This Time for Keeps Read online

  They had promised she would be wealthy. By all rights, she should have awakened in a penthouse suite. That very minute she should have been making reservations for a first class flight to London. Or Paris. On the Concorde.

  She turned her head slowly, letting her gaze slip over her surroundings. In the moonlit darkness, the ranch structures stood out from the shadows in sharp relief. A barn. A bunkhouse and corral. The main house with its distinctive outdoor bathroom set at a discreet distance to the rear.

  Nora shuddered and turned her gaze back to the skies.

  Damn it, this was not in the bargain!

  She'd already done outhouses and homespun. When you're reincarnated, you're supposed to go forward, not back.

  Making a deliberate effort to calm her thoughts, Nora held the ring even tighter and brought up the mental image of Tom, Dick, and Harry. The fact that in her mind's eye they all had horns and carried tridents shouldn't be held against her.

  "Come on you guys," she said. "This cosmic telephone in my head is supposed to work. You said I had a month to contact you when I had a problem." She glanced around at the darkness again and ground her teeth together when she heard the distinctive howl of a wolf in the distance. "Well, there's a problem.”

  Nothing happened. There was no blinding flash of light. The skies didn't open to her. There was no chorus of heavenly voices.

  Perfect, she thought. But then why should she be surprised that they weren't answering? They'd lied to her about her new life. Why not lie about her ability to contact them too?

  Instantly, a low hum of sound invaded her mind. Mentally grabbing onto that thread of communication, Nora concentrated fiercely, determined to make herself heard. Then the humming changed, breaking up into short, sharp dashes all in the same droning pitch.

  "A busy signal?" she nearly shouted. Unbelievable. What was next, voicemail? "You can't get rid of me this easily," she said. "You guys lied to me and we will talk about this."

  “Who lied to you, Nora?”

  The deep voice came from directly behind her. She jumped guiltily and spun around to face Seth Murdoch.

  "Jeeeezzzz," she muttered, clapping one hand to her chest.

  "Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something?"

  "No." he said seriously. "Are you trying to catch pneumonia again?" His gaze dropped pointedly to her bare feet.

  Nora curled her toes as if trying to hide them beneath the hem of her nightgown. Then it struck her that she didn't really care what this guy had to say about anything. "Look, if you don't mind, I'm trying to have a private conversation here.”

  "Yeah?" he countered, moving closer to her. Leaning his right elbow on the top rail of the paddock fence, he cocked his head and stared at her. "With who?"

  Good point. Lifting her chin, Nora matched him stare for stare. "With myself, cowboy. Have a problem with that?"

  “A problem?” One corner of his mouth lifted into what could have been a smile if he had really let himself go. “With you wandering around in the damp cold, talking to yourself and shouting at the sky?” He shook his head. "Nope. Why should I have a problem with that?"

  A sarcastic cowboy. Great. Just what she needed to end her day on a perfect note. "Look, Kemosabe," she started and had the pleasure of seeing confusion settle on his features. "I just want to be alone for a while, all right?"

  "Kemosabe?" he repeated. "What the hell are you talking about, Nora?"

  She inhaled slowly, deeply, and the mingled scents of earth and pine and… she sniffed again… cow, reminded her why she was in such a mood. "Never mind what I'm talking about, Hopalong. You work for me, right?"

  "Yeah." Though at the moment, he didn't look any too pleased with that fact.

  “So you have to take orders from me, right?”

  He didn't say a word. Ordinarily, a man wearing an expression like his would have worried her. But right now, Nora was too ticked off at men in general to be concerned about it.

  Shaking her head at him, she said, "Why don't you go brand something? Just… leave me alone, will you?"

  "Brand something."

  "Isn't that what you do?"

  "Not at night, usually."

  He was being deliberately uncooperative. Just like three other males she could name. The last, lingering traces of her patience disappeared and she snapped, “Then go to town. Get drunk. Play poker. Rent a hooker.”

  "Rent a what?" he asked, his voice as tight as piano wire.

  "A hooker," Nora repeated, then, because his blank expression didn't change, she elaborated. "A harlot. Soiled dove. Lady of the evening. In short, Buck, a woman."

  His eyes widened in surprise at her last statement, then narrowed just as quickly. His mouth a grim slash across his face, he reached for her, neatly avoiding the right hook she aimed at his jaw.

  “That does it, Nora. Back to bed until the Doc checks you over good and proper."

  "Put me down, you Neanderthal." She slugged him again, but only managed to bruise her knuckles against his shoulder.

  "What the hell is a Neander-" he shook his head, hitched her higher in his arms, and started for the house. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."

  Nora kicked her legs furiously and tried to push away from him, but it was useless. For a tall, lean man, he was surprisingly strong. His arms felt like bands of steel and the hold he had on her showed no signs of lessening. Mentally she apologized to every actress she had ever seen carried in such a way in the movies. Nora had always scoffed at their helpless, fluttery kicks, telling herself that they could escape if they wanted to badly enough.

  Now she knew different.

  "Murdoch," she said, trying to sound calm, reasonable. "Put me down now and we'll forget this ever happened."

  He barely glanced at her. In the moonlight, his profile looked dangerous. Determined. "No chance."

  "Fine," she said as they neared the front door of the ranch house. "Then you leave me no choice." Taking a deep breath, she stared right up into his cold, hard eyes and said, "You're fired."

  For the first time in their acquaintance, Seth Murdoch laughed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The only reason she kept quiet as he carried her through the house to her bedroom was that she didn't want everyone else in the place to awaken and join in on the conversation. When he unceremoniously dropped her onto her mattress, Nora winced as the old springs squealed in protest. Before she could say a word though, Murdoch had the quilt pulled over her and tucked in around her neck.

  For God's sake, she hadn't been put to bed since— well, she couldn't even remember the last time. Pushing herself into a sitting position, she shoved the quilt down to her lap and glared at him. There was just enough moonlight filtering through the curtains to let her know he was not impressed.

  "Look, Roy," she snapped, though he didn't look the least bit like Roy Rogers, "I don't know what your game is, but this caveman routine is not going to work on me."

  “I'm not the one playing a game here, Nora." he snarled and leaned down close to her. "First you call me by my name, then it's Kemosabe, Hopalong, Buck, then Roy. Hell, you can't remember who I am from one minute to the next and you say I'm playin' a game?"

  "It appears your memory is working just fine," she murmured. Forced to stare directly into his icy blue eyes, Nora was also forced to admit that he was one gorgeous man. His black hair, a shade too long for her tastes, fell in careless disarray across his forehead and curled over the back of his collar. The squint lines between his tightly drawn black eyebrows gave his face character, and she noted for the first time that it looked as though his nose had been broken at least once. He looked hard, implacable. A warrior who wouldn't know the meaning of the word "quit," even on his deathbed. John Wayne would have liked this guy a lot. Yes indeedy, Seth Murdoch was a genuine babe. With a capital B.

  If you liked his type.

  Thankfully she didn't. Never had.

  Still, she couldn't stifle the small, purely feminine curl of
appreciation unwinding deep in the pit of her stomach. In what she hoped was a calm, reasonable tone, Nora said, "I know exactly who you are, mister. It's you who keeps forgetting."

  "Is that right?"

  “Yeah," she snapped. "You work for me, remember? When I fire somebody who works for me, they stay fired.”

  Clearly unmoved, he shook his head. "Honey, you can't fire me.”

  "Why's that?"

  "Because without me, who would run this ranch for you?" He snorted a laugh. “Richard?”

  No love lost there, she told herself. And if she was going to be stuck here, she would have to know what was going on. Might as well start now. "You don't think much of him, do you, Clint?"

  He scowled at the strange name, then paused before answering thickly, "That's no secret."

  "Why not?"

  Straightening up, he pushed his hair back off his face with both hands, then leaned over the small table beside her bed. The scratch of a match head against a striking pad sounded out, then a brief, brilliant flare of light rose up. He touched the flame to the wick of an oil lamp, then shook out the match and tossed it onto a forgotten saucer. As he settled the chimney over the top of the lamp, his features were outlined briefly by the column of light. Shadows danced over his face, masking whatever he was thinking behind an illusion of movement.

  "No answer?" she prodded.

  He glanced at her. "I can answer. You just won't like it this time any more than any of the other times I've told you."

  Ah, that tricky memory again. She knew who these people were, she just didn't know how she was supposed to feel about them. Tom, Dick and Harry were real funny guys.

  "Say it anyway," she told him.

  "Fine." He swiveled his head to look at her directly. "I think he's a no-account. He wouldn't know an honest day's work if it walked up and shot him. Him and that sister of his have been nothing but trouble since they got here.”

  Apparently Seth didn't have any trouble with being honest.

  "How long have they been here again?" she wondered out loud.

  He sighed. "Seems like longer, but he's only been here a few months. Elizabeth sent for him. Said she needed her brother in her time of grief."

  "Grief?" Nora repeated.

  Seth looked at her strangely and nodded. "She was in mourning for your pa. That's why she moved in here after the funeral six months ago. Said you could help each other get over Jake's death. Don't you remember?"

  Six months? The old Nora's father had died that recently? She felt a pang of sympathy for her predecessor. Memories of her own parents' deaths were still painful for her.

  "Where'd they come from?” she asked.

  His gaze narrowed and he tilted his head in wary consideration. "Elizabeth moved to town from Boston to be near your pa. She'd only been here a month or so when he died. That horse threw him just a week before the wedding.”

  "Wedding?"

  Seth hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. "Yeah. Elizabeth was darn near your stepmother.”

  Remembering the woman who had pitched to the floor when she woke up, Nora muttered, “She looked very young to be marrying a man my father's age." Or at least what she would guess to be the man's age.

  "Not so young as she'd like you to think," he said with a mocking smile. "She's a widow. 'Bout thirty-five, I'd guess.”

  Well, hell, she thought. Pick out a wheelchair.

  "But you know all this already, Nora. Don't you?"

  She forced a laugh she didn't feel. "Sure. Stupid questions, huh?"

  He looked about to say something else, so Nora hurried on. "When Richard said earlier that we were engaged, you said it was a lie. Was it?"

  “See this is what I'm talkin' about Nora." Seth pointed one finger at her accusingly. "That fever must have been harder on you than Doc Hanes knows.”

  Harder than any of them knew, actually, but that was beside the point.

  "Maybe we ought to take you into Helena. Have some other doctor check you over.”

  "Forget the fever and just answer the question. Was he lying?”

  "Far as I know," he admitted. "You sure as hell didn't announce any engagement before you took sick.”

  Hmm. "Then why would he-" she waved one hand, dismissing the thought for now. She could get this all cleared up in the morning. If she was engaged, she had to know about it. Because she had no intention of getting married and the sooner she told Richard the news, the better. “Never mind," she said. “I’ll talk to him in the morning."

  He was staring at her again.

  "What is it now?" she demanded.

  The same thing as before, Seth told himself. There was something different about her. Something had changed during this latest illness. It was almost as if she had awakened a different person.

  Except that she looked the same. Her voice sounded the same. It was just the things she said and how she acted that was so… wrong.

  "I could have Doc Hanes back out here in no time."

  “I'm fine."

  He shook his head. Eleanor Wilding hadn't had a fine day in her whole life. She had always been sickly. Pale and rail thin, she looked as though a stiff breeze would carry her clear to California.

  "Hello…"

  He snapped back from his wandering thoughts and saw Nora waving her hands in front of his face. "What are you doing?”

  “Trying to get your attention, Slim." Shaking her head, she grabbed her quilt and drew it up over her as she stretched out on the bed. "If you're not going to stay fired, at least get out of my room. I have a feeling that I'm going to need all the rest I can get."

  Finally, she was starting to make sense. Seth nodded, started for the door, then stopped. "No more running around outside barefoot?”

  "Girl Scout's honor," she replied, holding up three fingers, with her thumb and smallest finger crossed on her palm.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "Never mind, Tex." She said with a half chuckle. "Just get lost, okay?"

  Tex. Slim. Clint. Shaking his head, Seth bent down, blew out the lamp, and stepped into the hall, closing her bedroom door behind him. As he left the main house and crossed the yard, he paused long enough to stare up at the stars overhead. Maybe Nora was right, he told himself. Maybe he did need to go to town and rent a-what had she said? A hooker?

  A snort of disbelief shot from his throat. Nora Wilding telling a man to go bed a woman? Until today, he would have been willing to bet that such a thing would never come out of her mouth. Hell, she had grown up on a ranch and still managed to avoid any talk about "breeding." As far as Nora had been concerned, baby cows just… happened.

  He shot a look at the closed door behind him, then turned his face skyward. Rubbing one hand across the back of his neck, he stared blindly at the stars. There was something strange going on around there, and damn it, he wanted to know what it was.

  #

  Just as dawn streaked its color-stained fingers across the sky, Seth stepped into the kitchen. A wave of cinnamon-scented warmth washed over him, drawing him further inside. He closed the door against the chill, then let his gaze sweep over the tidy room. He had spent many a cold winter's morning huddled up to the table, drinking coffee bold enough to stand on its own. This place, this room, was as close to a home as he'd ever had.

  Hannah Miller came in from the hall, carrying a tray laden with a teapot, cup and saucer, and a plate of uneaten toast. She saw him, shook her head, then set the tray down on the massive oak trestle table.

  "Look at that," she said and clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "Wouldn't touch it. Said she doesn't like tea." Shooting Seth a glance, she asked, "Have you ever heard such a thing?"

  "No ma'am," he said, walking to the cupboard where the coffee cups were kept. Nora had been drinking hot tea ever since he'd known her. One more change, he told himself and mentally added it to the growing list of differences in his employer.

  He poured himself some coffee, set the pot back down on the stove, then headed for the
table. Taking his usual seat on one of the benches, he held his cup between his palms and looked at Hannah. The older woman's already wrinkled brow was furrowed deeply as she considered the uneaten breakfast tray before her.

  "Do you suppose the doctor was wrong? That she's still sick? I thought she'd like a little something more than broth, but…” she shrugged wide shoulders.

  "No. she isn't sick," he said. At least, not the kind of illness they were used to dealing with. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with her body. It was her mind that had Seth worried. Nora Wilding was not herself. But it wouldn't do any good to have Hannah fretting uselessly. "Maybe she just wants a change, is all."

  "Well, she's certainly getting that." Hannah retorted, one gray-blond eyebrow lifting into a high arch.

  "What do you mean?” He took a sip of coffee as if preparing himself for a blow.

  "You'll see soon enough, I'm thinking," Hannah muttered and busied herself at the stove. "I'll have your breakfast in a shake, Seth."

  "No hurry," he told her and meant it. For the moment, he was perfectly content to sit near the warmth of the fire burning in the hearth and breathe in the aroma of Hannah's cinnamon bread.

  As if she could read his mind, she stepped up to the table and set a plate of the fresh, sweet bread in front of him. Next to that, she placed a dish of butter and a knife. “That should hold you for a bit,” she said and gave him a distracted smile.

  Problems momentarily forgotten, Seth reached for the bread knife. He had barely buttered his first slice when he heard light footsteps on the stairs.

  Confused, Seth glanced first at Hannah, who shrugged and shook her head, then to the open doorway, where a moment later Nora appeared. She wore a pale gray dress with a high collar and long sleeves. If not for the pallor of her skin, she would have appeared to be in the bloom of health. Looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time, Nora stepped into the kitchen and inhaled deeply.