Rugged (5 page)

It was too dangerous.

“No,” he said, his tone curt. He knew the harsh reply would stop her from asking again. “It’s just a few numbers on a scrap of paper. Nothing sophisticated enough to interest you.”

One slim shoulder rose and fell inside the white sweater. “Fine,” she said. “But the offer’s there, in case you change your mind. I expect to be here until the middle of December when Melvin and his New York crowd take over the place.”

“Is he the big man with long hair, or the slim one with a goatee beard?”

Her straight dark brows shot up “Don’t you know your new neighbors at all?”

“Only as specimens of an alien race.”

She laughed that silvery laugh again. It made shivers dance along his spine.

“I assume the big man is Melvin. My boss, Hank Goldman, is his brother, and he’s huge. The one with a goatee must be Philippe. They own a photographic studio together.”

“Are you related to your boss?”

“No.” She looked puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Same last name. Goldman.”

“Oh.
That
.” She slumped in the seat. “Not related. It’s just a…coincidence.”

She was lying. He knew it with as much certainty as he knew that he should avoid getting tangled up with her. With an angry gesture, Jed shoved the empty plate away.

“That was good,” he said. “I’ll go and cut firewood.”

“No need.” She must have noticed the sudden shift in his mood, because her tone became strained. “I spent most of the afternoon learning how to do it. I picked the smaller logs and chopped enough wood to last for a couple of days.”

Jed got to his feet, edgy and bristling.

So much for the idea that she might need his help for anything, or that he might be able to forge any sort of a friendship with the likes of her.

“I can’t come to dinner tomorrow night,” he said brusquely. “There’s too much to do on a ranch. It doesn’t make sense to waste evenings on small talk with someone you don’t give a damn about, and whom you’ll never see again.”

She flinched, as if he’d slapped her.

“I understand,” she said in a tightly controlled voice. “I didn’t know what to cook anyway. Most of the frozen food will need an oven. Perhaps you’d like to take a tray of lasagna with you, or a meat and potato pie. They’ll just go to waste otherwise.”

Jed shrugged into his coat and stalked to the door, where he paused, his hand on the lock, his back to her. “Damn,” he muttered. He wanted her to argue, say something sarcastic. If she gave him the slightest reason to dislike her, he’d be able to walk away. But instead, she fought back tears and told him she understood. “Come by tomorrow before it gets dark,” he said, almost despite himself. “Bring the food that needs cooking.”

Then he stormed out without looking back.

Chapter Three

Rachel knocked, knocked again. No lights illuminated the big house. She’d set out to climb the forest track when the twilight started to thicken. Now it crossed her mind that Jed’s idea of
before it gets dark
might be different from hers.

He might have meant pitch black.

She tried the tarnished brass knob. It turned smoothly. The door swung open on silent, well-oiled hinges. Her hand tightened inside the blue mitten that curled around the handle of a shopping bag full of food she’d hauled with her.

Would she dare to go inside?

She shrugged away the doubt. If Jed didn’t want her entering, he would have locked the door. She stepped into the dark hall, fumbled for a light switch and found it. Unlike her cabin, where the front door opened straight into the living area, the big house had a vestibule to keep out the cold. Rachel pulled off her boots. Feeling the icy draft over the floorboards, she changed her mind and put them back on.

If Jed slept with his boots on, surely she didn’t need to remove hers to cook.

With caution, she pushed the inner door open—and gasped in surprise.

She’d expected a dark, slightly unkempt bachelor pad with shabby furniture. Instead, she found a soaring room with full-height cathedral windows on the right and a massive stone fireplace along the far wall. A dog-leg open staircase rose to the upper floor. The furniture was mostly wood, even the sofas covered in black and red padded cushions. And, all around, gnarled trunks of dead trees stood like ghosts, taller than a man, the natural contours of the wood polished into a smooth shine.

Rachel went up to the nearest sculpture and ran her fingers over the surface. It felt soft as skin. Someone must have stripped off the bark and sanded each piece by hand, a task that would have taken hours of painstaking labor to complete.

Leaving the timber statue, she continued her tour. A door led to a cluttered den. Rows and rows of books crowded the open shelves. Romance novels jostled for space with classics and thrillers and biographies. Agricultural and wildlife magazines teetered in high stacks. An ancient desktop computer stood on the floor in one corner, the keyboard wedged behind the bulky monitor.

On the big desk, a ledger sat open, surrounded by scattered papers that looked like invoices and delivery notes and bank statements. Rachel craned her neck to check the last entry in the columns that ran across the page of the ledger. May. And it was November now. The tax season loomed close. She spotted a calculator buried beneath the papers and backed out of the room before she gave in to the temptation to put her skills to use.

Kitchen.

That’s where a woman’s place is
.

Rachel grinned at the thought as she strolled through the living room. From what she’d seen, Jed Ferguson was an old fashioned man. If he ever married, he’d take the word
obey
in the woman’s wedding vows at face value.

A good thing she had a life to go back to.

Because when it came to men,
obey
wasn’t part of her vocabulary.

* * * *

Jed walked up the hill, carrying the dying calf in his arms. It would have been easier to shoot him down at the pasture, as he’d done with the cow, but he didn’t like the idea of the orphan not being given a chance. And he disliked the idea that the animal would die cold and hungry, his last memory watching his mother die.

It sounded too much like what had happened to his brother.

The lights were on in the house.

Pleasure soared inside him at the thought that he could come home, aching with fatigue, and find the house bright and warm, a hot dinner on the table, and a pretty woman waiting for him, eager to ask about his day.

A man could get used to it.

He pushed away the thought with an angry snort. A man could get used to a lot of things, including idleness and drinking too much. Just because something sounded tempting, it didn’t make it into a good idea.

He took the orphan calf into the barn and tried to get him to drink some milk. After finding an old blanket to wrap around the tiny animal, Jed left the barn and went into the house. As soon as he’d walked in through the door, Rachel rushed up to him. She was wearing the same jeans and white sweater she’d worn yesterday, and the day before. He knew that for the rest of his life he’d remember how she looked in them.

“I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in,” she said.

“That’s fine.” Lifting his chin like a bloodhound, he savored the air. “Smells good.”

“Lasagna. I had two. I cooked both. You can reheat the second tomorrow.”

He shrugged off his sheepskin coat.

To his surprise, Rachel reached out to hang up the garment.

“Don’t,” he warned her. “It’s dirty. I had to carry an orphan calf into the barn. If you get me a cloth from under the kitchen sink, I’ll sponge the coat clean on the porch.”

She hurried away and returned with a rag made from an old T-shirt. He took it from her and went back outside. She followed and settled a few paces away, watching him as he wiped away the dirt in methodical sweeps.

“You have a calf in the barn?” she said. “Can I go and see it?”

“Tomorrow,” he promised, not telling her the animal might die.

“What happened?” She reached out and held the edge of the coat taut for him.

“A cow had a broken leg. I had to shoot her. I left my horse by the lake brought the orphan calf in with the tractor. It’s parked near your cabin. I usually stop there. The last stretch is uphill and it’s harder to turn.”

He spoke in short sentences, the long day draining his energy.

“Do you lose many animals?”

“Some. The winters can be hard.”

Her clear gray eyes shone with sympathy. Today, her hair was twisted into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, although wisps had broken loose to curl around her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes.” He inspected the coat before pulling it back on. “Pour me a drink of whiskey. There’s a bottle in the kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator. I’ll go back to the tractor and carry up the groceries I collected from Martha’s house.”

Don’t
, Jed told himself as he waded through the snow.
Don’t get used to her
.

* * * *

Logs crackled in the big stone fireplace. A smoky scent of pine filled the vaulted living room. Jed sprawled on one sofa, watching Rachel sitting across from him. She had let her hair down. The leaping flames made the curls glint with gold and copper and bronze.

She raised her glass and tasted. “Yuck!” Her face puckered in disgust.

“You don’t drink alcohol?” Jed took a sip of whiskey and relished the trail of fire it left in its wake.

“Not this rotgut,” she replied. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of good California Chardonnay, would you?”

“No. I don’t like white wine. Drink should warm you up, not cool you down.” He reached over to the radio he carried from room to room and switched it on, fiddling with the dial until he found a classical music station.

“Don’t you have a TV?” Rachel asked.

“No.”

“And the computer in the den looks pretty
kaput
.”

“Dead as a…whatever.” He raised one arm and made a sweeping gesture. A mellow heat was flowing through his veins as his body was finally beginning to thaw after the cold day of working outdoors.

“Who made these?” Rachel got up from the sofa and ran her hand over one of the timber soldiers. Her other arm curled around the sculpture, making it look like a lover’s embrace.

Jed felt his breath catch. A hollow ache settled in his gut. He adjusted his position on the sofa to hide the swelling in his groin. “My grandfather,” he said hoarsely. “He lost his eyesight in his old age.”

“They’re wonderful.”

“They are soldiers.” He paused, then carried on hesitantly, unsettled by his reaction to her innocent display. “My uncle, my father’s only brother, died in Vietnam. There’s one of these for every man in his unit who didn’t come back. The one you’re touching is Simon Bancroft.”

She turned to him. “Has Melvin seen these, or Philippe?”

“The
fashion people
?” He made a scornful sound. “I don’t invite them here.”

“Don’t let them see these.” She spoke in all earnestness. “If you do, they’ll pester you to do a magazine feature, or lend the works for an exhibition. The sculptures are wonderful on their own, but with that story attached to them, they’d be a publicity goldmine.”

Jed shrugged, his main concern getting his body under control.

The music on the radio changed.

“Oh, I love this. I’ve always wanted to dance to this.” Rachel held the timber soldier in her arms and swayed to the waltz from the
Jazz Suite
by Shostakovich. A moment later, she spun around, waving at Jed to come over and take Simon Bancroft’s place.