ribs. He felt the same pull that had drawn him to her the first time he’d laid eyes on her in Vegas. He forced himself to ignore the feeling. She might be the most exciting woman he’d ever known, but the sting of her rejection and her disdain for his lifestyle told him in no uncertain terms just how unimportant he was to her. She’d walked away from him once. He wouldn’t give her another chance to do it again.
Distracted by his turbulent thoughts, it took him a moment to notice the frown on her pretty face. “Is something wrong?” he asked as he climbed the steps.
“Where do you keep your food?” she answered his question with one of her own as they entered the house. “I was going to make something for dinner, but the refrigerator and pantry are both empty. If you live here why isn’t there anything in the house to eat?”
“I usually eat down at the bunkhouse with the single men or over at the main house,” he said truthfully as he set the cooler and jug of iced tea on the kitchen island, then turned to hang his hat on a peg by the door. He did eat with his men at the bunkhouse occasionally, just not as often as he ate what his cook made for him in the main house.
She looked doubtful. “Even in the winter when you’re snowed in?”
He couldn’t help but laugh at her erroneous assumption. “Sweetheart, there’s no such thing as getting snowed in around here. A ranch is a twenty-four-hours, seven-days-a-week operation. It never shuts down because the livestock are depending on us to take care of them. If it rains we get wet. If it snows we wade through it no matter how deep it gets or how cold it is.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Looking a little sheepish, she shook her head. “I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about ranching.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He motioned toward the thermal carrier. “And don’t worry about cooking. I had the cook over at the main house pack up what he made for supper. Why don’t you set the table while I go wash up?”
He didn’t mention that he’d had to endure an interrogation and a stern lecture before old Silas finished loading the carrier with containers of food. A retired cowboy turned cook after his arthritis prevented him from doing ranch work, Silas Burrows had some definite ideas on how Blake should conduct his life and he didn’t mind sharing them every chance he got. Having a wife show up unexpectedly, one that Blake hadn’t told Silas about, definitely got the old boy started. As sure as the grass was green, Blake knew he hadn’t heard the end of what Silas had to say on the matter, either.
“I’ll have dinner on the table by the time you return,” she said as she started removing the food from the carrier to set it on the butcher-block island.
Blake watched her for a moment before he gritted his teeth and left the room. Karly had changed into a pair of khaki camp shorts and an oversize T-shirt while he was gone. She shouldn’t have looked the least bit appealing. But he’d be damned if just seeing her in the baggy shorts, shapeless shirt and bright pink flip-flops didn’t have him feeling as restless as a range-raised colt.
Disgusted with himself, he marched up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. How could he want a woman who had rejected him? Who had rejected his way of life and the land he loved?
Setting his backpack on the cedar chest at the end of the bed, he walked into the adjoining bathroom to wash up. As he splashed cold water on his face to clear his head, he couldn’t help but think about the irony of the situation.
When Karly called him a few days after they parted in Vegas to tell him that she had changed her mind about being his wife, she hadn’t even been willing to discuss coming to Wyoming in order to see if they could save their brief marriage. Yet almost nine months later, here she was—in the very place she said she never wanted to see—with papers to end the union.
But as he dried his face and hands with one of the fluffy towels from the linen cabinet, he couldn’t help but think there had to have been something that happened when she got back to Seattle that had caused her change of heart. But what could it have been? Was there someone else she hadn’t told him about? Maybe an old flame or someone she had been seeing before they met?
He’d asked himself the same questions a hundred times—and just as often told himself to forget about solving the mystery. He had no way of knowing what went through her head. And no reason to ask once she’d been determined to end things between them.
But now that Karly was here, he had a golden opportunity that was just too damn good to pass up. All he had to do was convince her to stay at the ranch a few days, until the strike in Denver was settled. That would give him time to ask her what had happened, to find out what had changed her mind and why.
It might not be the smartest thing he’d ever wanted to do. And he knew that whatever he found out wouldn’t change the state of their marriage; he’d already signed the papers and let her go. Hell, he’d probably be better off not knowing. And he certainly wasn’t expecting anything about him or his ranch to change her mind, even if he did learn the answer.
But some perverse part of him felt that it was his right to know why she’d refused to even try to make a go of things with him.
With his mind made up, Blake went back downstairs to the kitchen to help Karly set the table. “I’ve been thinking. It doesn’t make any sense for you to spend money on a motel room when you can stay here for free,” he pointed out as he got two glasses down from one of the cabinets.
“I can’t do that,” she said, looking at him like he had sprouted another head.
“Why not?” he asked, pouring them each a glass of iced tea from the thermal jug.
“I don’t want to impose,” she said, placing a container of country-fried steaks on the table.
“How would you staying here be an imposition?” He carried the glasses to the table, then held her chair for her to sit down. “We’re still married and the last time I heard, a husband and wife staying in the same house isn’t all that unusual,” he added, laughing.
“We’re not going to be married that much longer,” she insisted. “We’re practically divorced already.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged as he seated himself at the head of the table and reached for the container of steaks. “You’re still my wife and that gives you the right to stay here.”
“We really don’t know each other,” she said, taking a bite of a seasoned potato wedge.
“That didn’t seem to be a deal breaker when you said ‘I do,’” he pointed out, before he could stop himself. He felt like a prize ass when he saw the wounded expression on her pretty face.
She stared at him for several long moments before she shook her head. “I think it would be best if I get that motel room tomorrow as planned.”
“Look, I’m sorry about what I just said.” He took a deep breath. “That was out of line.”
She stared at him for a moment longer before she shook her head again. “Not entirely. We were both—” she paused, as if searching for the right words “—caught up in the moment in Las Vegas. And I don’t think one of us was more at fault than the other.”
Maybe she had been caught up in the moment, but he had known exactly what he was doing and the commitment he was making when he vowed to take care of her for the rest of their lives. But arguing that
