Gabe grimaced. Only he had, by letting his temper get the best of him and scaring off Miss Sarah Ann Dempsey and their best chance at that property.
“Can’t say that I miss those fatigues, you know. I still break out in hives whenever I see khaki.” Joking, Mike’s grin grew even wider. “And at least we don’t have to salute Gabe anymore.”
“No, we can give him orders now,” Rafe said.
Gabe’s mouth twitched. “Mutiny, is it?”
“Since you obviously screwed up earlier, you get to repeat the assignment.” Rafe jabbed a finger at him. “Get in touch with Miss Dempsey and open negotiations again. Sir.”
Gabe’s belly clenched, and he frowned. “Waste of time.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Hey, Mike’s the ladies’ man in the outfit, remember?”
The Irishman laughed. “You’re saying you didn’t handle things with your usual finesse and flair?”
“Something like that.”
Rafe shrugged. “Tough. Get back in that ring and start swinging. A Ranger never admits defeat.”
“I really blew it,” Gabe admitted. “One look at me, and she’ll spit in my eye.”
Mike and Rafe glanced at each other. Grinned.
“So, duck, sir.”
Little girl…
Sarah Ann folded Gramps’s pajama top with a savage snap of her wrists.
Out of your league…
Her face burned. The arrogance. The utter gall!
Try this…
Teeth gritted, she slapped the pj’s onto the bureau, then cast an anxious look at the wizened man asleep in the hospital bed. The window blinds were closed against the glare of a lingering sunset and the room was dim, illuminated only by the pale light of the fluorescent fixture above the narrow bed. Silver stubble sprouted on Harlan Dempsey’s weathered cheeks, and the IV tube dripped quietly into a thin arm, but he didn’t stir.
Sarah Ann drew a deep breath, wrinkling her nose at the familiar scents of disinfectant and alcohol, but nothing calmed her rankled feelings. Her stomach hadn’t stopped churning since the previous afternoon’s debacle. Damn Gabriel Thornton! Just who did he think he was?
Well, she wasn’t some simpleminded schoolgirl, easily intimidated by a mere kiss! Her thoughts balked at the word mere, then skittered away from the toe-curling memory of masterful lips and raw male power. Granted, he’d taken her completely off guard, but that’s because she’d been under the impression that the days of Neanderthal men were over and that a Texas drawl bespoke some old standard of Southern chivalry.
Wrong on both accounts.
Well, she wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating him again. And there would be a next time. Someday, somewhere, Gabe Thornton would get his comeuppance, she guaranteed it. In the meantime, she still had to do her best for Gramps, and she was fresh out of ideas.
The bedside phone jangled, and she jumped to catch it on the first ring. Gramps murmured something indistinguishable and fitful, then subsided, snoring softly again.
“Sarah Ann, is that you?”
Suppressing a grimace of irritation, she tugged the phone cord to its length and stepped to the window to peer out between the slats. Her voice was low. “Hello, Douglas.”
Douglas Ritchie’s well-modulated words rumbled over the line. “Can you speak up? I can hardly hear you.”
“Gramps is sleeping.” Absently, she untucked her plain knit shirt from the waistband of her denim shorts and pulled her ponytail loose, getting more comfortable for the evening visiting hours still ahead of her.
“How is he today?”
“About the same.” She combed tired fingers through the mass of her hair, sighing at the sensation. “Weak.”
“And the doctors still don’t have any answers? That’s unacceptable. If I were you, I’d start thinking about malpractice—”
She stiffened. “Not now, Douglas, please.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. That was thoughtless. You know I’d never do anything to upset you.”
“Yes, I know.”
That was the whole problem, Sarah Ann thought. How did you tell a nice guy and successful Realtor like Douglas Ritchie that you just weren’t interested?
Gabe’s blunt question “Don’t you have a boyfriend…?” rang in her ears again, staining her cheeks with chagrin.
While she wouldn’t exactly call herself experienced, she’d had several, thank you very much, including one serious beau she’d almost married before she’d dropped out of college to help Gramps. Her almost-fiancé had opted out at that point, unwilling to take on a wife with responsibilities.
After that disappointment she’d been much too busy to worry about her social life. It was hard to cultivate those kinds of friendships when you were up at dawn running a struggling tomato farm and orange groves, keeping up with the bookkeeping, taking up the slack in the warehouse, even doing some of the tractor driving, then falling into bed exhausted every night.
Lately, however, there was a difference of opinion on the boyfriend question, at least in Lostman’s Island. But just because you’d been going out occasionally for the past year with the only guy who asked, and the whole town had begun to assume you were a couple, did that have to make it so?
Tall and bespectacled, Douglas was a soft-spoken teddy bear who’d been so solicitous during Gramps’s illness Sarah Ann would have felt like the most ungrateful wretch in the world to break things off. And she’d found it flattering to have a man pursue her, even though his conversation bored her to tears and his kisses were lackluster. But she felt guilty taking advantage of his good nature and had decided that the only honorable course of action was to gently, but firmly, decline any further invitations.
Unfortunately Douglas didn’t seem to be getting the message. And to ask him to pretend to be her fiancé to ease Gramps’s worries would only encourage him unnecessarily just when she most wanted to disentangle herself.
“Why don’t you let me take you out for dinner tonight?” he asked. “I hear the Cotton Patch has great chicken-fried steak.”
The thought of a greasy, crusty mass of beef in a plastic basket of fries held even less appeal than making conversation with Douglas. “Thanks, but I really can’t.”
“You’re swamped taking care of the farm and staying at the hospital, too, aren’t you? Sure, sweetheart, I understand.” His words were full of kindness and concern and made Sarah Ann feel guiltier than ever.
“You try to do too much,” he said. “One of these days you’re going to have to let me help you out from under all that responsibility. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“That’s not nec—” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Chewing her lip, she turned to hang up the receiver.
“You ought not to turn the boy down. He’ll get discouraged.”