Hidden in a Heartbeat (A Place Called Home, Book 3) Page 5

  “Why don’t you tell me to go to hell?”

  Her head snapped up in surprise. “What?”

  He was grinning. Oh, his mouth was straight and his eyes as masked as ever, yet she knew – knew – he was grinning.

  “Tell me to go to hell. It’s what you want to do.”

  Damn right, she wanted to – She swallowed hard. Letting one’s emotions rule was a sign of weakness.

  “That would hardly be professional.” Did he notice she hadn’t come out and denied she wanted to? “And it would hardly be the way of securing Far Hills Ranch as a client.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Might ease that starch in your backbone.”

  “Starch! I – ”

  If you can’t curb that temper, you’ll end up like your mother. She has a sentimental disposition that considered love the excuse for every shortcoming. Temper or sentiment, it’s all the same – Indulge in emotions, and you will come to the same end.

  Rebecca blinked, and the tanned, tough, unshaved face of Luke Chandler snapped into focus in front of her. The misalignment a third of the way down his nose and the scar on his chin testified he had followed his own advice – and likely more than once – to tell someone to go to hell.

  She couldn’t afford that luxury.

  “Posture was emphasized when I was growing up,” she said blandly. “Now, about the history of the ranch ... Marti said your father was foreman here and you grew up on Far Hills.”

  “What’s this got to do with a computer?”

  “Knowing the history helps give me a complete picture of the enterprise and its workers.” More important, it edged her closer to discovering if his time overlapped with the most likely period for her father to have been working here. And it changed the subject. “So you lived here all your life?”

  “Except eleven years.”

  “Those eleven years were spent – ?”

  They’d reached a wide creek. Before she could do more than wonder where the bridge was, he downshifted and eased the truck down the bank and into the water. They were across and climbing the opposite low bank before he spoke.

  “Denver. College. Couple, three ranches in Montana.”

  She ventured an interpretation. “Your family moved to Denver after your father quit as foreman, then you went off to college – studying something to do with ranching, no doubt.” His grunt acknowledged she had that right. “You tested out your learning at apprenticeship jobs, before coming home to Far Hills.” Home. “It must be wonderful to have somewhere you belong.”

  He turned toward her; she didn’t meet his look. If she didn’t look at him, maybe her words – she couldn’t believe she’d spoken them aloud – would die in the air.

  “I’m just passing through. Besides, I thought you’d lived all your life in Delaware?”

  “Yes. Now, getting back to the potential for a laptop – ”

  “You don’t belong there?” Twinned with the dryly amused skepticism of his words, she heard true interest.

  “No.”

  He braked the truck to a stop, yanked a hand brake, switched off the ignition and turned in his seat to face her. She felt the weight of his unspoken questions, but that wouldn’t have bothered her. No, what tempted her to stumble into an explanation, was the seductive belief that he would listen without judging. Might care. Might even understand.

  That last thought was what brought her back to reality. How could he understand what she didn’t?

  “That’s all off the point. As you’ve said repeatedly, you have a good deal of work to do, so you had better start this truck, and get on with it.”

  “So happens, I stopped the truck in order to get on with my work.” He reached into the well behind the seat and drew out a pair of stained, dirt-stiffened work gloves.

  Before she could respond, he’d swung around and was out of the truck, the door slammed firmly behind him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She gathered her wits and her bag before she exited her side.

  At the back of the truck, Luke was sitting on the lowered tailgate, trading his cowboy boots for knee-high rubber boots.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Clean ditches.”

  “Ditches?” She looked around. She saw only scrubby grass, clumps of sagebrush and dirt. As an alternative to having him dig and poke at her past, however, she was happy – thrilled – to talk about ditches. “What ditches? Why do you clean them?”

  “We clean ‘em so water can get through. To see one – ” He hoisted tools to his shoulder. “ – you’ll have to follow me.”

  They climbed a dusty rock-strewn incline, then pushed through a thicket of scratchy bushes that snatched at her shoulder bag when they weren’t snagging her jacket, before clambering down descending terrain. He seemed to cut through the bushes like a snake, and deal with the rise and fall of the land like a mountain goat. Still, she followed him.

  “Stay here,” Luke ordered abruptly. He took his denim jacket off and hung it on a dead branch. “It might look dry, but there’s water underneath and you’ll get those things soaked.” His dismissive nod made it clear those things applied to her hiking boots.

  With that he headed off to her left, disappearing from sight.

  “When am I going to see a ditch?” she called after him.

  “You’re looking at one.” His voice sounded eerily close, since she couldn’t see him. “Two feet ahead, then look down.”

  And there, partially masked by the tall, tough grass and the short, tough bushes, was a cut through the earth that could be called a ditch. On the far side, she saw a field with new growth shooting up amid the stubble of cut hay.

  “Is this for drainage?” she called out, talking over the dull sound of tool contacting vegetation.

  “Irrigation.”

  “You didn’t need water on this field before now?”

  “We rested this field last year, and had rain pretty regular all spring, so we didn’t need to irrigate until now. And what doesn’t need doing right away has a way of getting put off.”

  She shrugged out of her jacket, laid it down and sat there, with the tablet teetering on first one then the other of her cross-legged knees.

  She fired questions at him – where they irrigated and when and how often and how much and what methods. He answered in short bursts as he steadily worked into her line of sight, then disappeared to the right.

  He returned with the tools propped over his shoulder. “C’mon. This one’s done.”

  “Now what are you going to do?” She’d found the information on irrigation interesting. If his next task yielded as much new information, she would make real progress in no time.

  Before plunging back into the bushes that separated them from the truck, he said, “Clean another one.”

  * * * *

  The second ditch followed a similar pattern, although they reached this one from the field side, where the vegetation wasn’t nearly as thick as they’d fought through at the first ditch. Could Luke have taken the most difficult route to that first ditch in an effort to shake her off? Definitely.

  The other difference was that Rebecca’s system sustained a jolt of something like adrenaline when Luke worked into her line of vision this time with his shirt gone, leaving only a damp and skin-clinging undershirt as covering.

  She kept her head down, rapidly typing notes about potential methods of planning and tracking irrigation, when he came over to where she was seated to hang his shirt on a branch near his jacket.

  She’d seen male chests, of course. From her earliest years of swimming lessons at the club, through teen forays to the beach, and her grand total of two lovers. And his wasn’t even bare.

  Why did that seem worse? No, not worse. But like the layer of white cotton somehow showed more than no covering would have. Or was it because there was more to show? Broader shoulders, a fuller chest, ropey muscles whose outlines showed clearly through the thin fabric with each twist and extension. Muscles molded by ne
cessity. Utility and grace combined.

  A gap between his back and the jeans’ waistband formed as he bent to dislodge a branch. The white material of his undershirt disappeared into that gaping V, inviting a hand to follow its softness, down to the hard curve inside that pressed as tightly against the faded denim as it had yesterday morning ...

  The sound of a sigh – her sigh! for heaven’s sake – when he disappeared from view to her right, caught her up short. She redoubled her questions, sometimes not giving him a chance to answer before she fired the next.

  At their third stop, when she grabbed her bag, he groaned. “You couldn’t have any more questions.”

  She could – she did – but probably not about ditches or irrigation. And if she got him to tell her anything about what she really wanted to know about, she wouldn’t need notes to remember.

  She slid left her bag in the truck.

  He hadn’t bothered to button his shirt after retrieving it when he finished the second ditch. Now he slid it off with a shrug.

  Without note-taking to occupy her, she tried focusing on the flora. That didn’t last long since she couldn’t identify any of it. Which left the native fauna.

  This ditch was less congested. Luke was making quick progress, and his shirtless form stayed in sight only a brief time. He had already disappeared to her right when Rebecca felt something against her cheek and pushed it away. Then something hit her shoulder.

  She looked up, and got a raindrop square on the chin.

  “Oh! It’s raining.” She scrambled up, shaking out the jacket she’d been sitting on.

  The change in her position brought him into sight. He didn’t look up, forking another mass of debris out of the ditch.

  “Afraid you’ll melt? I don’t think you’ve got enough sugar in you to worry about it.”

  For no reason that comment made her want to grin. “Not sugar, bits and bytes,” she said with mock sternness. “And they’re not supposed to get wet.”

  “Told you a computer wouldn’t last out here. You get wet, you get hot, you get cold, you get grit in your eyes, you get bugs in your clothes, you get cow shit on your boots, you get hungry, you get tired. And you keep working. Until the work’s done.”

  She stood without moving, watching his efficient, confident motions. The rain came down harder. Weighted by the water, her hair dropped all at once from the pins that held it. It would be streaming in a moment. Her jacket was already wet through.

  He finished the last few forkfuls. “And when it’s done,” he said with a grunt of satisfaction, “then you get dry. Let’s go.”

  With no wasted movements, he took his tools, jacket and shirt, and strode across the stubbled field toward the truck.

  The rain roused a spicy scent from the land. The heavy drops made small craters in the dirt at her feet. She slowed her steps, falling behind him. Fat drops exploded against her scalp like a massage.

  From beside the truck, he looked back. “Are you coming?”

  She spread her arms shoulder high, palms up to cup the moisture. “Thought you didn’t mind getting wet, Luke.”

  “I work through it. That doesn’t mean I like it.”

  She tilted her head back, closing her eyes and opening her mouth. “Maybe you should – like it, I mean.”

  “If you’re not worrying about sugar, what if you melt all that starch of yours?” His voice had dropped, and picked up a timber that rasped across her nerve-endings like a bow low on a viola.

  A huge raindrop hit the base of her exposed throat, exploded like a single-serving water balloon and slid down her breastbone and into the valley between her breasts. She shivered with the sensation, and a pleasure she refused to examine.

  “The starch goes much too deep to melt.”

  She turned around once, then twice.

  “I don’t doubt it goes right to the backbone.” He cleared his throat. “Minute ago you couldn’t wait to get out of the rain. Now, you want to dance in it? Make up your mind.”

  She laughed, finally raising her head and opening her eyes. Moisture dripped from her eyelashes onto her cheeks, adding a more intimate curtain of rain.

  Always before rain meant staying inside, to avoid any chance of getting wet or dirty. Rain meant playing with a decorum that granted Dahlgren House the respect due it. Rain meant no chance to escape into the woods beyond the formal garden.

  “This is so different. It’s like a gift. A brief, passing gift, to enjoy while it’s here. Not like in Delaware. When I was a girl and I’d wake up and see that thick dismal blanket over the sky that meant rain was there to stay for days, my heart fell to the ground. It seemed so – What?”

  “Nothing. Get in the truck. It’s going to open up.”

  He brushed off water beading on the heavy denim of his jacket, then, from inside the truck, he turned and tipped his head forward to drain his hat of the water it had collected. He placed the hat carefully on the dashboard ledge.

  He was right about the rain. The drops blended into a sheet. She jumped into the passenger side of the truck and yanked the door closed against a sudden gust of wind.

  He barely showed any effects from the rain. But then he hadn’t danced in it as if celebrating the end of a drought.

  She felt like someone coming out of hypnosis, who, despite all the assurances, really had clucked like a chicken on command.

  What was he thinking? – other than that she had absolutely lost her mind.

  Nothing he’d said? No, that looked he’d given her hadn’t been nothing.

  She squirmed out of her dripping jacket while he turned the ignition key.

  “Hey! Don’t go slinging that thing around.” Luke took her jacket off the seat, and dropped it to the floor by her feet. She’d already discovered that her hiking boots were not entirely waterproof, and the waterfall that came off the jacket didn’t help.

  “Do you have a towel I could use on my hair?”

  He fed the hesitant engine more gas and the truck jumped forward. “Not one that you’d want to use.”

  She looked up at the challenge of that. Then, remembering what she’d seen on his gloves, decided that was one bit of bait she wasn’t going to rise to.

  She leaned forward, caught her hair in both hands and twisted it gently, squeezing out water. She let it fall, then twisted in the opposite direction, a trick she’d learned when she’d finally grown her hair long in college after all the years of chin length cuts.

  Her top sweater was rapidly soaking through to the one below. She grasped the hem and pulled it over her head, tugging it free carefully after bumping her elbow against the side window.

  Damn. The other sweater was damp, too. She crossed her arms and took hold of each side of that hem, and started to tug.

  A sound from beside her froze her.

  “It’s wet,” she said defensively.

  “How many damn layers do you have on?”

  His gaze was on the strip exposed by her rising sweater. A strip covered by a cotton shirt and a silky camisole. Without the hat shielding his eyes, what she saw in his gaze brought heat to every portion of her body, covered or uncovered.

  She saw disappointment that there were more layers. And she saw unsatisfied lust.

  She couldn’t remember any male ever looking at her like that. Not the few hormone-driven high schoolers who’d met Antonia’s approval, not the equally hormone-driven college guys who most definitely would not have met her approval. Not even the two men Rebecca had slept with.

  A jolt nearly knocked her off the seat.

  The first instant she thought it was the outward manifestation of what she was feeling. The second, she knew it was the truck.

  Luke jerked his head around toward the front of the truck, swearing prodigiously under his breath. The engine had stopped. And through the waves of rain, she could see that the truck had its nose in the creek and the back slanted up toward the northwest, where the sky was already clearing.

  Luke Chandler had driven r
ight into a creek.

  Unexpected laughter came before she could stop it. She still held her sweater’s hem in a cross-armed grip, though her arms had dropped to her waist. Not even that position helped hold in the laughter bubbling up.

  “Laugh one more time, and you’ll be back out in the rain, lady.” Beneath his would-be growl she heard the humor, and she made no effort to stop.

  The failure of his repeated efforts to restart the engine sobered her some. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “What’s wrong with it is it’s a rattletrap, and I’m not a damn wizard no matter what Marti says,” he grumbled.

  He jammed his hat on and opened his door, stretching partway out. She turned away from the wind-driven rain, relieved when he pulled back in, slamming the door and removing his hat.

  He dug in the deep pocket of his jacket and brought out a two-way radio. He stared down at the radio two long beats before adding to his previous comments, “And a nose full of water didn’t help.”

  He looked out his window, although the rain streaming down the glass had turned it as opaque as a curtain, while he pressed the radio’s button and spoke into it. “Luke to all Far Hills. Who’s closest to Tumbleweed Creek?”

  After a pause long enough to make Rebecca remember his words about the size of the ranch and the dangers that made two-way radios a necessity, a voice crackled to life.

  “That’d likely be me – Walt. I’m still fencing that bull pasture.”

  “Good. C’mon up here with the gray truck. We need a pull.”

  “Uh, now? It’ll be a half-hour before I finish.”

  The hesitation was clear in the younger man’s voice. He apparently carried the sting of Luke’s words from this morning about finishing up, and didn’t want to leave the job now.

  “Finish, then get up here.”

  “Okay.

  Luke signed off the radio, then cursed under his breath. This time, she thought, he meant it. Was he lamenting the time away from work, or the time with her?

  Too bad, either way, she thought defiantly. It didn’t have to be a waste of time for her. So, they were alone in these few square feet of space. Isolated by the rain, the moisture bringing his scent of wet cotton, disrupted soil and vegetation, hard work and a tang of leather too strongly to her. Or was she breathing it in too deeply?