The Humbug Man Read online

  Hollister paused and scowled down at the generator. “This damned thing came over with the Ark,” he muttered. “I don’t understand why your father-in-law didn’t replace it.”

  “He probably liked eating,” she remarked, pulling her stocking cap over her ears. Snow was falling again. “He wasn’t a wealthy man.”

  “Could have been,” he murmured as he stripped off his gloves to reveal huge but elegant hands, which were long-fingered and darkly tanned—capable hands, with callused ridges on the finger pads. “But he kept putting off things.”

  “Maybe he thought money would corrupt him,” she suggested.

  His big shoulders shrugged. “It can.” He caught her hand that was holding the light and positioned it where he wanted the beam with no regard for her posture. His hand was warm over her own, and curious little tingles went down her spine until he released his brief hold. “Keep it there,” he said absently, scowling under the brim of his hat. “Damn. I hope I can splice that wire….”

  He pulled out a pocketknife while Maggie watched with fascination. He was a fixer. Most men were, but this one did it with such style. She studied his profile in the faint radiance of the flashlight, fascinated with its hardness, the uncompromising nature it revealed.

  He seemed to feel her intent scrutiny because his head turned. His black eyes caught hers and held them, penetrating, questioning. “Well?” he asked curtly.

  “You have an interesting hairline,” she improvised. Her voice sounded odd. Probably because lightning was running down her spine from that intent black stare.

  He lifted a shaggy eyebrow as if he thought she might need immediate mental counseling. “That’s a new one.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a grin. “I thought it up all by myself, too.”

  He tilted his hat back as he worked with the generator. “What the hell are you and the boy doing up here by yourselves?” he asked suddenly.

  It was none of his business, and she almost said so. But she stopped herself in time—it wouldn’t do to antagonize a man when he was that close to fixing her generator.

  “It’s almost Christmas. Blake wanted to spend some time with me,” she said finally. “He doesn’t really like military school, and I think he’s out to convince me that I can run a ranch in the wilds of Montana while he sits on a fence and hero-worships you.”

  He looked at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry. It slipped out.” She leaned against the wall, holding the light steady.

  But he wasn’t moving. His dark eyes were fixed on her face. “I said: I beg your pardon, lady.”

  How in the world could a man make an insult of the word lady, she wondered absently. She shifted. “Blake likes you.”

  “Well, I’m not much on boys,” he returned shortly. “Or city women. Or even neighbors. I live alone and I like my privacy. I don’t intend having it invaded by your son.”

  “That’s plain enough,” she returned, feeling her temper start to rise. “Now let me tell you something. I don’t like men in general and you in particular, and what I think of your type of man would fill a book! As for my son, he’s only nine years old and he never knew his father. His grandfather is the only male besides you that he’s ever spent any time around. And Papa Jeffries was kind and gentle and loving—the exact opposite of you. Blake doesn’t know what a man is, so you’ll have to forgive his attachment to you!”

  His left eye had narrowed and his jaw was clenched. “You are playing one dangerous game, lady,” he said shortly.

  “I’m so sorry if I’ve offended you, Mr. Hollister,” she replied coolly. “And I promise you Blake won’t be allowed within a mile of you for the entire two weeks we’re in residence.”

  “You won’t last two weeks if you don’t get this outfit into shape,” he said shortly as he looped a wire and stayed it with a screw. “There. Let’s try it now.”

  He replaced the cover and started the generator. Maggie had to concede that Hollister was good with his hands. He was lucky, she thought venomously, that he had something to make up for his lack of looks.

  Hollister slid his gloves back on and didn’t glance at her. She brought back painful memories, she and her son. It had been six years, but he still grieved for his own family. He didn’t want or need complications, but this woman could get under his skin. And that irritated him. She opened his wounds and made them bleed. The boy rubbed salt in them.

  Blake opened the door and let them back in. “The heater’s running!” He grinned up at the big, unsmiling man. “Thanks, Mr. Hollister. We’d have frozen to death but for you.”

  Hollister’s black eyes went over that boyish face with something less than affection. The boy looked like a boy—all uncombed hair and eyes that sparkled with mischief. Just like his mother. The pair of them were going to give him problems. He could feel it in his bones. He missed the old man, because Jeffries had never bothered him. But Blake had, at every opportunity. When he’d come to visit Jeffries for the summer, Tate couldn’t walk for bumping into him. It had been irritating at first, and then frankly painful. He’d been glad when the boy left at the end of summer and went back to school. Now here he was back again, and Hollister was feeling the same old stabs of memory, only they were worse. Because now she was here, too, and he’d been a hell of a long time without a woman. She aroused sensations that he’d forgotten he could feel, and he hated them. Damn it, he hated the world…!

  Maggie glanced at him, surprised by his cold reaction to Blake’s gratitude. He was a cold man, though, she thought as she got out of her cap and jacket and boots. Thank God he wasn’t going to be around very much.

  “Yes, thank you for fixing the generator,” Maggie agreed. “I suppose you need to get home, so I won’t offer to make coffee….”

  She didn’t want to, she meant. Oddly enough, that irritated Hollister. He didn’t like the way she reacted to him. He knew he wasn’t pretty, for God’s sake, but did she have to make it so obvious that she found him ugly?

  “Those cattle have got to be moved. I’ll find your men and set them to it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, deciding against arguing because it would only keep him here longer, and she didn’t want that.

  “Wouldn’t you like a cup of coffee?” Blake invited, while Maggie felt herself choking. No, Blake, she moaned inwardly.

  Hollister saw that look in her eyes and just for the hell of it, he said yes.

  Maggie forced a smile to her lips. Be generous, she told herself. He fixed the generator. You won’t freeze. The least you can do is give the poor cold man a cup of hot coffee. If only she could have managed to get him in the pot with it….

  “What do you take in your coffee, Mr. Hollister?” she asked with forced sweetness.

  He took off his hat, revealing his thick black hair. Snow flaked from the hat as he placed it on the hat rack and shed his thick coat. Under it he was wearing a red flannel plaid shirt and as near as she could tell, no undershirt. The flannel was unbuttoned halfway down his brawny dark chest, and it had the thickest covering of hair she’d ever seen on a man.

  She stared at him. She couldn’t help it. Despite her very brief marriage, she knew almost nothing about men. Bob had been as inexperienced as she, and as shy, so she’d learned little during those few fumbling encounters in the dark. But Hollister had a savage masculinity, an untamed look that made her blood run crazy and her pulse do unexpected things. She didn’t even like him, but he had a dangerously sensual appeal. She forced her eyes back to the white mugs she was pouring coffee into.

  “I take my coffee black, Mrs. Jeffries,” Hollister said quietly.

  She’d known that somehow before she’d posed the question. He looked that kind of man. No frills, no embellishments. She’d have bet that he drank his whiskey straight and never put catsup on his meat. She looked up as he came close to take the cup, smelling of wind and fir trees and leather.

  “I’ll bet you never put catsup on a st
eak,” she said without thinking.

  He searched her eyes curiously. “As a matter of fact, I don’t,” he agreed. His heavy brows moved together faintly. “What brought that on?”

  She dropped her eyes to her coffee. “I don’t know.” She lifted it, even though it was hot. Involuntarily her gaze went to Hollister’s hands. They fascinated her, now that she knew how capable they were. They were huge. Lean. Darkly tanned, with thick hair on the wrists and hard muscle in the long fingers. Flat nails, very clean. She could imagine those hands doing anything that was necessary on a ranch, from fixing generators to helping a calf be born.

  “Do you still have that big Aberdeen Angus bull, Mr. Hollister?” Blake asked. He’d joined them at the table and was sipping a cola from a can he’d gotten out of the refrigerator.

  Hollister hated having the boy ask him questions. But the youngster had a natural feel for ranching, and he remembered vividly the ease with which Blake had helped old man Jeffries deliver a calf and doctor one of the bulls. “I’ve still got him,” he replied tersely. He glanced at Blake, his eyes suddenly curious, losing their sharp edge as he realized that the boy was really interested and not just asking inane questions. “And I’ve bought a new Hereford crossbreed bull as well. I’m doing a three-one cross this next year. Angus to Beefmaster, Beefmaster to Hereford, and back to Angus again.”

  “Angus are easy calvers,” Blake said knowledgeably. “And Herefords are hardy. And Beefmasters are good choice grade beef.”

  “With good weight gains ratios,” Hollister agreed. The boy had been putting in some study to learn all that. He was impressed despite himself. “I had to sell my Brangus bulls. After two years of inbreeding, you can create some problems for yourself if you don’t introduce some new blood into your herd.”

  “That’s a fact,” Blake said, sipping his cola.

  Maggie, lost, glared at both of them. Hollister happened to glance her way and lifted an eyebrow. He came as close to smiling then as he had in six long years. “Something bothering you, Mrs. Jeffries?” he asked in his deep, slow tone.

  “She doesn’t know a lot about cattle,” Blake said. “But she’s a whiz at math and accounts payable and organizing things. She’s the top secretary at Skyline Printing Services and a computer expert.”

  Maggie shifted restlessly. “Don’t brag about me that way,” she told her son. “I only learned accounting to get out of typesetting. And I learned computer programming to get out of accounting.”

  “Most women aren’t good at math.” Hollister’s dark eyes narrowed in his hard face. “My mother could barely count hens.”

  “It was always my best subject in school,” Maggie replied. “My dad was a farmer. He kept a tally book, and I was his payroll clerk. He taught me to add columns of figures in my head.”

  “Her parents are dead now,” Blake volunteered. “I have three uncles, but they’re spread all over the country and I never see them.”

  “A farmer?” Hollister persisted. “What kind of livestock did he have?”

  “Cattle and hogs,” she answered. “He had some high pastures, too. Right on the side of the hills, but he did very well. We had Jersey cows and a few Holsteins.”

  The tall man finished his coffee. “But you don’t know how to breed cattle?”

  “A handful of cows, mostly milk cows, doesn’t qualify anyone to handle several hundred head of beef cattle,” she reminded him. “It’s a totally different proposition. And I was only eighteen when I married Blake’s father and left the country for the city. I’ve forgotten most of what little I knew about the management of it.”

  Hollister’s big hands toyed with the empty cup. “I went to school with Bob Jeffries,” he said. “He was a grade behind me.”

  She sat very still. “He died in Central America before Blake was born. We’d been married less than six months.” She sighed. “It seems like a dream sometimes. Except for the talking proof sitting there trying to look invisible while he drinks his soda,” she added with a dry grin at Blake.

  Blake just grinned back, but he was listening.

  “Bob loved danger,” Maggie reminisced, aware of Hollister’s narrow gaze on her face. “He fed on adrenaline. Just after we were married he tried to give it up.” She smiled sadly. “It didn’t work out. For him it was like trying not to breathe.”

  “I never knew him,” Blake sighed. He looked up at Hollister. “You aren’t married, are you, Mr. Hollister?”

  Hollister stared into the empty coffee cup. “I was.” He put the cup down on the table and turned. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll round up your hands and point them in the right direction.” He put on his coat and cocked his hat over one eye, glancing back at Blake and his mother without smiling. “If I were you, I’d stay inside until this snow lets up. And I’ll have that fence fixed before I let your men come home.”

  “Thanks for fixing the generator,” she said, alternately relieved and irritated by his shouldering of her own problems.

  He opened the door. “No problem. Good night.”

  He was gone in a whirl of wind and snowflakes, and Maggie stared after him feeling oddly empty and alone. How strange to feel that way about a man she disliked.

  “He must be divorced,” Maggie said absently.

  Blake joined her in the kitchen, draining his can of soft drink. “No, he’s a widower,” he told her. “Grandpa said his whole family was killed in an accident in the Rockies. Mr. Hollister was driving. His wife and son died, and he didn’t.” He shrugged, oblivious to the shock and horror on his mother’s soft face. “Grandpa said that was why he lived like he does, alone and away from everybody. That he was punishing himself because he didn’t die, too. Too bad. He sure is a nice man.”

  He glanced at his mother and did a double take at the look on her face. She actually looked interested. And that made him smile, but he was careful not to let her see him doing it.

  Chapter Two

  With the electrical generator fixed and the snow diminishing, thank God, Maggie spent a day going over the ranch’s financial statement. Blake busied himself with a new computer game while listening to Christmas music on a local country and western radio station. She wondered how Grandfather Jeffries had ever made a go of ranching in the first place, having spent so much on adding new land to his ranch when interest rates were sky-high and spending so little on herd improvement.

  What little she’d gleaned from Hollister about crossbreeding had piqued her curiosity. She wondered if her father-in-law had been trying that angle, or if he’d just raised beef without worrying about bloodlines or grades at auction.

  The really big problem, though, wasn’t what the ranch’s past had been. It was what its future was going to be. She hated to sell it. There was something majestic and real about rural Montana. About mountains that touched heaven and trees almost that tall. There was space here, not unlike the Arizona she’d come to love, and there were basic values. Blake would love staying on the ranch, having cattle to raise, and he’d have a heritage to inherit. But how was she going to keep it solvent all by herself? As she’d admitted, she knew nothing about the daily routine of ranching, even about how to breed cattle. The worst thing in the world would be to tackle it without expertise. She’d fall flat on her face and lose everything, and where would she be then?

  Blake, noting the lines of worry on her oval face, saved the game he’d been playing and, carefully removing the disks first, cut off the computer. He lowered the volume on the radio and turned to face her.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I’m no rancher,” she sighed. “That about sizes it up. This place needs a cattleman, not a vacationing secretary.”

  “There’s always—”

  “Mr. Hollister,” she bit off with a glittering stare in his direction. “Don’t you know any other words?”

  Blake grinned, not at all chastened. “His first name is Tate.”

  She rolled her eyes toward the ceil
ing and went back to the figures. “I’ll never be able to make it work.”

  “We have a great foreman,” Blake said sensibly. “And that’s mainly all we need.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” she replied and smiled wearily at him. Probably at his age everything was easy. It was only when people grew up that life got so complicated. “Well, I’ll think about it,” she promised.

  But Blake went to bed that night frowning because she’d had that look on her face. The one that said: I’m quitting while I’m ahead. And at all costs, he couldn’t possibly let her out of these mountains before he got a good chance to bring her and Mr. Hollister together. They were both alone, about the right age, and he doted on them. Why wouldn’t it work? He turned off his light so his mother would think he was sleeping, and before he dropped off to sleep he had the answer.

  Maggie made pancakes the next morning, and Blake ate two helpings before he got up from the table, put on his boots and thick parka and announced that he was going to hike down the ridge to the river and see if it was frozen.

  “You be careful,” she cautioned as he went out, reminding herself that young boys had to have some independence and that she couldn’t keep him indoors for the rest of his life.

  “Sure I will,” he promised. He chuckled. “See you in a couple of hours. I’ve got my watch on, so I’ll know when I’m due back, okay?”

  She smiled gently. “Okay.”

  But two hours passed, joined by two more, and still he didn’t return. Maggie was frantic. She tried searching, but she didn’t have any idea how to find which way he’d gone. She didn’t trust the men, either. Not with Blake’s life. She grimaced and gritted her teeth and tried to stay calm. There was only one person in the world she did trust to find Blake. In a fever of impatience, she got into the four-wheel-drive Bronco that Blake had talked her into buying in the summer and went quickly down the road to the Hollister place.

  The Hollister house was a big rugged retreat, with a varnished wood exterior, all angles and glass. Every possible view had its own window, and judging by the number and size of the chimneys, it must have as many fireplaces. Maggie had never set foot inside it, but she’d seen it often enough from the road.