With a heavy emphasis on love.
“This is a working ranch, not a bordello.” Having guests on the place was bad enough. He sure didn’t want a bunch of lovesick greenhorns mooning around.
“Oh, pooh.” Teddi tossed her head. A green pyramid-shaped earring, complete with eyeball in the center, flapped against her neck. “That’s not what I’m talking about at all. Remember the Love Boat? Why not a Love Ranch? A place where lonely singles come to find their one true love.”
“No.”
“Matching singles is all the rage right now, Carson. It’s on the Internet, in churches, colleges. There are even professional matchmaking companies.”
“Not here there aren’t.”
“Okay, then.” Teddi tapped the pointy toe of her lime-green shoe with intentional nonchalance. “You win. Let the ranch sink deeper in debt. Let Cousin Arnold buy us out and turn the place into an outlet mall.”
She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Carson knew that body language. And he also knew his sister would talk incessantly about love until he was ready to jump off the balcony and run screaming through the pasture.
He heaved a sigh strong enough to blow papers off his desk. As uncomfortable as the idea made him, a significant downturn of fortunes for the Benedict Ranch had occurred. They did need some kind of advertising gimmick to bring more guests to the ranch. He had hoped the lure of the Old West would do the trick, but Teddi was right. It hadn’t.
“Think of something other than a Love Ranch.”
“Just because Suzy tossed you over for Brad Holder and his oil wells is no reason to be sour on love.”
Carson’s blood did a slow boil at the mention of his ex-wife Suzy and the wealthy Brad. Suzy’s love had been true and forever—or so she’d said—until his finances had gone south.
“I’ll worry about this some other time.” He had a budget to wrestle, cattle to cull and a stupid birthday party to endure. “Discussion is closed.”
“No.” Teddi clamped a hand on each hip, earrings dancing in indignation. For all her flighty ways, she was nearly as stubborn as Carson. “This is my home, too. And keeping it intact affects me as much as it does you. The only way to bring in more guests is to come up with a marketing theme. And what is more appealing than romance?”
“Eating razor blades?”
She narrowed her eyes in speculation. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
Uh-oh. She had that look. He was about to be whopped upside the head with one of her universal relevance statements. “What’s it?”
“You, my darling brother—” she slapped a hand on his desk “—are scared.”
He frowned. “Of what?”
“That little four-letter word. L-O-V-E. You are so afraid of love that you couldn’t convince Romeo and Juliet to go out for free pizza.”
“Sure I could.” She was starting to make him mad. The very idea that he, a trail-hardened rancher and businessman, was scared of anything put a burr in his saddle. “I just don’t want to.”
“You could not.” Teddi slid onto the edge of his desk, crossed her legs and swung her foot back and forth.
“Could, too.”
“Not, not, not.” Her foot tapped with each consecutive not.
She was taunting him, darn her hide. And it was working. “Look. I had a bad experience, but I am not afraid of love.”
“Prove it,” she sang in her happy-go-lucky voice.
“How?”
“Do a little matchmaking between our guests.”
“No way.”
“See,” she said smugly. “I knew you couldn’t do it.”
Carson ground his teeth. Nobody told him he couldn’t do something. Not even his flibbertigibbet sister. “Wanna bet?”
“You won’t do it.”
“I said I would.”
“Okay, then. I’ll bet that you cannot get the next two single guests to fall in love.”
He stuck his nose in her face. “And if I do?”
“I will not say another word about a Love Ranch. But if you lose, I get to rename the ranch and send out the ads.”
He felt a smile coming on. “You’ve got yourself a bet.”
Teddi exploded off the desk and into his arms. She almost knocked all six foot two of him onto his jeanclad backside. “Oh, this is perfect. I’ll even help you.”
“Whoa, wait a minute.” What had he gotten himself into? “Why would you help me?”
“Because once you see how powerful love is, you’ll be hooked and you’ll want us to become the Love County Love Ranch.”
Carson was appalled. “No way. You said you’d drop the subject.”
“I will.” She gave him a sly glance. “If you still want me to. But first you have to make that match.” She danced around the office, and Carson knew the wobbly wheels inside her head were in full motion. “We have an absolute hunk of a guy here already.”
Carson stiffened. “If you mean Luc Gardner, he is off-limits.”
For once Teddi stood still, pinning him with a curious gaze. “He’s single, isn’t he?”
Yes, he was single and a lot more that a woman would appreciate, but Carson had promised to shelter his royal friend and give him a summer of privacy, not find him a wife. Lucky for him, Teddi had been away contemplating the mysteries of the universe the last time Luc had been to Oklahoma.
“Not Luc,” he repeated.
“Has to be. He’s the first single guy, and that was the bet.”
At the sound of a car door, Teddi rushed to the window and peeked through the gauzy curtain. She turned with a flourish and clapped her hands. “And there is a perfectly acceptable young woman—a little tacky-looking maybe but still a female—arriving down below right this minute.”
She sailed to him, kissed him on the cheek and rushed to the door, flinging it open with such exuberance Carson flinched.
“I’ll just run down and make her welcome.” She started out the door, then stopped, turned and pointed a finger at him. “You made a bet, Carson. You can’t renege. It would be very bad karma and upset the cosmic balance of this ranch.”
The cosmic balance, as Carson saw it, was already in bad shape. But he’d never reneged on a bet in his life. Much as he wished he’d kept his mouth shut, his word was his bond. He was about to push his royal college buddy down the road to romance.
He stifled a shudder.
Anything to keep from renaming his ancestral home the Love County Love Ranch.
Chapter One
Exiled.
With a huge groan of dismay, Carly Carpenter popped the trunk on her green Camry and dragged out the one bag she always carried on assignment along with her tape recorder and a laptop. On second thought, she shoved the recorder back inside. Who in Maribella, Oklahoma, would be worth taping?
She stared up at the sprawling three-story turn-of-the-century guest ranch located in the middle of ten thousand acres of nothing and wondered why on earth her sister, Meg, had picked this spot for her exile. Oh, she had said it wasn’t an exile, but Carly knew better. Meg’s husband, Eric, owner and head detective