Her Man On Three Rivers Ranch

“Then you’d like my brother Holt. He rides bucking horses practically every day.”

Nick was clearly impressed. “Really? Wow, he must be a tough guy.”

“As tough as they come,” Blake agreed.

“You have brothers and sisters?” he asked.

“Three brothers and two sisters.”

“Gosh, that must be great. I don’t have a brother. Or a sister. I wish I had some. But I don’t think I ever will.”

Blake had expected Katherine’s boy to utter a few stilted words, then disappear into another part of the house. The fact that Nick seemed to want to talk, especially about such personal things, touched a soft spot in him.

Doing his best to sound casual, Blake asked, “Why do you think that?”

Exasperation twisted Nick’s young features. “Because Mom don’t like men much. She don’t even like to talk about my dad.”

Blake wasn’t sure what Nick meant by that statement and he was hardly going to pump the boy about Katherine’s private life.

“Well, she must like some men,” Blake reasoned. “She agreed to go on a date with me.”

Nick scooted up on the edge of his seat and leaned closer to Blake. “Yeah. And that’s got me stumped. I’ve been thinking she’s gotten sick or something. When Mom walks in here, you take a real close look and see if anything looks funny to you.”

Struggling to keep a straight face, Blake said, “Don’t worry. I’ll study her close.”

Nick started to make some sort of reply when his mother suddenly appeared in the open doorway to the living room.

As Blake slowly rose to his feet, he realized his promise to Nick was going to be mighty easy to keep. Dressed casually in a red-and-white-flowered sundress with skinny straps and her long hair pinned behind one ear, she looked like an exotic flower in the middle of a jungle.

“Good evening, Blake. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”

“No problem,” he assured her. “Nick and I have been using the time to get acquainted.”

Her skeptical gaze traveled back and forth between him and her son. “Really? Nick isn’t much of a talker around strangers.”

“We’re not strangers now, though, are we, Nick?” Blake looked over at the boy and winked.

Grinning, Nick immediately jumped to his feet. “Gosh, no!” He turned his attention to his mother. “Blake’s been telling me about his ranch. And he has lots of brothers and sisters. Did you know that, Mom? And one of his brothers rides bucking broncos! Isn’t that something?”

Katherine’s brows inched upward as she darted a look of surprise toward Blake. “It’s something, all right,” she told him, then gestured over her shoulder. “Go get your backpack. And be sure you have your toothbrush and pajamas.”

After Nick disappeared from the room, Blake said, “I hope you’re not making Nick stay overnight at the sitter’s on my account. We can be back early if you need to pick him up before bedtime.”

Katherine shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s no problem. Nick is staying with his best friend, Shawn. His dad, Lash, loves for Nick to stay overnight. And Shawn stays with us quite often. Lash is a single parent like me, so it helps both of us to switch off with the babysitting duties. The Ralstons live just down the street, so it’s not out of the way.”

A single dad with a son the age of Nick? Blake wondered if he should be jealous of Katherine’s neighbor, then promptly scolded himself for being such an idiot. Just because she’d agreed to have one date with him, didn’t mean he had exclusive tabs on the woman. She had the right to go out with whomever she pleased.

Shoving away that disturbing thought, Blake said, “It’s good you have someone so trustworthy to watch Nick. And by the way, your son is quite a boy. You must be incredibly proud of him.”

A faint smile touched her face. “He’s everything to me. Without him...well, these past years would’ve been even harder to get through.”

Blake expected her to make a comment about Nick taking after his father in certain ways, or how she hoped he’d grow up to be like the man she’d married, but she didn’t. And suddenly Blake was wondering if Nick had been right about his mother not wanting to talk about her late husband.

Before Blake could think of a suitable reply to her remark, Nick bounced into the room with a backpack hooked around both shoulders.

“I got everything, Mom. And don’t worry. Lash will make sure we brush our teeth. He doesn’t let us get by with anything.”

Chuckling, Katherine picked up a clutch bag from a nearby end table. “That’s why he’s the best babysitter you’ve ever had.”

Blake picked up his cowboy hat from where he’d left it by the armchair and levered it onto his head. “Are we ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready,” Katherine answered, then with a gentle scruff to the top of Nick’s head, she urged her son toward the door.

Blake followed them onto the front porch, and while she dealt with locking the door, he wondered what might have happened if he’d dated Katherine twelve years ago before she’d left Wickenburg. Perhaps she and Nick would be living on Three Rivers now as his family. But at eighteen, she might’ve been too immature for a serious relationship between them. Especially one that would last. Either way, he couldn’t change the past, he realized. But starting tonight, he was definitely going to try to change the course of his future.

* * *

“Since you said you wanted to keep things casual, I didn’t make dinner reservations,” Blake said as he braked for a stop sign. “Have you thought about where you’d like to eat? Or what you’d like to do?”

Katherine glanced over at him. For Blake, dressing casually meant a pale blue Western shirt that had most likely cost more than her monthly grocery bill, dark blue jeans and a pair of brown, square-toed alligator boots. With his black cowboy hat lying on the console between them, she had a full view of the dark tousled waves of hair edging over the tops of his ears and onto the collar of his shirt. He looked like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and, once he got it, wouldn’t hesitate to fight to keep it. To say the man was attractive would be like calling a hurricane a gentle breeze.

She clasped her hands together on her lap as though she needed to prevent herself from reaching across the seat and touching him. “This is probably going to sound silly to you, but I’d like to take a drive through the mountains toward Prescott and eat at some little spot on the side of the road. Is that okay with you?”

He looked over at her and she noticed one corner of his lips was curved faintly upward. The expression was hardly a smile, she decided, yet it was as sexy as heck.

He said, “That sounds absolutely okay with me.”

Relieved, she felt compelled to explain her choice. “I’m not much for fancy, Blake. That’s probably hard for a man like you to understand.”

His grunt was a mocking sound. “A man like me? I’m hardly black-tie-and-tails, Katherine.”

A blush stung her cheeks. “No. But, well, you know what I’m getting at. I wasn’t raised like you.”

With his gaze fixed firmly on the highway, he said, “Look, Katherine, I thought we’d hashed out all of that. Sure, I remember your parents’ little house, where you were raised as a kid. Nobody had to tell me that your family didn’t own much. But that has nothing to do with you as a person. Besides, you’ve grown above all of that. Seems to me, you’ve been doing very well for yourself and your son.”

She smoothed a hand over the hem of her dress. “Yes, things are much better now. Financially speaking, that is. But with Dad gone, my mother too bitter to really enjoy life and my brother keeping his distance, I can’t help but wish things had been different. For them and for me and Nick.”

“I’m sure you wish things had been different for your late husband, too.”

A chill settled over her. Clearly, he’d noticed she’d left Nick’s father off her list. “Talking about Cliff isn’t something I want to do tonight,” she said stiffly.

“Hmm. Nick says you never want to talk about his father.”

She stared at his profile. “Nick told you that?”

He glanced in her direction. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I’m curious as to why you want to avoid the subject of your late husband. Is it because you loved him so much that remembering hurts?”

Katherine groaned. This was supposed to be a date, not a question-and-answer session, she thought crossly. “It’s not that. And I’m not trying to keep Nick from learning about his father. Well, maybe I am in some ways,” she glumly admitted. “You see, I’d rather Nick only know about the good parts of his father. It would only hurt my son to learn how his father changed from a loving husband into a man driven by an obsessive need for money.”