Reuniting with the Rancher. Rachel Lee

he thought. He was going to have to deal with her at least some over the next couple of weeks. Greasing the skids with some superficial chitchat and courtesy ought to be safe enough. But no way was he going to fall into her honeyed web again.

      Still, despite all the ugliness that had once happened, he couldn’t help a twinge of concern. Way too thin, he thought as he glanced at her again. The bones in her face had become prominent, and her skin appeared stretched tightly across them. Not good.

      But he didn’t know how to ask without crossing into territory where she didn’t want him to walk. Of that he was certain. He had begun to suspect that the past was no more buried for her than it was for him. Some things, it seemed, hurt forever.

      He sought something else to say, and the question came out without thinking. “You married? Kids?”

      “No and no.”

      It was a short answer, making it clear there were indeed limits to how personal she wanted to get with him. Hell, he thought, who was it who had taken out the scythe at their last meeting? Certainly not him.

      “I tried it,” he said finally, and waited.

      Presently she asked, “And?”

      “And it stank. Big-time. We couldn’t shake the bottle hard enough to mix the oil and vinegar.”

      He waited, then heard a smothered laugh escape her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but your description...”

      In spite of himself, he laughed, too. “Well, I can’t think of a better one. Martha warned me.”

      “Really?”

      He sensed her turn toward him for the first time. “Yeah. She said... Well, she was Martha. She asked me which head I was thinking with, and said that it would make more sense to ride my horse off a cliff than marry that woman. She was right.”

      “What happened?”

      “Let’s just say I went off the deep end for one woman and woke up to find myself married to a different one.”

      “Ouch.”

      “My ego needed some bandaging, but that was about it. Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be.”

      She fell silent, and he let the subject go. It hadn’t been right with Lisa, and chances were it wouldn’t have been right with Holly, either. Not back then, for sure. Time to man up and admit it. He and Holly had been horses pulling in different directions, and if he’d been older and wiser he would have recognized it.

      Well, he had learned his lessons. He hoped. All he needed to do was get that tree planted, see if Holly needed any other assistance and go back to his ranch, his sheep and his goats. It would take a special woman to want a life like that, and he couldn’t afford to forget it.

      They finally jolted up to Martha’s house. “I need to get this road graded,” he remarked. “It always goes to hell over the winter and spring, and that little car of yours is going to bounce like a Ping-Pong ball.”

      She didn’t say anything, and he wondered if he’d trespassed by taking possession of the problem. He didn’t know whether to sigh or roll his eyes. Oh, this was going to be fun. Thank you very much, Martha.

      He braked without turning off the engine. “Where do you want to plant it?”

      “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how big it’s going to get, how much sun it needs.” She screwed up her face in the way he had once loved. “City girl here.”

      How could he forget that?

      “Southwest corner,” he suggested. “It’ll get enough sun, keep the house cooler in the summer and lose all its leaves so it won’t keep you colder in the winter.”

      “Sounds good to me.”

      Slowly he rolled the truck around the house. “It’s going to need a lot of water the first month. And that’s going to be a drag. Martha doesn’t have an outside tap, so no hose.”

      “Really? I never noticed that before.”

      Why would she? She’d never been here long enough to really learn anything, although she had been here long enough to cause him a peck of trouble.

      “I’ll have someone see to it after you go home.” That’s as far as he would go. Or so he told himself.

      “Thank you.”

      Damn it, he could almost hear Martha laughing and asking, “When did you turn into a chicken, boy?”

      Then Holly said, “Martha always had such a big vegetable garden. She had to water it somehow.”

      “That’s where the hand pump comes in. Come on, you were here lots of times. Surely you saw.”

      She paused. “My God, I’d forgotten. Of course I remember. I used to love to do it for her.”

      “Right. She planted in rows and pumped until the water filled the space between them. Every couple of days. The last few years it got harder for her, so I put in a motorized pump for her. Maybe you missed it.”

      “I guess so. My job gives me only short vacations.”

      “Well, it won’t help with the tree regardless. It’s going to be buckets.”

      “I can do that,” she said stoutly.

      He had his doubts, but maybe she was stronger than she looked right now.

      The truth was, and he readily admitted it, he couldn’t imagine her life in Chicago, nor how she could want to go back to it. Gunshots on the streets? The crushing poverty? Gang culture? Like so many, he had only a vague idea of how some people had to live. She volunteered to face that every day. From his point of view, it had certainly taken a toll on her.

      Even so, when she walked ahead of him to pick out the exact spot for the tree, he couldn’t help noticing the way her hips swayed. Or that when she turned her breasts were still full. A beautiful woman. A desirable woman.

      Too bad.

      When she’d chosen a spot, he headed for Martha’s shed to get a shovel. While he did that, Holly disappeared inside, then returned with two tall glasses of iced tea.

      “I seem to remember you liked sugar,” she said, handing him one.

      “Still do,” he admitted. “I know it’s a vice, but I work it off.”

      The corners of her mouth edged up a bit. “I guess you do. I can help with this.”

      “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dig this ground around here, but we’re going to be lucky if we don’t need a backhoe.”

      That drew another small laugh from her. Angling the spade, he stood on it with one foot and penetrated the ground by about six inches. Good, the spring rains hadn’t completely dried up yet. Dirt instead of concrete.

      “Being in the house is difficult,” Holly said quietly.

      He looked up after tossing another shovelful of dirt to the side. “It is?”

      “I keep expecting to hear Martha. To see her come around a corner. Even when it was just her and me, it never, ever seemed so silent in there.”

      He hadn’t thought about that. He paused and looked back at the two-story clapboard house. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess it would be quiet.”

      His gaze returned to Holly and he saw a tear rolling down her cheek. Whatever else he thought of her, he’d never doubted that she loved her aunt.

      But talk about putting a man in an impossible bind. The thing to do would have been to hug her and comfort her. With anyone else, that’s exactly what he would have done. But Holly was so far off-limits he couldn’t even offer the most common act of sympathy. Finally he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

      She dashed the tear away. “Eventually.