His Texas Wildflower (3 page)

“I'd be pleased,” he said.

“Fine.” She drew in a long breath, then stepped away from him and quickly headed to her car.

Gertrude's house was only two short miles from Pine Valley cemetery. As she drove carefully over the country
dirt road, Jake followed at a respectable distance behind her. When she finally parked in front of her aunt's small house, she climbed out of the car and waited for him to pull his vehicle to a stop next to hers.

When he joined her, she said, “I only arrived in Ruidoso last night, so I didn't get a chance to drive out here until this morning. I've still not looked over the whole property. Only the house and its surroundings.” She glanced at the house and tried not to sigh with desperation. “I have to admit it wasn't what I expected.”

As she walked toward a small gate that would lead them to the front entrance of the house, Jake followed a step behind.

He said, “I take it you've never been out here to your aunt's home before.”

There was no censure or disbelief in his voice and that in itself drew out her next words before she had time to think about them.

“You're right, I haven't. And I'm very sorry about that.”

“Well, you're here now. That has to stand for something,” he said, then with an easy smile, he touched a hand to her back and ushered her up the small steps and onto a concrete porch.

By the time Rebecca reached to open the door, his comment had tugged on her raw emotions. Pausing, she bent her head and swallowed hard at the tears burning her throat. What was the matter with her? She hadn't known Gertrude O'Dell and until an hour or so ago, Jake Rollins had been a stranger. Neither of them should be affecting her like this.

“Rebecca? Is something wrong?”

Lifting her head, she looked at him and her eyes instantly flooded with tears.

“Oh—Jake.”

The words came out on a broken sob and before she could stop herself her head fell against his chest, her hands snatched holds on his shoulders.

She felt his strong arms come around her and then his graveled voice was whispering next to her ear.

“Don't cry, Becca. Your aunt wouldn't want that. And neither do I.”

T
he comfort of his arms felt so good. Too good, she thought, as she sniffed back her tears and pushed herself away from him. She didn't know how long she'd allowed her cheek to rest against his broad chest, or his hand to stroke the back of her head. For a while she'd seemed to lose all sense of control over herself.

“I'm so sorry, Jake,” she mumbled in an embarrassed rush. “I didn't mean to fall apart on you like that. I— The day has been long and everything just seemed to hit me all at once. And now I've gotten mascara on your nice, white shirt.”

She darted a glance at his face and saw that his brown eyes were studying her with concern. Amusement, disgust, surprise. Anything would have been easier to deal with than his compassion. She struggled to keep her tears from returning.

“Forget that,” he murmured. “Are you okay?”

While she'd been in his arms, while her cheek had rested against him, he'd called her Becca, she thought. No one had ever called her that and she wondered why it had sounded so endearing and natural coming from him.

Drawing in a deep breath, she nodded and turned to open the door. “Yes. I'm fine now. Please come in and I'll show you around,” she invited.

They stepped into a small living room crammed full of old furniture, stacks of magazines and newspapers, and shelves of dusty trinkets. The windows were open, but outside awnings shaded the sunlight and left the cluttered interior dark and gloomy.

As Rebecca switched on a table lamp, Jake said, “I suppose I was eight years old the first time I ever visited Apache Wells with Quint. As best as I can remember your aunt was living here then. It's going to feel strange to drive by and know that she's not here anymore.”

With one hand Rebecca gestured around the room. “It's clear that my aunt lived modestly. I suppose she wanted it that way.”

“Maybe she couldn't afford anything else,” he suggested.

“My aunt wasn't exactly a pauper,” Rebecca revealed. “She had a nice nest egg in her savings account.”

“Guess she was saving it for something more important.”

More important? The money, the property, everything had been left to Rebecca. Nothing about her aunt's life or final wishes made sense. Had the woman lived miserly just to leave Rebecca a small fortune? She'd not even known her niece! Oh, God, Rebecca wished she could understand what it all meant.

“Come along this way to the kitchen,” she told him.
“I'd offer you something, but I'm afraid there's nothing in the house to eat or drink.”

“I'm fine,” he assured her. “It hasn't been that long since we had refreshments at Abe's.”

The kitchen was a tiny room with one row of cabinets and a single sink with a window above it. Through a pair of faded yellow curtains, a ridge of desert mountains loomed in the far distance. Between them and the house was an open range filled with green grass, clumps of purple sage and blooming yucca plants.

“Would you look at that refrigerator,” Jake remarked. “I'll bet it's at least fifty years old.”

Rebecca glanced at the appliance with its rounded corners and chromed handle. In spite of the paint being worn and rusted in places, the thing was still working. Although someone, she didn't know who, had removed nearly all of the food from the shelves. In order to keep it from spoiling, she supposed. Perhaps Gertrude's friend, Bess, had done the chore.

“Yes. I guess Aunt Gertrude didn't believe in getting rid of anything that was still working.” Which was the complete opposite of her twin sister, Rebecca thought wryly. In Houston, Gwyn was constantly refurnishing her house with the newest and best. The contrast of how the two sisters lived was completely shocking and made Rebecca wonder even more how the split had happened.

Rebecca pointed to a short hallway that led off the kitchen. “The bedrooms and bathroom are down there. I'd show you, but they're all a mess. Would you like to see out back?”

“Sure.”

He followed her out of the kitchen and onto a porch. This portico was made of planked wood and shaded
with a roof. At one end, the thin branches of a desert willow moved in the breeze and scattered lavender blossoms on the dusty boards. The grass in the yard was long, scraggly and full of weeds and Rebecca couldn't help thinking about her mother's well-manicured lawn in Houston. There, thick St. Augustine grass was fed and groomed on a regular basis by a hired gardener. Expensive lawn furniture was arranged in an eye-pleasing manner beneath the deep shade of a live oak. From the looks of it, Gertrude O'Dell hadn't even owned an old porch swing, she thought dismally.

“Looks like things need a little cleaning and fixing up here, too,” Jake remarked. “I didn't realize there was a barn behind the house. The trees hide it from the road. Are there animals or equipment in it?”

“No tractors or anything that could be deemed as equipment,” she told him. “But there are three barn cats. And a horse was here this morning. I think it must come and go in the pasture. At least, it wasn't locked inside a pen when I saw it. There's a dog somewhere around here, too.”

“Let's go have a look,” he suggested, then glanced down at her high heels. “Or maybe you'd rather not.”

“The ground is hard and dry. I'm not worried about my shoes, Jake.”

He smiled and for a moment she was reliving those few moments she'd stood in the circle of his arms. His body had been warm. Incredibly warm. And his muscles thick and hard. His male scent had engulfed her and she'd wanted to bury her face in the V of his shirt, to cling to him until nothing else in the world mattered.

Her strong reaction to the cowboy was startling and continued to confuse her. Although Rebecca had always enjoyed male company, she'd never relied on a man to
keep her happy. How could she, when all the ones she'd known had been as fickle and unpredictable as the wind? Down through the years, she'd learned, somewhat the hard way, that men perpetually put themselves first. To them, sacrificing meant giving up football tickets to take her to the opera. She could do without that. And do without them. At least, she believed she could.

Still there were times, like earlier at Apache Wells, when she'd watched the loving exchange between Maura and Quint Cantrell, when she'd listened to them speak of their young sons, that she wondered if she would ever find that sort of love, ever have children of her own.

“Good,” he suggested, breaking into her thoughts. “Lead the way.”

As they stepped off the porch, a reddish-brown dog with long hair scurried beneath the yard fence and came loping toward them. From the wag of his tail, he was happy to see Rebecca again and she paused to bend and stroke his head.

“I was surprised to find that my aunt had left pets behind,” she told Jake. “I suppose before I leave I'll have to take them to a place where they can be adopted out to new homes. And I need to find a trustworthy Realtor to deal with the property.”

After giving the animal a few strokes on the head, she straightened to her full height to see Jake was studying her closely.

“Gertie didn't have a will?” he asked thoughtfully.

Color rushed to Rebecca's cheeks, although she didn't understand why his question should unsettle her. It wasn't a crime to be an heiress, even to a run-down property like this.

“Uh—yes. Actually, Gertrude made me the sole beneficiary.”

She began walking on toward the barn and he strolled beside her. A stand of aspen trees grew at the back of the yard and as they passed beneath the shade, the air was dry and pleasant. She suspected that by nightfall the temperature would be downright cool.

“So why don't you stay on and make use of the property?” he asked. “Or do you already own something in Houston?”

As they walked along, she stared at him. “No. I rent. In the city. I don't have any use for property.”

Was the man crazy? Why would he even think she'd want or need Gertrude's old homestead? Even though she'd told him and his friends that she worked as a fashion buyer, he obviously didn't realize the importance of her job. At least, its importance to her. He didn't understand that her mother and friends would be shocked to see her spend one night on this ramshackle property, much less want to hold on to it for herself.

But she kept all those thoughts to herself. She didn't want to give him the impression that she was a snob. Because she wasn't. She was just accustomed to a different life than this. That was all.

“That's a shame,” he said. “With a bit of loving care this place could be a nice little home. But I guess a fancy lady like you would never settle for anything this simple.”

There was no sarcasm or accusation in his voice. He'd simply stated a fact the way he saw it. And she wasn't at all sure she liked the image he'd formed of her.

Pushing a hand through her tousled hair, she wondered if she looked as bad as she felt. But that hardly mattered. When Jake Rollins had called her a fancy lady, he'd not been referring to her looks, but her substance as a person. She couldn't remember the last time anyone
had noticed anything more about her than her outward appearance, the latest fashion she happened to be wearing. It was a jarring realization.

“Actually, I won't be leaving tomorrow,” she told him, while trying to decide why she felt it important to give him that bit of information. “It will take me a few days to deal with everything and get the property ready to sell.”

“Well, I hope everything turns out the way you want,” he said quietly.

“I do, too,” she murmured, then quickened her pace on to the barn.

The structure was built of lapped boards with a low roof made of corrugated iron. The outside had once been painted white but had long since faded to a tired gray. At one end, two wide doors stood open, allowing a shaft of waning sunlight to slant across a floor of hard-packed dirt.

Inside, two female cats, one gray striped and the other a solid white, were lounging on a low stack of old hay bales. Nearby, a yellow tom was stretched out in the shade of a metal water trough full of rusty holes. Everywhere she looked, everything about the place seemed to have been long forgotten, as though her aunt had quit living years ago, instead of days ago. The idea saddened her even more.

While Rebecca tried to get near the wary felines, Jake walked around the structure, testing the supporting beams for structural soundness. Perhaps he knew someone who was looking to buy a place like this, she thought.

“This morning the horse was standing out in that wooden corral. But the gate to it is open and I suppose he or she wandered away,” Rebecca suggested.

“Grass is probably the only feed it's been getting. Do you know how much acreage goes with the house?” he asked.

“Two hundred and ten acres.”

“Well, I wouldn't worry about the horse. With that much grazing area, he has plenty to eat.”

Rebecca moved away from the cats and walked to where he stood gazing out the wide-open door. “Do you cowboy for a living, Jake?” she asked.

His expression faintly amused, he looked at her. “That depends on what you mean by cowboying.”

She shrugged, while wondering why he made her feel just a bit foolish. She was an educated woman with a college degree in business, along with being well-read on a variety of subjects. She kept up with current events, politics and the stock market. She was independent and had lived on her own for some years now. Yet when Jake looked at her with those brown eyes of his, she felt like a piece of mush, a woman who didn't know the first thing about dealing with a real man like him.

“Well, I'll put the question this way, do you do your job on horseback?”

He chuckled softly. “Most of the time. I own a ranch over by Fort Stanton, near Capitan. I raise cattle and horses.”

She looked at him with interest. “Oh. Somehow I got the impression that you worked for the Cantrells.”

“I used to work for Quint. On his ranch, the Golden Spur. But once he got the place built up to the way he wanted it, I decided he didn't need me anymore. And by then—” he paused, his lips twisting to a wry slant “—I had fish of my own to fry. From time to time I still help Quint. Whenever he has roundup going. And Abe occasionally asks me to do things for him, too. For
instance, a few of his special horses he won't let anyone shoe, except me.”

Her brows arched. “You do farrier work?”

He nodded. “I did a lot of farrier work when I was younger. And then for a long time I managed the training barns at Ruidoso Downs.”

“So you know a lot about horses.”

He chuckled again and the sexy sound drew her gaze straight to his. There was a gleam in his amber eyes that could only be described as provocative and she found herself drawing in a deep, cleansing breath and releasing it slowly.

“I like to think so,” he drawled.

Finding it more comfortable to look at her feet rather than him, she noticed her high heels were now covered with dust and one of the pointed toes scuffed. But she didn't care. Bordeaux's supplied her with clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry and anything she wanted as a way to advertise their merchandise. There were plenty more high heels where these came from.

“I don't know much about the outdoors,” she admitted, then glanced over her shoulder at the lazy cats. “Or animals. I've always loved being around them, but never had the opportunity to have any of my own.”

As a young girl, she'd begged her mother for a dog or cat, but Gwyn had refused. Yet that hadn't deterred Rebecca's interest in animals. She'd visited the Humane Society every chance she'd gotten and fussed over her girlfriends' furry pets. By the time she entered high school, she'd had her heart set on becoming a veterinarian and had tried to gear her studies in that direction. In her mind, it would be the perfect job. Not only would she get to spend her days with a variety of animals, she'd be caring for them, making them well and happy.