Red-Hot Ranchman Read online

  It just hadn’t worked. Every time he’d turned around for the past two months, there Robbie would be. Full of questions and chatter and tall tales and that purely innocent outlook on life that only children can have.

  Little by little the boy had worn down John’s resistance. Had won him over against John’s better judgment.

  But John couldn’t let that happen with Paige.

  He had to fight the picture of her that kept flashing through his mind. He had to ignore the itch he was feeling to walk across and see her again. Talk to her again. Have even just a few more minutes with her.

  He certainly had to keep from starting anything with her. He was afraid that’s just what would happen if he spent any time at all with her. Because he knew deep in his gut that Paige Kenton was not a woman he could only be friends with. Not when in just that brief meeting the night before he’d felt a pull toward her that was hardly platonic.

  No, Robbie was one thing. Robbie was actually good for him, giving him some company to stave off loneliness, a distraction from the dark memories of the past several months. Robbie brought him out of himself, and that was something he needed badly right now. The little boy was like a breath of fresh air let into a stagnant, stifling room, and so he indulged himself in the child’s company and tried hard to fill the need Robbie seemed to have for contact with a man, maybe for a father figure.

  But Robbie’s mother was something else again.

  She wouldn’t ask only the simple questions her son did. Or be happy with the ambiguous answers John would give. And while there didn’t seem to be any risk in letting Robbie get to know him, there could be if she did.

  But it wasn’t going to be easy for him to stay away. Not now that he’d met Paige Kenton and couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her.

  Still, easy or not, he was determined.

  He had to be.

  He didn’t have any other choice.

  PAIGE MADE ROBBIE his favorite blueberry pancakes for breakfast. It was the same thing she did every Sunday morning. It was Robbie’s weekly treat.

  But as she stood at the stove watching the flapjacks on the griddle while Robbie set the table and got out butter and syrup, one thing was different. Usually her son was chattering away about John Jarvis and she was wishing he would talk about something else. Today Robbie was practicing the whistling John had taught him and Paige was wishing her son would stop and talk about their neighbor instead.

  She could have kicked herself for her own sudden intense curiosity about the man next door. But he’d been on her mind something fierce since the night before. And because her son was the only person in Pine Ridge who’d gotten to know John Jarvis, he was the best source—besides the man himself—for satisfying some of that curiosity.

  Only Robbie just kept whistling instead of offering her an opportunity to broach the subject.

  “So tell me about John,” she said when she couldn’t wait another minute.

  “What about ‘im?”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How come he isn’t very friendly to folks?”

  “He don’t like to talk to many people—I told you that. He jus’ likes to keep to hisself and see me when I come over.”

  “He doesn’t like to talk to many people, and he likes to keep to himself,” she corrected. “But what about friends? Or family? He never has visitors.”

  “He has me. I visit him.”

  “But does he say why no one else ever does?”

  “Nope.”

  “Does he have family somewhere?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Lady friends?” She hated herself the most for that one.

  “I dunno. He likes ‘em, though. He told me girls were nice and I’d like ‘em better when I got older when I told ‘im about punchin’ Heather Burns in the stomach at the Fourth of July and you gettin’ mad at me.”

  Paige wondered whether it had been herself or Heather Burns her son had complained about that day. Probably both. But she didn’t press the issue. She was too intent on thoughts of John. Thoughts that had been plaguing her last night and every minute this morning.

  The man seemed to be stuck like glue to her brain. She’d fallen asleep thinking about him. Picturing the way he’d looked sitting in her kitchen, the way he unfolded that long, hard, muscular body when he’d stood up. Hearing again his deep voice and remembering how incongruously soft-spoken it had been. Thrilling to it all…

  “Has he ever been married?” she heard herself say even as she told herself to stop this grilling.

  “I dunno.”

  That exhausted things until Paige remembered the end of the encounter with her neighbor.

  “Does John know the sheriff?” she asked then.

  Robbie shrugged his thin shoulders as he stabbed some pancakes. “Everybody knows the sheriff,” he said, barely getting the words out before he stuffed the flapjacks in.

  “John sure went out of here fast last night when Burt came. Doesn’t he like him?”

  Another shrug. A big swallow. Then, “The puppy needed to get back to his momma. Puppies can’t be away too long. When I take one out of the box to play I have to put ‘im back pretty soon because they’re always eatin’ or Hannah gets worried about ‘em jus’ like a real mom, John says.”

  Paige decided to try a different tack as she brought her own plate to join her son. “John teaches you a lot of things, it seems.”

  “He knows everything. ’Cept how they make marshmallows. He don’t know that. But he says some things you don’t need to know. They jus’ need to be ‘joyed. Like marshmallows. We were eatin’ ‘em on his porch jus’ before we left for Topeka. Diff’rent colored ones. But they all tasted the same.”

  Paige realized she was going nowhere fast with this discussion and took it as a sign that she shouldn’t be pursuing anything that kept John in her thoughts. She should work at pushing them out of her mind instead. So after a moment’s hesitation she said, “You really like him, don’t you?”

  “John’s nice to me. He listens to my stories an’ lets me play with the puppies an’ we take a break together an’ eat somethin’ good an’ I wish you didn’t hit ‘im with my bat.”

  “I wish I hadn’t, too.” Except if she hadn’t, she might never have met him. And despite the fact that she could argue the merits of never having seen the man at close range, she couldn’t quite convince herself that she would rather not have.

  “Hittin’ ’im wasn’t very nice,” Robbie said, breaking into her thoughts of their neighbor.

  “I didn’t know it was John out there. I thought it was a prowler.”

  “Shoulda looked first. You coulda hurt ‘im bad.”

  “I said I was sorry.” And when did this conversation turn from her fact-finding mission to her son calling her on the carpet for clobbering their neighbor?

  But she was saved from further chastisement by the sound of a car pulling up out front.

  Robbie slid off his chair in a hurry and ran to see who their early-morning visitor could be. “Sheriff’s here again,” he called back.

  “I’ll be right there.” Paige dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin and went to the front door, shooing Robbie to the kitchen to finish his breakfast. She stepped onto the porch to meet Burt.

  “Morning,” he greeted her.

  “Morning. You’re just in time for blueberry pancakes. Can I interest you in a stack?”

  “Sounds good, but I’m headed for Julie’s house to take her to the diner for breakfast. She’d shoot me if I ate over here first.”

  “Just a cup of coffee, then?”

  “Better not. I can only stay a minute. But I hurried out of here so fast last night when that other call came in that I wanted to check back with you and make sure you’re okay.”

  “Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that. I’m fine. And sorry for bringing you here on a false alarm.”

  “Didn’t matter. I was only halfway
home and I wouldn’t have gotten there anyway before old Mrs. Forbush put in that call that got me out of here so quick. She heard a noise and thought she was being broken into, too. It was a tree branch banging against her window—same tree branch she called me about twice last week. I told her to have it cut down but I guess I’m going to have to go over there this afternoon and do it myself or it isn’t going to get done and she’ll keep calling me. At least you had a real person lurking around.” Burt glanced at John Jarvis’s house.

  In for a penny, in for a pound today, Paige thought before she said, “What do you know about my neighbor? Anything?”

  Burt shook his head, still studying John Jarvis’s house as he answered. “Not much. Folks figure he’s one of those sullen, keep-to-himself cowboys more used to being out on the range alone with a herd of cows than with people. But I don’t think anybody knows that for certain, either. He comes into town once a week or so for groceries and such, barely speaks and then disappears again.”

  So much for having any of her curiosity satisfied here, either.

  Burt looked back at her. “By the way, last night I didn’t even get a chance to ask how your trip went.”

  And that was it for the subject of her neighbor. With some regret that she knew no more about him than before, she finally put him out of her mind and answered the sheriff’s question. “The trip was fine.”

  “So what happened with the will that made it so important for you to be there when it was read?”

  “My great-aunt left me her house. A real nice old Victorian gingerbread that’s been completely remodeled and modernized. It’s a beautiful place.”

  “Are you thinking of moving?”

  “Thought about it. But even as nice as the house is, I love it around here. I’m too attached to Pine Ridge and my own place. Besides, the house is in the city and I think small-town living is better for Robbie. I’ll probably put the Topeka house up for sale and stay right here.”

  “Julie’ll be happy to hear that.”

  “But she won’t be happy if you’re late picking her up,” Paige reminded him.

  Burt checked his watch, and when he looked up from it, his gaze seemed to fasten on her neighbor’s house once more. Something about it made him frown.

  “You’re sure everything is okay?” he asked.

  “Absolutely.” Except for her own unruly thoughts.

  The sheriff didn’t budge from the spot. Instead, he went on giving John Jarvis’s place a hard stare. “You know, I just thought of something. The burglaries started not too long after he moved in here.”

  “I thought you believed the burglars were teenagers coming over from Tinsdale?”

  “I did. It’s still a likelihood. But then again, nothing concrete’s turning up, and when that happens, anything bears some looking into.”

  “But John Jarvis?” Paige said, her voice full of her reluctance to believe there was a connection between him and the break-ins.

  “He paid cash for that place over there, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “It’s a small spread. Can’t make too big a living off of farming or raising cattle without more land. He doesn’t seem inclined to board animals the way you do to bring in extra money. Doesn’t do anything else—”

  “That you know of. Maybe he works out of his house. With computers. Or maybe he’s a writer or an artist of some kind. Or maybe he’s an accountant who only works through tax season.”

  Although none of those things seemed to fit the man, and from what Robbie had said over the past several weeks, it seemed like tending to his small spread was the extent of John Jarvis’s activities.

  Yet Paige felt a strong urge to defend him. An urge she couldn’t explain even to herself.

  “Or maybe he’s just independently wealthy or has an inheritance he’s living off of,” she added, her own recent inheritance fresh in her mind.

  “Maybe,” Burt said, though so skeptically she knew he didn’t really agree. “But maybe I better do some looking into Pine Ridge’s newest citizen. Maybe you’re coming home early last night really did have you walking in on what was about to become our next burglary.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. He was looking for his puppy and the puppy really was on our porch. I told you about that. The puppy came in before he did. It loves Robbie.”

  And she was getting a little too insistent in his defense. With nothing to base it on but a few minutes spent with a man who had made her feel more like a woman than she had in longer than she could remember.

  “Could be you’re right, Paige. But there’s no harm in my doing a little checking. I’ll feel better about your being out here so close to him if I do.”

  “Sure,” she said simply, belatedly conquering her inclinations and conceding that Burt was only looking out for her safety and well-being. And that he probably should look into the coincidence of the burglaries starting when John moved in.

  “I better get going,” Burt said then.

  “Tell Julie I’ll talk to her soon.”

  “Will do.” He said goodbye and went down the porch steps to his car.

  Paige watched him leave, thinking that it was just silly to suspect John Jarvis was a burglar regardless of the circumstances that might hint at it.

  On the other hand, maybe she wasn’t altogether objective.

  SUNDAY OR NOT, PAIGE PUT in a long, hard day to catch up on the things that had gone undone while she’d been in Topeka. But with Robbie asleep for the night she had one more chore left before she could head for her own bed.

  Three weeks ago, a mare she boarded—Nijjy—had torn a fetlock on a nail that had somehow worked its way out of a plank in her stall gate. The animal had ripped the flesh nearly to the bone and the wound had festered despite the fact that Paige had seen it happen, tended to it immediately and had been treating it with a salve from the vet ever since. It was extremely stubborn about healing, so she had to ignore the fact that her body ached with weariness because she couldn’t miss an application of the ointment.

  She flipped on the back porch light and the floodlight high up above the loft window on her big red barn. Then out she went, after locking Robbie in and taking with her the speaker for an intercom she’d had in his room since he was a baby.

  Once inside the barn’s great door, she switched on another light and said, “It’s me, Nijjy,” to the only horse that occupied the place while the other seven she boarded were left out for the night in the cooler evening air of the connecting pasture.

  Paige thought it helped slightly to announce herself from the get-go because Nijjy was a nervous mare who had to be approached slowly and cautiously or else she shied and was apt to rear up on her hind legs.

  “How are you tonight, girl?” she asked in a calming voice as she opened the stall gate.

  Nijjy snorted at her and backed up until her hind end hit the rear wall, then she tried to sidle away.

  “It’s okay. Just let me see to that fetlock and I’ll leave you in peace. I have a treat for you.” Paige held up a sandwich bag with halved apples in it. She took out one of the halves to offer to the horse from her palm. “Come on. Come and get it, Nijjy,” she cajoled.

  Again the horse snorted at her, but after a few minutes Nijjy eased up toward the front of the stall and took the apple. While she ate, Paige knelt on the barn floor and went to work cleaning the wound so she could reapply the salve.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  Paige jumped and the horse shied back to the rear of the stall again.

  Paige might have been angry about that except she had only to hear the deep voice to know whom it belonged to. And to have a little thrill of delight feather across her nerve endings. John Jarvis.

  She leaned back on her heels to peer beyond the stall wall. “Hello,” she greeted, mentally assessing how she looked for their second meeting and not feeling much more confident in her work-soiled jeans and sleeveless chambray shirt, with her hair pulled up to her crown
and left in a bunch of curls in deference to the heat.

  But again, there was nothing she could do about it, so instead she watched him as he left the great door and headed down the center aisle.

  He had on a crisp yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His blue jeans fitted him like a second skin and rode low on lean, trim hips. The jeans sported a belt with a big silver buckle that caught and held her eye until she realized just where on his body she was looking and adjusted her glance upward.

  He wasn’t wearing his hat, and his dark hair glistened in the light as if it had just been freshly washed and combed, and he was clean shaven except for his mustache, which was trimmed to a bushy sort of precision.

  She was struck all over again by how terrific-looking the man was coming at her with long, confident, bootshod strides that made a muted sound on the hardpacked dirt of the barn floor and seemed to match her every heartbeat. Or maybe it was the other way around and her every heartbeat matched his steps.

  “How’s your head?” she asked as he drew near.

  “Hard as ever,” he joked.

  “No ill effects from my using it for batting practice?”

  “None at all.” He smiled down at her with a hint of devilishness in the lopsided grin. “But thanks for askin’.” He stopped at the end of the stall. “I saw you come out here and thought now that we’ve met maybe we could talk about those water rights.”

  He was only here on business, she realized suddenly. And disappointment shot through her, much to her dismay at herself. “Nothing to talk about,” she said.

  He took a step into the stall, pivoted so that he almost faced her and hooked a boot heel on a low cross board. The jar of ointment was sitting on top of the side wall and he picked it up in order to rest his left arm there, keeping the jar in his hand.

  “So you said in your letter.”

  Paige looked around for the bag of apple halves so she could lure Nijjy back, but even before she found it, the mare was nosing John Jarvis as if to flirt with him.