experts like to spout. We just want two things from life. One—” he waved the glass of Jack Daniel’s in her face “—is a swig of booze, and the other is getting naked with a woman when the mood strikes.”
She was highly offended or extremely embarrassed—he wasn’t sure which. Her peaches-and-cream complexion turned candy-apple red. Her eyes were shooting sparks, too, he noted.
“You want to know what I think?” she asked in a tone that reminded him of a hissing cat.
“No, not particularly.” He downed another slug of booze. “But you’re probably planning to tell me anyway, right?”
Apparently that really ticked her off because she glared at him and said, “I think you’re a throwback to the caveman era and your Neanderthal mentality sucks!”
Unfazed, he took another drink. “You’re entitled to your opinion, professor, but don’t come crying to me when you think you’ve landed Mr. Right and he doesn’t meet all your fairy-tale expectations of love and romance.”
He winced when her fuming glance zeroed in on his right hand that held his sweating glass of booze. He knew what she was going to ask before the words were out of her mouth.
“Is that a wedding band? It certainly looks like one. Why are you wearing it on the wrong hand?” she quizzed him like any self-respecting schoolmarm.
“Because I married the wrong woman. It’s a reminder never to make that disastrous mistake again, so long as I live.”
“Ah,” she said pensively. “No wonder you have so many hang-ups. That explains a lot.”
He stiffened and glowered down from his advantageous height, annoyed by that smug little smile on her rosebud mouth. “That doesn’t explain squat. I don’t have hang-ups.”
“Sure you do.” She returned to her task of stocking the cabinets. “You probably got your itsy-bitsy heart broken and you’re holding all women responsible for the traitorous act of one femme fatale. What did she do? Cheat on you?”
“None of your damn business,” he said through his teeth.
“That’s why this house shows no signs of a woman’s touch. You’ve become a card-carrying woman-hater, haven’t you?”
She thought she was so damn smart, did she? Well, she was right, but he didn’t cotton to how easily she’d read him.
“You tried to erase all evidence that there was a woman in your house who got under your skin.” She stacked three cans of tuna then reached over to grab three cans of turkey. “You figured you couldn’t make a woman happy so why try, right? It’s easier to give up, to quit.”
She turned toward him then, all fierce determination. “Well, you need to know that I’m not a quitter, Mr. Ryder, no matter how hard you try to drive me away. I intend to do my job exceptionally well. One look at you testifies to the obvious fact that you need my assistance to keep this place shipshape while you recuperate. Now, go take a load off your broken leg while I whip up supper. Go on, scram,” she ordered, shooing him on his way. “You’re slowing me down.”
Wade was so frustrated by the unexpected turn of events that he was halfway across the room before he realized he’d allowed her to boss him around. Hell! He’d let that woman have the last word. That would never do.
“Just stay out of my way, professor, and I’ll stay out of yours,” he felt to compelled to say.
“Fine.”
“Good!”
Muttering at his live-in housekeeper, he limped off on his crutch. He cursed his devilish cousins with every uneven step and returned to the living room with his glasses of whiskey. As he lowered himself gingerly into his recliner he watched John Wayne’s character drop Liberty Valance in his tracks. If only he could dispose of Laura Seymour that easily! She might have thought she had him all figured out so she could deal effectively with him, but she was way wrong about that.
Now, more than ever, Wade wanted her gone. When a woman started picking around in a man’s brain, he was in heap big trouble. And this particular woman was too blasted smart if she could analyze him in the course of one afternoon. He’d have to work harder at driving her away so he could reclaim his private, female-free domain. Besides, he’d kept his emotions in cold storage for years and he didn’t want Laura to defrost them. Keeping them frozen solid worked best.
As for his traitorous cousins, he wasn’t going to kick their butts, as soon as he was able. He’d decided to murder them for foisting this particular woman off on him. He suspected Vance and Quint were trying to do a little matchmaking—kill a couple of birds with one stone, as it were. Well, they’d wasted their time with this prank. Laura Seymour wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted in his life—not that he wanted any kind of female in his life, mind you, because he didn’t. He especially didn’t want to share his personal space with a female as tempting and intelligent as Seymour. She stirred up his hormones and put his conscience under duress.
True, he’d been raised better than to be unspeakably rude and disrespectful to women—his mother would’ve killed him if she’d overheard that exchange in the kitchen. Of course, his mother didn’t fall into the Women category. She was, after all, his mother. And okay, so maybe all women weren’t as treacherous as Bobbie Lynn. But Wade’s track record indicated that he was a lousy judge of the female of the species and he naturally attracted women who were all wrong for him. That said, the best course of action was to avoid close association with all varieties of females.
Furthermore, he mused as he sipped his hooch, he wasn’t about to let his younger cousins pick women for him. They enjoyed all varieties of women. The more women the better, so they claimed. What did they know about finding the elusive Ms. Right? Nothing, that’s what. Otherwise those two clowns would be wedlocked by now.
Wade knew that when it came to women Vance and Quint had stumbled and fallen a couple of times themselves. They chose to handle their humiliation in different ways. Quint preferred to shield his emotions by flirting outrageously with everything in skirts and he was swift enough of foot to dodge wedding nooses that flew his way. Vance relied on teasing humor to sidestep emotional land mines. As for Wade, he chose avoidance and barbed-wire barriers to protect his heart.
Whatever worked, he supposed. But the fact remained that the Ryder cousins—even the absentee Gage—were considered highly prized bachelors in Hoot’s Roost. Come to think of it, his maternal cousins were in great demand as well. The whole passel of male cousins were decent looking—if that mattered—and they were successful—and that did matter to females who power-shopped for low-maintenance husbands who could provide for their wives in the wealthy manner to which they aspired.
Well, gold diggers need not apply at the Ryder ranches, Wade mused. As for Laura Seymour, he wanted her to vamoose—pronto. Now that he knew he had the ability to make her mad he’d push and prod until she lost her temper and spit out the four-letter Q word. Then he’d have her exactly where he wanted her…besides naked in his bed….
Wade jerked upright, shocked by that whimsical thought. He didn’t want to visualize how Laura would look naked because that would lead to more trouble than he had already. Wade squelched the testosterone-induced fantasy that leaped to mind and concentrated on the movie. He wasn’t going to give his new housekeeper another thought—except to conjure up ways to get rid of her, while he listened to her rummage around in his kitchen, as if she owned the place.
SWIFTLY
