Only Hers (3 page)

“Look, we need to talk. Where are you staying?”

Shannon couldn’t suppress a shudder as she nodded toward the cabin. “I had planned on stay—”

“What!” Matt cried, cutting her off. “No one has slept in there for years. You’re liable to wake up kissing a rattler.”

Shannon’s head snapped up and she stared at the cabin. “I . . . I was in there and I didn’t see anything.”

“You probably wouldn’t until tonight.” She swayed on her feet. His hand shot out to steady her.

“Mr. Ferguson said it was habitable,” she said softly.

Matt snorted. “After Octavia and a couple of the hands tackled it all day.”

“I see. Well that will change now that I’m here.” Withdrawing her arm, she stepped away and instantly regretted the loss of the warmth and strength of his large callused hand.

For a split second Matt admired her show of courage and wanted to wipe the frightened look from her sad brown eyes almost as much as he wanted to keep feeling her silken skin. Skin that probably tasted as rich and sweet as its toffee color. He scowled. He must have been out in the sun too long. This woman wanted his
heritage!

A beeping sound shattered the air. Matt snatched the pager from his belt and read the phone number. “It’s almost six. Meet me at the ranch house in an hour so we can talk.”

Her stomach growled again. Embarrassment overrode caution. Perhaps he wouldn’t seem so overbearing after a meal. “I’ll be there.”

“Just follow the main road you turned in on and it will take you to the ranch house.” The brim of his black Stetson dipped, then he turned away. With every step Matt berated his chivalrous uncle for putting him in a position of going up against a woman who looked as if she was on her last leg. Grabbing the dangling reins of his sorrel stallion, he mounted. Shannon was still staring at the cabin, the letter clutched in her hand.

Matt’s eyes turned flint hard. She might be on her last
leg, but like a lot of women, Miss Shannon Johnson still had dollar signs before her eyes and in her heart.

Matt’s booted heel rapped loudly on the wide wooden front porch of the two-story ranch house. Opening the heavily carved door, he went directly to his office and dialed Arthur Ferguson’s home phone number. The soft voice of Arthur’s wife greeted him on a recording. Gritting his teeth in frustration, he left an urgent message for the lawyer to call him, then dialed the number on the pager. He and rancher Adam Gordon had talked back and forth so much in the past months that Matt knew the number by heart. The older rancher answered the phone on the second ring.

“Hello, Adam.” Matt tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “I hope your call means I can buy Sir Galahad.” Matt winced every time he said the name, but considering the bull’s registered bloodline, it was his due.

“I didn’t call to talk business, son.”

Matt winced again. Adam had started calling him “son” ever since his daughter Vivian had made her romantic interest in Matt clear. She was a nice kid, but she was just that, a kid. “Oh.”

“The wife has decided to give a little party to celebrate Vivian’s graduation from junior college. We want you to come.”

Matt’s grip on the phone tightened. He needed that bull to improve his stock’s bloodline but he wasn’t going to dance a tune to Vivian’s fiddle to get it. “It’s hard to believe she’s graduating already. Seems I still remember her in plaits.”

“Vivian is a woman full grown and knows what she wants.”

“I’m sure she does,” Matt said, then added to himself,
but it’s not going to be me.
“Adam, I hate to push you, but I need a decision on that bull. Getting closer to the time I have to start breeding.”

“If Vivian lets us, we’ll see if we have time to talk this coming Saturday night. She’s so excited and looking forward to seeing you. I don’t mind telling you that my little girl has taken quite an interest in you.”

Matt’s patience reached its limit. “Adam, we’ve been friends for years, so I’ll be up front with you. You know I don’t date the local women and, more important, you know why. With my reputation, would you and Peggy really be comfortable with me seeing your daughter?”

Silence stretched across the line for several seconds, then, “A man can change.”

“Only if he wants to. If the sale of the bull hinges on my taking Vivian out, I’m withdrawing my offer.”

“Now hold on, Matt.” Outrage roughened Adam’s voice. “You can’t think I’d stoop to something that low.”

“Ordinarily no, but I think you’d do anything to please Vivian and keep your wife happy,” Matt said bluntly. “While I admire you for loving your family, I’m disappointed in you as a friend. You have until tomorrow to give me a decision on the bull or I’ll look someplace else.”

“Matt—”

“And I won’t be able to make it Saturday.” Matt dropped the receiver back into its base, then plopped in the chair behind his desk. He desperately needed that bull, but he wasn’t going to be used or use a young woman’s infatuation and her father’s blind love to get the animal.

Adam was a good man, but his only daughter had always been able to wrap him around her little finger. He would bust a gut trying to get Vivian whatever she wanted. All she had to do was point. Apparently, she had pointed at Matt.

He really didn’t think the girl wanted
him.
Since his uncle’s death, Matt’s appeal to the women in the area had increased a hundredfold. He had received more invitations in the past four months than he had in the past four years. Most of the women probably meant well, but he knew being sole owner of the Circle T, the largest ranch in the county, didn’t hurt.

But you aren’t the sole owner of the Circle T,
Matt thought with a grimace. And the blame lay solely at the feet of his soft-hearted uncle.

Wade Taggart had been a robust man with an easygoing manner and a ready smile. A throwback to the bygone days when men protected women, pampered them. He was a sucker for their sob stories. Not even when Matt’s wife had turned his life into a nightmare had Wade said one word against her.

Women, in Wade’s opinion, were the weaker sex, and if they sometimes acted unladylike, it was their way of surviving. His belief had financed more than one woman out of trouble. No matter how much Matt tried to tell Wade the women were using him, he just smiled and did as he pleased.

Yet, never would Matt have thought Wade capable of giving away a section of their ranch. Wade’s ties to the land were as strong and as deep as Matt’s. It didn’t make sense.

Matt’s father, Bill, and his brother Wade were Matt’s paternal grandparents’ only children. The ranch passed jointly to both brothers. Since Wade was the oldest, when Matt’s parents married and moved to Tyler, Texas, Wade stayed on the Circle T and kept the place going.

Ten years ago when Matt’s world turned into a living hell, it was to the ranch that he had come to heal. At the time he wasn’t fit to be around man nor beast. However, working the land had restored his sanity and given him back a reason for getting up in the morning. The week after the birth of Kane’s twins, their father had signed over his share of the Circle T to Matt with Kane’s blessing.

Wade had been there. “When my time comes, the Circle T will all be yours.”

That was two years ago. What catastrophe in Shannon Johnson’s life could have been enough to change Wade’s mind? Try as Matt might want to dispute it, somehow he knew her claim was real.

Wade had gone to her rescue.

Matt pushed to his feet. Her story didn’t matter. She wasn’t getting his land. No woman was ever taking anything else from him again. He had made himself that promise the day his divorce was final, and in the years since, he had yet to break his oath.

But in order to fight Shannon, he had to learn more about her. Inviting her to dinner was the first step. He didn’t like subterfuge, but if he had to put on the charm to find out what she was up to, his conscience could take it.

Reaching into one of the desk drawers, Matt pulled out a paperback novel, then strode into the kitchen. He needed the house to himself. Pushing open the swinging door separating the den from the kitchen, he saw Octavia Ralston stirring something with a wooden spoon in an old-fashioned crock bowl. He knew whatever she was making would be mouth-watering.

After burying two husbands, raising six children, and helping to care for twenty grandchildren, Octavia had always said mothering, cooking, and cleaning came naturally. Her gray hair was scraped back from her plump ebony-hued face that was free of makeup, leaving it as open as the owner. At least Matt had thought so until a few days ago.

“Octavia, I need you to leave the house for a couple of hours tonight.”

“Why?” The housekeeper and cook for the Taggart household for the past forty years didn’t pause as she dumped the soft bread dough onto a floured board.

“I’ve invited a woman over.”

Octavia’s speed in turning belied her sixty-odd years and her considerable bulk. “There’ll be none of that going on in this house.”

Matt returned her stare. “This is business. I’ve never asked a woman to the ranch. You’re the one always inviting them over.”

“It’s about time you remarried.” The housekeeper grabbed the rolling pin.

“At least just stay in your room.”

“My TV is on the blink in my room and tonight’s the conclusion of that miniseries.”

Matt set his teeth. Octavia seldom watched her color TV. She had carried on for weeks to him about the waste after her children had bought it for her for Valentine’s Day. She was just being stubborn.

“Strange. All this time I thought you were in your room reading books like these.” He pulled the paperback from behind his back.

Wide-eyed, she advanced on him. “Give me that.”

“Now, Octavia, don’t be so savage,” he said, eyeing the rolling pin in her hand. “Or did you get that from . . .” He paused and opened the book. “ ‘Serena, her black eyes glazed with passion, leaned into Jared’s hard—’.”

“That’s my property,” Octavia interrupted sharply. “Where did you get it?”

“In the easy chair.” Black eyes twinkled mischievously. “Imagine my surprise when I reached down between the arm of the chair and the cushion for the TV remote I dropped and found a love novel with your name inside.”

“Romance novel,” she corrected.

Matt grinned. “Pardon me. Romance novel.”

She held out her hand. “My book.”

“You can have it and I promise to keep quiet about your reading material
if
you’ll take the book and stay in your room tonight.”

“Never thought you’d hurt a woman of my years.”

Matt grunted. “This is the boy you took a broomstick to when I was sixteen, saying you wanted to even the odds.”

Octavia smiled, showing strong white teeth. “It did, too.” She took the paperback and pocketed it in her apron. “You win this time, but there’s still two or three women I haven’t invited back after church for Sunday dinner.”

“And while they’re here, perhaps they’d like to see what you do when you close your door.”

“You’re a mean man, Matthew Evans Taggart.”

“It’s a mean world.”

Shannon stopped in the driveway of the rambling two-story white house and gripped the steering wheel. Dread made her tremble. She had to make Matt Taggart accept his uncle’s will. As silly and as desperate as it sounded to her own practical mind, she believed Wade’s meadow could help her. A legal battle would only delay matters. She only had three weeks of vacation. Every day counted.

She chastised herself for becoming defensive. She should have made Matt understand that she had no intention of keeping the property. Her life was in St. Louis, not on a ranch in Texas. But he had the annoying ability of making her lose her composure.

People usually thought of her as the quiet, sweet Johnson girl. No one she knew would believe she had held her own with a man as commanding as Matt.

“You coming in or what?”

Snatched out of her musing, Shannon glanced around. Matt’s handsome brown face was inches from hers. For a split second their gaze met and held. Shannon’s stomach muscles tightened. Quickly, she looked away from the magnetic pull of his riveting eyes and grabbed her purse. She must be more stressed out than she imagined. The last thing she needed was another complication in her unsettled life.

As soon as she stood, his gaze moved with maddening slowness from her shoulder-length hair to her sandled feet, then swept upward. The tightness in her stomach moved to her breasts. She fought the urge to hunch her shoulders beneath the same yellow T-shirt she wore earlier. “I . . . I didn’t think it wise to change.”

“Probably not. You can freshen up inside.”

She was encouraged by his offer of hospitality. Perhaps they could come to terms.

Grasping her elbow, he started for the house. “Come on. Dinner is ready.”

Shannon faltered on the first step of the wooden porch. “You said one hour. How long before you finish?”

His implacable gaze cut to her upturned face. “Do you think I’d sit down and eat and leave you cooling your heels?”

“I—”

“Don’t answer that,” he told her and continued up the steps.

Once inside the house Shannon let out a small sound of appreciation. She liked space, hardwood floors, and the durable softness of leather furniture. The front room boasted all three. “It’s lovely.”

“You expected cow hides and horns?”

Refusing to be baited, Shannon pressed her lips together.

Matt grunted. “Bathroom’s on the left of the stairs. I’ll be in the kitchen through those swinging doors. It’s pot roast.” He walked away before she could answer.

Shannon watched his long, measured strides, noticing the grace and ease of his conditioned body, the subtle shift of well-worn supple denim against his muscular legs and tight buttocks. Only after he disappeared through the swinging doors did she realize what she had been doing. Annoyed with herself, she hurried to the bathroom, flicked on the light and splashed water over her flushed cheeks.

She wasn’t the type to pant over a man. James politely referred to her as “restrained.” She had always assumed it was because the male body held no mystery for her. Matt had just shot down her theory.