A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR

Ghostwriter Samantha Monroe has just arrived in Forever, Texas, to turn a remarkable woman’s two-hundred-year-old journals into a personal memoir. The Rodriguez clan welcomes her with open arms…and awakens Sam’s fierce yearning to be part of a family. But it’s the eldest son—intensely private rancher Mike Rodriguez—who awakens her passion.

Hiring Sam to preserve his great-great-great-grandmother’s story for future generations was Mike’s inspiration. He just didn’t realize how much he’d want her to be part of his family’s continuing saga. Delving into the past has made Sam hungry for a future—with Mike. The next move is up to him—if he doesn’t make it, the best woman he’s ever met just might waltz back out of his life forever!

“What part of ‘I don’t lie’ is unclear to you?”

It was apparent that his supply of patience was seriously running low.

Sam blew out a breath. “No part,” she freely admitted. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand what Mike was claiming—she just didn’t know whether she actually believed him. “I just never met anyone who didn’t, let’s say, ‘bend the truth’ once in a while when it was to their advantage.”

“Well, now you have.” He gave her a penetrating look that was meant to intimidate her. It annoyed him that it failed and yet it was also the start of grudging respect for her feistiness. “Are you going to argue with me all the way into town, or are you finally going to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and just accept the fact that you lucked out?” he asked.

A few choice hot words rose to her lips, but she managed to keep them under wraps. Someday, though, she promised herself, she and this man were going to have it out—and she would put him in his place the way no one else apparently ever did.

Dear Reader,

I cannot remember when I first became fascinated by the various cultures of the first inhabitants of North America. I’ve been told that it seems to be a hallmark of foreign-born citizens to embrace Westerns. Me, I embraced the underdog in those Westerns. I was into learning about Native Americans way before it was popular, at a time when they were still known as Indians and no one realized that Custer provoked the confrontation at Little Big Horn because he wanted to be seen as a brave hero by the country. His goal was to be elected president the way Grant had been.

But I digress (occupational habit). When I was in fifth grade, I read a book called White Squaw, about a wife and mother who was kidnapped by Indians and eventually returned to her family. That story has stayed with me all these years. I thought it might be interesting if Mike Rodriguez decided to have someone organize and transcribe his great-great-great-grandmother’s journals so his own grandchildren would be firmly connected to their roots. As luck would have it, Mike’s ancestor was kidnapped by the natives of the area. And, as luck would also have it, the ghostwriter whom he hires to create a book from the journals is a widow searching for roots herself. By the time she has organized the journals into a coherent whole, she winds up capturing Mike’s heart and he hers. Happy endings all around. (What? You were expecting maybe not?)

As always I thank you for reading. I take none of you for granted and hope I have succeeded in entertaining you. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

All my best,

Marie

A Small Town

Thanksgiving

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Ferrarella, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Nik,

Who Finally

Got It All Together

And Got It

Right

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Prologue

The day began like all the days that had come before. It was too hot with too much to do and none of it to my liking. I was bored and yearning for excitement, for an adventure that would take me away from trying to coax a bit of green, a bit of growth out of the parched, dry ground that destroyed more than it yielded.

I was young and wanted to live before I was old and dried up before my time, like Abuela and Tia Josefina. Tia and Abuela came to live with Papa after Mama died. Papa said she died bringing me into the world. I have no way of knowing if that is true since she was gone by the time I started to remember things. But Papa does not lie, so I suppose it must be so.

Frustrated with my futile efforts in the garden, I went to fetch water from the stream that ran on our property. Anything to get away from the boredom and the hard work, if only for a moment.

The stream is always cool and I can take my shoes and stockings off so I can feel the water against my sweating skin.

Sometimes, when I go to the stream, I pretend I am a princess, held against my will, waiting for a prince to come rescue me and take me away to his castle in the mountains. I pretend so hard that once or twice, I thought I heard the whinny of a horse and the sound of hooves against the ground.

I am disappointed when I look to see that the sound belongs to my imagination. Or to a stray mustang running closer than he should.

There are horses here that have no masters, that run where they want to and are freer than I am. I envy them. Or I did before...

But since that afternoon, I find myself longing for the boredom of home, for the tedious labor of scratching the ground, coaxing life from the hard, dry soil. For the feeling of triumph the few times I succeeded. When you lose something, that is the time when you realize that you really wanted it and did not have the sense to value it when it was yours.

But that day, when I went to fetch the water and dreamed of princes searching for their princess, the sound of horses existed outside my imagination. They existed in the real world.

The sound belonged to the Indian ponies that came galloping at me. Indian ponies mounted with riders. When I saw them coming, I ran as if the very devil was after me because he was. Abuela and Tia and Papa all warned me to be careful, that the Mescalero-Apaches would just as soon kill us than look at us. Papa said that they thought we invaded their land. When I asked him if we had, he told me that we were making it better, but that they did not understand that. I think they do not understand that because we do not speak their language and they do not speak ours.

I was swift of foot and could beat my brothers whenever we ran, but I was not swifter than an Indian and one of the riders caught me and picked me up as easily as I could pick up one of Tia’s baby chicks.

I begged him to put me down and the rider yelled something to another rider and then at me, but I could not understand.

For the first time in my fourteen years, I thought about dying for I was more frightened than I could ever recall being.

I prayed for God to welcome me and to make my dying less painful.

* * *

LETTING OUT A long breath, Miguel Rodriguez stared at the faded ink in the worn book he had just discovered and been reading for the past half hour. The pages of the book were so dry they fairly crackled beneath his fingers as he turned them. Afraid they might tear, he was handling them as gently as humanly possible for a man with hands the size and thickness of leather catchers’ mitts.

The book was one of half a dozen or more such tattered, cloth-covered journals he had just uncovered in his attic.

He had come up to the attic driven by a sudden desire to put his house in order figuratively and literally, something he’d felt compelled to do since suffering a heart attack earlier in the year. The unexpected event had unceremoniously brought him to the brink of his existence and taught him how truly fragile life was—as if he really needed that lesson since his beloved wife had passed on all these years ago.

But with his sons Miguel, Jr. and Ramon caring for his ranch and his other four offspring volunteering sporadically whenever they had the time, Miguel found he had a lot of free time to himself now. Never one who could handle too much free time well, he decided to get busy and turned his attention to things that had long been neglected.

Things like the attic, where nonessential items far too precious to part with at the moment were sent to await a verdict about their future.

Unfortunately, “out of sight, out of mind” seemed the golden rule for dealing with the attic and he had forgotten about over half the things that had been stored up there over the years. Some he barely remembered even after having spent the past few days browsing through the storage boxes.

This particular box, however, contained the journals that he couldn’t remember ever having looked through before.

Vaguely, as he thought back now, Miguel thought he recalled his mother giving the battered old container to him more than fifty years ago, saying something about passing it on to the next generation to preserve. His mother had mentioned that they were stories that had been written by his great-great-great-grandmother, Marguerite Perez-Rodriguez.

At the time, he now remembered, he’d thought that his mother was talking about short stories, that the box contained some sort of a creative writing endeavor attempted by his long-departed ancestor.

But looking at the journal in his hand now, he was beginning to suspect that perhaps his mother had meant that they were memoirs or recollections from his great-great-great-grandmother’s youth, not some sort of stories she had made up.

Sitting here now, a lantern turned up to its maximum capacity to banish the darkness from that one corner of the attic, Miguel ran his hand along the journal’s tattered spine with reverence, as if he was touching something very precious.

For all the world, he felt as if he had just stepped into the past. A past that connected him to his family, to his roots and, in an odd sort of way, to the future and to the children who had yet to come.

His unborn grandchildren.

An idea suddenly came to him, taking hold of his imagination. The more he thought about it, the more pleased he became.

But if this was going to happen, he needed help.

Miguel sat there in the stillness and the aging dust, trying to think of who he might turn to with this, who could advise him who he should seek out in order to get started on this journey into the Rodriguez past.

And then he smiled as a name occurred to him.

For once, it wasn’t one of his children.

Chapter One

Miguel Rodriguez Jr. referred to as “Mike” by everyone but his father, frowned as he sat in the cluttered room that his father referred to as his study, listening to Miguel Sr. tell him about his latest plan, the one involving not the ranch but the ranch house.

Mike could feel his frown deepening with each word that his father uttered.

When the older Rodriguez paused because he was either finally finished or—more likely—just taking a breath, Mike saw his opportunity to register and give voice to his displeasure at this newest turn of events.

“You know, Dad, this keeps up and whenever the occasional tourist passes through Forever, asking where the local hotel is, people’ll just start sending them in this direction.”

Six months ago had seen his father inviting Valentine Jones, a movie location scout who thought their property would be perfect for her studio’s next film, to stay at their house for part of the shoot. That had turned out fairly well, especially for Rafe, but that had been a fluke. The thought of another stranger living here at the house left Mike cold.

He didn’t really mind strangers, but he wanted them in his own terms. And he did value his privacy—a great deal.

“Why are we putting up this person again?” he grumbled at his father.

“Because, as you so wisely pointed out, my beloved oldest son,” Miguel said expansively, rocking back in his chair, “there is no hotel here in Forever. The woman who has agreed to go over those diaries and journals that I found in the attic needs to stay somewhere while she works.”

Mike supposed what his father said was logical, but as far as he was concerned, it was also logical not to get in the habit of welcoming strangers with open arms. At times it was hard enough having not just four brothers and a sister, but their various spouses, moving through the house. Adding an unfamiliar face to the mix was flirting with the proverbial straw that had brought such grief to the camel and his back.

“Never said she didn’t,” Mike pointed out. “But why does it have to be here?” His dark eyes narrowed as he repeated a well-known fact. “I don’t like strangers traipsing through the ranch.”

“Once you meet her, she will no longer be a stranger,” Miguel told his son, echoing an optimistic, upbeat philosophy he strongly believed in. “And since she will be working on your great-great-great-grandmother’s journals, it is only right that she stay here. That way, if she has any questions,” Miguel explained, “she will not have far to go for an answer.”

Mike knew it was futile to point out that there were such magic devices as telephones and their brethren that could easily handle any questions that might come up. Instead, he went on record and voiced a lament.

“You know, Dad, I liked it a lot better when we were all struggling to keep one jump ahead of the bill collectors and you didn’t have time for any fancy projects that had us holding an open house. What’s next?” Mike asked. “We turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast?”

His oldest had a decent heart, but Miguel Jr. had never been accused of being overly friendly. For the most part, he kept to himself. He could be counted on in an emergency, but had a tendency to disappear when all was going well. He wasn’t one, Miguel thought now, who liked to stop and smell the roses. His first-born was more inclined to walk right over the roses because as far as he was concerned, the flowers didn’t serve any practical purpose.

“Having Valentine here did not turn out so badly, now, did it?” Miguel asked, tilting his head slightly in order to look into his son’s face. He was hoping for a glimmer of a smile. He saw none.

“We lucked out that time,” Mike countered with a careless shrug. And by his reckoning, they had run out of luck. “She married Rafe and they’re happy, I get that. But Val had said that she wasn’t going to stay for more than a week. From everything that you just said, this one is going be moving in with us until we all grow old and die,” he grumbled.

“She’s not going to be here long,” Miguel protested, “just until she has your great-great—”

Mike’s hand shot up as if to push the vocalization of the woman’s full lineage back. His patience was at a premium and that premium didn’t include having to listen to an endless repetition of the word great.

“Please, Dad,” Mike begged, “just say G-4 or something like that. I’m well aware that she was really ‘great.’”

Always willing to do what he could within reason to humor his children, Miguel obliged. “Just until she organizes G-4’s journals so that she can transcribe them all into a single book.”

Mike had glanced at the journals the first night his father had brought the dusty, dilapidated box down from the attic, bursting with excitement over what he’d found. As far as he was concerned, what his father had so dismissively described as organizing probably involved an enormous amount of work. But maybe he was wrong. He was more than willing to find out that he was.

“And how long is that going to take?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know, son,” Miguel confessed honestly. “This is all new to me.”

Mike stifled a sigh. Just as he thought. “Exactly,” he said out loud. “How do you know she won’t be taking advantage of your hospitality? She might decide to stick around endlessly.” The last thing they needed, he thought, was a pseudo-intellectual lolling around, spouting a few learned words and then withdrawing into her room to live off them for another day.

Damn it, he wasn’t going to let his father get duped this way, Mike thought.

“How do you know she will be?” his father countered innocently.

His father’s heart was just too good and too big, Mike silently lamented. “Because it’s human nature to take advantage of people.”

“Forever is filled with people,” Miguel reminded his son. “And they,” he went on proudly, “do not take advantage of one another.”

For the most part, Mike knew he couldn’t argue with that. But that kind of behavior was not the norm. The world was filled with con artists and scammers. Their little town was the exception to the rule. “Forever is an unusual place.”

“And maybe, once she is here, this woman will be just as ‘unusual’ as everyone else in Forever,” his father theorized. “Give the woman a chance, boy,” Miguel requested. His eyes washed over his son, silently entreating Mike to lighten up. Not for the sake of the young woman who hadn’t arrived yet, but for his own sake. Miguel felt that his son was missing out on so much being like this. “You have to be more open-hearted, Miguel.”

Mike shook his head. In his opinion, his father’s heart was much too open. “And just where did you get this woman’s name?” he asked.

Ordinarily, along with the question, he would have thrown in a warning about using anything that came off an online site because as far as he was concerned, his father was incredibly innocent for a man his age. But his father didn’t even have a nodding acquaintance with a computer or the internet and no desire to strike up any sort of friendship with either anytime soon. So the idea of his father surfing through want ads was just incredibly ludicrous.

Thank God for small favors, Mike thought wryly.

But the question still remained: Where had he found this woman’s name?

“Olivia recommended her,” Miguel answered simply.

Mike stared at his father, almost dumbfounded. “Olivia?”

Miguel nodded his dark head. “The sheriff’s wife.”

Mike closed his eyes for a second, searching for strength. “I know who Olivia is, Dad. I’m just surprised that she would condone something like this.” As far as he knew, Olivia was a private person. Perhaps not as private as he was, but relatively close. Why would she just give him someone’s name like that? What did she know about this woman? And who could vouch for this so-called journal organizer?

“She didn’t just condone it,” Miguel informed him proudly. “She encouraged it. And,” he said with emphasis, saving the best for last, “she thinks my idea of passing this book on to my grandchildren when it is finished is a very good idea.”

A sense of defeat pressed against his chest. Mike could see that his father had made up his mind about this. He knew that once that happened, there was no swaying the old man. Miguel Rodriguez was an easy-going, loving man most of the time. He could also be as stubborn as hell once he set his mind on something, Mike thought with an inward sigh.

Granted, the ranch was supposed to belong to all of them equally, but it was an unspoken rule that Miguel got the final say in all matters should there be a division of opinion. After all, this had been Miguel Rodriguez’s ranch before he had decided to divide the land among all of them. It had been his way of thanking his children for pitching in to save the ranch from its creditors and the bank that sought to foreclose on it. Had they not all found some sort of work and handed every penny they earned over to him, the ranch would currently belong to another family, not theirs.

Throwing in the towel, Mike decided he needed to get the particulars nailed down so that at least he knew how long he had to put up with this so-called intellectual’s invasion.

He pinned his father with a look. “Exactly how long is Miss Organizer going to be here?”

Miguel had always tried to be truthful with his children, never answering something for the sake of closing the subject if he actually didn’t know. “That depends.”

“On what?” Mike’s voice rose with a touch of indignation. “On whether or not she likes getting a free ride?”

Mike knew for a fact that his father’s hospitality was boundless, that whoever stayed here on the ranch wouldn’t be allowed to contribute a dime toward their keep and while his family was far from financially hurting these days, he didn’t like the idea of his father being taken advantage of by some little two-bit opportunist, either.

Miguel gave no indication that his son’s tone annoyed him. “On how long it will take her to organize those journals and diaries in such a way that she can use them to create a memoir that does your great-great—that does G-4 justice,” Miguel amended.

Mike didn’t bother stifling his sigh of displeasure this time. “In other words, she’s going to become a permanent member of the household.”

“Only if you or Ramon marry her,” his father countered innocently. “The way Rafe married Valentine.”

Or if you marry her, Mike thought, keeping the response, which he meant more than half-seriously, to himself. It had been a long time since his mother had died and there were times Mike worried that his father was ripe for the picking by some enterprising little gold digger.

“Well, I certainly won’t,” Mike said out loud, “and Ray is still half pining after that starlet who was here while they were filming that movie in Forever. Although he does fall in and out of love like some people change socks,” Mike acknowledged, “so maybe you’d better warn this literary cleaning lady that she might just want to stay where she is instead of coming to the Casa de Rodriguez,” Mike concluded.

His father surprised him by shaking his head sadly and asking, “When did it happen, mi hijo?”

Mike looked at his father, confused. “When did what happen?”

“When did you become this old man?” Miguel asked. “These are the years when you are supposed to be young and foolish, my son. Enjoy life. Make mistakes and pick yourself up and try again. That is how you grow,” the older man insisted. “Through experiences.”

Sure there might have been times—few though they were, Mike silently maintained—when he thought that something might be missing from his life. But that had been part of the sacrifice he’d felt he had to make for the good of the family. “Sorry, Dad. Someone around here has to be the serious one.”

The way Miguel saw it, it was a matter of definition. “There is serious and then there is inflexible.” Miguel patted his son’s face. “Do not miss out on being young, Miguel. You only get one chance at it.”

He was who he was and for the most part, he’d made his peace with that. He was too old to change now, Mike thought. “You seem to be doing just fine for both of us, Dad.”

Miguel shook his head. It was obvious by his expression that he was trying to understand just where he had gone wrong, where he had failed his first-born. All his other children were outgoing and had a zest for life, even Eli, while Miguel Jr. seemed to work hard at avoiding it, foregoing any personal dealings outside the family—sometimes even inside the family. That was no way to live, the older man thought sadly.

But it wasn’t a problem that could be solved quickly, or even soon. And he had something more pressing that needed tending to.

“We can discuss this at some other time,” Miguel told his son. “Right now I need you to go and pick the young lady up at the airport.”

The closest airport to Forever was over fifty miles away. A trip of that nature would take a huge chunk out of his day.

“When?” Mike asked, preparing to beg off whatever date his father gave him.

“Leaving in the next twenty minutes would be nice.” Miguel watched his son’s jaw drop in amazement. “I know how you like to give yourself enough time in case something comes up like a traffic jam outside of Laredo.”

“Today?” Mike asked in disbelief. “You want me to pick her up today?”

Miguel nodded. “Her plane lands in a little less than two hours.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Mike asked in disbelief.

“I thought it was better that way. It gives you less time to be angry about it. You know how you get,” he pointed out sadly to his son.

“Dad, I can’t just drop everything and—”

“You have nothing to drop,” Miguel told him calmly. “I have already checked.”

Mike didn’t like being thought of as predictable. “What if I had plans you didn’t know about?” he challenged.

“When have you ever had plans no one knew about?” his father countered.

“I could,” Mike maintained stubbornly.

“Do you?” Miguel asked, his eyes meeting his son’s.

With reluctance and no small measure of annoyance, Mike replied, “No, I don’t.”

“Good, then I would hurry if I were you.”

“How am I supposed to find this literary genius?” he wanted to know.

It was more a matter of the young woman finding his son, Miguel thought. After he’d seen her picture, thanks to Olivia’s computer, he saw great potential—not just for his ancestor’s journals, but for his present-day son, as well.

“I told her you would hold up a sign with her name on it and I described you to her.”

Mike stared at his father. “You knew I was going to pick her up?” He’d just agreed to it this moment. He could have just as easily said no and refused, Mike thought.

“Of course,” Miguel replied complacently. “I am your father. I know everything. I told her to look for a tall, dark, handsome man with a deep scowl on his face. Of course, if you have the sign with her name on it, it would not really confuse the young woman if you were, perhaps, smiling,” his father concluded hopefully.

“Maybe not, but it might confuse me,” Mike quipped. And then he sighed. “What’s her name so I can write it on the sign?”

“Her name is Samantha Monroe,” his father told him. Reaching behind the sofa, Miguel pulled out a large white poster board he’d prepared earlier. Both the woman’s name as well as his own was on it. And beneath that was the name of their ranch.

The lettering was rather distinctive and very eye-catching. That did not look like his father’s handiwork, Mike couldn’t help thinking.

“You did this?” Mike asked rather skeptically.

Miguel laughed softly under his breath even as he shook his head. “I would like to take the credit for it, but it was Tina, Olivia’s sister, who is the artistic one.”

“Tina,” Mike repeated. “Olivia’s sister,” he added for good measure. “Did everybody in town know about this woman coming but me?”

“Not everybody,” his father replied evasively. “Just those who would not be upset by the news.”

“In other words, everyone but me,” Mike repeated.

He blew out a breath, annoyed because he knew he was on the losing end of a disagreement that he had been destined to lose before he was ever born. Mike freely acknowledged that he was different from his brothers and his sister in that by no stretch of the imagination could he be described as being sociable, ready to call any stranger “friend” after an exchange of only a few words. Pressing his lips together, he kept his comment to himself. Instead, he reached for the sign and muttered, “I’ll see you later.”

His father followed him to the door. “Thank you, Miguel.”

Mike made no answer. He didn’t trust himself to say anything at all. Instead, he merely nodded in response and kept on walking.

* * *

PACKING WAS EASY when you had very little to pack, and possessions had never been a big factor in Samantha Monroe’s life.

So, picking up and physically being ready to travel was no problem.

Acclimating was more difficult.

Sam had butterflies in her stomach. The same butterflies that showed up each and every time she began a new project. There was that fear that she wasn’t up to the job and the fear of having to travel alone to unfamiliar places.

Before she had undertaken this career, she had never seen the outside of her little suburban Maryland town. She’d had twenty-five years of moving along the same streets, nodding at the same neighbors and being completely devoid of any desire to see anything beyond those boundaries.

Those were hard things to give up.

But she had to.

With Danny gone, a bank account amounting to seventeen dollars and twelve cents and bills to pay, Sam knew she had no other choice. She had no way to take care of herself if she remained inert.

Danny had been the very light of her life, but he hadn’t exactly been the kind who believed in saving for a rainy day. He believed in spending every dime as long as the sun was shining.

Which was exactly what happened when he went on that February skiing trip with his two best friends. Promising to be “back before you know it,” he went off for a carefree weekend of fun.

He hadn’t counted on an encounter with a tanker truck whose cross-country driver had pushed himself too hard and had fallen asleep behind the wheel. The truck careened out of control and despite Danny’s frantic attempts to get the car out of harm’s way, there had been a collision. It ultimately turned out not to be as serious as it could have been—but just serious enough for one fatality—Danny’s.

His two friends and the sleeping driver survived the crash.

And so, a little more than eighteen months after becoming a bride, she had become a widow. A widow with bills and no way to pay them. There were no parents for her to fall back on or turn to, no parents around at all. Her father had never been in the picture, vanishing months before she was born, and her mother had worked endless hours to provide for the two of them. When she wasn’t working, her mother was searching for “Mr. Right,” someone to take them away from the brink of poverty where they had always existed.

However, when her mother finally found that man, he only took her away. And Sam was left behind. By then, she had turned eighteen and was officially on her own, the way she had been, unofficially, for most of her life.

But she wasn’t alone, not really. Danny had lived across the street and had been part of her life since she’d had her first memory.

Before even that.

They were friends, and then sweethearts and then lovers who were destined to get married. When they did, Sam was truly ready for a happily-ever-after life—as much as any life could be happily-ever-after.

But fate had other ideas and fate always won out in the end. So, at twenty-seven, she found herself very much alone and determined to hold her head up high. The latter entailed providing for herself. All she needed was the way how.

Sam loved biographies and had always had the ability to put words together eloquently on a page. She eventually combined her passion and talent to become a ghostwriter. A much sought-after ghostwriter because she also had the ability to mimic any voice, sound like any person who hired her to do the heavy lifting and tell the story of their life.

In addition, she had an aptitude for knowing what interested readers and a neat, clean style that delivered what had been promised while leaving the so-called autobiographer’s ego intact.

Her chosen career necessitated travel, which in turn required a certain independence she was only now growing accustomed to. Eventually, she hoped to be comfortable with flying to parts unknown at a moment’s notice.

Right now, Sam thought as she deplaned amid a flock of passengers, she needed to find her new employer, for while the publishing house paid her salary, the person whose autobiography she would be fashioning was her boss. It was something she didn’t ever forget and that one small trick was responsible for her working as steadily as she had been these past two years.

Joan, the main publisher’s assistant at Tatum House, had told her to be on the lookout for her driver. The man had been described as tall, dark and handsome. He was also said to be scowling, although about what Joan hadn’t a clue. The person who had called her hadn’t covered that detail.

So there she was, walking in slow motion and taking in both sides of the area as best she could. The person, Joan had promised, would be holding a sign with her name on it.

So there was hope.

Bingo, Sam thought as she zeroed in on a man who fit the description she’d been given to a T.

And he was holding a large sign with her name written on it.

Doctor Livingston, I presume, she thought to herself as she began to forge a path toward the man who hadn’t made eye contact with her yet.

Chapter Two

“Excuse me, are you Miguel Rodriguez?”

The melodic voice cut through the layers of tangled thoughts going through Mike’s mind. When he turned to look at the source of the voice, his mind was still struggling to focus, fighting its way out of a fantasy-filled zone. He was imagining the woman he’d been sent to meet, picturing a matronly lady right down to a pair of sensible shoes and a tailored, unflattering suit.

Instead, the woman addressing him looked like what he would have conjured up after encountering a genie in a bottle. The petite young blonde standing before him would have constituted his first wish—and quite possibly just about every wish that he’d ever had.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” he replied, the inside of his mouth unaccountably turning bone-dry. So much so that it felt as if any second now, he would start exhaling dust. “How did you know?” he heard himself asking.

She smiled up at him, causing his heart to momentarily stop before it suddenly started beating double time, all within the scope of approximately fifteen seconds. Her sky-blue eyes teasingly captured his as she pointed to the rectangular piece of cardboard he’d forgotten he was holding in his hands.

“That kind of gave me a clue,” she told him. “You’re holding up my name,” she explained when he made no effort to acknowledge what she’d just said

Mike blinked, slowly coming to. “I am? Oh, yeah, I am.”

The next moment, as his own words—as well as Samantha Monroe’s—sank in, he suddenly felt like a contestant for—and most likely the winner of—the crown of Jackass of the Decade.

Possibly of the century.

A massive wave of embarrassment washed over him.

He had no idea what had just come over him. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a beautiful woman before. His own sister, Alma, though he wouldn’t have readily admitted it to her, was an extremely attractive young woman, as were the women that his brothers, Eli, Gabe and Rafe, had married.

But something about this woman, about the laughter in her eyes, her straight golden hair and her sexy figure sent an earthquake rippling through him. The sum total of those assets could have made a dead man sit up and beg.

“Well, since I found you, I think you can put the sign down now,” Sam gently prompted.

“Yeah,” Mike agreed, still stumbling over his tongue. That part of his anatomy seemed to have inexplicably grown in weight and girth.

“Funny,” Sam went on to observe, “I pictured someone a bit older when I spoke to you on the phone the other day.” There was amusement in her eyes as she told him, “You certainly don’t look like the patriarch of such a large family.”

“No, I d— Wait, what?” he asked, confusion running rampant through the fog that encircled his brain.

“I said I pictured someone older when I spoke to you the other day,” Sam repeated.

She was fairly certain that there had to be some sort of a mistake. No matter which way you sliced it, the tall, handsome cowboy standing before her was not well into his fifth decade. She doubted if he was finished with his second one. Or, at the very most, had just gotten a toehold of his third.

But she was not about to shower this man with questions. She was giving him leeway to surrender any sort of an explanation. She had no intentions of crowding him or rushing him to clarify. To be honest, she found his verbal stumbling rather sweet and definitely flattering.

It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her as if she was an attractive female. Just because she earned a living as a ghostwriter did not mean that she was supposed to be invisible to the naked eye. Her last three clients had been women and while she could capture their perspective even better than she could that of a male client, she did like the almost involuntary appreciative look in this man’s eyes.

For the most part, the women she’d worked with had acted as if she didn’t really exist, but she supposed it was because they would have preferred that people think they had written their own autobiographies rather than that they’d had help in wording them. She amounted to their dirty little secret and as such had to be as close to nonexistent as possible.

“You didn’t talk to me.”

“I spoke to Miguel Rodriguez,” Sam pointed out, her cadence deliberately slow and easy, giving the man every opportunity to interrupt and set the record straight whenever he wanted. “And you did say that that was your name.”

“It is,” Mike agreed. “That’s the name written on my birth certificate.” But then he hastened to clarify the point. “But I’m Junior to my father’s Senior.”

She smiled. It wasn’t as if she’d never encountered that before. “Is that what you’d like me to call you?” she asked. “Junior?”

He didn’t look like a Junior anything. Tall, with wide shoulders, rather appealing small waist and hips, with wavy, thick black hair that made her fingers unexpectedly itchy, he was definitely in a class all his own.

“Mike,” he told her, his voice striking a note of command. “Call me Mike.”

“Mike,” she repeated, her smile once again mesmerizing him and all but freezing his brain, making it impossible for him to form a coherent thought. “I like that.”

“Yeah, me, too.” The words fell flat and were incredibly lame.

What was going on with him? Mike silently demanded of himself. He’d never sounded like a blithering idiot before, not even in the presence of a drop-dead knockout like that starlet that Ray was so crazy about.

Why was this particular woman numbing his brain and completely negating his ability to think in near complete sentences?

“And what do I call you?” he asked, wanting to say at least one semi-intelligent thing in her presence. “Ms. Monroe, or—”

“Sam,” she told him, cutting off any further speculation on the cowboy’s part. “Everyone just calls me Sam.”

“Sam” was way too masculine-sounding a name for someone who was the absolute antithesis of masculinity, he couldn’t help thinking. But she obviously seemed to like the name and for no other reason than to go along with whatever the woman wanted, Mike nodded and repeated the name.

“Sam.”

Then, remembering that he was supposed to be a walking, talking, functioning adult, Mike forced himself to follow up the single word, and say something more.

“Let’s get your baggage.”

It came out more like a gruff order, but Mike preferred that to sounding like some mesmerized half-wit incapable of stringing four words together into a discernible whole.

“This is it,” Sam informed him, indicating the two pieces of luggage she had with her. The larger piece was most obviously a suitcase on wheels, the kind that easily fit into overhead compartments on planes; the other case was much smaller and in all likelihood contained her laptop inside. A wide, fringed dark brown hobo purse hung off her shoulder.

“You don’t have anything else coming down the chute onto the carousel?” he asked, surprised.

Sam shook her head, her straight chin-length golden hair swaying to and fro as if to reinforce her denial. “No, I travel light.”

Mike took that to mean that the rest of her things were being shipped out—which only bore out what he’d complained about to his father: that the woman was going to be moving in indefinitely.

And while Sam was admittedly a great deal prettier than Ray, the brother who was still living at home, Mike had to admit that he still didn’t really like the idea of having a stranger moving into their ranch house for an indefinite period of time. Indefinite sounded too much like “forever”—the eternity, not the town.

“The rest of your things being shipped out?” he asked her, an accusing note in his voice.

“There is no ‘rest of my things,’” she told him, then added, “This is it,” indicating her meager belongings with a quick sweep of her hand.

Mike stared at the suitcase. “How much can you fit in there?”

“Enough,” she replied with a smile that was both tranquilizing and yet seemed to be able to get an unsuspecting heart racing at the same time.

It certainly did his.

The next moment, Mike cleared his throat and said, “Then I guess if we have everything, we’d better get going.”

“I guess so,” she agreed, doing her best to keep a straight face. She didn’t want this man to think that she was laughing at him or having fun at his expense.

But she did flash a smile in his direction.

Without a word, Mike took possession of her suitcase from her and claimed the black faux-leather briefcase with his other hand.

Mike took exactly two steps before he abruptly stopped walking and turned around to look at her. Not expecting the sudden halt, Sam managed to just barely catch herself just in time to keep from plowing straight into him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him, doing her best to appear unaffected by this whole venture. Her tall, handsome driver had no way of knowing how many knots currently resided in her stomach and she was going to keep it that way.

“Do you know what you’re getting into?” Mike asked.

Until he’d just said the words out loud, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask. But this Sam woman appeared delicate to him. Moreover, she looked like someone who was accustomed to having all the amenities that places like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and cities of that size had to offer a woman like her.

Forever didn’t even have a hotel and there was just one movie theater in town, known simply as The Theater, and it ran second-run movies. And while they weren’t exactly backward here in Forever, they certainly weren’t considered cutting-edge, either. Not by a really long shot.

A “crime spree” here meant that Donnie Taylor and his younger brother, Will, carved their initials on the sides of two barns, or spray-painted those initials on the sides of someone’s garage.

There was nothing modern or even noteworthy about a town like Forever. And most of the people who lived here liked it that way.

“Yes, I’m going to be reading and organizing some journals and diaries written by one of your ancestors. Your father said that this woman had been carried off by some Native Americans and spent a year with them before managing to escape. I’m assuming that she couldn’t write anything down in a journal while it was happening, but once she was able to return home, she put everything down on paper as best she could, doing it in such a way as to make it seem that it was happening as she wrote.” She looked up at the cowboy’s tanned face. “Did I get that right?”

The wide shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “I don’t know, I didn’t look at the books.”

Maybe it was his imagination, but Sam seemed both surprised and a bit confused by his answer. “Oh, but how could you help not looking through the books?” she asked him. Had she stumbled across something like that herself, she knew she wouldn’t have closed her eyes until she’d read all—or at least most of it—herself.

But then, she had always been hungry for family connections, something she’d never really had outside of her mother.

The next moment, realizing that her question might have sounded somewhat condescending or judgmental, Sam quickly withdrew it.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that,” she apologized.

He shrugged off both her apology and the question that had come before it. “That’s not what I’m referring to,” Mike told the young blonde.

“Then what are you referring to?” she asked him pleasantly, giving every indication that she wanted to hear him out no matter what he had to say.

“I just wanted to make sure that you knew what this place was like. Forever, I mean,” he clarified in case she wasn’t following him. He was still tripping over his own tongue, he thought in disgust. “We don’t have a hotel,” he began.

Sam nodded. “I gathered that,” she replied. “Your father very generously invited me to stay at the ranch while I worked. But then you’re probably aware of that,” she realized, thinking out loud.

“Yeah, I am,” he told her, then went back to listing the town’s shortcomings. He honestly didn’t know if he was trying to chase her away with the facts, or telling her this so that she was forewarned as to what to expect now, while she was still fresh and hot on the idea of pursuing this restoration project. “There are no fancy restaurants here.”

“I didn’t come here to eat, I came to work,” she pointed out simply.

Mike found himself being reeled in by the woman’s smile, despite his best efforts not to be. He wondered if she even knew how magnetic that smile of hers was. The next moment, a mocking voice in his head asked, How could she not?

“All we’ve got is a diner,” Mike told her, continuing to list what he assumed a stranger would see as Forever’s shortcomings.

“That sounds more than adequate for anything I might want,” Sam assured him.

Since he’d mentioned Miss Joan’s—how could anyone spending more than ten minutes in Forever be oblivious to Miss Joan’s?—he felt it only right to give a little equal time to the only place in town that served alcohol.

“There’s a saloon if you feel the need to unwind,” he heard himself telling her. He slanted a glance in her direction to see if this piece of information would be welcomed, or barely registered. It turned out to be the latter.

“Good to know,” she murmured. “Although I probably won’t be visiting it,” Sam speculated. “I’ll be too busy with the journals.” She looked up at him again, waiting. “Anything else?”

He thought for a moment, then said, “There’s no nightlife here.”

She didn’t know what he was getting at. She could only make an educated guess that he thought she was something she wasn’t. That she required entertainment and special treatment, like she was “high maintenance.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth—and Sam was proud of that fact.

But for now, she tried to set his mind at ease as best she could.

“Mr. Rodriguez, I’m not exactly sure what it is you’re saying or what you expect me to be, but I was raised in a small town in Maryland where they rolled up the sidewalk at seven-thirty every night. I don’t require a ‘night life.’ What I require is a comfortable work atmosphere and an occasional conversation with friendly, decent people, something I’m assuming won’t be difficult to encounter here.

“Now, if you find any of that objectionable or believe that any of it wouldn’t be to your father’s liking, tell me now so we can iron all this out before I get down to work.”

Mike frowned as he listened to her, unable to believe that a woman who looked the way this Sam person did would be satisfied with so little.

“You’ll be bored,” Mike predicted.

Sam smiled at him in response. A wide, amused, guileless smile that sent ripples of unnamed anticipation through his gut.

“I am never bored, Mr. Rodriguez,” she told him. “If need be, I make my own entertainment. Now, is there anything else?” she asked.

He blew out a breath and picked up the suitcase handle again.

“No,” he told her, then added as an afterthought, “You can call me Mike.”

“Mike,” she echoed with a pleased nod of her head. She’d found the first chink in the wall. Sam considered it her first victory.

The first of many, Sam promised herself.

Chapter Three

“This is really beautiful country,” Sam commented as she stared out the window of Mike’s truck.

They’d been driving for about half an hour and in that time, the rather stoic cowboy behind the steering wheel had said nothing. Oh, he’d grunted a couple of times in acknowledgment of something she had said, but only after she’d deliberately addressed the remark or question to him.

As far as forming actual words on his own, he’d stubbornly refrained from that.

Obviously, the man had used up his less than vast supply of vocabulary at the airport. Determined to get more than a noise in response, she tried again, hoping that commenting on a preferred topic would get the taciturn man to speak.

“It probably hasn’t changed all that much since the first settlers came out here in their covered wagons,” she speculated when he still said nothing. “It looks untouched,” she added, glancing in Mike’s direction. When he still gave no indication that he was going to comment on her observation, she piled on another word. “Pristine, even.”

Mike snorted.

“What?” she asked, eager to prod him. “Did I say something wrong?”

He made another noise and she thought that was all the interaction there was going to be, in which case she had gotten more of a response from a squeaky floorboard. But then Mike surprised her.

“Pristine,” Mike repeated with a mocking tone. “All except for the electrical wires and the phone wires that’re buried underground,” he pointed out crisply.

“All except for that,” she agreed, doing her best to keep a straight face. But her tone betrayed her when she told him, “Some progress is actually a lovely thing, Mike.” Was he the type who had little patience with any kind of modern advancements?

“Never said it wasn’t,” Mike replied, keeping his eyes on the road despite the fact that there was nothing moving in either direction and most likely wouldn’t be for most of the drive back to his ranch. They were twenty-five miles into their journey and the only thing on the road was more road.

After the sparse exchange between them, there was more silence.

Sam suppressed a sigh. This man would have no trouble with solitary confinement, she thought. As for her, she didn’t relish silence.

She gave conversation another try. Eventually, the man would have to do some talking, if only in self-defense.

“So, is it just you and your father on the ranch?” she asked him.

He spared her a look that was completely unfathomable. “What makes you say that?”

“No reason,” Sam said with a careless shrug. “I don’t have anything to go on, really, so I thought I’d make a guess.”

He glanced back at the road. Questions about this woman were beginning to pile up in his mind, but he deliberately shoved them to the side, telling himself he didn’t care one way or another.

“You guessed wrong,” he told her in a monotone.

“Obviously,” she allowed good-naturedly. “Okay, why don’t you fill me in?”

It seemed to her as if he turned his head in slow-motion to look at her. “On what?”

Since she knew nothing about him or his family, that left the door wide-open when it came to subject matter. She spread her hands wide to underscore her feeling.

“On anything you want to. Family dynamics. The average annual rainfall around here.” She continued making suggestions since she wasn’t getting any kind of a reaction from him. “What your favorite animal is—”

“What?” Mike turned to look at her again, his brow furrowed. “Why would you want to know that?”

Finally! she thought in triumph. She’d gotten a reaction.

“Because it would be a start,” she told him honestly. “I’m not picky, Mike. I like to get to know the people I’ll be dealing with and,” she continued with emphasis, “I’m a good listener—but you’re going to have to talk for me to have something to listen to.”

Mike blew out a long breath and the silence continued. Just as Sam was starting to think that she’d completely lost him, she heard the tall, silent cowboy say in a low voice, “I’ve got four brothers and a sister, all younger. Only Ray, the youngest, still lives at the ranch—besides me,” he amended. “I’m partial to my horse and I have no idea what the ‘average’ rainfall around here is. I just know if it’s been a good year or a bad year. Anything else?” he asked, although, for the most part, he expected that what he’d just volunteered would be enough to satisfy her.

Looking back later, he realized that he should have known better. It was true that he hardly knew the woman, but he’d always been fairly good about picking up clues and nothing about this woman had suggested that she was the quiet type, given to meditating and being content with her own thoughts for company. He had a feeling that she was the type who probably thought that a brass band was understated.

As suspected, he didn’t have long to wait for the torrent of questions to begin.

“What are your brothers’ and sister’s names? If they don’t live on the ranch with you and your father, what line of work do they do? Are any of them married? What do they think of your father wanting to have his great-great-great-grandmother’s journals and diaries turned into a memoir? And how could you not at least look through one of the journals once you knew about them?”

Overwhelmed by the questions and the speed with which they were emerging and flowing from her lips, Mike pulled the truck over to the side of the road and turned the engine off.

“Hold it!” he ordered.

The command jolted Sam into a moment of silence. But only for a moment. The next moment, she was back asking questions.

Or at least a question.

“Is something wrong?” Sam asked. She assumed that there had to be something wrong with the truck because why else would he have pulled over so abruptly?

“When I asked if there was anything else, I was being—” The proper word eluded him for a moment.

“Sarcastic?” Sam guessed as the situation suddenly dawned on her.

He supposed he had been, but he hadn’t expected her to actually say it. Nor had he expected the tidal wave of words that had come at him. It had completely overwhelmed him.

“I didn’t think I was sending out an invitation for the Spanish Inquisition,” he countered.

“I wasn’t expecting you to answer all the questions,” she told him. “I was giving you a number of questions to choose from.”

No, she wasn’t, Mike thought. She wanted answers to all of them. He could tell by the look in the woman’s eyes—eyes that were unnervingly blue and hypnotic.

As for answering her questions, the hell he would. All answers did for someone like Sam was create more questions.

“Shouldn’t you have a career that would be more in keeping with that insatiable curiosity of yours?” he asked the woman. “Like a journalist, or better yet, a TV reporter?”

She had no use for the latter, not after what she’d lived through.

“You mean someone who sticks a microphone into people’s worst moments and tries to shatter their privacy by asking the most invasive questions?” she asked, thinking of the reporter who had camped out on her doorstep, hoping to capture her reaction for the viewing public when she first heard about Danny’s accident.

Ordinarily, she wasn’t a violent person, but she’d hit the woman’s microphone out of her hand before escaping to her car and driving away. She’d cried for almost half an hour after that.

“Not exactly my cup of tea,” she told Mike stoically.

“Why an invisible writer?” he asked her.

Sam looked at him blankly for a second, then realized that he’d gotten his terms confused. “You mean ghostwriter?”

He shrugged as he turned his key in the ignition again and drove back to the road. “Invisible, ghost, same thing,” he told her glibly.

She supposed that in a way, it was. Besides, he didn’t strike her as a man who liked to quibble over definitions while hunting for the appropriate word to describe something.

Sam addressed the gist of his question instead. “To answer your question, I like to write and more than that, I like to be able to delve into another person’s life, find out what made that person who and what he or she was,” she said honestly. “I like that they share their memories, their childhood, the special moments of their lives. Once I finish, I’m a part of them and they’re a part of me. It gives me roots,” she concluded.

He glanced in her direction. “Don’t you have roots of your own?” he asked.

Maybe she’d said too much, Sam thought. But then, this cowboy probably really wasn’t listening and what she said to him would be forgotten by morning. She risked nothing by sharing and maybe it would even do her some good, she speculated.

“Well, yes, sure,” she acknowledged. “But they’re very sparse roots. My father took off before I was born, so I never got to know him. For all I know, he was an orphan. My mother was hardly ever around, she was too busy earning a living and keeping the wolf from our door. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was looking for Mr. Right.

“When she finally found him,” Sam said glibly, “he was not only Mr. Right, but Mr. Right-Now. They got married and went off to parts unknown.” The last time she’d seen her stepfather or her mother was at their wedding reception. It still hurt her to think about that, but she’d made the best of it.

“They just up and left you?” Mike asked incredulously. The look he spared her this time was longer and he appeared to be more interested than he had before.

Was that compassion she heard in his voice? The idea surprised her. He didn’t strike her as someone who was capable of that sort of a reaction. Maybe she’d misjudged him.

At least she could hope so.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly a baby in a basket that they sent drifting off to sea,” she pointed out with a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I was eighteen and the truth of it was, I’d been on my own pretty much for years. My mother knew I could take care of myself.” And then, of course, she added silently, there’d been Daniel. Daniel, whom she’d always been able to count on and lean on.

Until he wasn’t there anymore and all she had to lean on was herself.

Mike had a feeling she was giving her mother far too much credit. He knew people like her mother. People whose vision was limited to what they saw in their bathroom mirror in the morning. Sam’s mother undoubtedly had a sink-or-swim attitude toward her daughter when she threw her into the deep end of the emotional pool. In either outcome, whether it was sink or swim, the woman’s hands were clean and she was free to just walk away from the responsibility for the human being she had brought into the world eighteen years ago.

Still, just because this woman sitting in his truck had had a hard time of it, that wasn’t a reason he should feel sorry for her or treat her any differently than he treated most people he came across, Mike told himself.

But after a beat, without bothering to look in her direction, he recited the names of his siblings—in birth order. “Eli, Rafe, Gabe, Alma and Ray.”

Talk about coming out of left field. Sam blinked, completely confused. “Excuse me?”

“You wanted names,” he reminded her briskly. “Those are my brothers’ and sister’s names.” Then, because she’d asked for more details, he gave her a little more to go on. “Eli has his own spread, Rafe is looking to have the same. Gabe and Alma work for the sheriff’s office and Ray is still doing odd jobs around the ranch until he decides what to do with the rest of his life.”

“How about you?” she asked. “Have you figured out what you want to do with ‘the rest of your life’?”

He’d figured that out when he was five. “Run the main ranch,” he told her simply.

In his opinion, as the oldest, there had never been any other course for him to take but that one. While it was true that the ranch officially belonged to all of them, someone had to handle the regular, day-to-day decisions that had to be made in order to keep it productive and running smoothly. Right now, that job belonged to his father, but more and more it was falling to him to be in the wings and ready to take over. He did it now for the short haul. Someday, that “haul” would be permanent. He neither resented it nor looked forward to it.

It was just the way it was.

It was his destiny.

Sam could tell by the cowboy’s tone that he meant it. Apparently, he saw the ranch as his responsibility and despite his lack of effusive words, he obviously took that responsibility very seriously.

“No other hidden ambitions?” She couldn’t help wondering.

“Nope,” he answered with just the right amount of conviction to make the denial sound true. “I’m doing what I like. Or at least I will be once I get you delivered to the house,” he amended.

She leaned forward to catch a glimpse of his face as she asked, “Didn’t sign up to drive some woman from back East around, right?”

The shrug was neither dismissive nor self-conscious. “You said it, I didn’t.”

The man probably didn’t realize that his body language gave away his thoughts. “You didn’t have to. Everything about you says you resent being viewed as an errand boy—even if no one actually sees you that way,” she added with emphasis. She certainly didn’t.

“Just what would you know about it?” he asked.

His tone told her that she’d hit closer to home than he was happy about. She’d been studying people all her life. It had been one of her main interests as well as a source of diversion for as far back as she could remember. It cost nothing and brought an education with it.

“I know a little about having a chip on your shoulder,” she countered kindly. “All it succeeds in doing is weigh you down and make you miserable. The sooner you get rid of it, the sooner you can see things in the right perspective.”

Mike could feel his back going up. He didn’t like being analyzed, even by an exceptionally attractive woman. “Looks like my father lucked out and got two for the price of one,” he said sarcastically.

She didn’t allow his tone to put her off. “I’m afraid I don’t understand—”

“He got a ghostwriter and an armchair psychologist. Maybe even a lecturer thrown into the mix,” he added for good measure.

Maybe she had that coming, Sam thought. She was usually better about keeping her opinions to herself. It was the silence that had gotten to her, made her talkative. Had he been a normal person, he would have felt uncomfortable about the silence as well and would have tried to get some sort of conversation going.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sound like I was lecturing—or psychoanalyzing you,” Sam apologized. “I was just trying to tell you that I’ve been where you are and I know it’s not a comfortable situation.”

Mike turned his head and stared at her for a very long moment.

Granted it was October, but October in this region of Texas was not cold by any means. Still, she could have sworn she felt frost being sent in her direction.

“You mean like now?” he asked her.

Sam wasn’t sure just what the cowboy was getting at, if he was being sarcastic again or if there was some sort of hidden meaning to his question. In any case, she had a feeling that any further discussion on the topic might lead to some sort of an argument and she did not want to begin her stay here with a confrontation with her client’s son. That didn’t bode well for what she hoped to accomplish here.

Winning an argument had never meant all that much to her.

Still, she really didn’t just want to leave the subject hanging there either, so, in an effort to clarify things for herself, she ventured just one more question. “Did you try to talk your father out of hiring someone to work on your relative’s journals for him?” She needed to know just how much he didn’t want her here, although exactly why that was important wasn’t crystal clear to her yet.

Mike shrugged. “I didn’t know he was hiring someone until a few hours ago.”

Maybe his resentment stemmed from being kept in the dark? That would explain his less than friendly attitude.

“You didn’t know he’d hired anyone?” Sam asked.

Mike didn’t know how much more clearly he could say it. “Not until he told me that he needed me to pick you up at the airport.”

“That must have been some surprise.” No wonder the man seemed so disgruntled. She wouldn’t have been thrilled to have this sprung on her either.

Mike laughed then. It was a deep, robust laugh that sounded hearty rather than perfunctory. Sam found herself instantly captivated by the sound.

“I didn’t know you had the gift of understatement,” Mike said to her.

“I don’t know if it’s understatement so much as empathy,” she corrected him, then confessed, “I can put myself into almost anyone’s shoes. It’s a bit confusing to be able to see both sides of an argument.” At times it made her feel ambiguous, unable to back away from one side or the other. “But that does keep me fair,” she added.

“And that’s important to you?” he asked. He congratulated himself that not a shred of curiosity was discernible in his voice—even though he was.

“That is very important to me,” she told him with emphasis. “Being unfair puts us on the same level as soulless creatures who are looking to get the better of anyone remotely threatening.”

Before he could venture a comment, he saw the ranch house coming into view. They’d been on Rodriguez property for a bit now. That was when he realized that they had been traveling for close to an hour.

He supposed he had to grudgingly admit—if only to himself—that the constant droning of a conversation in the background made the time go by faster.

“We’re here,” he announced for her benefit as the ranch house grew steadily closer.

It was obviously the right thing to say—because Sam abruptly stopped talking.

Chapter Four

Sam took a deep breath before exiting the truck. It was her way of attempting to fortify herself before plunging into her surroundings and meeting the man who was responsible for her coming all the way out here from the East Coast.

The same excitement, as well as anxiety, that she always experienced before beginning a project danced through her. She both looked forward to this moment in a project and dreaded it. Dreaded it because there was always that part of her that worried she might be unequal to the job, that she would produce an uninspired work. It hadn’t happened yet, but there was always a first time.

The excitement arose from the fact that at this moment in a project, she was standing on the threshold of endless possibilities, not the least of which was uncovering a world she’d never seen before.

Mentally crossing her fingers, Sam unbuckled her seat belt and slid out of the passenger seat. She’d worn her best outfit in hopes of creating a good impression and looking professional. Consequently, she had on high heels rather than the boots she realized would have been better for the dirt path that led from where Mike had stopped the truck to the three-storied, sprawling ranch house.

Just as Mike had pulled up to the house, Sam saw the front door open and a slightly heavyset, distinguished-looking older man came out onto the porch. Rather than stand there like a sentry, the man came down the three steps to her level. Far from solemn-looking, his smile was wide and inviting. In most situations she was the perpetual outsider, but here Sam felt instantly at home.

Miguel Rodriguez Sr. had that sort of quality about him.

And if his very presence didn’t do it, the expression on his rounded face, coupled with a genuine embrace, conveyed that friendliness to any visitor who stepped onto his property.

“Welcome to my home,” he declared from the midst of a bear hug. Releasing Sam, he stepped back and told her, “Thank you for coming.”

“I should be thanking you for hiring me,” Sam countered. “Most of my clients don’t hire me until after they’ve asked to see a sample of my work and a list of all the projects I’ve worked on.” She looked at the man with genuine wonder. “You didn’t.”

“Olivia Santiago gave me your name,” Miguel told her simply. “She said you were a friend of a friend who worked with you and they were very pleased with what you did. That was more than good enough for me,” he admitted honestly.

She’d never been confronted with such blatant trust before. The world she came from held people suspect until proven otherwise.

“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” she told him sincerely.

“I am sure that you will not,” he told her with conviction. Glancing over her shoulder, he saw Mike taking out her suitcase and the briefcase containing her laptop. When nothing else followed, Miguel eyed his houseguest curiously. “Are the rest of your things being shipped out?”

“There is no ‘rest of her things,’” Mike told his father before she could.

Miguel looked quizzically from his son to his guest. “You’re not staying long?” he asked.

“I’m staying as long as it takes,” she assured him. Then, to make things clearer, she told her new teddy-bear of an employer, “I don’t need much.”

“Ah, a lady after my own heart.” He patted her hand before slipping it through the crook of his arm. “We will get along just fine,” he predicted.

If she wasn’t inclined to do the very best job she could each and every time she undertook a new assignment, Miguel would have made her want to reach that pinnacle now. He definitely had a winning way about him, she thought. And he was certainly a great deal friendlier and more welcoming than his oldest son was.

“How was your trip?” Miguel asked as he led her up the porch steps and into the house.

“Uneventful,” she replied.

For a moment, he considered her words, then realized that perhaps she had misunderstood his question. “I am asking about your trip from the airport to the ranch with my son.” He glanced toward his son. “He does not talk much, but all the others were busy, so I had no choice,” Miguel explained. “Still, his heart is in the right place.”

“Slightly left of center, where it’s always been, Dad,” Mike said with a touch of impatience. He was thirty-one and had been a man for a long time now. He didn’t appreciate being discussed as if he was eleven, clueless and out of earshot.

With a less than pleased grunt, Mike picked up the two pieces of their houseguest’s luggage and made his way into the house behind his father and Sam. “She staying in Alma’s old room?” he asked so he could drop off her things in the right room.

Miguel nodded, then explained to Sam, “Alma is my daughter.”

“The deputy,” Sam acknowledged.

“You know Alma?” Miguel asked, surprised that the young woman was acquainted with his daughter.

“No—” she was quick to set the record straight “—I asked Mike about his siblings and he told all their names and what they did for a living.”

Now that really surprised the older man. “You got him to talk? I am impressed.”

“Still here, Dad,” Mike reminded his father, doing his best to curb his exasperation.

There was no point in losing his temper. He knew what his father was like and there was no changing the man at this stage of the game any more than he could hope to change the spots on a leopard.

“So I see,” Miguel acknowledged. He closed the front door behind his son, then instructed him, “Show Miss Monroe—”

Sam was quick to interrupt. “Call me Sam, please,” she urged.

Miguel smiled warmly at the petite young woman. He’d already taken measure of her and he liked what he saw. As did, he suspected, his son. Miguel, Jr. just needed a little prodding and he was more than ready to do that. By his reckoning, he had approximately six weeks to make that happen.

“Show Sam to her room, please, Miguel,” he requested. “And when you are settled in,” Miguel continued, addressing his words to Sam, “we will talk and get acquainted.” His eyes crinkled as he added, “I am looking forward to that.”

Sam was anxious to get started as soon as possible, to sink her teeth into the project and immerse herself in a brand-new world that was significantly different from her own.

But she knew Miguel was right. There were steps to follow. She didn’t want him to think he had brought a fanatical workaholic into his house even though that was probably the best description of her.

“I’ll be down very soon,” she promised for form’s sake as she hurried to follow Mike.

The latter hadn’t stopped to allow her to catch up. Instead, he’d already disappeared by the time she was halfway up the stairs.

Moving faster, Sam reached the landing just as she saw him walking into a room on the far right-hand side.

No coddling from that quarter, which was fine as far as she was concerned. She didn’t expect to be coddled and wouldn’t have really known how to react if she had been. It was foreign to everything she had experienced up to this point. The people she’d worked with prior to this assignment had all been forthcoming, but there had never been any pampering and she preferred it that way.

The cowboy certainly had some stride, she thought just as she reached the room that he’d entered. The second she did, her mind went blank.

Sam all but froze in the doorway, looking around the nine-by-twelve room. The bedroom appeared to be as welcoming as the man downstairs had been.

It was obviously a girl’s room, yet it wasn’t given over to frills and “girly” things. An individual had lived and slept here, Sam decided as she looked around. And it looked as if that person would come walking back in at any moment.

There was no sign of dust in the room and it appeared to be well taken care of.

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