Kitabı oku: «The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter»

Chapter One

Harlan Adams walked out of Rosa’s Mexican Café after eating his fill of her spicy brand of Tex-Mex food just in time to see his pickup barrel down the center of Main Street at fifty miles an hour. In the sleepy Texas town of Los Piños, both the theft and the speed were uncommon occurrences.

“Ain’t that your truck?” Mule Masters asked, staring after the vehicle that was zigzagging all over the road, endangering parked cars and pedestrians alike.

“Sure as hell is,” Harlan said, indignation making his insides churn worse than Rosa’s hot sauce.

“That’s what you get for leaving your keys in plain sight. I’ve been telling you for months now that times have changed. The world’s full of thieves and murderers,” Mule said ominously. “They were bound to get to Los Piños sooner or later.”

Given the time it was wasting, Harlan found the familiar lecture extremely irritating. “Where’s your car?” he snapped.

Mule blinked at the sharp tone. “Across the street, right where it always is.”

Harlan was already striding across the two-lane road before the words were completely out of his friend’s mouth. “Come on, old man.”

Mule appeared vaguely startled by the command. “Come on where?”

“To catch the damned thing, that’s where,” he replied with a certain amount of eagerness. The thought of a good ruckus held an amazing appeal.

“Sheriff’s close by,” Mule objected without picking up speed.

Harlan lost patience with the procrastinating that had earned Mule his nickname. “Just give me your keys,” he instructed. He didn’t take any chances on Mule’s compliance. He reached out and snatched them from his friend’s hand.

Before the old man could even start grumbling, Harlan was across the street and starting the engine of a battered old sedan. That car had seen a hundred thousand hard miles or more back and forth across the state of Texas, thanks to Mule’s knack for tinkering with an engine.

Harlan pulled out onto Main Street, gunned the engine a couple of times, then shifted gears with pure pleasure. The smooth glide from standing stock-still to sixty in the blink of an eye was enough to make a man weep.

In less than a minute his truck was in sight again on the outskirts of town and he was gaining on it. He was tempted to whoop with joy at the sheer exhilaration of the impromptu race, but he had to keep every bit of his energy focused on his pursuit of that runaway truck.

The chase lasted just long enough to stir his ire, but not nearly long enough to be downright interesting. Not a mile out of town, where the two-lane road curved like a well-rounded lady’s hips, he caught up with the truck just in time to see it miss the turn and swerve straight toward a big, old, cottonwood tree. His heart climbed straight into his throat and stayed there as he watched the drama unfold.

He veered from the highway onto the shoulder and slammed on his own brakes just as the truck collided with the tree. It hit with a resounding thwack that crumpled the front fender on the passenger side, sent his blood pressure soaring, and elicited a string of profanity from inside the truck that blistered his ears.

“What the devil?” he muttered as he scrambled from the borrowed car and ran toward the truck. Obviously the thief couldn’t be badly injured if he had that much energy left for cursing.

To his astonishment, when he flung open the driver’s door, a slender young girl practically tumbled out into his arms. He righted her, keeping a firm clamp on her wrist in case the little thief decided to flee.

She couldn’t be a day over thirteen, he decided, gazing into scared brown eyes. Admittedly, though, she had a vocabulary that a much older dock worker would envy. She also had a belligerent tilt to her cute little chin and a sullen expression that dared him to yell at her.

Taken aback by her apparent age, Harlan bit back the shouted lecture he’d planned and settled for a less confrontative approach. He could hardly wait to hear why this child had stolen his pickup.

“You okay?” he inquired quietly. Other than a bump on her forehead, he couldn’t see any other signs of injury.

She wriggled in a game effort to free herself from his grip. He grinned at the wasted attempt. He’d wrestled cows ten times her weight or more. This little slip of a thing didn’t stand a chance of getting away until he was good and ready to let her go. He didn’t plan on that happening anytime soon. Not until he had the answers he wanted, anyway.

“Must be just fine, if you can struggle like that,” he concluded out loud. “Any particular reason you decided to steal my truck?”

“I was tired of walking,” she shot back.

“Did you ever consider a bike?”

“Not fast enough,” she muttered, her gaze defiantly clashing with his.

“You had someplace to get to in a hurry?”

She shrugged.

Harlan had to fight to hide a grin. He’d always been a big admirer of audacity, though he preferred it to be a little better directed. “What’s your name?”

She frowned and for the first time began to look faintly uneasy. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m Harlan Adams. I own White Pines. That’s a ranch just outside of town.” If she was local, that would be plenty of explanation to intimidate her. If she wasn’t, he could elaborate until he had her quivering with fear in her dusty sneakers for pulling a stunt like the one that had ended with his pickup wrapped around a tree.

“Big deal,” she retorted, then let loose a string of expletives.

She either wasn’t local or it was going to take a lot more to impress her with the stupidity of what she’d done. “You have a foul mouth, you know that?” he observed.

“So?”

“I’ll just bet you don’t talk that way around your mama.”

The mention of her mother stirred an expression of pure alarm on her delicate features. Harlan sensed that he’d hit the nail on the head. This ragamuffin kid with the sleek black hair cut as short as a boy’s, with the high cheekbones and tanned complexion, might not be afraid of him, but she was scared to death of her mother. He considered it a hopeful sign. He was very big on respect for parental authority, not that he’d noticed his grown-up sons paying the concept much mind lately.

“You’re not going to tell her, are you?” she asked, clearly trying to keep the worry out of her voice and failing miserably. For the first time since she’d climbed out of his truck, she sounded her age.

“Now why would I want to keep quiet about the fact that you stole my truck and slammed it into a tree?”

A resurgence of belligerence glinted in her eyes. “Because she’ll sue you for pain and suffering. I’m almost positive I’ve got a whiplash injury,” she said, rubbing at her neck convincingly. “Probably back problems that’ll last the rest of my life, too.”

Harlan chuckled. “Imagine that. All those problems and you expect to blame them on the man whose truck you stole and smashed up. You and your mother have a little scam going? You wreck cars and she sues for damages?”

At the criticism of her mother’s ethics, her defiance wavered just a little. “My mom’s a lawyer,” she admitted eventually. “She sues lots of people.” Her eyes glittered with triumphant sparks as she added, “She wins, too.”

An image suddenly came to him, an image of the new lawyer he’d read about just last week in the local paper. The article had been accompanied by a picture of an incredibly lovely woman, her long black hair flowing down her back, her features and her name strongly suggesting her Comanche heritage. Janet Something-or-other. Runningbear, maybe. Yep, that was it. Janet Runningbear.

He surveyed the girl standing in front of him and thought he detected a resemblance. There was no mistaking the Native American genes in her proud bearing, her features or her coloring, though he had a hunch they’d been mellowed by a couple of generations of interracial marriage.

“Your mom’s the new lawyer in town, then,” he said. “Janet Runningbear.”

She seemed startled that he’d guessed, but she hid it quickly behind another of those belligerent looks she’d obviously worked hard to perfect. “So?”

“So, I think you and I need to go have a little chat with your mama,” he said, putting a hand on the middle of her back and giving her a gentle but unrelenting little push in the direction of Mule’s car. Her chin rose another notch, but her shoulders slumped and she didn’t resist. In fact, there was an air of weary resignation about her that tugged at his heart.

As he drove back into town he couldn’t help wondering just how much trouble Janet Runningbear’s daughter managed to get herself into on a regular basis and why she felt the need to do it. After raising four sons of his own, he knew a whole lot about teenage rebellion and the testing of parental authority. He’d always thought—mistakenly apparently—that girls might have been easier. Not that he would have traded a single one of his boys to find out firsthand. He’d planned on keeping an eye on his female grandbabies to test his theory.

He glanced over at the slight figure next to him and caught the downward turn of her mouth and the protective clasping of her arms across her chest. Stubbornness radiated from every pore. The prospect of meeting the woman who had raised such a little hellion intrigued him.

It was the first time since a riding accident had taken his beloved Mary away from him the year before that he’d found much of anything fascinating. He realized as the blood zinged through his veins for the first time in months just how boring and predictable he’d allowed his life to become.

He’d left the running of the ranch mostly in Cody’s hands, just as his youngest son had been itching for him to do for some time. Harlan spent his days riding over his land or stopping off in town to have lunch and play a few hands of poker with Mule or some other friend. His evenings dragged out endlessly unless one or the other of his sons stopped by for a visit and brought his grandbabies along.

For a rancher who’d crammed each day to its limits all his life, he’d been telling himself that the tedium was a welcome relief. He’d been convinced of it, too, until the instant when he’d seen his truck barreling down Main Street.

Something about the quick, hot surge of blood in his veins told him those soothing, dull days were over. Glancing down at the ruffian by his side, he could already anticipate the upcoming encounter with any woman bold and brash enough to keep her in hand. He suddenly sensed that he was just about to start living again.

* * *

Janet Runningbear gazed out of the window of her small law office on Main Street and saw her daughter being ushered down the sidewalk by a man she recognized at once as Harlan Adams, owner of White Pines and one of the most successful ranchers for several hundred miles in any direction. Judging from the stern expression on his face and Jenny’s dragging footsteps, her daughter had once more gotten herself into a mess of trouble.

She studied the man approaching with a mixture of trepidation, anger, and an odd, tingly hint of anticipation. Ever since her move to Los Piños, the closest town to where her ancestors had once lived, she’d been hearing about Harlan Adams, the man whose own ancestors had been at least in part responsible for pushing the Comanches out of Texas and onto an Oklahoma reservation.

The claiming of Comanche lands might have taken place a hundred years or more ago, but Janet clung to the resentment that had been passed down to her by her great-grandfather. Lone Wolf had lived to be ninety-seven and his father had been forced from the nomadic life of a hunter to the confined space of a reservation.

Even though she knew it was ridiculous to blame Harlan Adams for deeds that had been committed long before his birth or her own, she was prepared to dislike him just on principle. What she hadn’t been prepared for was the prompt and very feminine response to a man who practically oozed sex appeal from every masculine pore.

He was cowboy through and through, from the Stetson hat that rode atop his thick, sun-streaked hair to the tips of his dusty boots. His weathered face hinted at his age, which she knew to be somewhere in his fifties, but nothing about his easy stride or his broad shoulders added to that impression. He had the bearing of a much younger man.

In fact, Harlan Adams strolled down the sidewalk, her daughter in tow, with the confidence of a man who was comfortable with himself and with the power his wealth had earned him. To dampen any spark of fascination he might arouse, Janet quickly assured herself it was more than confidence she saw. It was arrogance, a trait she despised. Since there was no mistaking his destination, she braced herself for his arrival.

A few minutes later, with the pair of them seated across from her, she listened with a sense of growing horror as Harlan Adams described the theft of his truck and the subsequent accident, which had clearly done more damage to the truck than it had to Jenny. Her daughter didn’t even seem flustered.

“He shouldn’t have left the damned keys inside,” Jenny muttered.

“Watch your tongue, young lady,” Janet warned.

A heartfelt apology rose to Janet’s lips but before she could begin to form the words, she caught a surprising glint of amusement in Harlan’s startlingly blue eyes. She’d been anticipating the same mischievous dark brown eyes each of his sons reportedly had, according to the fond reminiscences of the local ladies. They must have inherited those from their mother, she decided. Harlan’s were the bright blue of a summer sky just rinsed by rain.

“Jenny, perhaps you should wait in the other room, while Mr. Adams and I discuss this,” she said, sensing that the twinkle in those eyes might mean an inclination toward leniency that wasn’t altogether deserved.

The last of her daughter’s defiance slid away. “Am I going to jail?” she asked in a voice that shook even though she was clearly trying desperately to sound brave.

“That remains to be seen,” Janet told her without so much as a hint that she thought jail was the last thing on this particular victim’s mind.

“Are you going to be my lawyer?”

Janet hid her face so that Jenny wouldn’t see her own smile. “If you need one,” she promised solemnly, doubting that it was going to come to that.

Sure enough, the second Jenny was out of the room, Harlan Adams chuckled. “Damn, but she’s a pistol. She’s got the makings of one heck of a young woman.”

“If she doesn’t self-destruct first,” Janet muttered wearily. “I’m not sure I understand why you find all of this so amusing.”

He grinned at her and her heart did an unexpected little flip. There was something so unexpectedly boyish about that lazy, lopsided smile. At the same time, the experience and wisdom that shone in his eyes was comforting. Something told her at once that this was a man a woman could always count on for straight talk and moral support. A little of that misguided resentment she’d been stoking slipped away.

“Remind me to tell you about the time one of my boys rustled a bunch of my cattle to start his own herd,” Harlan Adams said, still chuckling over the memory. “He was seven at the time. Try taking your daughter’s mischief and multiply it four times over and you’ll have some idea why I can’t work up too much of a sweat over one stolen truck.”

“She could have been killed,” Janet said grimly, realizing as she spoke that she was shaking at the very thought of what could have happened to Jenny.

“But she wasn’t,” Harlan reminded her in a soothing tone that suggested he knew exactly the sort of belated reaction she was having.

“Then there’s the matter of your truck. I’m just getting my practice off the ground here, but I can make arrangements to pay you back over time, if that’s okay.”

He waved off the offer. “Insurance will take care of it.”

“But it’s my responsibility,” she insisted.

“The danged truck’s not important,” he countered emphatically. “The real question now is how to make sure that gal of yours doesn’t go trying some fool thing like that again.”

His unexpected kindness brought the salty sting of tears to her eyes. Janet rubbed at them impatiently. She never cried. Never. In fact, she considered it a point of honor that she was always strong and in control.

Suddenly, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she was not only crying, but actually considering spilling her guts to a total stranger. Harlan Adams was practically the first person in town to be civilized to her, much less kind. Truth be told, the move to Texas was not turning out anything at all the way she’d imagined it would.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me or with Jenny. I never cry. And she used to be such a good girl.”

Harlan’s expression remained solemn and thoughtful. “You know,” he said, “I used to teach my sons that tears made a man seem weak. The past year or so, I’ve had a change of heart. I think it takes someone pretty strong to acknowledge when they’re feeling vulnerable and then deal straight-out with the pain they’re going through.”

Janet guessed right off that it was his wife’s death that had brought him to a change of heart. The word on Mary Adams was mixed, according to the gossip that folks had been eager to share. Some thought she’d been an elegant, refined lady. Others thought she was a cold, uppity witch. One thing no one disputed, however, was that Harlan Adams had adored her and that she had doted on him.

Janet had wondered more than once what it would be like to love anyone with such passion. Her own marriage had been lukewarm at best and certainly not up to the kind of tests it had been put through. She’d been relieved to call it quits, eager to move far from New York and its memories to the land Lone Wolf had described with such bittersweet poignancy. She had legally taken the name he’d dubbed her with as soon as she’d settled in town. A new name, a fresh start for her and Jenny.

She glanced up and realized that Harlan’s warm gaze was fixed on her. He was regarding her with more of that compassion that made her want to weep.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on with that girl of yours?” he offered. “Maybe we can figure this thing out together.”

Surprised at the relief she felt at having someone with whom to share her concerns, Janet tried to describe what the past few weeks had been like. “I thought coming here was going to make such a difference for Jenny,” she said. “Instead, she’s behaving as if I’ve punished her by moving from New York to Texas.”

“Quite a change for a young girl,” Harlan observed. “She’s at an age when leaving all her friends behind must seem like the end of the world. Hell, she’s at an age when everything seems like the end of the world. Besides that, it’s summertime. All the kids her age around here are caught up with their own vacation activities. Lots of `em have to work their family’s ranch. Must seem like she’ll never have a friend of her own again.”

Janet didn’t like having a total stranger tell her something she should have figured out for herself. She’d been so anxious to get to Texas after the divorce, so determined to get on with her life and to get Jenny settled in a safer environment than the city streets of Manhattan that she hadn’t given much thought to how lonely the summer might be for her daughter. She’d been thinking of the move as an adventure and had assumed Jenny was doing the same.

Now it appeared that the kind of energy that might have resulted in little more than mischief back in New York was taking a dangerous turn. She cringed as she pictured that truck slamming into a tree with her daughter behind the wheel. If her ex-husband heard about that, he’d wash his hands of Jenny once and for all. Barry Randall had little enough room in his life for his daughter now. If she became a liability to his image, he’d forget she existed.

“I have an idea,” the man seated across from her said. “I don’t intend to press charges for this, but we don’t want her getting the idea that she can get away with stealing a car and taking it joyriding.”

Janet was so worried by the prospects for Jenny getting herself into serious trouble before school started in the fall that she was willing to listen to anything, even if it was being offered by the exact kind of man she’d learned to distrust—a rich and powerful white man. A Texan, to boot. A sworn enemy of her ancestors.

“What?” she asked warily.

“I’ll give her a job out at White Pines. She can earn enough to pay off the cost of the truck’s repairs. That’ll keep her busy, teach her to take responsibility for her actions, and wear her out at the same time.”

“I said I’d pay,” Janet reminded him.

“It’s not the same. It was her mistake.”

Just one of many lately, Janet thought with a sigh. Perhaps if Jenny hadn’t shoplifted a whole handful of cosmetics from the drugstore the week before, perhaps if she hadn’t upended a table in Rosa’s Café breaking every dish on it, Janet might have resisted a suggestion that would have kept her in contact with this man who made her pulse skip. The kindness in his voice, the humor in his eyes, were every bit as dangerous to her in her beleaguered state of mind as Jenny’s exploits were to her future. At the rate she’d been going since they got to Texas, she’d either end up in jail or dead.

“Do I have any choice?” she asked, all but resigned to accepting the deal he was offering.

He shrugged. “Not really. I could sue you, I suppose, but that gal of yours says you’re the best lawyer around. You might win, and then where would I be?”

Janet laughed at the outrageous comment. A man who could keep his sense of humor in a circumstance like this was rare. She just might be forced to reevaluate Harlan Adams. And he might be just the kind of good influence her daughter needed. There was no question Jenny needed a stern hand and perhaps a stronger father figure than her own daddy had ever provided.

“Are you really sure you want to deal with a rebellious teenage girl for the rest of the summer?” she asked, but there was no denying the hopeful note in her voice as she envisioned an improvement in Jenny’s reckless behavior.

“I’ll take my chances,” he said solemnly, his gaze fixed on her.

Janet trembled at the speculative gleam she saw in his eyes. She hadn’t had this kind of immediate, purely sexual reaction to a man in a very long time. She’d actually convinced herself she was capable of controlling such things. Now not only was Jenny out of control, it appeared her hormones were, as well. It was a dismaying turn of events.

It also served as a warning that she’d better be on her guard around Harlan Adams. It wouldn’t do to spend much time around him with her defenses down. He was the kind of man who’d claim what he wanted, just as his ancestors had. Whether it was land or a woman probably wouldn’t matter much.

She adopted her most businesslike demeanor, the one she reserved for clients and the courtroom. “What time do you want her at White Pines?” she inquired briskly, prepared to temporarily sacrifice her emotional peace of mind for her daughter’s sake.

“Dawn will do,” he said as he rose and headed for the door.

He must have heard her faint gasp of dismay because he turned back and winked. “I’ll have the coffee ready when you get there.”

Janet sighed as he walked away. Dawn! If he expected her to be coherent at that hour, he’d better have gallons of it and it had best be strong and black.