the one with the Gypsy in his soul. We’re afraid he’ll never settle down. I wish he would. Of the three brothers, he was always the most…”
She paused, bemused.
“Most what?” prompted Tara.
“The most fun to be with,” Lynn said thoughtfully. “The hardest working. Maybe—it’s a hard call—the smartest. The easiest to talk to. The hardest to understand.”
She shrugged, patted the album cover and smiled. “Whatever. Ready for lunch?”
BRET MCKINNEY WAS GOING about his business in all innocence when he was ambushed by a godlessly seductive nightie.
All he’d done was open a closet door in an unused bedroom of the Double C. There were other clothes in the closet, but it was the nightgown that sneak-attacked him.
Then Bret realized that there was a crowd of nightgowns and negligees. They hung tauntingly empty on their satin hangers, and they reminded him of how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.
Bret slammed the closet door shut in panicky haste. He felt guilty, like an inadvertent Peeping Tom. Whose intimate, gauzy stuff was this? Did it belong to his cousin’s wife? One of his nephews’ wives?
For the first time in years, Bret felt the stirring of a long dormant sensuality. He’d thought such feelings were dead, and he hadn’t mourned them. He meant to be faithful to his wife’s memory. He was a man of iron discipline, and he’d made up his mind.
It disturbed him that his body had rebelled against his mind’s dictate. He stepped to the window and stared out at the miles of rolling Texas range.
Bret still missed his wife, Maggie, dead two years now. He had severed himself from his job in Idaho in part because he could no longer endure the ranch house so painfully haunted by memories of her.
Bret’s plan had been to come back to Texas to learn to live alone and like it. Fate, however, had decreed that solitude was not an option. First, his youngest son, Jonah, had announced he’d join him.
Bret hadn’t minded this so much. Jonah was a good man with cattle; he was serious and he was quiet. He helped work the ranch by day and wrote his doctoral dissertation at night. He was no trouble and made no demands. It was almost the same as being alone.
But now Bret’s middle son was on his way to the Double C, tangled up in money and marriage problems. At thirty-one, Lang was too damned young to be having a midlife crisis, but that wasn’t stopping him.
Bret shook his head in frustration. Lang was due tomorrow, which was why Bret was checking out the room. It was why he’d opened the closet and been bushwhacked by the nighties.
Well, the things would have to be moved, that was all. Lang didn’t need a closet full of female finery to taunt him.
Bret left the room and strode down the hall to the kitchen, from which floated an aroma of Tex-Mex beef and spices. He would ask Millie Gilligan, the Double C’s housekeeper, to move all that frippery somewhere else, anywhere else.
He found her in the kitchen, stirring a pot of chili. She was an odd little gnome of a woman, restless and given to strange pronouncements.
Mrs. Gilligan was almost as new to the ranch as Bret was, and J.T. had cautioned him about her. “She’s the best we could find. She’s a great cook and a fine housekeeper. But, dammit, I think she might be a witch.”
She indeed might be, thought Bret, for she would stir her pots, dropping in pinches of this and sprinkles of that, and produce foods that seemed too delectable to be created by a mere mortal.
“Mrs. Gilligan,” Bret said gruffly, “I need your help when you’ve got a minute. My son will be using the back bedroom. There are some women’s…things…in the closet. Could you move them someplace else?”
Mrs. Gilligan squinted at him wisely. She had eyes as green as bottle glass and wildly curling gray hair. “I’ll see to it,” she croaked. “We’ll make him comfortable. Even the finest phoenix needs its nest.”
Whatever the hell that means, Bret thought. “Yes. Well. Thanks.”
He paused. “Mrs. Gilligan, about my son—I don’t know how long he’ll stay. Looking after an extra person…you’re sure this is all right?”
“The more the merrier, or so the wind blows. I’ll tend to the closet.” She left, her gait somewhere between a scuttle and a scamper.
Bret sighed harshly and stared after her. How old was she? Fifty? Sixty? Eighty? He couldn’t tell. At least he doubted if anyone would gossip he was sleeping with his housekeeper. Wiry little Millie Gilligan seemed as sexless as a pipe cleaner.
Jonah came in the back door, quietly, of course. More leanly built than his father, he also stood taller, nearly six foot three. He had dark-lashed blue eyes like Maggie’s, intelligent and sensitive. Sometimes looking into those eyes ripped Bret with pangs of loss. She’s still here, he’d think. In him.
Jonah gave Bret his serious smile. “Hi.”
“Where’ve you been all afternoon?” Bret asked.
Jonah tipped his brown Stetson back to an incongruously rakish angle. “Riding fence,” he murmured.
Bret nodded in approval. Riding fence was a common stockman’s job, but Jonah never minded humble work. No part of ranching was beneath his interest. He was going to make somebody a hell of a manager.
“Anything new?” This was generally a useless question to put to Jonah, because he always muttered, “Not really.”
But today a troubled look crept into Jonah’s eyes. “New neighbor’s moving in.”
Bret frowned. As if he didn’t have enough to do. “The woman?”
Jonah shifted uneasily. “Yeah. Slattery told me.” Slattery was the foreman.
“Well,” Bret said impatiently, “what did he say?”
“She’s here, that’s all,” Jonah said. He shrugged out of his denim jacket and hung it on a peg beside the door. He went to the refrigerator, took out the milk jug and poured himself a full glass.
“We should pay her a call,” Bret muttered, not looking forward to it. “Cal asked us to look in on her, make her feel at home.”
“You go,” Jonah said, then drank his milk the way some men chug beer.
Bret gave a sigh of frustration. Jonah went out of his way to avoid women.
Bret would go alone. He wanted to honor his nephew’s wishes. He knew the woman was the sister of one of the partners, but nothing more.
The only clue he’d had was Cal’s request to be friendly to her. “Help her if you can. She’s had a tough time.”
Bret had been too discreet to ask what kind of tough time, and Cal had been too discreet to say. Well, maybe Bret would saddle up, ride over and get the job out of the way. He was not by nature a sociable man, and with Lang boomeranging back on him, he felt less sociable than
