The Cattleman And The Virgin Heiress. Jackie Merritt
are repaired enough to drive on.”
“But if someone I cared about was missing, I wouldn’t leave a stone unturned to find him or her, and I wouldn’t let a storm or washed-out road stop me,” she snapped.
Matt was beginning to hear a note of hysteria in Hope’s voice, and the last thing he needed in the isolation everyone on the ranch must bear until things returned to normal was a hysterical amnesiac. No, he would not show her that article. In fact, he would do anything he could think of to get her thoughts away from her own admittedly wretched situation.
“You didn’t eat much of your sandwich. Would you like something else?” he asked.
“You deliberately changed the subject,” she said, suddenly weary of it herself. “It’s okay, I’m bored with my problems, too. Scared spitless, let me add, but harping on the same old know-nothing theme is nothing but wasted energy. You know, I bet that you’d give anything you own not to have found me today.”
You’ve got that right, baby! “Don’t be silly,” Matt said out loud in a soothing tone of voice. “Tell you what. You sit there while I clear these dishes away, then I’ll walk you back to your bedroom.”
“Fine,” she said listlessly. Could he say or do anything that would take away her blues? Her self-pity? Lord above, what was she even doing in Texas? Was her mother, Madelyn, worried about her, or had Hope left Massachusetts for an extended trip, gotten in this mess somehow, and no one was worried about her?
Watching Matt move from table to sink, it struck Hope that he was all she had. Until she regained her memory—she would regain it, wouldn’t she?—Matt McCarlson was the only person she knew face-to-face in the entire world.
And yet she had snapped at him, admitted anger at him—if only to herself—and pretty much blamed him for this mysterious fiasco. Well, it wasn’t that she blamed him for everything, but one would think a rancher living miles and miles from civilization would be better prepared for a damn storm.
So that’s it, she thought with narrowed eyes. She blamed him for living a lackadaisical lifestyle that didn’t include emergency communication.
“How come you don’t have some way to contact…uh, the town, for instance…in case of an emergency?” she asked.
Matt heard the distinct disapproval in her voice, the judgment, and it raised his hackles. “I’m like a lot of ranchers,” he said flatly. “I’m not particularly fond of people, especially city dwellers, and I’d rather wait out a storm by myself than have a horde of do-gooders descending on my land under the guise of neighborly generosity to rescue me, when I never needed rescuing in the first place.”
“And I suppose the men who work for you feel the same?”
“My men are seasoned ranch hands. They know the table stakes and when they’re dealt a bad hand, they take their lumps without complaint.”
“As you do.”
“Have you heard me complaining? Let me say it like it is, Hope LeClaire. You’re the only person on this ranch who’s done any complaining about being landlocked, so to speak. Now, I have to concede your right to a few complaints, but—”
Hope broke in. “How big of you,” she said with drawling sarcasm. “I wonder what you’d do if you woke up in a strange place with no memory.” She got to her feet. “I’m going back to bed, and I don’t need your help in getting there, so please just let me leave without offering the support of your big, manly arm.”
“Hey, my arm is big and manly, and your sarcasm doesn’t make it any less than it is. Take the lantern so you don’t fall flat on your ungrateful face!”
“Ungrateful? Ungrateful? How would you like me to express my gratitude, by kissing your feet? I’ve said thank you repeatedly, which you’ve either obviously forgotten or were too dense to register at the time.”
“I’m not dense, lady,” Matt growled. “And since you are, I would think that dense is a word you’d try real hard to avoid.”
“You jerk!” she shouted, then turned herself around, plucked the lantern from the table and did her best imitation of royalty sweeping from a room filled with ignorant peasants.
“Yeah, I’m a jerk,” Matt mumbled while lighting another lantern for his use. “And you’re just as spoiled and overbearing as every other pampered princess I’ve known.”
Matt went to bed about an hour later. Lying in the dark he listened to the rain, which had slowed to a barely discernible drizzle. The storm was passing, but at this stage it was hard to forecast its final gasp. It could drizzle and mist like this for days, it could start pouring again at any time, or it could stop completely without a dram of warning.
And when it did stop, the work would begin. Cleaning up after a storm like this one was an enormous job. Washed-out roads, flooded creeks and mud everywhere. Yeah, every rancher in the storm belt and even some townsfolk were in for a lot of backbreaking labor.
Matt was visualizing the ravages to his land and worrying about the cost of restoring everything to its prestorm condition when a bloodcurdling scream made his hair stand on end.
Jumping out of bed, he ran down the hall to Hope’s room. His first thought had been that someone had gotten into the house and was trying to throttle her. But since she’d left the lantern burning on low, he could tell at once that she was only having a dream.
She was thrashing around in bed, not screaming anymore but making almost inhuman sounds that all but curdled Matt’s blood. No one deserves a nightmare that terrifying, Matt thought and hurried over to the bed where he lay down next to her.
“Hope…Hope…” he said as he pulled her into his arms, held her tightly against himself and stopped her from throwing herself around. “It’s only a dream, Hope, just a dream. I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”
She opened her teary eyes and heard Matt’s quiet voice. His arms were around her, and her face was nestled against his bare chest. She felt warm and comforted and, as he’d just told her, safe, and she did nothing to alter their positions.
“I had a nightmare,” she whispered tremulously. “An awful nightmare.”
“I know. I was in my room and you screamed so loudly that I thought a monster was gnawing on your big toe.”
She smiled weakly. “You’re trying to make me feel better.”
“Did it work?”
“Something’s working.”
Something was “working” for him, too, but it wasn’t a corny joke. It was Hope and the fact that she was plastered against him and his body could feel every delicious curve of hers. He shut his eyes and groaned inwardly. It was only natural for a man to become aroused while holding a beautiful woman, but this particular woman was not one he should be fooling around with. He’d sworn an oath to never again get involved with a woman who had more money than he did, which, at the present time, pretty much eliminated the entire female population of Texas. Thus, it was a rare day—or night—when he so much as paid for a lady’s hamburger or movie ticket. In truth, he hadn’t done any real dating since Trisha’s death, and he’d never felt as though life was passing him by because of it, either.
However, things were starting to look a little different to him. Lying in bed with a luscious lady wrapped around him sort of took the guts out of that well-intentioned oath, which, he realized, should probably make him resent the hell out of Hope. He had enough worries and problems with the ranch without piling on the heartache of an intimate relationship that couldn’t possibly go anywhere. Still, regardless of commonsense arguments against any such liaison, he was about to toss that earthshaking oath over the edge of the bed when she said, “The man in my dream had tied me up and he was…he was—”
“He was what?” Matt prompted when she left him hanging and he already had some bad feelings about what that dream had really been about.