days, live under the same roof with me?”
Intimate images flooded her mind. She forced them out. His home was humongous. His bedroom was on one side of the house and hers on the other. Chances were there would be days when their paths wouldn’t even cross. “Yes, I’m agreeing to do just that,” she said.
He nodded. “I’ll call Hightower and let him know. By the way, what about more clothes for you? You only brought an overnight bag,” Clint said.
“I spoke with my aunt yesterday and she told me if I decided to stay she would send me some things.”
“Your aunt is the only family you have?”
She might as well be, she wanted to say.
“No, I have an uncle and several cousins,” she said instead. “My mother sent me to live with my grandfather and Aunt Claudine when I was thirteen. Over the years Aunt Claudine has become a surrogate mother to me,” she added.
“And your grandfather?”
A pain settled in her heart. She wanted to correct him so badly.
“My grandfather died four years ago,” she said softly.
“That was about the same time I lost my mother,” he said, looking down at the coffee in his cup. She could hear the sadness in his voice. He glanced up and at that moment an emotion passed between them—a deep understanding of how it felt to lose someone you truly cared about.
“Were you close to her?” she asked.
“Yes. Casey, Cole and I were her world and she was ours. She and Uncle Sid, along with Chester and the other old-timers on the ranch were our family. What about your mother? You said she sent you to live with your grandfather and aunt when you were thirteen. Do the two of you still keep in touch?”
In a way Alyssa wished he would have asked her anything but that. That her mother could so easily send her away and not stay in touch was still a pain that would occasionally slither through her heart.
“No. I haven’t seen or heard from my mother since the day she sent me away,” she said.
Deciding she didn’t want to subject herself to any more of his inquiries about her family, she stood. “I need to make a few calls. In addition to contacting my aunt, I need to make sure I have everything I need to continue my business while I’m here. That means I will need to use your computer a lot,” she said.
“I don’t have a problem with that.”
Alyssa nodded. “Okay. I’m sure you have a lot to do today, as well,” she said, picking up her plate and cup and carrying both over to the sink. “And since today is Chester’s day off, I’ll take care of the dishes as soon as I’ve made those calls.”
With nothing else to say, Alyssa walked out of the kitchen.
* * *
Clint continued to sit at the table. From the moment he had gotten the letter from the bureau advising him of his marriage to Alyssa, he had simply assumed that getting out of the marriage would be easy—a piece of cake. He had miscalculated on a number of things. First, the bureau being so hard-nosed over such a blatant mistake and second, his attraction to the woman who was legally his wife. Now, he was fully committed to go to extraordinary restrictions to keep his hands off of her. In other words, to stay out of her bed and to make sure she stayed out of his.
Neither would be easy.
That was what made the thought of the next thirty days so disconcerting. A part of him wanted to rebel. Why not have sex with her? After all it was just sex, no big deal. They were mature adults who evidently had healthy appetites with no desire to get caught up in anything other than the moment. Right? Wrong.
He couldn’t help but recall her words about not being one to indulge in casual affairs, which gave him a glimpse into her character. While engaging her in conversation, he had taken in everything she’d said—even some things she hadn’t said, especially about her family.
The Texas Ranger in him could detect when someone was withholding information. He hadn’t wanted to pry, but she’d deliberately omitted mentioning a few things. Such as why her mother had given her up at thirteen and had never once come back to see her. And when she had mentioned her cousins he hadn’t heard that deep sense of love and warmth he’d felt whenever he spoke of his. Granted, he didn’t expect every family to be like the Westmorelands, but still he would think there was a closeness there. He had heard the deep love and affection in her voice when she had spoken of her grandfather and aunt.
And then he could very well be reading more into it than was there. It could be that she was a private person and hadn’t felt the need or wasn’t stirred by any desire to tell him any more than she had. Wife or no wife, it wasn’t “expose your soul to Clint” day.
He rubbed his hand down his face. Why did he even care? he wondered. What was there about Alyssa that made him want to dig deeper and unravel her inner being, layer by layer? With that thought in mind, he was about to get up from the table when his cell phone went off. He stood to pull it off the attachment on his belt. “Hello,” he said.
“So what’s this I hear about you having a wife?”
He couldn’t help but smile when he sat back down. He could envision his sister with her long black lashes lifting in a way that said she had every right to know everything she asked him.
“I see Chester’s loose lips have been flapping again,” he muttered, thinking he needed to have a talk with the old man. Of course, Clint knew that all the talk in the world wouldn’t do any good with Chester.
“He knew I had a right to know,” Casey Westmoreland Quinn said in a serious tone. “So tell me about her.”
He sighed. Since she hadn’t asked what happened to make him have a wife in the first place, he could only assume that Chester had covered that information with her already. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. What’s her name? Where is she from? How old is she? Is she someone that you used to work with who I’ve met already? And so on and so forth.”
Clint frowned. Alyssa reminded him of Casey with her endless questions.
“Her name is Alyssa Barkley. She’s from Waco and she’s twenty-seven. And no, you’ve never met her. She became a Ranger right out of college and then left not long after that assignment we did together. She was only with the Rangers for a year,” he said.
“So you didn’t make a good impression on her then, did you?”
“I wasn’t trying to. I was all into Chantelle at the time,” he said.
“Please don’t mention her name,” Casey said in feigned terror.
Clint chuckled. Casey and Chantelle had never gotten along from day one. His sister had warned him about her but he wouldn’t listen. Now he wished he had. But at the time he had been thinking with the lower part of his body and not his brain. Chantelle caught the attention of any man within one hundred feet. But then so did Alyssa. However, it had taken only a few moments spent with Alyssa to know she and Chantelle were very different.
Alyssa wasn’t all into herself.
