he realized what was missing. “Where’s your TV?”
“I don’t have time to watch TV.”
“That’s not what I asked you. At Christmas last year, Alex said he bought himself a big-screen plasma TV so he could watch his tapes and improve his rodeo technique.”
Taking the ice pack and moving it to a different part of her shoulder, she asked, “Does it matter?”
“It might. What happened to it?”
“I needed the money from it to pay bills.”
Brock didn’t like the picture that was coming into clearer focus. “I want to look at the books.”
Again her expression was troubled. “I can’t prevent you from doing that.”
“But you’d like to. Why?”
Her cheeks became rosy with color. “On your own admission, you couldn’t wait to leave here. You rarely came back after you went to school. You haven’t come back since your dad died. So why do you want to get involved now?”
The problem was, he couldn’t give her just one reason. The problem was, he wasn’t certain why he was here or what he expected from coming home. It wasn’t his place now, though—it was hers. Unless she decided to sell it. “I came back because Dix admitted he couldn’t handle you and the ranch.”
“I’m going to be—” She stopped.
“It’ll be at least two weeks—maybe longer—until you’re really back on your feet. That’s what the doctor said. By then you’ll be dealing with the last two months of your pregnancy. How much do you think you’ll be able to help Dix? Face reality, Kylie.”
Without any warning she let the ice pack drop to the sofa and stood. “I’ve faced more reality than you can ever imagine. So don’t preach to me, Brock.” She headed out of the living room to a hall at the back of the house.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To the bathroom. Don’t think you’re going to follow me there.”
Brock raked his hand through his hair. Making Kylie’s supper would be the easy part. Sitting together and pretending there weren’t issues and problems to be resolved between them would be the difficult part. With her pregnancy and all, she really should be staying on the first floor. After Jack had had a heart attack a few years before he died, he’d renovated the downstairs, closing the back porch into a bedroom and modernizing and expanding the bath so it included a shower. Kylie should really be spending the latter part of her pregnancy down here. He could help her move her things. But right now wasn’t the time to suggest it. Maybe after he’d cooked them a meal, maybe after they’d talked superficially about something other than Saddle Ridge, she’d relax around him and he’d relax around her.
A little devil in his ear told him he was dreaming if he thought that was going to happen.
The bottom line here was he had to tread carefully. He had to remind himself she was still grieving over Alex, and the loss would be with her for a long time. If he tried to take over, he might trample everything she held dear. Then she’d hate him.
He couldn’t abide the thought of Kylie Armstrong Warner hating him. That realization made him decidedly uneasy.
Leaning back in his kitchen chair, Brock swiped at his mouth with his napkin and tossed it onto the table. His plate was clean. Frustration with Kylie was growing minute by minute. Frustration with himself for caring how she was reacting to him wasn’t much better. The fact that his gut twisted every time she smiled had him totally unsettled. He was damned uncomfortable.
“When are you going to stop pretending with me?” he asked, hoping to clear the air. For the past fifteen minutes she’d pushed food around on her plate, not eating much of anything. He suspected she was hurting but she wouldn’t admit it.
“We’ve known each other for years,” he went on. “I won’t be insulted if you don’t like the way I cooked the steak.”
She studied him for a moment. “We spent some time together years ago on your short visits home. I haven’t laid eyes on you for five years. I’m not sure we do know each other.”
Okay, he’d asked for that. Maybe he should have put things a different way. “Years ago, you said what you were thinking. You were as easy to read as the proverbial open book. Now you’re acting as if you want me to go away and never come back when it’s obvious you need help here. I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on. Alex never mentioned this place was headed downstream. Why not?”
Her answer was quick coming. “Do you really think he’d tell you? He’d never want you to know that he’d failed to succeed in managing what Jack had left him.”
“What if I’d come back and seen it?”
“But you didn’t. The decline of Saddle Ridge didn’t happen overnight. It’s been slow. There were times when I thought that with or without Alex’s help I could turn it around—”
She stopped.
“What do you mean with or without Alex’s help?”
The guarded expression was back on her face, the shadows in her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t Alex want to keep Saddle Ridge going?” he pressed.
“Oh, he wanted to keep it going. Rather, he wanted me to keep it going.”
“And what was he doing?” Brock asked cautiously.
“You know what he was doing. He was riding the rodeo circuit, chasing the wildest bull.”
That’s what Dix had said. Brock thought about the times Alex had called him. Often he’d been away from Saddle Ridge. And whenever Brock had called Alex—those times had been too few—at Alex’s direction, he’d gotten hold of him on his cell phone.
So Kylie wouldn’t answer?
The same tension that had looped around them ever since he’d stepped into Kylie’s hospital room surrounded them now. It was broken when the door opened and Dix came in.
The foreman took off his Stetson and when he entered the kitchen, he looked like a man who was facing his executioner. “Are you still talking to me?” he asked Kylie.
“Do I have any choice?” she returned with a half smile that told Brock she couldn’t stay mad at Dix for long.
“You do,” the older man answered, “but the horses don’t like a woman in a snit any more than I do.”
She laughed. The sound was so genuine, so free, that Brock remembered the girl she’d been.
“Well then, that decides it,” she said, getting to her feet and wincing because she’d moved too fast.
Every protective instinct in Brock urged him to push back his chair, put his arm around her shoulders and make sure she got to the sofa safely. Yet he stayed put because he knew she wouldn’t tolerate it.
Kylie was lifting her plate to take it to the sink when Brock said, “I’ll get the dishes.”
Dix’s gaze cut from one of them to the other. “Looks like everything’s under control in here,” he muttered.
“In a week I’ll be back in the barn,” Kylie told him.
“Only to visit.” Brock’s voice was steel.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Dix assured her. “Feather’s doing fine. She even let me put a blanket on her rump this afternoon. Of course she does miss you, but I’ll tend to her real good.”
“Feather?” Brock asked.
“I adopted a mustang from the B.L.M.”
The Bureau of Land Management thinned the wild mustang herds that roamed