“Do you give everyone a nickname?”
He frowned. “I suppose.”
“What’s yours?”
She was the most distracting woman. Or at least her perfume was. Nothing like the scents he smelled all day, barn smells and prairie sage. Better than both. A scent he could go on inhaling every day and still look forward to taking his first breath the next morning.
He swallowed hard. “Speed and the boys call me boss.”
“The boys don’t call you Dad?”
“Most of the youngsters who come here have issues about their fathers. No sense to push their buttons. And giving them a nickname gives them a chance to be someone else, someone whose old man hasn’t beaten the tar out of them or whose mother didn’t abandon him. Someone who can start over without any strikes against them.”
She bent over the baby again, snapping her overalls back together. When she lifted her head, Walker could have sworn there were tears in her eyes, but maybe it was just the light that made the blue glisten like a high-mountain lake on a bright summer day.
“I think that’s a wonderful concept,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. “And so does Susie-Q, don’t you, sweetie?”
She hugged the baby, and something in her eyes brought a lump to Walker’s throat. He’d seen that same haunted look in the eyes of the boys who’d come to him over the years. Wary desperation. A need for sanctuary. Fear that he’d turn them out just as their families had.
He didn’t doubt for a minute that same look had been in his eyes the day he showed up at the Double O.
Damn it all! How could he send this woman and the baby away? Whatever her real story was, he didn’t have the heart to do that.
Not as long as she didn’t pose a threat to the Double O Ranch.
“Come on, Slick.” Standing, he picked up the diaper bag. “I’ll show you to your room.”
Her nicely arched brows rose. “Slick?”
“Yeah. As in city slicker.”
“What makes you so sure I’m a city slicker?”
“Must be something about that BMW you’re driving and the fancy designer label on your rear end.” Not to mention her sexy perfume or how nicely her rear end fit into those blue jeans.
As she started to stand, holding the baby to her shoulder with both hands, he took her arm to help her up. His fingers closed around smooth skin, pampered by expensive creams, and warm to the touch. In contrast, his hands were callused and rough enough to abrade her tender skin.
Pulling his hand away, he tried not to let the velvety feel of her flesh imprint itself into his memory. That was as hopeless as trying to erase a brand from the rump of a calf. No matter how long the animal lived, the evidence of the mark would still be there.
Elizabeth grasped Suzanne more tightly as an unnerving surge of feminine awareness shot through her. During the few seconds Walker touched and then released her, her body had responded in an elemental way to his sheer masculinity, the rugged texture of his palm against her skin in what was little more than a quick caress. Even after he’d let her go, her heartbeat kept up its rapid cadence.
Oddly she’d never reacted in quite that way to a man—not even Steve, whom she had loved with all of her heart, she thought with a stab of guilt. Certainly Vernon hadn’t caused her pulse to speed up by simply touching her. She wasn’t one to swoon or be dazzled by a handsome face.
Indeed Walker’s features were too solid, too sharply honed, to make him a candidate for a GQ cover model. He set his jaw too sharply, pale squint lines fanned out from golden-brown eyes set deeply in his tanned face, and a slight bend in his nose suggested it had once been broken.
No, not a beautiful face but one that was altogether too potently masculine for her taste. Or so she’d thought until he touched her.
“Do you, uh, want me to carry the baby?” he asked, as he walked beside her toward the wide staircase to the second floor. The dark walnut banister looked smoothed by age and, if she knew anything about boys, a thousand youthful slides down it.
“I think for the sake of your shirt, I’d better keep her.”
His lips slid into a wry smile. “My shirt’s already a loss.”
That wasn’t quite true. From her perspective, a man with a little baby dribble down his shirt held a certain appeal. It meant he wasn’t afraid to be gentle.
Of course, Susie-Q had done more than just dribble. Spitting up hadn’t been much of a problem when she was nursing, the baby digesting breast milk far better than she did formula. Not for the first time, she regretted Vernon’s demand that she wean Suzanne before the wedding—and her foolish agreement.
She should have stood up for the best interests of her baby. From now on, that’s exactly what she was going to do. She’d learn to be strong for Suzanne’s sake.
A half-dozen doors led off the upstairs hallway and the carpet was worn thin leading to each room.
“The boys sleep in the bunkhouse?” she asked.
“During the summer. They think of it as one long sleepover. Winter time it’s too cold out there and I make ’em sleep inside. Besides, they’ve gotta get up early to catch the school bus.”
“How far is it to their school?”
“About an hour, maybe more, assuming the bus can get through.”
“Get through?”
“We get a little snow here now and then.”
Elizabeth suspected that was a serious understatement. This close to the Canadian border, winter blizzards had to be as common as wildfires in California.
He gestured toward an open door at the front of the house, and she stepped into the room where Speed was fluffing up a pillow. A light breeze fluttered lace curtains at the windows and brought with it the warm, dry scent of sage.
“Here you go, ma’am.” Speed propped the big pillow at the head of the bed. “I gotcha some clean sheets. The blanket might smell a bit musty—”
“This is awfully nice for servants’ quarters. Don’t you have—”
“Unless you want to bunk with the boys,” Walker said, “this is what you get.”
Somehow as housekeeper she’d pictured a private room off the kitchen where she and Suzanne would stay, not a guest bedroom opposite her employer’s room. She shrugged. “In that case, I’m sure everything will be fine.”
The room really was lovely, the view a hundred and eighty degrees of prairie and rolling, tree-covered hills. In an unpretentious way, the room and view were both more elegant than her parents’ home where her mother had spared no expense on furnishings.
Smiling, she imagined Steve would have liked it here. An adventure, he would have said.
A sharp blade of regret slid through her that this adventure was one she and her baby would have to experience without him. Almost a year had passed since she’d laid her beloved Steve to rest and she still felt the raw edge of grief whenever she thought of him. Somehow—for her baby—she had to find a way to go on.
“Miss?”
Blinking back her tears, she turned to the foreman. “Yes?”
“I’ll get the boys to bring up your suitcases,” Speed said.
Right on cue, the sound of booted feet came thundering down the hallway. Fridge arrived first with the playpen in hand. “Ya want this in here?” he asked Speed.
Complaining at the top of his voice, Scotty arrived lugging Elizabeth’s much heavier suitcase, which he’d hauled up from