A Ranch To Call Home

In her opinion, it would have been a fine thing for them to work side by side to pay off the mortgage. Still, paid was paid and she should be grateful for it.

She tried not to think it, but would she be able to keep her property if something prevented Johnny from returning?

Yes, she thought so. Her booth at last week’s market had been a great success. It had been wonderful meeting so many friendly people, even if some of them did seem baffled about where her ranch was. She’d explained it, but in the end, they’d simply shrugged and welcomed her. There had been a few new ranchers to the area so the confusion was understandable.

Ten gongs chimed from the clock she’d found in the loft and placed on the mantel.

Time for bed and every muscle in her body was glad for it. Without a doubt, she was going to sleep like a stone. And a good thing, too. She would need to rise early in the morning to begin baking for market on Friday.

“Bedtime,” she announced to Chisel, who was already asleep in front of the hearth.

The dog twitched one ear. Clearly he was in no mood to move to another place to continue his doze. Leaning over him as far as she could, she banked the fire.

“Sweet dreams, my hairy friend.”

The soft woof he gave in answer must mean the same, she figured, except for the hairy part. Moments later, she fell into bed and was sleeping before she got three blessings counted.

* * *

Jesse drew the pocket watch from his vest. He wiped a smear of rain from the glass to find it was already one fifteen in the morning.

Hell, it was good to finally be home, no matter the hour.

A steady sheet of rain blurred the figure of Bingham racing across the bridge for home. Jesse had tried to get the boy to spend the night but he’d wanted to wake up in his own bed and was all but bursting to show his pa the horse he’d earned. The moment they’d sheltered the horses under the large lean-to in the corral, the kid had lit out for home.

Given Bingham’s youth, the extra hour of riding wouldn’t hurt. While Jesse was far from doddering, it had been a long, exhausting trip and he was weary to his bones. Walking over the bridge, he knew that if it weren’t that he was soaked to the skin, he would fall face-first onto his bed and not wake until the afternoon.

Through wavering sheets of rain, he spotted his house. In his mind, it had arms, wide open and ready to give him a welcome-home embrace.

Funny how something that wasn’t even alive could make him feel like that. It must be because a place of his own, that sense of belonging, had eluded him all his life.

It had taken a tragedy to get him here but—

What was in the windows? A white film? Fog, maybe?

He picked up his pace, his boots sucking in the mud with the effort to run. At the porch steps, he came up short, skidding and nearly going down with the shock of what he saw.

Not fog, not a white film, but curtains...lacy ones with dainty embroidered flowers.

Must be one of his neighbors played a joke on him while he was gone. Although he couldn’t imagine who it would be. He didn’t really know anyone well enough for that kind of humor.

He only hoped it wasn’t Martha Timbly, a widow more than ten years his senior. As new as he was to town, she had set her cap for him. She might have had the forwardness to decorate his place in order to show him what a fine wife she would be.

It didn’t seem likely that she had, but in the end, he could not imagine why there were curtains in his windows. He did know that in the morning they were coming down.

Given that his boots were more mud than leather, he shucked them off outside. His clothes weren’t much better so he shed them, too. Hopefully they would be dry enough come morning to put them back on so he could tend to his stock. Regretfully, all the clothes he owned were in the saddle packs he’d left behind under the lean-to. He would have remembered to bring them up to the house had he not put so much effort into trying to convince Bingham to stay the night.

He opened the front door, grateful that whoever had played the trick or done the courting hadn’t locked the door when they’d sneaked out. He doubted that many of his neighbors even had locks on their doors. Forget-Me-Not wasn’t a locking-doors kind of town.

He probably ought to check the barn to be sure no animals were in there to indicate that the prankster was still here. In his old life, he never left his door unlocked. The person he had been would have checked the barn and the trees surrounding it as a matter of habit.

But this was now. Goose bumps rippled over his bare flesh. Water dripped from his hair in an icy jag between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t get to his bed soon enough.

He paused for a moment to listen for any sound that shouldn’t be.

Nothing. Only the relentless pelting of rain on the roof.

Already half asleep, he plodded toward the bedroom, wondering if the jokester or the widow had done anything but hang curtains. He was just too tired to look right now.

Reaching for the blanket on the bed, his eyes already closed, his fingers curled about something that was not wool. Whatever it was shifted between his fingers like threads of silk...or hair?

His eyes jerked open.

There was a woman sleeping in his bed!

And not just any woman! It was her! The one he had met in town two weeks ago, the one he had daydreamed about so vividly.

Now, with his eyes wide and blinking, he could see that she had left a lamp burning low. It cast the room in a soft amber glow.

Just as in his imagination, the lady lay with shimmering cream-colored hair fanned out across his pillow. The same playful smile he’d conjured now lurked at the corners of her mouth. She must be engaged in some sweet dream.

Awake as he now felt, the room and the lady still bore a dream quality. Something about the shape of her mouth, the way her brown lashes deepened to black at the tips, felt more like a memory than the here and now. Could be he was in the grips of some magic spell. As if he believed in magic spells.

But...just maybe she would open her eyes and gaze upon him with love like she had in the daydream.

Or maybe he really was asleep again, dreaming that he was awake. Maybe the woman and the situation he knew her to be in had touched him more deeply than he realized so she was appearing in his dreams...day and night.

The only thing to do was wait and see what would happen next, if he would wake up or she would.

It was while he watched, eager and hoping to see again that devotion in her eyes, that he heard a growl.

Something lunged and knocked him sideways. The hit left him dazed. He closed his eyes, struggling to make sense of things. Footsteps pattered quickly out of the room and then returned. He cracked his eyes open. The world went black.

* * *

“I think he’s coming around,” said a voice so sweet it could only belong to an angel.

Jesse was halfway afraid to open his eyes and find that eternity had landed him someplace other than heaven. Still there was the voice and a gentle brush of fingers across his forehead.

He wasn’t mistaking the scent of lilac and citrus either. Someone, although he could not recall who or how they would know, had claimed that heaven smelled like that.

No rush to find out where he was. For now, he was happy to feel the angel rustle her fingers in his hair, to feel the soft, moist puff of her breath on his face.

Except...he felt like he was suffocating, being bound in robes that were far too tight. And whatever cloud he was reclining upon was rock hard.

“Get back, Chisel. Let the man breathe.” The fingers in his hair gently traced his scalp, running from ear to—

Pain, red-hot stabbing misery, shot through his head. He tried to sit up but firm yet feminine hands held him down.

“Lie still, Mr. Creed. You’ll only make it hurt worse.”

As if it could. Soothing unconsciousness claimed him before he could decide which side of the mortal coil he was on.

* * *

Laura Lee hadn’t meant to hit the man quite so hard, but a skillet was a skillet and the situation had been dire.

She’d been sleeping when he crept into her room, deeply sleeping in fact and betraying Johnny by dreaming of the man who lay unconscious on the floor beside her bed.

One moment, his compelling green eyes had been looking at her with dreamy longing. In the next instant, he was real, bending over her naked and dripping water on her nose.

Before she knew for sure she was awake, Chisel had knocked the man to the floor. She’d rushed for the frying pan and walloped him, in her fuzzy state not certain he was who she thought.

Not that it would have made a difference one way or another. Knowing who he was was not the same thing as knowing him.

And a wet, naked man leaning over one’s bed was a shocking thing to wake up to.

Naturally, she’d wanted to toss him back into the storm where he came from but he’d been much too heavy for her to drag. Which was why he remained beside the bed where he had fallen.

Upon their first meeting, she hadn’t judged him to be a lewd-minded man. To the contrary. He had been concerned for her predicament, even though she had not been in one.

She could not guess why he had invaded her house in the wee hours.

The storm was much worse than when she had gone to bed. Perhaps that was the reason. Maybe he was seeking shelter. Or he could be lost and had mistaken her home for his. From what she’d seen, the ranch homes in this area were not so different from one another. It might be hard to tell the difference through the deluge pounding the earth.

And if he had been very tired? Given the hour, he might have been confused.

Carefully, she slid a pillow under his head. He winced but didn’t awaken. There was no reason she should feel responsible for his pain. He was the one who’d trespassed. Any woman would have reacted the same way to a bare, damp-skinned intruder in her bedroom.

A gloriously built intruder. One she had gazed upon far longer than was appropriate under the circumstances. Under any circumstances, she had reminded herself before she dressed him in the only garment at hand.

He wouldn’t like it. What man would? But his clothes were a dripping heap on the hearth. He could wear what she put on him or continue to shiver on the floor. Besides, he would have no idea how absurd he looked until he came to.

When he did regain consciousness, and she dearly hoped it was soon since she would hate to have to fetch a doctor in this weather, she would discover his reason for being here. Depending upon what it was, she would make up her mind on whether or not to have Chisel escort him back into the rain, or sleet, as it was becoming.

For the moment, though, she would have to tend to him since she was the one who’d laid him low.

“I’m sorry I hit you.” She ought to touch the lump to assure herself that it was going down, to wash the blood out of his hair and cleanse the gash, but every time she tried, he moaned.

“Nearly sorry anyway. You can’t just sneak into a body’s home. And in case you hoped to shock me, I’ve seen a man without his clothes on before.”

One time when she and Johnny had been camped by a stream, he went to bathe, then came back without wearing a stitch. That had been the first time he’d tried to convince her to take premarital liberties. He’d pivoted this way and that, making sure she got a good look at what she would be missing by turning him down. In spite of the fact that he seemed as confident in his allure as a rooster strutting about the hen coop, some things were meant to be waited for.

In the moment, she had been fascinated by the way he looked, so trim and dapper. There had been the slightest softness to his belly, which she didn’t mind since she chose to take it as a compliment to her cooking.

Johnny was pleasant, but seeing him like that had not made her blush in the least.

The same was not true of Jesse Creed. She’d had to look away several times while getting him decently covered. She’d felt her cheeks flaming each time her fingers touched him while she yanked and tugged fabric about him.

Where Johnny was spare and reedy, Mr. Creed was muscled. Every inch of the man looked ripe with power.

It was a good thing it was Johnny she was marrying. She would hate to spend her life feeling the odd edginess that sidelong glances at Mr. Creed gave her. She took a deep breath, expelled it in a rush to purge her mind of comparing naked men.

Since she could do nothing for Mr. Creed at the moment but watch him sleep, and it was getting close to dawn, she decided to go to the barn and tend her horses.

Walking into the front room, she drew aside her pretty curtain. She’d been right about the sleet. It was coming down heavily.

Responsibilities came with having all this land. Back on the Lucky Clover, animals got fed no matter the weather. Her obligation had been to feed the hands who fed the stock. Today, it was up to her to feed the animals.

“Stay here, Chisel. Watch over our prisoner. Or our guest. We’ll figure it out later.” Yanking the blanket from the bed, she spread it over Mr. Creed.

For safety’s sake, she snuffed out the bedroom lamp. She shrugged into her heavy coat, then went outside and dashed for the barn.

By the time she reached the big red doors, mud caked her legs well past her knees. Her dress and petticoats would never be the same. She didn’t even want to think about her shoes.

A whinny of greeting met her while she still had her hand on the door latch. Then another and another...then three more.

She didn’t have that many horses! And hers were in the barn, not the paddock behind the barn.

* * *

Jesse tried to stretch. His arms would not straighten. He needed to take a deep breath but his chest was banded by something that kept his lungs from expanding.

Confusion set heavy upon him. The only thing he knew with certainty was that he was lying on the floor and it was cold.

Easing onto his elbows, he felt something soft yet inflexible cage the roll of his shoulders.

The fabric smelled pretty, though, like citrus and lilac. He’d noticed that fragrance recently, but when? His head pounded. His eyeballs ached. With great force of will, he opened his eyes.

A rose-patterned ruffle fluttered across his chest to the tempo of his breathing.

Sitting up suddenly, he cursed the pain shooting from the back of his brain to the front. He heard a seam rip. Looking down, he saw his legs sticking out of the bottom of a woman’s flannel nightgown. A wide band of lace tickled the hair on his legs inches below his knees.

What the blazes! He’d been in and out of a dream state was all he could recall.

But this was his room, as solid and real as he’d last seen it.

He sat on the floor beside the bed, his naked butt numb with cold. Glancing down, he saw a pillow. Someone must have put it under his head.

A woman—but no, not simply a woman—the woman. She must be the one who dressed him in this...this flannel nightmare.

Also the one who, no doubt, hit him in the head with the skillet that lay on the mattress. It was the only thing that made sense.

She’d hit him because—

Of his horses!

Her beau was the cowboy who was involved with those hell-raising Underwoods. They would have known he’d gone to purchase his herd.

“Damn!” he shouted, then regretted it because it hurt like blazes and because in a shadowed corner of the room, something growled.

Slowly, Jesse came to his feet. So did the animal. In the dim, predawn light, he saw it bare its great, long teeth.

“Good dog.” Or wolf or bear. “Good, good fellow.”

There was no time to deal with the beast. At this very moment, the Underwoods and their fetching accomplice could be riding away with his stock.

As he thought about it, it made sense. Just because Bingham believed the gang of brothers went to Black Creek on a regular basis did not mean that this time they weren’t following Jesse. It had been no secret in Forget-Me-Not that he would be away purchasing his horses. If the brothers were set on thievery, they knew where to find a victim.

The woman had proved to be a skilled conspirator, luring him over the bed and then knocking him senseless. Could be the reason she looked familiar was from seeing that pretty face on a wanted poster. Although, he didn’t think that was something he would forget.

How long had he been unconscious? Plenty long enough for them to ride off with nineteen prime breeding animals.

The dog’s tail thumped the wall. It emerged from the corner.

“Hey...Dog! Is that you?” he muttered in relief. “What the glory blazes are you doing in my house?”

When Jesse ran out the door, he heard the dog padding behind him.

It was a good thing his closest neighbor was a fair distance away. He’d look like a fool, running barefoot in the freezing rain wearing a woman’s nightie. And a double fool for having no weapon at hand.

In the future, no matter how blamed tired he was, he was not leaving his rifle on his saddle under the lean-to.

But if sheer anger could count as a weapon, he was well armed.

For all that his toes felt frozen, numb in the sucking mud, it didn’t cool his anger at himself and the folly of being duped by a pretty slip of a woman. He was ashamed to admit that he’d succumbed to such beguiling bait...even dreamed of her while wide awake.

Slipping and sliding, he rounded the corner of the barn where the paddock was located.

As he’d feared, it was empty.

No mind, he was a tracker by former profession.

Looked like Hey...Dog was a tracker, too, although not so skilled as a dog ought to be. He trotted to the large barn doors, scratched and whined.

A seam of light glowed dimly through the door crack.

Either someone remained in the barn or the thieves had committed the sin of leaving a lamp burning when they hightailed it.

“Hush up, pup,” he whispered, not wanting his presence known before he snatched his rifle from the saddle where it lay across a sawhorse ten feet away. “You ready to catch us a thief?” he asked, retrieving the weapon. The dog thumped his muddy tail on the nightgown.

Slowly, so as to make the least noise possible, he drew open one of the doors and eased inside, his rifle at the ready.

He spotted his horses first thing.

Then he saw the woman. She stood on a wagon bed, her skirt rucked up about her waist and her shapely bare legs caked with mud. Gripping a pitchfork, she shoveled hay onto the barn floor. Because she had her back turned, he had a moment to watch her golden hair shimmy with the sway of her hips. She hummed an off-key tune while she worked.

The relief he felt finding that she was not a thief seemed excessive. He’d only met her the one time, for pity’s sake. It couldn’t rightly be said that she was even an acquaintance. There was just something about her...a sensation of knowing...

Wasn’t that as logical as a frog flapping butterfly wings?

But here she was, making herself at home in his house and in his barn.

“Howdy, ma’am,” he said because his sense of knowing did not include the knowledge of her name.

Chapter Five

“Oh!” Startled by the voice, Laura Lee’s fingers clamped hard around the handle of the pitchfork. Turning quickly, she sucked in a breath and held it. Not because she believed the man intended to shoot her; the weapon was nose to the dirt and his finger nowhere near the trigger. She couldn’t breathe because of the effort it took not to laugh out loud.

Her guest—she supposed that was what she must consider him to be—looked absurd. Seeing him standing in the doorway of the barn, his legs spread in a no-nonsense stance, holding his weapon while rain dripped off his eyebrows...oh, my.

Still, it wasn’t that which nearly brought her to her knees in hilarity. It was the sight of this large man, so bold looking in every way, dressed in pink flannel with delicate flowers and leaves stretched across his chest, with wiry brown hair poking from the stretched-out neckline, that made her need to cover her mouth with one hand.

She might have managed to keep control had it not been for the sodden lace clinging to his shins, seeing those muscular calves captured by embroidered rosebuds.

Pressing her fingers to her mouth did no good. A giggle burst from her lips.

“I do beg your pardon,” she said with a slight, high-pitched hiccup.

She stabbed the prongs of the pitchfork into the hay, then climbed down from the wagon. She yanked her skirt from the waistband, smoothing it down so that it covered her legs in a proper manner. He’d already seen more of her than he should have...but not nearly as much as she’d seen of him.

Why did that have to pop into her mind? Now she was blushing and he would guess why.

“Your own clothes are wet and this is all I could spare that didn’t require a corset.” No! She could not have possibly blurted that out. “I meant...well, you were wet and shivering. Most of the time, flannel is wonderfully warm. I hope you—”

“Thank you for bringing my horses in,” he said, saving her from continued babbling.

Which she did not normally do. It’s just that the events of the last hours had been...unusual, and vastly perplexing. At least she understood now what he was doing on her property. He and his horses needed shelter. He had been naked because—she didn’t know why for sure, but there could be many reasons that did not involve an assault on her person.

No doubt being soaked, he had removed his clothes out of for respect for the many hours she had spent polishing the floor. A more suspicious part of her brain argued that he would have no idea how much care she had given the floors and that it had been too dark to see the shine.

“You are welcome. Come, Chisel.” She would rather have the dog standing beside her than Mr. Creed. One could only trust one’s judgment to a certain degree.

Except where Johnny was concerned. Naturally, she trusted her fiancé completely. But where was he? Two weeks would be enough time for him to do what he needed to. If he really... But no, she trusted him with all her heart.

Obediently, Chisel trotted forward and licked her hand. Seconds later, he joined Whittle and Bride in their stall. Saffron and the other horses mingled in the large open area between the stalls, munching hay.

“I’m sorry I hit you, Mr. Creed.” She might as well clear her conscience about that now. Judging by the increasingly bad weather, they might be stranded together for a few hours. “But you did give me a start.”

“I didn’t expect anyone to be in the house.”

It was a relief to know she was right about the reason he was here. Any reasonable person would have sought the nearest shelter in this storm. She knew nothing about Mr. Creed other than his name and that he had a scar on his left hip. She also knew that he looked... well, never mind that.

It was blamed difficult to never mind it, though. Her eyes had seen what they’d seen and there was no changing that. If soaking flannel was not clinging to him, it would be easier. But it was clinging to him, an intimate reminder.

“Your herd is beautiful,” she said as a distraction.

“Plenty hungry, too. Again, many thanks for bringing them inside and feeding them.”

Setting his rifle against the wall beside the door, he crossed the barn and leaped up on the wagon. He picked up the pitchfork and began shoveling out the hay. The smooth pull and draw of his muscles, which she could see because of what he was wearing, made the job look easier than it felt when she did it.

“It was the neighborly thing to do,” she answered while refocusing her attention on the long black mane of a pretty brown mare.

“And I reckon we’re neighbors?” His brows knit together, as though something was puzzling him.