Her Right-Hand Cowboy (Forever, Tx Series Book 21) Read online

  But now, in his opinion, she was really going too far.

  “You’re sleeping here,” she told him with finality as she finished making up the sofa. “And so am I.”

  Mitch blinked, wondering if he was hallucinating or if his hearing was suddenly going. He swallowed because his mouth had gone dry. “How’s that again?”

  “You heard me,” she told him, turning around to look at him. “I’m sleeping in here.”

  That caught him completely off guard. He thought of the times he’d fantasized about just this sort of thing when they were back in high school. “Not that I mind,” he told her in a hoarse voice. “But why?”

  “I want to be here in case you have a seizure during the night,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “A what?” He stared at her. Was she kidding? But one look at her face and he saw she was serious. “Look, I appreciate you being concerned, but you’ve been watching way too many doctor programs on TV,” he insisted. “I told you, I’m fine.”

  “Yes, I know what you keep saying,” she replied. “But the doctor said you have a mild concussion.” She waved at the sofa. “This is just precautionary. But if, during the night, you suddenly have a seizure or start throwing up, someone has to be here to look after you. Although it pains me to say it, none of those guys in the bunkhouse would know the first thing to do if that does happen.”

  He looked at her rather skeptically. “Oh, and you do?”

  “Yes, I do,” she informed him, adding, “I’ve had some first aid training.”

  Mitch wasn’t sure if he believed her, but he supposed it was possible. He let her words sink in.

  “Wow, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” he marveled, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  She knew what he was trying to do—and she wasn’t about to be diverted. “Don’t turn this around, Parnell. We’re talking about you, not me.”

  She was like a bulldog, he thought. Once she latched onto something, he couldn’t shake her loose.

  He decided to try another approach. “So I’m getting the bed and you’re getting that lumpy thing over there that’s supposed to pass as a sofa, is that it?” He frowned, looking at it. “That doesn’t look very comfortable.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, dismissing his observation.

  Mitch looked thoughtfully at the double bed that was up against one wall. “You know, this bed’s big enough to accommodate two people.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, Parnell, it’s not happening,” she informed him. “The whole idea of all this is for you to get some rest, not get yourself all worked up.”

  And that was as close to the subject of lovemaking as she intended to get—at least until he was completely out of the woods.

  “We could each stay on our side of the bed,” Mitch proposed, not ready to abandon the subject just yet.

  She refused to allow herself to be tempted—even though she was. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

  “So you’re just going to be a dictator now?” Mitch asked.

  It would have been more effective without the mischievous smile, she thought. Doing her best to sound tough, she said, “Watch me.”

  That was just the problem. He had been watching her. A lot. And the more he watched her, the more he found himself wanting her. Having her hovering over him like this, ministering to him, only made his longing grow that much stronger.

  “You know,” he said, lowering his voice seductively, “I usually sleep in the nude.”

  Now he was just saying anything to get a rise out of her, Ena thought. She would have known about a pajamaless sleeping habit if Mitch actually had one. There were no such things as secrets on the ranch. But for the moment, she pretended to believe him. “Not tonight you’re not.”

  Resigned, Mitch gave up and lay back in the bed.

  “All right,” he told her. “You win.”

  “The outcome was never in doubt,” she informed him. “See you in the morning, Mitch,” she said, lying down on the sofa and shutting off the lamp on the side table. The room was suddenly bathed in darkness.

  “You’re sleeping in your clothes?” Mitch questioned. He was still dressed himself, but that was only because he’d been hoping to retreat back to the bunkhouse before she had become a human watchdog.

  “I am tonight,” she answered.

  Ena tried to fluff up her pillow. It wasn’t cooperating. Neither was the sagging sofa. It wasn’t easy finding a comfortable position on it.

  Mitch could hear her moving around and guessed that the sofa was even more uncomfortable than she had bargained on.

  “Offer still stands,” he told her. “There’s plenty of room in the bed.”

  “Go to sleep, Parnell,” Ena ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And stop grinning,” she said. “I can hear the grin in your voice.”

  Which only made him smile more. But he dutifully said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ena remained awake for a while, anticipating any one of a number of things. But eventually, the sound of Mitch’s even breathing lulled her to sleep.

  The night went by without any further incident.

  * * *

  Ena had had every intention to get up before Mitch was awake. But when she finally opened her eyes, the first thing she was aware of was that Mitch had his head propped up on his fisted hand and he was looking at her.

  Intently.

  She frowned as she instantly sat up, still not totally conscious. She dragged her fingers through her hair, doing what she could to make herself appear presentable. It was hopeless, she decided.

  She fixed Mitch with a glare. “Why aren’t you still sleeping?”

  “Because I’m an early riser,” he replied. He’d been awake for a while and had spent the time just watching her sleep. “Do you know that you wrinkle your nose when you’re sleeping?”

  “I’ll be sure to make a note of that,” she replied crisply.

  But Mitch wasn’t finished with his observation yet. “It’s kind of cute.”

  She supposed he was just trying to be nice. “Glad you approve of my wrinkled nose. More important, how are you feeling?”

  He looked at her. “Like a slug who wants to get back to work.”

  Ena nodded, taking his answer in stride. “In other words, normal.”

  “Yes,” he said, seizing on the word. “Normal!” All he wanted was for her to treat him as if everything was back to normal.

  “Good.” She smiled sweetly at him as she kicked off the covers and got off the sofa. “Then you have one more day to go.”

  Mitch gave her an exasperated look. “Ena O’Rourke, you are a cruel woman.”

  She wasn’t doing this to win points with him. “Cruel or not, the doctor said to have you rest for a couple of days and we’re sticking to that.”

  “I warn you, I’m going to go stir-crazy,” he complained as he watched her head toward the room’s doorway.

  “Nobody ever went stir-crazy in two days,” she assured him.

  His mood grew just the slightest bit more desperate. “Then I’ll be the first.”

  “You know, you could try being patient,” she told Mitch.

  He’d already thrown off his own covers and was sitting on the edge of the bed, itching to get moving. “Not in my nature.”

  “Learn,” she told him as she left the room. “I’m going to see about breakfast.”

  Refusing to remain confined, Mitch brushed his teeth, threw some water on his face and went down into the kitchen.

  She’d expected him to protest, then give in the way he had yesterday. But that didn’t seem to be happening, she thought when she saw him coming into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing here?” Ena asked.

  “Stretching my legs,” he lied. “I was gettin
g cramps in them because of all that resting I was doing.”

  Felicity, busy making breakfast, looked thoughtfully from Ena to the foreman who had just walked into her domain. She didn’t ask any questions, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she was filling in the blanks for herself.

  “Hungry?” she asked Mitch.

  Mitch grinned. That was a question that he could answer without hesitation. “Starving.”

  The housekeeper nodded. “That is a good sign,” she said with approval.

  Ena had told the housekeeper about Mitch’s visit to the medical center the moment she saw the woman. She was attempting to enlist Felicity’s help.

  “The doctor said he should rest,” she insisted.

  Felicity glanced over at the foreman. “And by the looks of him, he did. But too much rest makes a person feel useless and lazy. That is no way to run a ranch,” the housekeeper concluded with authority.

  Ena threw up her hands, knowing she couldn’t fight both Felicity and Mitch.

  “All right, if you promise not to exert yourself and to let the other hands do all the heavy stuff, you don’t have to go back to bed after you eat. Good enough?” she asked Mitch.

  The smile he flashed her caused her stomach to tighten as a little thrill worked its way down her spine. It almost made her surrender worth it.

  If she worried that the others would rag on Mitch for allowing himself to be restricted by her, she could have saved herself the grief. When the ranch hands saw him that morning, they greeted Mitch as if he were a conquering hero coming home from war.

  Things quickly went back to normal after that. Mitch couldn’t have been happier.

  * * *

  Because she had allowed her other responsibilities—both the accounts from her firm as well as the accounts in her father’s poor excuse for a ledger—slide, she began putting in more time working on them. So much so that she was back to losing sleep because she stayed up late and was up early, doing her best to attempt to catch up.

  At times it began to feel like a losing battle, but she wasn’t about to give up, even though she felt herself fading.

  Every shred of time she had was utilized.

  “Hey, ever hear that old chestnut ‘Physician, heal thyself’?” Mitch asked her one evening several weeks later.

  He was standing in the doorway of the study, watching her working after she had already put in a full day’s work on the ranch. Something stirred within him. Damn, but he had never gotten over her, he thought.

  He walked into the room.

  “I’m aware of it,” she told Mitch without looking up. Having put in time on her firm’s accounts, she was back to trying to figure out what to do about rectifying her father’s rather creative record keeping.

  “Then maybe you should think about giving it a try,” he said.

  “Later,” she responded. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m busy right now.”

  “I noticed,” he answered. “Seems to me that you’re busy all the time.”

  She was getting cross-eyed, trying to follow the numbers on the page. “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re not listening to me, are you?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  That was what he thought. This time, he put his hand down on the ledger, blocking her view.

  “Hey!” she cried in protest, looking at him.

  He could be just as stubborn as she was, Mitch thought. And this was for her own good. “You need a break.”

  “What I need is to get this done,” she countered, physically removing his hand from the ledger.

  He could have kept his hand there if he wanted to. Instead, he let her move it. But he needed to get her to see things his way—for her own good.

  “You’re going to make yourself sick, you know that. You’re not just burning the candle at both ends—you’re burning the candle in the middle, too,” Mitch insisted.

  She closed her eyes, searching for strength. “Thank you for your concern, but—”

  Mitch didn’t let her finish. “Does this conversation sound familiar to you?” he asked. Because she didn’t say anything, he went on, “Let me refresh your memory for you—you and I had this exact same conversation a few weeks ago, except I was the one being lectured and I was the one insisting I was fine. You, in your infinite wisdom, pointed out that I wasn’t.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Allow me to return the favor now,” he requested.

  Ena sighed, knowing Mitch was right. That didn’t make it any easier for her to back off. “You can be a royal pain, you know.”

  He grinned at her and said, “Right back at you.”

  Dead tired, she still made an attempt to reason with him. “Look, I can let the accounts from my old firm go for the time being. I can say that I’ve decided to take a prolonged vacation and focus on the ranch for now—but that hodgepodge that my father called a ledger? I can’t just ignore that. Too many things are coming due soon and if I don’t find a way to get creative and to manage to secure an extension on the bank’s note, the ranch is going to be under new ownership and it’s not going to be mine, Parnell.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “Maybe you can find a way to make the bank give you that extension you mentioned. The bank really doesn’t want your ranch. It’s more profitable for them if you keep the ranch and repay the loan.”

  Ena scrubbed her hands over her face and then looked at Mitch. “You know, for a cowboy, you think like an accountant.”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Mitch told her, keeping a straight face. “Look, there’s a party this weekend. I know for a fact that the bank manager is going to be there. Maybe if we approach him in a friendly, neutral setting, he might be open to seeing things your way. Maybe you’ll even come up with a viable suggestion about a repayment schedule by then.”

  She hadn’t gotten past the first sentence. “A party?”

  He nodded. “Miss Joan’s holding the party for Dr. Dan and his wife. It’s celebrating the clinic being open for ten years. Everyone’s invited,” he added before she could protest that she hadn’t gotten an invitation so she couldn’t go. “You wouldn’t want to insult Miss Joan by not attending.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Heaven forbid.”

  “Not to mention the fact that you could use the break,” he told her. “By my count, you’ve been doing nothing but work ever since you got here and you above all people know that you need to balance that out,” he told her.

  “I balance it out,” she protested. When he looked at her, she told him, “I sleep.”

  “Not much fun in that,” Mitch told her. “C’mon, you’ll be killing two birds with one stone. You’ll be approaching the bank manager on neutral ground and you’ll be getting some much-needed recreation. You know what they say, all work and no play, et cetera.”

  Ena raised her eyes to his. “Are you saying that I’m dull?” she asked, playing out the rest of the saying in her head.

  Mitch smiled at her, his eyes saying things to her that he couldn’t say out loud.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to ignore the way her pulse had picked up, responding to the way he was looking at her—and making her want things that would only cause problems in the long run.

  “No, I’d never say you were dull,” he told her. “Anything but dull,” he added with enthusiasm, his words all but caressing her face.

  “Is that a compliment, Parnell, or am I just being extremely punchy?” she asked.

  “That was a compliment,” he assured her. “You are the most well-rounded, fascinating woman I have ever met and I certainly wouldn’t think of insulting you,” Mitch said. He cleared his throat before he said anything else. “So, about that party...” He allowed his voice to trail off as he waited for her to agree.

  She sighed. “When did you say it was?”

  M
itch knew that meant yes. “This Saturday.”

  Ena shrugged. “All right, I’ll go. For the good of the ranch—and not to insult Miss Joan.”

  His grin widened. “Good idea.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mitch glanced up at the sky. He was able to tell time by the position of the sun as easily as if he were looking at his watch. Right now, it was getting late.

  “We’d better start getting ready if we’re going to make that party that Miss Joan’s throwing,” he said to Ena as he stripped off his gloves. He shoved them into his back pocket and started to head out of the corral.

  “Yeah, about that,” Ena replied slowly, deliberately avoiding Mitch’s eyes. She always felt as if his piercing blue eyes could see right through her and she really didn’t want to deal with that right now.

  Looking at the ground, she told him, “I’m not going.” When Mitch said nothing in response, she could feel herself beginning to fidget inside. She was anticipating an argument. “A party’s no place to talk business, and besides, there’s just too much to do here.” She waved her hand at the straw they had been spreading around in the stalls that was a long way from finished. “I can’t just take off and play hooky for the better part of the day. What if something goes wrong?”

  More silence.

  She pressed her lips together, already knowing what he had to say about that. “Okay, so the hands might be able to handle it, but I’d still rather be here myself—just in case,” she insisted.

  Running out of words, Ena finally looked up at Mitch. The man could be so infuriating.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.

  The foreman looked at her with a calm, knowing expression on his face. “Scared?” he asked.

  Ena was instantly incensed. “No, I’m not scared,” she snapped indignantly.