The Tycoon's Tots Read Free Page B

this woman’s interference. Buthe didn’t always do the smart thing. Believing Belinda’s happy stories proved that much.
    â€œI’ll wait. Is there anything I can help you with?”
    Surprised by his offer, she looked at him. Not as a threat, but simply as a man. “I wouldn’t want you to dirty yourself.”
    There wasn’t anything he needed to prove to this woman. Her opinion of him didn’t matter at all. Yet the idea that she thought of him as soft, pricked his ego as nothing had in years. “I’ve been known to get a little dirt under my fingernails before.”
    She gave him a dry little smile. “Scratching and clawing your way to the top, I suppose?”
    â€œYou find something wrong with ambition, Ms. Murdock?”
    â€œNot when it’s aimed in the right direction, Mr. Sanders.”
    Brushing past him, she walked out of the stable to leave Wyatt standing by the empty stall. For a moment he considered following her, but then he decided there wouldn’t be much point in it. This was her turf, and she obviously figured he’d be more of a hindrance than a help.
    It took her only a matter of a few minutes to return the four horses to their stalls. Wyatt stood silently by, watching her work and wondering if this was how she spent all of her time here on this isolated New Mexican ranch. In his opinion it was a shame to see a beautiful woman like her buried in such a place.
    Once she was ready to go, Wyatt followed her out of the stable and along the beaten path leading back to the house. Along the way they passed several barns and a maze of connecting metal pens.
    Wyatt didn’t see any cattle except one bull lying near a mound of alfalfa hay. Closer to the house, in a small wooden corral, a black calf poked its head through the fence and bawled loudly.
    â€œYou’ll get your bottle soon enough, Martin,” Chloe told the calf. “You’re not the only one around here who’s hungry.”
    â€œWhere’s his mother? Can’t she feed him?” Wyatt asked as they walked on at a brisk clip. Did the woman move at this pace all day, he wondered. If she did, she had to feel like hell by nightfall. And weren’t there any cowboys around to help?
    â€œHis mother is dead. My sister Rose and I take turns hand-feeding him.” Chloe didn’t go on to tell him that Martin’s mother was killed when Belinda torched a section of the ranch. It was a horrible scene she hated to think about, much less relate to him.
    A few moments later, the two of them entered a small courtyard landscaped with an assortment of desert plants, a couple of piñon pines and redwood lawn furniture.
    A ground-level porch made a square with the back of the house. Wyatt followed her across one end of it, through a screen door and into a warm, cluttered kitchen. Two steps inside the room, Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks as he spotted two red-headed babies sitting side by side in a pair of high chairs.
    These were his sister’s children, the only close relatives he had left. Yet incredibly they looked like the woman standing next to him.
    â€œAunt Kitty, this is Wyatt Sanders.”
    Wyatt tore his gaze away from the babies to see the petite gray-haired woman had joined them. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel and looking Wyatt over with open suspicion.
    â€œYes, he told me his name when he came to the door. I see you found Chloe,” she told him.
    He nodded politely toward the older woman, but before he could get a word out, Chloe said, “Did he tell you he’s Belinda Waller’s brother?”
    Kitty’s face grew ashen and her wide gaze flew fromher niece to the dark-haired stranger. “Belinda’s brother?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. “We didn’t know she had a brother! What are you doing here?”
    Wyatt turned to Chloe and wondered, not for the first time, what his next words were going to do to