My Dearest Cal (7 page)

“Do you have a man waiting for you back in Atlanta?”

“No, no man,” she said to Cal. “Not the way you mean.”

“Friends?”

“A few, though a lot of them have left Atlanta the past couple of years.”

“Then why go back? Start your adventure now, this minute.”

“And do what?”

“Stay here with us. The housekeeping job is yours for as long as you want it. When you’re ready to move on, you can.”

The idea tempted in a way he’d probably never intended. Not that Cal Rivers wasn’t very aware of the impact he’d have on a woman, any woman, but he probably figured he’d warned her adequately about the kind of no-strings man he was.

“How long do you expect to stick around here yourself?” she asked.

“It’s hard to say. Right now it’s all new. I want to make this stud farm one of the best. That takes time. A few good stallions were part of the original deal, but I want more. In some cases that’ll mean buying them as yearlings, training them and giving them time to be tested on the track. I suppose I’d like to have a Kentucky Derby winner just once.”

Marilou was surprised by his level of enthusiasm and apparent commitment to such a long-range plan. “Why did you pick this, anyway? It’s a far cry from the computer business you had in Daytona.”

“You know about that?”

“I discovered it when I was trying to track you down.”

“Maybe you’ve missed your calling. Maybe you ought to be a private eye.”

“In some ways I already am. You still haven’t answered me. Why a stud farm?”

“It looked like fun,” he said with a touch of irony as they took yet another turn around the quarter-mile training track.

“Then you must not have known about these 4:00 a.m. strolls.”

“Maybe I just wanted to get into practice for fatherhood.”

Marilou swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “Are you and Lady Mary planning a large family?”

At that the horse pricked up its ears and turned its head toward Marilou. She nickered softly. Cal chuckled. “I think Lady Mary has her own family plans and they don’t include me.”

Marilou looked from him to the horse and back again. “Lady Mary?”

“Lady Mary,” he confirmed.

She felt laughter bubbling up from deep inside, relieved laughter. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“It was too much fun watching you jump to conclusions.”

Just then Chaney joined them, nodding at Marilou, then looking at the horse. “She doing any better?”

“I think so. She seems to have settled down quite a bit.”

“Want me to take over?”

“Let’s take her back to the barn and see how it goes,” Cal suggested.

“I’ll go back and get breakfast on the table,” Marilou volunteered.

They both shot her a surprised look. Cal nodded. “We’ll be in soon.”

As she walked away, she heard Chaney demand, “Is she staying?”

“At least through breakfast, it seems,” Cal said. “After that, I guess we’ll see.”

Marilou couldn’t tell from his tone if it mattered to him one way or the other. The apparent indifference set her teeth on edge. She worked out her frustration by cooking the biggest, heartiest breakfast she could think of. By the time Cal and Chaney came back in, she had the food on the table.

“Well, boss, will you look at this,” Chaney said with glee, digging into the stack of pancakes she’d kept warm in the oven. Apparently he was willing to overlook his objections about her presence as long as she kept his stomach filled.

Cal grunted. He might be unwilling to acknowledge her new attitude, but she noticed that it didn’t keep him from taking five pancakes for himself. “You surprise me,” he said, swallowing the last of them. “For a minute there last night, I figured you for one of those types who can’t cook a lick.”

“Oh, I can cook. I just don’t like men making assumptions about the role I should play.”

His gaze narrowed. “Sounds like the usual rhetoric to me.”

Unintimidated by his fierce look, Marilou scowled right back. He laughed then and shook his head. “Lady, you really are a piece of work. So, tell me, what do you plan to do about clothes? I never met a woman yet who was satisfied to wear the same outfit day after day.”

That, of course, was a quandary that had crossed her mind already. She supposed there was no help for
it. She was going to have to leave and drive back to her hotel, unless…

“I don’t suppose you’re ready to discuss this visit to your grandmother yet?”

He pushed back from the table and tilted his chair onto its back legs. Long fingers intertwined and rested on his belt buckle. “Nope.”

She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

“You decided about taking me up on my offer?”

“What offer’s that?” Chaney asked.

“I thought maybe she’d like to hire on as our housekeeper.”

Chaney choked on his coffee, then settled into a sullen pout.

“Hey, you liked the pancakes, didn’t you?” Cal teased. “And what about the spaghetti?”

“We wasn’t starving before she came.”

“The next thing to it. I was ready to start ordering pizza deliveries. What about it, Marilou? You gonna stick around?”

She suddenly realized that she wanted very much to stay, and it had very little to do with the letter anymore. She took a deep breath. “What about a trial run?”

“How long?”

“A month. That’s how long my vacation lasts.”

He stuck out his hand, enveloping hers. The currents that raced along her arm headed straight for her abdomen, spawning desire and confusion in equal measures. Oh, yes, she thought, she was definitely in over her head, definitely out of her mind.

“I guess I’ll go and get my things,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.” He kept his gaze on her as she cleaned up the kitchen and got her purse.

“I shouldn’t be more than a few hours,” she said finally, still struggling to determine the wisdom of her decision.

Apparently he read her doubts and misinterpreted them. Frowning, he said, “And here I thought we’d been making progress. I was sure you trusted me to be here when you got back.”

“I don’t trust you a bit, but I’m going anyway,” she said, glad that he couldn’t read her so easily. “And don’t get your hopes up, because I will be back and I haven’t forgotten about the letter, either.”

He laughed at that, the first unrestrained emotion she’d seen. “I never doubted that for a minute, sweetheart.”

She hesitated at the door, then teased, “Don’t change the locks.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he countered with a wink.

If he meant the devilish wink to be a warning of some sort, it failed. Marilou found the challenge of it flat-out irresistible.

Chapter Five

C
al stayed clear of the house until nearly supper time. It was one of the hardest struggles of his life. Oh, he had plenty to do to keep occupied, but all of his thoughts seemed centered on Marilou Stockton. He couldn’t imagine a more troubling turn of events. He’d made it a practice not to let any woman get too close. He hadn’t lived with a woman for the past ten years, not since he’d realized and accepted that he was the kind of man who simply couldn’t settle down and make the kind of commitment any decent woman deserved.

Now he had gone and broken his own rule. He’d invited a woman who was dead set on reforming him to stick around and give it her best shot. Even if he hadn’t been convinced of his own lunacy, Chaney
would have been more than happy to point it out. His scowling disapproval spoke volumes. As a result of that silent condemnation, Cal flatly refused to be caught looking to see if Marilou had returned, although Chaney was giving him regular reports.

Squinting toward the horizon at midafternoon, Chaney announced obliquely, “Not yet.” Obviously he figured that Cal would know perfectly well what he meant.

“Not yet,” he said again an hour later and again the hour after that, until Cal felt like strangling him. All of the men were giving him a wide berth as his temper grew shorter with each passing minute.

What if she didn’t come back? The prospect nagged at him worse than her presence had. God knew, he couldn’t blame her for running scared. There was a contradictory blend of recklessness and caution in her that fascinated him. Maybe the caution had won out. After all, he’d warned her about his lifestyle in one breath, then with the next he’d taunted her to share it. Even though the invitation to stay had been couched as a job offer, only a totally naive woman would believe that the two of them could keep it that way for long. The air had crackled with sexual tension from the minute they’d laid eyes on each other. He realized with a sudden guilty pang that Marilou might just be too innocent, too hell-bent on proving something to herself to recognize all the snapping and sparring for what it was, a prelude to passion of a different sort entirely. Well, heaven help the two of them if she’d misunderstood!

Cal prided himself on being an analytical man. Some even described him as coolly calculating. He never ever let his emotions get in the way of a business decision. That made this impulsive move all the more disconcerting. There was an emotional tug here that was not only totally out of character, but went against every commonsense instinct he possessed.

Maybe it was her long red hair pulled back in that braid that his fingers itched to undo.

Maybe it was her green eyes, which met his with such a total lack of guile.

More likely—and most dangerous—it was the depth of caring that radiated from her. That compassion had made her travel several hundred miles to find a long-lost grandson for a woman she didn’t even know. The part of him that was accustomed to burying family ties wanted to know what sort of woman was driven to do something like that. He wanted that warmth and generosity of spirit directed at him, even as he distrusted it.

It was nearly dusk when he finally spotted the dust flying up on the long driveway to the house. He caught himself grinning as he watched. She drove at a damn-the-consequences speed with which she apparently did everything else regarding him. Relief, so profound it astonished him, flooded through him. Perversely it kept him hiding out down in the stables until long after Chaney had gone to his quarters to clean up for supper.

If Cal had hoped that the defiant gesture would prove his indifference, he was very much mistaken.
He had only to walk into the kitchen and see her there to feel the unfamiliar swell of emotion that had plagued him throughout the day.

Marilou was dressed in a flowered sundress that showed off shoulders lightly dusted with freckles and emphasized a tiny waist. He had to fight an almost irresistible urge to circle that waist with his hands and kiss every one of those faint marks left by the sun. As he passed by, he caught the scent of roses, sweet and all too alluring. Strappy little sandals that had no business on a farm showed off her ankles. She had fine ankles, he observed with a catch in his heartbeat. When he saw Chaney regarding them appreciatively, he had to restrain the primitive, proprietary impulse to slug him.

Keeping his purely masculine response under control might have been more difficult if he hadn’t been drawn toward the pots simmering on the stove. Chili, thick with meat and beans and spices bubbled in one. In another, ears of sweet corn tumbled in the boiling water. In the last, greens simmered with a ham hock. As he drew in a deep, satisfying breath, he realized that it had been twenty years since he’d had a real home-cooked meal. Hell, maybe longer. His mother hadn’t been much of a cook. She’d grown up in a house filled with servants. His daddy’s income, once the oil business crashed, hadn’t even been enough to support a cleaning woman once a week. After that his mother tended to serve complaints instead of decent meals. The fancy restaurants that had eventually taken
the place of frozen dinners as his own career took off were more likely to serve beef Wellington than chili.

“Smells good,” he said, recalling the last time he’d eaten real Texas chili. It had been in a diner near the bus station an hour before he’d left home for good. Joshua had been sitting on the stool next to him, talking a mile a minute, coming up with every reason he could think of to keep Cal from running. Not a one of those reasons had been worth a tinker’s damn once he’d made up his mind to go. He wondered what Joshua would have to say when he heard about his new, temporary housekeeper.

Marilou turned at the sound of his voice and greeted him with a radiant, unhesitating smile that almost took his breath away. Any sane man would fly home from work for a welcome like that.

“I hope you like chili,” she said, a hint of nervousness in her eyes. “I made enough for an army. This kitchen looks as if it were built for the entire crew. I wasn’t sure if you’d want some for the other men.”

“Not tonight. They’re used to going out on their own or cooking out in the bunkhouse. If it looks like you’re going to stick around, we’ll see if they want to change that.”

“They might want to sample my cooking before they make up their minds.”

“If that corn bread that’s baking tastes half as good as it smells, I can almost guarantee they’ll want to join us,” he said.

“Amen to that,” Chaney agreed, walking in just
then and eyeing the big golden squares she was cutting and putting into a basket lined with a bright red-and-white checked napkin. He was reaching for a piece before she could get the corn bread on the table.

“I think you may have found a way to his heart, after all,” Cal observed wryly as he sat at the big round table that she’d set with a red-checked cloth and the sturdy white everyday dishes. It occurred to him again that she had an instinct for making things homey instead of fancy. She’d left the previous owner’s fine English bone china and expensive Irish crystal in the cupboard where they belonged.

Marilou grinned back at him. “Cooking is a tried and true method. My mother swears she got my father to marry her by baking him mouth-watering lemon meringue pies.”

Chaney coughed and shot a warning glance at Cal. “Did you hear that, boss? I guess she’s put you on notice. There’s a lot to be said for a woman who don’t play games.”

Marilou blushed prettily at the taunt, but met Chaney’s gaze evenly. “Who says it’s not you I’m after, you handsome devil?”