LITMIR.BIZ

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than the teasing one he and Delia shared.

      He wanted to resent these women, and did. But some of that resentment was fading, no matter how he struggled to hold on to it.

      God, he missed Ben. He supposed that would never change. But how to keep his dream alive without hurting these women?

      Maddie was a haunting beauty, with huge wide eyes that just made a man want to drown in them and offer to slay dragons. Those eyes held secrets, painful ones, and he wondered at them. Delia was tall and slender, a glamour girl. Intelligent, too, with a wicked sense of humor he got a kick out of. And in her eyes was a need to belong. Well, she belonged now, to the ranch he wanted for himself.

      Then there was Zoe. She was different from her sisters, far different. He wasn’t satisfied by anything so simple as friendship, and he didn’t understand it.

      “Eat,” Maddie said to him again, gesturing with the box. “You’ve lost weight.”

      Zoe snorted.

      He ignored Zoe and winked at Maddie. She held the pan patiently.

      His stomach growled.

      Oh, what the hell. He took the piece, studying the third sister, the one who didn’t easily fit into any simple category.

      Did she feel the same way about him? Hard to tell since she hid everything going on inside that head behind a screen of grumpy indifference.

      She wiggled uncomfortably under his scrutiny, then finally swallowed a bit of pizza before demanding, “What are you looking at?”

      “You.”

      She flushed, fidgeted some more, giving herself away. “why?”

      He simply grinned and continued eating, undisturbed, relaxing now that he knew the truth...she was secretly crazy about him.

      A comfortable silence filled the room as they ate. They were all sitting on the freshly cleaned living room floor, before a warm, crackling fire, eating picnic-style.

      That they didn’t have four chairs in the kitchen wasn’t the point. The sisters just loved being together, and they were willing to share that with him—and he wanted their one and only possession for himself.

      “I didn’t come to eat,” he said quietly, putting down his pizza.

      “Really,” Zoe said dryly, brushing off her hands. “I never would have guessed.” Her eyes sharpened on him. “You being here wouldn’t by any chance have anything to do with you wanting this land, would it?”

       Chapter 3

      “Zoe, be nice,” Maddie said lightly. She swiveled her head, her short, dark hair flying around her face, her dark, deep eyes warm with affection as she spoke to Ty. “She’s a bully today because that jerk at the bank in Lewiston didn’t hire her.” She looked at Zoe again and reached for her sister’s hand. “He just didn’t recognize a treasure when he found one, that’s all.”

      Zoe swallowed, closed her eyes for a long heartbeat, clearly touched, and just as clearly uncomfortable with Maddie’s easy love.

      Ty’s curiosity upped a notch, so did a strange sense of protectiveness. The drive to Lewiston was long and never easy in the best of times. “Why did you want a job there? It’s too far for you to drive it every day.”

      Zoe recovered from Maddie’s affection in the blink of an eye and looked at him as if he were something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. “It’s funny how expensive this habit of eating is.”

      “I wish you wouldn’t, Zoe,” Delia said quietly. “We’ll find a way. We’ll sell something, or get a loan.”

      “Delia’s right,” Maddie insisted. “We’ll make it work together or not at all.”

      Ty watched the three of them, felt their closeness as a tangible thing.

      And it was, he reminded himself. These women were family. They were closer than family, for they’d chosen to be related. He’d chosen to be unrelated to the family he had left. It’d been for a good reason, that reason being survival basically, but the fact remained. He had no one.

      God, he missed Ben.

      Drawing in a deep breath, he realized the truth he’d only guessed at before. These women couldn’t afford to get the ranch going, but they were too stubborn to give up. They might never leave and sell him the land. There was only one thing to do.

      “I came here tonight to talk to all of you,” he said. Zoe frowned, Maddie’s brow wrinkled in worry. Delia sat calmly, waiting. Typical, he thought. The pessimist, the worrier, the cool one. Already, they were worming their way into his affections. He couldn’t stand the thought of any of them being hurt.

      That it was him trying to hurt them was unbearable. “I’d like to be your partner,” he said.

      That was met with stunned silence.

      “You’re already manager,” Zoe said suspiciously.

      And how she hated that. “This would be different. I’d be an equal partner. I’d share the losses.”

      “And the profits,” she pointed out.

      “Well, yes.”

      They all stared at him, three pairs of wide eyes, as if he’d lost his marbles.

      “Hey, this is a good thing, ladies,” he said, smiling into their pensive silence. “You want a ranch. You don’t have the needed capital. I do. It would give you money to survive on until you got your stock built up through purchases and breeding.”

      “Wait a minute. Did you say breeding?” Delia carefully set down her drink. “Here?”

      She said breeding as if it were a four-letter word, and it made Ty laugh. Delia was a city girl, born and bred. Los Angeles was her playground. Hell, she probably did think breeding was a bad word.

      Once upon a time he had felt stifled in a city, claustrophobic. Chicago was a place where one couldn’t even turn around without bumping elbows with a neighbor, and he had resented that. Ben had, too, and for as long as he could remember, Ty had wanted out.

      He needed open space. Fresh air. His own land, lots of it.

      What he needed was their land.

      “And you have enough money just lying around that you could lend it to us,” Zoe said, with serious doubt.

      “Yes.” He hadn’t gotten it by inheritance, that much was certain. His mother had been a whore, his father a career criminal. He didn’t have any relatives who would leave him a time bomb, much less something of value. He’d simply been very successful at raising and training horses, investing his profits wisely, making the most of what he’d earned.

      “And how much is this going to cost us?” Zoe asked. “In say...land?”

      Trust her to speak so bluntly. “I’m not going to cheat you out of anything, Zoe. Ever.”

      Her eyes, the color of drenched moss in the dim light, stared at him warily, unwilling to believe, which hurt in a way he hadn’t expected.

      “Well, I for one know you’d never hurt us,” Delia said gently as she scooted around the pizza to put her arm on his shoulders. She squeezed him. “We just don’t want to take your money, that’s all.”

      “It wouldn’t be right,” Maddie said, smiling sweetly and patting his knee. “You keep it for yourself, Ty.”

      He couldn’t believe it, but his throat actually tightened at their easy affection and trust. He hugged Delia back, and touched Maddie’s lovely face. Something about the heat warring with fear in Zoe’s eyes kept his hands off her, for she wasn’t as simple to show easy affection to as her sisters.

      But he wanted to touch her;

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