The Enemy's Daughter

Liking him immediately, Steve grinned. “Well, now, that depends. I’m not much of a gambler. How about you?”

He shrugged. “I lose more than I win, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

Steve watched smothered grins spread through the rest of the cowboys and knew he was being set up. Not bothering to hide his grin, he’d expected as much. He was the odd man out and a Yank, to boot, and if he’d been in their shoes, he would have done the same thing. The way a man played poker said a hell of a lot about him.

Pulling out a chair across the table from the older man, he said, “I’m in. Name your stakes.”

Chairs scraped on the old wooden floor as the others quickly joined in, someone pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and the game was on.

It didn’t take long for his companions to figure out that Steve was no slouch when it came to cards—or for him to realize that they could hold their own with him when it came to bluffing. Especially Nate. He could be holding everything from a royal flush to nothing but a pair of deuces, but you’d never know it from the easygoing grin on his face.

And that made him a very dangerous man indeed, Steve acknowledged. When you couldn’t tell what someone was thinking, you didn’t dare turn your back on him. He knew that, accepted it and didn’t intend to forget it. But that didn’t mean he didn’t thoroughly enjoy pitting his wits against Nate and every other man there. From the way things were looking, first with the daughter, then Nate and the rest of the hands, this mission was going to be a hell of a lot more fun than he’d expected.

Losing his second hand in a row to the older man, Steve watched him rake in winnings that at the outset of the hand he’d been sure were his, and he could do nothing but swear good-naturedly. “You’ve got a hell of a way of losing there, mate. You ever let anyone else lose?”

“Not if I can help it.” He chuckled. “I kind of like it this way.”

“I can see why you would,” Steve drawled, amused. “Just don’t get too comfortable. Things are about to change.”

Far from perturbed, Nate only grinned. “I wouldn’t go spending my winnings just yet, if I were you. From where I’m sitting, you haven’t got any.”

“The night’s not over yet,” Steve retorted, his own grin wide. “Deal.”

With nothing more than that, the challenge was issued and the stakes were raised. Enjoying himself, Steve won the next two hands, then lost three. But he couldn’t complain. The game stayed friendly, and it gave him a chance to learn more about Lise and her elusive father.

Tossing his ante into the middle of the table for the next game, he said with studied casualness, “I guess things are pretty easy around here when the boss is away, huh? How long’s he going to be gone?”

In the process of taking a sip of his whiskey, Chuck, the youngest of the group, nearly choked. “What are you talking about? The old man doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what’s going on around here. He’s not here half the time. Lise is the one who keeps this place going.”

“And she does a damn good job of it,” Preston, the quiet one of the group, said proudly.

The others nodded in agreement, and there was no question that Lise was respected by all of them. “She’s a good boss,” Nate said. “I never worked for a better one.”

“No kidding?” Steve said. “This place must be half the size of Texas. You sure her boyfriend’s not helping her? That’s an awful lot of responsibility for a woman alone.”

Fishing for more information, Steve threw the bait out and didn’t have to wait long for a response. “Lise ain’t got no boyfriend,” Frankie, a big, balding hulk of a cowboy, said with a crooked grin. “Never has, as far as I remember.”

“Wait a minute,” Barney said. A short, husky man with a tattoo of a mermaid on his arm, he had a wicked grin and the very devil in his eyes. “Don’t go forgetting old man McEnnis. He was sweet on her there for a while.”

“Sweet, my eye,” Nate retorted. “The old geezer didn’t have any teeth! And he died the next week! That ain’t no boyfriend. That’s a nightmare!”

Everyone laughed at that, including Steve, even as he filed away the information for future use. So Lise didn’t have a man in her life, and from the sound of it, never had. That would make romancing her a hell of a lot easier, if that’s what he had to do to find out more information about her father.

In her father’s study in the main house, Lise sat at his oversize desk and was frowning at the ranch books when there was a knock at the study door. Glancing up, she smiled at the sight of Tuck standing on the threshold with his hat in his hand, looking for all the world like an overgrown kid being called on the carpet before the schoolmaster. He was a big man, nearly as tall as she, with a round face and an easygoing nature that made him a favorite with just about everyone. That didn’t, however, mean he was soft. Far from it, in fact. He could be tough as nails when he had to, and knew the cattle business inside and out. Which was why he was her right-hand man. She could always depend on him to tell it to her straight when it came to anything concerning the station.

Closing the station books, she sat back in her chair and motioned him inside. “Have a seat. Is that the list of supplies we need for the roundup?”

“Yeah. Sorry it’s so late. I meant to have it to you by this afternoon, but I couldn’t get Cookie to give me a list of the provisions he wanted to take. You know how he is. He never can make up his mind until the last minute.” Handing over the list to her, he took the seat across from her desk and sighed in relief as the cool air of the air-conditioning washed over him. “Damn, that feels good! The heat’s really been getting to me this year. I don’t know how I’m going to stand the roundup. It’s going to be hotter than hell out there in the bush.”

Making no attempt to hold back a grin, Lise had to laugh. For as long as she could remember, the fall roundup was held the same time every year. And every year, Tuck complained about the heat. Anyone listening to him would think he was a whiny baby who didn’t have a bit of stamina, but every year, he toughed it out with the best of them and weathered the heat just fine.

“You love it and you know it,” she teased. “What about the rest of the men? Are they all ready? How’s Frankie’s foot? He didn’t seem to be favoring it as much today as he has been.”

Just last week, Frankie’s horse had stepped on his foot and he’d been hobbling around ever since. “It’s better than it was,” Tuck replied, “but it’s still tender. It should be better by next week. Even if it’s not, we’ve got the Yank to pick up the slack, so we should do fine.”

Her pulse kicking into high gear just at the memory of how he’d made her feel, Lise frowned. “You think he’ll be able to handle the work?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? He’s big as a house! And from what you told me about the way he hauled you out from under Thunder’s hooves, he’s not only strong, he keeps his head in an emergency. You must have thought so, too, or you wouldn’t have hired him.”

She couldn’t deny it. Like Tuck, she’d thought he was just what she needed in a cowboy. Now she wasn’t so sure. There was something about the man that disturbed her, and she couldn’t for the life of her say what it was. For now, though, she was reserving judgment on Steve Trace, though she had no intention of admitting that to Tuck.

“It’s not like we’ve got a flood of cowboys beating a path to our door in search of a job,” she said dryly. “Beggars can’t be choosers. Sometimes, you’ve got to take what you get till something better comes along. Not that he’s not going to work out,” she amended quickly. “At this point, it’s too soon to tell. But at least we’ve got another hand for the roundup, and right now, that’s our main concern.”

If he didn’t work out after that, she thought, she’d send him packing. They’d be shorthanded again, but somebody would come along eventually. They always did.

The next day started early. Long before daylight, the men were up and dressed and wolfing down bacon and eggs and homemade biscuits in the dining hall. Feeling like he was back home again in his mother’s kitchen, Steve bit into his first biscuit of the morning and groaned in appreciation. Lise hadn’t been kidding when she said she fed her cowboys well. His mother was an excellent cook, but even she never made biscuits like this. “Damn, this is great!”

Looking up from the four biscuits he was slathering with real butter, Frankie grinned. “If you think this is good, wait till the roundup starts. You’re not going to believe what Cookie can do on a campfire.”

In the process of taking another bite of his biscuit, Steve stiffened slightly. “What roundup?”

“The one that starts a week from Monday,” he retorted. “Didn’t Lise tell you about it yesterday when she hired you? The summers are so hot, we have a roundup every year at the beginning of fall to check out the cattle and watering holes. The whole crew goes.”

“Including Lise?”

He nodded. “Yep. We load the horses up in trailers, along with all the gear, and head out for a couple of weeks in the bush. It’s just like being in the Old West. It’s great!”

Steve didn’t doubt that it was. But he wasn’t ready to leave the compound yet, dammit. Certainly not for two or three weeks! He had to get inside the house and search it, and he couldn’t do that if he was miles away, traipsing around the bush playing cowboy.

There wasn’t, however, a hell of a lot he could do about it without blowing his cover. He’d come there pretending to be down and out and in need of the job Simon had promised him, and when the boss said you had to go out in the bush, you went without complaint. Damn. Now what was he supposed to do?

“Hey, that’s my biscuit!” Chuck bellowed when Barney snatched the last one in the pan right out from under his nose. “You’ve already had five, you pig! Gimme that!”

“Not on your life, junior. You just ate four, yourself. This one’s mine.”

Furious, the younger man looked ready to punch him, and Steve wasn’t sure if it was because Barney had stolen the last biscuit or because he’d called him junior. Either way, Steve knew an opportunity when he saw one. Grinning at the two men, he drawled, “Geez, fellas, they’re damn good biscuits, but you don’t have to fight over them. Here, Chuck, take mine.” Tossing him the last one on his plate, he rose to his feet and grabbed the empty biscuit pan. “I’ll get a hot one from the kitchen. Anybody else want one?”

When five hands went up, including Chuck and Barney’s, he had to laugh. “If Cookie can keep up with you guys, he must be some cook. I’ll be right back.”

Chuckling, he strode out, but his smile died the second the door to the dining hall closed behind him and he headed for the house thirty yards away. He was taking a chance, making a move when Lise and the cook were both there, but what other choice did he have? With the roundup starting in a matter of days, he was running out of time.

Another agent would, in all likelihood, have had a game plan in place before he even thought about stepping into the house, but Steve had never operated that way. He was a roll-with-the-punches, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy, which was what made him a damn good agent. He didn’t act—he reacted—and nine times out of ten, his instincts were right on the money.

That didn’t mean the old ticker wasn’t pumping out the adrenaline as he approached the door. Every nerve ending was on alert, his muscles tense, though he liked to think he hid it well. His gait easy and relaxed, he opened the back door as if he had every right in the world to be there.

Not sure what to expect, he stepped inside and found himself in a small back hall. Stairs directly in front of him gave access to the upstairs, and to the right, a swinging door obviously led to the kitchen. Through the door, he could hear pots and pans rattling as Cookie sang to himself in an off-key baritone.

So he hadn’t heard him come in, he thought with a soundless sigh of relief. Now, where the hell was Lise?

Standing perfectly still, he cocked his head and thought he caught the faint strains of what sounded like the weather channel coming from a television upstairs. Pleased, he smiled slowly, his gray eyes glinting with satisfaction. So Cookie was tied up in the kitchen with the dishes, and Lise was upstairs. He couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried. He couldn’t do a search now, not when either one of them could walk in on him at any second, but at least he could discover the floor plan. Then if he had to search the place in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t run into a lamp or something and wake the household.

The question was, which way did he go first? Hesitating, he stared down the hall, then to his left, and wondered which led to the study. He knew there was one—last night when Tuck had returned to the bunkhouse and joined the poker game, he’d mentioned that he’d been talking to Lise in the study. It was there, no doubt, that Simon had concealed records of his illegal activities.

Five minutes, Steve thought grimly. He didn’t care how well the bastard had hid them, give him five minutes and he felt sure he could find them.

Tossing a mental coin, he decided to explore through the door to the left, but before he could make a single move, he heard a noise at the top of the stairs. Freezing, all senses on alert, he glanced up, ready to explain that he was there for biscuits and didn’t know where the kitchen was. But the words never left his mouth. He took one look at Lise in her nightgown and robe, her waist-length auburn hair flowing past her shoulders, and his mind went completely blank.

Chapter 2

She had no right to look so captivating so early in the morning, he thought with a frown. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d been expecting him and had set out to knock the air out of his lungs. The gown and robe she wore covered her body like a sack and were hardly flattering. But still, he was somehow seduced. It was her hair, he told himself. A woman with hair like that could tempt the devil himself. And Lord knew, he was no saint. All too easily, he could picture her naked in his bed, her fiery locks spread out, giving him tempting views of her body as she smiled and held out her arms to him.

Then his gaze lifted to her face, and he realized it was a hell of a lot more than her hair that attracted him. She had an innocence about her, a total lack of awareness of her own beauty that he found incredibly appealing. With no effort whatsoever, she reached out and grabbed his attention just by breathing, and she didn’t even seem to know it.

But he did, and alarm bells were going off all over the place in his head. Watch it, a voice cautioned in his ear. Remember who the lady is and why you’re here. You may have to seduce her before it’s all said and done. If you don’t keep your head about you, you may end up losing it. This is Simon’s daughter, for God’s sake!

It took nothing more than that to pull him up short. Silently cursing himself for momentarily losing sight of his mission, he jerked himself to his surroundings—and his very precarious position. If she’d come down five seconds later, she’d have caught him boldly exploring the house.

He watched surprise widen her eyes, then suspicion, and didn’t give her time to wonder any longer just what the devil he was doing in her back hall. Turning on the charm to distract her, he grinned at her. “Well, if it isn’t my lucky day. Good morning, boss lady. Were you looking for me? All you had to do was whistle, and I’d have come running.”

Stopping dead in her tracks at the sight of him, Lise felt the physical stroke of his eyes and couldn’t, for the life of her, understand how he made her so breathless with just a look. Growing up around cowboys, she’d seen his kind all her life. She knew better than to take anything he said seriously.

Not, she reminded herself, that she had any personal experience with flirtatious cowboys. The ones she knew had never even noticed she was a woman, and that had always been fine with her. She knew bull when she heard it, and she’d always wondered how the women in town and at parties could fall for one load of manure after another.

Now she knew.

Caught in the trap of his boyish grin, her heart was fluttering like a schoolgirl’s, and that irritated her no end. Her delicately arched brows snapping together in a scowl, she growled, “Stuff it, Trace. What are you doing in my house?”

Not appearing the least bit offended, he held up the empty biscuit pan he’d brought with him from the bunkhouse and winked at her. “The boys want more biscuits. I’d rather have you.”

She should have laughed at his outrageousness and put him in his place—it would have been no more than he deserved. But there was something about the glint in his eye that made her all too conscious of the fact that she stood before him in nothing but her nightgown and robe. Her mouth suddenly as dry as the outback itself, all she could manage was a nod toward the door on his right. “The kitchen’s through there,” she said hoarsely. “Excuse me. I need to get dressed.”

Turning, she fled up the stairs, leaving Steve staring after her in a way that may have flattered her immensely if she’d only turned around and looked. She didn’t.

“Did I hear somebody say something about biscuits?”

Jerking his gaze from the top of the empty stairs, Steve turned to find a short, rail-thin Aboriginal watching him with small black eyes that missed little. Obviously, the man had seen Steve gazing after Lise like he’d never seen a female in her nightclothes before.

His smile rueful, Steve made no apologies for his behavior. “There’s something about a woman who can put me in my place that really turns me on,” he said honestly. Holding out his hand, he grinned. “Hi. I’m Steve Trace. You must be Cookie. Do you think you could give my mama your recipe for biscuits? I’ve never eaten anything like them in my life.”

He spoke nothing less than the truth, though he would have said the same thing if the biscuits had been as hard as rocks. In order to do his job, he needed to gain the confidence of everyone who could help him discover more information about Simon, and Cookie was right at the top of the list. A trusted servant who had his own room inside the house, he, unlike the cowboys, was in a position to know everything that was going on with Simon and his daughter.

He wasn’t, however, a pushover. If he was flattered by Steve’s compliment, he didn’t show it. He shook his hand, but only briefly. “I don’t give out my recipes,” he said curtly. “Come in the kitchen. I just took another pan of biscuits out of the oven.”

Not waiting to see if he followed, the other man pushed through the swinging door, leaving Steve silently swearing behind him. His last chance to look around now gone, he was left with no choice but to step into the kitchen.

Standing in front of the mirror, Lise adjusted the collar of her cotton blouse for the third time in thirty seconds, only to realize that she, Lise Meldrum, was primping! “Oh, God!” she whispered. Horrified, she swore and quickly dropped her hand, leaving her collar just the way it was.

“Quit being a ninny,” she scolded her image in the mirror. “The man’s playing with you and you’re falling for it. Look at yourself, for heaven’s sake! You’ve got lip gloss on!”

Wincing, she couldn’t deny it. She’d definitely taken pains with her appearance, but not because she was trying to look pretty for Steve Trace, she assured herself. She was going into town later for supplies for the roundup, that was all, and she didn’t want to look like a hoyden. What was wrong with that? It wasn’t as if she was dressing for Steve. She had work to do in the study that would keep her busy all morning, and the trip to town and back would take all afternoon. If she was lucky, she’d be able to avoid him not only for the rest of the day, but from now until they left for the roundup. After all, organizing a roundup took a lot of work, and even though she’d been doing it for years, it didn’t get any easier. Between now and the morning when horses and men were loaded into trucks to begin the trek across the bush to the wildest regions of the station, she’d work every night until midnight and be up at dawn. She had too much to do to waste a single second between now and then thinking about Steve.

Her chin set at a determined angle, she turned from the mirror, and hurried downstairs to the study. She had letters and e-mail to answer from charities and youth organizations she contributed to every year in her father’s name and that took all of her attentions. By the time she finished, it was noon and time to leave for town. Quickly dialing the bunkhouse she wasn’t surprised when Tuck answered. They spoke every day, rain or shine, about what needed to be done that day, and she didn’t know how she would have run the place without his help.

“I’m leaving for Roo Springs in five minutes,” she told him. “Send one of the boys over to go with me. I’ll need help loading everything.”

“Sure thing,” he said easily. “Oh, and don’t forget to add metal fence posts to the list,” he reminded her before she could hang up. “After that storm we had last winter, we’re bound to need them.”

“I forgot about that,” she said, quickly jotting a note at the end of the extensive list of supplies she had to buy. “At the rate we’re going, I may have to make two trips to town and back just to haul everything.”

“Take the diesel,” he suggested. “It holds more.”

“Good idea. As soon as I gas it up, I’ll be ready to go.”

Her mind on everything she had to do, she checked one last time with Cookie to make sure she had his final list, then grabbed the keys to the diesel truck from a hook by the back door. The second she stepped outside the blistering heat of the day hit her in the face.

And she loved it. She always had. She’d been born and raised there, and the heat and wind and grit was as much a part of her as the color of her eyes. Given the chance, she would have parked herself in the porch swing and relaxed just by watching the wind blow. As usual, however, she didn’t have the time. Tomorrow, she promised herself, and climbed into the truck to drive it over to the gas tank behind the barn.

She had a little over a quarter of a tank of gas, but it was over a hundred miles to town, and there was no place between there and home to buy anything. She had a cell phone, of course, if she got into trouble, but she could just hear Nate and Tuck and the rest of the boys, as she liked to call them, if she ran out of gas on the way to town. They’d never let her hear the end of it.

“I must be living right. Is that smile for me, boss lady?”

Caught up in her reflections, Lise jerked her attention to her surroundings to find Steve leaning against the pickup bed on the opposite side of the truck. Watching her pump gas, he had that little grin on his face that she swore he wore just to irritate the hell out of her.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

But even as she asked, she knew. He was the most expendable cowboy she had, the one who didn’t know his way around the ranch yet and hadn’t a clue how things were done in the bush. And no one had time to teach him. Which was why he was the perfect one to go with her to town. He was big and strong and could load the truck without breaking a sweat—and he could be gone for hours and would never be missed.

“And here I thought you’d be thrilled we were going to spend the day together,” he replied teasingly, flashing his dimples at her. “Now I’m hurt.”

A quick retort sprang to her tongue, but she bit it back, refusing to give him the satisfaction. No, she told herself grimly. She wasn’t going to let him push her buttons so easily. So she ground her teeth on the sassy words and said instead, “I don’t have time for your jocularity. Get in the truck, Trace. It’s time to go.”

“Whatever you say,” he said with an easy grin. “You’re the boss.”

It was, Lise decided, going to be a long day.