a piquantly pretty face, she came running eagerly down the three broad steps.
‘Hi, Alex! It’s great to meet you at last!’ She went up on her toes to deliver a kiss on the cheek, laughing unaffectedly when her aim went a bit askew. ‘Aren’t you lovely and tall! Should have known you would be! Greg told me how much alike the two of you were.’ She stood back to direct a frank appraisal. ‘You’re more gorgeous even than I imagined! Is your hair natural?’
‘I’ve been known to have it streaked a time or two, but, otherwise, yes,’ Alex confirmed, laughing with her. ‘And you’re pretty gorgeous yourself, sister-in-law.’
‘Oh, gosh, we are, aren’t we? Sisters-in-law, I mean. I always wanted a sister!’
‘So how about saying thank you to the man who provided you with one?’ said Greg.
Margot flung her arms about his neck, the sheer adoration in her sparkling hazel eyes catching at Alex’s heartstrings. ‘Thank you, honey! Thank you, thank you, thank you!’
‘No need to overdo it,’ he admonished. He kissed the end of her nose and put her back on her feet, turning her about to deliver a light slap on her pert behind. ‘To duty, wench, or it’s going to be supper-time before we’re ready for it. Take Alex up to her room while I get the bags.’
A regular master of the house, thought Alex amusedly, moving to accompany the younger girl indoors. Not that Margot appeared to have any objections to being ordered around. That she was totally overboard where Greg was concerned was only too patently obvious.
It was too early as yet to say whether Greg returned any real depth of feeling, although, judging from his attitude just now, Alex somehow doubted it. Tolerant affection was the closest she could come to describing it, yet they’d been married little more than three months. Hardly time for the honeymoon to be over.
The house was no disappointment inside, either. Arches gave access to what looked like a vast living room on one side of the wide, pine-floored hall, and an equally vast dining room on the other, the central staircase branching left and right to open galleries.
The room Alex was to occupy was at the front of the house. Timber all the way through, it had woven rugs scattered across the floor and a hand-crocheted cover on the king-sized bed. The two windows were small and multi-paned. Designed to better resist the winter cold, Alex judged, loving the ambience of the place.
‘There’s a bathroom two doors down, and another the other side but no en suite I’m afraid,’ said Margot apologetically. ‘The guest cabins all have private facilities, but Cal said we’d knocked things about enough without trying to incorporate them here. Apart from the living and dining rooms, we don’t have paying guests in the house anyway. I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she added, looking round. ‘It isn’t exactly luxurious.’
‘It couldn’t be better,’ Alex assured her. ‘None of it could!’
She went over to a window, looking down on the scene below with elation bubbling inside her at the thought of the days to come. Humping saddles, the recently returned party was headed for one of the barns, leaving their mounts in the confines of the corral. Another group of riders was coming in through the overbarred gateway, with its swinging sign. A working party this time, she guessed, spying coiled lariats hanging from one or two pommels. The real McCoy!
She watched the men dismount and start unsaddling, her eyes coming to rest on one lean and rangy figure in a beige shirt. The horse he was stripping was lean and rangy too, its hindquarters packed with muscular power. A fitting partnership, she thought, studying the taut stretch of blue jeans across hard male hemispheres.
‘Oh, good, the boys are back,’ exclaimed Margot, coming to stand beside her. ‘That’s my brother in the fawn shirt. We’re not a bit alike, as you can see even from here. He’s a Forrester through and through, whereas I take after my mother’s side. Cal more or less brought me up. I was only ten when Dad was killed. I owe him an awful lot.’
‘He only did what any brother would do in the same circumstances,’ said Greg, a trifle brusquely, from the doorway. ‘Don’t make a hero out of him.’
Margot laughed, apparently oblivious to any implied criticism. ‘Cal would be the last to want that. Can I help you unpack?’ she added ingenuously to Alex as the two cases were lifted onto the bed. ‘I’ll bet you have some lovely things!’
‘Judging from the weight, there’s a lot of them for certain,’ commented Greg on a lighter note. ‘Show me the woman who can go anywhere without taking her whole wardrobe!’
‘Show me the man who can refrain from making the same old comment,’ retorted Alex, equally lightly. ‘I didn’t bring anything particularly dressy, Margot, but I’d be grateful for some help in putting what I have brought away.’
‘You’ve only just time for that shower before supper,’ Greg warned her. ‘Less than half an hour.’
A shower wasn’t going to take her more than five minutes, Alex could have told him, and she certainly wasn’t going to be piling on make-up for the evening, but she took the point. Apart from what she needed for now, the unpacking could wait.
‘I’d better go and freshen up myself,’ said Margot. ‘You don’t need to go to any great trouble, by the way. Nobody does.’ She directed a bright-eyed smile at the other girl. ‘I’m really glad to have you here, Alex. The guests are fine, but they don’t stay around long enough to get to know all that well. Greg says you used to ride a lot. Do you still?’
‘Not as often as I’d like to,’ Alex acknowledged.
‘Well, you can catch up here. We’ve over seventy head to choose from. I don’t usually ride with the guests on short sessions, but I often go on the day-longs. They can be real fun.’
‘For some,’ commented Greg, bringing an apologetic expression to his wife’s face.
‘I know Cal’s been driving you hard, honey, but it’s only because he wants you to know how to run things, so that you can take over if needed.’
‘Sure he does.’ Greg didn’t try to hide the scepticism. ‘Anyway, it’s time we were out of here. You can fill Alex in on the rest of it later.’
Alex stayed where she was for a moment or two after they’d gone, a line between her brows as she reflected on the latter conversation. That Greg wasn’t too enthused about ranch work was apparent, yet what had he expected of life on a working ranch? It was probably true that in every relationship there was one who felt more than the other, but in his and Margot’s case the balance looked to be far too one-sided.
Shelving the matter for the moment, she moved to unlock one of the cases and extract her toilet bag and a wrap. First the shower, then she could decide what to wear for the evening.
There was no one in sight when she emerged onto the gallery, although she could hear voices coming from below. The bathroom proved both spacious and well-appointed, with a separate shower-cubicle in addition to the oversized bath. There were towels over the rails and more folded on racks above the bath, thick and soft and huge. Big country, big everything! she thought humorously.
As Greg had promised, there was no shortage of hot water. Accustomed to the low pressure back in her flat, she was almost knocked off her feet by the sheer force of it. Gasping, she turned the control down a couple of notches, glad of the cap protecting her hair. There
