An excerpt from

THEIR OTHER MOTHER

by Janis Reams Hudson

(ISBN 0-373-24267-0)

a September 1999 release from Silhouette Special Edition®, in stores August 1999

©1999 by Janis Reams Hudson

(published here by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.)

CHAPTER ONE

Ace Wilder heard tires crunching on gravel outside the back door and wondered who would be pulling up to the house. Most people knew enough to park at the barn or the stables if they wanted somebody in the middle of the da.

Ace carried his sandwich to the back door to look out. Eating on the move with his entire meal in one hand had become a fact of life lately around the Flying Ace Ranch.  Things had gone to hell in a handbasket since Aunt Mary left. Maybe when Elaine got here later in the week things would smooth out some. His mother-in-law was a born caretaker. Just like Cathy had been.

The pain had eased during the past two years. He could think of his late wife now without feeling like his insides were being ripped out. He had even learned to say the phrase, "Cathy is dead," without flinching.

Cathy’s mother was coming to take care of the boys while Ace looked around for a housekeeper to handle everything Aunt Mary used to do. Not that Ace had the slightest idea where he would find such a person in Wyatt County, Wyoming. Every woman he knew--at least the ones he would trust with his sons--had her own house to keep, her own children to raise or had already done those things and was too old to want to do them again for someone else.

It was a good thing Elaine was planning on staying the whole summer. Ace had a feeling it was going to take him at least that long to find someone who could handle his three little hellions, without bloodshed or permanent psychological damage on either side.

Someone who could cook, he thought, taking another bite of his stale sandwich.

Thinking more about his stomach than about why someone would be pulling up at the back of the house, Ace nudged open the screen door with his shoulder and stepped onto the back porch.

It wasn’t the fancy red sports car with Colorado tags that had every muscle in his body suddenly tightening in protest, it was the woman climbing out of it. Ye gods and little fishes. The Wicked Witch of the West--in the flesh. Nice flesh, he admitted. But then, he’d been told that a porcupine had nice flesh, too, underneath all those quills.

Just the sight of this woman tightened his gut and made him groan.

Belinda Randall was as sleek and long-legged as any woman had a right to be, and then some, but he wouldn’t say she was restful on the eyes. There was nothing restful about her.  Her short, black hair might be ordinary enough, but the sun struck fiery streaks through it that spoke of heat, of sheer energy.  Her gray eyes were as changeable as the weather, dark as thunderheads one minute, soft as morning fog the next.  And that lower lip of hers could smile or pout in the blink of an eye.  She was all perpetual motion, restless energy, fire. And, Cathy’s sister or not, she was a royal pain in the backside.

"Tell me you’re lost," he said to her, making every effort to keep from grinding his teeth. "Please, tell me you’re lost."

"In your dreams, Wilder." She shook her head slowly and smirked. "I’m here on purpose."

Ace let out a breath. "A nightmare, then."

"You got that right." She slammed the car door and propped her hands on her hips. "My nightmare."

Ace leaned against the porch post. "You’re too late. We finished castrating last week. But then, we only castrate calves around here, anyway, so maybe you wouldn’t have enjoyed it."

She gave one sharp nod of her head. "The war’s still on, then. Battle lines drawn. Suits me just fine, cowboy--"

"That’s 'rancher' to you."

"--but you might get tired of it before I do. I’m here for the duration."

"What duration?" With a whole new regard for how the passengers on the Titanic must have felt upon being told the ship was sinking, Ace straightened away from the porch post. "Why are you here?"

Oh, she did enjoy that wary look on his face, Belinda decided. If she had to put herself in his vicinity for the next several weeks, she wanted him just as miserable and irritated as she was.

She was already over that first hard jolt that struck her each time she saw him again on one of her infrequent visits to this big, empty corner of the world. She didn’t like that nasty jolt, didn’t like him, but both were facts of life.

No man should be allowed to look like Ace Wilder. No face that rugged should be considered handsome. He had a slight bump on the bridge of his nose, deep grooves bracketing a mouth that was usually set in a hard, unforgiving line, white lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, with a crescent-shaped scar beside the right one. But handsome he was. Breathtakingly so. She’d always wondered why that fact irritated her so much.

Belinda could easily imagine her younger sister taking one look at this six-foot package of lean male muscle, with those Wilder blue eyes and coal-black hair just long enough to intrigue, and tumbling headfirst into love with him. Which was exactly what Cathy had done.

Cathy had been naive that way.

Belinda wasn’t. She didn’t like Ace Wilder, not one little bit. No man should be that cocksure of himself. But she was here, and there was no getting around it.

"I’m here because my mother blackmailed me, and I’m here for the summer or until you hire someone to take care of my nephews, whichever comes first."

Ace eyed her like a man eyeing a rattler coiled to strike. "The hell you say. Where’s Elaine?"

A wild whoop from the corner of the house cut off her answer. "Aunt Binda! Hey, guys, it’s Aunt Binda!"

Belinda turned and braced herself just in time to keep from being knocked flat by the high-speed impact of four sturdy young bodies--three boys and a scruffy yellow mutt the size of a small sofa. They were loud, they were dirty, and they smelled suspiciously like something a person should scrape off the bottom of a shoe before stepping indoors. And Belinda loved them so much--the boys, at least; the verdict was still out on the dog--that she ached with it. They were the sweetest, dearest beings on earth. Despite the elbows and knees jabbing her more-tender places, she hugged them close.

"Oh, my." With a huge grin, she stared down at the three most adorable faces on the planet. Adorable despite being the spitting image of their father, whom she utterly detested. "Who are you guys? What have you done with my nephews?"

"Aw, Aunt Binda." Jason, the oldest at six, grinned and socked her in the arm.

"Jason," Ace said tersely. "What’s the rule?"

"Uh-oh." Four-year-old Clay grinned at Jason.

"Aw, Dad," Jason whined. "It was just a little one."

"What’s the rule?" Ace repeated.

Jason heaved a sigh. "Boys don’t hit girls."

"What’s the rest of it?" Ace demanded quietly.

Jason sighed again. "Ever. Boys don’t hit girls, ever. I’m sorry, Aunt Binda. I forgot. I didn’t mean to hit you."

Belinda wanted to protest. It had been just a friendly tap on the arm from a six-year-old, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t as if he’d tried to hurt her. But the look on Ace’s face made her think better of interfering with the way he disciplined his own children. It really wasn’t her place to criticize. At least not yet, and not in front of the boys.

"Apology accepted," she told Jason. Then she grinned again. "But I’d still like to know what you’ve done with my nephews. Where are they?"

"Aw, gee," Jason said, his good humor restored. "You know it’s us."

"Nope." Belinda shook her head. "You look like Jason, but you’re too big."

"I grew!"

"It’s really us, Aunt Binda." Clay jumped up and down on Belinda’s toes. "Honest!"

Belinda squinted down at him. "Oh, yeah? Well, then, you must be Clayton. But who’s this fellow?" She hoisted two-year-old Grant onto her hip. Surely a two-year-old wouldn’t notice that her hands were suddenly shaking. He was the child who shouldn’t have been. The child her sister gave her life for. Because of that, maybe Belinda loved him just a little bit extra.

Oh, how he’d grown! She’d seen him a mere six months ago, but he’d changed so much. They all had. Her throat tightened with emotion at how much of his life--of all their lives--she had missed.

"That’s Grant," Jason said, laughing.

"He was just a baby last time you saw us," Clay told her.

The boy on her hip nodded. "I Grant. I used to be a baby, but I’s big now."

"You sure are," Belinda told him.

"Did you come to stay with us?" Jason asked. "Did Grandma come with you?"

"Yes," Belinda said, "and no."

"Huh?"

Belinda laughed. "Yes, I came to stay with you, but no, Grandma didn’t come with me. She got sick and couldn’t come, but she sends her love."

Jason looked up at her with a sober expression. "Did she die, like our mother?"

That fast, Belinda’s eyes stung. A giant fist squeezed her heart. "Oh, no, honey." She dropped to her knees and hugged him, then pulled all three boys into her embrace. "No, Grandma didn’t die. She just got a nasty ol’ case of pneumonia, that’s all. The doctors gave her medicine and she’s getting all better. She just has to stay home and rest, and pretty soon she’ll be good as new, I promise."

"Can we send her a get-well card?" Clay asked cheerfully.

Leave it to Clay. Nothing could squash his spirit for long. "She would like that very much."

"Will you help us make it?" Jason, too, was now smiling again.

"You betcha," Belinda told him. "We can even e-mail her some virtual flowers."

The boys’ eyes rounded.

"Grandma’s got e-mail?" Jason breathed. "Really?"

"Really."

"What’s virgil fowlers?" Clay wanted to know.

Belinda chuckled. "It’s virtual flowers, and I’ll show you later."

Ace sauntered over and stood beside them. It irritated Belinda to no end that he couldn’t just walk, like a normal man. He sauntered. There was no other word to describe that slow, deliberate, long-legged movement that probably sent the hearts of weak-willed women--which Belinda definitely was not--fluttering all over Wyoming. No other word but saunter. Unless it was mosey. Or maybe strut.

"Okay, boys," he said to his sons. "Weren’t you going to clean out the chicken house today?"

"Aw, Dad." Clay grinned. Clay grinned at everything.

Jason’s eyes twinkled, but his smile barely curved his lips. "Ah, Dad."

"Aw, Dad," Grant mimicked.

"Go on, now, so I can talk to Aunt Belinda. And try to make it back to the house with a few eggs this time, will ya?" Ace ruffled the hair on the two tallest boys and winked at Grant.

"We always make it back with eggs," Jason protested. "Lots of eggs."

"And most of them are broken by the time you get them to the house," Ace reminded. "They’re food, not ammunition."

"Aw, Dad," Jason said, his grin spreading wider. "You take all the fun out of everything."

"I’ll take all the fun out of you," Ace said in a mock threat.

With a shriek of giggles, all three boys unlatched themselves from Belinda’s legs and dashed out of sight around the corner of the house, the dog barking excitedly as he raced after them.

Ace watched them go, his gaze lingering until they disappeared. The instant they were out of earshot, he folded his arms across his chest and turned back to Belinda. "Elaine was fine when I talked to her last week."

"She wasn’t fine. She’s been sick for weeks and lying to all of us because she wanted to come here and spend the summer with her grandsons."  Belinda stopped, then frowned.  "Don’t you think the boys are a little young to be taking on ranch chores?"

Ace counted slowly to ten. Then he started over and did it again before he trusted himself to speak. "No, I don’t think they’re too young to have what amounts to an Easter egg hunt every day. And that’s the last time I ever want to hear you question how I raise my sons. What do you mean she’s been sick for weeks?"

"Just what I said. Do you have hay in your ears?"

"To blazes with this."

"Manure, more likely."

"If I want a straight answer, I guess I’ll have to call her myself." He turned to go, aiming to get away from this woman who had the rare ability to make him tense, irritable, and downright angry. He was usually none of those things. Only with Belinda.

Long, elegant fingers with short, unpolished nails latched on to his wrist like a steel handcuff. "Don’t you dare call her. She needs her rest. She just got out of the hospital yesterday."

Ace stopped and eyed his sister-in-law over his shoulder. "She really had pneumonia?"

"Yes." She didn’t so much let go of his arm as toss it away. "She kept saying it was just a cold, that she’d be over it before she came up here. She must have known it was worse than that, because she wouldn’t even agree to see a doctor until I promised her I would come up here and take care of the boys if she wasn’t able."

Ace had no choice but to believe her. Belinda might be more prickly than a cactus, but she didn’t lie. And Elaine loved her grandsons like there was no tomorrow. If she could have been here, she would have been.

Aside from that, Belinda hated his guts. She wouldn’t have come to the ranch--especially not planning to stay the whole summer--if she didn’t have to. "How long is she going to be laid up?"

Belinda’s eyes narrowed to slate-gray slits. "If by that you mean when is she coming to take over from me, forget it, buckaroo. She’s so run-down it will take her weeks if not months to fully recover. You and I are stuck with each other, Wilder. Get used to it."

"That’ll be the day." She’d been on the Flying Ace for all of fifteen minutes, and already his jaw ached from grinding his teeth, and his stomach was eating a hole in itself. He would be out of his mind by this time tomorrow. If she was still here next week, one of them would probably end up dead or legally insane. The woman was a menace.

Since Ace couldn’t figure out a way to get her to leave that didn’t involve bloodshed--probably his--he strode over to her little toy car and hauled two suitcases out of the tiny back seat. "Might as well get you settled, since you’re here."

"Why, thank you for that warm welcome." Belinda batted her eyes at him, then reached in to her passenger seat.

When she straightened beside him, Ace shook his head. "Two purses?"

"One purse, one computer."

Ace shuddered. "Your computer, if I recall--and I do--consists of at least four big boxes of equipment, miles of cables, and blown fuses every other hour."

"That was before they made laptops that weigh less than three pounds." She swung one of the purses under his nose by one finger. "Your fuses are safe. And so," she added with a smirk as she remembered his complaints the last time, "is your poor aching back. No boxes to lug." With a wave of her arm, she motioned toward the house. "Lead the way, cowboy."

Rolling his eyes and flexing his jaw, he did.

Belinda followed the Sauntering Buckaroo to the back door. As slow as he walked, they’d be at this all night. She wondered irritably if he moved that slowly in bed.

The laugh brought on by that errant thought bordered on the hysterical.

Ace stopped and frowned at her. "Something funny?"

"Everything, Wilder." She refused to look at him. "Just every little thing."

"We’ll see how funny you think everything is by the time you get supper on the table tonight."

"What, you think I can’t cook?"

"Just wondering if you understand that laundry, housecleaning, and cooking are part of the deal. A good, hot meal on the table at six o’clock sharp for a bunch of hungry men and three little boys, and you, if you want to eat with us. Breakfast at five A.M., and plenty of it, with lunch at noon. Seven days a week."

"Do you have an ad in the paper yet to find a new housekeeper?"

"Tired of your job already?"

"You wish. I can handle the job, Wilder. Maybe not the way Cathy did, or Mary, but I can handle it."

He smirked.

She smirked right back at him. "I’ll need to hook my modem to a phone line. I’m not letting my business suffer because you can’t keep a woman in your house."

Those Wilder blue eyes turned to ice.

Belinda admitted she may have crossed the line with that remark about a woman. Her stomach knotted as her own words echoed cruelly in her mind.

"There’s a phone jack in your bedroom," he said curtly. "You call long distance, you pay for it."

Shaking off her discomfort, she refused to dignify his petty comment with a reply. When he held the door open for her, she sailed into the house. She deliberately ignored the bedroom off the kitchen and headed up the stairs to the guest room she normally used when she visited. The downstairs room had been Mary’s. Belinda assumed it would be used by the new housekeeper, but she wasn’t sleeping that close to the kitchen to save her soul. She would see enough of the kitchen as it was. She sure didn’t plan to sleep next to it.

"One more thing," Ace told her when they went back out to her car for another load.

She arched a brow. "Only one?"

His eyes narrowed to sharp slits. "I know you and I have never had much use for each other--"

"Now there’s an understatement."

"--but I won’t have my boys exposed to your hostility toward me."

"My hostility toward you?"

"That’s right."

"Oh, and you’re so fond of me, right?"

"You’re their aunt. I’m their father. For their sake, we don’t hammer at each other in front of them."

"You think you have to tell me how to act around my own nephews?"

"No," he said, surprising her. "I just wanted it said, for the record, so we know where we stand with each other."

"We don’t stand anywhere with each other. I stand with and for my sister’s children. If you think for a minute I’d do anything to hurt them--"

"I wouldn’t have let you out of your car if I did."

Belinda looked at Ace and smiled.  "Are you sure you want me to cook for you? Poison is so easy to disguise."

Ace glanced down at his watch. "Hmm. Twenty-seven minutes."

"He can tell time," she observed, reaching into her car for her portable printer.

"That’s how long it took you to threaten my life." His lips twitched. "You’re slipping, Slim. You usually get that over with in the first ten minutes."

"I promised my mother I’d try to be nice to you."

"So much for keeping your word," he mumbled.

Pulling her printer out of the car, Belinda tossed her head. "You can question my ability, but not my integrity. I promised to try, and I did try."

Neither spoke again until the last of her bags was in her room upstairs. Then she told him she’d be downstairs in thirty minutes and shut the door in his face.

She’d done it, Belinda told herself as she leaned her back against the closed door and slid to the floor. She had kept her word to her mother and come to Wyoming as promised, and she’d faced Ace Wilder and lived through the inevitable confrontation. In thirty minutes she would have to do it again.

She had hoped, as she’d pulled up at the house, that when she saw him those old jittery feelings wouldn’t stir to life in her stomach again.

Ridiculous hope. Futile.

All she knew was that somehow, for some reason, she always ended up feeling at a disadvantage around Ace. Vulnerable. Shaky. Threatened?

No, of course not. Men didn’t threaten her. She’d been sired and raised by one, married to another--jerk though he turned out to be--and worked with them her entire adult life. She could hold her own with any man.

Which was why her feeling of vulnerability around Ace irritated her so much. She hated it. Hated him for causing it, hated him more for sensing it. The only way she knew to fight that vulnerability, to prove to him and herself that she was not vulnerable, was to strike out.

It was reflex, pure and simple. Habit, now, after all these years. She wasn’t proud of it, but there it was. In fact, most of the time she had trouble believing some of the things that came out of her mouth when she was around him.

Dammit, there was just something about Ace Wilder that made her nerves twitch and set her teeth on edge. And she’d let her mother talk her into putting herself in his immediate vicinity for who knew how long.

"Mother, you have no idea what you’ve done to me."

It was going to be a long, hot summer.

* * * *

Down at the barn Ace reminded himself yet again to unclench his jaw.

"Problem?"

He turned from staring--glaring, he realized--at the bay mare in the corral to find Jack eyeing him critically.

"That’s putting it mildly," Ace admitted. "Elaine came down with pneumonia."

"That’s rough. She gonna be okay?"

"She’ll be fine. It’s the rest of us you better worry about."

"How so?"

"She sent Belinda in her place."

One of Jack’s infrequent grins flashed across his face. "No foolin’?"

Ace groaned.

Jack laughed--an even-less-frequent occurrence than his grin. "The boys’ll be in hog heaven."

"They already are."

"How long’s she staying?"

Trey poked his head out of the barn door. "How long is who staying?"

"Ace’s favorite sister-in-law," Jack answered, still grinning.

"The fox?" The youngest Wilder brother threw his head back and let out a howl.

Ace grunted. "I dare you to call her that to her face."

"Oh, no." Trey held his hands out as if to ward off attack. "I’d like to live to see my next birthday."

"Glad to see you’re not entirely stupid."

"Of course he’s not stupid," Jack said. "He’s generally outstanding in his field."

In charge of the Flying Ace crops, Trey didn’t even bother to groan at the old pun.

They were a sight, the three Wilder brothers. Tall, lean, muscular and, according to the female population of Wyatt County, good-looking as all get-out. Thick, raven-black hair, strong, angular faces, and eyes as blue as the background for the stars on Old Glory herself.

While their looks were strikingly similar, their personalities were not. Sometimes they clashed, as brothers often did. Ace was the oldest, the ranch operator. When their father, King Wilder, died, he’d left Ace sixty percent of all his worldly goods, and that naturally included the Flying Ace Ranch. King had left the remaining forty percent to be divided equally among the rest of his children.

There was no jealousy from the other Wilder offspring over that. Jack, Trey, and Rachel were equally grateful not to have been left with the heavy responsibility of running the ranch, making sure it turned enough profit to support them all regardless of falling beef or oil prices, uncooperative weather, and a constant shortage of good help. They all pulled their weight, each having separate responsibilities, but they were satisfied to have Ace hold the position of ranch operator.

Being operator of one of the largest ranches in the state hadn’t ever gone to Ace’s head as it could have, but he never forgot it, the duty, the responsibility, the past generations looking over his shoulder and judging him. No, he never forgot it. Neither did anyone who had to deal with him.

Jack was the quiet one, but steady as a rock. It was no secret that he was King Wilder’s bastard--Ace, Trey, and Rachel’s half brother. But to give the devil his due, when King Wilder had learned he had an illegitimate son, he had moved quickly to adopt the boy and change his name to Wilder. Jack had been twelve the day his aunt had dropped him on King’s doorstep after the boy’s mother had drunk herself to death. There had been more than a few bloody noses among the three brothers in the beginning, but their little sister, Rachel, had calmly and emphatically put a stop to it by declaring that Jack was her brother just as much as Ace and Trey were, and they’d better just stop picking on him. She’d been five at the time, the baby of the family, with every man on the ranch wrapped right around her little-bitty finger. From that moment on, Jack had been accepted.

Trey was the youngest and most outgoing of the three brothers. He’d been twelve when their parents had hit that icy patch that had sent them to their deaths on their way home from Jackson Hole. Ace had been twenty and, in Trey’s opinion at the time, had thrown his weight around. He’d made twelve-year-old Trey stay in school, and if that hadn’t been bad enough, had packed him off to college right after graduation and made him stay there.

Trey had gotten his degree in agribusiness and floored them all by fixing his attention on crops instead of cattle or horses. Since neither Jack nor Ace was overly fond of the farming aspect of the Flying Ace, they’d stepped back and let Trey have it.

"So how long is Belinda staying?" Trey asked when Ace didn’t answer Jack.

Ace grunted. "Until I find a new housekeeper."

Jack was still grinning. "Won’t be dull around here, that’s for sure."

"I don’t know what the hell you’re grinning about," Ace said irritably. "She’s already threatened to poison me."

"Yeah, but she likes us," Trey taunted. "If you don’t have your will made out yet, I want your Winchester."

"Well now, kid." Ace knew how to get a rise out of Trey. He hated being called kid. "I tell you what you do. You wish real hard for that Winchester in one hand, and spit in the other, and see which hand gets filled."

"Stingy."

"That’s me."

"I mean, it’s not like you can take it with you."

"Maybe I wanna be buried with it."

At the shotgun sound of the back screen door whacking shut, the three brothers turned to look toward the house and the woman marching toward them.

"Looks like you might get your chance sooner than you thought," Trey said with a snicker.

"What’d you ever do to her, anyway?" Jack asked.

"Near as I can tell," Ace muttered, "I was born."

One of these days, Ace thought, he was going to take her down and sit on her until she told him once and for all why she hated his guts. From the night they met, at his and Cathy’s wedding rehearsal, Belinda had been on the attack. Only when Cathy had been within earshot had Belinda ever held her tongue around him. One of these days . . .

But first, he figured he was going to have to deal with whatever had put this latest look of irritation on her face.

"Hey, darlin’," Trey called.

"Don’t waste your breath, little brother," she tossed back. But it was a good-natured toss. The irritation had faded from her face the instant she took her gaze off Ace.

Trey let out an exaggerated sigh and slapped his hand over his heart. "She loves me. You can just tell."

"Of course I do." She grabbed him by the ears and planted a quick, smacking kiss on his mouth. "Like a boil on the backside."

"Welcome back," Jack told her.

Here, Belinda had always thought, was a kindred spirit, of sorts. Because of an accident of birth, Jack had not always been accepted. Their circumstances were different, his and hers, but she recognized that guarded look in his eyes.

"Thanks, Jack," she said, shaking his hand.

"Is there a problem?" Ace asked her.

"No problem." She turned and faced him. "Only that there doesn’t seem to be much food in the house, and you neglected to define the word ‘bunch’ when you told me how many I’d be cooking for."

Trey thumped his hand against his heart again. "And she cooks, too."

Belinda squinted up at Ace. "Did he get dropped on his head when he was a baby?"

Ace pursed his lips to keep from smiling. He wasn’t about to let her get a smile out of him. Not that easily. "A time or two," he answered.

She nodded as though weighing some serious matter. "That would explain it, then. Now, about that bunch."

"The three of us, plus three hands, the boys, and you."

"Enough food for ten, then."

Trey winked at her. "We’re hungry, darlin’. Make it enough for twenty. That ought to hold us till breakfast. Unless you want to hold me till breakfast," he added with a goofy leer.

"In your dreams, Number Three."

"Great dreams. Wanna hear about ‘em?"

"Not unless you’re aiming at becoming my next ex-husband."

Jack hooted with laughter.

"Hell, Trey, she just got here," Ace complained. "Do you have to start hitting on her already?"

"Relax, Ace," Belinda said with a smirk. "If I ever took him up on it, he’d run for his life. And speaking of running, I guess I’ll have to make a run into town for groceries. I’ll take the boys with me."

"Sorry." Ace grimaced. "Just sign your name on the Flying Ace charge card at Biddle’s on Main. I wasn’t expecting you--or rather, Elaine--until the end of the week."

"You weren’t going to eat?"

"We were making do. Take the Blazer," he added, pointing toward the barn and the white Chevy Blazer parked beside it with the red-and-black Flying Ace logo on the door. "The keys are in it."

"And don’t forget," Trey said with a wink. "We’re hungry."

Ace eyed her critically. "You do know how to cook, don’t you?"

Belinda pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "As long as you don’t expect me to churn butter or kill and skin my own meat."

Ace hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. "Well, there’s the chickens, but you don’t have to skin ‘em. Just pluck ‘em. And I wouldn’t want you to go to all that trouble your first night here."

She gave him a tight smile. "I’ll fix you a meal you won’t forget for a long, long time."

"Now that," Ace muttered as she walked away, "is a scary thought."

* * * *

As soon as Belinda got the boys cleaned up from their romp through the chicken house, she took the list she’d made while they had a water fight in the bathroom and marched them out to the Blazer.

You do know how to cook, don’t you?

She’d get him for that. She’d promised him a meal he wouldn’t forget, and that’s exactly what she’d give him.

"Boys?" she asked as the Blazer shot up a rooster tail of dust behind it while eating up the miles to town. "If you could have anything you wanted for supper tonight, what would it be?"

Three young voices clamored to be heard over each other.

Belinda grinned to herself. Her nephews were going to be thrilled, but Ace Wilder had good reason to worry about his supper.

-- end of excerpt --