Sandra Chastain (5 page)

Rusty spun around. “Stuff it, McCall,” she snapped. “There’s nothing frustrated about me. If I want something, I go after it.”

“Humph!” Letty interjected, “And maybe sometimes you don’t know what you want. I’d better tell you, Cade, I didn’t approve of Rusty’s wild idea to hire herself a husband to begin with. I thought there were plenty of men around here ready and willing. She didn’t need to advertise for a yes man.” Letty grinned. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re just what she needs.”

“Letty.” Rusty’s voice was full of bristling warning. “I don’t
need
a man. If I get one it’s purely for business purposes.”

“Sure,” Letty agreed. “If that’s what you want to call it, it’s fine with me, but I wonder what your father would say about his daughter contemplating marriage to a hot-blooded—gigolo.”

Cade scowled. “I may be hot-blooded, Letty, but I’m no gigolo.”

“No, I don’t think you are. But you sure aren’t what Rusty expected.”

“And the widow isn’t exactly what I was expecting either, Letty.”

Rusty gave an exasperated toss of her head, turned, and headed toward the window. “I’d appreciate it if you two wouldn’t talk about me as if I weren’t here. I’m trying to conduct a business deal here, Letty.”

“Yeah, looked real businesslike, all right,” Letty observed mildly.

“It doesn’t matter what we—I—you expected,” Rusty went on with a frown. “My goal is the same now as it was when I started—a husband and children. Whether or not you, Mr. McCall, have the good sense to accept my offer is yet to be determined.”

Cade didn’t reply. Instead he stood there, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He wasn’t smiling, but Rusty could almost feel his hidden amusement and his growing confidence. She wasn’t losing control, but neither was she gaining it. If they’d been playing poker, they’d both have thrown in their hands.

Letty glanced from Cade to Rusty and back again. “How do you feel about changing your name to Wilder after the marriage, Cade?” she asked innocently.

“Now, Letty, love, you know that I have no intention of changing anything, my name or myself. This marriage isn’t a done deal yet. In fact, I’m not sure that I’m even interested in this offer.”

Rusty looked startled. “And I thought you were a gambler, Mr. McCall. What exactly are you taking a chance on? Wealth? Position? Success?”

“I seem to remember another man who was offered great riches. His name was Faust, and he lost his soul.”

A quick fear swept through Rusty. She clenched her fists and stepped toward her mail-order groom. “Let’s stop jockeying for position, Mr. McCall. Any permanent arrangement will be based on a written contract that we both agree to. But we’re not there yet. We have six months to work out the details. If you have doubts about the trial basis I’ve suggested, you should take the night to consider my proposal. If my offer of money, a home, and being a mother to your daughter isn’t a good enough reward for your services, then so be it. You have a return ticket. Go back to Alaska, and we’ll forget we met.”

There was a long rigid moment of silence as they stared at each other before Letty’s voice cut through the tension. “Stuff and nonsense, Willadean Wilder! If ever two people were a match for each other, you two are. Ahhhh, the children you’ll have. And I’m thinking that no piece of paper is going to hold you back, and there’s no point in either one of you fooling yourselves.”

Rusty gasped. Letty was right. One touch by Cade McCall, and every sane thought about her future had left her mind. Granted, he might be the perfect candidate for fatherhood, but loosing sight of her objectives because of pure lust was foolish.

“McCall, Letty may be right. I’m beginning to think that I may have made a mistake. One of the other applicants might be a better choice. I’m glad you insisted on a … demonstration, Mr. McCall—”

“I don’t know if we’re a ‘match,’ ” Cade said,
cutting her off, “but something happens when we’re together, and I don’t think you want to end it just like that—without giving it a chance, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“No point in either of us trying to pretend otherwise. We are volatile together, too volatile to make sense. And this isn’t turning out as either of us anticipated. Maybe we’d better sleep on it. Then you can decide what you want, Mrs. Wilder.”

What she wanted? That stopped her. McCall was right about their chemistry. What she wanted was to throw herself back into his arms. Rusty studied his stern expression. Oh, yes, she understood the reference he’d made to a man’s selling his soul to the devil. She was beginning to understand that she might be in danger of losing hers. She didn’t know how to stop it, or even if she wanted to.

“What I want, Cade McCall? I don’t know. Suddenly I don’t know at all.” Garnering every ounce of strength left in her, she straightened her shoulders, turned, and strode from the room. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard his voice in the foyer behind her.

“If it’s any consolation to you, Redhead, neither do I.”

The sun leaped over the black mountains in the distance and brought with it the harsh light of day. From his window Cade McCall watched the world come to life. In the pastures the cattle appeared to be dirty white rocks being brushed by a sea of brown grass that gently swayed in the crisp air.

He watched below as Rusty strode purposefully
across the distance between the house and one of the barns. From where he stood, he could see a charged smile of anticipation on her face. She pulled herself up on the bottom rail of the fence and shaded her hand with her eyes as she gazed past the front of the house. This morning she wore spring-green-colored corduroy pants under the fleece-lined denim jacket she’d had on the day before. A bright paisley scarf caught her copper hair at the back in a loose knot.

Cade had hoped that a good night’s sleep would bring logic to his disordered thoughts. It hadn’t. If anything his senses, too, were in greater turmoil. The thrumming in his veins heightened. Just the sight of her proud face brought an unbidden lift to his entire being. And he wanted nothing more than to vault across the banister and join her where she clung to the corral fence.

Eugene had told stories about men who’d gone mad from wilderness fever and married the first woman they met when they reached civilization. But Fairbanks wasn’t wilderness, and he had already married once in haste.

He’d gone into marriage with the usual expectations when he’d married Janie. He’d been with the coast guard, away from his home base in South Carolina for the first time, assigned to duty in Washington State. He was lonely and homesick. Then Janie had come along. She was older, a woman looking for a ticket out of a seaport town. And they’d been each other’s port in the storm—for a time. He’d given her credit for trying. But the marriage had been a mistake from the first. He’d mistaken sex for love. She’d mistaken a uniform for success and his desire for her as the kind of
constant adoration that she craved. But he’d had to be away too much, and Janie needed company. She wasn’t too particular, he learned each time he returned.

Four years later he’d come home to an empty house and a note that she was filing for a divorce. She’d found someone would be there for her when she needed him. He hadn’t contested her decision. Instead he’d left the coast guard, drifting from one job to another, never allowing any one place or person to pin him down, until he’d finally ended up on the Alaskan pipeline.

It had been four more years before he’d learned that Janie had never followed through with the divorce. She was still his wife. He’d assumed that he’d never gotten any papers because he’d moved around. He might never have known except that Janie was sick and the bill collectors managed to track him down. When Janie’s hospital bills came to him, he paid. When Janie died, a stranger delivered his daughter, Jennifer, to him, the child he’d never known.

One look at Pixie’s great dark eyes had convinced him without doubt that she was his. Even if she hadn’t been, the memory of himself as a rejected eight-year-old boy who was so unhappy that he finally gave up and ran away from home seven years later would have made him accept her.

Neither shy nor frightened, Jennifer had quickly captured the devotion of Eugene, who’d been pressed into service as a nanny. It had taken longer for Jennifer to become “Pixie” and notch out a part of Cade’s heart. He’d nearly died along with her when she was so sick. She was already late in starting back to school because of her
health and because his camp was too far from town.

Eugene was right. Pixie deserved a different kind of life than in a pipeline camp: a father who was a line troubleshooter and was gone much of the time; a gruff old sourdough as her caretaker. So he’d put his own feelings aside and answered the ad, the ad that brought him to this ranch and a wild, red-haired woman who had offered him a strange proposal of marriage.

If he accepted Rusty’s proposal, it would be with his eyes wide open. Whatever attraction he felt to this woman had to be tempered with reality. What was best for Pixie would be the deciding factor, not what he wanted. And getting to know more about his potential employer was the only way he’d be able to determine that.

With that decision made, he pulled on a down vest and loped down the stairs to the kitchen where Letty had a cup of coffee and a sweet roll waiting for him.

“Figured you wouldn’t want to sit down and eat either. Rusty’s worse than a kid at Christmas, waiting for that bull to be delivered. She’s out—”

“At the corral,” Cade cut her off. “I saw her from the window.”

“I thought you might. Heard you walking around up there.”

Cade winced. He’d spent more than a few hours pacing back and forth last night. After bolting his breakfast he went out to the yard.

As he watched Rusty Wilder, his thoughts danced around in his head like the plastic Ping Pong balls in a bingo machine. She slowly turned
her head, finding his gaze and locking onto it with a frown.

“I didn’t expect you up so early,” she said.

“I might as well have come downstairs two hours ago,” he answered, “I couldn’t sleep. Change in altitude, I suppose. When’s your pretty new boy due?”

“ ‘Pretty boy’?”

“The bull.”

“Oh, any minute now.”

“How long will it take you to prove your theory about the new crossbreed?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, allowing a twinge of doubt to show in her eyes. “Probably too long. If the snowmelt is as light as anticipated, the Silverwild may be in jeopardy before I’m able to produce the kind of cow I’m going for.”

“You mean I’m likely to lose my twenty-five percent before I ever get it?”

“Then you’ve decided to accept my offer?” She forced her voice to remain calm, to conceal the unreasonable spurt of adrenaline that his words inspired. Sometime before dawn she’d decided that a business arrangement with Cade McCall could exist in spite of the tension between them. That would pass, once they’d … mated. The excitement now was enhanced because of anticipation, because she’d never had a relationship with a sensual man. It was the end result that she had to consider—children. If their relationship was wildly exciting in the meantime, she wouldn’t fight it. From what she’d seen of people and animals, once they’d mated, they lost their craving for each other. Desire served a necessary purpose.
It was temporary and could therefore be dealt with on a logical basis.

Once she’d arrived at her decision, she’d believed that she was prepared for him. She wasn’t. Desire was one thing, but when it interferéd with the operation of Silverwild, she couldn’t allow it. And it just had. She’d already blurted out her fears, and she’d never done that before. She held on to the fence and tried to concentrate on his readiness to answer.

“No, I haven’t made a decision yet about the marriage. But if you’re pulling a scam about what you’re offering me, at least you’re the most honest crook I’ve met. And”—he caught the tie of her scarf and held it for a moment—“the most beautiful too.”

“Don’t, Cade. I know that I’m not beautiful. You don’t have to flatter me. Those kinds of lies aren’t part of the deal.”

“If a man never told you you’re beautiful before—and proved to you he wasn’t lying—well, then I guess there are
some
things you’re not an expert at. I’m glad. Being close to you is intimidating enough.”

“Cade,” she whispered, “please don’t. I can’t seem to think when you’re so close.”

“I know,” he answered. “I’m having some problems with that myself.”

“Then don’t you think we ought to avoid—touching?”

“Yes, we ought to,” he agreed, and draped the scarf along her cheek, letting his fingers touch her for just a moment.

“Look, there’s the truck,” one of the hands shouted.

Cade dropped the scarf and turned around, his hand resting possessively on Rusty’s shoulder as if they had known each other years instead of hours.

A cattle truck was racing along the road toward the barn, throwing a cloud of dust behind it. The driver slowed the truck, came to a stop, and began to back toward the corral. Cade could hear the excited snorting of the new bull inside the trailer. He sounded violent even before the back gate was lowered and the huge red animal charged toward the fenced area.

“He’s sure a mean ’un, Rusty,” the driver observed as he piled out of the cattle hauler. “Like to butted the back wall of the cab to pieces on the way out here.”

The bull charged around the outer fence, then walked slowly to the middle of the corral and pawed at the ground, all the while snorting and bellowing as he glared at the watching group of hands.

The bull had a large chest, a hump on his back the size of a buffalo’s, and a lean, hairy rear end. His long tail swished sharply from one side to the other as his huge red-lined eyes darted back and forth. His head was large and flat, and his heavy curved horns extended out at least twelve inches in each direction.

Cade let out a long whistle. “This is a bull from Borneo, Mrs. Wilder. When you go out on a limb, you take a saw with you.”

“What do you mean, McCall? He’s just what we need. See the hump? That’s where he’ll store the extra water, in the mound of tissue. So what if he isn’t beautiful? We don’t care what he looks like. It’s the cattle he sires that count.”