Astonishment. Was that what he was seeing on her now?
He’d take it, because that meant he was getting a rise out of her, and if there was nothing about her that was interested in him, she wouldn’t have bothered with any kind of reaction.
“You’ve got some chutzpah,” she finally said.
“What I’ve also got is great taste in wine.”
“Do you really.”
“Sure. Tex and I used to sit on his porch swing and talk about everything while we drank from his spirits collection. He was a wine guy, you know.”
Donna had her arms crossed over her chest now. She seemed to do that around Caleb frequently.
“I saw his cellar,” she said. “It is extensive.”
“He had vintages shipped from all over—Napa Valley, Bordeaux, Chile, the Rioja region of Spain.”
She surveyed him, seemingly taking a second look at the cowboy loitering near the doorway, and hope sprang in Caleb’s chest.
Was she seeing beyond the Stetson and boots?
When she went back to straightening the pillows on the bed, he wasn’t so sure.
“Thanks for the offer for movie night,” she said, “but I’m afraid I won’t have a second to rest.”
Caleb let her excuse go. If she didn’t come around this weekend, he would find another time to be alone with Donna Byrd.
Before he went, he took one last opportunity to be complimentary, glancing around the room. “As I said yesterday, you’ve done a real good job with the ranch so far. You should be proud.”
She actually beamed, and it made him think that all the trouble she’d been dealing to him had been worth it.
“That’s nice of you to say,” she said.
“It’s just the truth.”
She sat on the bed, as if forgetting he was in the room and she had been using the mattress as an obstacle only a short time before.
Beds.
Donna Byrd.
Stop it, Caleb.
She said, “I’ve been going over the cabins again and again, looking for faults. It’s good to hear that we’ve been successful.”
“There’s one place that you left out of your makeover, though. Savannah’s old cabin.”
The name hovered, as if circling them.
But if he was going to get to know Donna Byrd, Savannah was bound to come up sometime or another.
“It’s a cabin that’s just as good as any of the others,” he said.
“No. That antique bed has been stored in there for a while, and… Well, we modernized the kitchen, but moving anything else around in there seems like bad luck or something.”
This was unexpected. Was she superstitious?
Maybe she would believe in fate just as much as he did—that his destiny was tied to hers….
“You know all about that bed,” she said. “Don’t pretend you’re oblivious.”
“Tex told me a thing or two about it.” But not everything, I suppose.
“I know that my great-grandmother first brought that bed to the ranch. This sounds like such a cliché, but she was supposed to have the gift of second sight, and she would dream of the future when she slept on that feather mattress.” She hesitated, then said, “I know other people who’ve had… experiences… in the bed, too.”
“You?”
It was dangerous to ask such a forthcoming question about beds. About Donna Byrd.
But she didn’t shoot him one of those what-are-you-all-about? looks this time. She only laughed a little.
“No, I haven’t been on the bed. But I do wonder if Savannah ever had dreams there since she stayed in that cabin.”
“You think you’ll have the chance to ask her?”
Now he knew he’d gone too far, because she stiffened.
Was she thinking that Byrd business was Byrd business, and he had no part of it?
Before he could decide, she gave him a curious look. “You haven’t been around the ranch in a while, right?”
Aha, she’d noticed. The news did him good. “Right.”
“There’s a lot that’s been happening with Savannah Jeffries. Nobody caught you up on all of it?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Donna sighed. “Tammy found a grocery receipt while she was snooping around Savannah’s cabin. You remember that day.”
The day Tammy had injured herself in the cabin and he’d first seen Donna. He’d never forget.
“A receipt?” he asked.
“It was from the time Savannah spent on the ranch, and there was a pregnancy test on it.”
Caleb froze. “Are you saying there might be another Byrd running around out there?”
“There could be.”
He was getting better and better at recognizing Donna’s body language. She was already shutting him out with her cool voice. But damned if he’d let her do that. He had an investment in this family, too, an interest in seeing that Tex’s love for this land and his family was never tarnished.
But Caleb would have plenty of time for trying to make Donna come around, and he moseyed toward the door. “You’ll want to be deciding on your favorite vintage, Donna Byrd. I’ll have it ready when you are.”
He received one of her miffed expressions in return, putting them back to where they’d been when he’d first entered the cabin. And just before it seemed that she was about to follow it up with a tart remark, the sound of a cell phone—a businesslike digital ring—interrupted them.
She stood, reaching into her pocket to answer as Caleb smiled at her in parting.
As he exited, he glanced back, just one more time, and when he found that Donna Byrd was watching him while answering her phone, he went on his way, his smile growing even wider.
HOURS LATER, DONNA was in her room in the main wing of the big house, sitting in the bay window and rubbing her temples to chase away a headache as she waited to go downstairs to share the news from the call she’d received earlier.
She was still reeling from what their investigator, Roland Walker, had told her, and, surprisingly, the only thing that was keeping her from stressing out entirely was the thought of Caleb and his promises of wine.
How strange was it that Caleb seemed to be her only bright spot during the day? She wouldn’t have predicted that in a thousand years because he was a distraction. A man with a killer smile who only messed up her head and took her offtrack.
But every time he would cross her thoughts—and he seemed to be doing that quite a bit—she would find herself fighting a smile.
Her—the remote Byrd. The prickly one who had never found the kind of love Tammy and Doc or Jenna and J.D. had, and the one who probably never would, based on her record of dating, then deciding her time was better spent on whatever project she had on the front burner.
Speaking of which…
Her alarm clock read 5:00 p.m., and she inhaled, standing, then leaving her bedroom. When she got to the living room, everyone was waiting: Jenna, who sat in the new rocking chair by the fireplace; Tammy, who perched on a leather sofa in between her brothers,