One Night with the Texan(13)

But Cole didn’t need to make any effort to turn her on. She felt her response to him loud and clear. His hard body was erect and ready. And all she had to do was say yes. The heat surged through her at the thought. But with determination she stepped back and this time he let her go.

She didn’t know if he was trying to seduce her because he found something about her he liked, or if he was trying to seduce her into making her leave. It had to be one or the other. She had her doubts about the first possibility, though. In a lot of ways, she was still that gangly, naïve girl who had grasped hold of any attention John had offered and done what he’d wanted her to do because he was the only one who had ever showed any interest. So what would a man like Cole Masters see in her?

Then again, if he was trying to seduce her to have his way over the dig site, it could backfire on him. Seducing her, if she allowed it, would not make her leave any faster. In fact, it could very well further complicate the entire situation.

It was more than likely he saw her as weak and vulnerable. She had the education but she’d never experienced the level of sophistication he was used to. She’d never had a man of Cole’s wealth and status coming on to her and she would be the first to admit she was completely out of her depth. He was probably taking advantage of any opportunity to talk her into abandoning the dig. He was a master manipulator who would warp any love session into forcing her to leave. She’d be stupid to discount that option; the most probable one under the circumstances.

“Good night, Cole.” She turned and walked toward the front door of the shack. Stepping inside, she sat on the sleeping bag, absently watching as the lights from his truck shone through the holes in the sides and top of the cabin as he turned around then drove away.

She didn’t know the man and he didn’t know her. She didn’t know how to get to know him without precariously dangling her heart on a string. If she were more worldly, she might say yes and see where it would go. But her experience with John painted a pretty clear and dismal picture of how men acted.

And she would never put herself in that situation again.



It was four o’clock in the afternoon the following day when the garage called about Tallie’s tire. It couldn’t be saved.

“Fine. Put a new one on my account.” Cole started to end the call but thought better of it. “Ray? I need the new tire to look like the old one. Roll it in the mud a couple of times and walk your dog.”

“Walk my dog?”

“Yeah. You know. Walk your dog. Let him do his business on the tire, then roll it in the dirt again.”

“Cole, you ask for some strange things.”

Cole couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, Ray.”

Clearly the man didn’t understand the why of the request but he would do it. Cole suspected Tallie would insist on paying for the fix. She wouldn’t be happy about an entirely new tire and he would have to listen to a long argument over a hundred bucks. No thanks. With any luck, he would accept her ten dollars for the “repaired” tire and that would be that.

By five o’clock the new tire was delivered. It looked pretty bad. Cole was impressed. He threw it in the back of his truck and headed for the dig site. Damn. She even had him calling it a dig site. Whatever, it was a good excuse to check on her progress, as if he needed one. She’d been working on the last section of her initial grid this morning. He couldn’t help but wonder where she would go next.

He drove out to the site, pulled the new old tire out of the back of his truck and rolled it over to her vehicle. He was almost finished changing it out when she came around the corner.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Ten dollars.”

“Ten dollars? For a new tire?” She gave him a look that clearly said nice try.

“I’ll put it on the tab.”

“Fine. I’ll settle up before I leave.”

And Cole believed she would. At least she would try.





Seven

It was not fully light the next morning when Tallie was awakened by an odd sound. It was as though someone had turned on a giant sprinkler. She looked toward the dig site. There was just enough light to see an irrigation system, silent and unused until now, watering the wheat. One of the sprayers appeared to be centered on the area she had planned on digging that day.

No way. This could not be happening. She quickly pulled on her jeans, a clean shirt and her boots, grabbed a sheet of plastic they used to preserve a site during a rain storm and hurried to the dig. Water was spewing at full throttle. She made an attempt to cover the ground where she’d planned to work. The soil had already become saturated.

She took a step forward and realized, belatedly, that her boots were stuck more than ankle deep in the reddish-brown mud. About then a blast of cold water hit her smack in the face, causing her to lose her balance. She fell to the left, her right foot sliding out of the boot. Turning onto her back, which seemed to be the only way to right herself, she sat up, struggling to pull her boots out of the now almost shin-deep mud. She succeeded in freeing one boot before another blast of water knocked her down again, this time face-first. At that point, a slow crawl was the only remaining option to escape.

Lumbering toward the end of the sprinkler, she attempted to turn it off. The thing was controlled remotely. As in, from the ranch. She didn’t have to ask who’d done this.

As she sloshed back toward her Ford wagon, her anger grew with each step. It would be days before that area could be excavated. And the longer the sprinklers were on, the worse it would get. Cole Masters was behind this. The man just would not give up, but she had to admit after this stunt he was getting closer to inspiring her to pack her bags. Reaching the vehicle she started the engine and headed to Cole’s ranch house.

She passed the Circle M Ranch sign over the entrance to the driveway. The blacktop road continued on, rising at a steady elevation until she arrived at the house. She got out of her Ford and followed the flagstone path up to the door. She rang the bell then knocked.

She would give him thirty seconds before she walked in. Her blood pressure was sending off warning signals, her ears were ringing and she prayed the horrible man would get to the door before she stroked out. There were few times over the course of her life she’d ever been this furious.

Just seconds before she reached for the knob, the door opened. Cole took one look, his eyes growing big at the sight of her. She knew what she must look like, wet and covered in dark red mud head to toe, with one boot on and the other still stuck in the mud back at camp. She glared at the preposterous man and then noticed another man rise from the sofa in the den behind him and slowly walk toward the open door where she stood.

“If you think, for one second, your little schemes will drive me away, you’d better think again.” Her voice was quivering in anger. “Shut that irrigation system off. Now.”

“Irrigation? The irrigation system is not scheduled to come on in that area. The wheat is about to be harvested. Because of both your dig and my project I had it shut down.”

“Convince me.”

“Tallie, I didn’t do this.” Cole held up his hands, palms forward in a gesture of surrender. But he pursed his lips as he tried to hide a grin. “I don’t know what happened but I’ll take care of it.” He paused, allowing his eyes to roam over her from head to foot as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen the first time.

“You have fifteen seconds.” She pinned him to the spot with her eyes, her finger poking at his chest. “This little gimmick will set me back days, but I’m not leaving. I refuse. You cannot run me off, Masters. Believe it. Deal with it.”

“Come inside. Please.”

She stepped inside, hoping to leave as much mud as possible. She nodded to the other man. He nodded back and also pursed his lips as though fighting not to laugh. “I’m Cole’s brother, Wade. And you must be Dr. Finley.”

“I would shake but...” She held out her mud-covered hand.

Cole reached for the phone and hit a speed dial number. “Yeah. Griff? I thought I instructed your boys to kill the watering on the east part of the forty thousand acres for a while.” He listened quietly. “Well, whatever you did, it didn’t work. The irrigation is going full-blast and has apparently destroyed Dr. Finley’s excavation site. Shut it down now then find out who turned it on or fix what’s wrong and call me when you make a determination.” He ended the call.

“I’m sorry, Tallie, but I had nothing to do with this. Perhaps you can relocate to another area until that section of the site dries out. It would appear,” he said as he once again let his eyes rake her from top to bottom, “that the site is too muddy to work.”

“Ya think?” Fool that she was she believed him when he said he had no part in what happened, but he still had no appreciation for what she was trying to accomplish. “Do you even know or care what I’m trying to do out there?”

He shrugged. “Look for pieces of old pottery? I guess I really don’t know. Should I?”

“No. No, you’re right. It has nothing to do with you except to delay your project.”

Shaking her head, she turned around and limped back outside to her vehicle. She had to go back and try to retrieve her other boot from the mud once the water was turned off. Pulling out her phone, she wiped the dried dirt from the screen and punched speed dial to the museum curator’s private line.