He was still the boss around here, not Gumpy.
Of course, there was the little matter of the keys. If he took the toilet apart tonight, a prospect that blackened his already-black mood, Gumpy could take her back to Calgary first thing in the morning. He could feed the cattle on his own. He cursed the early skiff of snow that added four hours of feeding cattle to his daily workload. Six, if Gumpy weren’t here.
What was he going to do with the kids? The thought of taking them with him to feed the cattle was enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. He thought of sending them with Gumpy, but there wouldn’t be enough seat belts in Gumpy’s truck, not that Gumpy would go for it if there were. Pulling rank only went so far with his old hand. Of course, Gumpy was more than a hand, and he knew it.
More even than a friend. A link to ways long forgotten.
He
