Mary Brady - Winning Over the Rancher

“About time you got home, Baylor. She’ll be here anytime,” a man’s voice called from down the hallway.

He grimaced. “Wait here, please. I’ll see if they are ready for you.”

“Am I early? Do you want me to wait outside?”

KayLee regretted the questions as soon as the words were out. They made her seem tentative. Not good in a place where life was serious and flippancy was most likely confined to the children.

He shook his head and strode off down a hallway from where the voice had come. His broad shoulders, it seemed, spread from wall to wall, and could probably hold the weight of the world.

Frown or no frown, if she weren’t careful, she’d be in love Hollywood-style with this man—fast, hot and gone as soon as sanity returned.

She took in her surroundings as she waited: pottery on high shelves, stark black-and-white photos of Old West life in groupings on one wall, family type photos hung in a large collection on the far wall. If these were all family photos, there were a lot of Doyles. One photo, if she wasn’t mistaken, was Baylor Doyle, with his parents, his two brothers and a sister from at least ten years ago. She walked over to the photo.

She wondered if she’d have to face all of them today.

“They don’t bite.” Baylor’s deep voice came from behind her.

Funny, she thought, coming from a man who looked as if he might, but when she faced him, he wore a deliberate smirk. It made him skew bad boy even more than the frown. Attraction stirred in her and she gathered her full coat around her. A pox on bad boys. That had been why her husband had been so attractive, a rogue producer on the fringes of Hollywood.

“Most of them don’t, anyway,” he continued, sans drawl, and it was her turn to narrow her eyes in suspicion. “My mother will be here in just a couple of minutes.”

“Thank you.” Bring ’em on, all of them, KayLee decided as she stepped away from the wall of photos and over to a carefully lit painting of a solitary horse, saddled, riderless, standing on a rocky hilltop, proud. If he hadn’t been wearing a saddle, she would have thought him a wild stallion.

“This horse must be special to your family,” she said as she examined the delicate brush strokes and the colors suffused with light and energy.

“Not the horse so much as the artist.”

KayLee glanced at the man again. His playfulness was gone, replaced by something that might be hurt, but also might be “none of your business, so don’t ask.”

She leaned closer. In the lower left corner in pale blue paint was the name Crystal.

“It’s beautiful.” She wanted to ask about it, but if she didn’t get the job…

He let her wander the room, getting to know the Doyle family a bit more. She tried to affect casually interested and empathetic, not needy or like the fish out of water she was.

If the objects in the room were an indication of the family history, KayLee couldn’t help but feel awe at the depth. She moved from the gleaming silver cup sealed in a glass box to a handmade baby gown pinned out on a frame and also protected behind glass. “Some of these artifacts appear to be really old.”

“Many of them have been in the family for a long time.”

“Those?” She pointed at the pair of rifles hanging above the fireplace.

“They were used on the ranch well over a hundred years ago.”

The stocks of the rifles were worn and the barrels dinged but they had been polished with care. She wondered how many lives they had taken and how many they had saved.

“It’s all so far-removed from the chrome accessories and plastic fingernails in my life.”

He checked her hands and she held them up. “A little clear polish is all.”

“Good, I’d have hated to have to throw you out over plastic fingernails.” His expression gave nothing away, but he sounded as if he were kidding.

At least she hoped to God he was. Baylor Doyle was a swarming mass of confusing signals. She’d have to steer clear of him as much as she could.

An older woman entered the room from the hallway. She glared pointedly at Baylor, then smiled welcomingly as a tray of chocolate chip cookies just off the cooling rack in grandmother’s kitchen.

“Hello, Ms. Morgan. Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s lookin’ to be booted out of the state,” she said, giving the man a “be good” look that could only come from a mother.

“You must be Evelyn Doyle.” KayLee stepped toward the older version of the woman in the family photo and put her hand out. “This is a lovely home, so full of history.”

“The Shadow Range Ranch has been in the family for over five generations. Though it’s much larger than the original homestead.” Evelyn Doyle’s smile broadened and she adjusted the thick gray ponytail that hung down the front of her Western-style plaid shirt.

“And we’d like to keep it that way.” Baylor leaned down, placed a kiss on his mother’s cheek and then stepped away.

Evelyn took KayLee’s hand in one of hers and put her other hand on Kaylee’s shoulder, giving her a couple of pats. “I am Evelyn Doyle, but Evvy will do,” she said. Then, without taking her hand away, she looked up at Baylor. “Welcome back, Bay, dear. Your buying trip must have gone well.”

“They’ll be delivering the new stock as soon as it can be arranged.”

Evvy let her hand drop and smiled at KayLee again. “I’m afraid there’ll be a lot of livestock talk here. We’ve bred our own line of Angus beef and we’d like to think it’s superior to most of what’s out there.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about beef that isn’t ready to put on my plate,” KayLee said and looked from Evvy to Baylor, hoping that wasn’t some sort of faux pas.

Baylor made a quiet, derisive sound.

“Baylor.” Man and mother held a momentary wordless exchange and then Evvy continued, “I’m glad you made it in time. Bay, take her coat now, please.”

Evvy gestured toward KayLee, who shrugged off the heavy shoulder bag and placed it on the floor at her feet. The light touch of Baylor’s fingertips on her shoulders as he helped her out of her coat might have felt sensual if she weren’t standing between the rancher and his mother. And not at all if pregnancy hormones hadn’t tricked her brain into becoming a sex engine. Thankfully, Baylor took her coat and left quickly.

“And your drive?” Evvy asked KayLee as Baylor strode away.

KayLee tugged on the tails of the white sweater she had put over her dress when she realized her coat wasn’t going to be warm enough. “I can’t get over how gorgeous Montana is. I hope I’m not being insulting if I say you all live in a scenic postcard.”

“Not at all. Even those of us who were born here think the same thing from time to time. Well, come, we’re all in the den.”

“I’m so glad to have the chance to meet everyone.” Everyone. Gulp.

When KayLee heard Baylor coming back into the room, she spun around slowly and faced him. His steps faltered and he gave her a long, questioning look with his eyebrows nearly drawn together, but he didn’t say anything.

She smiled to herself. This was the moment he realized he was seeing a pregnant woman, that her girth wasn’t just from her coat that fell from her shoulders in voluminous folds.

Evvy had not been surprised or, at least, not bothered.

After more smiles and nods, Baylor snatched up KayLee’s shoulder bag from the floor, and they all headed down a hallway, Evvy Doyle in the lead.

The ranch house was big—bigger than she expected. Good. They were already used to big spaces inside as well as out. Hopefully, they’d like the wide-open design of her guest cabins the best. If K. L. Morgan and Associates got this job, her design firm might have a future, she might have a future and so might her baby, who was the only associate she had.