Page 43 of Wyoming Heart

“How many brothers do you have?” she asked.

“Three. And they’re all in law enforcement.”

She smiled. “Are they older than you?”

“All of them are. You don’t have siblings, do you?”

“None at all. It was a lonely life, even when my father was still at home. He wasn’t, much. Law enforcement takes you out at all hours.”

He recalled that her father had been a policeman. “You’d know, I guess.”

She nodded.

“You like to cook, don’t you?” he remarked as she finished the piecrusts and covered them with clear wrap.

“Very much.”

“Knitting and crocheting, romance novels and cooking,” he mused. “Do you know what century this is?”

She turned with floury hands to glare up at him. “It’s my life and I live it as I please. I don’t make snide remarks about you, do I? I mean, you walk around in cow manure all day and muck out stables. How is that better than knitting? At least yarn doesn’t stink!”

He burst out laughing.

She glared at him. “Thank Bart for the apples, please, and tell him I’ll bring him a nice apple pie tomorrow.”

“He’ll be thrilled. He’s partial to apple pie.”

“I know.”

He scowled. “Why don’t you have anything going with him? He’s got a ranch of his own and he’s a good man, steady and law-abiding.”

“He’s my friend,” she said. “I don’t feel that way about him.”

“And he’s hardly in the same league as McGuire, right?” he persisted. “If you get involved with McGuire, you’ve got a steep learning curve ahead of you. It’s not like this.” He looked around the house. “You’d have to entertain his guests, know how to organize parties, wear the right clothes, use the right utensils at table.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked, aghast, because she was well on her way to the sort of life McGuire lived. Not that she was going to tell this cowboy anything!

He shrugged. “I guess you can learn. But if you don’t grow up in those circles, it’s not so easy to fit in,” he added with faint hauteur.

Her full lips flattened as she glared up at him. She knew how to wear the right clothes—she’d learned how from a kind makeup artist at the studio where she’d done her very first satellite media tour. It had led her to a high-ticket department store and clothes that suited her slender body. She’d learned how to use utensils in a fancy restaurant simply by observing her editor when they went out to eat. Organizing parties? She hadn’t done it yet, but that was something Pam Simpson could certainly teach her.

“Yes, I can learn,” she said shortly. But she wasn’t thinking of Jake McGuire and fitting into his life. She was thinking of her career, the one she had that this cowboy didn’t even know about.

He looked odd as he studied her in silence for a long moment. She wasn’t really a pretty woman. She had a nice figure and a pretty mouth and that glorious honey-streaked brown hair. It was what was inside her that made her look beautiful. She had a kind heart. He barely remembered his mother, but that was what people always said about her, people who knew her when she was still alive; that she was kindhearted.

“Anyway, my future doesn’t concern you,” she said shortly, turning away. “If you’re like most cowboys around here, you’ll be moving on to greener pastures in a few months. Bill McAllister is the only cowboy I’ve ever known who stayed put.”

“He never married?”

She sighed. “Yes, he did, years and years ago. She died of pneumonia. He never got over it.”

He laughed shortly. “The world is full of women,” he said. “Surely he could find somebody else.”

She turned, frowning. “Haven’t you ever been in love?” she asked, stunned.

“Not really,” he said, searching her eyes. “I’ve had my share of lovers, I guess.”

“It isn’t the same thing,” she returned.

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