Cook County Cowboys Read online

  “Bacon and eggs.” Chance’s grin spread into a dazzling smile.

  Kenzie frowned. “Bacon and eggs?”

  “It’s what I like for breakfast.” He shrugged and made his way up the porch. “Give me a couple good meals a day and a bed in that bunkhouse and we’ll call it even.”

  She blinked as he stared down at her, grinning, clearly pleased with himself.

  “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart-atta—” His grin faltered. “I mean as a serious situation.”

  Kenzie pursed her lips. “So you heard Daddy died from a heart attack while on top of that she-devil.”

  Chance’s eyes grew wide as saucers and a little choking noise rumbled in his throat. “Uh…I knew about the heart attack, not about the…” He crossed his index fingers together and Kenzie lightly smacked his arm.

  “I can’t believe I’m letting you in my kitchen again.”

  “I can’t believe I’m brave enough to face it,” he responded as he followed her in the house.

  Kenzie went to the sink and washed her hands before crossing over to the cabinets. She pulled out a pair of frying pans and turned. Chance stood in place, his eyes zeroed on the chair he’d sat in while extending his crude invitation ten years earlier. He looked up and locked onto her gaze to share a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  Deciding a few minutes of it was more than she could take, Kenzie headed over to the refrigerator. “How do you like your eggs?” she asked, all the while praying she didn’t regret letting him back in her house…where he would surely start the journey back into her heart.

  Chapter Four

  Kenzie put away the last article of folded laundry and dusted her hands together. Finished.

  It had been a long time since she’d been able to really get the house good and cleaned. So busy with making sure the animals were fed and properly vaccinated, and doing whatever she could to keep the property from falling apart, she’d let the housework fall to the wayside. The only exceptions being the kitchen and main bathroom. She couldn’t eat in a dirty kitchen and there was no way she’d ever take a chance on showing a guest into a filthy bathroom. It was a precaution she was glad she took considering Chance’s surprise appearance on her property.

  She would have died of embarrassment if he’d entered her home and thought it was a pigsty. “The man has all but said I’m just a pretty face he’s never even thought of loving, and yet I still care so much what he thinks about me.” She rolled her eyes at her foolishness and moved on to the next task on her cleaning list.

  Grabbing a mop, bucket and cleanser from the utility room, she entered the kitchen where she’d managed to enjoy a somewhat friendly, if not awkward, breakfast with the one man she’d thought would never step over the threshold again. She’d prayed that he would, though, if only to see his beautiful stormy eyes again.

  Kenzie chuckled as she filled the bucket with water and soap before lowering it to the floor and dropping the mop inside. After Chance had left that day, she’d torn up all his pictures and then moved on to her diary, where she intended to tear out every entry that mentioned him. She would have had to destroy the whole thing, but there were entries in there she just couldn’t bring herself to touch.

  Chance was the one who’d taught her how to throw a punch when the school bully kept picking on her, the one who’d held her for hours the night her mother died, and the one who’d saved her from being mauled by a bull. He may have thought of her as a bratty little kid with a silly crush, but he’d always been there for her when she needed him, just like he was now.

  Kenzie sighed as she dunked the mop in the sudsy water and ran it over the linoleum floor. She hadn’t been able to rip apart those treasured memories in her diary, and she still couldn’t erase them from her mind. Chance cared about her, even if it wasn’t the same way she cared about him. If she truly loved him, she should want him to be happy. And he clearly indicated he wanted to start a family—just not with her.

  Her heart felt heavy, but she knew it was time to let go. She was twenty-eight years old and had never been able to move beyond kissing in any of her relationships, not even with Will, and they’d been together a good while. She’d been called cold, frigid and a tease. She’d even been called a closet lesbian, but she couldn’t make herself warm to anyone’s advances. Of all the men she’d dated, none of them sparked a fire in her like Chance Masters, and all that man had to do was breathe. “But he doesn’t love me that way.”

  She frowned and finished with the floor then put the mop back in the bucket, wondering why the man had so much control over her emotions. Why did she want him so bad? Because he didn’t want her? Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. She still remembered the hard length of him as he’d kissed her so passionately that day. He’d wanted her…but only until she mentioned the L-word. She couldn’t do it. He had to love her heart, body and soul. One out of three just wouldn’t do.

  But then again, if he only wanted her physically, why would he offer his help on the ranch? Was his guilt over that incident really that great?

  Kenzie peered out the kitchen window and saw Chance’s truck was gone. Had he left? No, there he was coming out of the barn. Wait. Chance was five-eleven and muscular, not five-eight and portly. Who was on her property now?

  She glanced at the clock, noting four hours had passed since breakfast—had she really needed that much time to get the house in order?—and stepped outside to see what was going on now. Daisy lay at the bottom of the porch, watching the portly man in jeans, T-shirt, and Stetson haul a paint can around the side of the barn, not bothering to sound an alarm. “Dog, you are one worthless mutt.”

  “G’mornin’, ma’am,” the portly man greeted as she neared.

  “Jimmy Seeley?” she asked in recognition.

  The man nodded before removing his hat and tossing it so it landed over a corner post of the fence. “Yes, ma’am.” He bent down and started situating painting materials.

  Kenzie raised an eyebrow, wondering why one of her father’s former workers was back on the property. “What are you doing here, Jimmy? You quit.”

  He frowned. “Your new foreman hired me to help with the fixing up of this place.” He narrowed his eyes on her. “Paid me in advance, too, so I know I won’t end up working for nothing.”

  She rubbed her eyes, but the man was still there when she reopened them. A feeling she’d been worked over crept into her stomach. “The new foreman, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Would this new foreman happen to be Chance Masters?”

  Jimmy looked up at her with brows scrunched, his expression indicating her line of questioning was a little odd. “Uh, yes ma’am. Your foreman, Chance Masters.”

  “That son-of-a-bitch.” She ignored Jimmy’s wide eyes. “Where is he now?”

  “Working on the outer fence. Took his truck up the side road.”

  Kenzie headed back in the house to grab her keys and raced out to climb into her own truck. It seemed she needed to have a little chat with her new foreman.

  ****

  The hot midday sun beat down on Chance’s bare back as he rolled another section of the chain-link fence to the next post and removed one of the nails from his mouth. The sound of an approaching truck caught his attention. He looked up to see Kenzie’s blue Ranger crawl to a stop along the side of the access road. The woman who stepped out didn’t look too happy, judging by the tight pucker of her mouth and grooves along her forehead. What had he done now? Chance heaved a breath and brought the hammer down on the head of the nail, securing the fence.

  “Chance Masters, just what the hell do you—oh, Chance!”

  He turned to see her staring at the newest scars, mouth open wide as her hand slowly rose to cover it. Her gaze had locked onto the one on his back first, where the tip of the bull’s horn had exited his body. Her already wide eyes watered when she saw the larger one two inches to the right of his navel.

  He looked down and tried to see
it through her eyes. “Sorry,” he muttered after removing the nails from his mouth. “I know it’s pretty ugly looking. I’d put my shirt back on, but it’s in the bed of my truck.” He jerked his head to indicate where he’d left the truck a little ways up the road.

  “Nothing about you is ugly.” Her wide eyes narrowed as they connected with his, before she looked back down at the scar. She slowly stepped forward and reached out her fingertips to gently touch the damaged area of his abdomen.

  He instantly went hard.

  “What happened?”

  He pulled away from her touch. “What? You live in Cook County, gossip capitol of the world, and didn’t hear?” He put the nails back in his mouth and turned away before she could notice the prominent bulge in his jeans. Dropping down to his haunches, he nailed the middle of the section of chain-link he’d unrolled to the center of the post.

  “I don’t really associate much with folks who knew you. I don’t really associate much at all with anyone if I can help it.”

  “You used to be a little social butterfly.” He lined up the nail for the bottom of the fence and hammered it in. “When did that change?”

  “After you left.” She shrugged when he glanced up at her. “People talk. You left town, and unlike your normal routine, you didn’t come back. It got to the point I couldn’t go anywhere without people staring at me. Some woman you’d messed around with had mentioned how the little Calhoun girl kept throwing herself at you and suggested you’d caved and left town out of guilt over your actions.”

  “Effectively tarnishing both our names.” Chance gripped the hammer tighter. He knew just who’d said it. Jeanine Loutner. She never could stand Kenzie, and had made several comments about ‘the little Calhoun brat.’ He lined up another nail. “I’m sorry, Kenz.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Well, actually it kind of was, considering you messed around with really worthless women.”

  He laughed and continued to work, easing Kenzie aside as he rolled the fencing to the next post. “Yeah, well you never took my advice on choosing friends so don’t expect me to apologize for my choice in women. How many illegitimate children does your friend, Stacy, have now?”

  Kenzie’s lips twitched. “I lost count.”

  “I bet.” He shook his head, recalling the times he’d come back to the bunkhouse to find the loose teenager had snuck into his bed. He’d always promptly thrown her out on her rear, but he knew there were men who probably hadn’t.

  “So, what happened to you?”

  Chance took a deep breath and forced the image of the bull bearing down on him out of his head. “Tussled with a bull and got my ass kicked.”

  “And I suppose you’re stubborn enough to get back in the arena with one.” She spoke the words angrily.

  “No, I’ve hung my spurs up for good.” He moved on to the next post. “Grab that can of nails, would ya?”

  He lined up the fence and waited for her. “Just give me a bunch.”

  “So you can put them in your mouth and get tetanus? I don’t think so.” She handed him one nail.

  He took it with a grin. “The nails aren’t rusty. I won’t catch anything.”

  “Aren’t you sore? Should you be doing labor with that wound?”

  “The wound is healed,” he advised. “I’m not handicapped and perfectly capable of doing anything I’ve ever done before.” Except getting back on a raging bull. He broke out into a sweat any time he thought about it.

  “It must have hurt like hell.”

  “It wasn’t as painful as the hospital bill,” he joked. “When it happened, I didn’t feel a thing. I guess the adrenaline was pumping so high I was just numb, but the moment I looked down…” He shook his head and fought off the urge to tremble under the chill snaking through his body. “It’s not something I’ll take a chance on again.”

  “I wish you hadn’t taken the chance to begin with.” She shuddered as she handed him another nail. “I’ve always worried about you out there with those beasts.”

  “I’m fine.” He took the nail from her and hammered it into the bottom of the post. There wasn’t a lot he could say. He didn’t have the grades for college, definitely hadn’t had the money. Like most of the folks in Cook County, he’d grown up on ranching, though his family hadn’t had one of their own. He’d worked on them most of his life though and took to bull riding naturally. He wasn’t the smartest guy, and didn’t talk well with snooty society types, but he knew cattle. If there was any way he was going to get a decent amount of money to start a family right, he’d figured it was going to be on the back of a bull, so he’d done what he had to do. Now he had some money saved for a ranch of his own, and he had the knowledge to raise a healthy herd of cattle. He planned to get started on his own ranch just as soon as he helped Kenzie with hers.

  They worked together in silence for another five minutes before Chance decided to open his big mouth and hope he didn’t regret it. “Um, Kenzie, not that I want to fight, but you seemed upset when you drove up here. Was there something you wanted to say?”

  Her eyes darkened. “Yes, as a matter of fact there was, er, is.” She held back the can of nails when he reached for one. “I hear I have a new foreman.”

  Chance nodded and tried again for another nail, only to have her pull the can farther out of reach. “What?”

  “I don’t recall hiring a foreman. I agreed to let you help me out and now there’s some man I don’t remember hiring painting my barn, and you’re rolling out a fence I don’t recall buying either. What’s going on?”

  Chance made a quick grab and snatched up a nail, turning to hammer it to the post before answering. “This place needs a lot of work. I’m good, but I’m only one man, so I hired some help. You need a good fence up here so we can let the herd graze in this field. I didn’t find any supplies so I bought some. It’s not that big of a deal, and I haven’t spent any of your money so I don’t see why you’re upset.”

  “You’re spending your money to fix my ranch and you don’t see why I’m upset?” She let out a rough almost-laugh. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve grown up a lot since you left.”

  Oh, he’d noticed. She’d been a pretty little thing when he’d left. Now, she was stunning. “Your point?”

  “This is my ranch, and although I don’t really know how to do all the work that needs doing, I should still know what’s going on with my own property. I should still be in charge. I’m not the same silly little girl who followed you around the ranch.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Will you ever look at me and not see a bratty little kid?”

  “I don’t see a bratty little kid when I look at you, Kenz. I never did.”

  “Yeah, you did.” She smiled self-deprecatingly. “Heck, you even tanned my hide once.”

  He grimaced at the memory. The little fool had let some friends talk her into tipping over a cow, and the bull had escaped from its pen, determined to mow her down. After rescuing her, and finally getting the bull back into its pen, he’d turned her over his knee and spanked her twelve-year-old butt for giving him the scare of his life. “You nearly gave me a frigging heart attack that night, not to mention this.” He tapped the scar on his shoulder then grinned softly. “I know you’re a grown woman, Kenzie, and I know you’re smart and perfectly capable of running this ranch once you learn how to.”

  “So why are you spending your own money and doing things without telling me?”

  “You need a foreman, and while I’m here, it might as well be me.” He lifted his hat and rubbed his arm across his forehead to mop up the sweat there. “You already know people around here like to talk. I figured I’d put the word out that I was the foreman over here before people started assuming I was shacking up with you or something. I bought the fence at a good cost and hired Seeley to help out because the man really needs work. I plan on making this ranch highly profitable again. I’ll get whatever I put in here back without problem.”

&nb
sp; She seemed to think over what he’d said and nodded. “Okay, but keep me in the loop of what’s going on. For a moment there it seemed you were…I don’t know, going behind my back. Don’t. If something needs to be purchased, it’ll be with funds from the ranch.”

  “Fine.” He bit down on the side of his jaw to keep from saying anything more. How could she think he’d go behind her and do something underhanded to get the ranch? He’d offered to buy it earlier, but that was only because she was talking of selling, and he’d wanted to make sure she knew how much to sell it for so she didn’t get taken. He hadn’t come here this morning to gain possession of the ranch, and he certainly wouldn’t scam or cheat her. Had he obliterated all her faith in him?

  “You know you can trust me, Kenzie.”

  “I do trust you, but I also know you don’t believe in me. I’m not a child anymore and I don’t appreciate being treated like one.” She folded her arms. “I’ve been mucking out stalls and handling everything else on this ranch all by myself. I’ve even made sure the cattle have bred. Maybe not as effectively as you would have since I had to pay someone to come in a few times to get it done. You’ve probably noticed a few cows are about ready to pop.” She shrugged. “It just got too hard and I kind of let it go, but with your help I can get it back on track…as long as you don’t treat me like a little kid who doesn’t know anything at all.”

  If she’d meant her little spiel to make him feel bad, it worked. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to step on your toes or insinuate that you can’t handle the ranch. I just want to get things back in good shape as soon as possible. You were talking about selling and looked a little hopeless. I couldn’t stand it.”

  A little smile played across her mouth. “Well, thank you for being concerned. Just try not to coddle me so much. I could get used to it.”

  And he could get used to doing it. Funny, now that the young woman before him was twenty-eight, the ten year age difference between them didn’t really seem like anything at all. But he didn’t deserve her. He’d hurt her, even if he’d had good intentions. Though she’d accepted his apology, she obviously still didn’t trust him, and most likely hadn’t fully forgiven him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”