His Hired Bride

Hoyt sat back in his chair to stare at her. He looked stunned. Well, so was she. And maybe insulted. If this was a joke, it was a rotten one she never would have expected from him.

“Your ring is beautiful,” she said casually. “But who’s it for…?”

Susan Fox lives in Des Moines, Iowa. A lifelong fan of Westerns, cowboys and love stories with guaranteed happy endings, she tends to think of romantic heroes in terms of Stetsons and boots.

Fans may visit her Web site at www.susanfox.org

Books by Susan Fox

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3777—THE MARRIAGE COMMAND

3788—BRIDE OF CONVENIENCE

3796—A MARRIAGE WORTH WAITING FOR

3828—THE BRIDE PRIZE

His Hired Bride

Susan Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

THESE days, Eadie Webb was almost the only person in their part of Texas who got along well with rancher Hoyt Donovan.

Eadie managed that by either staying out of his way or by treating him with relentless good grace. She ignored his surly expressions, bore it patiently when he was terse or blustery, and pleasantly accommodated his every dictate.

She knew precisely why he was out of sorts lately, and it tickled her sense of justice, though she’d never confess that to him in so many words. Partly because she was too polite to do so; partly because she didn’t want to take the chance that she might somehow hurt his feelings.

Men like Hoyt never owned up to having feelings anyway, at least not the kind that could be hurt, so any truthful remarks she might make about his situation would only enrage him further and increase the misery of everyone who happened to cross his path.

Hoyt Donovan was the most god-awful male chauvinist in Texas, and though he deserved to suffer some sort of consequences for his actions, no one else deserved to suffer with him. Not that Eadie believed he was truly suffering like normal mortals would, but he’d probably had his pride dented. And pride—particularly male pride—was all important to men like Hoyt.

But then, he’d come by that pride naturally. His blunt, stony looks gave him a rough handsomeness to go with his earthy sensuality, which was patently unfair for females like her who were too lackluster to ever enjoy anything more of them than the view.

Because of his rugged good looks, Hoyt Donovan had been the target of every marriage-minded female in their part of Texas, and women flocked to him like butterflies. If he wasn’t in the mood to have his male vanity catered to at that moment, he was arrogant enough to send them scattering with a cranky look or some other, more subtle indication of disinterest.

He could be bad about that, but it didn’t seem to make a lasting difference to the butterflies. More taken by surprise than offended or hurt, they recovered quickly and came fluttering back for another chance. He seemed somewhat more attracted to the mercenary ones, and they were usually the ones he put up with the longest, as if he enjoyed an occasional challenge to his unrelenting date ’em and drop ’em style. He deserved something for that, but his dating habits were more a by-product of his biggest flaw.

He didn’t treat his women badly, and none had ever complained that she’d heard about. He periodically sent them flowers between one expensive date and the next, and he almost always sent them a decent piece of jewelry or some interesting trinket after he stopped calling them. Eadie’s only problem with his generosity was that Hoyt regularly assigned those chores to her, and she’d been put in charge of the actual selections.

It wasn’t that he didn’t show his women a good time, because he did. He knew how to treat a woman like a queen, and he had a diabolical knack for catering to a lady’s interests, whether those interests were his or not.

But his ability to dictate the emotional parameters of the relationship, yet remain remote and unmarried, was becoming the stuff of legends. He’d left a prodigious number of broken hearts along his trail, so if he was surly now over finally getting jilted by the one woman he’d actually taken seriously, he deserved it.

But the biggest reason Eadie Webb hoped Hoyt Donovan would suffer a bit longer, was that his male tastes ran—no, galloped—to beautiful women, and always the most beautiful ones. He liked leggy blondes with haystack hair and puffy lips, exotic brunettes with lush curves, and fiery, green-eyed redheads who wore their costly designer clothes two sizes too small.

He didn’t seem to notice that most of his beauties were more self-involved and shallow than he was. Until he’d finally met the one who’d done him dirt.

Eadie felt ashamed of herself suddenly. She not only owed Hoyt her gratitude for hiring her to work for him a few afternoons a week, she also owed him her complete loyalty and deference because of a discreet act of kindness he’d once done for her. Though neither of them had ever spoken about that awful night since or even vaguely referred to it, Eadie felt the bittersweet burden of obligation to him.

Perhaps one of the reasons she felt so little sympathy for his upset of late was that the gentle man—the supremely kind man—he’d been that night five years ago, had been appearing less and less frequently these days. There’d been times this past year when she’d found his sour moods increasingly obnoxious, and she often wondered if she’d dreamed what he’d done for her way back then.

What no one would ever know and what Hoyt Donovan would never suspect, was that she’d fallen in love with him that night five years ago. Completely and irrevocably. Because she had, and because she was the very last woman on earth that beauty-obsessed Hoyt Donovan would ever consider a romantic possibility, Eadie was fully aware that the biggest reason she took such a harsh view of his love life was that she couldn’t seem to get past the jealousy she felt, so it gave her more than a little satisfaction to know he’d gotten a taste of his own medicine. She wondered if the beautiful Celeste had sent him a “parting gift.”

It frustrated her that Hoyt couldn’t see that his beauties were too in love with themselves to ever truly love him. Hoyt wasn’t a stupid man, and she’d always been wary of his insights, but he was as dense as a brick on some subjects.

Five years of loving him in secret was a long time. Long enough to prove, even to her, that Hoyt Donovan’s tastes would never change. It hadn’t taken five minutes for Eadie to realize he’d never be interested in a plain woman like her, though it had taken her far less than five minutes that awful night to realize she was doomed to love him—almost unconditionally—for the rest of her life.

Eadie forced herself to ignore the depressing sense of hopelessness she felt as she finished tidying up Hoyt’s desk. She’d typed his letters and caught up on his bookwork, saving it all to files before obsessively backing them up. Donovan Ranch was a monstrous headache to keep track of. Her three afternoons a week made a respectable dent in the paperwork, but Hoyt took care of the rest himself.

He’d paid her well for the tasks he’d hired her to do, and the money came in handy on her own small ranch, though the extra income evaporated by the time she got done paying bills. If things at home continued going downhill, by next year she might have to sell out.

The notion dragged her spirits lower. The idea of having to move to town and take an office job was traumatic. Aside from losing touch with the ranch life she’d loved and had grown up with, she’d no longer have either a reason or the opportunity to see Hoyt, though that was probably for the best. At twenty-six, the only thing more pitiful than being doomed to achieve “old maid” status in another few years or less, was to hang around a man she could never have.

The sound of Hoyt’s heavy bootsteps pounding steadily through the big ranch house startled her and she automatically glanced at the clock. The fact that Hoyt had apparently come back to the house early today wasn’t a good sign, not when he was still so riled and cranky. Because his bad mood had grown worse this past week, Eadie had taken greater pains to stay out of his way. She’d hoped to make her escape before he came back to the house, but his sudden arrival thwarted her plan.

From the bedroom end of the house opposite the wing the office was located in, she heard him thunder, “Eadie? I need you in here! Now!”

The order was as angry as she’d ever heard, and Eadie hurriedly finished stacking the handful of letters with their envelopes on his desk blotter to rush out of the room. Hoyt never leveled his bullish temper on her, though he often treated her to a blustery verbal account of the reason for his choler. She suspected he did that because she always listened calmly, and her very calmness seemed to cool him off by the time he was done letting off steam.

And of course, once he finished, he usually saw reason and quickly got over his aggravation. That was one of the things that made her forgive those times when his temper rose high: when he cooled off, Hoyt was truly mellow, and he didn’t hold grudges.

The problem in the aftermath of his breakup with the beautiful Celeste was that he’d fumed around for weeks now, and as far as she knew, he’d not spoken more than a handful of choice words on the subject. Most of what she knew had come from gossip. Which was why she’d guessed that his male pride had somehow been soundly assaulted. And why he wasn’t showing signs of letting go of a bit of his anger over it anytime soon.

She’d barely made it down the hall and halfway across the big living room before he bellowed out another, “Eadie—get in here!”

She sprinted the rest of the way across the living room to the hall, suddenly shaky because she sensed something new about his anger this time.

As she slowed to rush into what had to be the master bedroom, her shaking increased. She’d never been in the private areas of Hoyt’s home, and his bedroom was the most private. And intimate. She had only a moment to note the dark luster of the wide headboard of his massive bed before she reached the open door of the master bath and rounded the corner.

The moment she saw him, Eadie realized that for the rest of her life, she’d always feel this same wild excitement and rush of happiness at the mere sight of the man.

Hoyt was so big and broad-shouldered, his powerful, work-hardened body the very zenith of masculinity. His larger-than-life presence made the large bathroom feel about a foot wide. Beneath the black Stetson he still wore, his hair was dark and overlong, and his face was almost too rugged and harsh to be considered handsome, though it was.

And she adored him. Truly and simply, Eadie adored everything about Hoyt Donovan, though she’d never in a million years confess that to him or to anyone else. She’d taken brutal pains to make sure she never showed it.

The glittering black gaze that missed so little when it wasn’t dazzled blind by female beauty, arrowed straight to her heat-flushed face and impacted her startled blue gaze with enough force to make her eyelashes give an involuntary spasm.

“It’s about time,” he growled. “I coulda bled to death in here.”

Alarmed, Eadie’s wide gaze dropped to the side of his ripped and bloodied chambray shirt as he turned, then pulled the shirttail out of his jeans and held it up to display the oozing slice in the hard flesh beneath.

Eadie’s gasp was overridden by his clipped, “Hurts like a son-of-a-gun.”

His remark was far less profane than it might have been if he’d been talking to one of his men, but Eadie barely noticed as she stepped close for a better look.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“Medical stuff’s in the cabinet right there.” He nodded toward a panel of the wide mirror that spanned the long counter. “Clean me up an’ slap on a patch.”

Hoyt’s voice was loud in the crowded space. His frustration was in the terse order, but the volume of his voice was anger. None of it made much of an impression on Eadie because she knew instantly that his frustration was with the injury and his anger was at himself for being injured in the first place.

“It needs stitches,” she said as she quickly washed her hands, hastily dried them, then rummaged briefly in the cabinet he’d indicated to find antiseptic and sterile gauze pads.

“You too squeamish to do it?”

The demand was a bit more crabby than angry, and they both knew she was anything but squeamish. Eadie opened the peroxide, then tore open a few of the sterile pad packs to dampen them. She turned toward him to brush the pads gently around the gash to clear away the blood, and answered.

“There’s a big difference between cowhide and your hide.”

“Stitches are stitches. If you can sew up a cow, you can sew me up.”

Eadie let herself smile faintly to acknowledge how ridiculous that was. “Not the same thing,” she murmured as she continued to work.

“How come?” Now his big voice had gentled a bit more as if his temper was already cooling.

Eadie glanced up to make eye contact. “Your hide’s thicker.”

As she’d hoped, he’d liked that. The lingering anger in his gaze abruptly softened to a glitter. The stern line of his mouth curved slightly. “Do tell.”

Eadie looked back down at her work, thrilled, flustered, but confident it wouldn’t show. She’d had years of practice keeping her face blank, even when Hoyt got that dangerously sexy look that made her ache for him. She knew that sexy look wasn’t aimed at her for any special reason. It was just the man’s natural state, and nothing to take personally. She directed them both back to the business at hand.

“Let me finish here and cover it, then I’ll call the doctor and find someone to drive you to town.”

“I’ll drive myself,” he growled, and Eadie wasn’t surprised. As long as Hoyt was conscious and on his feet, she wouldn’t think of arguing with his macho declaration. He’d consider the suggestion polite, but arguing with him about it would somehow put his manhood in question.

“Suit yourself.”

The silence as she gently worked suddenly seemed odd somehow. There was a tension to it, but the tension could only be hers. After all, taking care of Hoyt like this was a tiny spark of heaven. And that was not only ridiculous, but evidence of how pitiful she was.

Helping Hoyt with paperwork was one thing, but cleaning the small wound on his side seemed intensely personal, at least for her. She was tingling all over and her insides were fluttery. And oh, oh, she loved even a flimsy excuse to stand so close to him, and she couldn’t get enough of the smell of leather and sunshine and man.

Meanwhile Hoyt wouldn’t even notice the smell of her bargain shampoo. He wouldn’t be any more affected by her touch than he would have been if someone had absently brushed against his arm in a crowd. Though she knew that, the longer this small bit of first aid went on, the more intense the tingles and flutters became.

She couldn’t help it. Touching him, even like this, was about as good as it got for her. And Hoyt’s skin was not tougher than cowhide. It was hot and firm on his side, surprisingly silky, and the steely muscle and bone beneath were rocklike. Eadie suddenly felt a primitive feminine craving to touch more of him.

“How come your hands are shakin’?”

The blunt question made her heart jump and Eadie felt her face go a scorching red. She tried to cover it with a faked hint of irritation.

“You stomped in bellowing for me like a crazed bull. And since cleaning this has got to hurt, I keep thinking you’ll bellow again.”

“That all it is?” There was something edgy in his stark question, as if her trembling hands had somehow put him on alert and made him suspicious of her.

Which seemed like nonsense until it dawned on her why he’d go on the alert. Considering Hoyt’s taste for beautiful women, even a faint hint that sexless, Plain-Jane Eadie Webb might be getting a bit excited over this was sure to be a horrifying notion for a lady-killer like Hoyt.

Hurt by the idea, Eadie tried to finish quickly. If he’d suspected enough of her feelings to hint so fast that he was repelled, then it was time to counter his impression by rushing this. The doctor would insist on doing a more thorough job anyway, but for now it was clean enough to cover for the ride to town. At least the bleeding had almost stopped.

Eadie tossed the last wad of soiled gauze pads into the sink, then reached for three of the larger gauze packs to tear them open. In moments, she had the big squares pressed against his side and took his hand to lift it to hold the pads in place so she could tape them.

But taking Hoyt’s big, callused hand was like taking hold of the live end of a broken powerline, and Eadie couldn’t tell if her reflex was to yank her hand away or to hold on tighter. When she guided his fingers into place over the gauze pad and let go, her racing heart slowed a good ten beats per second. As desperate to deny the snapping charge she’d just gotten as she was to get this over with, she briskly tore off strips of tape to anchor the pad to Hoyt’s skin.

When she finished, she took an extra second to press a ripple of tape more securely against him. Only she had to know that the ripple was no ripple, but was instead an overwhelming need to touch Hoyt one last, daringly insane time. In the normal course of her life, there’d been few opportunities to ever touch him, and she was certain this time was destined to be the last.

Eadie reached for a small dark green towel and handed it to him. “Take this along, in case it starts oozing.”

She gingerly reached for the corners of the soiled gauze pads and bent to get out the small garbage can from beneath the sink. She transferred the squares to the trash before she put it back under the sink and let the door close. She’d just turned on the hot water tap to wash her hands and squirt some liquid soap from the ceramic dispenser into her palm before it dawned on her that Hoyt was still standing close by, not moving away as she’d expected.

Eadie sneaked a peek into the mirror to confirm what she could already see in her peripheral vision. Hoyt was staring solemnly at her, watching her every move. Her gaze dropped back down while she briskly washed her hands, splashed a bit of water against the bowl of the sink to rinse away any spots, then turned off the faucets and stepped away to dry her hands.

She’d not wanted to allow herself to read something ominous in Hoyt’s profile as he’d stared at her, because the fact that he was staring at her couldn’t be good. Though her instinct was to get out of his sight as soon as possible, she tried to sound cool about it.

“Well, that’s it,” she said, taking a moment to straighten the hand towel on the bar as she automatically did the same with the larger ones next to it. Clearly Hoyt wasn’t the neat freak she was. “Be sure to ask the doctor when your last tetanus shot was in case you need another. I was just about to get home.”

With that, she turned to walk to the door without looking directly at him, but Hoyt caught her arm. The fresh jolt that he gave her sent her gaze shooting up to his.

“That’s it?” His dark brows were cranky whorls that confused her.

“I said I’d call the doctor.”

“You’re gonna let me drive to town alone?”

Eadie studied his stern face a moment, unable to miss his disapproval. “You said you’d drive yourself.”

“You’d let me do that? I thought women liked to fuss.”

Eadie gave her head a disbelieving shake. “Do you…want me to fuss?”

He released her arm then and growled, “Not if you have to strain yourself.”

Eadie stared harder, unable to grasp this, though she was almost amused by it. “So you do want me to fuss,” she concluded as she tried to come to grips with the idea. “How much fussing…would you want?”

She almost giggled over how ridiculous that sounded, but didn’t dare. Hoyt looked deadly serious!

Now some of his stony expression eased and a bit of the ire in his dark eyes died down, as if her question mollified him.

“Considering how froze up you are, slather it on. I’ll let you know if it’s too much. My side’s stingin’ like a son of a buck, and it feels like you cleaned it with acid.”

Eadie ignored the crack about her being “froze up” and instantly felt bad that she’d hurt him. She impulsively touched his arm. “I’m sorry. Can you walk to my truck or do you need help?”

“I can walk,” he grumbled, then added, “just steady me till we’re sure.”

Genuinely sorry she’d hurt him and anxious to make up for it, Eadie took back the hand towel and moved to his uninjured side. She helped him lift his arm as she ducked beneath it so he could rest it across her shoulders and lean on her if he had to. She hesitantly put her arm around his waist and got a grip on his belt, both to avoid coming in contact with his injured side but also to provide a hold in case his legs somehow did give out.

That idea seemed absurdly far-fetched because Hoyt was so physical and naturally strong, but if he was feeling poorly enough to sacrifice a little male pride to ask for assistance, then he must be feeling bad. He hadn’t nicked an artery, but maybe he was a little shocky. Could he have hit his head?

“You’re a puny little thing, you know that? How the hell do you do outside work?”

Eadie turned her head to briefly look at him before she faced forward to start him toward the door. He didn’t sound weak, just irritable. Looked it, too.

“Thanks for the compliment. I don’t have to be big to use smarts. Lean on me if you need to because it’s almost closing time at the doctor’s. You don’t want to pay for the emergency room,” she said as they walked out into the bedroom.

“You’re supposed to coddle me, not worry me about money,” he said, vexed.

“Sorry.”

“And it sounds like you don’t think I’m worth the extra fee.”

Eadie tried to be patient with that surprising hint of self-pity. It was out of character. “Money’s an automatic worry for me,” she said calmly. “I forget some folks don’t need to worry.”

“That’s right, it’s my money,” he said, then went on. “But how come you worry? Are you saying I don’t pay you enough?”

“It’ll be easier to coddle you if you stop talking.”

“I never noticed meanness in you before, Eadie Webb.”

She couldn’t help an ironic smile, since he couldn’t see it. “I’m not surprised.”