Branded with his Baby

His suggestion caught her by surprise and she dared to glance over her shoulder at him. “Do you really want to?”

He suddenly chuckled and Maura was amazed at how different he looked with humor softening his features.

“I don’t make offers unless I want to.”

Something about the husky tone of his voice, the warmth in his eyes, sent prickles of excitement racing through her. She could feel her cheeks growing warm and pink and she suddenly felt like a foolish teenager instead of a thirty-six-year-old woman who’d been married and divorced.

But just for this once, she wasn’t going to think about the dangers this man represented to her peace of mind. Tomorrow she would remind herself that she was behaving like an idiot. Today she was going to let herself enjoy the pleasure of being in the presence of a very sexy man.

“In that case,” she said, “I’d love to have a look around.”

Moving forward, he touched a hand to her back and Maura felt her senses splintering in all directions.

“Good,” he murmured. “Just let me get my hat and we’ll be on our way,” he told her.

Chapter Three

Once they stepped onto the porch, Quint dropped his hand from her back and Maura was finally able to draw in a normal breath. But as they moved into the yard, he immediately wrapped a hold around her upper arm.

“Let’s go to the barn first,” he suggested. “I need to let Jake, my ranch hand, know I’m okay.”

Nodding, she looked away from him and tried not to dwell on his warm, rough fingers pressing into her flesh.

The afternoon was all bright sunshine, while a soft west wind carried the scent of sagebrush and juniper. A lone aspen shaded one corner of the house, but that was the only bona fide tree that she could see for miles around. The rest of the vegetation growing beyond the ranch yard amounted to a few spindly pinyon pines, some twisted snags of juniper and a sea of jumping choya cactus and sagebrush. It was a stark, yet beautiful sight and Maura instinctively knew it would be even more so in the late evening when the sun fell from the sky and twilight purpled the nearby mountains.

“How many men do you have working for you?” she asked.

Now that they were walking abreast, he dropped his hold on her arm and Maura didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. Either way, just being this near him left her shaky and nothing like the practical, no-nonsense nurse that had dealt calmly with all sorts of men. She kept remembering the way he’d looked without his shirt and how the warmth and scent of his body had filled up the little bathroom and stifled her breath.

“The contractor working on the barn and storage sheds has several men working with him. But as far as the ranch goes, I only have two hands. Once I start putting livestock on the place, I’ll hire more. Though my grandfather deeded over the land a few years ago, I only started full-time here about two years ago.”

She kept her gaze on the rocky ground in front of her. “Do you have plenty of land here to support cattle?”

“Ten thousand acres. Not that much, but enough to do what I want to do.”

Glancing over at him, she asked curiously, “And what is that?”

He shrugged and not for the first time, Maura couldn’t help thinking how serious and driven he was for a man his age. Abe had commented one day that his grandson wasn’t yet thirty so that meant he was either twenty-eight or twenty-nine. He certainly didn’t look any older than that, Maura thought. Yet he seemed older, as though the years he’d been on this earth had pushed his soul to manhood long before his body had caught up.

“My plans aren’t anything grand. Just raise a few purebred cattle and a few horses.”

“What about the old gold mine—the Golden Spur—that your ranch is named after?”

She’d not meant to ask that question. It had just slipped out on its own. The same way her heart seemed to jump into a crazy jig each time she looked at his face.

Frowning, he glanced her way. “What about it?” he asked curtly.

Knowing she’d touched on a tender spot, she shrugged in an effort to appear casual. “Nothing really. Except that I couldn’t help noticing the letter Abe asked me to deliver to you. The return address was Red Bluff Mining Company. And your grandfather doesn’t make any secret about wanting to reopen the old thing.”

His footsteps paused on the barren ground and Maura came to a stop with him. As he looked at her, she could see frustration edging his features.

“Gramps thinks the mine could be profitable again. But I don’t want anything to do with it. Having a bunch of trucks and men and equipment going across the ranch is the last thing I need.”

“If it turned out to be profitable, the extra money might come in handy,” she suggested. “Especially when you start buying stock for this place.”

“I don’t need the money,” he said flatly. “Nor do I want it. I’m a rancher, not a miner.”

He picked up his stride again, only this time it was much longer and purposeful as he covered the last few yards to the barn. Maura quickened her steps to stay up with him.

“So if money isn’t the issue, why does your grandfather want to reopen the mine?” she said, darting a quick glance at his sober face.

“For the adventure, Maura. He’s always wanted to turn over a rock just to see what was beneath it. That’s how he got rich in the first place—on the plains of Texas, drilling for oil. He hit it big and brought his fortune out here to New Mexico to buy land and cattle. To him, the mine takes him back to those days when he was drilling for black gold. Guess it makes him feel young all over again. He didn’t care about the mine for years when he owned it, but now that I have the land, it’s all he seems to care about.”

“Sometimes feeling young or having a dream is very important. Sometimes it even keeps a person from dying.”

The muscles around his hard mouth tightened with impatience. “Don’t try to make me believe that Gramps is dying. That he needs you or the mine to keep him healthy.”

“I wouldn’t attempt such a thing,” she said defensively. “Abe isn’t ill. He has a perfectly good mind. And the way I see it, he has the right to dream his own dreams. Just like you.”

By now they had reached the massive barn. Instead of opening the huge double doors at the south end of the building, Quint led her to a smaller entrance at the side.

With his hand pausing on the door latch, he turned a searching look on her. “And what about you, Maura? What are your dreams?”

A few years ago his questions would have been easy to answer. Her dreams were waiting for the day her roving husband would settle down to a life exclusively with her. She’d been dreaming of the time they could start having children and Gilbert would be home so that they could parent them together. She’d waited because he kept promising he’d be ready the next year, and she wanted to raise her children with her husband home every night. But none of those dreams had come true. Instead, she’d discovered he’d changed women as often as he’d changed the cities his job had taken him to. And she’d had to accept the fact of his infidelity and that he’d never intended to change his job and settle down to family life. That had only been one of his false promises.

Maura had spent the past year trying to restore her broken self-confidence and move on from her shattered marriage. For months after her divorce, she’d struggled to simply put one foot in front of the other, and looking back, she realized her responsibilities as a nurse had been the only thing keeping her going. She was good at her job and no man could take that fact away from her. As for her dreams, she wasn’t sure what they were now.

“I don’t know, Quint,” she said honestly. “Sometimes dreams get lost along the way.”

Nobody had to tell him that, he thought grimly. His romantic dreams had been busted years ago. Now his goals were concrete and didn’t depend on another person—particularly a woman.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “And when that happens, it’s damned hard to find new ones.”

While the two of them had been talking, her face had taken on a sad hue and Quint realized he didn’t like seeing her in such a mood. Maybe because it reminded him of his own lonely existence. Or maybe because he simply didn’t like to think of this woman suffering over anyone or anything.

The unwanted notions disturbed him so much that he quickly turned away from her and shoved open the door.

“Let’s go in,” he urged. “I think Jake is probably at the back of the building where the men are working.”

Since livestock hadn’t yet been moved onto the ranch, the barn was missing the smells of animals and hay and leather. Instead, the scents of sawdust and fresh paint filled the air. On the opposite side of the building, a table saw buzzed and hammers rang out as men erected a frame of lumber that Quint explained would eventually become a large feed room.

“The contractor hasn’t yet finished the horse stalls or the tack room. They’ll get to that next,” Quint continued as they slowly made their way through the building.

She was looking around her with real interest, a fact that surprised Quint. Even though she came from a ranching background, she didn’t seem the sort that would be personally interested in such things. After all, she’d chosen a profession outside the Diamond D, her family’s famous thoroughbred ranch. Add to that, she had a soft, feminine air about her that was totally opposite of an outdoor girl.

“This is going to be very nice,” she said. “And I like the way you’ve laid out everything. When you open the big doors, the horses will be able to look outside. They like that, you know. When they can see what’s going on, they’re more content.”

Bemused by her observation, Quint paused to look at her. Now that they were indoors, her features were muted by shadows, yet the dimness couldn’t diminish the pearly sheen of her skin and for a brief moment he wondered what it would feel like to press his cheek against hers, to experience such softness next to him.