Rancher Needs a Wife

Wayne Hammond figured two factors were responsible for the standing-room-only crowd at tonight's school board meeting: a visiting celebrity and the rumor of a big donation. He doubted it was a sudden curiosity about educational policy or campus maintenance that was filling the high school auditorium's dented metal chairs as fast as they could be unfolded. Most of the folks who'd turned out on this cold September night in Tucker, Montana, had likely come to gawk at the man seated opposite Wayne's chairman spot on the board's makeshift dais. Hollywood superstar Fitz Kelleran slouched in his boneless style on a front row seat, his long, jeans-clad legs crossed at the ankles. One arm was slung across the back of his wife's chair, where he toyed with the tail of her thick reddish braid with casual and absentminded affection. Ellie Harrison Kelleran was a very lucky woman, and it wasn't only because the widow had lassoed a marriage proposal from the handsome actor who'd arrived at her family's ranch for a summer location shoot three months ago. It was because she'd deflected a potential proposal from Wayne. He frowned down at the meeting agenda, remembering how he'd been easing his way into a courtship. He'd figured he'd keep things practical at first, pointing out the logic of a match between two longtime friends and neighbors, a match that would remove some of the fence line between their spreads. Ellie would gain a new daddy for the young daughter Tom Harrison had left behind when he died, and Wayne would get a head start on the family he'd always wanted. Not the most romantic approach, maybe, but then he hadn't thought Ellie was the kind of woman who needed it. That was before Kelleran had arrived at Granite Ridge Ranch and swept her right off her feet. Wayne had been wrong about a woman before, and his own marriage's failure was a painful testament to that. He'd thought funloving Alicia would settle into life on his ranch and quit her pining for the round-theclock social whirl of LasVegas. Looking back on it all, he could see what a fool he'd been to toss aside his usual caution and rush headlong into a relationship with a woman who craved the kind of attention he couldn't provide. But like most of the single men in Tucker"and likely some of the married ones, too"Wayne had taken one look at Alicia and fallen head over heels in lust. When he'd regained his balance, he'd found himself married to a woman who didn't care for life on a ranch, wasn't in a hurry to start a family and didn't want to stay through another Montana winter. He didn't intend to lose his footing again. At the moment, however, he was thinking he might have slipped into a mess of a different kind. The audience continued to swell in a shifting, murmuring mass with dozens of staring faces, and a familiar discomfort had him hunching in his seat and poring obsessively through the thin stack of paperwork before him. Stage fright. It unnerved him enough to keep him from the spotlight, but, on occasions such as this, he hunkered down and refused to let the panic prevent him from participating in community events or taking advantage of business opportunities. Tonight he'd force himself to sit with his fellow board members and remind himself, over and over, that no one had come to ogle him. He'd concentrate on the business at hand and the familiar faces in the front row and ignore the ocean of bodies beyond. "Here comes trouble." Board member Trace Bardett shoved a knobby black microphone into a short plastic stand under Wayne's chin and jerked his head toward the woman striding down the crooked center aisle. "Ms. Hell-on-Heels." Maggie Harrison Sinclair. She had her mother's blond hair and blue eyes, and her father's rangy height and angular build, but her agile mind and uptown attitude were all her own. Throughout their high school days she'd made it clear that she was aiming for biggeMcLaughlin, Terry is the author of 'Rancher Needs a Wife ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373781454 and ISBN 0373781458.