Kathie DeNosky - Your Ranch...Or Mine?

But when it came to Taylor, it was as if his skills didn’t even exist. All she had to do was look at him with those big green eyes of hers and his training seemed to go right out the window.

The first time he’d noticed his uncharacteristic reaction to her had been when she told him that she wanted the other half of the ranch. She’d looked him square in the eye and the passion and determination in her striking green gaze had sent a streak of heat straight to the region south of his belt buckle. He had even found himself wondering if she would be that passionate when he made love to her.

His body tightened to an almost painful state and he rattled off every curse word he could think of. He forcefully slammed the car door and locked it with the remote. As he walked back to the house, he glanced down at the small bag in his hand. She couldn’t have put much more than a few changes of clothes in it, indicating that she wouldn’t be staying more than a night or two. That suited him just fine.

The sooner she went back to California and left him alone, the better. Then maybe he could figure out what the hell had gotten into him and what he was going to do to get rid of it.

* * *

Well before dawn, Taylor rolled over in bed and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. She hadn’t been able to sleep more than a couple of hours and those had been filled with fitful dreams of the tall, dark-haired man sleeping in the bedroom directly across the hall from hers.

Deciding she couldn’t stand another minute of tossing and turning, she sighed heavily, threw back the covers and sat up on the side of the bed. How was she going to get Donaldson to sell her his interest in the ranch and leave the Lucky Ace for good? And why on earth did she find him so darned attractive?

She still wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t somehow managed to cheat her grandfather in that poker game. But Donaldson had presented a compelling argument for his innocence and even though she knew how good her grandfather was at the game, she was starting to have her doubts. After all, he was human and as much as she hated to admit it, he could very well have made a mistake when he mentally calculated his odds of winning that fateful hand.

But what disturbed her the most about Donaldson was her reaction to him. The moment he’d approached her at the party to introduce himself, she had caught her breath, and she wasn’t entirely certain she had breathed normally since. She had never experienced that kind of reaction to any of the men she’d dated in the past, let alone one she had just met and didn’t trust.

Exhausted from the emotional roller coaster she had been on for the past three weeks and unsettled by her reaction to the man across the hall, she decided to do the one thing that always helped her put things in perspective. After a quick shower, she was going to start cooking.

Twenty minutes later, Taylor tied her damp hair back in a ponytail as she walked into the spacious kitchen. After washing her hands and starting the coffeemaker, she prepared to get to work. Checking the pantry and refrigerator for available ingredients, she decided on what she would make for breakfast then reached into one of the cabinets for a set of mixing bowls.

“Do you mind if I get myself a cup of coffee?” a deep male voice asked from close behind her.

Jumping, she almost dropped the bowls she held as she spun around to face Donaldson. Her heart racing, she took a deep breath. “I think you just took ten years off my life.”

“Sorry,” he said, hanging his hat on a peg by the door before pouring himself a mug of coffee. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me.” His deep chuckle sent a wave of goose bumps shimmering over her skin. “It’s kind of hard not to make noise in a pair of boots on a hardwood floor.”

Her heart skipped a beat as her gaze traveled the length of him, down to his scuffed cowboy boots. No man had a right to look that good so early in the morning.

Last night at the party, she had thought he was extremely handsome in his dark blue jeans, white oxford-cloth shirt and expensive caiman-leather boots. But that was nothing compared to the way he looked now. Wearing well-worn jeans and a chambray work shirt, he was downright devastating. With his dark eyes, black hair and a fashionable day’s growth of beard stubble, Donaldson had that bad boy appeal about him that was sure to send shivers up the spine of any woman with a pulse.

Disgusted with herself and her wayward thoughts, Taylor set the metal mixing bowls on the counter and reached for a carton of eggs. “Where’s my grandfather’s housekeeper?”

“Marie retired right after the first of the year and I just haven’t gotten around to hiring another one,” he answered.

She wasn’t surprised. The woman her grandfather had hired after her grandmother died had to be getting close to seventy. But on the other hand, she wouldn’t have put it past Donaldson to have fired the woman, either.

“I’ll have breakfast ready in a few minutes,” she said, cracking eggs into one of the bowls with one hand while she reached for a whisk with the other. “Why don’t you have a seat at the table?”

“What are you making?” he asked as he sat down at the head of the oak trestle table that had been in her grandmother’s family for over three generations.

“Blueberry and ricotta–stuffed French toast with blueberry syrup, link sausage and blueberries and cantaloupe covered with vanilla sauce,” she said, dipping extra thick slices of bread in the cinnamon-spiced egg mixture before placing them on the heated stovetop griddle.

“Sounds good, but isn’t that a little fancy for a typical ranch breakfast?” he commented. “You must really like to cook.”

She shrugged. “Since I graduated from the California School of Culinary Arts, then went to Paris for a year to study pastry, you might say I’m rather fond of it.”

“Do you have your own restaurant?”

Arranging the food on two plates, she shook her head. “No, I’m a personal chef. I’m mainly hired for dinner parties and other special in-home occasions, like graduation and anniversary celebrations.”

“That sounds like an interesting job,” he said conversationally. “Do you have many clients?”

Nodding, she poured vanilla sauce over the fruit. “When I first started, I registered with the personal chef association and they referred clients to me. Now the majority of the calls I get are referrals from clients or from people who have attended the dinner parties I’ve prepared.”

“You must be good at what you do,” he said, sounding thoughtful.

Taylor carried the plates over to the table and sat down. “I’ll let you be the judge.” She watched him eye the food in front of him as if he wasn’t sure it was safe to eat. Barely resisting the urge to laugh, she asked, “Is something wrong?”

“You made your opinion of me quite clear last night, so I’m sure you can understand my hesitation,” he said, giving her a deliberate smile.

“It’s true that I don’t completely trust you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t trust me.” She switched his plate with hers. “Now you have no reason not to try it.”

Picking up his knife and fork, he cut into the French toast. “What do you say we start over?” he suggested. “The least we can do is be civil to each other until you go back to Los Angeles.”

“I agree that being polite to each other would make negotiations for my buying your share of the ranch a lot easier,” she agreed, taking a bite of fruit.

“I told you last night I’m not selling. But you could always sell your half to me,” he said, taking a bite of toast.

“Absolutely not. I love the Lucky Ace. It represents the best part of my childhood.” Irritated by his offer to buy her share, Taylor put her fork down to glare at him. “My grandfather knew how much this place meant to me and he intended for me to have it. I’m not selling it to you or anyone else.”

Donaldson calmly took a sip of his coffee. “Then before you go back to Los Angeles, we’ll have to work out an agreement on how I run the day-to-day operations and how often you want to receive dividend checks.”

“I’m not going back to L.A.,” she said, taking great satisfaction in the annoyed expression that came over his handsome face.

A forkful of toast halfway to his mouth, he slowly lowered it back to his plate. “What do you mean you aren’t going back?”

Her appetite deserting her, she rose from the table to scrape the contents of her plate in the garbage disposal. “I have every intention of making the Lucky Ace my permanent home.”

“What about your clients back in Los Angeles?” he asked, looking more irritated with each passing second. “And that backpack wasn’t big enough to hold more than a handful of clothes.”

“I informed my clients of the move over a week ago and arranged for another chef to cover the dinner parties I had scheduled,” she said, watching the frown lines on his forehead deepen further. “I sublet my apartment, stored my furniture, and the clothes I was unable to bring with me in the car, I shipped here. Those cartons should arrive sometime next week. I told you last night when you went out to get my backpack that I was here to run the ranch and would get the rest of my things from the car today.”

He suddenly got up from the table, walked over to scrape his plate, then reached for the hat hanging beside the back door.

“Will you be back for lunch?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then I’ll have plenty of time to clean my room this morning before I bring my things in from the car and put them away this afternoon,” she said thoughtfully.

“I’ll go over to the bunkhouse and see if I can get one of the men to help you with that,” he answered without turning around.

Before she could thank him for his thoughtfulness, he opened the door to walk out onto the porch then forcefully pulled it shut behind him.

“He took that better than what I thought he would,” she murmured as she started rinsing their dishes to put into the dishwasher. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but Donaldson’s passive acceptance of her moving into the ranch house hadn’t been it.

Of course, she wasn’t foolish enough to think that he had given up trying to get her to sell her part of the ranch to him. But maybe now that he knew she was serious about living at the ranch, he was giving a little more thought to selling her his.

* * *

Lane rode his blue roan gelding across the pasture toward the barn at a slow walk. He had to find some way to get Taylor to sell him her share of the ranch. Or if that wasn’t something she was willing to do, at least get her to go back to Los Angeles and leave him the hell alone.

He could appreciate her sentimentality about the place her grandfather owned. But he had become attached to the property as well. For the first time in over twenty years he had a place he could truly call his own. It felt good and he wasn’t willing to give that up.

As he stared off across the land, he thought about the plans he had for the future. He’d made a fortune playing poker and having invested wisely, he never had to work another day in his life if he didn’t want to. But he didn’t consider playing poker or ranching actual jobs. Poker was a pastime. He enjoyed the challenge of competing with other equally skilled players and if he ever lost interest in it, he’d quit with no regrets. But ranching was a lifestyle, and up until six months ago, he hadn’t even realized how much he had missed it. That’s why he intended to improve the Lucky Ace by introducing a herd of free-range cattle, as well as start raising and training roping horses for rodeo.