Rodeo Rancher

Before he could respond, he got caught up in watching her unwind her scarf. She took off her wool hat and Michael stopped breathing.

She was that beautiful. Hair like spun gold. Eyes as blue as photographs he’d seen of the sea around Greece. Flawless, tanned skin.

Any man would lose his senses.

Not him, though. He was immune. He didn’t think about women these days. Didn’t pay them much attention. He had other things on his mind, like surviving each day.

Michael felt her older son watching him, probably gauging his reaction. At maybe nine or ten years old, and mature enough to understand the way men checked out his mom, the boy watched Michael with a knowing look. He’d seen it all before, a shame in one so young, but no wonder. What a woman.

The wind screeched. Something thumped against the side of the house. As he’d noted a few moments ago, Michael had other things on his mind, like how to get through the coming night...and what he was supposed to do with the family stranded on his doorstep.

His unexpected company might be stuck here for days. This beautiful woman might be in his house for a while.

Images of Lillian flashed through his mind, with her average looks, but more beautiful to him than any model or movie star.

The woman had been prattling again, but he’d missed every word.

She stopped and stared at the wall behind him. “Is that—is that a wagon wheel? On the wall?”

“Yeah. I’m a rancher.” You got a problem with that? he wanted to add, but good manners held him back. He amended the thought and asked, “You okay with it?”

“Yes, of course,” she said too quickly. “What’s that?” She pointed to the antique wood hand plane on the table in the front hallway.

Michael loved old tools, the ones men had used to craft and shape wood before power tools were invented. He loved the way they felt in his hand.

“It’s a plane,” he said.

The smaller of the boys, four or five at a guess, stepped close to the table and touched it with one finger. “That’s not a plane, mister. Where’s its wings?”

Michael smiled. Cute kid. “Not that kind of plane.”

The boy sneezed, stirring the dust on the table.

Michael frowned. There’d been a time when his tools would have been spotless.

The woman patted her pockets and started rummaging through the bag she carried. She looked up at him, kind of helplessly. “I don’t believe I have a tissue.”

“I got it.” Michael had wiped more noses in the past two winters than he cared to count.

He took a clean handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped his fingers around the back of the boy’s head and cleaned his nose.

“Hey!” The boy tried to pull away and pointed toward the living room.

Used to children resisting handkerchiefs, Michael finished the job.

The kid struggled to peer around his legs. “There’s kids here!”

Michael turned. Mick and Lily stood in the doorway, Mick holding his little sister’s hand. Their curiosity must have kicked in when they heard all the voices.

“You can take off your coats and things in the back room.” Michael bent to help the younger boy when he struggled with his zipper. “We’ll make introductions when you’re done.”

To Mick, he said, “Show them where to put their things, then bring them to the living room.”

To the boys, he said, “Take off your boots here and carry them through.”

The little one sat down and took off his boots, nearly hauling his socks off with them.

The woman bent over to pull up his socks, but teetered on her fancy high-heeled boots.

Again Michael said, “I got it,” and squatted to pull the boy’s socks back up. They were too big for him. Must be his older brother’s.

Mick led the boys to the back of the house. When the small one ran out of one of his socks, Lily picked it up and chased after him.

While the woman—he really should get her name soon—studied her surroundings, Michael studied her. Her tight-fitting leather jacket outlined a fairly perfect body. Long legs fit snugly into her jeans. He thought they might be what they called skinny jeans, because there wasn’t much that was generous about the fit.

Women around here didn’t dress like that.

A slight frown furrowed her brow.

Michael followed her gaze and found himself eyeing his home critically. Sure, he’d decorated with the tools of his trade, like the wagon wheel, but he found it homey.

All of it was real, used at one time or another over the years. Not a speck of it had been bought from a store.

This woman, with her fancy clothes, obviously found it wanting. She probably thought he was some kind of hick.

Well, he was, wasn’t he?

He’d lived on this ranch just outside Rodeo, Montana, for every one of his forty years. He was a country boy through and through.

Too bad if that made him deficient in her eyes. He was who he was. A rancher. A cowboy. A man who loved horses, cattle, the land and, above all, his children.

Worse than her judgment of his decor was the unspoken criticism of his housekeeping skills.

Bewildered, he saw his home clearly for the first time in a long while. Toys and books and some of the children’s clothes littered every surface, including the carpet.

When had it gotten so bad? He used to be on top of the chores, but lately he was barely keeping up.

He scarcely managed to keep body and soul together, let alone tidying up and dusting.

Besides, he was dog-tired when he fell into bed every night. He’d been up since four thirty this morning and had put in a good three hours of work before this woman even opened her eyes.

She glanced at the carpet that obviously needed vacuuming. On the side tables, his ranching magazines hadn’t even had a chance to get dog-eared, still waiting for his attention months after they’d been delivered.

On the windowsills, plants languished, every leaf caked in a layer of dust, watered only when he remembered to do it every couple of weeks.

She didn’t say anything, but he felt her censure. Or maybe not. Maybe it was his own guilt.

Good manners compelled him to rise above his resentment.