Not Your Average Cowboy. Christine Wenger

struck deep into her bones. Snakes? But even in the dim light, she saw the twinkle in his eyes, and she knew she was being teased.

      “Buck, you don’t have to sleep on the couch. You can go to the…um…” She couldn’t think of the word that Karen had used earlier. “Barracks?”

      “Bunkhouse.”

      “Yes. Go ahead. We’ll be all right.”

      He tweaked the brim of his hat and walked out of the room. In the doorway, he paused and looked back. “Thanks again…for everything,” he said, but didn’t leave. “Um…Cait might have a nightmare. I just wanted you to be aware of that.”

      With that, he was gone.

      A nightmare. Terrific.

      She could make an eight-course meal for a party of fifty. She could decorate a three-thousand-room hotel and casino. She could write bestselling cookbooks, change the Porter’s home into a successful dude ranch like they’d asked her to do, but she knew nothing about children.

      Meredith Turner had never been a child herself.

      The windows of the room stared back at her like huge, blank eyes. She undressed in the bathroom.

      Even though Buck had been teasing her about snakes, she hated to have her fears thrown in her face. She hated to show one chink in her armor. Her competitors would like nothing better than to find something on her, something past or present that they could zero in on.

      She was supposed to be the perfect woman, the perfect hostess, the perfect cook and homemaker.

      Meredith Bingham Turner, Miss Hospitality.

      If she believed her own hype, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.

      She found a sheet, blanket and pillow in the linen closet in the bathroom, and began to make up the futon.

      Listening to Caitlin’s gentle breathing, she wondered again what demons had a hold of the sweet little girl.

      Merry knew about demons. She was a personal failure, in spite of her business success. Men wooed her, then they used her for her clout or for her bank account, or both, so it was impossible to know whom she could trust.

      She couldn’t get a compliment from her parents even if she received every award known to humankind. She needed to get better control over her company, and she needed a break from men. Her one true friend was in the hospital, and Merry had a gut feeling that Bucklin Floyd Porter and his daughter were going to test her mettle.

      So no matter how handsome he was, no matter how delicious he looked in jeans, no matter how sweet he was to his daughter or how his deep voice made her think of moonlit nights and satin sheets, the last thing she needed was to get involved with him or Cait.

      Then again, he hadn’t asked her to get involved. She was just here to do a job. And that was a good thing because she had nothing else to give anyone.