Cattleman's Heart. Lois Faye Dyer

hung on the bare walls, no curtains draped the tall, sashed window. The room held only the bare essentials but it was scrupulously clean.

      “It’s not fancy.”

      Rebecca glanced quickly at Jackson and found him watching her, arms folded across his chest.

      “It’s fine,” she assured him, smiling slightly at his look of disbelief. “Believe me, I’ve stayed in much worse places. This is perfectly okay.”

      “If you say so.”

      He looked unconvinced, but shrugged and moved toward the door. He paused on the threshold, looking back at her.

      “Make yourself at home. I’ll be working down at the barn until six or so, but this evening we can go over the books.”

      “That sounds good,” Rebecca agreed.

      He nodded abruptly, turned on his heel and left.

      Rebecca stood motionless, listening to the sound of his boots against the bare oak floors as he descended the stairs and crossed the hallway, then the squeak and slam of the screen door as he left the house.

      “Well.” She dropped onto the edge of the bed, toed off her shoes and stared blankly at the bare wall.

      She wasn’t sure what she’d expected from the owner of the Rand Ranch, but she definitely hadn’t anticipated a man like Jackson Rand.

      She’d worked for her mother’s venture capital firm for the last four years, ever since she graduated from college. She’d often been assigned on-site work with various firms, requiring her to travel to the area and remain there for several weeks. This was different. When her mother, Kathleen, the head of Bay Area Investments, had asked her to fill in for a co-worker stricken with a sudden illness, she’d readily agreed. She wasn’t elated to learn that the assignment called for a stay of two months, perhaps longer, on a ranch in eastern Montana, and she was puzzled by her mother’s decision to loan hundreds of thousands of dollars to a rancher. Kathleen’s usual investments were in high-profile business ventures and her specialty was San Francisco real estate. When she’d questioned her mother, Kathleen’s response that the investment was well-researched and wise had left Rebecca debating her mother’s decision-making for the first time.

      More important than the puzzle of why her mother had agreed to lend money to Jackson Rand, however, was her reaction to the rancher.

      Rebecca recognized the signs of physical attraction—the heat that moved through her veins when he was near, the increased pace of her heartbeat. She’d felt those same things when she’d had a crush at seventeen. The crush had ended badly and the experience had reinforced the bitter lessons hammered home by her stepfather over the years. Harold Wallingford had never let her forget that she was illegitimate, the product of a passionate liaison by her mother before she married him. Harold’s too frequent comments and her unfortunate experience at seventeen had taught Rebecca a valuable lesson—that common sense went out the window when hormones took over. She’d avoided any recurrence of the madness of attraction ever since and she’d been amazingly lucky. She’d even chosen her fiancé, Steven, based on common interests and goals. No passion raged between them, and Rebecca reminded herself that she was glad his kisses generated only mild pleasure with no trace of out-of-control emotions.

      She glanced down at her hand and smoothed a fingertip over the diamond solitaire. There was no reason to think that her status as an engaged woman wouldn’t hold the men at the Rand Ranch at arm’s length. Especially Jackson Rand. Because she was determined to control any impulses from her own wildly attracted hormones. Discipline and commitment.

      That decided, Rebecca stood, stripping off her black linen suit jacket. She unzipped the pencil-straight matching skirt and padded on stockinged feet to the closet. The wire hangers weren’t the best for the expensive linen, but Rebecca had long since learned to make do while traveling. She pulled the white cotton, short-sleeved shell off over her head and dropped it on the bed before swinging one of the suitcases atop the blanket-covered sheets.

      There was no spread on the bed, but the corners of the blankets and sheets were folded and tucked with military preciseness. Rebecca wondered if Jackson had done a stint in the army. He’d certainly learned neatness somewhere. The small glimpses she’d caught of the house plus the appearance of her bedroom all testified that Jackson Rand was a man with a tendency toward sparse, clean, tidy surroundings.

      She hoped he was as careful about his financial dealings. It would make her job over the next few months much easier. Clients who had to be reminded to be fiscally cautious were often difficult clients, and she suspected that handling Jackson Rand in any aspect wouldn’t be an easy task.

      Accustomed to traveling light, Rebecca unpacked with quick efficiency and tucked her empty suitcases into the back of the small closet. Then she pulled on a green silk tank top and tucked it into the waistband of a gathered cotton skirt, slid her feet into leather sandals, picked up a box of English Breakfast tea bags from the blanket-covered bed and headed back downstairs.

      She felt a bit as if she were intruding but, as Jackson’s home would also be her home for the next few months, she ignored the concern and walked down the hall into the kitchen.

      The stripped-down tone of the rest of the house was evident in the kitchen, also, but the wide window over the sink and the back door’s square glass let in cheery sunlight. There was something very welcoming and warm about the knotty-pine cupboards with their plain white counters. A square maple table and chairs took up one corner of the room and a white stove and refrigerator faced each other at opposite ends of the cabinets.

      The house was nothing like the Knob Hill mansion she’d grown up in, nor the apartment she’d bought after college and where she now lived. The upscale rooms on the twentieth floor of a posh building on Van Ness Avenue, a bustling downtown location, were a planet removed from these. But the differences only made the house more interesting.

      “Nothing fancy, but very functional,” Rebecca murmured, her gaze slowly surveying the kitchen. A battered copper teakettle sat on a back burner of the stove. “Ah,” she said with satisfaction.

      It took only moments to fill the kettle with cold tap water and set it on the stove to heat. Rebecca opened cupboard doors until she found several mugs. The one she took down had a Montana State Fair and Rodeo emblem on the side. None of the cupboards held good china, although there was a collection of mismatched dishes, glasses, cups and bowls.

      While she waited for the kettle to boil, she glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly five o’clock.

      Rebecca was hungry. She’d swallowed less than half of the limp chicken and dry rice served as lunch on the plane. Then she’d downed a bottle of water and a candy bar while waiting for her rental car to be processed at the airport, but except for two tall take-out coffees she drank on the drive from Billings to Colson and the bagel she’d eaten at her 6:00 a.m. meeting before leaving for the airport in San Francisco, that was the sum total of her food intake for the day.

      She was beyond hungry. She was starved.

      The teakettle whistled, startling her and she quickly poured boiling water into her mug.

      “What the hell are you doing?”

      Rebecca jumped and spun to look at the door. A man stood just outside the screen door in the utility room. He yanked open the door and stepped into the kitchen, and she got a clearer view of him. He wasn’t a tall man; in fact, he was probably an inch or so shorter than her own five feet eight, but his legs were bowed and his back slightly bent, making it difficult to know how tall he might have been when young. His dusty jeans and snap-front western shirt were faded blue and worn white in places, his brown cowboy boots smeared with mud. At least, Rebecca assumed it was mud. She wasn’t sure. A shock of white hair was startlingly pale against the dark, weathered tan of his lined face, and bright blue eyes watched her suspiciously.

      “Well?” he demanded.

      Rebecca realized that she’d been staring, speechless, at him and hadn’t answered his question.

      “I’m