“What are you looking at?”
“I was wondering…” She paused so she could quickly make something up because she sure as heck wasn’t going to tell him what she was thinking. “Does the nonranching part get to all of you?”
He was silent while he bounced the truck over the uneven road, out beyond where the two smaller houses sat and onto the edge of a small meadow.
“From time to time, but keeping the ranch for everyone’s future is more important than not washing someone’s dirty sheets. And we get to help the poor city folk get a glimpse of what a really rich life is like. You know, dirt under your fingernails, getting stiff from being in a saddle too long, sleeping out under the stars with the snakes.”
“You make it sound as nice here as I imagined it would. I might have to rent out one of the cabins we’re building—but there’d be no snakes for me, please.” She wondered what he’d say if he knew how little she was kidding about renting one of the cabins, reptiles or not.
“The wooded area over there…” He’d stopped the truck, and pointed out into the distance.
“Wait. Where do you put the tourists? Aren’t those two houses for Holly and Amy and their families?”
“In the spring, while Lance and Seth are busy calving and doing ranch work, Holly and Amy are busy packing up to move out of their homes and into the big house. We all live together in the late spring and s ummer. There are seven bedrooms and it’s, well, we’ll call it cozy.”
“It’s good you all like each other. Maybe we should build more cabins to start with and that might give Holly and Amy a break next spring.”
“If we build them all at once, you can invite all your California friends who are looking for a break from the crowd.”
Bam. A reality blast thrown in her face. All her friends?
It was bad enough to know most of her so-called friends had deserted her, but to have to admit it to a stranger—a customer—pointed out a far too dismal future. Blah.
BAYLOR WONDERED WHAT he said that made her face go all long and thoughtful, and then he reminded himself it didn’t matter.
He knew himself well enough to know KayLee Morgan could be dangerous territory. Dangerous because he couldn’t help himself. Rescuing damsels in distress had been his thing since he kept the bullies in grade school from picking on Abby Fairbanks when he was nine and she was twelve. But damsel rescuing had to take a second seat to this business deal. Rescuing this one could put his family’s welfare in jeopardy.
“Over there—” he pointed toward the far side of the meadow “—is where you propose to start the first cabin.”
She leaned closer to the windshield and peered at an isolated stand of pine and larch trees. “Perfect. We’ll need to set down the roads first so the equipment can be moved easily in and out.”
She reached for the door handle.
“Hang on. I’ll drive over and you can get a closer look. It gets muddy out there when the snow melts.”
She nodded. Her expression held a mixture of concentration and excitement. He wondered if he would have gotten that reaction from the other bidders.
Baylor realized she had a hand on her belly. She seemed to be speaking to her baby and that simple gesture made her seem totally invested in the project. At that moment, she seemed more like a partner than a vendor. He wasn’t sure whether that was bad or good.
Bad if it made him lose his objectivity, and good if it made her care more about his family’s future.
Suddenly, she seemed very attractive and not just because she was sexy. He stopped the truck. The heat must have been making him stupid. He needed fresh air and badly.
BAYLOR STOPPED THE TRUCK at the edge of the stream and leaped out, but KayLee climbed down before he could get around to help her. She didn’t need help, she couldn’t allow herself to need help, but she wanted to stand where one of the cabins would be built, feel the site, make sure it was as perfect as she had hoped it would be.
While Baylor rummaged around for something in the toolbox in the bed of the truck, she made her way across the uneven, somewhat icy terrain to the middle of the grouping of ponderosa pine trees. Their sweet scent filled the air and she inhaled deeply and let herself imagine.
She could see a cabin nestled between the largest trees where there was a natural space. There was enough access from the side of the lot away from the stream that only one small sapling might have to be removed to make way for the heavy equipment.
It was the perfect spot for a cabin, a home, her mountain home. She shook her head at the futility of that dream and swiped a rascal tear from the corner of her eye.
“What do you think?” Baylor spoke softly from behind her as if he knew he was intruding on the mood.
Upbeat, that’s all she’d show him, not tears. In fact when she wasn’t pregnant anymore, she vowed to never cry again for any reason.
“It’s perfect,” she said when she was sure her voice wouldn’t squeak or waver. “I’d put the cabin right here, offset from the middle.”
“That’s where me and my brothers would pitch a tent when we wanted a wilderness adventure and our mother thought we were too young to be too far away.”
The sound of his voice drew closer until she could feel the heat of his breath against the back of her neck. KayLee fought a sudden intense craving to have him touch her, put a hand on her waist—well, where she used to have a waist—or put his lips to her neck. Oh, heck and darn. She took a step away.
“This is a special place, and I think a cabin here would be great. We could call it the Whispering Winds Cabin because the wind swishes like a whisper through the pine needles.”
“Maybe not,” he said and chuckled.
“No?” Why not? Why was he laughing? Was he going to squash all her ideas?
He nudged her shoulder with his fingertip to get her attention. “It’s a fine name, but Whispering Winds is the name of the neighbor’s ranch. Thinking of names as you build them is a good idea, though. Cabin one, two, three, et cetera is kind of boring.”
She shifted to look directly into sky-blue eyes that studied her face. She dropped her gaze to keep him from reading her soul.
The sparkle of golden hair in the V of his cream-colored shirt beckoned her with a “come on and touch me.” She wanted to put her fingers in the V and loosen the rest of the buttons so she could press her palms into the middle of that soft hair, feel the ridge of muscle where his pecs bulged. She fought to keep her eyes from moving even lower and then with a hormone-balancing force of will brought her gaze back up to his face.
She smiled and shifted from one foot to the other. “You know…”
“What do I know?” He was amused and not embarrassed by her assessment.
“Besides the obvious handsomeness of your face, speaking from a Hollywood perspective, you have uncommonly nice individual features.”
“A Hollywood perspective?”
“I saw enough of the people my husband cast in films to know a great jaw and a sexy camera-friendly mouth when I see them.”
“Sexy, too?”
She parted her lips to speak again, but stopped when she realized she wanted to ask him to kiss her.
She stepped backward.
Ask him to kiss her? Yeah. That should send him fleeing back to the ranch house, where he could call the sheriff to toss her out of Montana for good.
But