leave no time for a roll in the hay with a stable girl.
“I’m looking for Nita Windcroft,” he said. “She’s expecting me.”
“Well—” she looked him up one side and down the other “—this is your lucky day, cowboy, because you just found her.”
Chapter Two
Salvation manifested itself in many forms.
This particular brand had showed up in tight jeans, a flannel shirt and cowboy boots.
And he was looking at her as though her hair had caught fire.
“You’re Nita Windcroft?”
“That’s what it says on my birth certificate.”
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it. Connor may have been Jake’s identical twin, but they were complete opposites. Sure, they looked alike—the same height, the same dark brown hair, though Connor’s was cut military short. They both had eyes the color of the Texas sky at dusk on a cloudless day—deep, relentless blue. But Connor seemed darker somehow, more intense.
The lines bracketing his eyes were carved deeper in his skin, the worry lines in his forehead more pronounced. This man had obviously done his fair share of frowning. In their depths his eyes held the life experience of a man twice his age.
The things that man must have seen to have eyes like that.
“You’re really Nita?” he asked, looking down one side of the porch, then the other, as if he expected the real Nita suddenly to appear.
“Not what you were expecting, huh?”
His eyes roamed over her, slowly. Deliberately. Something about the way he looked at her, the way he studied her features, made her feel self-conscious and exposed.
“Not exactly.”
More like, hell no, considering the look on his face.
“I thought you would be…older,” he said.
“If you got your information from the old biddies in town, you probably thought I was some nasty hag.”
She could tell by the look of guilt in his eyes, that’s exactly what he’d thought, but he was apparently too polite to tell her so.
“If you’d like, I could show you my driver’s license.”
He finally cracked a smile—even though it was just a little one—and the change in his face, the softening of his features knocked her for a loop. “No, ma’am, that won’t be necessary.”
“You can call me Nita,” she said, extending a hand for him to shake.
He gripped it firmly. Not the sissy shake some men used on a woman, as if the slightest pressure would snap her like a dry twig. On the other side of that coin were the men who felt they had something to prove, the ones who turned the shake into some kind of contest of brute strength. Connor’s handshake was just right.
Having him stay here, getting in her way, might not be so bad after all.
“I guess we should get this show on the road,” Nita said. “I had Jane, our housekeeper, make up the bedroom in the guesthouse so you’ll have some privacy.”
He paused. “I’d prefer to stay in the main house if that’s not a problem.”
The only empty bedroom in the main house was right next to hers. The thought of this man sleeping within shouting distance gave her an unexpected little shiver of excitement. She wondered what he looked like when he slept. Did he lie on his stomach, his back? Did he wear pajamas or did he sleep in his birthday suit?
Maybe one day she’d be lucky enough to find out.
Or maybe she’d be better off not letting her imagination run off with her again. Her daddy always accused her of being too curious, too brazen, for her own good.
“You can stay wherever you’d like,” she told Connor. “We’ve got plenty of room. I’m just grateful you’re here to keep an eye on things. The staff have been instructed to assist you in any way possible.”
“I appreciate that,” he said—so somber, so serious and businesslike. He really was different from his brother.
“Well, okay, let’s get you settled in.” She reached for the door handle, but in a flash he’d grabbed it and opened the door for her.
Well, damn. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone but her daddy had opened a door for her. To the farm hands, she was just one of the men, and was treated accordingly. That was the way she liked it. She had no delusions about the kind of woman she’d become. She wasn’t pretty or worldly like her sister Rose, and she certainly wasn’t what you would call feminine. She could drink any of the farm hands under the bar and was known to cuss a blue streak when the circumstances demanded it. She couldn’t cook, and had no inclination to learn, and would rather muck a stall than clean a toilet. Not a dream wife by any stretch of the imagination.
Not any kind of wife at all.
Not that she didn’t appreciate a good-looking man in a pair of tight jeans, she thought, taking a not-so-subtle peek at Connor’s rear end as she eased past him into the house.
As Connor stepped in behind her, he gazed around the interior, at the cream-colored walls and French doors that opened to the office, up the wide staircase that led to the bedrooms. “Not your typical farmhouse.”
“Nope. My momma was a city girl and my daddy knew she wasn’t happy living in the old farmhouse, so he built her this one. I was just a baby when we moved in. Two years later cancer took her.”
Most people would mumble some sort of apology, or words of regret. Connor only nodded.
Not the talkative type, was he?
“Kitchen’s that way,” she said, pointing to the right. “Meals are at 6:00 a.m., noon and 6:00 p.m. sharp. Jane’s room is behind the kitchen. Through those doors over there is the office. The family room and Daddy’s suite are at the back of the house.”
“How is your father?” Connor asked.
“His surgery went well. He’ll be home in a day or two, but he’s going to be off his feet for at least a couple of weeks. It could have been a lot worse. If he hadn’t had Jimmy, our stable manager, with him, who knows how long he would have laid there.” She’d seen men hurt before, but when they cut away her daddy’s bloody pant leg and she saw the bone jutting through the skin, she’d felt dizzy and sick to her stomach.
She’d never seen him looking so pale and weak and broken down. It disturbed her more than she would ever let on. He was her protector. Her hero. Larger than life and invincible. Even though she was a grown woman now, she wasn’t ready to let go of that fantasy. Instead it had been snatched away. Stolen from her by the Devlins.
She turned to Connor. “We need to find out who did this.”
There was fire in Nita’s eyes, a volatile, vivid anger—one
