Agatha Kristenson
The rancher_s wife
CHAPTER ONE
The late afternoon sun was still blazing hot. Kate Sutherland wiped the sweat from under her ponytail and bent again to pull tender green onions from the crusted earth of the garden. The flies and bees sped by in a monotonous tune of buzzing through the corn stalks and over the tomato plants. It hung in the still heat that shimmered over the fields beyond.
Kate straightened again and wiped her brow, looking out over the green-gold rolling plains through the big poplar that stood guard over the edge of the garden. It was almost a blinding color, the wheat gold that burned the eyes and leeched their moisture in a Van Gogh painting. Arles must have been very much like South Dakota she decided.
She moved over to the cucumber patch and pulled three big ones for dinner, feeling their slick green silky length in her hand. Cole would be home tomorrow. She blushed then, realizing those phallic vegetables had made her think of her husband. Well, it had been a long time. Six weeks in France while she'd been here alone on the ranch except for the hired hands.
Kate wandered over to the strawberry patch, her basket almost laden now with vegetables, the good things she grew every summer in this unpromising earth. If the foreman hadn't been so new she could have gone with Cole. She still didn't quite understand what was that special about a Limousin bull but Cole studied every night after dinner, the breeds, the blood lines, the beef per pound, the proportions of bone and gristle and fat. A Limousin bull was finally what he had to have… and so he'd gone.
There were times when she almost hated the pedigrees and charts of the cattle that Cole studied. He kept meticulous records and knew every calf and the day it was born and who its great great grandparents were. For this was the excuse he used every time she mentioned adopting a child. "Hell no! I know too much about genetics. Adopting a kid from one of those agencies would be like buying a bull or a heifer without knowing the pedigree. You're liable to get stuck with anything! A runt or worse!"
A sigh of apprehension escaped Kate's dry lips. What was Cole going to say when he got home tomorrow and found out about the two high school boys she'd hired to help for the summer. They were not of the "best" bloodlines certainly. From the inner city, not much better than foundlings. Hard tough city boys who knew nothing about ranches or ranch life.
But that ad in the magazine had been irresistible. In her frustrated maternity, she mothered everything, Cole said. Even the calves and the cats and the dogs and the geese. Stubbornly she clung to the idea that it was a good thing to give a high school boy a job, particularly boys from the city who'd wind up on the street and get into trouble if someone didn't help.
A small voice in her head whispered that she also wanted to convince Cole that genetics weren't all that important. If she could make this experiment work this summer. If Cole got fond of the boys, then maybe he'd listen to reason about adopting a child.
Here she was, surrounded by all the fruits of the earth and she had no bounty of her own. All the animals on the ranch gave birth and multiplied and she alone was barren. Actually she really didn't know if she was the culprit. When the doctor had wanted to do further tests on both of them, Cole had adamantly refused.
Kate straightened up again and blew a long strand of chestnut hair from her sweaty forehead. The angled sun sent an elongated shadow of her across the ground. Short shorts and a sleeveless jersey did not distort the ripe sensuousness of her body. Long, long shapely legs, sleek curved hips, narrow waist and breasts that looked as though they were made for suckling a man's children.