Maxine didn’t laugh or smile or cry. She arrived every morning, did her work, and then left every night when her husband came to pick her up.

Maxine was silent and sober and moved through the house as if invisible.

Harley moved through the house as if a beacon shone on her. She practically glowed, bathed with light.

He didn’t understand how she did it, or what she did, only that from the moment she’d arrived seven days ago nothing in this house had been the same.

Suddenly aware that they were standing so close he could smell the scent of her shampoo—something sweet and floral, freesia or orange blossom and entirely foreign in his masculine house—he abruptly stepped back, letting her pass.

His gaze followed her as she crossed the kitchen, hating himself for noticing how the apron around her waist emphasized how small it was as well as the gentle swell of hips. “Just leave my dinner in the oven,” he said.

“If that’s what you want,” she said, reaching for the coffee pot to fill his thermos.

“That’s what I want,” he growled, looking away, unable to watch her a moment longer because just having her in his house made him feel things he didn’t want to feel.

Like desire.

And hunger.

Lust.

He didn’t lust. Not anymore. Maybe when he was a kid, young and randy with testosterone, he battled with control, but he didn’t battle for control, not at thirty-nine.

At least, he hadn’t battled for control in years.

But he was struggling now, inexplicably drawn to this temporary housekeeper who looked so fresh and wholesome in her olive green apron with its sprigs of holly berries that he wanted to touch her. Kiss her. Taste her.

And that was just plain wrong.

He ground his teeth together, held his breath, and cursed the employment agency for sending him a sexy housekeeper.

She walked toward him, held out the filled thermos and foil-wrapped packets of cheese sausage and coffee cake. “Be careful.”

He glanced down at her, seeing but not wanting to see how her apron outlined her shape. Hips, full breasts, and a tiny waist he could circle with two hands. Even with her hideous apron strings wrapped twice around her waist.

Aprons were supposed to hide the body. Her apron just emphasized her curves. And olive was such a drab color but somehow it made her eyes look mysterious and cool and green and her lips dark pink and her skin—

“I’m always careful,” he ground out, taking the thermos and foil packages from her, annoyed all over again.

He was a man about to turn forty and he’d spent the past eleven years raising two kids on his own, and he might not be a perfect father or a perfect man but he tried his best. He did. And while he appreciated his new housekeeper’s concern, he didn’t have time to be babied, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain himself. Not to his brothers, his dad, and especially not to a staggeringly pretty woman from California who was now living in his house, under his roof, bending and leaning and doing all sorts of things with her incredibly appealing body, all the while humming as she went about her work as if she were Snow White or Mary Poppins.

Most annoying to have a beautiful housekeeper. He would never have hired her if he’d realized she was so damn pretty. He didn’t want pretty in his house. He didn’t want to be tempted. He had a ranch to manage and two children who would be home from boarding school for their holidays in another week and he couldn’t afford to get distracted by a pretty face or a shapely body.

His gaze narrowed as it swept Harley Diekerhoff’s long, lean legs and gently rounded hips before skimming her small waist, then lifting to her face. “Always careful,” he repeated, and stalked out through the kitchen door to the back porch.

Harley Diekerhoff might be a perfect cook and housekeeper, but she was also a temptation, and that was a problem he didn’t need.

 


 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

Harley rang the bell at six o’clock to let the ranch hands know dinner was ready. Brock had trained his hands to come to the main kitchen to help carry their dinner to the bunkhouse. One by one she handed off the various dishes—the platter of sliced flank steak, a substantial casserole of cheesy potato gratin, two loaves of warm buttered French bread, a bowl of green beans with almonds and bacon, a hefty green salad, and an enormous chocolate sheet cake with a gallon of milk for dessert.

Bundled in her winter coat and mittens, she followed the parade of ranch hands through the swirling snow, careful not to drop the oversized sheet cake with its thick chocolate icing. Brock said the hands didn’t need dessert every night. She disagreed. A man always needed something sweet before bed. Made a man feel cared for.

At least that’s how she’d been raised.

Young Lewis Dilford, one of the newer hands, held the bunk house’s front door open for her. She stomped her fleece-lined all-weather boots on the mat, knocking off snow before stepping into the bunkhouse. A fire burned hotly in the cast iron stove in the corner.

The bunk house was actually the original log cabin on the property, and on her first day at Copper Mountain Ranch, JB, Brock’s ranch foreman, gave Harley a tour of the outbuildings, including a walk through the bunk house.

JB told her that when Brock had bought the ranch thirteen years ago his plan had been to tear the old log cabin down and salvage the logs for a future project, but when he discovered that the walls and flooring were still sound, and all the cabin really needed was a new roof and some modernizing, he gutted the one-bedroom cabin, adding electricity and plumbing, a small indoor bathroom, and a working kitchen.

With the exception of some of the electrical work, Brock had done all the remodeling himself. It’d taken him a year to complete the bunk house, but he liked being busy, and it gave him something to do during the summers with the longer days of sunlight.

She glanced around the main room which was both sitting room and dining room. Chairs were pushed back against the wall and the pine dining table was already set.

“It looks nice,” she said, complimenting their efforts to make the table look nice with the tablecloth she’d given them.

Her first two nights here they’d ignored the table cloth she’d brought them. Apparently Maxine didn’t care if they used a tablecloth or placemats.

Some of the men weren’t sure they needed to use fancy stuff like table cloths, either. But Harley said it just might make dinner a little nicer, and while she couldn’t make them use a table cloth, it was their dinner, after all, and they ought to enjoy themselves. Feel good about themselves.

The next night she entered the bunkhouse and found the table covered with the cloth and five place settings of silverware and plates.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. They were watching her face and her quick surprised smile told them everything they needed to know. Since then they used the table cloth every night, and lately, they all washed up and combed their hair, too.

The lost boys of Copper Mountain, she thought, smiling a little as she looked at them now.

“I hope you are hungry,” she said, placing the cake and the milk on the table next to all the other dishes filling the center of the table. Maxine used to leave all the food on the buffet, but Harley put everything on the table so the men could stay seated and serve themselves family style.