Elizabeth August - The Rancher's Hand-Picked Bride

“Look, I’m not any happier about this than you are,” he returned with equal animosity, “but we’ve made a bargain and we might as well be civil about it.”

“I’m used to living alone.” She tried to school the tenseness out of her voice but an edge remained. Not wanting him to guess how uneasy he made her, especially after that unnerving reaction she’d had to his touch, she added, “I guess I’m a little short on people skills.”

“You always have been.”

She bit back a retort. She had good reason for being the way she was, but that was her own private hell and no one else’s and she had no intention of revealing it just to justify her behavior.

Jess’s eyebrow raised in a questioning arch when she made no response. Then obviously accepting her silence as an end to the conversation, he picked up her satchel and computer bag.

Gwen grabbed at it. “I can carry my own things.”

“My mother taught me to be polite to guests.”

“Well, I’m no guest. I’m an employee.”

“You’re a female. I’d never hear the end of it from the women in my family if I didn’t carry your bag.”

Realizing she was fighting a losing battle, she shrugged and reached into the car for the old wooden baseball bat lying on the floor.

Surprise showed on Jess’s face. “Don’t you think that’s overreacting a bit. I’m just trying to be a good host.”

A flush reddened her cheeks. “I wasn’t going to use it on you.”

A grin tilted one corner of his mouth. “Never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but you look kind of cute when you’re flustered.”

Abruptly, her eyes turned cold with warning. “I’d better correct my last statement. I’m not planning to use this bat on you right now. But I do plan to keep it around in case any varmints wander too close.”

“Cute like a rattlesnake,” Jess muttered, clearly rethinking his first reaction. He met her icy glare with impatience. “Well, you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Good.” A curl of self-directed anger wove through her. He’d just told her what she wanted to hear. She should have been relieved, but deep inside she’d felt a sting. I’m just overly tense, she reasoned, pushing the car door closed.

Leading the way into the house, Jess silently cursed his great-grandmother for inviting this woman under their roof. She’d always been as prickly as a cactus and the fact that she thought she needed a bat to protect herself from him grated on his nerves. He sure as heck had never given her any indication he found her the least bit attractive. Not that she wasn’t physically good-looking…nice figure, curves in all the right places, green eyes and chestnut hair cut short so that it framed her face in a gentle style. But her core was cold as ice and hard as stone.

After showing her to her room, he went in search of Morning Hawk and found her in the kitchen with Lilly.

“I’ve got a stew on the stove and will be putting the corn bread in shortly,” Lilly said. She was in her mid-fifties, comfortable in her manner and she had a kindly disposition.

“Thanks.” Jess gave her the barest of glances. Lilly had worked for the Logans since she was a teenager. He considered her a trustworthy part of their household and thus felt perfectly comfortable discussing Gwen in front of her. Locking his gaze on Morning Hawk, he said tersely, “I don’t think inviting Gwen to stay under our roof was such a good idea.”

“She’s not as difficult to get along with as some people think,” Lilly spoke.

Surprised by the housekeeper’s defense of his unwanted guest, Jess’s gaze swung to her.

“She kept my niece from getting involved with a real loser. My sister didn’t like the guy so she hired Gwen to check him out. Turned out he not only had a criminal record, he had two wives and a total of six kids.”

“I’m not saying that what she does isn’t useful.” Jess’s gaze traveled between the two women. His jaw tensed. “She keeps a baseball bat with her.”

Morning Hawk regarded him indulgently. “A woman who lives alone should have something to protect herself with.”

Lilly nodded. “A lot of young women have taken to carrying guns. Not that I think that’s such a good idea. But on the other hand, the world has become a much more dangerous place, or so it seems. My daughter has taken up karate and she’s already up to a brown belt.”

“Maybe I should take some self-defense courses before I go out on my next date. And maybe carry a metal detector with me,” Jess muttered, shaking his head as he left the kitchen and went to his study.

Seated at his desk, he doodled on the edges of a sheet of paper where he’d listed a number of women’s names. He had nothing against marriage. He just hadn’t met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Even more, he didn’t like being pushed! “I’ll find a wife myself and in my own sweet time,” he growled, then focused his full attention on the paper in front of him.

After Gwen had left, he’d given this current situation a great deal of thought. He didn’t like blind dates. If he was going to go out with someone, it was going to be someone he had, at least, a passing acquaintance with. His plan was to hand Gwen the names of three women and tell her to set him up with them. That would make his part a bit more palatable and hers easy, allowing them to get finished with this charade quickly. Stopping his doodling, he made his final list.

Gwen stood at the window in her bedroom, knowing she had to leave the sanctity of the room and face Jess but not wanting to. She’d never understood why he had such a strong effect on her. He just did.

Her mind went back to her first day in school after she and her mother had moved to this panhandle area of Texas. She’d been in fourth grade. When it came time for lunch, a couple of the popular girls had attached themselves to her, more to find out all about her than to claim her as a friend. The three of them were just finishing eating when Jess wandered over to introduce himself. The other two girls had twittered, clearly excited and pleased by his presence. He was two years older and the fact that he was welcoming Gwen was clearly an event as far as her friends were concerned. But he made her feel weirdly uncomfortable in ways she’d never felt before and that had scared her. To hide her discomfort, she’d given him a cold look that told him she didn’t want him anywhere near her. The two girls she’d been eating with were both stunned and quickly made excuses to get away from her. From then on she’d been excluded from the popular crowd. But she didn’t care. They would have expected her to invite them to her house and she never invited anyone there. In addition to the house always smelling like liquor and stale cigarettes, her mother was a lousy housekeeper. Bottles and full ashtrays littered all the rooms except for Gwen’s and she never knew when her mother might come home early from work with a new “friend.”

Even Henry, the one lasting friend she’d made while in school here and who she’d learned to love like a brother, had only been inside a few times. His home life had been as bad as hers in its own way, so she hadn’t been quite so embarrassed about him coming in. Still, the uncertainty of finding her mother drunk or with a “friend” caused her to check the house before she let even him enter.

A knock on Gwen’s door startled her, jerking her mind back to the present. Answering the summons, she found her nemesis standing there.

“I suppose I should be flattered that you didn’t answer with your weapon in your hand,” he muttered.

Again a tint of red colored her cheeks. She’d tried to make herself leave the bat behind, but it had been her security blanket from an early age and she couldn’t sleep without it under her bed. “You said I was safe from you and from what I’ve heard, Logans keep their word.”