“Only women think that,” he shot back.
She dismissed that with a wave. “Boy, that’s what you are. A boy. You Ransoms never grow up.” On that sour observation, she donned her shawl, grabbed up the shirt he had been mending, and marched out to join her husband, Carlos, the foreman, in the little house they shared. “I will take care of the shirt,” she groused, “because you do not have a wife as you should. So the rest of us must suffer. Hmph.”
Josh had to smile as Rita banged the door behind her. The lecture rang familiar, because he got one at least once a month. Rita wanted children to fuss over. Hers were grown and gone, so now she wanted his.
If Marguerita knew he was legally hitched, she would dance with glee-until she met Tess, that is. Tess McCabe sure as hell wouldn’t be caught dead mending any man’s shirt. Josh would be willing to bet on it. And he doubted Tess could bake a pie or make fluffy biscuits.
But she could ride as if she were born on a horse. She could throw a rope over a set of horns or snag a steer’s foot in a single toss. Flooding rivers didn’t faze her. Cold and wet didn’t stop her. She feared nothing-except losing her home and her way of life, and maybe being laughed at by people who didn’t understand her worth.
No one who really knew Tess McCabe would laugh at her, Josh reflected. She marched to a different drum, perhaps, but along that march she had become a special sort of woman. Strong, proud, undaunted by things that sent most women into a tizzy. But when she took off those work clothes and got dressed up like a woman, run for cover, because Tess could knock a man’s socks right off his feet.
Or kiss his lips right off his face. Tess McCabe kissed like an angel. No, not an angel, she kissed like a woman. A hell of a woman.
A woman who would likely shoot him if she saw him again, considering the way he had left. By now she would have remembered why she didn’t want a man messing up her life. And she sure as hell wouldn’t want to leave her precious Diamond T to be his wife for real, even if he asked her.
But then, there had been that kiss…
MIGUEL scraped the mud from his boots before he came into the house, where Tess was helping Rosie put dinner on the table. The aroma of Rosie’s beef stew mingled with the warm scent of freshly baked bread, and Miguel inhaled appreciatively.
“You look like a drowned rat,” Tess commented.
“You didn’t look much better an hour ago,” Rosie reminded Tess.
Tess, Miguel, and Luis had spent most of the day beating the brush looking for mired cattle. Tess had come in early to look over the accounts. Her freshly braided hair still dripped water down the back of her shirt.
“Can’t complain about the rain,” Miguel said. “The way the cows are dropping calves, we’ll need the good pasture this summer.”
“You’ll never hear me complain about rain,” Tess agreed. “Not in this country. Even if it does make more work.” She smiled. “Even if it does make you-and me too-look like something that the high water swept in.”
She put a tureen of stew on the table as Miguel sat in his accustomed spot. “Where’s the others?”
“In the bunkhouse, cleaning up. Henry’s been cleaning the barn all day, and he smells worse than a cow. And you can’t see Luis for the mud. Compared to those hombres, I look dressed for company. And speaking of company, Don Sebastian de Moros will be along any day now, I’m thinking. I heard in town yesterday that he’s bringing another herd of those longlegged Spanish horses he breeds. I was thinking we could pick up a few from him this year. Improve the mustang blood in what we’re turning out.”
“He always wants a lot of money,” Tess said, tucking into her plate of stew.
“Worth it,” Miguel replied.
“Maybe. We can think about it when he shows up.” Normally, Tess loved an evening of talk about horseflesh, cattle, and plans for the future of the Diamond T, but lately she couldn’t maintain much interest. She still loved the land, loved the ranch, but her former singleminded concentration had disappeared. Her mood had been gloomy as the gray spring skies.
A week later, the sun shone brightly from a clear blue sky and wildflowers perfumed the warm spring air, but Tess’s mood hadn’t improved. It dropped yet another notch as the familiar figure of her brother, Sean, rode down the road toward the house.
“Just what I need,” she muttered to Rosie. They were busy hanging wash on a line strung between the main house and the little house on the other side of the courtyard.
“Have patience, Tessie girl. He is family.”
“Which means we’re stuck with him for life,” Tess grumbled. “Joy.”
Sean rode up to the courtyard wall and grinned at Tess. “Howdy, Sis. How’s life treating you?”
“Thought you’d be headed back to California by now,” Tess grumbled. “Heard that old Maisie at the hotel threatened to take a broom to you unless you paid your bill.”
“A minor misunderstanding,” Sean said. “We worked it out.”
Tess knew that Sean had been hanging around town talking to lawyer Bartlett. She’d had reports from the men that her brother spied on the ranch as well, probably trying to see if her socalled husband was still here. Tess had grown so weary of this deception she could spit, preferably hitting both Sean and lawyer Bartlett with the same effort.
“You’re looking good, Tess. Marriage must agree with you.”
“Right,” Tess snapped. “I’m sure you mean that.”
“Mind if I stay and chat awhile?”
“I could stop you?”
He just smiled.
While Sean put his horse in the barn, Tess thought furiously about what she would do. If he had been slinking around as the men said, he probably knew that Josh was gone.
With more violence than necessary, she snapped a wet shirt into the breeze with a sharp cracking sound. Had it connected with someone’s backside, the wet material would have delivered an attentiongetting sting. She could think of several backsides that would be good targets.
“Miguel is waving from the casita,” Rosie told her. “He wants you to come.”
“Later,” Tess groused. “First I have to send Sean packing. Somehow.”
Sean ambled through the courtyard gate, picked up a bedsheet, and helped Tess pin it on the clothesline. “I don’t see your husband about. What’s his name?”
“Joshua.” Joshua Ransom. She wouldn’t forget the name again. Not ever, as much as she might try.
“Haven’t seen him in town, either.”
Tess kept her mouth shut. Lying made a person tired, and she didn’t have the energy for it.
“I found out a thing or two about your husband. Want to hear?”
“I doubt you know anything I don’t,” Tess said through clenched teeth. “After all, we are married.”
They picked up another wet sheet. “Did you know he has a big spread over by Arrivaca?”
“So?”
“And his brother, the fool, gambled away their entire herd of beeves? Ransom came to town because he had a friend at the bank. Tried to hit him up for a loan to get his cattle back.”
So that was why he had wanted her three hundred dollars. That was why he had been desperate enough to marry her. Tess could understand a man-or a woman-going to any lengths to save a ranch. Look at what she had done. Too bad her scheme seemed doomed to fail, thanks to Sean and that lizard Bartlett.
She hoped Josh Ransom had gotten his beeves back.
“Tess!” This from Miguel, impatiently beckoning from the doorway of the little house. Tess ignored him. Whatever it was, she could take care of it later.
“Are you two gonna pin up that sheet or stand there staring at each other like two badass dogs?” Rosie complained.
Stiffjawed, Tess draped the sheet over the line. Sean sighed unhappily. “Tess, listen, will you?”
“I got ears.”
“This isn’t anywhere near a real marriage you got with this Ransom fellow. You know it. I know it. And it won’t be hard to prove to Bartlett, who’s got the judge wrapped around his finger, anyway, if it comes to that. But hell, I don’t want this ranch. To me it’s just a hunk of dirt and sand that’s full of bad memories.”