Marie Ferrarella - Her Mistletoe Cowboy

Garrett nodded. “It’s been known to happen on occasion,” he acknowledged.

She was right. This was a hellhole. “How long an occasion?” she asked.

The shrug was quick and generally indifferent, as if there were far more important matters to tend to. “It varies.” He nodded at her compact. “What’s wrong with your car?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Nothing, I just didn’t want to drive it if I didn’t know where I was going.” A small pout accompanied the next accusation. “I lost the GPS signal.”

Garrett took that in stride. Nothing unusual about that either, he supposed, even though neither he nor anyone he knew even had a GPS in their car. They relied far more on their own instincts and general familiarity with the area.

He did move just a little closer now. He saw that she was watching him, as if uncertain whether or not to trust him yet. He could see her side of it. After all, it was just the two of them out here and she only had his word for who he was.

“You can follow me, then,” he told her, then added with a smile that was intended to dazzle her—several of Miss Joan’s waitresses had told him his smile was one of his best features, “Consider me your guiding light.”

You’re cute, no doubt about that, but I’ll hold off on the whole guiding-light thing, if you don’t mind , Kim thought.

She stifled a sigh as she got in behind the wheel of her car. She knew she should have dug in and fought getting stuck with this assignment.

Chapter Three

Well, Kim thought wryly, following close behind Garrett, she had to admit that this was certainly different. She was definitely not accustomed to being treated to the rear view of a horse.

Granted, Garrett created a rather intriguing, captivating specimen of manhood, sitting atop his horse the way he was, but she hadn’t come here to stare at the back of some man, muscular and impressive though he might appear to be.

Garrett White Eagle—if that was who he really was and she had only his word for that—seemed nice enough, but for all she knew, that engaging smile of his could be hiding the soul of a sadist.

A sadist who lured trusting women off to some obscure hideaway where no one would ever find them—or her—until years later.

A hideaway in a hole-in-the-wall. Now there was irony for you. Maybe she should flee now while she still could.

Kim’s hands tightened on the steering wheel and she was all set to execute a U-turn and make her getaway when she saw it.

A ranch house in the distance.

So there really was a ranch out here. Maybe this was actually all on the level after all, which meant that Garrett White Eagle actually was Garrett White Eagle, just as he claimed to be.

Kim’s relief at spotting the ranch—civilization at last—was rather short-lived when she took a closer look at the actual structure she was driving toward.

Garrett turned around just then, as he had been doing every couple of minutes to make sure that she was still following him.

“Something wrong?” Garrett asked, pulling up on Wicked’s reins.

Even though he was leading the way and going so slowly he was afraid Wicked would fall asleep in midstep, the woman didn’t exactly fill him with confidence about her navigational skills.

He saw the stunned expression on Kim’s face. Her mouth had all but dropped open.

Now what?

When her eyes shifted toward him, he saw the confusion in them.

“Where’s the main house?” she asked, then said, “That’s the cook’s quarters, right?”

Garrett inclined his head, as if in agreement. “Uh-huh. The cook’s quarters, the main ranch hand’s quarters, Jackson’s quarters—along with his wife, Debi—and, oh yes, my quarters, too.”

“All of you live there?” she asked, as if the concept hadn’t quite sunk in.

“Uh-huh.” His eyes never left her face.

Kim’s eyes widened as her driving definitely slowed down to almost a crawl. It was as if her little car had gone on automatic pilot and was now driving itself.

She chewed on her lower lip before asking, “That’s the main house?” If she was trying to hide the appalled note in her voice, she was failing.

He had to admit, after having talked to her for a couple of minutes, her reaction didn’t come as much of a surprise.

Garrett laughed. “Let me guess, you were expecting South Fork.”

Her eyebrows knitted together, as she struggled to hide her disappointment over the building she saw. “South Fork?” she echoed. “What’s that?”

“Something obviously before your time,” he told her. Then, not wanting to seem old in her eyes, he added, “Before mine, too. Except that I like watching old, classic TV programs. To answer your question, South Fork was this big, sprawling fictional ranch just outside of Dallas that belonged to this really rich family whose members were always arguing and at each other’s throats all the time. But I’ve got to admit, the ranch house they had was a thing of beauty,” he told her. “This might not be South Fork,” he allowed, “but it’s all ours.”

There was no missing the pride in his voice.

To each his own, Kim thought, stifling the urge to shrug at his response. If that ranch house up ahead had been hers, she would have done whatever she needed to in order to make it look better in a hurry—and then she would have sold it as fast as she could before the buyer could think twice about the wisdom of getting stuck with a rundown house and a ranch that wasn’t producing much of anything except work.

As if reading her mind, Garrett leaned down from his horse and promised, “It’ll grow on you.”

She wasn’t going to be here long enough for that to happen, but for now, she kept that fact to herself.

Before she’d left, she had told Stan that she would write the best article she could on the Healing Ranch, but after seeing the place, she estimated it shouldn’t take her more than a day to whip up her article. Two if she deliberately stalled and didn’t get started for the first day.

And since she wanted to get out of Prairie Gulch as fast as she could, she would get started as fast as she could.

Kim prided herself on knowing how to put someone at ease so that they would confide in her.

Looking at the house as she drew closer, she promised herself to “make nice” with the people out here, get her story—or rather Stan’s story since he was the one who was so keen on it, not her—and then get back home. If she were particularly diligent, she’d be back in time to hand Stan her copy and then go shopping at Barneys, the New York–based department store that had found a second home in San Francisco and had become one of her treasured stomping grounds of choice.

With that in mind, Kim turned up her smile several watts and told her guide in the sweetest voice possible, “I think it’s charming.”

Garrett laughed, not taken in for a second, although he had to admit she was the prettiest liar he’d ever had to deal with.

“No, you don’t,” he contradicted. “But that’s okay, it’s not supposed to be ‘charming.’ It’s supposed to be functional. And it is. This is where the ‘bad’ boys get sent in order to be turned into human beings, something that my brother, Jackson, does, time and again, very, very well.”

“And you? What do you do?” she asked. She’d stopped driving for a moment and was taking in the ranch in its entirety.

Did it get any less run-down from close up? She certainly hoped so. She was planning on taking a few photographs to go with her article and right now, she didn’t see a good angle to use for her shots of the ranch house’s exterior.

“Anything I have to,” Garrett said in response, his voice dropping by an octave or so. Enough to get her attention and have her wondering things that wouldn’t be finding their way into the article.