The Rancher's Mistress. Kay Thorpe

objections to being ordered around. That she was totally overboard where Greg was concerned was only too patently obvious.

      It was too early as yet to say whether Greg returned any real depth of feeling, although, judging from his attitude just now, Alex somehow doubted it. Tolerant affection was the closest she could come to describing it, yet they’d been married little more than three months. Hardly time for the honeymoon to be over.

      The house was no disappointment inside, either. Arches gave access to what looked like a vast living room on one side of the wide, pine-floored hall, and an equally vast dining room on the other, the central staircase branching left and right to open galleries.

      The room Alex was to occupy was at the front of the house. Timber all the way through, it had woven rugs scattered across the floor and a hand-crocheted cover on the king-sized bed. The two windows were small and multi-paned. Designed to better resist the winter cold, Alex judged, loving the ambience of the place.

      ‘There’s a bathroom two doors down, and another the other side but no en suite I’m afraid,’ said Margot apologetically. ‘The guest cabins all have private facilities, but Cal said we’d knocked things about enough without trying to incorporate them here. Apart from the living and dining rooms, we don’t have paying guests in the house anyway. I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she added, looking round. ‘It isn’t exactly luxurious.’

      ‘It couldn’t be better,’ Alex assured her. ‘None of it could!’

      She went over to a window, looking down on the scene below with elation bubbling inside her at the thought of the days to come. Humping saddles, the recently returned party was headed for one of the barns, leaving their mounts in the confines of the corral. Another group of riders was coming in through the overbarred gateway, with its swinging sign. A working party this time, she guessed, spying coiled lariats hanging from one or two pommels. The real McCoy!

      She watched the men dismount and start unsaddling, her eyes coming to rest on one lean and rangy figure in a beige shirt. The horse he was stripping was lean and rangy too, its hindquarters packed with muscular power. A fitting partnership, she thought, studying the taut stretch of blue jeans across hard male hemispheres.

      ‘Oh, good, the boys are back,’ exclaimed Margot, coming to stand beside her. ‘That’s my brother in the fawn shirt. We’re not a bit alike, as you can see even from here. He’s a Forrester through and through, whereas I take after my mother’s side. Cal more or less brought me up. I was only ten when Dad was killed. I owe him an awful lot.’

      ‘He only did what any brother would do in the same circumstances,’ said Greg, a trifle brusquely, from the doorway. ‘Don’t make a hero out of him.’

      Margot laughed, apparently oblivious to any implied criticism. ‘Cal would be the last to want that. Can I help you unpack?’ she added ingenuously to Alex as the two cases were lifted onto the bed. ‘I’ll bet you have some lovely things!’

      ‘Judging from the weight, there’s a lot of them for certain,’ commented Greg on a lighter note. ‘Show me the woman who can go anywhere without taking her whole wardrobe!’

      ‘Show me the man who can refrain from making the same old comment,’ retorted Alex, equally lightly. ‘I didn’t bring anything particularly dressy, Margot, but I’d be grateful for some help in putting what I have brought away.’

      ‘You’ve only just time for that shower before supper,’ Greg warned her. ‘Less than half an hour.’

      A shower wasn’t going to take her more than five minutes, Alex could have told him, and she certainly wasn’t going to be piling on make-up for the evening, but she took the point. Apart from what she needed for now, the unpacking could wait.

      ‘I’d better go and freshen up myself,’ said Margot. ‘You don’t need to go to any great trouble, by the way. Nobody does.’ She directed a bright-eyed smile at the other girl. ‘I’m really glad to have you here, Alex. The guests are fine, but they don’t stay around long enough to get to know all that well. Greg says you used to ride a lot. Do you still?’

      ‘Not as often as I’d like to,’ Alex acknowledged.

      ‘Well, you can catch up here. We’ve over seventy head to choose from. I don’t usually ride with the guests on short sessions, but I often go on the day-longs. They can be real fun.’

      ‘For some,’ commented Greg, bringing an apologetic expression to his wife’s face.

      ‘I know Cal’s been driving you hard, honey, but it’s only because he wants you to know how to run things, so that you can take over if needed.’

      ‘Sure he does.’ Greg didn’t try to hide the scepticism. ‘Anyway, it’s time we were out of here. You can fill Alex in on the rest of it later.’

      Alex stayed where she was for a moment or two after they’d gone, a line between her brows as she reflected on the latter conversation. That Greg wasn’t too enthused about ranch work was apparent, yet what had he expected of life on a working ranch? It was probably true that in every relationship there was one who felt more than the other, but in his and Margot’s case the balance looked to be far too one-sided.

      Shelving the matter for the moment, she moved to unlock one of the cases and extract her toilet bag and a wrap. First the shower, then she could decide what to wear for the evening.

      There was no one in sight when she emerged onto the gallery, although she could hear voices coming from below. The bathroom proved both spacious and well-appointed, with a separate shower-cubicle in addition to the oversized bath. There were towels over the rails and more folded on racks above the bath, thick and soft and huge. Big country, big everything! she thought humorously.

      As Greg had promised, there was no shortage of hot water. Accustomed to the low pressure back in her flat, she was almost knocked off her feet by the sheer force of it. Gasping, she turned the control down a couple of notches, glad of the cap protecting her hair. There wouldn’t have been time to dry it before supper and, while casual might be the order of the day, she certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable sitting down to table with her hair dripping down her back.

      Lulled by the warm flow, she stood for a few moments just enjoying it before starting to wash. Normally she cream-cleansed her face, in the interests of keeping her skin moisturised for the camera, but tonight she threw caution to the winds and applied a luxurious lather instead, relishing the feel of it, the fresh smell of it in her nostrils.

      The sudden stinging pain as the suds found their way beneath her eyelids was excruciating. Eyes screwed up and watering, she rinsed off hastily and thrust open the shower door to grope for the towel she had left hanging on the convenient hook, only to feel it slide from her wet fingers onto the floor.

      ‘Let me help,’ said a deep male voice on a satirical note, freezing her where she stood.

      Squinting through the tears, she saw the same lean and rangy figure she had watched earlier flick another towel from the rail in passing and the next moment was enveloped in it, with one free end offered in order for her to wipe her still streaming eyes.

      Mingled embarrassment and anger conquered the pain. This was hardly the way she had anticipated meeting her host for the first time. He was making no attempt to move away, studying her with eyes the colour of burnished steel, a faint twist at the corners of his strongly defined mouth. A strong face altogether: skin taut over hard male cheekbones, jawline clean and forceful, the whole surmounted by a thick sweep of dark hair. At five feet nine in her bare feet, Alex considered herself a fair height, but he topped her by a good six inches.

      ‘Better?’ he asked.

      ‘Fine,’ she returned, struggling to hang onto some thread of composure. ‘Are you in the habit of just walking in on people?’

      ‘The door wasn’t locked,’ he said without apology.

      ‘You must have heard the shower running!’

      ‘Not through the door.’

      ‘So