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LAURA NEATLY STACKED HER underwear and socks in the empty dresser and hung her clothes in the walk-in closet. Pensively she contemplated ways to give the living area a more welcoming appearance. For sure, she’d let plenty of light into that dark room, place scented candles and potpourri on the end tables and fill the area with vases of wildflowers. Then she’d rearrange the furniture to give the room better balance.

Laura stashed her suitcases in the corner of the closet then hiked off to appraise the kitchen and check to see what kind of food was on hand for supper. She was pleased to find an ultramodern kitchen at her disposal, but the reckless arrangement of food in the cabinets offended her sense of order. She set about organizing the boxes, cans and jars in alphabetical order so she wouldn’t waste valuable time rummaging to locate items while cooking.

She was halfway through the process when Wade hobbled into the kitchen on his crutch and braced his battered body against the doorjamb. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he all but roared at her.

Refusing to let him rile her, Laura pivoted and tossed him a high-voltage smile. “I’m reorganizing the kitchen.”

“It was the fine the way it was,” he grouched. “I’ll never find a damn thing now.”

“You won’t have to because I’m in charge of KP duty for the next six to eight weeks,” she reminded him, striving for a noncombative tone—which wasn’t easy since he was glaring thunderclouds on her sunny smile.

“You’re working here, not taking over the place,” he growled. “Put that stuff back where it was…now.”

Even bruised and mauled, the man could still come off looking ominous and intimidating. Laura forced herself not to shrink away from him the way she’d done when they first met. Learning to hold her own was good practice, she realized. Her fairy godbrothers were no longer waving their magic wands, paving the way for her and running interference. She’d landed her new teaching position by herself and she was taking absolute control of her life for the first time in twenty-five years. Wade was a test of her character and gumption and she had no intention of failing the test.

“When my employment is terminated I’ll arrange your kitchen the way you had it.” She gestured carelessly toward the cabinets. “I’ll cram stuff on the shelves so you’ll have to waste time locating ingredients. Happy now, Mr. Ryder?”

“No,” he mumbled, shooting her a disgruntled glance.

Admirably she shrugged off his hostility and resumed the task of arranging items that began with N. Silence reigned for several moments while she progressed through O and P and skipped over Q to place a box of rice on the shelf.

“Where’re you from, Seymour? You don’t speak Oklahoman.”

“Colorado.” She plunked down the spaghetti sauce next to the rice.

“What happened? Did the school administration fire you and you had to leave the state to outrun your reputation?”

Laura gnashed her teeth as she swiveled around to meet Wade’s insolent smirk. The man didn’t know how close he’d come to having a jar of spaghetti sauce smack him right between his moss-green eyes. “No, as a matter of fact I come highly recommended by my principal.”

She had no idea why she was defending herself to him. She certainly didn’t owe him an explanation and he didn’t deserve one. She’d never had acceptance issues with her associates, either. Most people gravitated toward her friendly, nonconfrontational nature. All except His Grouchiness. He seemed to derive wicked pleasure from provoking her.

“No doubt, you came with all sorts of recommendations,” he said in a tone that implied scandalous activities. “Did the principal’s wife resent the competition? Did you move on before she stamped a scarlet letter on your forehead?”

Laura quivered with outrage. The horrible man had the audacity to stand there, assassinating her character, judging her by his lowlife standards and condemning her in one felled swoop. “I was not having an affair with my principal,” she defended hotly. “For your information my principal was a she!”

“Gad, that’s even worse,” he said distastefully.

The man was insufferable! “I came here to be on my own and work in the same school system with my college roommate, not that it’s any of your business,” she all but shouted.

Wade shook his tousled raven head. “I’ve got a news flash for you, Seymour, the PTA isn’t going to approve of striking up your old affair with your college roommate, either.”

Laura didn’t know what possessed her to react so violently to his goading. Her ability to apply restraint and self-control, after years of dealing with challenging students, failed her completely. Before she realized what she’d done, the container of salt that she had clenched in her fist was sailing across the room and smacked Wade squarely in the chest. With a horrified gasp, she watched him stare at the container that plopped on the tiled floor. He turned his death-ray glare on her and Laura’s face flushed with mortification. Damn it, she’d let him get to her.

With extreme effort, Wade doubled over to retrieve the salt container then tossed it back to her. “I guess you don’t think I’m injured in enough places already, huh?”

Regretful and embarrassed, Laura emitted an inarticulate sound and refused to meet his mocking gaze.

He smiled wickedly, then added, “I’ll bet your résumé failed to mention that you’re prone to violence when provoked. How many students have you clobbered when they’ve managed to tick you off, Seymour?”

Laura was so frustrated and angry that she was shaking. Her heart jackhammered in her chest, spurred by an overdose of adrenaline. She wanted to grab this infuriating rascal by the throat and strangle him for making her lose her temper. She almost never lost her temper. But Wade Ryder, the devil incarnate, had witnessed her complete loss of control.

“You aren’t going to let loose with the waterworks, too, are you?” he taunted. “If you’re going to cloud up and rain every day, I’ll make sure I have flood insurance.”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me cry,” she snapped at him. “Just go away.”

“Nope, this is my house and my kitchen.”

“Fine then, I qu—” Laura shut her mouth so fast she nearly cropped off the tip of her tongue. No matter what the man said to her, no matter how often he goaded and insulted her, she wasn’t going to quit. She wanted this job. She needed this job for a dozen good reasons.

He arched a dark, challenging brow, daring her to complete that sentence. “Yes, Seymour? You were saying?”

Laura might not have been the modern-day version of Einstein, but she was smart enough to deduce that A: Wade Ryder didn’t like her. And B: He didn’t want her crowding his private space. And C: He was trying to provoke her into quitting her new job before she had twenty-four hours under her belt. She didn’t understand why he wanted her gone because she didn’t know him well enough to determine what made him tick. But, for pure contrariness alone, she wasn’t giving this cantankerous rancher the satisfaction of hearing her say she quit. She wasn’t a quitter and she’d dealt with troublesome students during her four years of teaching at the elite private school in Colorado—a job her brothers had pulled a few strings to secure for her….

The thought served to bolster her firm resolve. She was going to tough it out on her own, no matter how snide and sarcastic Wade Ryder proved to be. She wasn’t a wuss, even though most of her former students weren’t in the juvenile delinquent category of kids who tested her temper and challenged her authority on a daily basis—not like Mr. I’m-Gonna-Give-You-Hell-Just-To-See-If-You-Can-Take-It Ryder. No matter how mad he made her—and he’d made her plenty mad already—she wouldn’t quit. She’d stay, if only to aggravate him.

“I’m not quitting,” she told him as she squared her shoulders and tilted her chin to a determined angle. The fact that she was trembling with frustration probably detracted from her defiant stance, but she’d get better at dealing with this rascal. Now that she knew he was deliberately trying to get rid of her, she’d refuse to take him seriously, wouldn’t allow him to annoy her. In fact, she could be as disagreeable as he was if she really tried.

“If you aren’t quitting then you better toughen up,” he goaded her. “I have no intention of letting up on you.”

“Why? Because it goes against your sour, surly nature to be nice to people?” she flung back.

Wade didn’t so much as flinch when she flashed him a smirk. With jerky, agitated motions, she resumed stocking the kitchen cabinets in alphabetical order. He felt like a first-class ass for provoking Laura. His conscience—which he was trying to ignore—was screaming some pretty raunchy curses at him for behaving so badly.

Silently he marveled at her organizational abilities that the White House would envy. Hell, the woman could probably run a small country all by herself and still take a couple of days’ vacation each week. But if he was to succeed in his campaign to rout Ms. Temptation from his house then he couldn’t pay her compliments or cut her any slack.

An apology flocked to his tongue, but he refused to voice it because being nice to her would defeat his purpose. And damn it, he was uncomfortably aware of Laura Seymour in her trim-fitting, perfectly creased jeans and her pink knit blouse that displayed the full rounded swells of her breasts. Her perfume kept trying to lure him across the kitchen to get a stronger whiff and his good hand itched—and so did the injured one—to map the alluring contours of her goddesslike body.

Sheesh! Of all the women in all the world why did she have to be the one hired as his temporary housecleaner, cook and bottle washer…? Bottle, that’s what he needed, he decided instantly. After a few drinks he’d be numb to the goddess in designer jeans.

Wade hobbled across the room and reached up to the top shelf to retrieve a bottle of hooch. He accidentally bumped into Laura when she grabbed the box of tea bags to align them beside the spaghetti sauce. Her breasts brushed the side of his left arm and Wade snatched a quick breath—only to be assailed by that citrusy scent that had been driving him crazy from the far side of the room.

When he glanced down his gaze collided with those enormous powder-blue eyes, surrounded by a hedge of long, thick lashes. Then his attention dropped to the teasing hint of cleavage displayed by her V-necked blouse. Feeling like a kid who’d been caught with his hands in the cookie jar—or wherever—because he knew that she knew what had momentarily distracted his attention, his gaze bounced guiltily back to her face. Her full, tempting lips were only a scant few inches from his. Wade didn’t dare draw breath, for fear of breathing in her essence so deeply that he’d succumb to the reckless urge to kiss her and find out if she tasted as delicious as she looked. Gawd, he’d known she’d be pure trouble!

“What are you doing?” she asked, a hitch in her voice, a flush of color on her face.

Checking you out, though that’s the last thing I’d planned to do, the voice of honesty replied. But Wade decided to play dumb. He could do dumb if he had to. “Whaddya mean, what am I doing?”

Blushing profusely, her gaze focused on his mouth, Laura gestured toward the top shelf where his hand had stalled in midair. “If you’re reaching for that whiskey bottle, that isn’t a wise idea. Pain medication doesn’t mix with liquor. Your doctor wouldn’t approve, Mr. Ryder.”

“First off, I decided to forego that pain medication because it makes me woozy.” He ignored her when she muttered something about preferring woozy to downright cranky.

“Secondly, you can drop that mister stuff, professor,” he instructed, then backed away from temptation personified.

“I’m not a college professor,” she clarified. “I’m a secondary school instructor.”

“Yeah, whatever. Fact is that my doctor is Jack Daniel’s and he makes house calls.” He snatched the bottle off the shelf and set it on the counter with a decisive thump. “Hand me two glasses.”

“I don’t want a drink,” she informed him.

“I’d hope not. You’re on the clock. I want two glasses, one for each hand.”

She stared pointedly at his left wrist that was draped in the sling. “You only have one good hand,” she reminded him.

“So what? Just hand me the damn glasses.”

She didn’t move, just stared him down as if he was one of her belligerent students.

“Fine then, I’ll get it myself, which only goes to prove that I don’t need you.”

Before Wade could reach around her to grab the glasses she plucked them off the shelf and set them down with a clank.

“Thanks, professor,” he said, and not very politely.

“You’re welcome, Ryder. But you should know that you don’t get extra credit for doing things for yourself when you’re supposed to be resting all those body parts you injured while bull wrestling.”

“I wasn’t bull wrestling,” he corrected.

“Yeah, whatever.”

When she tossed his caustic words back in his face he gnashed his teeth, then realized his jaw was as sore as the rest of his abused body.

“According to your cousins’ version of the incident that required immediate medical attention,” she went on, “you valiantly distracted the big bad bull before he flattened Vance and Quint. But I suspect that you were just trying to clamber out of the way so that thousand-pound brute could vent his frustration on your cousins.”

Wade’s chest swelled with indignation—which served to remind him that his ribs were exceptionally tender. “I didn’t turn tail and run,” he huffed and puffed and blew her theory down. “My cousins may be ornery cusses, but I didn’t see any sense of all three of us getting trampled so none of us could handle the ranch chores.”

“Oh, I see,” she said in pretended thoughtfulness. “You just wanted an excuse to take some time off and let your cousins handle the hard work.”

The comment cut like a Weed Eater. “Hell no! Are you nuts, lady?” he roared. “The last thing I wanted was to be laid up and have a woman under my roof!”

Wade slammed his mouth shut and cursed himself soundly. It was never wise to let the enemy know your battle plan. If Laura hadn’t figured out that he was trying to get rid of her any way he could, she surely suspected it now.

She regarded him through her narrowed gaze then went back to alphabetically stocking the shelves. “So, you’re saying that you’re afraid of women and that fear defines who you are.”

“I’m saying nothing of the kind,” he said, highly affronted. He twisted the cap off the whiskey with a vicious jerk and purposely slopped the amber liquid on the counter as he filled his glasses. “You think I’m afraid of you? Not hardly. You’re all of five foot nothing and I’m six-three in my stocking feet. Whaddya gonna do? Break my other leg? I don’t think so!”

“I’m not referring to physical fright,” she clarified. “I’m talking about emotional terror.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he protested.

She reached over to grab a dish towel to mop up his mess then tossed him a sly glance. “Then you’re saying that you don’t appreciate women in the same capacity that most men do.”

“If you’re asking if I like sex, which is none of your business, by the way, the answer is: Yes, I like sex as much as the next heterosexual guy. I just want sex on my terms. No strings attached, no commitment.”

“So basically you’re saying you just don’t like women, but you don’t mind using them to scratch the occasional itch,” she paraphrased.

Hoo-kay, so that sounded cold and insensitive. But yeah, she’d pretty much hit the nail on its proverbial head. Thanks to Bobbie Lynn he’d never let a woman close enough for prolonged periods of time to form an emotional attachment. “Right,” he replied. “Sex is impersonal. You get some when you need some. Like filling an empty fuel tank.”

She paused momentarily from her chore to glance sideways at him. He could tell she was offended, which was fine by him. He didn’t want to like her and he didn’t care if she liked him, either. The less she liked him the sooner she’d realize working here was a mistake and she’d take a hike.

“This is fascinating,” she said, staring at him with those luminous baby blues that had the power to make him weak in the knees. “Explain to me how sex can be impersonal when the act itself involves baring pretty much everything you are to someone else in the most intimate manner possible?”

Wade grabbed some ice cubes from the fridge, plunked them in his glasses and then tossed back a shot of booze. It gave him time to formulate his reply. “Well, ya see, professor, this is where we get into the differences between men and women,” he lectured authoritatively. “Women think you’re supposed to attach meaningful emotion to sex, but men just like to get laid because it makes ’em feel good all over.” He noticed her face had become splotchy with color, so he pressed the issue. “A man’s psyche isn’t so difficult to understand, despite all that mumbo-jumbo those psychological experts like to spout. We just want two things from life. One—” he waved the glass of Jack Daniel’s in her face “—is a swig of booze, and the other is getting naked with a woman when the mood strikes.”

She was highly offended or extremely embarrassed—he wasn’t sure which. Her peaches-and-cream complexion turned candy-apple red. Her eyes were shooting sparks, too, he noted.

“You want to know what I think?” she asked in a tone that reminded him of a hissing cat.

“No, not particularly.” He downed another slug of booze. “But you’re probably planning to tell me anyway, right?”

Apparently that really ticked her off because she glared at him and said, “I think you’re a throwback to the caveman era and your Neanderthal mentality sucks!”

Unfazed, he took another drink. “You’re entitled to your opinion, professor, but don’t come crying to me when you think you’ve landed Mr. Right and he doesn’t meet all your fairy-tale expectations of love and romance.”

He winced when her fuming glance zeroed in on his right hand that held his sweating glass of booze. He knew what she was going to ask before the words were out of her mouth.

“Is that a wedding band? It certainly looks like one. Why are you wearing it on the wrong hand?” she quizzed him like any self-respecting schoolmarm.

“Because I married the wrong woman. It’s a reminder never to make that disastrous mistake again, so long as I live.”

“Ah,” she said pensively. “No wonder you have so many hang-ups. That explains a lot.”

He stiffened and glowered down from his advantageous height, annoyed by that smug little smile on her rosebud mouth. “That doesn’t explain squat. I don’t have hang-ups.”

“Sure you do.” She returned to her task of stocking the cabinets. “You probably got your itsy-bitsy heart broken and you’re holding all women responsible for the traitorous act of one femme fatale. What did she do? Cheat on you?”

“None of your damn business,” he said through his teeth.

“That’s why this house shows no signs of a woman’s touch. You’ve become a card-carrying woman-hater, haven’t you?”

She thought she was so damn smart, did she? Well, she was right, but he didn’t cotton to how easily she’d read him.

“You tried to erase all evidence that there was a woman in your house who got under your skin.” She stacked three cans of tuna then reached over to grab three cans of turkey. “You figured you couldn’t make a woman happy so why try, right? It’s easier to give up, to quit.”

She turned toward him then, all fierce determination. “Well, you need to know that I’m not a quitter, Mr. Ryder, no matter how hard you try to drive me away. I intend to do my job exceptionally well. One look at you testifies to the obvious fact that you need my assistance to keep this place shipshape while you recuperate. Now, go take a load off your broken leg while I whip up supper. Go on, scram,” she ordered, shooing him on his way. “You’re slowing me down.”

Wade was so frustrated by the unexpected turn of events that he was halfway across the room before he realized he’d allowed her to boss him around. Hell! He’d let that woman have the last word. That would never do.

“Just stay out of my way, professor, and I’ll stay out of yours,” he felt to compelled to say.

“Fine.”

“Good!”

Muttering at his live-in housekeeper, he limped off on his crutch. He cursed his devilish cousins with every uneven step and returned to the living room with his glasses of whiskey. As he lowered himself gingerly into his recliner he watched John Wayne’s character drop Liberty Valance in his tracks. If only he could dispose of Laura Seymour that easily! She might have thought she had him all figured out so she could deal effectively with him, but she was way wrong about that.

Now, more than ever, Wade wanted her gone. When a woman started picking around in a man’s brain, he was in heap big trouble. And this particular woman was too blasted smart if she could analyze him in the course of one afternoon. He’d have to work harder at driving her away so he could reclaim his private, female-free domain. Besides, he’d kept his emotions in cold storage for years and he didn’t want Laura to defrost them. Keeping them frozen solid worked best.

As for his traitorous cousins, he wasn’t going to kick their butts, as soon as he was able. He’d decided to murder them for foisting this particular woman off on him. He suspected Vance and Quint were trying to do a little matchmaking—kill a couple of birds with one stone, as it were. Well, they’d wasted their time with this prank. Laura Seymour wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted in his life—not that he wanted any kind of female in his life, mind you, because he didn’t. He especially didn’t want to share his personal space with a female as tempting and intelligent as Seymour. She stirred up his hormones and put his conscience under duress.

True, he’d been raised better than to be unspeakably rude and disrespectful to women—his mother would’ve killed him if she’d overheard that exchange in the kitchen. Of course, his mother didn’t fall into the Women category. She was, after all, his mother. And okay, so maybe all women weren’t as treacherous as Bobbie Lynn. But Wade’s track record indicated that he was a lousy judge of the female of the species and he naturally attracted women who were all wrong for him. That said, the best course of action was to avoid close association with all varieties of females.

Furthermore, he mused as he sipped his hooch, he wasn’t about to let his younger cousins pick women for him. They enjoyed all varieties of women. The more women the better, so they claimed. What did they know about finding the elusive Ms. Right? Nothing, that’s what. Otherwise those two clowns would be wedlocked by now.

Wade knew that when it came to women Vance and Quint had stumbled and fallen a couple of times themselves. They chose to handle their humiliation in different ways. Quint preferred to shield his emotions by flirting outrageously with everything in skirts and he was swift enough of foot to dodge wedding nooses that flew his way. Vance relied on teasing humor to sidestep emotional land mines. As for Wade, he chose avoidance and barbed-wire barriers to protect his heart.

Whatever worked, he supposed. But the fact remained that the Ryder cousins—even the absentee Gage—were considered highly prized bachelors in Hoot’s Roost. Come to think of it, his maternal cousins were in great demand as well. The whole passel of male cousins were decent looking—if that mattered—and they were successful—and that did matter to females who power-shopped for low-maintenance husbands who could provide for their wives in the wealthy manner to which they aspired.

Well, gold diggers need not apply at the Ryder ranches, Wade mused. As for Laura Seymour, he wanted her to vamoose—pronto. Now that he knew he had the ability to make her mad he’d push and prod until she lost her temper and spit out the four-letter Q word. Then he’d have her exactly where he wanted her…besides naked in his bed….

Wade jerked upright, shocked by that whimsical thought. He didn’t want to visualize how Laura would look naked because that would lead to more trouble than he had already. Wade squelched the testosterone-induced fantasy that leaped to mind and concentrated on the movie. He wasn’t going to give his new housekeeper another thought—except to conjure up ways to get rid of her, while he listened to her rummage around in his kitchen, as if she owned the place.

SWIFTLY AND EFFICIENTLY, Laura bustled around the kitchen, preparing the evening meal that she felt certain Wade couldn’t fault. She’d covered the basic food groups to provide a well-rounded, nutritious supper. Immensely pleased with herself, she sauntered into the living room, toying with the devilish urge to dump the food on Wade’s head rather than politely placing the tray on his lap. To her disappointment he stared distastefully at his plate.

“What the hell is this?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, duh, it’s supper. What does it look like?” Laura mentally patted herself on the back for her sassy rejoinder. Already, she’d learned to counter Wade’s intimidation with lightning-quick sarcasm. After a few weeks of dealing with him she was positively certain she could hold her own with any man. She might have been a little timid and unsure of herself in the past, since her brothers tried to map out her life and speak in her behalf, but she was learning fast.

Wade glanced up from the tray and said, “Do you have the slightest idea where you are, Seymour?”

Puzzled, she replied, “On an Oklahoma ranch?”

“Well, if you figured that out all by yourself, did you also notice this is cattle country?”

She had no idea where he was going with this line of questioning. “Yes, I do believe I saw a herd of cattle grazing the pastures.”

“Good, it’s a relief to know you’re not blind, just dense.”

She could feel her temper simmering, but she valiantly suppressed her mounting irritation. “And your point, provided there is one, would be?”

He made a stabbing gesture toward the stuffed poultry and dressing, smothered in gravy, on his plate. “I raise cattle, therefore I support the beef industry, not poultry. You don’t feed a cattleman a damn chicken. Jeez, Seymour, are they giving away teaching certificates to the highest bidder these days?”

“Jeez, Ryder, if you don’t eat chicken, then what are all those frozen breasts doing in your freezing unit?”

A wave of heat flooded through her when his gaze focused deliberately on her bosom. He delighted in rattling her—that conversation they’d shared in the kitchen about the depersonalization of sex indicated as much. She should be highly offended by his telling glance. Indeed if another man stared so blatantly, unblinkingly, at her chest she would have been outraged and insulted.

For some unexplainable reason the red-hot, seductive glimmer in Wade’s green eyes sent her senses reeling and heightened her awareness of him. Which she didn’t need, thank you so much. She was aware of him—to the extreme. His deep, smoky voice sent hot chills down her spine. His muscular physique kept drawing her unwilling attention and feminine speculation. He was distractingly handsome with that thatch of raven hair, those hypnotic eyes, those deeply tanned and chiseled features, those broad shoulders and horseman’s thighs. He looked solid and unyielding and he exuded some mystical aura that fascinated her on an elemental level.