Carol Arens - Rebel Outlaw

He reached for the doorknob.

“I believe it’s only right for us to knock,” Aunt Tillie said. “Miss Holly Jane might take a fright to see strangers walking into her house.”

He sincerely hoped he wasn’t inheriting a frail and skittish female. Heaven help him, he could almost see her now, a pinch-faced old biddy too shy to find a man...and looking dried-out as straw.

But he’d given his word to watch out for her, and he would. He’d care for her the same as he would Grannie Rose or Aunt Tillie.

He knocked on the door, not too loud, in case the poor woman was the nervous kind.

No answer. He knocked again, louder. With still no answer, he opened the door.

The three of them stepped inside.

“Oh, my word,” Aunt Tillie whispered. “It looks like a whirly wind passed through.”

“I do hope the poor little dear hasn’t been carried off by a Folsom,” Grannie said, her voice cracking in alarm.

“Or a Broadhower.” Aunt Tillie touched her throat with a delicate age-spotted hand.

He’d place his bet on the former lady of the house being none too pleased to give it up. Chances are she wasn’t waiting with a tea-and-scone welcome.

Colt led the way through the dining room, where dried-out posies lay scattered on the table, then to the kitchen, where it looked like a pastry explosion had occurred.

Small human footprints tracked through a dusting of flour on the floor, along with some four-legged prints that looked suspiciously piglike.

It couldn’t be, but how many times had he seen an oinker indoors? Only once, and that was yesterday.

He left the kitchen and made a right for the stairs with the old ladies close behind him. There was a heavy feeling in his gut that his charge might not be the retiring violet he had imagined.

She might be temptation dressed in an angel’s guise.

He opened the first closed door he came to.

Hell and damn. Curled smack in the middle of the bed was a miniature pig flicking its ear so that the pink bow tied in it looked like a waving hankie. Curled up about the pig was yesterday’s angel covered in the proof of her crime and not a whole lot else.

Flour dusted her cheeks and dappled her hair. One hand lay against the pillow, dainty fingers curled, the other under her pink cheek. Her lips puckered in her sleep, looking soft and moist.

“I told you she was the one, Colt.” Grannie Rose bent over the bed, peering at Miss Holly Jane. “If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t look so at home in your bed.”

Chapter Three

“The reason she looks at home is because she is.” Holly Jane heard a man’s voice say, the tone so rich it made her imagine melted caramel.

She snuggled more deeply into her dream, trying to savor the sound. It was a shame that she couldn’t see him, but he had popped into the dream without warning. His voice was a welcome change from the stubborn suitor she was trying to send on his way...and something burning in the oven at the kitchen of The Sweet Treat.

No wonder it was burning if she had been so careless as to return home without taking whatever was baking out of the oven. Just then the dream fog cleared from her brain. Nothing was burning. She was home in her bed.

She sighed deeply, snuggling into the pillow and wishing she might return to the dream. She would face the stubborn suitor and the ruined baked goods in order to hear that other manly voice one more time.

“Wake up, Mischief Muffin.”

Her eyes popped open before her vision cleared. Peering down at her was the blurred face of the man she had spun castle’s in the air about last night. The man whose voice had trespassed into her dream.

The man that Lulu had humiliated her in front of!

He gazed down at her with a grin and eyes bluer than any she had ever seen...and a pair of dimples that very clearly knew what deviltry was all about.

Disturbingly, her first reaction to him was not “What are you doing in my bedroom?” or “Get off my property!” but “I think I’m in love.”

Which was impossible, because one didn’t fall in love willy-nilly with a stranger bending over one’s bed. One would screech and scratch until he ran away.

“You always sleep with a pig, Bo Peep?”

Suddenly, her senses snapped back into place.

“I never sleep with—” The weight of the bed shifted near her belly. “Lulu!”

She pushed at Lulu’s rump. Hopping off the bed with a grunt, she hit the floor in a puff of flour.

Holly Jane sat up, grabbed her robe from the spindle of the headboard then yanked her arms though the sleeves. She stood up.

Being a good head taller than she was, the man stared down at her. He was trouble for sure, with a gaze that threatened devilment even more than the dimples did.

What was he doing here? And the pair of elderly women with him? He couldn’t be... Oh, please don’t let him be—

She shivered, but only because the floorboards were cold under her bare feet.

“Come along, sister,” a woman said. This was Grannie Rose, she recalled from yesterday afternoon’s disaster. “Let’s let the lovebirds get acquainted.”

“They aren’t lovebirds, Rose.” The tall, slender woman led the shorter, rounder woman by the elbow. “By the looks of the house she’s not well pleased to have any of us here.”

And who would be pleased to be awoken from a sweet and spicy dream by trespassers...or so she desperately hoped.

“I’m sure that’s not true, sister.” Rose glanced back at her with a smile. “Miss Munroe is nearly kin.”

The ladies walked out of the room.

The man stood too close, looking down with his dimples flaring and his lips... Well, she had to look away from them. Even though he remained silent, the creases at the corners of his eyes crinkled with laughter.

The chill in her toes shot goose bumps up her legs.

“Pleasure to meet you, Holly Jane.”

The man, who she had by now decided could only be Mr. Colt Wesson Travers, tipped his head then backed out of the bedroom, clearly enjoying the fact that he had come upon her vulnerable and in her bed, wearing her nightgown—and sleeping with a pig to go with it.

Without warning, he winked, spun about on his boot heel and followed his elderly relatives down the stairs.

She had not by any means fallen instantly in love with this stranger! Just the opposite, she disliked him with a righteous intensity. He was arrogant...cocky...and much too handsome for anyone’s good.

And he owned the ranch that should have been hers!

* * *

Half an hour later, Holly Jane stood at the top of the stairs, yanking the bow of her apron and listening to the murmur of voices drifting up the stairs.

The scent of fried potatoes drifted up as well, but she did her best to ignore it. One would think that the aroma would make her want to retch, being that a stranger was using her kitchen, but it only made her stomach growl.

With a sigh, she straightened her spine, the one in her back and the one in her soul. She descended the stairs determined to present the new owners with a smile. She would pass through the kitchen as quickly as possible on her way to her own circle of property, where she would make herself a cozy place to live.

No doubt that’s what Granddaddy would have expected of her...a smile and a friendly greeting.

Blame it, her cheeks blushed like flames when she stepped into the kitchen and saw the three of them gathered about the dining table.

She’d like to blame the darn pig for it all, but it hadn’t been Lulu’s idea to ruin the house.

“Good morning,” she said, and since they hadn’t really been introduced and she could be anyone, she added. “I’m Holly Jane Munroe. Welcome home.”

“Good morning, dear,” the shorter woman said, her smile as agreeable as sunrise after a cold night. “I’m Grannie Rose, and this is my sister, Aunt Tillie. Our young man is my grandson, Colt Wesson.”