His thoughts refused to stray far from Malika.She was another one of his problems.Maybe he’d take her with him to check on some rangeland they’d leased from a neighbor.It was always good to look at familiar things through fresh eyes.
Especially pretty green eyes that refused to stray far from him, either.What might have happened if the idiot scientist hadn’t interrupted?How far might things have gone?Where would she draw the line?Did she have one?Because he couldn’t decipher the signals she sent.
It was like high school all over again.
“How long has your family lived on the ranch?”Malika asked Huck, because she’d faced down one ill-tempered bear already today, and one more wouldn’t faze her.
Fortunately, she’d hit the one topic that his dad could pontificate over for hours.
“Jayce is the fifth generation of Hansons,” Huck told her proudly.“Fourth generation rancher.Most family-owned operations don’t last beyond two or three generations, but we’re still going strong.He’s got a good head on his shoulders and plenty of modern ideas to pass on to his kids.”
The secondary income from Burning Scrub’s ventures didn’t hurt either, because at the end of the day ranching was a labor of love, but no need to burst his dad’s bubble.He had a right to be proud of what the family had built.
“Goodness.”Malika gazed at his dad with wide-eyed admiration.
She really did know a lot about flirting, and she laid it on thick.
She shifted all that admiration to incorporate Jayce’s mom, proving she could charm either sex, regardless of age.“You’re such a wonderful couple.How did you two meet?”
Jayce had heard this story before.It always softened his mom’s eyes and made his dad beam.He gave Malika a careful thumbs-up of approval when his parents weren’t looking.
“We met at a horse sale,” Vanessa said.“I was a city girl.My parents taught at the university.I was a month away from turning seventeen, and they said I could have a horse for my birthday.I had my heart set on a pretty little rescue mare, and I was trying to decide if I could afford her, when this cocky young cowboy sidled up to me and started to quietly point out all the reasons why she was a bad choice for me.Then he proceeded to sell me one of his horses.”
“At a steep discount,” Huck added.“On the condition she allow me to visit the horse every now and then.”
Vanessa smiled at her husband, and Jayce began to have hope that they’d put their squabble behind them.“Every now and then turned into every second Saturday.My parents weren’t pleased, but Huck won them over.”
“They weren’t easy to sway, either,” Huck said.“Your parents didn’t like having an uneducated rancher chasing after their precious little girl.They had bigger plans for you than me.”
“So, Huck went to college,” Vanessa said to Malika.“Earned himself a business degree.”
Huck didn’t know how to quit when he was ahead.“One of us had to get a practical education.That English degree of yours wasn’t going to get you very far without a doctorate behind it.I ended up having to teach you how to take over the ranch finances.Would have saved us both trouble and money if you’d got the business degree yourself, in the first place.”
“What a wonderful story,” Malika exclaimed, apparently determined to ignore the clear signs that the conversation was taking a steep, downward turn.“How lucky you are to have found each other, and to both know what you wanted.”
“I wanted the prettiest girl I’d ever laid eyes on,” Huck declared, and Jayce’s hope rekindled.
Vanessa laughed.“I wanted a horse.”
Huck scowled.“And now, you want ferrets.”
Jayce shook his head and gave up.Nope.No truce today.Something about those ferrets was really bugging his dad.And as for his mother…
She could use a lesson or two about handling bears from Malika.
His mom began gathering the empty dishes.“Sweetheart, give me a hand, will you?”she said to Jayce.
Son of a—
He’d dropped his guard while his parents reminisced, and now that his defenses were sufficiently down, she was about to move in for the kill.He knew what was coming.Put him in the same room with a pretty woman, and his parents, obsessed over the next generation of Hansons, started having ideas.His mother planned to give him the third degree in the kitchen.
She set the stack of dirty dishes on the counter above the dishwasher, then started to load them.
Then, she started on Jayce.
“Malika is a lovely girl.”Which was a statement of fact, not a question.“I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time together.”
And so, it began.
