Joshua and the Cowgirl (3 page)

“You might as well stay, now that you’re here. I’ve put you in the same room at the top of the stairs. If you need anything, just ask Elena. You should be comfortable enough there for the next few weeks.”

An immediate knot formed in the pit of his stomach. “Weeks?” he repeated.

“According to Cal, that’s how long it’s likely to take to straighten out the mess we’ve made of things. Garrett tries, but she has too much to do around here as it is. We both sort of figured if there was money in the bank accounts at the end of the year we’d done okay.”

Joshua listened to the casual tone and detected the false note at once. Mrs. McDonald had not survived all these years as a widow in this hard, unforgiving environment with an attitude like that. She’d probably counted every penny, then squeezed the last cent of value out of each and every one.

He met her gaze head on. “You’re an old fraud, you know that?” he said.

Flustered by the direct challenge, she feigned a coughing fit, then finally shrugged and winked at him. “Maybe so. Maybe not. You’ll know better once you’ve seen those books.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you to keep a duplicate set, all nice and tidy, locked away in your bedroom.”

“What if I do? You won’t find it.”

“Maybe I will,” he warned. “It’d mean a lot to me not to come here again.”

“Enough to sneak in there and risk getting shot with the rifle I keep by my bed?”

Joshua thought of the danger Garrett represented to his equilibrium and those acres and acres of snow-covered land just crawling with cattle. “Could be,” he told her. “I guess we’ll both just have to wait and see.”

* * *

“Por favor,”
Elena pleaded as Garrett edged anxiously toward the kitchen door. “The
se;atnora
wishes you to dine with her and her guest tonight. The little
se;atnorita
, as well.”

“I promised Casey I’d make pizza tonight,” Garrett improvised, a trifle desperately. She did not want to sit at that oversized dining-room table and make small talk with a man whose gaze heated her blood as Joshua’s did. It had been incredibly disconcerting this afternoon to discover that she was not nearly as immune to men as she’d believed all these years. It was particularly distressing that it was Joshua Ames who’d awakened her senses from a fourteen-year slumber.

“I cannot tell the
se;atnora
that,” Elena said. A crafty note crept into the housekeeper’s voice. “You will have to tell her,” she said triumphantly.

“Tell me what?” Mrs. McDonald said just then, putting an end to the test of wills.

Garrett sighed. “I was just explaining to Elena that I’d promised Casey pizza tonight. I’m sorry. I won’t be able to join you for dinner.”

“Casey is already in the parlor entertaining Joshua.”

Garrett’s spirits sank. “Oh.”

Mrs. McDonald nodded victoriously. “That’s settled then. Hold dinner for a half hour, Elena. Mr. Ames and I will have a sherry in the parlor, while we wait for Garrett to change.”

Garrett looked down at her dirt-smeared jeans and muddy boots. She was achingly tired. If Mrs. Mac was determined to drag her to this dinner, she could just take her as she was. For an instant she was childishly tempted to tell her just that. In the end, though, her fondness for Mrs. Mac, as well as a streak of determined pride, kept her from doing it. “I’ll only be a minute,” she promised wearily.

It was a full half hour before she reappeared, but judging from the approval in Joshua’s eyes, her attempts to downplay her femininity had been wasted. His slow examination took in the bulky, shapeless blue sweater that fell below her hips, as if he were imagining every concealed curve. His gaze lingered appreciatively on the stretch pants below, then rose again to settle on her face. The only makeup she wore was a pale pink lipstick, but he seemed fascinated by it. Finally, as if he, too, felt disconcerted, he jerked his gaze away, moved toward the silver tray set on the desk and poured himself another glass of sherry from the crystal decanter. He drank it down in one gulp.

To Garrett’s dismay Mrs. Mac’s curious gaze was fixed on him the entire time. Garrett recognized at once the spark of interest that flared in her eyes at the scene before her. The old woman was an inveterate matchmaker. She’d made Garrett’s marital status her pet project years ago. Garrett’s stubborn refusal to go along with any of her schemes had finally dimmed her hopes, but obviously the last few minutes had rekindled the old fervor.

“Hey, Mom,” Casey said. “Mr. Ames said he’d teach me to play chess. Isn’t that great?”

Garrett didn’t like the idea of her daughter getting chummy with Joshua. It would be just one more reason why she’d have to be nice to him and at the moment she wanted to put up as many hostile barriers as possible. “Between your schoolwork and your chores, I don’t know when you’ll have time.”

“Perhaps Casey could be excused from her chores while Joshua is here,” Mrs. McDonald suggested with sly innocence.

“Absolutely not,” Garrett protested.

Casey’s face fell. “Oh, Mom, please. You know I’ve been wanting and wanting to learn. You don’t know how and Mrs. Mac says he plays much better than she does. Besides, it won’t be for long. I deserve a vacation. All the other hands get one.”

Garrett grinned despite herself. She ruffled her thirteen-year-old’s unruly golden curls. Casey prided herself on being one of the cowboys. Since she’d been old enough to sit in a saddle, the men had tolerantly allowed her along on their roundups, teaching her everything they knew about ranching and probably more than she needed to know about the world. It had made her precocious, but it had also given her a sense of responsibility. She handled more chores than most children her age and she did it without complaint.

“How long a vacation do you figure you deserve?” Garrett asked.

Casey turned adoring eyes on Joshua, who in turn was watching Garrett’s reaction. “How long will you be here?” Casey asked him.

He hesitated as if waiting for guidance from one of the women. “Long enough to teach you what you need to know to beat Mrs. Mac,” he promised finally.

“I can almost do that now,” Casey scoffed.

“Then maybe you ought to save that vacation for something else,” he said.

Casey shook her head adamantly. “No. It’s my vacation. I get to choose what to do during my vacation. I really, really want to learn how to play chess.”

“I suppose it won’t hurt if you take a few days to hone your skills,” Garrett conceded finally, unwilling to rob her daughter of a few hours of excitement and special attention. Besides, if Joshua was occupied at the chessboard, he’d have far less time to trouble her with his penetrating glances.

Mrs. Mac rose just then. “Shall we go into dinner, ladies? Joshua? Elena has made one of her Mexican specialties, I believe.”

Garrett watched closely as Joshua moved at once to her boss’s side. His touch on her elbow was polite, a courtly gesture that the independent woman couldn’t possibly interpret as pity. The thoughtfulness behind his action pricked Garrett’s conscience. Her own rudeness grated in the face of his good manners. She sighed as she watched Casey follow them into the dining room, chattering like a magpie until Mrs. Mac, chuckling, hushed her. “You’re making my stomach hurt with your tall tales, girl. Elena will have our hides if we don’t do justice to her dinner.”

With Elena hovering, they sat down to enchiladas crammed with spicy chicken and doused liberally with sour cream. Refried beans and Spanish rice completed the main course. Garrett picked up the bowl of green chili salsa and spooned it sparingly on her food. Mrs. Mac shook her head when it was offered to her. Garrett turned to Joshua.

“Salsa?” she asked innocently.

“Of course.”

He ladled on a generous portion that left Casey wide-eyed and Garrett chuckling to herself. He lifted the first forkful of food to his mouth. Garrett waited for him to grab for his glass of water. But even though the hot sauce brought tears to his eyes, he grinned. “Wonderful,” he said with obviously genuine pleasure as Elena beamed, her face a roadmap of wrinkles. “This is the best Mexican food I’ve had since I lived in Texas. Most restaurants are real wimps about the seasonings.”

“You lived in Texas?” Casey asked. “Did you have oil wells?”

“Afraid not.”

“Cattle, like us?”

“No. My dad was a banker, first in ranching country, then in Dallas. I guess I developed my fascination with numbers and money from listening to him. When banks all around us were failing, his stayed solvent.”

Casey seemed awed. “I’m flunking math,” she admitted. “Numbers don’t make any sense to me at all, especially algebra.”

Joshua grinned at her. “Sounds to me like that’s what we ought to have you studying on vacation, instead of chess,” he said. “Numbers are great. You can always count on them to do the same thing.”

There was an oddly sorrowful note in his voice that drew Garrett to ask, “What about people, Mr. Ames? Don’t you trust them?”

He turned the full force of his gaze on her. She could feel the impact all the way to her toes and regretted drawing his attention to her. “Actually, I find certain people fascinating,” he said in a low, seductive tone that made her pulse scamper like a newborn filly. “Tell me, how did you happen to end up on a Wyoming cattle ranch? Were you born around here?”

Garrett’s mouth seemed to go dry under the intensity of his gaze. Fortunately her irrepressible daughter chimed in. “I was,” she said. “But Mom moved here from Chicago before I was born. She worked in a diner as a waitress until Mrs. Mac hired her.”

“Oh, really,” he said, his eyes sparking with increased curiosity.

Garrett knew that look was about to lead to more questions. She tried to forestall them. “When did you and Cal meet?”

“When we were barely teenagers. My family moved into his neighborhood.”

“So you roared through adolescence together.”

“Cal roared. I grew up at a more sedate pace.”

“Why was that?”

He shrugged as if the reason escaped him, but Garrett thought she detected a faint trace of some old hurt in the depths of his yes. “Were you rivals for the same girls?”

“No one was Cal’s rival when it came to girls. They flocked to him.”

“Don’t be so modest,” Mrs. Mac chided. “I imagine you had more than your share of feminine attention.”

He grinned. “I have few complaints
now
, especially with Cal settled down and out of the running.”

Garrett found the thought of Joshua Ames being pursued from coast to coast by glamorous women all too likely. He was probably the sort of rich, thoughtful, attentive lover who would appeal to any woman set on snagging a husband and challenged by his elusiveness. She wondered if any particular woman had the lead in capturing his heart. Because it infuriated her that the thought had even crossed her mind, there was a snap in her voice when she said, “Isn’t it rather arrogant to assume you can take your pick of the remaining available women?”

Innocent blue eyes pinned her. “Is that what I said?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

“Perhaps your hearing was affected by your own jealousy.”

“It must be remarkably comforting to have an ego the size of yours, Mr. Ames.”

Casey’s gaze shot from Garrett to Joshua and back again. Even Mrs. Mac seemed taken aback by her sharp tone. Joshua simply laughed. “So I was right,” he said. “You are jealous.”

“I am not jealous,” she said through gritted teeth. “Your love life is absolutely no concern of mine and I don’t see that it’s a fitting topic for conversation at the dinner table.”

“You brought it up. Would you rather talk about your romantic conquests?”

“No, I would not.”

Mrs. Mac appeared to be having trouble controlling a smile. “Now children,” she said. “That’s enough.”

“Perhaps I’d better take my inflated ego back into the parlor, so I can get to work on those books,” Joshua said.

“I wouldn’t think of letting you work on your first night here,” Mrs. Mac protested. “There will be plenty of time for straightening out those books tomorrow. Join us in the parlor for a nightcap.”

Garrett very nearly groaned aloud when he blithely accepted the invitation. Still, to his credit, Joshua put on a polite facade for the next half hour. It seemed only Garrett was aware of the tension in the room. When she could stand it no longer, she excused herself.

“Casey and I really must be getting home. It’s a school night.”

Casey looked disappointed. She always enjoyed the chance to spend an evening with grown-ups. “But, Mom, I don’t have any homework. Couldn’t we stay a little longer?”

“Not tonight.”

“Joshua, why don’t you walk Garrett and Casey home?” Mrs. Mac suggested.

Garrett stared at her as if she’d suggested they fly to Acapulco together. “Really, that’s not necessary,” she said hurriedly.

“But it would be my pleasure,” Joshua said, that spark of mischief back in his eyes. “I’ll get my coat.”

As soon as he’d left the room, Garrett whirled on Mrs. Mac. “It is less than a hundred yards to our house. I walk it alone every single night. Why did you suddenly decide we needed an escort?”

“It’s always lovely to make a man think he’s needed, Garrett. You really should remember that.”

“This man is
not
needed,” Garrett said, her voice strained.

Mrs. Mac regarded her with barely suppressed amusement. “Interesting,” she observed.

After nearly ten years of working for the perceptive, outspoken cattlewoman, Garrett knew exactly what was going on in her head. “What’s interesting?” she inquired reluctantly.

“The way you two get along.”

“We don’t.”

“Exactly my point. Why is that, I wonder? You always get along with everybody. You’re the most even-tempered person I’ve ever known. That’s why you do so well with the hands. Not every woman could overcome the hands’ natural distrust of female leadership, but the hands know they can count on you to be cool and objective under the worst kind of pressure.”

Garrett squirmed under the penetrating gaze. “I guess I was due for a change.”

“Hmm.”