Rodeo Bride Read online

  “All right, then. Let’s get this on you.” Dillon lifted Toby’s tiny bottom and slid the diaper under him. He brought the front of the diaper up and looked at the left of the diaper and then the right. He brought the sides of his hand up and sighted along it.

  “The tabs…” Colleen began.

  “I know. In the back, fasten in the front,” Dillon repeated.

  “Then what are you doing?” she asked gently.

  “I’m measuring.”

  Colleen couldn’t keep from chuckling. “Dillon, it’s a diaper, not an engineering project.”

  Dillon gave her a patient, measured look. “Toby, she doesn’t understand that we are men, and we have our own way of doing things.”

  “What she understands is that if you don’t fasten that diaper on soon, Toby is going to respond to all this fresh air, and we’ll have a lot of cleaning up to do,” she said, raising a brow.

  Dillon gave her a wry grin. “Have I mentioned what a wise woman Colleen is, scout?” he asked his son. “Of course, you already knew that. Let’s get you diapered up.”

  When he was done, the diaper was almost perfectly straight, but not quite. He eyed it with a frown.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “You did great, and it’s going to get easier…until he learns to crawl and wriggle away,” she teased.

  Dillon laughed. He scooped his son up into his arms. “I can hardly wait.” Then, his expression grew serious. “Thank you for helping me, Colleen. You’re a good teacher.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yes. You did. He’s happy. That’s all you.”

  She wanted to tell him no, that Toby had been born a happy child, but her throat was closing up. She needed to ask him not to praise her, for fear she might do something foolish and take it too much to heart. She could not start yearning for praise from Dillon.

  Finally, she found her voice. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I guess…it’s time for Toby’s story and bed. Then…I have some written material you might find helpful.” Which was such a stupid, inane thing to say, but he nodded, took Toby and headed for the rocking chair.

  Soon the sound of his deep, hypnotic voice could be heard in the kitchen where she had retreated so that Dillon could have some private time with his son.

  She was alone in a way she hadn’t been for the past three months. Maybe she’d never been this alone, Colleen thought. Because now she had experienced joy, a special kind of joy. And she craved it.

  Get over it, she told herself. Be happy with what you’ve been lucky enough to have been given. And stop moping. There’s still a lot to do today. And maybe this would be a good day for you to go back to eating at the bunkhouse. She was spending too much time alone with Dillon.

  But by the time the day was done and the lessons were over, Millie had gone to bed with a headache, the women in the bunkhouse had made their own dinner and she and Dillon were all that was left.

  “I’m not much of a cook, but I can manage something,” she told him when he came back from putting Toby in his crib.

  “I’d offer to do the honors, but I’ve never learned how.”

  “You’ve always had servants, haven’t you?”

  “It goes with the territory. My parents were too self-involved to cook. I was too busy. Fortunately, there are people who will cook for you if you pay them well.”

  She was pretty sure that he paid better than well. Before he’d come here she’d done her homework on him. She’d seen his name on one of those Web sites where people gossiped about which celebrities were lousy tippers at restaurants, and Dillon was a legendary highly generous tipper.

  “I can help,” he offered, but the thought of him being next to her while she cooked…after that kiss…well, she’d probably have a brain meltdown and slice off a finger or two.

  “Go. Ramble. Read. Do something,” she ordered.

  He smiled and wandered out of the room. In a minute, she heard the noise of glass doors opening and closing and went to see what the commotion was. He had opened the china cabinet and was setting the table.

  “You really are a rodeo queen.” He motioned to the trophies and ribbons he’d had to move to get at the dishes.

  “Well, everyone has to be good at one thing,” she said.

  He frowned at that. “I’m sure you’re good at many things.”

  Automatically the sound of her stepfather telling her that she was good for absolutely nothing, that she was ugly and useless and that he couldn’t believe someone as pretty as her mother had given birth to her, dropped in. She hadn’t allowed that thought for ages.

  “I was a great barrel racer back when I had the time to practice,” she said as if she was trying to force that opinion down someone’s throat.

  “I would have liked to have seen that.”

  “I—” Colleen’s words were cut off by the sound of Dillon’s cell phone ringing.

  He looked at the display. “Unfamiliar. Probably a wrong number, but…”

  He clicked it on. Colleen went back into the kitchen to give him privacy.

  “What’s this about, Lisa? Yes, I know you called earlier. You’re in Europe. Fine. Where am I? I’m with my son.”

  Lisa, Colleen thought. Maybe Lisa wanted the baby even though she hadn’t asked one question about him these past few months. Or maybe she wanted Dillon again. A woman like Lisa tended to get the things she wanted.

  With an extra dollop of force, Colleen slammed the pan onto the stove.

  “Lisa, we haven’t talked in a year. What exactly do you want now?” Dillon continued. “I see. Well, you do what you have to do.”

  Colleen took out another pan and banged it on the stove, too. She wanted to scream, “Tell her not to call you here.” But she didn’t.

  “I’d say this conversation is over,” Dillon said.

  Another pan. And another. And…

  Colleen sensed rather than saw Dillon come into the room. She whirled and looked at him. He was leaning casually against the far wall, as if he’d been there all day and could stand there for another entire day. He looked as if nothing at all had happened.

  “How can you be so calm?” she asked.

  “I’m not, but tonight I’m too tired to think and react logically, and at the moment I have no recourse other than to keep tabs on her whereabouts. I already knew she was in Europe before she told me.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She seemed to want to tell me that she’d been planning to come back to the States, but that she didn’t have enough cash to make the trip and I—”

  He paused.

  “What?”

  “How are we going to eat all this?”

  Colleen looked down and saw that she had taken at least six pans out of the cabinet. They were squeezed together on the big commercial stove.

  “I was angry,” she said. “Really angry.” She suddenly couldn’t help smiling. “If Lisa had been here, I would have…”

  “You would have what? Fed her to death?”

  Colleen’s smile grew. “Hey, I said that I wasn’t a good cook, but nobody ever died from my cooking.”

  “I’m oddly reassured.”

  But Colleen wasn’t. Standing here alone in the kitchen with Dillon, she felt vulnerable. He’d asked her earlier today what she was good at, but at this moment, staring at him across the room this way, all she could concentrate on were his lips. She wanted to be good at kissing Dillon Farraday. She wanted to forget that any adults other than the two of them even existed and she wanted him to kiss her again.

  And since that wasn’t going to happen, Colleen simply opened the refrigerator, pulled out a little of this and a little of that and hastily made two sandwiches. She handed one to Dillon.

  “I do happen to make a darn good sandwich,” she told him, trying to turn her thoughts back to the mundane.

  “Looks delicious. I’ll be sure to savor it.” Which certainly didn’t sound as mundane as it should have. In fac
t, when she woke in the middle of the night from a sound sleep, she realized that she had been dreaming that she and Dillon had been locked in a fierce embrace.

  Surely it was just the newness of having a man in the house. “Tomorrow I will be so over this phase,” she promised herself. No more thinking about Dillon beyond teaching him his duties.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DILLON awoke to the sound of hushed whispers in the other part of the house. That was Colleen’s low husky voice. Already he knew it. Already he was regretting having touched her…and yet not regretting it at all. For all her tough cowgirl ways, there was something very soft and vulnerable about her. And her skin was equally soft, her lips warm and womanly.

  And my mind is where it has no business being, he thought. There were too many things to do today, too many important things to tend to. And some things he needed to talk to Colleen about. Despite his seemingly calm demeanor last night, Lisa’s sudden reappearance worried him. Lisa, he’d discovered early in their marriage, had a reason for everything she did. She was good at masking her ambition behind a smiling facade but she was very ambitious. All his instincts told him she wanted money, and the tool she might use as leverage was a baby.

  All that had passed through his mind last night, but he’d put off telling Colleen because…maybe because he hadn’t wanted to upset her.

  That wasn’t like him. He had never shied from getting right to the tough stuff. When he’d been growing up, the only way to get his parents’ attention had been to aim right for the jugular and cut directly to the heart of whatever topic he’d needed to take care of. He’d been that way ever since and it had stood him well in business and in war. Even in his personal life, he had jumped right in, met and married Lisa within a matter of weeks. But with Colleen, who had erected barriers the minute she’d met him and didn’t have any qualms about making him abide by rules, he thought, looking at the offending door that separated him from her, he found himself wanting to ease into topics. With her shields up, she was hard to read at times, so going slowly was important. She tried to be tough. He knew she was strong in many ways, but he also sensed that she could be easily wounded. He could fail her, and he didn’t want to either hurt her or fail her, not when he was pretty darn sure that she’d had more than her share of men doing that kind of thing.

  But we still have to talk about things, he thought. Money and attention were Lisa’s weaknesses, he’d learned. And now that he was back on his feet and able to be approached about giving her more funding, Lisa was probably going to be trouble. He would need to protect Toby. Things could get ugly, and he didn’t want any of this spilling over onto Colleen. Unfortunately, given her affection for Toby, he wasn’t sure how to protect her. Anger that the woman he had once trusted enough to marry might betray him again and roll over Colleen in the process made him want to swear.

  Blowing out a breath, he rolled over, grabbed his clothes and got dressed. Then he padded to the door and gave a rap.

  The door opened and he found himself facing Millie holding Toby, who had milk on his face, partially running down his bare baby chest and trickling into his diaper. The baby perked up and made happy smacking noises when he saw Dillon.

  Dillon’s heart flipped right over, and he held out his arms. Millie handed over Toby.

  “Looks like breakfast was a winner,” Dillon said, giving his child a kiss. “It also looks like I’ll be taking my first lesson on giving you a bath.”

  Millie chuckled, but he wondered why she was the one feeding Toby. Colleen had told him only yesterday how much she liked feeding Toby his breakfast.

  “Where’s Colleen?” he asked.

  Millie hesitated.

  “Is this one of those ‘none of my business, because it has nothing to do with me’ occasions?” he asked.

  No. The answer was clearly no, even though Millie didn’t speak. Her hesitation told him that Colleen’s absence did have something to do with him. Did this have something to do with that thing about the car Colleen had mentioned yesterday? And if he asked, would he get an answer?

  Fire fast and catch her off guard, he thought. She’ll either tell you something or think you’re totally crazy.

  He smiled down at his son, then quickly turned toward Millie. “Is there any chance there are visitors coming today?” he asked with as much of a frown as he could muster with a baby pulling on the button of his shirt and slobbering on his arm as Toby bent over and tried to chew without teeth. “Colleen seemed to think my car might bring some…um…crazed fans out of the woodwork.”

  Millie’s eyes opened wide. “Now, you’re not to worry. As soon as the first man showed up a few minutes ago, Colleen headed down to the entrance to make sure no one tried to sneak up here.”

  “She’s guarding the Ferrari?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say guarding. Just telling everyone to back off. People are curious, but Colleen says that you and Toby are our guests, you’re our responsibility and she doesn’t want those men bothering you when you and Toby need some quality bonding time. Jokes might be made. Or they might try to coerce you to let them drive your car. In other words, she feels that our neighbors aren’t minding their manners. But don’t worry. She has her shotgun, and Colleen hardly ever misses.”

  Dillon blinked.

  “Dillon, I’m just kidding, hon,” Millie drawled. “Not about Colleen hardly ever missing, but about her having her gun. Colleen doesn’t need a gun, but she is down there reading the riot act to the locals who came out to poke around and ask you nosy questions.”

  Which was totally wrong. She had done him a favor loving and caring for his child for the past three months, and now she was teaching him how to be a good father despite the fact that he was taking Toby away from her. Last night she had patiently sat down with him and given him a crash course on car seats and other safety issues. She had shepherded him through his first diaper change and assured him that Toby would let him know if he got the thing on too tight.

  Dillon looked down at his son’s milky face and gave him a kiss. “I’ll be back,” he said and he held Toby out to Millie. “Can you man the baby while I go give Colleen a hand?”

  “You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be a—”

  “Don’t say guest. Everyone keeps saying that. That’s an order.”

  Millie shrugged. “Sorry. We’re just trying to be hospitable.”

  “And I appreciate it. But things will run more smoothly if you simply accept the fact that I’m used to taking charge and being responsible for my own actions and welfare. I’m not good at being a taker. At least I hope not. Now, where will I find her?”

  “Probably down where the entrance to the Applegate is. Colleen won’t stop the fishermen from going through, but she’ll want to make sure that no one decides to wander up to the house to snoop around.”

  He nodded. “Toby?”

  “Of course,” Millie said. “And…thank you. It’s nice that there’s some man who doesn’t automatically assume that Colleen should be capable of doing everything. People have always taken advantage of the fact that she’s a doer. She takes on too much. Not that I should complain. If she hadn’t been the kind of person she is and taken us in, who knows what would have happened to us, but…yeah, I’m glad you’re not simply taking her for granted the way everyone in town seems to.”

  Interesting. Dillon was certainly going to find out more about that topic when he got a few minutes, but for now, it seemed that Colleen was off fighting dragons for him. He was grateful, but he just wasn’t a dependent sort of guy. Couldn’t ever be.

  As he started out the door, Millie called to him. “The fastest way to the entrance is straight across the south pasture and through the orchard. If you take the road, it’s a lot farther.”

  “Thank you,” he said as he took off toward the entrance. Despite the uneven ground and his uncooperative leg, he moved as swiftly as he could, given that he had left his cane behind. He wasn’t sure what this was all about, but he knew
this much. If he weren’t here, Colleen wouldn’t have to take care of the extra work of making sure he wasn’t “bothered.” Which was crazy, given the fact that he was bothered and hot and all kinds of attracted to her every time she got close to him. A man wanting to ask him about his car? Or even watching him struggle with a diaper? That was easy stuff. Not wanting to touch Colleen? Far too difficult.

  When he entered the orchard, the first thing he noticed was a striking sculpture of metal and what looked like broken bits of glass. It glittered in the sun, the glass tinkling in the breeze. Other bits of colored glass hung from the trees amidst the glossy leaves, the budding fruit and the gnarled branches. It was a bit like a living art gallery, but Dillon didn’t stop, because midway through the orchard he heard Colleen’s voice.

  “Harve, now I know you didn’t come here to fish. You only fish on Saturdays and the occasional Sunday. If you’re here during the week, it’s to spy on Mr. Farraday.”

  “He’s rich. He’s probably used to people staring at him.”

  “I don’t think that anyone ever gets used to people staring at them and asking nosy questions. Besides, where he’s from people probably don’t make him feel like some sort of bug under a microscope. There are lots of rich people in Chicago. Lots of interesting cars, too.”

  “Oh, come on, Colleen. We’re not going to bite him.”

  “No, you’re going to bug him. The man just got home after being in the hospital, he’s still recuperating and he wants some alone time with his son while they get used to each other. He doesn’t need to become an oddity on display. And I don’t want you asking him any questions about Lisa, either. I especially don’t want you doing that, and after what I heard in town yesterday, I know that you will, so don’t tell me otherwise. Rob, is that you? Don’t you have a job?”

  “It’s my break time.”

  “Well, break time’s over. Now, all of you go on back to town. Sooner or later Dillon will show up, and then and only then, if he wants, he’ll answer your questions. The Applegate should be a sanctuary, though. Off-limits.”