“Yeah. Mom put these up. I’ve never bothered changing them, nor did Lisa.”
“This is the house you grew up in?”
“Yes. This room and the first two bedrooms are the original house that my great-grandpa Daniel built. Dad redid the kitchen and added the other rooms. After Dad died, Mom remarried and moved to Chicago. When Lisa and I married, we moved in here. Lisa had the house remodeled, but she didn’t change much in this room or the dining room. The dining room table was my grandfather’s. And there are a few old tables here that belonged to great-grandpa Daniel.”
“Sounds like our house.”
They moved to an adjoining formal living room that had an off-white carpet and the same forest green color in the upholstered furniture. “Lisa did this room over. I’m hardly ever in it,” he said in a flat voice, and Mattie realized that every time he mentioned his wife, he sounded pained.
She followed him into a dining room that held a long mahogany table with twelve chairs. A silver tea service gleamed on the polished sideboard. “You have a nice home.”
“Thanks. The bedrooms are down the hall,” he said casually. “Want to sit outside with me while I grill steaks?”
“Sure,” she answered, thinking both of them had roots that went far back in tune. Their backgrounds were the same, but there the similarities ended.
He returned to the kitchen to get a platter of steaks, and they stepped outside to a deck where he motioned toward lawn chairs. “Sit down while I cook these. Rosalie already prepared potatoes and carrots, so dinner’ll be ready soon.”
As soon as the steaks were on, he pulled a chair close and sat down facing her.
“You really have a beautiful place,” she remarked.
“The ranch has done well. I hear you just acquired two new quarter horses from Ed Williams’s stables.”
“I’m trying to improve our stock.”
“That should do it.” He studied her, and every time he gave her one of his long intense looks, she felt ensnared and at a disadvantage, as if he were trying to see into her soul and succeeding. “You don’t object to my Indian blood, do you?”
“Of course not,” she replied, startled.
He shrugged broad shoulders. “I didn’t think you would, but some might. I run into occasional prejudice.”
“It isn’t you who’s causing my objections to your proposal—it’s me. I don’t know anything about babies.”
“It doesn’t take long to learn,” he replied in an offhanded tone as if the whole matter were settled in his mind. She wondered how many things in his life didn’t go the way he wanted. He had lost his wife and father, but other than that, she suspected he usually did what he wanted and got what he wanted.
He went to the grill, and she watched him turn the steaks, her gaze running down his back to his narrow waist, over his trim backside. Her husband? Impossible! Her pulse skittered at the thought.
In minutes they sat down in the kitchen to thick steaks, baked potatoes, crisp steamed carrots with slices of homemade bread.
“You’re a good cook.”
“Thanks, but Rosalie gets most of the credit. I don’t do bread. Are you riding in the July rodeo?”
She shook her head. “I don’t participate as much as I used to. How about you?”
“I’ll be in calf roping.”
They discussed ranch life, and she felt as if her nerves were stretching to a breaking point She wanted to get to the subject, decline his offer and go home to her peaceful life. Even if it was lonely. Yet the man across the table from her was handsome and charming. A tiny bubbling excitement tugged at her, and she tried to ignore it.
When they finished eating, he refused to let her help him clean up. “It should be cooler out now. Let’s walk, and I’ll show you the barn.”
She nodded, although she was tempted to give a firm no to his proposal and go home. She suspected he wanted to show off his ranch, but she didn’t dare give a thought to becoming part of it.
The sun was slanting toward the western horizon when they went outside, and a slight breeze had sprung up. His house was a fenced oasis with a green lawn and beds of blooming flowers. Sprinklers slowly revolved, sending sparkling silver streams over the grass. Two tall live oaks spread branches above the lawn, creating cool shade in the late hours. A picket fence surrounded the backyard, and they followed a winding walk toward the gate.
“Why can’t your mother come stay for a time until you hire a nanny?”
“Mom is busy. My stepfather is Thornton Bridges. He’s a state representative, and he has his sights set on running for the Senate next election. They have a busy social life, and Mom is into a lot of charities. She’d be glad to take Elizabeth to Chicago, but I don’t want to give up my daughter.”
Breezes tugged at Mattie’s hair as she lifted her face and gazed across his rolling land. In the distance she could see a herd of white-faced Herefords grazing. They left a flagstone path, went through a gate and followed the wide, graveled driveway toward the large barn. A collie came bounding up, frisking around Josh.
“Down, Grady,” he said gently, and the dog fell into step behind them.
She glanced at Josh surreptitiously, unable to imagine why he had selected her in spite of what he had told her. He had so many choices. Suddenly the butterflies in her stomach were back, fluttering wildly. Dinner was over, and she had to tell him no, for once and for all time.
They walked through the spacious barn, where Josh showed her the tack room, and then they strolled to a fenced pasture where mares were grazing. They stood beside the fence to look at the horses that were as fine as any she owned. Josh leaned against the fence and turned to face her. He caught her braid in his hand and toyed with it, the tugs against her scalp too faint to be the cause of the tingles she experienced. She wanted to back up because he was standing so close.
“I gave thought to what I wanted before I asked you, Mattie,” he said quietly. His brown eyes were compelling as he searched her gaze.
She looked up at him and realized again that he was one of the few men she had known in her life who made her feel petite. “It’s just impossible. I don’t know anything about babies. I really don’t know anything about men, either.”
“You work with men daily. You have all your life.”
“I’ve never dated, and that’s different,” she said, feeling her nervousness increase. Her skin felt prickly, and she was too conscious of him.
“It doesn’t matter one iota to me that you’ve never dated. And I doubt if never is the correct description. You’ve dated some,” he said. “You dated in college.”
“Very little, and it meant nothing. I feel like I’m an anachronism, a real throwback to another age and time when there were women like me. I’ve never seriously dated anyone.”
Josh wondered about the stories he had heard. She was skittish as a colt around him, but he suspected it was because of his proposal, not the fact that she was out with a man. Her gaze remained on the mares. Only the pink that suffused her cheeks gave a hint to her feelings.
“I thought you dated someone