“Stop,” Grace said, closing her eyes for a moment.
Luce giggled, although the sound was nearly inaudible.
“Why?” Mace asked reasonably. Like Drake, he loved Grace.
“Because it wasn’t a tenpenny nail,” Grace replied, looking to Slater for help, which wasn’t forthcoming. Her husband was buttering his second biscuit and grinning to himself.
“Your problem,” Mace told Drake, “is that you are totally unsophisticated. To you, warm generic beer from a can is the height of elegance.”
Let the games begin.
“I’m unsophisticated?” Drake raised his brows. “This from a man who wore different colored socks just the other day? That was sophisticated, all right.”
Mace looked and sounded pained. “Hey, it was dark when I got dressed, and I was in a hurry.”
“I bet you were,” Drake shot back. “Come to think of it, little brother, those might not have been your socks in the first place. Guess it all depends on whose bedroom floor you found them on.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Grace said, tossing a sympathetic glance Luce’s way.
“Are they always like this?” Luce asked.
“Unfortunately,” Grace answered, “yes.”
Just then, Blythe Carson breezed in, carrying a place setting and closely followed by Ryder.
“We’ve decided to join you,” Blythe announced cheerfully.
“Thank God,” Grace murmured.
Ryder, holding a bowl and silverware of his own, sat down next to his mother. “Basketball practice got out early,” he said. He nodded a greeting to Luce and reached for the stew.
Blythe Carson, more commonly known as “Mom,” sat down with a flourish and beamed a smile at Luce. “How nice to see you again,” she said. “I hope my sons have been behaving themselves.”
“Not so much,” Grace said.
“Hey,” Slater objected, elbowing his wife lightly. “I have been a complete gentleman.”
“You’ve been a spectator,” Grace countered, hiding a smile.
“All I did,” Mace said, “was warn Luce about Drake’s tendency to skinny-dip at every opportunity. Seemed like the least I could do, considering that she’s a stranger here, and a guest.”
“Hush,” said Blythe.
Harry reappeared with a coffeepot in one hand and a freshly baked pie in the other.
Once she’d set them down, she started whisking stew bowls out from under spoons. When she decided a course was over, and that folks had had enough, she took it away and served the next one.
Blythe sparkled.
The coffee was poured and the pie was served.
Ryder excused himself, saying he had homework to do, and left, taking his slice of apple pie with him.
The others lingered.
Grace, yawning, said she thought she’d make it an early night and promptly left the table, carrying her cup and saucer and her barely touched pie to the kitchen before heading upstairs.
Blythe remained, watching her sons thoughtfully, each in turn, before focusing on Mace. “Seriously?” she said. “You brought up skinny-dipping?”
Luce, who had been soaking up the conversation all evening, and probably taking mental notes, finally spoke up.
She smiled brightly at Slater, then Mace, and then Drake. “I enjoy skinny-dipping myself, once in a while.” She paused, obviously for effect. “Who knows, maybe I’ll join you sometime.”
Blythe laughed, delighted.
Mace and Slater picked up their dishes, murmured politely and fled.
“I’d better help Harry with the dishes,” Blythe said, and in another moment, she was gone, too.
* * *
LUCE TURNED TO DRAKE, all business. “Now, then,” she said, “the wild herd has almost doubled in size since you first reported their presence to the Bureau of Land Management several years ago. What accounts for the increase, in your opinion?”
The change of subject, from skinny-dipping to the BLM, had thrown Drake a little, and Luce took a certain satisfaction in the victory, however small and unimportant.
The room was empty, except for them, and Luce was of two minds about that. On the one hand, she liked having Drake Carson all to herself. On the other, she was nervous to the point of discomfort.
Drake, she noticed, had recovered quickly, and with no discernible brain split. He’d probably never been “of two minds” about anything in his life, Luce thought, with some ruefulness. Unless she missed her guess, he was a one-track kind of guy.
Now he leaned back in his chair, his expression giving nothing away. And, after due deliberation, he finally replied to her question.
“What accounts for the increase? Well, Ms. Hale, that’s simple. Good grazing land and plenty of water—the two main reasons my family settled here in the first place, over a hundred years ago.”
She wondered if he might be holding back a sarcastic comment, something in the category of any-idiot-ought-to-be-able-to-figure-that-out.
She had, in fact, taken note of the obvious; she’d put in long hours mapping out the details of her dissertation. She wanted his take on the subject, since that was the whole point of this or any other conversational exchange between them.
Okay, so she wasn’t an expert, but she was eager to learn. Wasn’t that what education was all about, from kindergarten right on up through postgraduate work?
She decided to shut down the little voice in her head, the one that presumed to speak for both her and Drake, before it got her into trouble.
“What makes it so good?” she asked with genuine interest. “The type of grass?”
His gaze was level. “There’s a wide variety, actually, but quantity matters almost as much as quality in this case.” A pause. “By the way, there are a lot more wild horses in Utah than here in Wyoming.”
Zap.
“Yes, I know that,” Luce replied coolly, determined to stay the course. She hadn’t gotten this far by running for shelter every time she encountered a challenge. “And I realize you would prefer I went there to do my research,” she countered, keeping her tone even and, she hoped, professional. “Bottom line, Mr. Carson, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why here? Why me?” For the first time, he sounded plaintive, rather than irritated.
“Fair questions,” Luce conceded. “I chose the Carson ranch because it meets all the qualifications and, I admit, because my mother knows your mother. I guess that sort of answers your second inquiry, too—you’re here, and you run the place. One thing, as they say, led to another.” She let her answer sink in for a moment, before the windup. “And, I will admit, your commitment to animal rights intrigues me.”
That was all Drake needed to know, for the time being. If she had a weakness for tall, blond cowboys with world-class bodies and eyes so blue it almost hurt to look into them, well, that was her business.
He surprised her with a slanted grin. “I know when I’m licked,” he drawled.
The remark was anything but innocent, Luce knew that, but she also knew that if she called him on it, she’d be the one who looked foolish, not Drake.
Bad enough that she blushed,