Her Single Dad Hero. Arlene James

Chapter One

      The sprawling old house creaked and groaned in the afternoon heat. Its cedar siding expanded with reluctant moans, while the steep, gleaming metal roof snapped impatiently beneath the relentless July sun. Such was summer in south central Oklahoma.

      Having grown up here on Straight Arrow Ranch, Ann Jollett Billings found the heat of mid-July no surprise. She was used to worse, frankly, and better, having spent the past six years in Dallas, Texas, being a manager in the finest hotel that city had to offer. Despite the opulence of her usual surroundings, however, what Ann now found difficult to bear was not the utilitarian inconveniences of her childhood home but the silence.

      She couldn’t recall the last time that she’d had more than a few quiet hours to herself, let alone two whole days. Managing a hotel meant being on call virtually around the clock; managing a ranch, not so much, even apparently during the “busy season.” At least her brother had claimed this to be the busy season before he had taken off to Tulsa with his new wife and adorable baby girl to settle personal business and put his condo on the market, leaving Ann in charge of the family ranch during his absence. She’d taken the time to fully computerize their bookkeeping, which would allow Rex to track everything online. Their sister, Meredith, a nurse, had left the afternoon after Rex, on Sunday, to take their father, Wes, to Oklahoma City for his second chemotherapy treatment. The house had been as silent as a tomb ever since.

      So who was pushing a chair across the kitchen floor? That noise, Ann suddenly realized, could not be anything else.

      “Oh, Lord,” she prayed softly, “please don’t let this be happening. Not here. Not now.”

      Rising from the battered old desk in her father’s study, Ann crept to the door that led into the foyer and listened. The screeching stopped, but other sounds ensued. She was definitely not alone in the house. Her imagination, fueled by her years in Dallas, conjured numerous scenarios, none of them innocent. Reason told her that theft was a rare thing around the small town of War Bonnet, Oklahoma, which lay five miles or so away. Rarer still in the outlying rural surrounds, but perhaps one of the employees of the custom cutter hired to install the new feed bins and harvest the oat and sorghum crops had assumed that, with Wes and Rex gone, the house would be empty and, therefore, easy pickings.

      Well, she was no helpless female. Never had been; never would be. At five feet eight inches in height and a hundred thirty-five pounds, she had enough heft to do some damage, if necessary, though more than once she’d wished otherwise.

      “All right. If this is how it has to be,” she whispered, “then give me strength, give me wisdom, give me courage, and send that thief running.”

      Moving quietly in her expensive Gucci flats, black jeans and lace-trimmed, jade-green silk T-shirt, she eased open the door of the coat closet at the foot of the front stairs and reached inside for the baseball bat that had been stored there since her brother had left home for college twenty years earlier. She could have taken the shotgun or the rifle from the high shelf, but it had been too long since she’d used a gun. Besides, she knew how to swing a bat for maximum effect, having played four years of fast-pitch softball in high school and three in college.

      Holding the bat at her side, she slunk in long, silent steps across the foyer, through the living room and dining room to the door of the kitchen, glancing out the windows as she went. She saw no new vehicles parked alongside the dusty, red-clay road that ran between the ranch house and the outbuildings that sheltered machinery, fodder and livestock, primarily the horses used to work the two-square-mile Straight Arrow Ranch. The regular hands—Woody, Cam and Duffy—lived off-site and would have simply come to the front door if they’d needed to speak to her.

      She lifted the heavy wood club into position and darted through the door into the kitchen. A dog—a mottled, black-masked blue heeler with brown markings, one of the better herding dogs—wagged its tail expectantly beside a kitchen chair pushed up to the counter, atop which kneeled an impish redheaded boy with his arm buried up to the elbow in the owl-shaped cookie jar.

      “Hello!” sang out the boy, his bright blue eyes hitting a chord of familiarity within her. Completely unrepentant to have been caught stealing cookies, he turned onto his bottom, pitched a cookie to his dog and crammed another into his mouth. “Mmm-mmm.”

      Stunned, Ann let the bat slide through her hands until she could park the butt on the floor and lean against the top. “Thank You, Lord!” she breathed. Then, in as reasonable a tone as she could muster, she demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

      He blinked at her, his freckles standing out in sharp contrast to his pale skin.

      “Eatin’ cookies,” he answered carefully as if any dummy could see that.

      His eyes were the brightest blue she’d ever seen, far brighter than her own pale, lackluster shade. He had eyes like sapphires. Hers more closely resembled the sun-bleached sky of a hot, cloudless summer noon. Suddenly she remembered where she’d seen eyes like them before, and to whom they belonged. Dean Paul Pryor. The very reason she was stuck in this dusty backcountry.

      She had first met Pryor at her brother’s wedding reception, when Rex had identified him as the custom cutter who would be harvesting their oat and remaining barley crops and installing the new feed storage and mixing station while Rex, his new bride, Callie, and her baby daughter were in Tulsa on a combined honeymoon and business trip. Pryor had presented himself again that morning when he’d reported for work.

      Dean Paul Pryor was everything Ann disliked in a man: tall, gorgeous, confident, masculine. She suspected he stood taller than her brother, who was at least six foot two. Dean might even be as tall as her dad, at six foot four. Solidly built, he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. Add the short, thick, wheat-blond hair, gem-like blue eyes and the square-jawed perfection of his face, and he had everything he needed to make most women melt at his feet. But not her.

      He’d mentioned that morning that he had his son with him. She hadn’t expected the boy to be so young, however. This child couldn’t be older than six or seven.

      “Where is your father?” she asked icily, taking a choke hold on the bat again.

      “Workin’,” came the laconic answer.

      Obviously the father, as well as the son, needed to be taught some manners. Well, this wouldn’t be the first spoiled brat who she’d had to deal with or the first lazy, uninvolved parent she’d had to set straight. This was why she didn’t have children, why she never intended to have children. One of the reasons.

      “Come.”

      Shrugging, the shameless imp helped himself to several more cookies. What he couldn’t stuff into his mouth, he crammed into the pockets of his baggy jeans before hopping down onto the chair and then the floor. As she had no intention of eating the cookies or anything he’d touched, she allowed it. He began to push the chair back toward the table, its feet screeching across the wood planks.

      “Leave it!” Ann ordered, her eyes crossing at the high-pitched noise.

      The dog barked sharply as if in agreement, and the boy again shrugged. Ann again pointed to the door, and he happily set off, the dog falling in at his side.

      “Mmm, Mizz Callie mawkz ze bezz cookeez,” he said around the mass in his mouth as Ann escorted him through the house.

      “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” she scolded, stopping to put the bat back in the closet.

      Nodding, he looked up at her with those big blue eyes, gulped and said, “You sure are pretty. And you got red hair like me.” He grinned suddenly, displaying an empty space in the front of his mouth where a tooth should be. “Come and meet my dad, why doncha?” With that, he turned, opened the front door and ran outside, the dog scampering after him.

      Her mouth agape, Ann snatched a faded ball cap from its wall peg, a shield against the relentless summer sun and the possibility of freckles, crammed it onto her head and went after the miniature thief.