Home on the Ranch: Oklahoma: Defending the Rancher's Daughter / The Rancher Bodyguard

Anything else he might have said was cut short by Sonny, who motioned toward him. “Well, I’d better get to work. It will take most of the afternoon to tag the cattle.”

As Zack got back to work with the rest of the men, Mark’s words played and replayed in his head. Obviously the temper he remembered Katie possessing was still there, she just hadn’t displayed it to him yet. But apparently she’d displayed it to others.

Now all he had to figure out was if Gray had died because he had made somebody mad at him or if perhaps he’d died because Katie had made somebody mad as hell at her.

* * *

Kate sat at the kitchen table, listening to the washing machine agitate, her thoughts doing the same thing. She wanted to be outside, watching the cattle being tagged, overseeing the day’s activities and interacting with the men.

But she knew she’d be too stupid to live if she just arbitrarily decided to go about her business as usual knowing that somebody had tried to kill her the night before.

So she had to be content following Zack’s rules, remaining in the house alone while life went on as usual around her.

She spent the morning doing loads of laundry. While the washing machine washed and the dryer dried, she sat at the kitchen table making a list of things she wanted to do when life returned to normal.

Mostly it was a list of chores, things that had needed to be done for the past several years but had never been accomplished. The spare bedroom needed to be repainted, the root cellar on the side of the house needed to be cleaned out and she needed to pack up her father’s clothing and donate it to one of the charities in town.

Her heart ached as she thought of this particular task. It would be the final goodbye to the father she had never really felt had given her the respect she’d hungered for, the unconditional love she’d sought from him all her life.

By noon she had changed out of the clothes she’d borrowed from Zack and into one of the newly washed sundresses that had been hanging in her closet.

As she sipped a glass of iced tea she thought about what Zack had said about Jake. Even though she had feigned ignorance of Jake’s obvious interest in her, she’d been aware of the cowboy’s subtle overtures of romance.

Jake was handsome and nice and most any girl would probably be pleased to catch his eye, but Kate wasn’t any girl. There was no electricity when Jake gazed at her, no tingles of pleasure or excitement when he touched her. There was no breathless anticipation when he came near.