Porcupine Ranch. Sally Carleen

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       Chapter One

      Hannah Lindsay rubbed her sweaty palms down the sides of her cotton skirt. Yesterday, she’d lost her mind or she never would have let Samuel talk her into coming out here. Today, she’d lost control of her body. No matter how hard she concentrated, she simply couldn’t make her hand reach up and knock on the door in front of her.

      She turned and looked wistfully back toward her small white car parked only a few yards away. The normally nondescript vehicle had been transformed into a bright, beckoning beacon against the dreary landscape. Tufts of grass, a few small cacti and several gnarled mesquite trees stabbed the flat, parched, brown earth, their green colors muted by the dust

      Only forty-five minutes south of San Antonio, Clayton Sinclair’s ranch seemed light-years from her cozy condo in the heart of the city. If she drove really fast, she could make it home in forty minutes. Maybe thirty-five.

      Behind her the door opened.

      She spun around to see a huge cowboy standing in the doorway, glowering down at her.

      Okay, maybe huge was an exaggeration, but he was definitely large, and he was definitely glowering.

      She recognized Clayton Sinclair from the picture Samuel, his grandfather, had shown her. He was a younger, tougher, sun-bronzed version of his grandfather. Tall, like Samuel, but with much wider shoulders and a bigger chest, as if he wrestled two-ton steers before breakfast.

      His hair was light, sun-streaked. Probably wrestled those steers after lunch in the midday sun, too. Squint lines fanned out from intensely blue eyes that seemed to burn from his deeply tanned face. Whoever said blue was a cool color? Hannah thought.

      He wore faded blue jeans over a flat stomach and muscular thighs, and his faded denim shirt was open at the throat, allowing light brown curls to spring out. Clayton oozed virility and sexuality and he didn’t look like anybody’s grandson. This was going to be even worse than Hannah had anticipated.

      “Can I help you?” he asked—demanded, actually—when she continued to gawk at him as if she were an idiot.

      Things were getting worse by the minute. Talking to strangers wasn’t easy for Hannah under the best of circumstances, and talking, under false pretenses, to a stranger who oozed sexuality didn’t even rank in the top fifty percent of her list of possibilities. In fact, it was pretty darn close to the bottom. Right down there with the day she graduated from high school and was supposed to give the valedictorian speech…and froze in front of a thousand people.

      She opened her mouth, but coherent words couldn’t fight their way past the tense muscles in her throat. She gurgled.

      That should make a terrific first impression. He’d probably send her packing before she figured out how to make her vocal chords work again.

      So? Wasn’t that what she wanted?

      “Are you Hannah Lindsay?” he finally asked.

      She had no idea what he’d expected, but she obviously wasn’t it. The disappointed look on his face knifed straight into her heart. Suddenly she was back in her adolescent years when everything she did was a disappointment to her parents.

      She nodded in answer to his question, giving up the effort to verbalize. The movement was a little jerky, but she was pretty sure it was the right one. Up and down with the head. Up and down. Good girl.

      “You’re applying for the job of live-in house-keeper?” He sounded resigned. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he knew all about her deficit in housekeeping skills.

      She cleared her throat and straightened her spine. “Yes.” That was much better. A squeak instead of a gurgle. A recognizable word. She was becoming practically verbose.

      “I’m Clayton Sinclair. Come in.” He stepped aside, holding the screen door for her.

      She swallowed hard, took a deep breath and ordered her feet to take her into the big old ranch house. Right foot. Left foot. Breathe.

      She almost lost cadence as she brushed past Clayton and the compelling scents of leather and open country overwhelmed her, painting a vivid mental picture of him on a horse, swinging a lariat and roping longhorn cattle. She’d better omit breathing from her walking sequence. One thing at a time.

      With its high ceiling and drawn drapes, the large room was cool, shadowy, cavernous and ominous. She half expected a bat to fly out of a corner at any minute. Or out of her own personal belfry. Today’s events certainly proved she had a few up there.

      “Have a seat.” Clayton indicated a looming, Victorian-style armchair patterned with large flowers on the back. Maybe the dim lighting was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see those flowers up close.

      From long habit, she reached behind her to shove things aside before she sat down, but the chair was empty. No books, papers, computer disks, shoes. That was probably one of the things housekeepers did. Kept the chairs empty. She had no empty chairs at home, not even after her housekeeper came.

      She perched on the edge. Ready to run…to escape.

      Clayton sat on a long red sofa a few feet away. It was empty, too. Until he sat down, anyway. He filled up a good portion of it and looked totally out of place on the formal, feminine furniture.

      “The position involves a lot of work,” he said, crossing one booted foot over the other knee with relaxed, unconscious masculinity.

      The gesture added one more layer of tension to the mass already squirming in Hannah’s stomach. Nothing could make this ordeal easy, but it would have helped if Clayton had been short and pudgy.

      She didn’t try to talk this time. Best to save her effort for when he asked her a direct question.

      “Keeping this place clean isn’t an easy job,” he continued. “As you can see, my mother furnished it pretty elaborately. It’s not my style, but she comes back to visit every month or two, so I like to keep all her tables and vases and—” He waved a negligent hand around the room, and Hannah noticed lamps, statues, bowls…even a bird cage decorated with flowers. A lot of wasted space, it seemed to her. Nothing that served any practical purpose.

      Her survey of the room ended with the painting over the fireplace. Samuel would be pleased to know it was still there. He was right. His wife had been a beautiful woman, but even in the portrait she looked frail.

      “The floors are all hardwood and have to be polished, except the kitchen,” Clayton went on. “It’s linoleum and has to be waxed. Then there’s the laundry. I have five ranch hands who’ll be here through the spring roundup. They stay in the bunkhouse, so you don’t have to clean for them, but you will be expected to do their laundry as well as mine, and you’ll cook for all of us, three meals a day.”

      He paused, peering СКАЧАТЬ