her father said. He was one of the only people there more concerned with eating his apple pie than Aaron Reyes’s unexpected appearance on the ranch.
“Very pleasant,” Natalie concurred, shaking a rattle in front of Shiloh’s face.
She’d put the baby in a carrier, one that doubled as a car seat, and secured it on the chair beside her. Shiloh had been restless most of the dinner and was getting fussier by the minute. Probably a reaction to the nervous energy abounding in the room, so different from the usual staff meals where everyone joked and told stories and decompressed after a hard day of work.
Meals were served family style at the ranch. Everyone dined at long tables holding twelve to fourteen people, and enjoyed simple, country fare. After the start of the new season, the staff, with the exception of the ranch hands and trail guides, would take their meals an hour earlier than the guests and eat either in the kitchen or outside beneath the ramada. Until then, they all ate together in the dining hall.
“Pleasant? That’s all you have to say?” Deana threw Aaron Reyes another sidelong glance.
“Polite,” Natalie added.
“Right sociable,” her father said.
“Likes kids.”
“Likes kids?” Deana looked inquisitively at Natalie. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t.” Natalie backpedaled. “Just a feeling.” Because he’d complimented Shiloh? Not much to go on, really. “What I mean is he doesn’t dislike kids.” That remark earned her an eye roll from her mother. Shut up, she told herself, while you can still save face.
Natalie’s father came to her rescue. “He knows a lot about horses.”
“Well, he should,” Deana said with a huff. “He was national bronc-riding champion for three straight years. Saddle and bareback.”
Only half listening, Natalie put the rattle in Shiloh’s pudgy hand. The baby immediately thrust the rattle into her mouth and began gnawing on it, freeing Natalie to drink her coffee and eat her pie.
“He’s a fine-looking man.”
Natalie hoped her lack of response would bring about a change of topic. Her efforts were in vain.
“I’ll say. He’s hot,” Alice Gilbert added. She sat directly across from Natalie and had been watching Aaron along with her mother. “Did you see him in those magazine ads? Whew! Made me want to buy vet supplies and I don’t even own a horse.”
“And what about that cable-TV show he was on for a while?” Deana elbowed Natalie’s father. “You used to watch it.”
“Rodeo Week in Review,” he mumbled.
“That’s it.” Deana quit trying to be subtle and openly studied Aaron. “No one could blame Hailey falling for him. How much younger than her was he?” She answered her own question before someone else could. “Four years, right? No, five. Which, of course, is no big deal these days.”
Natalie remembered the age difference really bothering Jake. But then, everything about his little sister’s marriage bothered him.
“How much money do you think he has?”
“Mom!”
“Did you see that silver belt buckle he’s wearing? The thing has to be worth a couple thousand dollars. I bet he has a whole drawer full of them.”
“His truck isn’t worth much more than that belt buckle,” Natalie’s father commented. “Whatever money he made rodeoing must be spent.”
“If he ever made any money at it to begin with,” Alice added with a knowing look. “I heard Jake say once that Aaron Reyes only married his sister for her money and the family connection.”
Natalie had her doubts. While certainly comfortable, the Tuckers weren’t as rich as they looked. And an ex-national rodeo champion who regularly appeared in magazine ads and on television wasn’t someone who needed the clout of the Tucker name. In her opinion, her boss had been looking for reasons to dislike Aaron.
“Maybe he blew all his money,” Deana offered.
“Or lost it on bad investments,” Alice suggested.
“Stop it, all of you.” Natalie frowned at her tablemates. Though she secretly agreed with her father’s assessment of Aaron’s financial situation, she refused to gossip about him. “You’re as bad as everyone else here.”
Deana rushed to their defense. “Naturally, we’re curious. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious, too?” her father asked. A slight smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
Natalie tried to muster up some annoyance and failed. He knew her too well, better even than her mother and sister. “A little,” she admitted out loud. A lot, she admitted to herself. “But I won’t gossip about him.”
She herself had been the subject of countless dinner-table discussions when her flash-in-the-pan romance with Shiloh’s father ended.
Natalie met Shiloh’s father at the Payson rodeo last year when Jake’s cousin, Carolina, coerced her into going. For all her twenty-seven years, Natalie didn’t have much experience with men. Fraternizing with the guests was strictly prohibited. Guests were pretty much the only men Natalie met. As a result, she didn’t date much. Okay, hardly at all.
Like Aaron Reyes, Shiloh’s father made his living as a professional rodeo rider, though he wasn’t nearly as successful. He’d swept Natalie off her feet with his easy charm and heart-stopping sexy smile. She succumbed quickly, and when he didn’t leave right away for the next rodeo, she started hoping he’d stay on and that maybe her father would give him a job on the ranch.
The positive home-pregnancy test panicked him. It had panicked her, too. He might have done the right thing eventually, given the time and the chance. Married her, stayed on the ranch, paid monthly child support. But Natalie sent him packing the second she realized how much he didn’t want a child. She’d justified her actions, saying she deserved more than an irresponsible drifter for a husband and that Shiloh deserved a father who wanted her. But there were nights when she lay in bed awake, wondering if she’d been wrong to act so hastily.
Aaron Reyes reminded her too much of Shiloh’s father. No matter how interesting he might be, how “fine-looking” he was, how pleasant he seemed, Natalie had dated her last rodeo rider. More importantly, her boss didn’t like Aaron, and she refused to go against the Tuckers. Not voluntarily.
Shiloh began crying. Natalie unbuckled the straps holding her daughter in the carrier and lifted her out, automatically checking her diaper. It was dry. A few soothing words whispered in her ear helped to settle her.
“He can’t be that broke.” Deana wasn’t ready to abandon the topic of Aaron Reyes. “Not with the money he gets from the family trust.”
“Depends on annual profits,” Alice said. “We had a few lean years there, though things are picking up.”
Based on advance bookings, the ranch was in for the busiest season they’d had in a long
