For Love and Family (7 page)

“Is that the way it was?”

“Nope,” she said, mimicking his periodic answer to things she asked him. “I just developed an interest in it when I took my first psychology class in my freshman year of college. Actually, I realized I had spent my life sort of standing on the sidelines, observing people and their behavior, thinking about what made them tick, and when I discovered a class that talked about that, I also discovered my niche.”

They'd finished putting away Johnny's puzzle and the rest of his toys, and Hunter sat on one end of the
sofa, angled toward the center, his arm stretched across the top of the back cushion.

There was no hint that he was ready for her to go out to the cabin tonight. In fact, something about his attitude seemed to say he expected her to sit, too. So that was what Terese did—sit on the couch but at the opposite end.

It must have been what he'd had in mind because he merely went on with their conversation. “Don't take this wrong, but I'm kind of surprised that you work at all.”

She knew what he was thinking—that she was a trust-fund baby who didn't need to earn a living. “I don't do it for the money. I do it because I enjoy it.”

“Does your sister work?”

“Eve? Unless you count working at being Eve and keeping up with the latest fashions and hairstyles and makeup, no. But maybe if I looked the way she does instead of the way I do—”

He cut her off before she could finish that. “That day at your house your sister made a not-too-nice comment about the way you look. You don't buy into that, do you?”

“Into the fact that I'm not as attractive as Eve? That I'm the lesser twin? It isn't a matter of buying into it. It's a fact of life.”

His brow creased into a frown. “You look different than she does, but the ‘lesser-twin'? You have to be kidding.”

He sounded as if he genuinely couldn't fathom that.

“Eve is beautiful,” she said.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he countered. “Or maybe ‘beauty is only skin-deep' would be a better platitude. Either way, I don't see your sister as beautiful. But you…”

He was studying her openly and it made Terese uncomfortable. Especially since she was sure he was going to find all kinds of flaws.

But then he said, “You have beautiful hair and skin like fresh cream. Your eyes glisten like moonlight on a still lake. You remind me of a spring morning when everything is clear and bright and new….” He shook his head, still keeping his eyes on her. “I like the way you look. I like it a whole lot better than the way your sister looks.”

There was something in his voice that made her believe this was actually how he felt, although it didn't convince her that she was more attractive than her sister. She thought that Hunter's opinions were just colored negatively by Eve's actions and positively by her own. And yet, his opinion of her still made her happier than he would ever know.

And more embarrassed. She could feel her cheeks heating, and she knew they had to be beet red.

But if Hunter noticed, he didn't comment on it. He just continued.

“Plus, unless I've missed something, you have a whole lot more going for you than your sister in every other regard,” he said.

“I'm just a teacher,” she demurred.

“A college professor, which is the top-of-the-heap teacher.”

Terese merely shrugged, unsure what to say to that.

“So why did you decide to teach, anyway? Why not do therapy or counseling?”

Terese had no idea when he'd gone from talking about her appearance to talking about her job but she was grateful for the change of topic nonetheless.

“The academics just appealed to me,” she told him. “I teach and do research—”

“What kind of research?”

“I know when I say that, people picture test tubes. But a psychologist's research is interviewing people. For instance, before I went on sabbatical I did follow-up research on teenagers who had been taking psychotropic drugs for ten years, beginning before the age of eight. That meant locating kids for the study and talking to them about where they are now, physically and mentally, and trying to determine whether being on medication has been beneficial enough to warrant the side effects. It's that kind of research.”

“And why are you on sabbatical now?”

He sounded genuinely interested and his focus on her was still so intent that Terese didn't think he was merely being polite.

“I'm finishing my doctoral dissertation,” she said.

Hunter's eyebrows arched. “You'll be Dr. Warwick?”

“It'll be a Ph.D., but yes, I'll be Dr. Warwick. On
the school roster and to my students at least, though I don't think it will matter to anyone else.”

“Dr. Warwick,” Hunter repeated. “And you think you're the lesser twin? That's a whole lot more than your sister can say. I know I'm impressed,” he said, but with a hint of teasing that made it clear he wasn't intimidated by her accomplishments the way some men she'd encountered had been. She liked that.

“What about you?” she asked then. “I know the ranch has been in your family for generations but how did you and Willy come to work it instead of you and that brother you mentioned before?”

One of his eyebrows hiked toward his hairline and he pointed a long, thick index finger at her. “You were paying attention,” he said as if it flattered him that she'd been listening close enough to what he'd said to remember it.

“I confess, I really was paying attention, yes. You said that Willy is closer to you than your brother—from which I took it that you have at least one brother.”

Hunter didn't comment on his familial relationships, though. It was the question about how he'd come to be a rancher that he addressed.

“I started working alongside my father and grandfather like Johnny is now at about the same age. And I loved it just the way he does. Being outside in the fresh air, it was more like play than work. Then, as I got older I started to appreciate moving through my day at my own pace, not having a boss breath
ing down my neck. I didn't mind getting my hands dirty or having to start before dawn or working weekends and holidays—you know, animals have to be fed, cows have to be milked no matter what. It all just fit,” he concluded.

“So you found your niche at four years old and never wavered?” Terese said with some awe.

“I wavered. Or maybe it was teenage rebellion. But yeah, there was a period when I tried out a different lifestyle and considered doing things other than ranching.”

“For instance?” Terese said to urge him into details.

“I went to college at the University of Colorado in Boulder. That's hardly a rural setting. During those four years I worked to pay my tuition by being a night watchman in a big office building. All cooped up five nights a week from six in the evening until three in the morning.”

“I'm guessing the ‘cooped-up' part is what got to you?”

“Mmm. It was good for studying, but I definitely got tired of being stuck inside. Only not before I thought about being a lawyer or a businessman.”

Terese smiled at that. There he was, dressed in his jeans, Western shirt and cowboy boots, with muscles nudging the confines of his clothes and his rugged handsomeness kissed by the sun, looking every inch the cowboy, and she just couldn't picture him as anything else. Certainly not as an attorney or an executive.

“What?” he challenged as if he could read her thoughts. “You don't think I could be a lawyer or a corporate muckety-muck?”

“I'm just surprised that either of those occupations ever appealed to you,” she said to cover her tracks.

“I was under the influence.”

“Of what?”

“The other two guys who worked my shift. They were both two years ahead of me, so while I finished my bachelor's degree, one of them went on to an MBA program, while the other went to law school.”

“And they nearly convinced you to follow in their footsteps?”

“I don't know how
nearly
it was, but I admit that they had me thinkin'. The law student was sure he'd end up on the Supreme Court, and the business major was determined to wow Wall Street. That made coming back here to work the ranch pale by comparison.”

“And you were an impressionable eighteen-to twenty-two-year-old.”

“I was,” he said with an irresistible half grin.

“So what happened to pull you back to the ranch?” Terese asked, trying not to go limp at the sight of that sexy, charming smile he flashed at her.

“A couple of things. Family things, partly. My grandfather died. That wasn't unexpected since his health had been failing pretty consistently for the last year or more of his life. But when he died that left my dad with only my brother to help around here and then there was some stuff with my brother…”

Apparently the
stuff
with his brother wasn't good because Hunter's brow furrowed at just the mention of it.

But he didn't seem inclined to explain because after a moment's pause, he went past it. “Anyway, about the time I was ready to graduate, my dad really needed me back here and to tell you the truth I'd sort of mentally tried on the lawyer bit and the businessman bit, and I knew they weren't right for me. I was itching to get outside again.”

“And you've been here ever since?”

“Ever since.”

“Without any regrets or secret wishes that maybe you
had
become a lawyer or a businessman?”

That made him chuckle. “Absolutely no secret wishes or regrets. Once I got my hands dirty again, I knew there was nothin' else for me. It's like getting away for a while, even considering doing something else, made me appreciate this all the more. Just remembering that I ever thought about those other things seems crazy now. Ranchin' really is my niche, as you put it. I love everything about it.”

“Which is why you want to improve your herd and keep things going,” Terese concluded. “And why it's good that you decided to go on your trip.”

He nodded, but he did it so slowly she could tell he still had reservations.

Whether it was those reservations or the fact that they'd been talking a long while and the hour had gotten late, they seemed to have reached a lull. A lull
that Terese thought she should act on before she overstayed her welcome.

So she stood and said, “I'll bet missing most of today's work means you have that much more to do tomorrow so I should let you get some rest.”

Hunter didn't refute that. In fact, he confirmed it by standing, too.

“Speaking of tomorrow,” he said as Terese led the way to the kitchen, “Willy and I have some fences to fix at the far end of the place. Mendin' fences is Johnny's least favorite of my jobs. He gets bored out on the range without much to do. So I was wondering if you might want to stay around here with him? He's been pestering me to let him draw faces on a bunch of the pumpkins he'll get me to carve for him, and he has a Halloween video I haven't had time to let him watch. You could keep him occupied doing some of that, if you wouldn't mind….”

“Mending fences does sound a little on the boring side,” Terese acknowledged. “But I'd love to do pumpkins and watch the Halloween video. Halloween wasn't a holiday we did much with in boarding school. The headmaster said it was a low-class, heathen holiday. This will give me a chance to experience it.”

“No camping and no Halloween? What kind of a childhood did you have, anyway?”

Terese laughed. “A very stuffy one,” she admitted.

They'd gone through the kitchen to the mudroom by then and Hunter reached around in front of her to
open the door. But once she'd gone through it, he followed her outside. Apparently walking her to the cabin was becoming enough of a habit for him to do it without announcing that he was going to the way he had on the previous nights.

But Terese certainly wasn't going to complain. She appreciated the gentlemanly courtesy. As well as the few more minutes it gave her with him.

“I hope you didn't feel pressured into making that doctor's appointment today,” Hunter said as they strolled through the balmy October air in the quiet of the yard.

During Johnny's visit, the hematologist had aggressively suggested that since hemophilia was passed from mother to son, Terese should be tested to determine if, like her twin, she carried the gene.

Terese hadn't been enthusiastic about it, even though it only required a blood test, but Johnny's doctor had been so insistent that she'd finally conceded and made an appointment for herself for early the following week.

“He was probably right,” she told Hunter in answer to his concern that she'd felt pressured. “It's information I should have, even if it doesn't ever become relevant.”

They'd reached the cabin and she opened the door and turned on the overhead light, stepping just inside and turning to find him leaning one broad shoulder against the jamb the same way he had the night before, his hands hidden in the pockets of his low-slung jeans.

“Why wouldn't it become relevant?” he asked. “Don't you want kids of your own?”

“I'd love to have kids of my own. But I doubt I'll ever have the chance.”

Hunter frowned in confusion. “Why not?”

That wasn't a subject she wanted to get into right then so she merely shrugged. “It's complicated. But I just don't think marriage and family are in the cards for me.”

“This isn't more of that ‘lesser twin' thing, is it?”

Terese repeated the shrug. “And some prior experience,” she said more to herself than to him.

Hunter was studying her again and he shook his head. “I don't know where this is all coming from but you're so damn wrong…”

His eyes were delving deeply into hers and for no reason Terese understood she felt mesmerized by their gold-streaked intensity. So mesmerized that words escaped her and the only thing she could think about was the same thing she'd thought about at the end of the last two evenings—what it might be like to have him kiss her.