Читать книгу Porcupine Ranch - Sally Carleen - Страница 8

Hannah Lindsay rubbed her sweaty palms down the sides of her cotton skirt. Yesterday, she’d lost her mind or she never would have let Samuel talk her into coming out here. Today, she’d lost control of her body. No matter how hard she concentrated, she simply couldn’t make her hand reach up and knock on the door in front of her.

She turned and looked wistfully back toward her small white car parked only a few yards away. The normally nondescript vehicle had been transformed into a bright, beckoning beacon against the dreary landscape. Tufts of grass, a few small cacti and several gnarled mesquite trees stabbed the flat, parched, brown earth, their green colors muted by the dust

Only forty-five minutes south of San Antonio, Clayton Sinclair’s ranch seemed light-years from her cozy condo in the heart of the city. If she drove really fast, she could make it home in forty minutes. Maybe thirty-five.

Behind her the door opened.

She spun around to see a huge cowboy standing in the doorway, glowering down at her.

Okay, maybe huge was an exaggeration, but he was definitely large, and he was definitely glowering.

She recognized Clayton Sinclair from the picture Samuel, his grandfather, had shown her. He was a younger, tougher, sun-bronzed version of his grandfather. Tall, like Samuel, but with much wider shoulders and a bigger chest, as if he wrestled two-ton steers before breakfast.

His hair was light, sun-streaked. Probably wrestled those steers after lunch in the midday sun, too. Squint lines fanned out from intensely blue eyes that seemed to burn from his deeply tanned face. Whoever said blue was a cool color? Hannah thought.

He wore faded blue jeans over a flat stomach and muscular thighs, and his faded denim shirt was open at the throat, allowing light brown curls to spring out. Clayton oozed virility and sexuality and he didn’t look like anybody’s grandson. This was going to be even worse than Hannah had anticipated.

“Can I help you?” he asked—demanded, actually—when she continued to gawk at him as if she were an idiot.

Things were getting worse by the minute. Talking to strangers wasn’t easy for Hannah under the best of circumstances, and talking, under false pretenses, to a stranger who oozed sexuality didn’t even rank in the top fifty percent of her list of possibilities. In fact, it was pretty darn close to the bottom. Right down there with the day she graduated from high school and was supposed to give the valedictorian speech…and froze in front of a thousand people.

She opened her mouth, but coherent words couldn’t fight their way past the tense muscles in her throat. She gurgled.

That should make a terrific first impression. He’d probably send her packing before she figured out how to make her vocal chords work again.

So? Wasn’t that what she wanted?

“Are you Hannah Lindsay?” he finally asked.

She had no idea what he’d expected, but she obviously wasn’t it. The disappointed look on his face knifed straight into her heart. Suddenly she was back in her adolescent years when everything she did was a disappointment to her parents.

She nodded in answer to his question, giving up the effort to verbalize. The movement was a little jerky, but she was pretty sure it was the right one. Up and down with the head. Up and down. Good girl.

“You’re applying for the job of live-in house-keeper?” He sounded resigned. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he knew all about her deficit in housekeeping skills.

She cleared her throat and straightened her spine. “Yes.” That was much better. A squeak instead of a gurgle. A recognizable word. She was becoming practically verbose.

“I’m Clayton Sinclair. Come in.” He stepped aside, holding the screen door for her.

She swallowed hard, took a deep breath and ordered her feet to take her into the big old ranch house. Right foot. Left foot. Breathe.

She almost lost cadence as she brushed past Clayton and the compelling scents of leather and open country overwhelmed her, painting a vivid mental picture of him on a horse, swinging a lariat and roping longhorn cattle. She’d better omit breathing from her walking sequence. One thing at a time.

With its high ceiling and drawn drapes, the large room was cool, shadowy, cavernous and ominous. She half expected a bat to fly out of a corner at any minute. Or out of her own personal belfry. Today’s events certainly proved she had a few up there.

“Have a seat.” Clayton indicated a looming, Victorian-style armchair patterned with large flowers on the back. Maybe the dim lighting was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see those flowers up close.

From long habit, she reached behind her to shove things aside before she sat down, but the chair was empty. No books, papers, computer disks, shoes. That was probably one of the things housekeepers did. Kept the chairs empty. She had no empty chairs at home, not even after her housekeeper came.

She perched on the edge. Ready to run…to escape.

Clayton sat on a long red sofa a few feet away. It was empty, too. Until he sat down, anyway. He filled up a good portion of it and looked totally out of place on the formal, feminine furniture.

“The position involves a lot of work,” he said, crossing one booted foot over the other knee with relaxed, unconscious masculinity.

The gesture added one more layer of tension to the mass already squirming in Hannah’s stomach. Nothing could make this ordeal easy, but it would have helped if Clayton had been short and pudgy.

She didn’t try to talk this time. Best to save her effort for when he asked her a direct question.

“Keeping this place clean isn’t an easy job,” he continued. “As you can see, my mother furnished it pretty elaborately. It’s not my style, but she comes back to visit every month or two, so I like to keep all her tables and vases and—” He waved a negligent hand around the room, and Hannah noticed lamps, statues, bowls…even a bird cage decorated with flowers. A lot of wasted space, it seemed to her. Nothing that served any practical purpose.

Her survey of the room ended with the painting over the fireplace. Samuel would be pleased to know it was still there. He was right. His wife had been a beautiful woman, but even in the portrait she looked frail.

“The floors are all hardwood and have to be polished, except the kitchen,” Clayton went on. “It’s linoleum and has to be waxed. Then there’s the laundry. I have five ranch hands who’ll be here through the spring roundup. They stay in the bunkhouse, so you don’t have to clean for them, but you will be expected to do their laundry as well as mine, and you’ll cook for all of us, three meals a day.”

He paused, peering at her intently. Unfortunately, her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and she could see his dubious expression quite clearly. He didn’t for one minute think she could do all those things.

Well, she couldn’t, so why did his attitude upset her? She could design complex computer programs as easily as most people wrote letters, but her cooking skills stopped with peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwiches or an occasional frozen dinner.

She ought to stand up, agree with Clayton, thank him for the interview and leave. She’d promised only to come out here and apply for the job. She could honestly tell Samuel she’d done her best. And she had warned him there was no way she’d actually be hired.

Stand! she ordered her legs. Up!

They ignored her.

She wasn’t surprised.

“Your former employer gave you a glowing recommendation,” Clayton continued.

“Glowing recommendation?” she repeated, her surprise conquering her nerves sufficiently to give her a voice.

Omni Software, Inc. had given her a glowing recommendation as a housekeeper?

That was impossible. Of course they hadn’t. He must be trying to let her know that he knew who she was and knew this whole thing was a hoax.

She dropped her head, letting her masses of unruly hair fall protectively forward. She should have felt relief that it was all over, but instead her cheeks flooded with embarrassment.

It wasn’t enough that she looked like a complete idiot in front of Clayton Sinclair, now she’d been exposed as a deceitful idiot.

“Yes, your employer said you were the best house-keeper he’s ever had.” Clayton’s tone was dry and unenthusiastic…a little angry, she thought. Not that she blamed him, considering the circumstances. “Actually I didn’t talk to Mr. Taylor directly.”

Hannah gasped, her head snapping upright at the mention of the surname Samuel had taken years ago when he’d awakened in a mental hospital in California, unable to remember his last name or how he got there. By the time he’d fully regained his memory, he’d already begun his business under that name and had kept it.

What had Samuel done?

Clayton frowned at her gasp, then continued. “Glen Ramsey, my banker, tells me that Mr. Taylor, who’s one of his major depositors, has given you a good reference and would really appreciate it if I’d hire you. This message comes from my banker who holds the note on this ranch—a man I really need to keep happy.”

Now she knew what Samuel had done. Pressured somebody at the bank to pressure Clayton. No wonder he’d been so unconcerned about her lack of skills! The game had been rigged from the beginning.

If she got out of there without having a stroke, she’d kill Samuel.

“I’m sorry he did that,” she mumbled, staring at the floor, again letting her hair fall forward around her face, embarrassed at her friend’s tactics.

She rose on shaky legs. Less shaky than when she’d come in, though. Now she had a purpose. Make it home to kill Samuel.

Clayton heaved a long sigh. “No, no. Sit back down. It’s all right. I don’t have applicants for this job lined up for ten miles down the road, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have time to interview them. I need a housekeeper, and I need one now.”

Hannah lifted her head. Surely he wasn’t saying what it sounded like he was saying.

He ran a hand through his hair, shifting the strands of light and shadow. She could almost feel the coarse texture, the warmth brought inside from days of working in the sunshine.

And sweating under a cowboy hat, she told herself in an unsuccessful effort to shut down her flight into fantasy. This was a real, working cowboy, not someone from a movie.

Somehow that thought made Clayton even more attractive.

“I don’t like being pressured, but, on the other hand, I really don’t care how I get a housekeeper as long as I get somebody who can do the job. Samuel Taylor assured my banker that you’re a very competent housekeeper and that you could handle the work with no problem.” A slight frown darted across his features, creasing his forehead between his eyebrows and making his jawline look even more square. “I just didn’t expect you to be so…” He spread his hands, moved them close together then far apart.

Hannah watched in tense fascination, wondering what he hadn’t expected her to be.

“My former housekeeper was fifty years old,” he said, “and, uh, sturdy. Mrs. Grogan could throw a hundred-pound sack of feed over her shoulder and carry it to the barn. Not that you’d be required to do that, of course.”

Hannah straightened her admittedly slim shoulders. Was he suggesting she couldn’t heft a hundred pound bag over her shoulder and carry it to the barn?

“You think I can’t?”

He looked at her dubiously, and her shoulders slumped.

Certainly she couldn’t. Why did it bother her that he had pointed out the obvious? She couldn’t cook or do laundry or polish floors, either, so why should she feel indignant and upset that he wasn’t going to hire her to do just that? Hadn’t she learned after all these years that it was pointless to try to succeed at activities for which she had no ability?

“We’ve been three weeks without a housekeeper,” he went on, ignoring her dumb question. “Mrs. Grogan left unexpectedly when her mother up in Oklahoma had a stroke. Last week she called to say she was going to have to stay there. My extra hands for the spring roundup came on two days ago, and the five of them have been complaining ever since about having to eat sandwiches after doing the work of ten men.”

He slapped one big hand on his denim-covered thigh, making her jump. “Okay, so you’re young and, uh, slim. I guess neither one of those problems is fatal. We’re in a financial crunch right now and I probably can’t start you at what you were making, but if the salary I mentioned in the ad is okay, you’ve got the job.”

Hannah fell back into the chair.

“The job?” she croaked. “I’ve got…?”