Tyler

He chuckled and took another draw from his cigarette. “Well, boss lady, I’d better get those strays before somebody with an itchy trigger finger has beef for supper. I won’t be long.”

“The boys want to go looking for Apache arrowheads while they’re here,” she added hesitantly. “I told them I’d ask you.”

“Your nephews are nice kids,” he said unexpectedly. “They need a firmer hand than they get, though.”

“Marguerite isn’t the ideal parent for two high-strung boys,” Nell said defensively. “And since Ted died, it’s been worse. My brother could handle them.”

“Marguerite needs a husband.” He smiled at the thought of Marguerite. She was like the life he’d been used to—sophisticated and uncomplicated and pretty. He liked her because she brought back sweet memories. She was, in fact, all the things Nell wasn’t. “But a dish like Margie shouldn’t have much trouble finding one.”

Nell knew her sister-in-law was beautiful, but it hurt somewhere deep inside to hear Tyler acknowledge Margie’s good looks. Nell was only too aware of her own limitations, of her round face and big eyes and high cheekbones. She nodded, though, and forced a smile to her unlipsticked mouth. She never wore makeup. She never did anything to draw attention to her…until recently. She’d tried to attract Tyler, but Bella’s comments had killed the notion. Tyler’s subsequent behavior had buried it.

Now Nell knew better than to make eyes at Tyler. Besides, Margie was just his style, she thought bitterly. And Margie was interested, too.

“I’ll go into Tucson, then, if you’re sure about the camp out. And if you can’t find those strays by five, come back in and we’ll let your Texas friends look for them in the morning,” she added, referring to two of the older hands who shared a Texas background with Tyler and had become fast friends of his in the six weeks he’d been in residence.

“I’ll find them,” he said carelessly. “All I have to do is look for a puddle of water, and they’ll be standing on their heads in it.”

“You already know not to sit in any dips or washes,” she murmured. “Out here is even worse than in Texas. It can be raining twenty miles away and the sky can be clear, and before you know it, you’re in a floodplain.”

“We have flash floods where I come from,” he reminded her. “I know the dangers.”

“I was just reminding you,” she said, and hated the concern that she’d unwittingly betrayed.

His eyes narrowed and he smiled unpleasantly, stung by her condescending attitude. “When I need a nursemaid, honey, I’ll advertise,” he said in a pronounced Texas drawl.

Nell steeled herself not to react to what was blatantly an insult. “If you have a chance tomorrow, I’d like you to speak to Marlowe about his language. One of the guests complained that she was getting tired of hearing him swear every time he saddled a horse for her.”

“Why can’t you tell him?”

She swallowed. “You’re the foreman. Isn’t keeping the men in line your job?”

“If you say so, ma’am.” He tipped his hat with faint insolence, and she wheeled her mount too quickly, almost unseating herself in the process when she pulled on the bit too hard. She urged the horse into a trot and soothed him, stroking his mane as she apologized. She knew Tyler had seen that betraying action, and she felt even worse. She was the last person on the ranch who’d ever hurt a horse voluntarily, but Tyler had a talent for stoking her temper.

He watched her go, his cigarette smoking, forgotten, in his lean, tanned fingers. Nell was a puzzle. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever known, and she had quirks that intrigued him. He was sorry they’d become antagonists. Even when she was pleasant, there was always the reserve, the bitter holding back. She seemed to become rigid when she had to talk to him.

He sighed. He didn’t have time for daydreaming. He had to find six little red-and-white-coated calves before dark. He turned his horse and moved into the thick brush.

Nell dawdled on her way back to the adobe ranch house. She wasn’t anxious to have Marguerite around, but she hadn’t been able to find an excuse to keep the redhead away. Tyler’s remark about her sister-in-law still rankled. He found Marguerite attractive, and it wasn’t because of Nell that Marguerite was finding reasons to spend time on the dude ranch. She wanted Tyler. She’d made it obvious with her flirting.

Marguerite was beautiful, all right. She was redheaded, green eyed, and blessed with a figure that looked good in anything. She and Nell got along fairly well, as long as neither of them looked back nine years. It had been Marguerite who’d helped put the scars on Nell’s young emotions. Nell had never been able to forget what had happened.

On the other hand, it wasn’t until Tyler came that Nell really noticed how often Marguerite used her. She was impulsive and thought nothing of inviting her friends out to the ranch for horseback rides or of leaving her two young sons in Nell’s care.

Those actions had never bothered Nell very much until lately. Recently, Nell had been feeling oddly restless and stubborn. She didn’t like the idea of Marguerite coming for two weekends in the same month. She should have said so. Giving in to her sister-in-law had become a habit, the way of least resistance. But not anymore. She’d already given Marguerite some unmistakable signals that little Nell wasn’t going to be walked over anymore.

Margie only came out to see the Texan, Nell was sure of it. She felt a sense of regret for what she might have felt for Tyler if he hadn’t made his lack of interest so apparent. But that was just as well. Margie had made it obvious that she liked Tyler, and Nell knew she was no competition for the older woman. On the other hand, she was pretty tired of letting Margie use her for a doormat. It was time to say so.

* * *

Her sister-in-law and her nephews, Jess and Curt, were already packed and waiting when Nell parked the Ford Tempo at the steps of their apartment. The boys, redheaded and green eyed like their mother, made a beeline for her. At seven, Jess was the oldest. Curt was five and already a contender for a talking marathon.

“Hi, Aunt Nell, how about taking us to hunt lizards?” Curt asked as he clambered into the back seat a jump ahead of his taller brother.

“Never mind lizards, nerd,” Jess muttered, “I want to look for arrowheads. Tyler said he’d show me where to look.”

“I reminded him,” Nell assured the older boy. “I’ll go lizard hunting with Curt.”

“Lizards make my skin crawl,” Marguerite said. She wasn’t quite as tall as Nell, but she was equally slender. She was wearing a green-and-white striped dress that looked as expensive as the diamond studs in her ears and the ruby ring on her right hand. She’d stopped wearing her wedding band recently—just since Tyler came to the ranch, in fact.

“Well, if I get a lizard, he can live with me,” Curt told his mother belligerently.

Nell laughed, seeing her brother in the small boy’s firm jaw and jutting chin. It made her a little sad, but it had been two years since Ted had died, and the worst of the grief had worn off. “Can he, now?”

“Not in my house,” Marguerite said firmly. After her husband had died, Margie had taken her share of the ranch in cash and moved to the city. Margie had never really liked ranch life.

“Then he can live with Aunt Nell, so there.”

“Stop talking back, you little terror.” Marguerite yawned. “I do hope all the air conditioners are working this time, Nell. I hate the heat. And you’d better have Bella stock up on Perrier—there’s no way I’m drinking water out of that well.”

Nell got in under the wheel without any comment. Marguerite always sounded like a conquering army. It was annoying and sometimes frankly embarrassing to have Margie ordering her around and taking things for granted. Nell had taken it for a long time, out of loyalty to her late brother, and because the boys would suffer if she didn’t. But it was hard going, and until just recently she’d taken a lot from Marguerite. It was only when Marguerite began making a dead set at Tyler that Nell had started talking back. And now that she’d gotten the hang of it, she rather liked not being talked down to and told what to do. She stared at her sister-in-law coldly while the boys argued in the back seat about who got the middle and who got a window seat.

“The ranch is mine,” she reminded Marguerite quietly. “Uncle Ted is in charge until I turn twenty-five, but after that, I’m sole owner. Remember the terms of my father’s will—my brother got half and I got half. Uncle Ted was executor. Then when my brother died, you got his share of the ranch in cash. As executor, Uncle Ted keeps control until I come of age. You don’t give orders to me, and you don’t get special consideration just because you’re an in-law.”

Marguerite stared. It wasn’t like Nell to fight back so fiercely. “Nell, I didn’t mean to sound like that,” she began hesitantly.

“I haven’t forgotten what happened nine years ago, even if you’re trying to,” Nell added quietly.

The older woman actually went bloodred. She looked away. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t believe that, but I really am. I’ve had to live with it, too. Ted despised me for it, you know. Things were never the same between us after I had that party. I still miss him, very much,” she added in a soft, conciliatory tone, with a glance in Nell’s direction.

“Sure you do,” Nell agreed as she started the car. “That’s why you’re dressed to the teeth and finding excuses to suffer the heat at the ranch. Because you miss Ted so much, and you want to console yourself with my hired help.”

Marguerite gasped, but Nell ignored the sound. She pulled out into traffic and started telling the boys about the new calves, which kept the older woman quiet during the drive home.

As usual, when Bella saw Marguerite coming in the front door, the buxom housekeeper went out the back door on the pretense of carrying an apple pie over to the bunkhouse. On the way there she ran into Tyler, who looked tired and dusty and half out of humor.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, grinning at the older woman with her black scowl.

“Hiding out,” Bella said grumpily, pushing back strands of salt-and-pepper hair while her black eyes glittered. “She’s back,” she added icily.

“She?”

“Her Majesty. Lady Leisure.” She shifted the pie. “Just what Nell needs, more people to take care of. That lazy redhead hasn’t lifted a finger since poor Ted drowned in a dry wash. And if you knew what that flighty ex-model had done to Nell…” She flushed as she remembered who she was talking to. She cleared her throat. “I baked the men a pie.”

“You baked me a pie,” Nell muttered, glaring at her housekeeper as she came out of the back door. “And now you’re giving it away because my sister-in-law is here. The boys like pie, too, you know. And Margie won’t spoil her figure with sweets, anyway.”

“She’ll spoil my day,” Bella shot back. “Wanting this, wanting that, make the bed, bring her a towel, cook her an omelet… She can’t be bothered to pick up a shoe or carry a cup of coffee, no, not her. She’s too good to work.”

“Don’t air the dirty linen out here,” Nell said shortly, glancing at Tyler.