She smiled and sat back in the chair by the window. “You’re succeeding right now and you just stay home. We’ll both be better off.”
She didn’t want a repeat of the scene they’d endured only hours ago at her back door. Watching him walk away was hard enough then; she couldn’t go through seeing him—and losing him—again.
“That may be true for you, but if I come over, I would definitely be better off.”
Despite herself, she laughed softly. “You make me feel so much better. But I still think you should stay home.”
“Lindsay, I’m already pulling on my jeans.”
“Don’t. I really mean it. I feel better now and I can go back to sleep, and I know you can roll over and go to sleep the minute your head is on the pillow.” She refused to picture him taking off his jeans and getting back into bed, shirtless and sexy.
“Fine,” he said. “The guys will take care of the animal for you and, hereafter, you won’t have to listen to it howl again.”
“I don’t know why, but I feel sorry for it. Unless it kills some of the livestock, I’d hate for them to shoot it.”
“Well, this is a change. You’re usually pretty damn tough and I know you’ve shot plenty of wildlife.”
“Now how would you know that?”
“The guys talk. And I remember a few marksmanship competitions over the years. Come to think of it, you haven’t participated in any in a long time.”
“Nope. It doesn’t seem to matter any longer. When I first got the ranch, I felt I had to prove that I could handle running the place and a few other things. I don’t feel that way any longer.”
“I would think not. Half the ranchers around here call you about their animals.”
“Not really half, but a few have,” she said. She settled back in the chair to talk, forgetting about everything but the sound of his voice, soothing and smooth as it settled around her in the darkness. It was an hour later when they finally said goodbye and she went to bed. That’s when she realized the howls had stopped long ago, but she hadn’t actually noticed when, thanks to Tony.
As the next week passed, Lindsay tried to keep busy and struggled to stop thinking about Tony, but that was impossible. She heard nothing from him for eight more days, but, instead of forgetting about him—something she once could easily do—she thought about him constantly, to the point where she had been distracted at work.
It was Thursday, in the middle of a hot, dry afternoon, after she’d helped move steers to another pasture, when her phone rang and she saw it was Tony. She pulled her truck off the road into the shade of an oak and opened the windows.
“It’s Tony. I thought it was time to see if you want to come look at the pumps on my water wells.”
She was surprised, to say the least. Even though he’d offered, she’d never really expected him to have her over to his ranch—because she still figured he had installed new and bigger pumps. She glanced at her watch. “Give me about two hours and I’ll be there. Tell everyone I’m coming so they don’t send me away if they see me.”
“Nobody’s going to send you away and my foreman knows I was going to call you. Come on over. See you in two hours,” he said, and ended the connection.
She looked at her phone for seconds, as if she could see Tony. Was he up to some trickery to convince her that he still had his old pumps and had just dug deeper?
She would never tell Tony, but she had already started checking into having her wells dug deeper, and Tony had been right. If she went deeper, there was still water in the aquifer, and when the rains finally came, that depleted water would be replenished and everything would be like it was.
She had already told the men she was headed home, so she started her truck and drove back to her house to shower. She changed into washed jeans, boots and a short-sleeved blue cotton shirt. She knew Tony liked her hair down and not fastened, but she was back at home and she didn’t care to change her appearance, so she braided her hair and got her wide-brimmed black hat.
She hadn’t been to Tony’s ranch house even though she had seen pictures of it on the web, along with a map of his ranch land. As she approached, she looked at the sprawling two-storyranch house that appeared even larger than hers. A porch ran across the front and a wide circle drive joined a walk leading to the front porch.
Flower beds surrounded the house with rock and cactus gardens, plants well adapted to the drought that usually hit West Texas. As she approached, Tony crossed his porch, coming to meet her, his long legs covering the distance. His hair was combed and he had on a clean short-sleeved blue-and-red-plaid shirt, tucked into his jeans. She smiled, happy to see him again.
Tony opened the door of her truck and watched her step out.
“Oh, lady, you do look great,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her and making her tingle and momentarily forget why she was here.
“And hello to you. Thank you.”
“You’ve never been to my home, have you?”
“Nope, I haven’t. And you haven’t been in mine, yet. Not really,” she amended, as she thought about last week and how he’d barely made it through her back door before he left.
“Well, I hope to remedy that soon,” he said.