“Mom, you’re getting that look on your face again.”
Carole nearly jumped at the sound of Jenny’s voice. She’d blocked out everything but the infuriating man who’d come to town just to torment her. For the second time in as many days, he’d made her forget her daughter. Another black mark against Greg Rafferty.
“Sorry, honey. I was just thinking about what I was going to say to Mr. Rafferty when I saw him.”
“You’re not going to yell at him again, are you?”
“I never yell.” She didn’t meet her daughter’s eyes, scanning the darkened windows of the house for signs of movement.
“Yes, you do, and you look really mad.” Jenny placed her hand on Carole’s arm, bringing her attention back to the interior of the pickup. “You should think about what he wants you to do. Maybe you could do just a little bit. He seemed like a nice man.”
“Jenny, just because he was nice to you doesn’t mean his intentions are good.”
“But you always tell me to keep an open mind when I meet new people. I’m just saying you should do the same thing.”
Carole reached for the door handle. “Okay, I’ll talk to him again. But I’m not promising to agree with him. I like our life just fine, thank-you-very-much.”
Jenny giggled at their familiar banter. From the beginning, they’d been closer than mother and daughter. Without a father around to distract them, they’d clung to each other through good times and bad. Carole had once worried that Jenny would suffer from not having a dad, but with the help of friends and relatives, they’d coped just fine. Jenny rarely talked about her biological father anymore, and for that, Carole was grateful. Her ex hadn’t wanted a child ten years ago; he didn’t deserve one now.
“I don’t see Puff,” Jenny said as Carole rang the door bell.
“He’s probably in the shade of those cottonwood trees by the stock tank, or maybe inside the barn.”
“I hope Mr. Rafferty knows how to take care of him. Puff isn’t used to being outside all day. His coat will just fry in this sun.”
Carole smiled, glad that her daughter was thinking about her former steer’s welfare rather than his imminent trip to the meat packer’s. “You can tell Mr. Rafferty what he needs to know. I doubt he knows anything about cattle other than what he learned yesterday at the arena.”
There was no answer to her summons, so she rang the bell again, folded her hands across her chest and tried not to concentrate on all of his faults, much less wishing him a miserable stay in Texas. Thinking such thoughts wasn’t exactly the charitable thing to do for a Sunday visit.
“Maybe he’s outside with Puff,” Jenny speculated.
“Okay. Let’s walk around back and see.”
The drone of the air-conditioning unit kept Carole from hearing anything that would give away Rafferty’s location. They walked toward the small barn that had been vacant a long time. The former owners hadn’t run any cattle or horses on their small ranch since their kids had outgrown 4-H.
“Puff!” Jenny called out, looking over the fence to the dark interior of the barn.
A dusky shadow moved, then slowly materialized into the large shape of Jenny’s steer—or her former steer, Carole corrected herself. She held her breath, wondering if Rafferty was also in the barn, until she realized what she was doing. She resisted the urge to call out to the man, to find out where he was lurking. With a disgusted sigh, she looked around the pasture, finding no trace of him.
“Do you want to stay and see Puff? I’m going back to the house to find Mr. Rafferty.”
“I’ll stay in the barn, Mom.” Jenny unlatched the gate and hurried toward the steer.
“Don’t wander off,” Carole warned as she walked toward the house.
The sun beat down on her back and shoulders, reminding her that she hadn’t worn a hat. And why was that? Because she wanted to look less like a cowgirl and more like a woman. A twenty-eight-year-old mother, a single head of her household, who had no business worrying about how she looked to visit a man who no doubt wanted her to dress up in an old-fashioned ruffled apron, display a plate of cookies and smile for the cameras.
But a little bit of doubt remained about her motives. Far back in her mind, she wondered if she’d dressed in soft, worn, body-hugging jeans and fitted, Western-cut shirt to make Greg Rafferty’s gaze roam over her the way he’d done yesterday at the arena. Could she possibly enjoy enticing his interest when she didn’t like him as a person? Surely she wasn’t that shallow.
She nearly stumbled over an exposed rock when she realized that she was exactly that superficial. With no conscious awareness, she was soliciting the interest of a man who was here to coax her into doing something she didn’t want to do, who would go to endless trouble and expense to impress her from a professional standpoint. Why, he was probably acting interested in her as another coercion tactic!
By the time she arrived back at the house, she was flushed from more than the heat. Something about Greg Rafferty rubbed her the wrong way. She’d never had this reaction to another man. In the past ten years, not once had she been even slightly tempted by the wrong kind of guy. Eleven years ago, as flighty as a green-broke filly…now that was a different story.
Carole pushed open the gate on the side of the house, grateful for the slight shade under the roof overhang. As soon as she turned the corner into the backyard, however, she was back in the sunlight again. She blinked, then squinted, then stared. Standing beside the pool, dressed in what could only be described as a scrap of black fabric stretched across an incredible male butt, stood the best-looking man her imagination could have dreamed up.
He must have heard her enter the yard because he turned, giving her a different view. His backside wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that scrap of a swimsuit struggled to cover. She sucked in a deep breath through her mouth, then started coughing.
Rafferty advanced on her until she put up a hand to stop him. If he got too close, she wasn’t real sure what she’d do. His lean, muscular body glistened with drops of water that slid from his wide shoulders to his smooth chest, then down his stomach, racing toward the low band of black fabric. She had the insane urge to taste those drops of water before they made their final destination.
After all, she was awfully thirsty.
She closed her eyes, thankful that she’d stopped coughing, hoping she could control these wild, out-of-character urges that had suddenly taken over her psyche. She wasn’t a loose woman. She wasn’t desperate. But she had been celibate for most of her adult life. Maybe there was something to those articles about hormones kicking in when a woman approached thirty.
“Are you all right?”
Without opening her eyes, she could tell he was close. Too close. Water-drop-licking close. “I’m fine,” she managed to whisper. Directing her gaze about six feet off the ground, she opened her eyes.
“I thought I was going to have to pound you on the back,” he said in an amused tone. “Or maybe give you the Heimlich maneuver.”
“I’ll take my chances on choking.”
Rafferty laughed. “You still don’t trust me.”
I don’t trust myself, she wanted to say, but kept silent. She found the idea of him locking his arms around her from behind, pressing that damp, hard body against her as his hands put pressure right below her breasts, way too tempting.
“You surprised me,” she said, trying to explain why she’d gone loco at the sight of him. “I rang the bell earlier, but no one answered.”
“I like to swim.”
Which