Emilie Rose - The Cowboy's Million-Dollar Secret

Quit thinking about her and get back to work, dammit. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a truckload to do. He snatched up the computer printout Caleb had left him and scanned the information about the incoming dudes. Most were families with kids, but there were a few couples and singles. He’d learned the hard way to keep his eye on the singles.

He heard the splash of coffee into a mug and turned. Leanna had returned so quietly he hadn’t heard her. She lifted the pot in his direction and arched a brow. He nodded and she filled his cup.

Leaning against the counter, she asked, “Brooke said you had two brothers besides Caleb. Are you close?”

He jerked his gaze away from the freckles splashed across her nose and discovered a toe ring on her sandaled foot. Different. Sexy. Heat curled in his belly. Aw, hell, did he have to discover a foot fetish now? “As close as most, I guess.”

“Do you help Caleb and Brooke with the dude ranch often?” She pursed her lips and blew on her steaming coffee, and he almost forgot her question. She’d painted her pouty mouth today. Red. Ripe. Ready.

Wrong. Man, he needed to go back home and start this day over. He rubbed the back of his neck. She’d asked him a question. What was it? “Brooke’s only owned the place a few months, but Caleb and I used to help the previous owner regularly.”

“You live next door with your father?”

“Yeah.”

“How does he feel about you working here?”

Where was the line of questions leading, and why did he feel as if he were being interviewed? “Probably glad to have me out of his hair.”

“You don’t get along?”

It could take him all day to answer that one. “Not as good as we could. Why?”

He thought she smiled into her coffee mug. “Just curious.”

“Right. If we’re playing twenty questions then why’re you here?”

She stilled and slowly lifted her gaze to his. “I needed a job.”

“In Texas?” He sipped his coffee and discovered Leanna made a danged good brew. It wasn’t strong enough to put hair on a man’s chest, but it came close. Had to like that.

She gnawed her lip and lifted her chin. “I’ve been fascinated with Texas since I read about it as a teenager, and this job seemed like the perfect opportunity to fulfill a dream. Brooke interviewed me over the phone and hired me.”

“So you decided to pack everything you own in the back of your car and satisfy your curiosity?”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t imagine loading up his truck and leaving his family behind. This patch of land in McMullen County, Texas, was his home. Two of his brothers had left home, but they’d had good reasons. Brand had traveled the rodeo circuit for ten years because they’d needed his winnings to hold on to the ranch. Cort had gone all the way to North Carolina for college because he’d had a partial scholarship at Duke.

Why had Leanna left home? Uprooting herself for a temporary job didn’t make sense. “Are you on the run?”

Her face paled, and her eyes widened. “From what?”

“Or whom.”

“I’m not running from anything or anyone.” She sounded pretty defensive for somebody who had nothing to hide.

“What did your family say when you took off?”

She glanced away. “I don’t have any family who’ll worry about me.”

He recognized a dodge when he saw one, and something in her tone didn’t sound right. “Show me your ID.”

“What?” She set her mug down on the counter with a thump.

“You look like a teenager. Your car’s packed with God-knows-what. You allegedly leave a job in a movie star’s mansion to hide out on a dude ranch halfway across the country. It doesn’t add up. I figure either you’re lying about your age or you’re on the run. For all I know you could have robbed the dead guy and skedaddled across the state line.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she frowned. “You’re incredibly suspicious.”

He pulled his gaze away from the taut fabric stretched over her breasts. “Did you steal his silver?”

She gaped at him. “No.”

“Nothing crammed in your car belonged to Arch Golden?”

Guilty pink climbed her cheeks. “I didn’t sneak anything out of Arch’s house.”

Yep. Evasive. “Where’s the ID?”

“I don’t have it with me.” He made a face and she continued, “I showed all the proper documentation to Brooke yesterday. I didn’t bring my purse today.”

Right. He’d never known a woman who went anywhere without the arsenal she carried in her purse. “Where is it?”

Again she averted her gaze. “I…I left it under…my bed.”

Sure she had. “Lemme see your car’s registration.”

“My car is at Pete’s.”

She had an answer for everything, but the last one he could and would check out with a phone call. Brooke had left him in charge, and danged if he’d let anything go wrong. His days of letting folks down were over. “How’d he die?”

She blinked and shook her head as if he’d surprised her. “Who? Arch?”

He nodded.

“Lung cancer. Do you smoke?”

What difference did it make if he did? “Never have. Expensive habit. You?”

“No.” She fiddled with the hem of her shirt.

“Do you have any secrets I need to know about, kid?”

Her deer-in-the-headlights expression sent alarm bells clanging in his mind. “Secrets?”

His gut twisted into one big knot of apprehension. Aw hell, Brooke, what have you dumped on me? He didn’t have time to police the Double C’s hostess. “Vices. Bad habits.”

“As many as your average citizen, I guess.”

An average citizen from a Hollywood movie star’s neighborhood was a whole different species from the folks he was used to dealing with. He couldn’t head off a problem if he’d never heard of it. “Like what?”

She rubbed her forehead with one long, slender finger. Her hand was steady and her skin and eyes were clear. He could probably rule out substance abuse.

“I have a weakness for jelly beans.”

He snorted in disbelief. “Now that’s scary. What else?”

She angled her chin and narrowed her eyes. “I like lobster with drawn butter and two-hour bubble baths.”

And just like that, his body took that wrong-way detour again. A picture of Leanna in a tub with her long hair piled on top of her head and bubbles teasing the tops of her breasts immediately formed in his mind. He chugged several sips of coffee to distract himself from that irrational, illogical, impossible fantasy and scalded his tongue.

What in the hell was wrong with him that he’d be fantasizing about a gal still wet behind the ears? Wasn’t thirty-six too young for a midlife crisis?

She arched a brow. “You?”

“Ask anybody. I have more vices than any man ought to.”

She frowned and shoved away from the counter. “If I want to figure out where everything is and go over the menus and cabin assignments before the others arrive I should get started.”

She hightailed it out of the room, leaving him wondering what he’d said to make her run away.

Leanna closed a guest room door, moved on to check the towels, sheets and soaps in the next one. She’d give anything to crawl into one of those beds and sleep for a couple of hours.

Darkness had fallen by the time Pete had dropped her off at the dude ranch entrance last night, and after lugging her suitcases up the mile-long driveway, she’d been too tired to poke around in the inky shadows looking for a place to sleep. Since Brooke had mentioned that the ranch would be empty for the night, she’d stashed her luggage under the porch and crashed on a lounge chair. Luckily she’d packed bug repellant because the mosquitoes here were huge, and they liked California cuisine—namely her.