The Rancher's Little Girl by Emily Tilton

Author:Emily Tilton [Tilton, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stormy Night Publications
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

True to his word, the next morning, after Victoria had cooked a big breakfast of flapjacks and bacon, Ross told her to get dressed for barn work. She put on her jeans—not the skinny ones in which she had arrived, but the ones she thought of as the ranch jeans, that she’d bought on the way, and a heavy sweatshirt, because the chill of late fall was biting in the mornings now.

Looking her up and down with a twinkle in his eye, Ross said, “I should warn you, darlin’, that the price of makin’ mistakes in your chores is that I put you in clothin’ suitable for a little lady.”

“What?” What could he possibly mean?

“I’ll show you later… since I know you’ll make a mistake.”

“Daddy!” she exclaimed.

“Shh, darlin’.” The way that man said “Shh.” Victoria thought, with a little rush of heat, of her super-naughty fantasy the night before.

“But what do you mean?”

“You’ll see,” Ross said. “And if you want to take a spankin’ instead, you can do that.”

“Oh. Um, okay.”

Mystified, she followed him out into the cold morning air. Surely he didn’t mean what she had seen in the top drawer of the dresser? A hot blush spread across her face at that thought.

At the time, when she had forgotten which part of the bridle to attach the crosstie to, Ross just said. “That’s okay, darlin’, because now you get to see what I mean by suitable clothin’.” She had blushed again, thinking of the top drawer, and then she had made many more little mistakes. Ross was so patient with her, though, that she knew he didn’t really mean to punish her. And then he actually gave her the first riding lesson she’d ever had, on his own horse, Sophie, laughing at the way the smile on her face wouldn’t quit.

Afterward, he led her back to the house as she chattered about how much she loved Sophie and how she was so grateful to him for everything. “Come upstairs,” he said.

There he showed her a bedroom that he said his almost-fiancée Sally Mae had used as a dressing and sewing room. There was a wardrobe in the corner, and he went and opened it up. Inside were clothes that immediately explained Ross’ words about suitable clothes, for they were girls’ clothes from a hundred years before and more, all newly made.

“They’re not antiques,” Ross said. “We bought a few, but Sally Mae made most of them. When she left she took most of the things she made, but she gave me the ones in here and said that if I found a girl who should wear them, it would make her very happy.”

“So your break-up…” Victoria ventured. “It was friendly?”

Ross nodded. “Yup.”

“And… well, why?”

“Just wasn’t quite right.”

Victoria nodded. She burned to ask about the top drawer of the dresser, but she didn’t know how.

Ross took one of the dresses out. It looked almost exactly like the ‘half-pint’ red print dress that Laura wore during the titles of the Little House TV series, when she ran to meet ‘pa.

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