What must he have thought, to see her standing in the doorway showing off her stomach and chest like that?
Her mind went from zero to naughty in an instant, and it took all her effort to bring it back to being appropriately embarrassed.
“He’s got big arms,” Carter commented, oblivious to his mother’s mental gymnastics.
Oh, she had noticed his arms. She had noticed every single inch of him, from the shaggy sun-kissed brown hair under a battered cowboy hat all the way to his scuffed boots. Her eyes had eaten him up like so much candy the moment she had seen him standing on her porch. But she wasn’t planning on telling her four-year-old son that. “Hopefully he’ll be strong enough to do things I can’t do all on my own to get this ranch working,” she said, trying to maintain her concentration on the tasks at hand.
“We’ll help, too,” Zach responded, a look of such sincerity on his young face that her heart—and eyes—welled up at the sight.
“I know you will,” she answered, ruffling the boy’s dark curls, trying to keep the worry out of her voice.
It had seemed like a great idea only a couple of months ago. Purchase a ranch, get out of the city and live the life she’d always wanted. It seemed so simple. But she hadn’t expected everything to cost quite so much, and now here she was with a broken-down ranch that needed to make money, somehow, and she didn’t have the faintest clue how to go about it.
She knew that once she got her small doctor’s office going in the front room of the ranch house, she would be able to make ends meet, but finances would likely be tight for a while, and a running, profitable ranch would help give her a cushion. Instead, she was going to need to pour money into this place before she could hope to get much out of it.
Finding this ranch for sale when she so desperately wanted to leave Minneapolis had seemed like fate, and she’d jumped at the chance. Now, it seemed more like a crazy whim she’d acted on without thinking it through.
Mrs. McNeal’s offer of a helpful son had been a gift from heaven, and she knew she could never turn down the assistance, even if the man on the doorstep made her think nothing but the most sinful of thoughts.
Cassie pictured the way he had been standing there looking her over, and she felt short of breath again. She had tried to behave as professionally as she could, despite the inclination to kiss this complete stranger. She was no longer a whimsical young woman who could give in to an impulse of that sort, no matter how strong.
It was more difficult than she’d like to admit, though. She did not look forward to seeing the man again, and she needed to keep her distance when those urges pushed her to do some very inappropriate things. If she had any choice, she would tell the neighbors she didn’t require any help, after all. But she did, so there was nothing for it.
Cassie turned her thoughts back to her two sons, who were playing amid the boxes piled around the living room. “Time for bed,” she told them, and they hopped up, racing for the bathroom.
Zach won, shutting the door in Carter’s face. While he waited his turn, he went over to his mother and pulled on her arm. “Can you tell us the story about the time Dad saved the baby birds?” he asked, looking up to her with his large green eyes.
Cassie’s heart squeezed tight. The boys idolized their father and always wanted to hear stories about him. He had only been gone for six months, and she couldn’t face tarnishing their perfect image of him, so she had kept telling them the good stories over and over, keeping the not-so-good ones to herself. To them, he was a kind-hearted police officer who had died in an unfortunate car crash. She wanted it to stay that way.
Zach and Carter were by far the biggest reason why she couldn’t bring a man into her life. They weren’t ready. Especially not for someone like this Mr. McNeal, who carried an air of recklessness about him.
If only that recklessness wasn’t so damn enticing.
* * *
“YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR seems nice,” Brock told his ma as he piled mashed potatoes onto his plate, trying to keep any hint of emotion out of his voice.
The old woman was terrible at hiding her exasperation. She had been so interested to hear what had happened that he was surprised she hadn’t been hanging out a window with binoculars and some kind of long-distance microphone like in an old spy movie.
Well, it served her right to be on tenterhooks for a while, after that bit of meddling. Not that she shouldn’t already know exactly how it went. She was well aware of his rule.
A bite of delicious fried chicken later, he felt he had tortured her enough.
“No kids, ma. You know that.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Brock, I can’t understand what you have against children, particularly those two. They’re sweet things. And being around them might do you, and them, some good. Howie, tell him,” she said, swatting her husband on the arm.
The elderly man looked up from his food slowly, clearly unwilling to join the conversation. His gray mustache shifted from side to side as he chewed. After it was clear he was expected to make some sort of contribution, though, he nodded slightly. “Fine boys,” he said.
Sarah looked triumphant, as if that settled everything.
Brock shrugged. “You know how I feel about raising kids. Between the rodeo circuit and the kind of life I live—”
His ma snorted, making her thoughts clear on that score. He plowed on, regardless.
“—I don’t want the responsibility of children hanging over me every time I go rock climbing or hop on my motorcycle.”
He didn’t need to say any more. His adopted parents knew that he would never want to leave children without a father. When his parents had died...well, it wasn’t something he would wish on anyone.
He turned his attention to his food, the air thick with unspoken words.
Still, if there was ever a woman who could make him consider breaking his “no kids” rule, it was this Cassie. Even then, the only type of relationship he was prepared to have with her would need to be something temporary, casual, especially when he’d be on the road again in another couple of weeks, and he doubted she would be okay with something like that. Not a widow with two young children.
It was best not to even start something, no matter how tempting the lady.
His ma shook her head at him. “Why you and your sister can’t be happy with a nice calm life, I’ll never know. With her always thousands of miles away and you doing reckless heaven-knows-what...at least your brothers don’t try me like the two of you.”
Brock bit his tongue, but he was sure Ma knew what he was thinking: what she called “reckless,” he called fun, interesting, exciting.
“Where’s Amy going after her visit?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.
“She said she needs to write an article about Morocco or something,” Ma said, still glowering. “It’s as if you two have a bet going to see who can make the last of my hairs gray the fastest.”
Brock had to laugh at that. He’d never told Ma about the time the previous winter that he’d nearly snowboarded off a cliff face when a storm blew up around him, or a dozen other adventures he’d had in the last few years, but he could imagine her hair going pure white if she ever found out about it. He wondered if Amy had been keeping similar secrets from their ma.
The older woman harrumphed, but didn’t say anything more on the subject, and for that he was grateful. They’d had the “When are you going to settle down?” conversation so many times that another run-through just sounded exhausting.