One Night with a Red-Hot Rancher: Tough to Tame / Carrying the Rancher's Heir / One Dance with the Cowboy

Kell, watching her, was amused and indulgent. “She could cook even when she was in her early teens,” he told Bentley. “Of course, that was desperation,” he added with a sigh.

She laughed. “He can burn water,” she pointed out. “I had so much carbon in my diet that I felt like a fire drill. I borrowed a cookbook from the wife of one of his buddies and started practicing. She felt sorry for me and gave me lessons.”

“They were delicious lessons,” Kell recalled with a smile. “The woman was a cordon bleu cook and she could make French pastries. I gained ten pounds. Then her husband was reassigned and the lessons stopped.”

“Hey, a new family moved in,” she argued. “It was a company commander, and she could make these terrific vegan dishes.”

Kell glared at her. “I hate vegetables.”

“Different strokes for different folks,” she shot back. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a good squash casserole.”

Kell and Bentley exchanged horrified looks.

“What is it with men and squash?” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I have never met a man who would eat squash in any form. It’s a perfectly respectable vegetable. You can make all sorts of things with it.”

Bentley pursed his lips. “Door props, paperweights…”

“Food things!” she returned.

“Hey, I don’t eat paperweights,” Bentley pointed out.

She shook her head.

“Why don’t you bring in that terrific dessert you made?” Kell prompted.

“I guess I could do that,” she told him. She got up and started gathering plates. Bentley got up and helped, as naturally as if he’d done it all his life.

She gave him an odd look.

“I live alone.” He shrugged. “I’m used to clearing the table.” He frowned. “Well, throwing away plastic plates, anyway. I eat a lot of TV dinners.”

She made a face.

“There is nothing wrong with a TV dinner,” Kell added. “I’ve eaten my share of them.”

“Only when I was working late and it was all you could get,” Cappie laughed. “And mostly, I left you things that you could just microwave.”

“Point conceded.” Kell grinned.

“What sort of dessert did you make?” Bentley asked.

She laughed. “A pound cake.”

He whistled. “I haven’t tasted one of those in years. My mother used to make them.” His pleasant expression drained away for a few seconds.

Cappie knew he was remembering his mother’s death. “It’s a chocolate pound cake,” she said, smiling, as she tried to draw him out of the past.

“Even better,” he said, smiling. “Those are rare. Barbara sells slices of one sometimes at her café, but not too often.”

“A lot of people can’t eat chocolate, on account of allergies,” she said.

“I don’t have allergies,” Bentley assured her. “And I do hope it’s a large pound cake. If you offered to send a slice home with me, I might let you come in an hour late one day next week.”

“Why, Dr. Rydel, that sounds suspiciously like a bribe,” she exclaimed.

He grinned. “It is.”

“In that case, you can take home two slices,” she said.

He chuckled.

Watching them head into the kitchen, Kell smiled to himself. Cappie had been afraid of men just after her bad experience with the date from hell. It was good to see her comfortable in a man’s company. Bentley might be just the man to heal her emotional scars.

“Where do you want these?” Bentley asked when he’d scraped the plates.

“Just put them in the sink. I’ll clean up in here later.”

He looked around quietly. The kitchen was bare bones. There was an older microwave oven, an old stove and refrigerator, a table and chairs that looked as if they’d come from a yard sale. The coffeepot and Crock-Pot on the counter had seen better days.

She noticed his interest and smiled sadly. “We didn’t bring a lot of stuff with us when we moved back to San Antonio. We sold a lot of things to other servicemen so we wouldn’t have to pay the moving costs. Then, after Kell got wounded, we sold more stuff so we could afford to pay the rent.”

“Didn’t he have any medical insurance?”

She shook her head. “He said there was some sort of mix-up with the magazine’s insurer, and he got left out in the cold.” She removed the cover from the cake pan and got out cake plates to serve it on. Her mother’s small china service had been one thing she’d managed to salvage. She loved the pretty rose pattern.

“That’s too bad,” Bentley murmured. But he was frowning behind her, his keen mind on some things he recalled about her mysterious brother. If Kell was friendly with the local mercs, it was unlikely he’d gotten to know them in the military. They were too old to have served anytime recently. But he did know that they’d been in Africa in recent years. So had Kell. That was more than a coincidence, he was almost sure.

His silence made her curious. She turned around, her soft eyes wide and searching.

His own pale blue eyes narrowed on her pretty face in its frame of long blond hair. She had a pert little figure, enhanced by the white sweater and blue jeans she was wearing. Her breasts were firm and small, just right for her build. He felt his whole body clench at the way she was looking at him.

He wasn’t handsome, she was thinking, but he had a killer physique, from his powerful long legs in blue jeans to his broad chest outlined under the knit shirt. Beige suited his coloring, made his tan look bronzed, the turtleneck enhancing his strong throat.

“You’re staring,” he pointed out huskily.

She searched for the right words. Her mouth was dry. “Your ears have very nice lobes.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

She flushed to her hairline. “Oh, good heavens!” She fumbled with the cake knife and it started to fall. He stepped forward and caught it halfway to the floor, just as she dived for it. They collided.

His arm slid around her to prevent her from going headlong into the counter and pulled her up short, right against him. Her intake of breath was audible as she clung to him to keep her footing.

She felt his chin against her temple, heard his breath coming out raggedly. His arm contracted.

“Th…thanks,” she managed to say against his throat. “I’m just so clumsy sometimes!”

“Nobody’s perfect.”