“You do know it’s Saturday night, right?” He shook his head at her sadly as if she really were breaking his heart. “And you’re sitting in a bar. Not just any bar. The Coyote used to be a good old-fashioned, authentic Western house of ill repute. People don’t come here for different matters. They’re here to get their sin on.”
“That’s as may be. I’ve left you a number of messages. None have been returned.”
“I appreciate that, darlin’. I do. But I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I’d given you my number.” He didn’t give out his number to women as a rule. He’d need a new number. But he didn’t see the need to tell her that.
Another wintry smile. “That seems unlikely, given your…”
He didn’t lean forward. He sprawled, grinning. “My…?”
It was possible he was goading her.
She adjusted her glasses on her nose. And sniffed. “Your enthusiasm for your friends.”
His grin widened. “I’m known for my enthusiasm, that’s for sure.”
She blinked, a lot like she was collecting herself, and there was no reason he should be paying such close attention, surely. No matter how much he might enjoy suffering a fool when one appeared, even if it was here.
“The outgoing message claims that it is the official voice mail of the Bar K ranch. You are an employee of the Bar K, are you not?”
Jensen laughed again, louder, and only partly because that was a little bit of a sore subject. Like all family things tended to be in one way or another. “Do you know what the K in Bar K stands for?” But he didn’t wait for her to answer that. “It’s for Kittredge. I’m not so much an employee of the Bar K as a member of the Kittredge family. It’s a messy line, I grant you, but it’s a line all the same.”
“I take that to mean that you are, in fact, employed by the ranch.”
Jensen could have broken it down for her. The Bar K had been in his family since way back when his ancestors decided to hightail it out of the stuffy east and over some mountains—but not all of them—to settle down here in the Longhorn Valley. Where they’d been fighting with the Colorado weather, sometimes with their neighbors, always with the Rocky Mountains, and pretty much daily with the horses they’d been training and breeding since an enterprising ancestor had decided he didn’t much care to run a large-scale cattle operation. He could have told her his thoughts on the stewardship of the ranch and his family’s longtime commitment to the land, bred into him so it felt like a part of his bones. He could have talked awhile about the tension between his grandfather and his father growing up and how that had trickled right on down to the way he, his brothers, and his sister interacted with and second-guessed his parents even now.
But there was no getting into that without further discussions about the current management of the ranch, which shouldn’t have concerned him at all. And wouldn’t have, normally. Because normally, Jensen spent his summers fighting the wildfires that chewed up the western United States year after year. Particularly his beloved Colorado. Jensen hadn’t been around Cold River in the summertime since that first, brutal summer after high school.
And that was where the Bar K was less an employer and more a family concern, like it or not. Because if Jensen had been merely an employee, he might have offered some thoughts and prayers when his father had experienced what everyone was calling a cardiac event, but he would have carried on as normal.
Instead of what he was doing, which was his part of the necessary all-hands-on-deck now that Donovan Kittredge was laid up and driving everyone crazy. Even crazier than he drove them when he was being his usual remote, inaccessible, angrily silent self.
Too bad, his younger brother Riley had said when it was clear how things were going to go this year. No vacation for you.
Jensen had wanted to take Riley’s head off, but only partly because of his comment. Mostly because he just wanted to take Riley’s head off as part of his personal policy as second oldest.
And also because what he did with those fires had nothing to do with a vacation.
His penance was his own business.
But none of his business was up for discussion with this strange woman who was still observing him like he was in a zoo. And on the wrong side of the bars.
“Sure,” Jensen said, slow and easy, her snippy tone still echoing in his ears. I take that to mean that you are, in fact, employed by the ranch. That in fact about killed him. “I work there.”
And he knew something about the woman sitting across from him, then.
Because she didn’t laugh at that, or point out that she knew perfectly well that he was a functioning member of the Kittredge family, which anyone from the Longhorn Valley—or anyone interested in the Bar K for business purposes—would have done. Clearly, she didn’t know what it meant to be a Kittredge. And that could only mean that she wasn’t from here.
Jensen looked at her more closely, but he still didn’t recognize her. Not even in the saw her across a potluck buffet table somewhere way that comprised most of the folks who lived in this hard-to-reach part of his favorite state. And while he was no stranger to women seeking him out, especially on a weekend night at the Coyote, they usually didn’t come dressed like this one was.
As if she’d gotten lost on her way to church.
There was the cardigan that looked as if it doubled as a blanket in cold weather. It was buttoned up over a fussy sort of shirt that was also done up, all the way up her neck, as if she wanted to teach her breasts a lesson by keeping them caged up good and tight. Then again, nothing about that frumpy cardigan or that bizarrely ruffled shirt indicated that she thought even that much about her breasts in the first place.
Which was a pity. Jensen was pretty sure he’d spent his entire fifteenth year thinking about nothing but breasts.
She was blond, though she had her hair coiled around and pinned up in a manner he could only describe as distinctly old-fashioned. She had those clunky glasses perched on her nose, and not in a come-hither kind of a way, like she was trying out a sexy librarian thing. Sadly. And if he recalled correctly, she was also wearing what he’d heard his little sister refer to, and not in a complimentary fashion, as slacks.
Women who tended to spend a lot of time in the Coyote preferred bare skin as a fashion statement.
The only thing this one was flashing was irritation. She was positively vibrating with it.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked.
He watched as the woman across from him bristled. “I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”
“I’ll take that as a yes, and I don’t know what it has to do with anything, because I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t even know your name.”
She smiled, but it was pure impatience. “My name is Harriet Barnett.”
And she announced that in the same crisp way, like she expected him to sit up straighter at the sound. He would have to decline. Jensen preferred to live down to low expectations wherever possible.
“I can’t say I recognize you, Harriet.”
Of course that was her name. She looked like she could be anywhere from thirty to sixty, and the name matched. Although, as he gazed at her, he kind of doubted she was much past thirty. It was something about her mouth, far plumper than it had any right to be when he doubted he’d be getting a taste.