Ultimate Texas Bachelor (5 page)

Sybil studied her. “All I am asking you to do is discover the truth and help Brad McCabe regain his reputation as a good and decent guy.”

If Lainey did that, maybe the brooding look would disappear from Brad's eyes. Maybe he would regain his innate good cheer and the optimism he'd once had about love and life. Maybe then all the McCabes would rest a little easier. On the other hand, if he didn't, he could easily end up like her late father—embittered, angry and resentful the rest of his life….

“I'm sure all Brad McCabe needs is a journalist to whom he can tell his side of things and he will open up,” Sybil continued.

But how could Lainey get Brad to trust her now, when she had gone out to the ranch to hunt him down? If she told Brad the truth, he would kick her off the ranch so fast her head would spin. If she didn't, she would be staying there under false pretenses.

“I think I understand where you're coming from,” Sybil said gently.

Lainey didn't see how
that
was possible, given all she hadn't told her old friend.

“You're scared. You haven't had to work in a long time, whereas a lot of women our age have done nothing but gain experience and devote themselves to their careers the past ten years. But you have to start somewhere if you want a career, Lainey. And I have to be honest with you—offers like mine are going to be few and far between.”

Lainey toyed with the last of her dessert, feeling torn between her own ambition and her loyalties to those she had grown up with. “I know that.”

“Then be sensible and take me up on this wonderful offer. Put your personal feelings aside and act like the tenacious reporter you were when we were in college! Find the facts. Put them in an article. And to help you get started—” Sybil opened her carryall and extracted a trio of DVDs.

“What's this?”

Sybil smiled. “Copies of the episodes that featured Brad McCabe and Yvonne Rathbone. I know you've seen them, along with the rest of the country, but watch them again, slowly and carefully this time. I guarantee you will see things you didn't see the first time, and that—plus your nose for news—will lead you to the truth about Rathbone and McCabe.”

Sybil had been right, Lainey thought late that evening as she watched the DVD on her laptop computer screen. Being able to watch the show again—thoughtfully—was going to be a huge help to her as she prepared a list of questions that would need to be answered if she were ever to find out what happened behind the scenes at
Bachelor Bliss
.

And the people who had known Brad forever were also correct in their assessment, Lainey noted. The Brad on TV was different from the smart, sassy, challenging man in real life. His actions, as he was introduced to each of the twenty women vying for his heart, were stiff, almost scripted, as were his deadly dull remarks. Except when it came to Yvonne Rathbone. When Yvonne approached him on the terrace, sumptuous curves spilling out of a glittering evening gown, flame-red hair flowing over her shoulders, something definitely clicked.

Lainey backed it up, and watched again as Yvonne sashayed toward Brad. Instead of simply clasping his hand or kissing his cheek in the same nervous, formal way all the other contestants had done, Yvonne went up on tiptoe and, covering her microphone with one hand, whispered something in his ear that the viewers couldn't catch. Brad's eyes lit up and he grinned, as if he hadn't expected Yvonne to say whatever it was she had whispered to him. And just that simply and quickly, a connection of some sort was made.

Question #1,
Lainey wrote.
What did Yvonne say when she and Brad first met?

Question #2. Was Yvonne the only woman in the bunch Brad was physically attracted to?

Because upon closer inspection Lainey realized that he hadn't looked as if he was enjoying himself with the others.

And if he were the selfish Casanova they had painted him as, Lainey thought as someone knocked on the guest house door, he should have been having fun with all the ladies.

“Who is it?” Lainey called, hurriedly stuffing her paper and pen beneath the sofa cushions.

“Brad McCabe.”

Lainey swore as she switched off the DVD, hid the covers for the other two disks beneath that day's
Dallas Morning News,
and moved back to the picture of Petey she used as a screen saver. “Just a minute!”

Satisfied she'd left no clues as to her mission, she hurried to the door.

Brad's expression was impatient. He got straight to the point. “I need printer paper. I know it's late—”

“No kidding.” She was already in her pink-and-white-striped cotton pajamas.

For once, he didn't look at her breasts. Not that he would have seen much. They were covered in the demure fabric. “But I saw you were still up—and Lewis said he knows he has some good quality stuff. He thinks it might be over here in a box marked ‘Pencils and Scissors.' I've already looked through the ranch house from top to bottom, and I have to have this thing I'm working on done by seven-thirty tomorrow morning, or believe me, I would not be bothering you.”

He did look stressed. Lainey realized this might be a good time to get started on gathering her background information from him. “Come on in. You can help me look for the ‘Pencils and Scissors' box,” she said casually, leading the way past the boxes that were stacked four-high along one wall of the
living room, behind the conversation area formed by the green Naugahyde sofa and two easy chairs. A round oak table for four sat beneath the window in the square country kitchen. There were boxes there, too, again pushed against the wall. Lainey noticed Brad had showered sometime that evening. He still smelled of soap and cologne, and his gleaming dark brown hair had the soft, rumpled look that comes from running a towel through just-shampooed hair and letting it dry any which way. Clamping down on her awareness of him—it wouldn't do her story any good to get distracted by his irresistible male presence—she asked, “What are you working on?”

“A business plan for the Lazy M. I've got back-to-back meetings with all three of the town's bankers tomorrow morning. I'm hoping one will be sufficiently impressed to want to lend me the money I need to get the cattle operation up and running. What are you doing?” He glanced at her personal computer sitting on the coffee table. Lainey tried not to feel guilty—and failed. She knew some reporters lied routinely about everything under the sun as they went undercover to ferret out stories that could not be dug out any other way. Lainey was not one of them.

She planned to get Brad's cooperation in the
Personalities
story. That would be a lot easier to do if they were friends and he understood from the get-go that she was there to help him clear up any misconceptions and restore his good name, not malign him as so many others had done. “I was catching up on my e-mail, and doing a few other things on my laptop.”
That I can't tell you about…just yet,
Lainey added silently.
But I will, I promise, just as soon as I think you trust me enough to understand.
“Before that I was lining the kitchen shelves.”

Brad studied the vintage Fiestaware she had bought at a tag sale the previous month. The rainbow-hued stoneware had been too colorful for her late husband's taste—he'd preferred
things subdued and understated—but she loved it because it reminded her of her youth and her flamboyant mother.

“Are those our dishes?” he asked her.

Lainey blinked. “I didn't know you and Lewis had any dishes. Other than paper plates and cups.”

“Actually, uh, we don't, as far as I know, which is why I was asking. We could use a few plates and glasses and stuff in the kitchen.”

Lainey made a mental note to work on that. “Actually, these dishes are mine.”

It was his turn to look surprised.

“I'm going to need them when Petey comes out to stay at the end of the week.”

He regarded her with an unreadable expression. “You thinking about taking the job here permanently?”

Was she?

Certainly it would be far enough away from Bunny and Bart that she wouldn't have to worry about them pressuring her. Room and board wouldn't be a factor, either, since that was free as long as she was out here. The fifty-thousand-dollar salary Lewis had talked about paying a housekeeper would go a long way toward Lainey's other expenses, while she made a name for herself as a reporter, either at
Personalities Magazine,
under Sybil, or elsewhere, as a freelance journalist.

But all that depended on Brad understanding what she ultimately had to do here. And, of course, Petey liking it out at the ranch.

His eyes narrowed. Misunderstanding the reason for her hesitant look, he continued wryly, “Don't worry if you are. I won't make a pass at you.”

Lainey scoffed as she headed back to the bedroom earmarked for Petey. Brad followed.

“I know what you're thinking about.”

The kiss…

“But that wasn't a pass.” He stepped past the twin bed with a rough-hewn frame and the bureau, to review the boxes stacked against the wall.

“It wasn't,” she deadpanned, looking over at him.

“That was just a kiss.” Brad was the picture of lazy male assurance. “If and when I ever make a pass at you, you'll know it.”

Lainey's heartbeat quickened. “I expect I would. So it's a good thing you're not going to do it because I'm not one of the women who signed up to compete for your attention.”

“Thank heaven for that,” he muttered beneath his breath, his lips taking on a brooding slant once again.

Lainey edged closer. “Mind answering a question for me?”

He lifted an indolent hand. “Depends.”

“How come you were so…sort of gallant but humorless on
Bachelor Bliss,
at least in the beginning? I mean, I've just been around you a few days and you're always full of witty remarks—”

“Or full of something,” he said with comically exaggerated seriousness.

“But you weren't funny on the TV show like you are in real life. Tell me the truth. Did they make you rein in your natural—”

“Don't you mean wicked?”

“—sense of humor while you were on camera?”

Respect glimmered in his brown eyes. “You're the first person who's ever asked me that.”

Aha! She'd known it! “So it's true,” Lainey said, ignoring the tingle of awareness starting up inside her whenever Brad was near. “The show's staff told you to rein in the repartee. What'd they do?” She regarded him with all the directness she could muster. “Write your dialogue on cue cards or something?”

“Not all of it,” he allowed reluctantly.

“How much?” Lainey pressed.

He shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe…ninety-eight percent or something.”

Lainey found this distressing. She figured the
Personalities Magazine
readers would, too. “But the TV show is supposed to be reality.”

Brad grimaced. “There's nothing real about that particular reality TV show. Everything on
Bachelor Bliss
is a setup, whether it's the circumstances you're in, or the person you're with.”

Interesting, Lainey thought. She wished she could dig out her notepad and pen. “Was the breakup with Yvonne part of the script?” Because from what Lainey recalled, it hadn't looked that way. Yvonne had appeared really stunned by what Brad had had to say, or not say, to her that evening during the final proposal ceremony.

An unreadable emotion shuttered Brad's eyes. “I don't know how we got on this,” he said gruffly.

“Or in other words, you're not going to tell me,” Lainey said, disappointed. Not yet, anyway….

“You got that right.” He stalked out into the hall and across to the bedroom where she was bunking. A queen-size brass bed dominated the center of the room. Lainey had outfitted it with a ruffled white spread and several satin throw pillows. The clothes she'd been wearing earlier—including her lacy pink bra—were strewn across the bed.

She blushed as Brad's eyes touched on her lingerie. Silence fraught with sexual tension fell between them as they both turned to scan the writing on the sides of the moving boxes.

“That box must be here somewhere,” Brad complained.

“You've got a lot riding on these meetings, I take it,” Lainey said, still not finding anything marked “Pencils and Scissors.”

Brad pulled a box from the middle of the wall that appeared to have no marking on it and turned it every which way.

Finally, the one they wanted!

“Let's put it this way,” Brad muttered as he ripped it open. “I used every bit of my savings to repair the existing pasture fences, purchase the equipment I need for sprinkler and heat-detecting systems in the barn, not to mention what it cost to get a new roof put on the barn, repair the termite damage that had started on one end, and repaint the whole darn thing.”

He began taking out wads of packing paper, handing them over to her.

“I've been meaning to ask you about that,” Lainey said as he dug deeper and deeper.

“Yeah?” Brad emerged, victorious, with a ream of high-quality printer paper.

Lainey dropped the wads of packing paper back into the box. “Was the barn that color when you bought the place?”

Brad led the way out of her bedroom. “No, I painted it.” He paused at her front door. “Why? Don't you like it?”

“It's a nice guy color, I guess.” Lainey stepped out onto the porch with him.

“But?”

She turned her glance to the buildings located behind the house. “I thought most barns were either red or white or weathered gray.”

Brad grinned and shook his head, suddenly appearing in no more hurry to leave her side than she was to see him go. “See. That just shows how much you don't know about ranching.”

Lainey looked back at the barns and stables. In the moonlight, they didn't look so bad, but in the daylight they were so deadly dull they practically faded into the landscape. “There's a reason they're all golden tan, right down to the corral fence?”

“Yep.”

And here she'd thought Brad and his brother just had no color sense whatsoever. “I'm dying to hear,” she prodded dryly.

“It calms the cattle.”

“You're joking.”

“Nope. Texas A&M has done studies on color and cattle management. That particular color is very soothing to cattle. They don't know why exactly—seems the cattle aren't talking,” he quipped, “but whenever cattle are around that color they are very calm and relaxed, which in turn makes them a lot easier to handle.”

Lainey studied him. “You must have some theory as to why that's so,” she observed softly.

Brad nodded, more sober rancher now than flirting cowboy. “It probably has something to do with the fact that animals don't see colors the way humans do. Their depth perception is different, too. This particular hue of tan eliminates shadows and blends well with the landscape, and hence the cattle are more apt to stay calm, less prone to balk, when you're leading them toward either a barn or a fence painted this color.”

“So how come all the ranches out here don't have their barns painted this color?”

Brad shrugged. “Maybe they haven't done their research.”

Lainey regarded him with respect. Obviously there was much more to Brad than he usually let on. “The fact you have should help you with your loan.”

“I hope so. I really need a bank to back us.”

 

B
RAD SEEMED
genuinely worried, Lainey realized. More so than he should be given the circumstances. She asked the questions that would tell
Personalities
readers what Brad planned for his future. “Couldn't Lewis just lend you guys the cash? Given the success of his computer-gaming company…he's supposed to be rolling in dough.”

Brad frowned. “He's already put up the entire down payment for the ranch.”

Determined to keep him off guard, Lainey pushed on.
“You must have known this was going to be the case when you two decided to purchase the ranch together.”