Kay Thorpe - The Rancher's Mistress

Cover About the Author KAY THORPE was born in Sheffield, England, in 1935. She tried out a variety of jobs after leaving school. Writing began as a hobby, becoming a way of life only after she had her first completed novel accepted for publication in 1968. Since then she’s written over fifty novels, and lives now with her husband, son, German shepherd dog and lucky black cat on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Her interests include reading, hiking and travel. Title Page The Rancher’s Mistress Kay Thorpe www.millsandboon.co.uk CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN Copyright

KAY THORPE was born in Sheffield, England, in 1935. She tried out a variety of jobs after leaving school. Writing began as a hobby, becoming a way of life only after she had her first completed novel accepted for publication in 1968. Since then she’s written over fifty novels, and lives now with her husband, son, German shepherd dog and lucky black cat on the outskirts of Chesterfield in Derbyshire. Her interests include reading, hiking and travel.

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The Rancher’s Mistress

Kay Thorpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

TAKING in the panoramic view of rolling grasslands and timbered mountain slopes, Alex felt well and truly over the rainbow. Wyoming! The name itself conjured up images of hard-thewed cowboys astride spirited steeds, of thundering herds of cattle and whistling lariats. That the old Western films she had loved as a teenager would bear little resemblance to today’s reality she didn’t need telling, but it did no harm to dream.

‘How long will it take us to reach the Lazy Y?’ she asked the man at the wheel of the station wagon, savouring the name.

‘An hour or so,’ he said. ‘We’ll be in good time for supper. Hope you’re not on a diet. The food is really something. Needs to be too, considering what it costs to spend a week on the ranch. Taking in dudes is a pretty lucrative business.’

‘It’s a working ranch too, though, isn’t it? At least, that’s the impression you gave in your letter.’

‘It’s that all right. Cal would sooner give up breathing than cattle-breeding.’

Catching the acerbic note, Alex shot her brother a glance. Handsome as he’d been at eighteen, when she’d last seen him in the flesh, he was even more so at twenty-six: blond hair bleached by the sun, features hardened into manhood. They had often been taken for twins when they were children, despite the two years between them. The resemblance was still there, of course, though obviously nowhere near as pronounced. Whether the empathy they had shared could be re-established after eight years apart was something else.

‘Do you get on all right with him?’ she queried.

The shrug was noncommittal. ‘Well enough.’

Not exactly ‘buddy-buddy’, Alex gathered—which wasn’t all that surprising, she supposed, considering the circumstances.

‘How about the guests?’ she said. ‘Do they join in with the general ranch work too?’

‘The ones who want to. Amazing how many seem to look on working their butts off fencing and riding herd as part and parcel of what they’re paying for!’

‘Perhaps they’re living out a private fantasy,’ Alex suggested lightly. ‘I always wanted to be a cowgirl myself.’

Greg’s quick grin momentarily restored the boyish look she remembered. ‘I’d say modelling was the better choice.’

She gave a wry smile. ‘Not so much a choice as an enticement. If I hadn’t been spotted by that photographer, I’d never have thought of it as a career. The problem now is having no particular qualifications to fall back on. Something you tend not to take too much into account at seventeen.’

‘You’re hardly over the hill yet,’ Greg observed, slanting a swift, appraising glance at the tumble of honey-blonde hair and finely sculpted profile.

‘Where photographic work is concerned, I’m fast getting that way.’ Alex took care to keep her tone matter-of-fact. ‘I’ve had a good run, but it’s time I started thinking about doing something else with my life.’

‘You know best, I suppose.’ He paused briefly. ‘Anything in particular in mind?’

‘I’ve done promotional work from time to time. A company I worked for last year offered me a permanent job selling costume jewellery in stores.’

Greg pulled a face. ‘Sounds a bit dull after the kind of life you must have led to date.’

‘I haven’t done that much candle-burning,’ Alex replied drily. ‘Riotous late nights aren’t to be recommended for anyone due to face a camera next day.’

‘You could always find yourself a rich husband. With your looks it should be a doddle!’

‘If I marry anyone at all,’ she declared on an emphatic note, ‘it certainly won’t be for money!’

‘You always were a romantic,’ he scoffed.

She might have been once, Alex reflected. If the last few years hadn’t rid her of her illusions, the last few weeks certainly had!

‘Was it love at first sight for you and Margot?’ she asked, putting the memories resolutely aside. ‘You said you met in Las Vegas.’

‘That’s right. Some friends she was visiting brought her to the nightclub where I was working behind the bar. We were married a week later.’

‘And you call me the romantic!’

The vivid blue eyes, so like her own, fixed on the near-empty road ahead, he said smoothly, ‘She wanted everything done and dusted before Cal could put his spoke in.’

‘He’s her brother, not her guardian. Surely—’

‘You wouldn’t know it at times. He treats her more like sixteen than twenty!’

Perhaps with some reason, Alex thought, trying to be fair-minded about it. Leaping into marriage with a virtual stranger was hardly sensible behaviour at any age. Greg hadn’t answered the first half of the question, which might suggest that love hadn’t been his prime motive. After drifting about the world for so long, a setup like the Lazy Y had to have some pulling power.

Scant evidence on which to make that kind of deduction, she chided herself. The man seated beside her was different in many ways from the boy she had grown up with, but that didn’t mean he’d become an out-and-out opportunist. She, of all people, should know better than to take anyone or anything at face value.

Twelve when their father had died, Alex had accepted her mother’s remarriage less than a year later rather more easily than Greg, who had bitterly resented the intrusion. His departure after four years of unceasing animosity to join a group intending to work their way round the world had come almost as a relief at first, but she had missed him badly as the days stretched into weeks and months. Letters had been few and far between, the content woefully inadequate. The group he was travelling with had gradually dwindled until there were only three of them left, but he’d never shown any sign of wanting to come home.

The news just a couple of weeks ago of his marriage and move to Wyoming had been a double shock as she had believed him to be still somewhere in Australia. Coming at a time when she so badly needed to get away from it all, his suggestion that she take a trip over to meet her new in-laws had seemed like manna from heaven. By the time she got back, the whole sorry business would hopefully be old news.