Debbi Rawlins - Texas Heat

No, she wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, he’d have to admit. She’d jumped right in to help hook up the trailer, and loaded the ramps and straps by herself. She hadn’t even waited for him to toss her a pair of gloves. Still, he felt weird letting a woman do physical work beside him. His sister was no flower herself, but even Kate stuck to her duties in the house.

“What’s the lumber we’re picking up for?” Dory asked, using the back of her wrist to wipe pear juice from the corner of her mouth. Her ponytail had loosened and her hair was all over the place.

Clint smiled at her lack of self-consciousness. “Tomorrow’s game booths.”

“Game booths? Like what?”

“The usual…tic-tac-toe, ring toss, that sort of thing.”

“Kind of like a carnival.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“We have a traveling carnival in Hawaii, but I haven’t been in years.”

Surprised, he looked over at her. “That’s where you’re from?”

“Yep, born and raised. My parents moved there during the free-love sixties era from Kansas. We lived in a commune until I was about thirteen.”

“You’re serious?”

She shrugged. “It’s not much different than you and Kate and your brother living here on the ranch all your life.”

He saw a major difference but no point in arguing. “How did you end up at a college on the East Coast?”

“A friend from high school talked me into it. I almost transferred out because I hated the snow. How about you?”

“I didn’t go far. University of Houston for four years. I liked coming home on weekends and working on the ranch with my brother, Joe.”

She shifted, bending one leg so that she faced him. “What did you study?”

“Business, believe it or not.”

“That is a surprise.”

Clint shrugged. “It’s not like I wanted to work in an office. I figured I might learn something that would make the ranch more efficient.”

“Did you?”

He gritted his teeth, annoyed that she was probing areas better left alone. “Yep.”

“So what kind of changes did you make?”

“Why all the questions? You writing a book?”

At his terse tone, she stiffened. “Jeez Louise, I thought we were making small talk, passing the time, being friendly.” She sniffed and twisted around to face the road again. “We don’t have to talk. We could listen to the radio if you want. Or I could sing to you. But I warn you, I can’t carry a tune worth a damn.”

He exhaled loudly. “Sorry, it’s kind of a touchy subject.” He felt the weight of her stare but she didn’t comment, which oddly encouraged him to add, “My brother, Joe, he wasn’t interested in making any changes.”

“Ah. He’s the oldest, right?”

Keeping his eyes on the road, Clint nodded. “He pretty much took over the ranch after our parents died. Kate was only fourteen and I was going into my senior year in high school.”

“He couldn’t have been much older himself.”

“He’d just finished his sophomore year at UCLA.”

“Wow!”

That was all Clint had to say on the subject. He knew he owed Joe a lot. It hadn’t been easy for him to drop out of school, take on the ranch and two resentful teenagers. Neither Kate nor Clint would’ve made it to college if it weren’t for Joe. But sometimes it was hard for Clint to keep his mouth shut when it came to the old-school way the ranch was still run. “So what do you do?”

“I’m a forensic anthropologist.”

He waited until he’d safely passed a horse trailer parked on the shoulder of the highway and then glanced her way. She was tightening her ponytail and with her arms raised, her T-shirt clung to her breasts. Odd he hadn’t noticed before how full and round they were. “I’m not sure what that means.”

“I study remains mostly.”

“Like bones?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, like bones.”

“Man, that would creep me out.”

“Wimp.”

He grunted but ignored her teasing. Figured she had a job like that. “So what? You work with law enforcement?”

“Actually, I’ve spent the last six months in Vietnam and Cambodia, identifying remains of missing soldiers.” The teasing tone was gone. Her voice had softened. “It’s so sad that families have had to wait this long to find out what happened to their missing loved ones from the war.”

“That’s true, all right,” he agreed quietly. “They’re lucky they have people like you to finally give them some closure.”

“Yeah, well, the findings are always kind of bittersweet, you know?”

“I can imagine.” His gaze went to her hands. Her nails were uneven but clean, the skin badly scraped on two of her knuckles. He understood now why she wasn’t like Kate’s other two friends. They seemed like nice enough women, pretty, well put together, his type actually. Stupid when he stopped to think about it, but the high maintenance ones were the kind that attracted him. Maybe that’s why he’d never entertained the thought of marriage. Too damn much work.

“Hey, look.” She straightened and pointed to an eagle soaring low against the cloudless blue sky. “Beautiful, isn’t he?”

Clint slowed down so he could appreciate the grace of the bird, and grinned. “How do you know it’s a he?”

“Guys have to try harder to attract a mate. That’s why males in most species have all the stunning feathers and bright colors,” she said matter-of-factly. “When it’s time to mate, girls just have to show up.”

He chuckled. She did have a point.

DORY WAS SURPRISED when they turned down a dirt road under an arching sign that announced the Double R Ranch. It had seemed more like twenty minutes instead of an hour since they’d left the Manning’s place, which was quite a spread as it turned out…about two thousand acres. Mostly flat pastureland, much of it fenced off for grazing cattle. For the entire ride, that pretty much had been all there was to see, more grazing land. Although she hadn’t focused on the scenery half as much as she had the man sitting beside her.

She liked watching his hands as they confidently gripped the wheel. They were large and tanned, the back of his fingers sprinkled sparingly with crisp dark hair. Rolled-back sleeves exposed broad, big-boned wrists and muscled forearms, and his blue cotton shirt did nothing to hide his well-formed biceps.

He obviously hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and she wondered if that omission had been deliberate. Had he tried for that perfect, rugged, cowboy look? No, he seemed like a man who enjoyed the outdoors and wasn’t afraid to sweat. Sure, she worked with a lot of big, muscular guys like that on digs, but unlike them, Clint had a lithe grace that had caught her attention earlier when he hooked up the trailer.

Weird, because she wasn’t normally attracted to a man based on physical attributes, even one as good-looking as Clint. In fact, she tended to ignore the head-turners. She figured they got enough female attention.

The road to the Double R had obviously once been graveled and graded but not well maintained, and the truck dipped and bounced for nearly a mile before a large white house and outbuildings came into view. Good thing. Her fanny had had enough, and that was saying something since she seemed to spend half her life in a Jeep lately.

“I hope some of the hands are close by to help load the lumber.” Clint pulled the truck up to the front of the barn. “Kate was supposed to have called ahead.”

“I don’t see anybody.”

“The Reynoldses own this place, but times have been kind of tough for them lately,” he said grimly. “They lost a good deal of their herd to cattle rustlers last year and had to lay off half their men.”