The Rancher's Baby Read online

  “What question is that?”

  “Who died?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There were ashes in that urn. Obviously they weren’t Will’s. But if he’s not dead, then who is?”

  Selena frowned. “Maybe no one’s dead. Maybe it’s ashes from a campfire.”

  “Why would someone go to all that trouble? Why would somebody go to that much trouble to fake Will’s death? Or to fake anyone’s death? Again, I think this has something to do with those letters. With all of the women in his life being made beneficiaries of his estate. And this is why I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

  “Because you’re a high-handed, difficult, surly, obnoxious...”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Just a second,” she said, taking her kettle off the stove and pouring hot water into two of the mugs on the counter. “Irritating, overbearing...”

  “Wealthy, handsome, incredibly generous.”

  “Yes, it’s true,” she said. “But I prefer beautiful to handsome. I mean, I assume you were offering up descriptions of me.”

  She shoved a mug in his direction, smiling brilliantly. He did not tell her he didn’t want any. He did not remind her that he had told her at least fifteen times over the years that he did not drink tea. Instead, he curled his fingers around the mug and pulled it close, knowing she wouldn’t realize he wasn’t having any.

  It was just one of her charming quirks. The fact that she could be totally oblivious to what was happening around her. Cast-off shoes in the middle of her floor were symptoms of it. It wasn’t that Selena was an airhead; she was incredibly insightful, actually. It was just that her head seemed to continually be full of thoughts about what was next. Sometimes, all that thinking made it hard to keep her rooted in the present.

  She rested her elbows on the counter, then placed her chin in her palms, looking suddenly much younger than she had only a moment ago. Reminding him of the girl he had known in college.

  And along with that memory came an old urge. To reach out, to brush her hair out of her face, to trace the line of her lower lip with the edge of his thumb. To take a chance with all of her spiky indignation and press his mouth against hers.

  Instead, he lifted his mug to his lips and took a long drink, the hot water and bitterly acidic tea burning his throat as he swallowed.

  He really, really didn’t like tea.

  “You know,” she said, tapping the side of her mug, straightening. “I do have a few projects you could work on around here. If you’re going to stay with me.”

  “You’re putting me to work?”

  “Yes. If you’re going to stay with me, you need to earn your keep.”

  “I’m earning my keep by guarding you.”

  “From a threat you don’t even know exists.”

  “I know a few things,” he said, holding up his hand and counting off each thing with his fingers. “I know someone is dead. I know you are mysteriously named as a beneficiary of a lot of money, as are a bunch of other women.”

  “And one assumes that we are no longer going to inherit any money since Will isn’t dead.”

  “But someone wanted us all to think that he was. Hell, maybe somebody wanted him to be dead.”

  “Are you a private detective now? The high-end health-food grocery-chain business not working out for you?”

  “It’s working out for me very well, actually. Which you know. And don’t change the subject.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

  He was genuinely concerned about her well-being; he wasn’t making that up. But there was something else, too. Something holding him here. Or maybe it was just something keeping him from going back to Wyoming. He had avoided Royal, and Texas altogether, since his divorce. Had avoided going anywhere that reminded him of his former life. He’d owned the ranch in Jackson Hole for over a decade, but he, Cassandra and Eleanor hadn’t spent as much time there as they had here.

  Still, for some reason, now that he was back, the idea of returning to that gigantic ranch house in Wyoming to rattle around all by himself didn’t seem appealing.

  There was a reason he had gotten married. A reason he and Cassandra had started a family. It was what he had wanted. An answer to his lifetime of loneliness. To the deficit he had grown up with. He had wanted everything. A wife, children, money. All of those things that would keep him from feeling like he had back then.

  But he had learned the hard way that children could be taken from you. That marriages crumbled. And that money didn’t mean a damn thing in the end.

  If he’d had a choice, if the universe would have asked him, he would have given up the money first.

  Of course, he hadn’t realized that until it was too late.

  Not that there was any fixing it. Not that there had been a choice. Cancer didn’t care if you were a billionaire.

  It didn’t care if a little girl was your entire world.

  Now all he had was a big empty house. One that currently had an invitation to a charity event on the fridge. An invitation he just couldn’t deal with right now.

  He looked back up at Selena. Yeah, staying here for a few days was definitely more appealing than heading straight back to Jackson Hole.

  “Okay,” he said. “What projects did you have in mind?”

  * * *

  He never said he didn’t like tea.

  That was Selena’s first thought when she got up the next morning and set about making coffee for Knox and herself. Selena found it singularly odd that he never refused the tea. She served it to him sometimes just to see if he would. But he never did. He just sat there holding it. Which was funny, because Knox was not a passive man. Far from it.

  In fact, in college, he had been her role model for that reason. He was authoritative. He asked for what he wanted. He went for what he wanted. And Selena had wanted to remake herself in his mold. She’d found him endlessly fascinating.

  Though she had to admit, as she bustled around the kitchen, he was just as fascinating now. But now she had a much firmer grasp on what she wanted. On what was possible.

  She had felt a little weird about him staying with her at first, which was old baggage creeping in. Old feelings. That crush she’d had on him in college that had never had a hope in hell of going anywhere. Not because she thought it was impossible for him to desire her, but because she knew there was no future in it. And she needed Knox as a friend much more than she needed him as a...well...the alternative.

  But then last night, as they had been standing in the kitchen, she had looked at him. Really looked at him. Those lines between his brows were so deep, and his eyes were so incredibly...changed. Physically, she supposed he kind of looked the same, and yet he didn’t. He was reduced. And it was a terrible thing to see a man like him reduced. But she couldn’t blame him.

  What happened with Eleanor had been such a shock. Such a horrible, hideous shock.

  One day, she had been a normal, healthy toddler, and then she had been lethargic. Right after that came the cancer diagnosis, and in only a couple of months she was gone.

  The entire situation had been surreal and heartbreaking. For her. And Eleanor wasn’t even her child. But her friend’s pain had been so real, so raw... She had no idea how he had coped with it, and now she could see that he hadn’t really. That he still was trying to cope.

  He hadn’t come back to Texas since Eleanor’s death, and she had seen him only a couple of times. At the funeral. And then when she had come to Jackson Hole in the summer for a visit. Otherwise...it had all been texts and emails and quick phone conversations.

  But now that he was back in Texas, he seemed to need to stay for a little while, and she was happy for him to think it was for her. Happy to be the scapegoat so he could work through whatever emotional thing he needed to work through. Knox,
in the past, would have been enraged at the assessment that he needed to work through anything emotionally. He was such a stoic guy, always had been.

  But she knew he wouldn’t even pretend there wasn’t lingering damage from the loss of his little girl. Selena had watched him break apart completely at Eleanor’s funeral. They had never talked about it again. She didn’t think they ever would. But then, she supposed they didn’t need to. They had shared the experience. That moment when he couldn’t be strong anymore. When there was no child to be strong for, and when his wife had been off with her family, and there had simply been no reason for him to remain standing upright. Selena had been there for that moment.

  If all the years of friendship hadn’t bonded them, that moment would have done it all on its own.

  Just thinking of it made her chest ache, and she shook off the feeling, going over to the coffee maker to pour herself a cup.

  She wondered if Knox was still sleeping. He was going to be mad if he missed prime caffeination time.

  She wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room just as the door to the guest bedroom opened and Knox walked out, pulling his T-shirt over his head—but not quickly enough. She caught a flash of muscled, tanned skin and...chest hair. Oh, the chest hair. Why was that compelling enough to stop her in her tracks? She didn’t even have a moment to question it. She was too caught up. Too beset by the sight.

  Genuinely. She was completely immobilized by the sight of her best friend’s muscles.

  It wasn’t like she had never seen Knox shirtless before. But it had been a long time. And the last time, he had most definitely been married.

  Not that she had forgotten he was hot when he was married to Cassandra. It was just that...he had been a married man. And that meant something to Selena. Because it meant something to him.

  It had been a barrier, an insurmountable one, even bigger than that whole long-term friendship thing. And now it wasn’t there. It just wasn’t. He was walking out of the guest bedroom looking sleep rumpled and entirely too lickable. And there was just...nothing stopping them from doing what men and women did.

  She’d had a million excuses for not doing that. For a long time. She didn’t want to risk entanglements, didn’t want to compromise her focus. Didn’t want to risk pregnancy. Didn’t have time for a relationship.

  But she was in a place where those things were less of a concern. This house was symbolic of that change in her life. She was making a home. And making a home made her want to fill it. With art, with warmth, with knickknacks that spoke to her. With people.

  She wondered, then. What it would be like to actually live with a man? To have one in her life? In her home? In her bed?

  And just like that she was fantasizing about Knox in her bed. That body she had caught a glimpse of relaxing beneath her emerald green bedspread, his hands clasped behind his head, a satisfied smile on his face...

  She sucked in a sharp breath and tried to get a hold of herself. “Coffee is ready,” she said, grinning broadly, not feeling the grin at all.

  “Good,” he said, his voice rough from sleep.

  It struck her then, just what an intimate thing that was. To hear someone’s voice after they had been sleeping.

  “Right this...way,” she said, awkwardly beating a path into the kitchen, turning away from him quickly enough that she sloshed coffee over the edge of her cup.

  “You have food for breakfast?” he asked, that voice persistently gravelly and interesting, and much less like her familiar friend’s than she would like it to be. She needed some kind of familiarity to latch on to, something to blot out the vision of his muscles. But he wasn’t giving her anything.

  Jerk.

  “No,” she said, keeping her voice cheery. “I have coffee and spite for breakfast.”

  “Well, that’s not going to work for me.”

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” she said, flinging open one of her cabinets and revealing her collection of cereal and biscotti. “Of course I have food for breakfast.”

  “Bacon? Eggs?”

  “Do I look like a diner to you?” she asked.

  “Not you personally. But I was hoping that your house might have more diner-like qualities.”

  “No,” she said, opening up the fridge and rummaging around. “Well, what do you know? I do have eggs. And bacon. I get a delivery of groceries every week. From a certain grocery store.”

  He smiled, a lopsided grin that did something to her stomach. Something she was going to ignore and call hunger, because they were talking about bacon, and being hungry for bacon was much more palatable than being hungry for your best friend.

  “I’ll cook,” he said.

  “Oh no,” she said, getting the package of bacon out of the fridge and handing it to Knox before bending back down and grabbing the carton of eggs and placing that in his other hand. “You don’t have to cook.”

  “Why do I get the feeling that I really do have to cook?”

  She shrugged. “It depends on whether you want bacon and eggs.”

  “Do you not know how to cook?”

  “I know how to cook,” she said. “But the odds of me actually cooking when I only have half of a cup of coffee in my system are basically none. Usually, I prefer to have sweets for breakfast. Hence, biscotti and breakfast cereals. However, I will sometimes eat bacon and eggs for dinner. Or I will eat bacon and eggs for breakfast if a handsome man fixes them for me.”

  He lifted a brow. “Oh, I see. So you have this in your fridge for when a man spends the night.”

  “Obviously. Since a man did just spend the night.” Her face flushed. She knew exactly what he was imagining. And really, he had no idea.

  That was not why she had the bacon and eggs. She had the bacon and eggs because sometimes she liked an easy dinner. But she didn’t really mind if Knox thought she had more of a love life than she actually did.

  Of course, now they were thinking about that kind of thing at the same time. Which was...weird. And possibly responsible for the strange electric current arcing between them.

  “I’ll cook,” he said, breaking that arc and moving to the stove, getting out pans and bowls, cracking eggs with an efficiency she admired.

  “Do you have an assignment list for me?” he asked, picking up the bowl and whisking the eggs inside.

  Why was that sexy? What was happening? His broad shoulders and chest, those intensely muscled forearms, somehow seeming all the more masculine when he was scrambling eggs, of all things.

  There was something about the very domestic action, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe it was the contrast between masculinity and domesticity. Or maybe it was just because there had never been a man in her kitchen making breakfast.

  She tried to look blasé, as though men made her breakfast every other weekend. After debauchery. Lots and lots of debauchery. She had a feeling she wasn’t quite managing blasé, so she just took a sip of her coffee and stared at the white star that hung on her back wall, her homage to the Lone Star State. And currently, her salvation.

  “Assignment list,” she said, slamming her hands down on the countertop, breaking her reverie. She owed that star a thank-you for restoring her sanity. She’d just needed a moment of not looking at Knox. “Well, I want new hardware on those cabinets. The people who lived here before me had a few things that weren’t really to my taste. That is one of them. Also, there are some things in an outbuilding the previous inhabitants left, and I want them moved out. Oh, and I want to get rid of the ceiling fan in the living room.”

  “I hope you’re planning on paying me for this,” he said, dumping the eggs into the pan, a sizzling sound filling the room.

  “Nope,” she said, lifting her coffee mug to her lips.

  Knox finished cooking, and somehow Selena managed not to swoon. So, that was good.

 
They didn’t bother to go into her dining room. Instead they sat at the tall chairs around the island, and Selena looked down at her breakfast resolutely.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What?” She looked up, her eyes clashing with Knox’s. “You keep asking me that.”

  “Because you keep acting like you might not be.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m alive,” he responded. “As to being okay...that’s not really part of my five-year plan.”

  “What’s your five-year plan?”

  “Not drink myself into a stupor. Keep my business running, because at some point I probably will be glad I still have it. That’s about it.”

  “Well,” she said softly, “you can add replacing my kitchen hardware to your five-year plan. But I would prefer it be on this side of it, rather than the back end.”

  He laughed, and she found that incredibly gratifying. Without thinking, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against his cheek, against his beard. She drew back quickly, wishing the impression of that touch would fade away. It didn’t.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Are you keeping the beard?”

  “It’s not really a fashion statement. It’s more evidence of personal neglect.”

  “Well, you haven’t neglected your whole body,” she said, thinking of that earlier flash of muscle. She immediately regretted her words. She regretted them more than she did touching his beard. And beard-touching was pretty damned inappropriate between friends. At least, she was pretty certain it was.

  He lifted a brow and took a bite of bacon. “Elaborate.”

  “I’m just saying. You’re in good shape, Knox. I noticed.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, setting the bacon down. His gray eyes were cool as they assessed her, but for some reason she felt heat pooling in her stomach.

  Settle down.

  Her body did not listen. It kept on being hot. And that heat bled into her cheeks. So she knew she was blushing brilliant rose for Knox’s amusement.

  “I’m just used to complimenting the men who make me breakfast,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice deadpan.