be blunt and tell her in no uncertain terms that there was no room at the inn.
What the hell did he know about running a guest ranch? He was a highly trained military specialist with a background in explosives. He knew about blowing things up and planning clandestine operations. Organized chaos was his specialty, not fluffing pillows and fetching tea for sleek city women who drove Lexus SUVs and looked as if they just stepped out of some aprés skiwear catalog.
Damn the woman and damn Joanie Reynolds for running off and leaving such a mess behind.
“If you’ll follow me, you can park your vehicle next to the cabin. I’ll unlock it for you and make sure the heat’s working, then help you with your bags.”
“That’s not necessary, really. Both of us don’t need to go out into the storm. I can take the key and let myself in if you’ll just point me in the right direction.”
He ignored her and opened the door. “Claire, keep an eye on Tallie for me, okay? I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got my cell with me if you need me.”
“Okay.”
She was too agreeable, his oldest niece. He hadn’t seen her a great deal in her eleven years, just the occasional visit between deployments, but he remembered her as always being eager to please. In the three months since her parents died, she had become even more so, though she still tried to boss her younger sister around as if she were trying desperately to control that one little corner of a chaotic universe.
“When can we make the hats?” Tallie asked.
“What hats?”
Emery Kendall pointed to hers. “They were admiring my cloche. I told them I could perhaps help them sew one of their own.”
He didn’t know what the hell a cloche was. It sounded French and vaguely sexy, especially to a man who hadn’t been with a woman since before his last tour of duty.
“Girls, you’re not to bother our guests. You know that.”
“They weren’t bothering me,” she protested. “I told them we could see in a few days, once I settle in.”
His mouth tightened. That was the last thing he needed, for his grieving, emotionally hungry nieces to suddenly decide to latch onto this stranger who was only going to be here for a week or so.
They missed their mother and father terribly. The hell of it was, he had come to the conclusion he was far worse at parenting than he was at running a guest ranch.
“You don’t have entertain Tallie and Claire,” he said, his voice gruff. “Especially when you’ve got work of your own to do.”
She looked as if she wanted to argue, but he wasn’t at all in the mood to tangle with her anymore tonight. He wanted to get the blasted woman settled in to her cabin and come back to the house so he could figure out where the hell his life had gone so disastrously off-track in a few short months.
“You girls go on up to bed,” he said. Though it was an order, he tried not to phrase it as such. He had learned the first few weeks after Suzi and John died that eight- and eleven-year-old girls didn’t respond like trained commandos to terse commands. “I’ll check on you when I come back inside.”
Without waiting for their answer—or to see if Ms. Kendall followed him—he turned up his collar, pulled down his Stetson and headed out into the lightly blowing snow.
He was halfway down the driveway he hadn’t had time to plow yet and trudging toward the cabins a few hundred yards away from the house before he heard her vehicle start up behind him.
He had to admit, his sister and her husband had picked a good spot for guest cabins. When he was a kid, this part of the struggling ranch had held rusting old farm equipment and a ramshackle shed or two. But Suzi and John had cleared all that out and built four comfortable log cabins out of old salvaged timbers and white chinking so they looked as if they had been there forever.
In the daylight, the place had a nice view of the west slope of the Tetons and of Cold Creek Canyon. And Suzi had made the inside of each cabin warm and welcoming.
He didn’t know much about this sort of thing. As long as he had a sleeping bag and a tight-weave tent to keep out the worst of the bugs and the sandstorms, he was fine. But he imagined the guests of the ranch Suzi had renamed Hope Springs probably appreciated the handmade curtains and the lodgepole pine furnishings.
He unlocked the first cabin and immediately switched on the electric fireplace in the main room and the smaller fireplace in the bedroom. Between the two of them, they did a surprisingly effective job of keeping the place toasty in only a matter of minutes.
He walked back out onto the porch and found the blasted woman trying to wrestle a huge suitcase out of the cargo space of the SUV.
“I said I’d help you with your bags,” he muttered.
Despite the dim light from the porch and the swirl of snow, he didn’t miss the cool look she sent him out of lovely blue eyes he didn’t want to notice.
“I appreciate your…courtesy.”
He didn’t miss the slight, subtle pause before she said the last word. Though he wanted to bark and growl and tell her where to shove that delicate hint of sarcasm, he forced a tight smile.
“Here at Hope Springs, we’re nothing if not courteous,” he said in a benign sort of voice that matched her own.
He reached down and pulled the suitcase away from her then lifted another one out. The back was chock-full with five suitcases and several bags of groceries. At least Joanie must have had the foresight despite her typical ditziness to encourage their guest to shop for food before she arrived. He was grateful for that, at least. The ranch didn’t provide any meals and the nearest restaurant was six miles down the canyon in Pine Gulch, but the cabin was outfitted with a full kitchen.
Between the two of them, it only took a few trips to empty out the back of her vehicle and set everything inside the now-toasty cabin.
When he returned inside with the last load, he found her in the kitchen, putting away food from the grocery bags.
She had taken off her coat and beneath it she wore a pale blue turtleneck that showed just how nicely curved she was in all the right places.
He didn’t want to notice. “The kitchen should have everything you need in the way of pots and pans and that sort of thing. If you’re missing anything you need, you can call up to the main house.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“The reservation said you’re staying until the twenty-seventh. Is anyone else joining you?”
He wondered if he imagined the way she tilted her chin in a rather defiant sort of way. “No.”
She was staying here by herself through Christmas? He wasn’t big on celebrating the holidays himself, but he had to wonder what would make a soft, pretty woman like Emery Kendall leave everything familiar and hide out in the Idaho wilderness alone during Christmas.
None of his business, he reminded himself. He had enough on his plate without spending a minute wondering why she wanted to
