“You know, hon, I just remembered you must be tired from your trip. You can pick out your horse tomorrow. Why don’t we just take a quick look at your room, then head on to the Lazy M?”
“That’s sound just like the tonic I need,” Lyndie said.
Bruce seemed to want to elaborate on what kind of tonic he’d like to give her, but to his credit, he directed “Right this way,” leading them toward a low building of new milled lumber that stood between the main house and a row of stables.
“This here’s the bunkhouse.” He threw open a door. “The place has been renovated to make private rooms. As you see, they’re basic, but they’re clean as the bottom of a feed bucket. And there’s plenty of hot water.”
Lyndie stepped into the room. Her black Italian pantsuit looked absolutely out of place next to the rough-hewn log bed and the throw rug covering the floor. She already felt like a fish out of water, and only more so when she turned and met the cowboy’s gyrfalcon gaze.
There was no reading his mind. He was like Mitch, a cipher. But she swore she saw the twist of a smirk on his lips as he, too, noticed the contrast between her and the simple room.
Rattled, she ran her hand down the thick, scratchy wool blanket on the bed. “Well, I didn’t expect the Ritz, so I guess this will serve its purpose just fine,” she said dismissively.
His gray eyes lit with an amused sparkle. “It’s always served my purposes damn well—”
Hazel interrupted him with a coughing fit. “Lordy, don’t know what came over me,” she apologized when she was finished.
“I—I guess I’ll get my bag, then,” Lyndie remarked.
“Let me help you,” he offered.
“Thanks, I can manage,” she assured him, walking out the door without turning around.
He stared at her until she turned the corner.
“Well, ain’t she silky satin,” he mumbled under his breath.
Hazel grinned. “Actually, she is.”
He raised one dark eyebrow.
“She’s in the lingerie business, remember?”
He grinned back. “That’s right. Well, either she’s got a mighty high opinion of herself, or a mighty low opinion of everyone else.”
“Neither one,” Hazel insisted. “She’s a wonderful girl. Just give her a little time, that’s all.”
Bruce lifted the corner of his mouth in a smirking smile. The gray of his eyes deepened. “Tell you what, Hazel, her nose may be a little out of joint, but the rest of her sure seems to be in order.”
“Atta boy,” Hazel encouraged him. “You just keep thinking like that, and sooner or later things are going to start humming right along.”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Humming along? Hey, I just run a dude ranch here, Hazel, and I try to be civil with all comers. I got no ulterior motives regarding your niece.”
“Well, you’d better get some,” Hazel insisted.
His jaw slackened in surprise.
But before he could respond, Hazel said, “Shush now, here she comes.”
“The hell you up to now, old gal?” he muttered.
“Just the usual tricks,” she muttered right back, quelling her smile before Lyndie saw it. “Just the usual tricks.”
Two
Bumping her wheeled suitcase along the dirt road toward the bunkhouse, Lyndie began to wonder what she’d gotten into.
A couple of weeks at a dude ranch had sounded fine in the steaming French Quarter—but that was then. Now she found herself in her high-heeled designer shoes, having to negotiate a hoof-rutted dirt path—not to mention the treacherous road map of a certain Mr. Everett.
He’d shaken her more than she wanted to admit. The lazy, hooded stare sparked something inside her which she feared was lust.
But she was not going down that highway to hell. Not now. Not ever. Fancy lingerie was fine for married women and the swinging single gal, but she was a businesswoman, and the lacy, sheer demi-bras she sold were now nothing more to her than product. They were the accoutrements of some other world, not of her own.
“Ma’am,” a deep-chested voice said in her ear.
Somehow he’d appeared beside her. She faced the ice-gray eyes of Bruce Everett.
He took her suitcase and hefted it easily to his shoulder like a favorite saddle.
“That’s all right—no—really, I can manage—” she stammered, following him like a schoolgirl.
“Been told you can manage just about anything—given what Hazel says about you,” he answered gruffly.
He turned and they locked stares.
Again she was frozen by his gaze.
Hazel showed up at the bunkhouse door, beaming. “We’ve got a good, old-fashioned Saturday night stomp at the Mystery Saloon tonight. You thinkin’ of comin’, Bruce?”
Lyndie cringed. She suddenly felt like she was in junior high, waiting for that first guy to ask her to dance. And there were no takers.
“You know I go for the trail and not the saloon, Hazel,” he answered gruffly.
Her great-aunt snorted like she was one of the cowpokes. “There was a time before Katherine that you were all too familiar with the saloon, and it’s time you stepped out again.”
If Lyndie didn’t know better, she would have sworn Bruce Everett gave Hazel one of those permafrost looks she was beginning to recognize herself. But that was not possible. No one thwarted Hazel. Hazel was the grand-dame of Mystery, Montana.
The McCallums went back more than a century, and had settled the entire valley. Among cattle ranchers, the McCallum name was interchangeable with the Midas touch. Even Lyndie herself knew how persuasive her great-aunt could be. In the midst of expansion and fiscal crisis, Lyndie had been lured to drop everything and attend a three-week vacation at a dude ranch—when she didn’t even know how to ride.
“We’ll see you at the stomp,” Hazel announced.
Bruce stood and stared at the two women, Lyndie’s leaden suitcase still perched on his broad shoulder.
“Well, if looks could kill…” Lyndie murmured as soon as she was locked inside Hazel’s signature burnt-orange Caddy and away from the eyes and ears of Bruce Everett.
“He just needs a nudge, that’s all.”
She looked at her great-aunt. “Hazel, I said no shenanigans. I certainly don’t need them, not when you’ve convinced me to take a break. And certainly Bruce Everett doesn’t need a woman thrown in his lap when he has this Katherine he’s hung up on.”
“He needs to quit his hang-up with Katherine. It wasn’t his fault. She was a headstrong fool who couldn’t be taught to respect a horse. And I don’t care how beautiful she was, he had no business with a woman who wouldn’t respect a horse,” Hazel said astutely.
“I am totally confused. What does this have to do with me?” Lyndie enquired. “Because, let me tell you, I respect horses. In fact, if the truth be known, I so respect them that I’m scared to death of them. So let Bruce and Katherine have their respect-the-horse love-fest without me.”
“He needs to go to the saloon tonight and two-step around a bit. It’d be good for what ails him. There was a time when he was the tomcat of Mystery. And believe me, the ladies didn’t complain.”
Lyndie released a cynical sigh. “I know too well