Wrangling The Rancher

“I’m allowing you to stay.”

“So as not to upset Karl.”

“The result is the same. You’re here.”

“Are you always this unpleasant?”

The laugh escaped before he could stop it. “No. Prior to the first of this year, I was a professional pleasant person.” He smiled in a way that felt satisfyingly dark. “But now I’m a farmer and I no longer have to suffer fools gladly.”

“Are you calling me a fool?” She spoke in a slow, measured tone.

“I’m calling you entitled.”

Her eyes flashed, but her expression barely shifted. She, too, was skilled at hiding her true feelings. He wondered briefly what it would take, short of a marauding rabbit, to make her lose her cool—which was not the direction his thoughts should be taking. He was on the farm to enjoy some solitude. Live on his terms, not on the whims of others. And he certainly wasn’t there to cause his unwanted tenant to lose it.

“I have things to do,” she said coolly.

“Me, too.” He headed to the door, stopping at the threshold. “The tools are in the building—”

“I know where the tools are,” she snapped.

“Just making sure.” With that he stepped outside, leaving Ms. Taylor Evans to soak up the ambiance of her new home.

* * *

TWO HOURS LATER Taylor was still stewing about her encounter with Cole. Entitled? No. It’d made sense for him to do the repairs. Yes, she could have asked rather than assumed, but in her world, the landlord took care of things like holes in the floor.

She rolled her neck, trying to ease the stiffness out of it. She’d unpacked the trailer and discovered that the losses were less than she’d anticipated. As near as she could tell, the thieves had blindly grabbed boxes, because if they’d looked inside, they wouldn’t have bothered with some of the things they’d taken. She’d lost her flatware, some serving dishes, her lingerie and a box of miscellaneous electronics. The loss of the flatware and dishes she took in stride, but the lingerie...that pissed her off. Bras were expensive, and finding ones that fit properly—that approached nightmare territory, which was why she bought her underwear from a boutique that specialized in bra fitting.

Five hundred bucks of silk, lace and underwire. Gone. Like that.

Let it go. Move on. She could practically hear Karl saying the same words he’d said over the phone whenever she’d failed to ace a test or hadn’t run her best during a cross-country meet. She wouldn’t be sharing this particular loss with him.

Tucking her hair behind her ears, Taylor folded the list she’d made and slipped it into her purse. She’d get a copy to the sheriff’s office and another to the insurance company. One more task tacked onto an already full agenda. She still had to return the trailer, buy flatware of some kind—and at the moment she was leaning toward plastic—and hire someone to fix the floor with money she couldn’t spare.

It had to be done. She wouldn’t have minded coming home to bunnies hopping around her house, but mice...she didn’t do mice. The floor needed to be fixed.

So what now? Pick the name of a handyman at random? The way her luck was running, she’d hire a scam artist.

She needed advice in the worst way, and even though she hated to call her grandfather with a sad story again, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed his number. Miraculously, he answered, so after making certain that all was well on his end, she launched into a description of what Cole had called the bunny attack, leaving out the part where she’d mistaken Thumper for a rat, as well as the part where she’d locked herself in her car. She had to hold on to some small shred of dignity. It was bad enough that her farm-mate had seen her. She ended her story with a description of the damaged boards under the sink.

“So what do I need? A plumber or a carpenter?”

“Why don’t you ask Cole to fix it?”

Because she’d had it up to there with tall, dark and irritating. “He’s pretty busy with farm stuff. I thought I could hire someone to do it.”

“Yeah, you could.”

“It’d be pricey, right?” She was guessing based on his tone of voice.

“I’ll call Cole.”

“No.” The word popped out in a way that made it necessary to do damage control immediately afterward. She forced an easy smile into her voice. “I can handle things. I was just looking for a little guidance.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

Half an hour later she realized just how long her grandfather was going to have to wait to hear that all was well. All the carpenters and plumbers were booked out for many weeks due to new construction in the area. The two local handymen were also seriously booked up.

“I’ll tell you what,” the last guy said, perhaps hearing the distress and desperation in her voice, “if you can cover the area with thick plastic and duct tape, that might keep the mice from coming in. If they’re not hungry enough to chew. Don’t keep food in the house.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. No food. Right. “And you’ll put me on the schedule?”

“Three weeks out.”

“If there’s a cancellation?”

She heard him suck a breath in between his teeth. “Five people ahead of you, but I’ll slot you into the waiting list.”

“Thank you.” It was kind of hard to say the words in a meaningful way, but she knew better than to annoy a handyman.

Taylor didn’t allow herself any breathing room between ending the call and heading for her car. She had to keep moving because if she stopped to consider her reality—no bras, possible mice, sleeping in a place in which she didn’t yet have a mattress—then she might not move forward at all.

Temporary. Remember?

Maybe she needed to write the word on the back of her hand in indelible ink.

She carefully closed the bunkhouse door as she left so as not to let in more rabbits, and then headed for her car, only to stop when she caught sight of Cole in the big shed where the baler and swather were parked. Abruptly she shifted course. Why? She hadn’t a clue. Maybe because she was still steamed about him calling her entitled. Taylor had never been good about leaving a fight alone. The same obsessive tendencies that had made her a great student also made it hard for her to handle unfinished business. He was bent over the baler, denim hugging the back of his thighs. Yeah, the guy was built. And yeah, he wasn’t getting any points for that. She was more about attitude, and his sucked where she was concerned.

“Hey,” she said. His head jerked up and he turned, the pained expression on his face clearly asking “What now, lady?” He was as ready for a fight as she was...so she wasn’t going to.

“I’m heading to town. Want anything?”

He blinked at her as a suspicious frown formed. “No.”

“Just checking,” she said smoothly.

“Right.” He turned back to the baler.

Dismissed. She didn’t think so. She ambled closer, saw the muscles of his shoulders bunch just a bit. He glared at her again, and she wondered if he knew that scowling only made him look hotter—in the sensual sense, rather than the angry sense.

“I need access to the house this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Karl said I could have the mattress in the guest room.” And rather than ask him to help her move it, she figured she could back her SUV to the side door, lay the seat down and shove it in. Awkward, yes, but she wasn’t going to ask this guy for help.