The Rancher Gets Hitched & An Affair of Convenience Read online

  Title Page

  Letter to Reader

  The Rancher Gets Hitched

  An Affair of Convenience

  The Rancher Gets Hitched

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  An Affair of Convenience

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Copyright

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve been hearing from readers how much they are enjoying the Harlequin Duets stories and how they’re finding our 2-in-1 format convenient. Keep your comments coming, so that we can keep publishing the kinds of stories you want

  BEST OF THE WEST features exactly that: three exciting, sexy cowboys tamed by the love of a good woman. Written by Cathie Linz, a nominee for a Romantic Times 1998 Reviewer’s Choice Award, The Rancher Gets Hitched has a generous dose of humor and sex appeal. Look for the second title in January 2000.

  Then we’re pleased to welcome Marissa Hall to Harlequin. She pens a delightful tale of two driven workaholics with no time for love, but plans for a perfect affair. In An Affair of Convenience these plans, naturally, go awry.

  Then we have two books about people on unusual journeys to love. A runaway bride pretending to have amnesia in Renee Roszel’s Bride on the Loose finds herself trapped on an island overrun by eccentric characters, too many animals and one very sexy veterinarian. Then Colleen Collins returns with another quirky story about the most unlikely opposites who attract: a millionaire and a showgirl. Their dizzying courtship is captured in Married After Breakfast.

  Keep those letters coming!

  Malle Vallik

  Senior Editor

  Harlequin Duets

  Harlequin Books

  225 Duncan Mill Road

  Don Mills, Ontario

  M3B 3K9 Canada

  The Rancher Gets Hitched

  No matter how she might tempt him,

  Zane wasn’t going to give in. Not this time. Not with this city girl or any other.

  He imagined Tracy thanking him for the massage with a come-hither look. Her full lips would smile in a way meant to make a man melt.

  He’d resist.

  She could stand stark naked in front of him and he wouldn’t flinch.

  She could...what was she doing now? He cautiously moved forward to get a better look at her face. Her long lashes were velvety dark against her creamy skin and her lips were parted as she...snored?

  Oh, it was delicate and dainty-like, but it was definitely a snore.

  So much for him thinking Tracy was lying there concocting some scheme to seduce him. She’d told him she was no more interested in having a relationship with him than he was with her.

  Maybe it was time Zane believed her.

  For more, turn to page 9

  An Affair of Convenience

  “Neither of us is any good at relationship, I guess.”

  “It’s not us, Mallory. It’s just that everyone else has unreasonable expectations. We work long, hard hours.” Cliff frowned. “But I like going out with women. I like dating. I like—”

  “Sex?” she asked sweetly. “Are you saying you can’t go without it?”

  “I happen to like women. So sue me,” the lawyer in him responded.

  Her smile faded. “Maybe you just need to have an affair.”

  Cliff sighed. “Every time I date, the woman pulls the same old your-work-means-more-to-you-than-I-do routine. I haven’t even made it to first base with anyone in ages.”

  She nodded. “You know there’s a solution to all this. We merely have to find someone to...to...”

  “Have sex with occasionally?” he inserted silkily.

  She tipped her chin upward. “Yes. Good clean sex.” Mallory took a deep breath. “Why don’t you and I have an affair?”

  For more, turn to page 197

  The Rancher Gets Hitched

  CATHIE

  LINZ

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  I confess that I have a “thing” for the West, just like my heroine Tracy. When I was a little girl, my big brother was a huge fan of TV Westerns like Gunsmoke and Bonanza (Little Joe was my favorite). Usually in our reenactments I played the role of the bad guy who gets shot. Now that I’m all grown up, I no longer have to “drop dead” at my brother’s command. Now I get to write my own zany Western legends for this BEST OF THE WEST trilogy, all set in Colorado where I spent several summers and where my aunt still has a ranch. I hope you enjoy Tracy and Zane’s story!

  P.S. Several of the cooking disasters in this book are taken from my own family’s chronicles of “Recipes Gone Wrong.” Live And Learn is my motto in the kitchen.

  Books by Cathie Linz

  HARLEQUIN LOVE & LAUGHTER

  39—TOO SEXY FOR MARRIAGE

  45—TOO STUBBORN TO MARRY

  51—TOO SMART FOR MARRIAGE

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

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  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  For Bill Phillips—my local cowboy poet

  and punmeister

  BEST

  OF THE

  WEST

  1

  “SON OF A BUCK!” a grizzled old man declared in a gravelly voice. “Look what we got here.”

  Blinking at the bright pool of light spilling from the open door, Tracy Campbell swatted at the raindrops on her eyelashes. Her long hair was plastered to her head and cheeks like strands of sticky seaweed. She felt like a drowned rat and had no doubt that she looked the part. She’d been driving around in circles for hours in a raging downpour that would have sent Noah heading back to the ark. Tired to the bone, she managed to ask, “Where am I?”

  “On our front porch,” a younger man replied.

  Great, she thought. Of all the ranch houses in Colorado, she had to end up on the doorstep of a comedian.

  Tracy wasn’t in the mood for laughing. What she was in the mood for was a full-blown crying jag. However, she refused to turn into a blubbering idiot in front of these two men. They were already staring at her as if she’d landed from outer space.

  The older man had a shock of white hair and piercing light blue eyes. He reminded her of Lloyd Bridges. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the younger man yet.

  Gathering her composure along with the damp skirt of her denim dress—she figured everyone in Colorado wore denim—and without waiting for an invitation, she walked inside.

  “I don’t care where I am,” she stated with a look that dared either man to cross her. “I’m not going out in that downpour again.”

  “Nobody asked you to,” the younger man noted, his voice shimmying down her spine like a hot toddy.

  “I got lost looking for the Best ranch,” she said.

  “You’ve found it,” he replied.

  Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, Tracy extended
her hand before realizing the navy cotton sweater she was wearing over her dress had stretched until it limply drooped beyond her fingertips.

  Yanking the saturated sleeve up to her elbow, she introduced herself. “I’m your new housekeeper.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat all.” The older man slapped his thigh and chortled.

  She sensed the younger man’s eyes gleaming with amusement as he surveyed her from dripping head to muddy feet.

  “She probably cleans up pretty good,” the older man added with another chortle.

  “Forgive my father, he has a peculiar sense of humor. I’m Zane Best.” His warm hand engulfed hers in a handshake that was startlingly powerful. Not that he squeezed her fingers too hard or anything like that. Still, her chilly fingers were humming with awareness.

  This was Zane? Her rancher employer? He wasn’t what she’d imagined. She’d pictured him looking like J.R.’s father in the TV series Dallas—silver-haired, distinguished-looking, tall.

  The only thing she’d gotten right was that last one. He had to be at least six-two and his ruggedly lean build was enough to make an advertising account executive like herself want to cast him in a jeans commercial.

  But Tracy wasn’t an account executive any longer. She wasn’t an about-to-be-bride, either. That life was behind her, left back in Chicago along with the sterling-silver tea set and the Austrian crystal decanters. She was on her own now. On her own as a housekeeper, on a ranch in Colorado.

  It had seemed like a good idea when her aunt Maeve had suggested it to her back in Chicago. Her aunt’s new husband, Herbert, had a dear cousin out west who was looking for a housekeeper. Hadn’t Tracy always wanted to live on a ranch?

  At the time, Tracy’s first priority had been getting away from the nightmarish mess her heretofore wellplanned life had become, and to do that as quickly as possible. She’d jumped at the job, asking no questions. Maeve had offered to call ahead and tell them Tracy was coming.

  Tracy had driven out west instead of flying and had spent more time behind the wheel of her beloved red Miata than she probably should have that day. But, after enduring a rough night in a no-name motel in the middle of Nebraska, she’d wanted to reach her destination by day’s end.

  The car was packed to the gills. She imagined her ex-fiancé, Dennis, had noticed a few things missing by now, not the least of which was her.

  Tracy’s frantic telephone conversation with her aunt had led her here to the wilds of Colorado and to this rugged man who was eyeing her with equal parts of amusement and wariness.

  “You still awake in there?” he inquired dryly.

  Despite the fact that they were inside, he still wore a cowboy hat so she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. He had a classic profile. Above his right ear, she could see a few inches of his hair—dark hair. He had chiseled cheekbones and a jaw that could have been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Altogether it made for a sexy and craggy face, like the guys that posed for those cigarette ads in the sixties. Back to advertising again? She closed her eyes.

  This man was supposed to be a middle-aged widower, with two angelic children of indeterminable age—Aunt Maeve hadn’t been real clear on that detail. In her glowing description, her aunt had bestowed the mild and easygoing disposition of a saint upon Zane. Tracy was getting the feeling her aunt had exaggerated. Greatly.

  THE WOMAN HAD “tenderfoot” written all over her—from the tips of her muddied beige suede boots to the top of her sopping wet blond hair. What kind of idiot wore suede boots to a ranch? Apparently the kind he’d hired, Zane noted with a sigh.

  Beggars can’t be choosers. It wasn’t as if he’d received tons of applications for the position of housekeeper. Everyone in the county knew about his situation and they’d rather eat rattlers than work in his household—thanks to the wild stories put out by the two housekeepers he’d already gone through in the past month.

  He hadn’t expected Tracy Campbell to just show up on his doorstep tonight. She was suppose to arrive tomorrow. He didn’t know exactly what relationship existed between himself and the woman dripping in his hallway. Her aunt had married his father’s favorite cousin, which made her... there was probably some word for it but he didn’t know what. Second cousin niece-in-law?

  Who knew? Who cared? He needed a housekeeper and he needed her pronto.

  His dad and his cousin Herbert, or Herb as he preferred to be called, talked on the phone all the time, and Buck had told Herb about the trouble they’d been having keeping household help. Still, Zane didn’t know much about Herb’s new wife. When he’d gotten the call saying that she had a niece who was coming to fill the job of housekeeper, he’d been too relieved to question his luck, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  This woman’s mouth was worth looking at, even if it was a little blue aground the edges from cold or exhaustion, he wasn’t sure which. Her long hair was beginning to dry at the ends, and as it did so it turned a warm gold. Her denim dress clung to a body that was curved in all the right places. And she had eyes as green as grass.

  “You should get out of those damp clothes before you catch a chill.” The image of her without those clothes was enough to make him take a step back, as if she’d just zapped him with a cattle prod. “Uh, did you bring your luggage with you?”

  “In the car,” she said.

  “You don’t look so good,” Buck stated bluntly. “Maybe you better sit down.”

  “You know what I could really use? A bathroom.”

  “It’s over there,” Zane said, nodding his head toward the door beneath the staircase leading upstairs. “It’s not real big, but it should suit your needs.”

  After brushing her hair and drying her face with towels that could give sandpaper a run for its money, she felt only marginally more presentable.

  “Appears to me, son, that a good wind would knock her over. She looked like a crazy wild woman, pounding on the door that way.”

  “She’s not crazy. She’s just tired from the trip.”

  Hearing Zane’s words through the bathroom door, Tracy decided that exhaustion was as good an excuse as any. The truth was that she definitely was not at her best, but then who would be after what she’d been through the past few days? Being an unemployed runaway bride would make any woman look crazy and wild. “You’re allowed,” she assured her reflection in the tiny mirror.

  From the other side of the door, she heard Buck’s bellowing voice saying, “Son, she’s in the john talking to herself! Maybe you should check on her.”

  “I’m fine,” Tracy shouted back. “I’ll be out in a second.”

  It took her several tries to undo the lock on the bathroom door, which probably dated back to the last century. She was just about ready to admit defeat when the lock finally gave way, and she nearly tumbled into the hallway, where Zane and his father stood waiting for her.

  Gathering her battered dignity around her, she straightened her shoulders and said, “I think I’ll go rest now, if you don’t mind. It was a long drive out here.”

  “I’ll take you up to your room,” Zane said. He already had two of her bags in hand, the damp patch on his shirt indicating that he’d been out in the rain to get them from her car, which she’d left unlocked.

  “Thanks.” Tracy followed him up the stairs that creaked with every step they took. Zane was two steps above her, which put his denim-clad behind right about at her eye level. His jeans fit him like a second skin. He had a narrow waist and lean hips to go with his long legs—thirty-four waist and thirty-six inseam, if she wasn’t mistaken. Not that she was paying attention to such things. Not anymore. Still, she couldn’t help noticing that he moved with the cowboy swagger of the guys on Bonanza.

  She should know, she’d seen every episode of the classic western TV show. She’d always had this secret desire to live on a ranch, and during the long drive west she’d told herself that maybe Dennis’s cheating had been fate’s way of guiding her here to live out her ranch dream. She
just hoped this didn’t turn into a nightmare the way her dreams of a life with Dennis had.

  “The housekeeper’s quarters are being...uh... being remodeled. So for the next few days you’ll have to stay in the guest room,” Zane said, kicking the door open with his booted foot.

  The bed was big and looked comfortable, even if it was old. It had a quilt of some kind on it instead of a bedspread. There was a nightstand and a chest of drawers along with a straight-backed chair. Not exactly The Ritz, but it would do.

  “I’ll just put your bag here,” Zane said, placing the smallest carry-on bag onto the bed, where it bounced several times on the creaky mattress.

  Looking at it, Tracy longed for her own luxury mattress in storage back in Chicago. “Do you have a bathtub?” she asked Zane.

  “Sure. But the hot-water heater is out of commission right now. Sorry,” he said regretfully, with a tug on the brim of his hat. “It should be working again by morning.”

  “That’s okay,” she murmured, her hope of taking a hot bath gone.

  “I’ll turn up the heat for you. If you don’t have any other questions, I’ll let you get some sleep. We get up early in these parts. Breakfast is at five-thirty.”