even prettier when we get it cleaned up. You’ll see.” She took a fortifying breath, “Well, let’s check out the inside.”
The key she carried in her purse wasn’t needed, as the front door stood partially open. Hesitantly Mary Claire stepped across the threshold with her children pressed at her back. If possible, the inside of the house was worse than the outside. Trash littered the entry-hall floor, wallpaper sagged in faded strips from the wall running along the staircase, and the smell of mildew and weeks-old garbage nearly stole her breath. Silently cursing J. C. Vickers, her former tenant, for not taking better care of the place, she slowly wove her way to the kitchen.
With each step, her spirits sagged lower and her excitement in moving her children to Temptation and the house her aunt Harriet had left her grew a little dimmer.
It just needs a good cleaning, she told herself, and started rolling up her sleeves.
“Okay, you two,” she told her wary-eyed children. “Go out to the van and start hauling in all the cleaning supplies we bought in town.” When they’d turned to do her bidding, she started throwing windows open. Once she had fresh air circulating, she twisted on the faucet at the kitchen sink and murmured a silent prayer of thanks when a spray of clean tap water hit the bottom of the chipped porcelain sink.
At least the well hadn’t run dry.
Harley stood with his arms draped across the top of a fence post on the back side of his land, staring off across the acreage that separated his ranch from the Beacham homestead while his horse grazed a few steps away. Mentally, he assessed the repairs that would need to be made before he could move his livestock onto the neighboring pastures. The fence was down in a couple of places, the barbed wire dragged low by choking vines and overgrown vegetation. He’d need to add a gate between his land and theirs, he decided, for ease in rotating the cattle from his place to theirs. Plus, he’d need to hook up his brush hog to his tractor to clear out the cedars that had sprung up here and there. Maybe he’d even run a new line of fence, he thought, cutting the large acreage into two pastures. He’d need it if cattle prices didn’t go up soon. Either way, though, he needed that land.
Which brought to mind the new owner.
He shifted his gaze to the two-story house in the distance where sunlight glinted off the old tin roof. On the drive beside the house, a minivan sat parked, its doors gaping wide. Looking like ants from this distance, the two kids who’d caused him so much grief in town scurried back and forth from the vehicle to the house, loaded down with boxes.
As he watched, the kitchen door swung open, and the Reynolds woman herself stepped out onto the narrow porch, stooped by the weight of the five-gallon bucket she carried. Straining, she lifted and swung, sending a spray of murky water to wet the weeds growing beyond the porch steps. She took a step back, hooking the handle of the empty bucket over one arm and paused to wipe the back of her hand across her brow. With her arm raised high like that, the knot she’d tied in her white shirt lifted and snagged against her breasts while her baggy jeans dipped below her navel to ride low on her hips.
And Harley couldn’t make the muscles in his throat move enough to swallow.
He was too far away to get the full effect, but he remembered well the feel and shape of the woman he’d held prisoner beneath him only hours before. Slim-hipped, full-breasted, long-limbed. He’d been too damn mad to fully appreciate her figure at the time, but the memory was there now to tease him.
He blew out a shaky breath. A divorcée. Cody had said. Harley quickly shook away the distracting thought that formed in his head. Didn’t matter, he told himself. All he wanted from her was her land. Catching the reins of his horse, he swung up into the saddle and looked back at the Beacham place just in time to see the screen door slam shut behind her.
He’d give her a day or two to settle in, he told himself, then he’d pay her a call. She’d probably jump at the chance to lease him the land. He bit back a grin. More than likely, being a city girl, she wouldn’t have a clue to the value and he could lease it from her for a song.
That thought kept a smile on his face as he rode back across his land toward home.
It took more than a couple of days for Harley to get around to calling on Mary Claire. More like two weeks. He kept telling himself he was too busy to bother with it, but he knew in his heart he was just plain scared to face her again. Telling himself he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about didn’t help, because he couldn’t quite shake the memory of her lying on the ground beneath him, struggling, her eyes wide with fear, pinned by his greater strength and weight. A gentle man by nature, it shamed him to think he’d handled a woman in such a rough way.
But he needed that land, he told himself as he finally made the drive to the Beacham place. And if it meant confronting the Reynolds woman and his shame to get it, he would. He parked alongside the picket fence and frowned at the closed but sagging gate. From the direction of the house came the sound of blaring rock music. Hooking a hand on the top rail, he avoided the broken gate and swung himself over the short fence. He strode down the winding, weedchoked brick walk, determined to get this business behind him.
Harley took the three steps that led to the porch of the Beacham home at a lope, then nearly fell right back down them when his gaze slammed into the backside of Mary Claire Reynolds herself. She stood on the fourth rung of a stepladder, bent at the waist, scrubbing at the front windows. Covered by a pair of ragged-hemmed cutoffs, the cheeks of her butt did a game of now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t as she moved her hips in time with the beat of the music. Legs that seemed to go on forever pressed against the ladder as she leaned toward the windows...and he couldn’t help but remember the feel of those legs wrapped around his waist.
Not liking the direction of his thoughts, Harley swallowed hard, then cleared his throat. “Ms. Reynolds?” he called. When she didn’t respond, he raised his voice to be heard over the blasting rock music. “Ms. Reynolds!”
Startled, she jerked at the sound of his voice, then grabbed at the top of the ladder to keep from tumbling backward. Moving quickly, Harley lunged, grabbing her at the waist and hauling her to safety.
Momentarily stunned, she could only stare up into the face of the man who held her. Blue eyes, dark complexion, thick mustache and bushy brows. It took only a moment before recognition dawned. She pushed against his chest, her green eyes snapping. “Get your hands off me!”
Embarrassed to realize that his hands still circled her waist, Harley dropped them to his sides and took a cautious step back. “Sorry. I thought you were going to fall.”
“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t scared the life out of me.” She let out a huff, tugging her T-shirt into place, then stooped to switch off the radio that sat beneath the ladder. More a George Strait fan himself, Harley sighed with relief at the silence that followed.
“What do you want?” she asked irritably.
Harley pulled off his hat and pushed his fingers through his hair. This business meeting wasn’t getting off to a very good start. “Well, ma’am, I’ve come to talk to you about leasing your land.”
Her head shot up, an eyebrow raised appraisingly. “And what need do you have for my land?”
“I’d like to run some cattle on it, if you’re of a mind to lease it.”
Mary Claire wiped her hands on the back of her cutoffs, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. “I
