than six months ago. Each time, as soon as the commitment was made, she’d gotten cold feet. Instead of a ring on her finger, Shannon had felt as if they’d wanted to put a noose around her neck.
“Seems like more than that to me.” He coughed, a wheezy noise that worried Shannon.
She gave him a drink of water, waited for him to regain his breath before asking, “Are you all right?”
“Won’t be until I know you have someone to take care of you when I’m gone.”
Her voice rose in frustration. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Yes, I am. Margaret’s been waiting for thirty years and she never was a patient woman. I’ll hear about it for a month once I get over there so I need to quit procrastinating and get on with it. She’s just like you. Once she gets over her snit, we’ll be the happiest pair in paradise.”
Shannon knew he was trying to make her laugh, to make a joke out of dying, but she saw no humor in losing the man who’d loved her and provided for her ever since she could remember.
“Stop it, Granddad. Just stop it. I need you. The ranch needs you.”
“What you need is a good man to look after you, so when I do go I can rest in peace instead of wondering if you’re all right.”
So they were back to that again. All three of her engagements had been as much to please him as to please herself. But every single fiancé had wanted to run her life, as well as her ranch. As soon as the engagement had been announced, they’d expected her to become someone else, to give up her hard work on the ranch and become a lady of the manor. And she wasn’t having any of that. She could ride, rope, train horses and run a ranch better than any man on the planet. She could stand on her own two feet, thank you. Shannon Gayle Wyoming did not need a man.
“Granddad, the doctor says you can live with this heart problem if you’ll only learn to behave yourself better and stop stressing over the small stuff.”
“Small stuff? My granddaughter’s happiness is not small. I likely could get back on my pegs if I wasn’t so all-fired worried about your future.”
Guilt as heavy as a feed truck descended on Shannon. She’d always been Granddad’s first and foremost concern, and she hated being the cause of his worry. To think that she was keeping him from getting well was just too much.
Sitting down on the pristine sheets, Shannon wrapped one hand around her grandfather’s gnarled fingers. “Granddad, I promise you I will seriously consider finding the right man.”
“When?”
She hedged. “Soon.”
“What about this Kane fellow? I like him. He’s a good horseman.”
“Granddad!” Shannon shot a quick glance toward the door, thankful no one, especially not Jackson, was in sight. She could hardly believe Granddad had said such a thing. Why, Jackson had only just arrived and already Granddad was pushing the two of them together. “What are you thinking?”
“Well,” Gus said, feigning innocence. “He ain’t married. I asked him.”
Shaking her head, she laughed. “Did you really?”
“Ah, only in the course of hiring him. I wasn’t trying to fix you up or nothing.”
She breathed an inward sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. I can do that for myself.”
The last thing she needed was a matchmaking grandparent. Especially when it came to Jackson Kane.
Long ago she’d taken that painful summer, locked the memory in a closet inside her mind, and tried not to visit there too often. Occasionally, like today with Jackson so ever present, the memory sneaked out, but she’d learned to skirt around it, not look too close, and shove it back inside as quickly as possible. Remembering what-might-have-been hurt too much.
“Well, he ain’t half-bad is he?” Granddad was rattling on. “I mean, he’s decent looking. He knows horses. And he’s clean.”
“Clean?” Latching onto the silly notion, she giggled. If she were to make a list of characteristics for a potential husband, would this one have made the list? “Clean?”
Gus chuckled and pulled her into the hook of his arm.
At that moment, the door swooshed open, and Mr. Clean himself entered the room. Half-inclined on her grandfather’s side, Shannon looked up and burst out laughing.
With a puzzled grin, Jackson glanced behind him then ambled into the room. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the now familiar Dum-Dum.
Granddad was right. He was definitely clean. The smell of his morning shower swirled in the door with him.
She couldn’t help noticing the strong, dark, clean hands unwrapping the orange sucker or their graceful, effortless movements. She loved his hands, had always admired those hands that could hold a thrashing horse with an iron grip, but could also hold her with such tenderness.
The paper crumpled into his fist and that tiny sound startled her to awareness. Good golly, Miss Molly. What was she thinking? And why?
But she knew the answer to that. Granddad’s silly nonsense had her noticing that Jackson Kane was much more than clean. He was cowboy sexy and more attractive than a man had a right to be.
Looking at him stirred some primal urge Shannon hadn’t felt in a long time. Ten years to be exact.
Her heart thudded in her throat until she wondered if she was the one with the heart problem instead of Granddad.
With his talk of seeing her settled with a good man, and her desperate need to make him happy, Granddad had her thinking things she shouldn’t.
Insanely ridiculous thoughts that she’d never allowed before danced through her mind.
Though the subject had never been broached, what if she had married Jackson back then? What if he’d known about the baby? Would he have asked her to marry him? Would she have agreed?
Pushing up from Granddad’s hug, she turned her back to Jackson and began to straighten the bedside table. Her hands shook and she was acutely aware that her odd behavior created curiosity in the two men.
Shannon had been certain she’d settled this issue years ago, but Granddad’s inadvertent teasing said the problem of Jackson Kane was a long way from being over.
Chapter Three
One month later, life on the Circle W had returned to some semblance of normality. To Shannon’s relief, Gus, though straining at the bit, was trying hard to follow doctor’s orders. Except for the thirty-minute prescribed walk he took each morning, he mostly puttered around in the house, grumbling about old age and bossy granddaughters.
True to his word, Jackson had gone above and beyond the amount of pay he received as assistant trainer. Long after he should have gone home to his aunt Bonnie’s house in Rattlesnake, he worked on the ranch tending to things that he knew would bother Gus if left undone.
“You gonna stand there and stare at me or get acquainted with this new colt?”
At Jackson’s amused voice, Shannon realized she had indeed been staring at him.
Morning looked good on him, she thought, noting that he’d come quickly when she’d called with the news that the mare was in labor. The moisture of his morning shower still glistened on his inky-black hair and the clean, fresh scent of soap and shaving cream amounted to sensory overload.
They were inside a stall in one of the horse barns to do the all-important job of imprinting a newborn foal. Jackson had arrived only moments before the mare delivered the new baby. They’d watched while the tiny bay had suckled and bonded with his mother, then lay down to sleep. That la-la land between sleep and wakefulness was the perfect time to handle a new colt.