"Not the Jackson cabin?"
She threw him a quick look and her eyes flared as if she were remembering their encounter. "I don't know yet. Maybe."
Nodding, Sage continued on to the shed and sensed rather than heard her follow him. And naturally, she was still talking.
"Going back to me being surprised at you doing the repairs to one of the buildings...I don't know, I guess I thought you would have one of the men who work for you do the minor repairs." She waved one hand to encompass the whole of the yard and the half dozen or so ranch hands working at different tasks.
His long strides never slowed, though he knew she had to be hurrying to keep up with him. "J.D. always said, 'Don't be afraid to do your own work. Men will respect you for it.'"
Frowning, he wondered where that had come from. He wasn't really in the habit of quoting his father. Yet it seemed that since J.D. died, Sage had thought more about him than he had in years. And the situation wasn't helped by Colleen's presence. After all, the only reason they were together at all was because of the old man.
"So you do have some good memories of J.D."
"Didn't say they were good ones," he muttered, leading the way into the shed. "Just memories."
Inside it was cool and dark. The walls were covered with hooks from which clean, cared-for tools hung neatly. One wall contained a long workbench with drawers beneath it and the rest of the place held everything from shovels to snowplows.
With her standing so close to him, it was hard to keep hold of his own self-control. Desire pulsed heavily inside him even while his brain kept shouting for caution. If he had any hope of keeping his mind clear, he needed some distance between them. Releasing a breath, Colleen glanced around the shed. "I won't need anywhere near this much equipment," she said as if to herself.
"You'll need plenty of it, though," he warned, taking the opportunity to spread a little more doubt in her mind. "Snowblower or plow. Shovels, pickaxes, and by the way, that old Jeep of yours isn't going to cut it up here, either."
"What?" She flashed him a stunned look. "Why not?"
"For one thing, it's too small. You'll need a truck."
At that, she laughed a little. "Why would I need a truck? My Jeep has been fine for me in the snow."
"The wheelbase is too short," he told her, and shook his head when he saw the blank confusion in her eyes. "Too easily tipped over. And in a high wind on the mountain road..."
She shivered as he'd meant her to-because the thought of her navigating those switchback curves alone in a storm gave him a damn heart attack.
"For another thing," he added, "you'll need the truck bed, because there's no trash collection here. You'll have to make trips to the dump yourself."
She chewed at her bottom lip and Sage felt a confusing mix of satisfaction and guilt. He didn't necessarily want to be the one to ruin her dream. But hell if he wanted her alone in a situation she wasn't prepared for either.
"Where's the dump?"
"I can show you." And that would serve as a negative, too. Once she got a whiff of the dump, she'd be less inclined to have to go there regularly.
"Okay..."
"There's no mail delivery up here either," he said while he still held her attention. "You'll have to get a P.O. box in town."
She sighed. "I hadn't thought it would be so complicated." Turning in a slow circle, she let her gaze wander over the walls of tools as if she were trying to figure out how to use them. "All I want to do is live on the mountain, closer to where my patients will be."
"Most things generally are complicated," he said, emptying the work bucket he'd brought in with him. He opened drawers, returning the hammer, nails and leftover shingles to their proper places and when he was finished, he turned to find Colleen staring at him, a smile as bright as sunlight on her face. "And when you live up here-especially alone-you have to expect to take care of a lot of things most people don't worry about...what are you smiling at?"
"You." She shrugged. "It's funny, but I don't think I ever pictured you as being a fix-it kind of guy."
"Yeah, well." He closed the drawer and walked to set the bucket down in a corner of the shed. "J.D. had Dylan and I working all over Big Blue when we were kids. The two of us had a chores list that would make a grown man weep. We worked with the cattle and the horses, learned how to rebuild engines and shingle roofs when they needed it." He leaned one hip against the workbench, folded his arms across his chest and continued, "J.D. thought we should know the place from the ground up. Be familiar with everything so we were never at the mercy of anyone else. During school, we had plenty of time for homework, but during summer, he worked us both."
She tipped her head to one side and looked up at him. "Sounds like it was hard work."
"It was," he admitted, realizing he hadn't thought about those times in years. When they were kids, he and Dylan had hated all the chores. But they'd learned. Not that Dylan needed most of those lessons today, what with spearheading the Lassiter Grill Group. But Sage could admit, at least to himself, that everything he'd learned on the Big Blue had helped him run his own ranch better than he might have done otherwise. Sourly, he acknowledged that growing up as J.D. Lassiter's son had prepared him for the kind of life he had always wanted to live.
All those hot summers spent training horses, riding the range rounding up stray cattle. The long hours sweeping out the stable and the barn. The backbreaking task of clearing brush away from the main house. He and his younger brother had become part of the crew working Big Blue. The other wranglers and cowboys accepted them as equals, not the boss's adopted kids.
Shaking his head, Sage looked back on it all now and could see that J.D. had been helping them build their own places on Big Blue. To feel a part of the ranch. He'd been giving them a foundation. Roots to replace the ones they'd lost.
"Crafty old goat," he muttered, with just a touch of admiration for the father he had resented for so long.
"He really was, wasn't he?"
Sage caught the indulgent smile on her face and stiffened. But Colleen was unaware of the change in him, because she kept talking.
"He used to make me laugh," she was saying. "He couldn't get out much in his last couple of months, but he managed to steer everyone around him into doing just what he wanted them to do. He ran the ranch from his bed and his recliner. He even convinced me to accompany him to the rehearsal dinner," she added softly, "when I knew he wasn't well enough for the stress of the evening."
"That wasn't your fault," he said quickly.
"Wasn't it?" Her gaze locked with his. "I was his nurse. Supposed to guard his failing health, not give in to him when I knew it was dangerous." She reached up and pushed her hair back from her face, and suddenly Sage thought of how it had felt to have his own hands in that thick, silky mass.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed that thought aside and only said, "J.D. had a way of getting just what he wanted from folks. You shouldn't feel guilty about being one of them."
"He was a lovely man," she whispered. "Hard, but fair. Tough, but he loved his family. All of you. He talked about you all so much..."
Sage's ears perked up. "Did he?"
"Oh, yes." She walked closer to him, running her fingertips along the edge of the workbench. "He was so proud of Dylan's work with the grill. And he talked about Angie all the time-"
She broke off, as if remembering that J.D.'s will sort of belied that last statement.
"And you." She moved even closer and he caught her scent on the still, cool air. The scent that had haunted him all night long. Her eyes shone up at him with innocence and pleasure, as if she was really enjoying being able to share all of this with him. "He took so much pride in what you've built. He used to go on and on about how you made your first million while you were in school, and how he'd had to go to great lengths to convince you to stay at college when all you really wanted to do was build your own ranch-"
Sage's vision went red. And just like that, the seductive, sensual air between him and Colleen sizzled into an inferno that apparently only he could sense. His mind burned and thoughts chased each other through the darkness spreading through him. Years-old fury reawakened as if it had never gone to sleep, and he trembled with the force of the control required to keep from shouting out his rage.