The Cowboy's Way(21)

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as she opened the door. “But don’t worry about us. Seth and I will be just fine.”

* * *

T.J. had no sooner cleared the entrance than the door was forcefully shut behind him. Hearing the distinct sound of the dead bolt being set, he shook his head.

“So much for being a good neighbor,” he muttered as he pulled his hat down low to shield his face from the rain and jogged the short distance to his truck.

She was pissed off again and unless he missed his guess, it was more a matter of her stinging pride than anything he had said. It was crystal clear she needed help—both with the work around the ranch and repairs to the house. But if there was one thing he had learned in the past several days, Heather Wilson was way too proud for her own good.

Why did she feel the need to prove herself? Why was she scared to death that someone would see her situation and look down on her for having such a struggle?

And he had no doubt that she was having a tough time of things. Although the horses were well taken care of, the amount of supplies she had told him better than anything else that she was hurting financially. Most ranchers tried to keep enough feed and bedding on hand to last for a couple of weeks, at the very least. Heather barely had enough for the next couple of days. And if her flimsy excuse about needing to take inventory of her supplies hadn’t been enough to convince him of how embarrassed she was by her circumstances, the heightened color on her cheeks as she tried to explain about her leaking roof was.

Cursing the woman’s stubborn pride, he started the truck and drove down the lane to the main road, turning toward the Dusty Diamond. If she would let him, he could make things a hell of a lot easier for her. But he had a feeling they would be passing out ice water in hell before that happened.

As he stared out the windshield he had to concentrate hard on the road ahead. The wipers were on the fastest setting, but couldn’t keep up with the amount of rain falling. He suddenly brought the truck to a stop and uttered a string of cuss words that would have raised a sailor’s eyebrows. He had been so distracted by Heather and what he’d observed of her ranch that he had forgotten all about the swollen creek and the inevitable flooding. Fortunately, the water always receded quickly once it stopped raining, but it didn’t appear that the rain was going to ease up anytime soon.

Staring through the sheets of water running down the windshield, T.J. decided he only had two options. He could either sit in his truck in the middle of the road for what could turn out to be the rest of the day and night or he could turn it around and go back to the Circle W.

Given the choices, there was really only one thing he could do. Heather wasn’t going to be overly happy about it—and for that matter neither was he—but there wasn’t any way around it. He was going to have to stay at her place until the road cleared.

A few minutes later, he parked the truck in front of her house, got out and jogged across the yard. He took the back porch steps two at a time. Drawing in a deep breath, he raised his arm to knock.

“The road is flooded out,” he said when Heather opened the door.

She stared past him at the heavy rain just beyond the porch, then, sighing audibly, she stepped back for him to enter the house.

“I’ll set another place for lunch,” she said, sounding resigned. “You’re going to be here a while.”





Four

After an uncomfortably silent lunch with her unexpected guest, Heather was glad when T.J. took Seth into the living room to play while she washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. She needed the distance between them to figure out why she seemed to lose all common sense whenever she was around him.

Normally, she was a very even-tempered, rational woman. Maybe she had a little more pride than was good for her and she was pretty stubborn about some things, but she didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a few flaws. But there was nothing about her behavior when she was near T.J. that made a bit of sense. He seemed to have the ability to anger her beyond words one minute, then turn around and have her melting into his arms without a thought about why she shouldn’t, the next.

But as she thought about her irritation with him earlier this morning, she had to admit to herself that part of the problem was her overwhelming embarrassment about her situation. It was humiliating to let anyone see how run-down the Circle W had become in the two and a half years since her father had passed away. Especially a man like T.J., who had family and more money to spare than most people saw in their entire lives. At one time the ranch had been one of the finest in the county, raising registered quarter horses for competition in the pleasure class at horse shows, as well as supplying a couple of dude ranches over in New Mexico with horses for their trail rides. But now? Seeing the Circle W through the eyes of a stranger, she was certain that it just looked shabby and sad.