vapor light on the power pole between the house and the outbuildings wasn’t powerful enough to completely pierce the darkness or the whirling snow, but she thought she could just make out the figure of a man standing motionless, his attention focused on her, on the house.
For just an instant, her heart stuttered, and old feelings of dread and helplessness came roiling back, and then the figure moved out of the shadows and she recognized Joe’s black Stetson and broad shoulders. Unlike Luke, he walked unbent in the wind, oblivious to the storm raging around him as he came toward the house.
“Everything okay in here?” he asked after she opened the door off the mudroom to his knock.
She shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I saw Mitchell walking back to the trailer. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t pestering you.”
“Pestering me?”
He cocked his head. “I told you at supper, it’s no secret the boy’s got it bad, Annie. He makes moon-eyes at you every time he gets within spitting distance. I wouldn’t want him to make a nuisance of himself.”
She felt herself blush. “I can handle it.”
“Well, let me know if he gets to be too much of a bother and I’ll have a word with him.”
Why did he always assume she couldn’t take care of things by herself? Probably because she had a pretty lousy track record in that department, she admitted.
“He wasn’t pestering me or making moon-eyes or anything like that. If you must know, he was applying for your job.”
For a long moment, he just stared at her, the only sound in the kitchen the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the furnace spewing warm air out of the register, then he tilted back his head and laughed, low and long and deep.
The sound of it—so rare coming from him—slid over her nerve endings like silk.
“He wants to be foreman?” He laughed again and flipped a chair around to straddle it, removing his hat and tossing it onto the table in the same motion. “I hope you didn’t encourage him.”
There he went again, thinking she didn’t have a brain in her head. “Of course I didn’t. I told him I was looking for somebody with a little more experience.”
He snorted. “I’m sure that went over well.”
“About like you’d expect.”
“How could he think you’d be willing to hire a twenty-year-old kid to run a big operation like the Double C?”
“Maybe he thought I’d be desperate, with you leaving and all.”
He studied her for a moment, then looked away. “How’s the boy?”
“Sleeping. Finally.”
“I hate like hell that I hurt him like this.”
“Of course he’s hurting! Did you think you could just walk away and it wouldn’t affect any of us?”
“I guess I was hoping it wouldn’t.”
“You’re part of the Double C, Joe. More than that, you’re part of this family. What you do affects all of us. C.J. loves you—of course he’s upset you’re going to leave. And Leah is, too, although she shows it differently.”
“What about you? Are you upset I’m leaving?”
He didn’t know why he asked it. Maybe because she looked so damn beautiful here in her warm, cozy kitchen, with the light from above the stove turning her hair red-gold and making her eyes look soft and welcoming and her mouth about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
Or maybe because he’d been more annoyed than he had a right to be when he saw Mitchell sneaking out her back door so late at night.
Whatever his reason for asking, her answer was clear. “You know I am.” She spoke in a low voice and then lifted eyes the color of brand-new aspen leaves to his.
He was shocked to his bones at the depth of emotion there—if he didn’t know better, he could swear there were tears lurking in those green depths, but Annie hardly ever cried.
Even if she had been the watering-pot sort, his brother would have fixed that in a hurry.
He reached out and grabbed her hand. It was rougher than it should have been, almost as nicked-up and callused as his own. She was killing herself trying to turn the Double C back into the ranch it once was. And he sure didn’t help matters any by taking off.
Her fingers trembled in his and he realized too late why he did his best to avoid touching her—just the simple contact of her hand in his filled him with wants and needs he had absolutely no business wanting or needing.
What would she do if he reached across that scarred pine table and pulled her to him, if he dug his fingers into that sinful hair and devoured that luscious mouth of hers like he imagined doing a dozen times a day?
Easy. More than likely, she’d kick him off the ranch herself. She’d barely survived being tangled up with one Redhawk brother and she sure didn’t need the other one messing things up for her now.
But wasn’t he doing just that by taking this job in Wyoming? Putting her to the trouble of having to find a new foreman and leaving her to deal with two upset kids?
He shifted on the hard chair. “Maybe I ought to just call Waterson and tell him to forget it.”
Relief flickered in her eyes for just a moment, then she shook her head vigorously. “I won’t let you do that. You’ve sacrificed enough of your life for us. You’re right, you need to move on and this sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you, a real chance to make a new start. It will be good for you. And whether we like it or not, it will be good for us not to depend on you so much.”
She was ready to cut him loose, he thought as he said his goodbyes a few moments later and headed back out into the blizzard. So why was he suddenly not so sure he wanted to be free?
She was becoming a pretty darn good liar.
Her conversation with Joe the night before ran through her head over and over while she tried to catch up on the mounds of paperwork that seemed to pile up like January snow.
Since the kids were still in school and the men were out repairing damage from the storm the night before, she had the ranch house to herself. She should have been able to make a real dent in that month’s bills, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate on much of anything.
On anything except a dark-eyed Shoshone who would be blowing out of her life on the last of the winter storms.
She sighed and forced herself to concentrate on all the work she had to do. It wasn’t doing her any good to brood about Joe’s leaving. If she didn’t stop it, she would be completely worthless for the two remaining months she had left with him.
She was just wincing over the check she had to write to the vet when the door off the mudroom suddenly creaked open, sounding abnormally loud in the stillness of the empty house. Just as abruptly, it closed again with a quiet click.
She glanced at the digital clock on the command line of the computer. Odd. The kids weren’t due home from school for several hours and Joe said he thought the men would be tied up most of the day fixing the roof of the hay shed in the far pasture. They’d taken lunch with them but maybe they forgot something or finished up earlier than expected.
“Hello?” she called out. “I’m back here in the office.”
She was met by silence, unbroken except for the low, ubiquitous whir of the furnace. A shiver sneaked down her spine and she frowned. “Hello?” she called again.
No one answered.
Was somebody playing some of kind of trick on her? She didn’t think any of the men had that kind of cruel streak in them, but Patch could be mischievous