Western Man Read Online Free Page B

wasn’t time for Sharon to have more than a quick chat with her while they gathered all Tony’s toys and clothing.
    Supper was in the oven and Sharon had the evening chores done when the pickup truck with the horse trailer crested a hillock and approached the barns. Sharon waved to the three people crowded together in the cab of the truck and continued to the house. With their horses to be unsaddled, rubbed down, and fed for the night, it would be another quarter of an hour before they joined her, Sharon knew.
    By the time Sharon’s parents and brother had taken turns using the shower, three-quarters of an hour had passed before they all sat down at the table. There was a moment’s pause while her father said grace. Lloyd Powell was tall and broadly muscled, with a silver mane of hair that had once been the color of his thirty-two-year-old son’s dusty brown hair. Scott had his wide features, bluntly chiseled and weathered brown by the sun and wind, but he had his mother’s green eyes. On the other hand, Sharon had inherited her mother’s slender build and toffee-colored hair, and her father’s hazel-brown eyes.
    “I noticed the corral gate is wired shut,” her father remarked. “Trouble again?”
    “I think I’m going to change Huck’s name to Trouble.” Sharon identified the chestnut as the culprit and explained about the afternoon’s fiasco—and Ridge’s timely arrival, passing on Ridge’s request for Scott to phone him that evening about working a couple of days for the Latigo.
    “Day after tomorrow?” Scott repeated and glanced questioningly at his father. “I should be able to manage that with no problem.”
    “None that I can see,” Lloyd Powell agreed with a slow nod.
    “How did the baby-sitting go today?” her mother inquired.
    “Don’t ask,” Sharon replied with a rueful grimace. “I’m convinced no woman in her right mind would take on the task of motherhood if she knew in advance what it was like. You need three sets of arms, feet, and eyes to keep up with them.”
    “Now you know what it was like having you two,” her mother laughed, her sparkling green glance darting between her son and daughter.
    “Is that why you waited until I was older before you had Sharon?” Scott wanted to know, drawing attention to their twelve-year age difference. “So you could have a built-in baby-sitter?”
    “Your son was a bit slow figuring that one out,” his mother declared as she cast a side glance at her husband.
    “My
son? When did he cease being ours and become mine?” he challenged good-naturedly.
    Sharon eyed her brother with a studying look.“Isn’t it time you were thinking about getting married and raising a family?” she asked. “By rights, there should already be another generation of Powells running around the house.”
    “Me?” He was startled and amused by her suggestion. “First, there’s a little matter of a bride. If you’re so eager for the folks to have grandchildren, why don’t you marry your oil man?”
    She lifted her head. “So you’re the one who told Ridge about Andy.”
    Her brother appeared slightly taken aback and a little uncomfortable. “Was your boyfriend supposed to be a secret?”
    “No.” She smiled at the thought. “At the moment, that’s all Andy happens to be—a friend. It’s just that Ridge referred to him as an oil man when he asked me about him this afternoon. I wasn’t aware my love life was something you two discussed.”
    “We don’t,” Scott replied evenly.
    “What do you talk about?’ Her curiosity was heightened by an afternoon spent wondering about such things and what they might reveal about Ridge.
    “What kind of a question is that?” Scott frowned at her as if she’d asked a ridiculous question. “What does anybody talk about? Me? You? Dad?”
    Put in that context, it did sound a little silly. She poked a fork at her food and shrugged. “I just wondered what men talk about.”
    “The weather, business, their