Now he was the one seeming to take stock of himself, peering at her as if he were just now seeing her for the first time. Finally he said, “You’re right. My parents didn’t bring me up to browbeat anybody for any reason.”
He checked his watch. “It’s close enough to noon break that you could stop for dinner. Maybe gettin’ a little food into you will be just the thing to revive you.”
She frowned in confusion. “But, Will—”
“There’s a lot of work to be done this afternoon. I don’t need any of my hired hands feelin’ poorly.”
He stuck his hat back on his head and pivoted away as Lacey stared after him. Hadn’t he heard what she said?
“Will—” she started to protest again, but he’d already swung back around.
“Y’know, I’ve got some orphan calves needin’ to be bottle fed and I always have a hard time getting any of the high schoolers we hire for the summer to do it. They’d rather be out in the corral practicing their ropin’ skills, and I need someone with patience and a gentle hand for this job.”
Scratching one cheek, he squinted at the paltry section she’d managed to get painted. “The barn can wait.”
Lacey set her gloved fists on her hips. “But, Will, didn’t you hear me?”
“I heard you fine. And I’m willin’ to give you another chance—” he cut her a measuring glance “—that is, if you’ll give me another chance.”
At his words, the chain around her throat slackened a little, and just in time, too. It had gotten so tight in the past few days she wasn’t sure she could stand it much longer.
But it was still there, a not-so-gentle reminder that she needed to keep her guard up.
“Look, if this is about keeping me from going to Lee for a job, then you have my word I won’t,” Lacey said. “Believe me, I don’t need that kind of grief in my life.”
“Well now, it’s not that.” He lifted one inimitable eyebrow at her. “I figure I better get you somewheres so I can keep an eye on you, because I frankly don’t trust you not to paint Captive Of Iron Will—Send Help! in big white letters on the side of this barn for the whole world to see.”
Before she could react, he was off again, impossibly long strides taking him halfway to his pickup in a matter of seconds.
So it seemed Iron Will Proffitt wasn’t made of stone. But whether that was good news or bad, she still didn’t know.
* * *
“LOOKED LIKE YOU WERE HAVIN’ a real nice nap from my place up in the choir loft. Had the devil of a time convincin’ Ida Thornton not to take it personally, but seeing as how you snored through her entire solo, she wasn’t even half for believin’ me.”
Lacey turned and, walking backward with her Bible clasped schoolgirl-like in front of her, grinned sheepishly at her father as he caught up with her on her way down the street after church.
“I didn’t snore!” she averred, knowing better than to hedge on the nodding off part. She had been dozing.
“Well, you were sawin’ on somethin’ pretty hard there,” Hank McCoy said, long strides bringing him even with his daughter, whom he embraced in a one-armed hug as she turned back around. They fell into step together. “Like to’ve drowned out Pastor Mike’s sermon on the evils of sloth.”
Lacey aimed an elbow at her father’s ribs, which he caught handily, giving her arm a squeeze.
A measure of peace settled over her which she hadn’t gotten from the service today. But then, she’d always found such comfort in her father’s embrace. She loved her mother dearly, but they had never had the special closeness she had with her father.
After years with Nicolai, she badly needed reminding that there were men like her father in this world—good, true-blue men. It wasn’t in men like her father to misuse their strength but to hold it in trust for times when it was needed by himself or his loved ones. As with her mother. Lacey had never seen him be anything but respectful and patient with her, even when Rachel hadn’t been her best with him.
Lacey studied the cracks in the sidewalk as she stepped over. “Where is Mother, by the way?” she asked.
“Oh, I left her debatin’ with the ladies from her civic group,” her father answered. “There’s the town social comin’ up they’re sponsoring. Half are wanting music but no dancing, and the other half are sayin’ if you have music, people are just goin’ to dance. Of course, if you don’t have music, then where’s the purpose in people going a’tall?”
“Sounds complicated,” Lacey said.
“It’s a pressing issue, all right. Let’s don’t even get started on what the status is on whether to serve liquor or not. It ranks right up there with settlin’ the nuclear problem.”
They both broke out in laughter threaded with well-earned—and fond—tolerance. “You’d think by now Mother would have more of a perspective, wouldn’t you?” she said.
“We-ell, left to her own devices, your mother comes out all right in the end. It’s just when she’s got the press of others’ expectations on her that she gets a little off track.” Hank shot her a sidelong glance. “Like you with that job.”
She should have known her father would bring up the subject.
“Working as a hand on the Double R is hard, Daddy,” she said a bit defiantly, “but what job can I get here in town? No one’s willing to hire America’s Cinderella.”
“Now, I’m not talkin’ about what you’re doin’ so much as why, although I am after asking Will Proffitt how he thinks workin’ you to exhaustion is gonna make up for anything that happened to either his brother or him.”
Lacey ground to a halt. “What do you mean? What happened?”
Hank gave his daughter a long look before saying, “No, I’m not one for telling tales that oughta be told by the main players. But I can and will talk about your takin’ on responsibility that’s not necessarily yours regardin’ that house, which is for me and your mother to see to.” He took her chin between thumb and forefinger and gave it a shake. “Nobody made us move in there, so I don’t want you to take it as your burden.”
Her lower lip trembled, and Lacey leaned her cheek against his shoulder to keep her father from seeing it. “But then the question would be, what will I do? I want to do something with my life that I not just like to do and am good at, but also believe in.”
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I think I need to do that. If I could just figure out what that’d be. Right now, though, I need to stick around here and keep working at the Double R so I can help you and Mother,” Lacey said.
“I told you, Lacey, you can’t worry about that.”
“Well, I do! And I’ll keep worrying about it until I come up with a way to get the situation under control!”
She slid out from under her father’s arm and paced ahead a few steps, trying to get a handle on her emotions. But this was probably the second sorest subject with her right now, and heaven love her father, she just didn’t think he’d understand.
Of course, she hadn’t thought Will would, either.
Especially yesterday. Yesterday he’d looked straight at her with those intense gray eyes and made her believe. And heaven love her, she’d barely stopped herself from letting him past her guard.
The thought that she might both terrified her and set off a romantic in her, almost as much as his touch had done.
She couldn’t be so unwise again. Could she?
“Oh, Daddy, I thought coming back here I’d be able to let go and relax about things but it all still seems so hard,” she whispered, meaning a whole slew of circumstances, but her father took her as meaning one in particular.
“You don’t have to work for Will Proffitt, darlin’.”
“Actually...actually I think, at least for the time being, that I do,” she murmured.
Her father came up behind h
er, turned her around, and tipped her chin up so she had to look him in the eye. “Things’ll work out all right in the end. You’ll manage, Lacey. We all will.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said on a sigh. “It’d be nice if we had some kind of idea soon of how we might make that happen.”
Hank’s hazel eyes twinkled. “I for one am for turning that Panhandle Palace into a boardinghouse.”
She had to smile. “Wouldn’t Mother love that! You sure you’d want to live with her?”
“Well, now, I’ve been married to your mother comin’ up on thirty years. I figure by now I know how to ride out every kind of storm she can whip up.”
He enfolded her in a hug, and Lacey hugged him back. Yes, somehow things would work out, if she could only learn to let go and trust.
But Lacey knew that was easier said than done, especially where Will Proffitt was concerned.
CHAPTER FOUR
IT OCCURRED TO WILL SOMEWHERE around the middle of the second week of Lacey’s employment that he might have made a serious tactical error.
Leaning his elbows on the top of a gate, he watched her help Yancy load panels of fencing to be used for constructing a temporary chute into the cattle truck. Sweat ringed her armpits halfway down her sides. Her chin-length hair hung lank around a face upon which had there been a speck of makeup, it would have melted off by now. Earlier this morning she’d obviously sat—or fallen down—in something that darkened the entire seat of her jeans.
He’d heard the saying that familiarity bred contempt, but this might be the exception that proved the rule.
She’d decided to continue working at the Double R, and Will took a portion of redemption from that, although he still felt a wave of good old-fashioned shame when he thought about how he’d treated her at first. He still couldn’t have said quite why he’d done so, even aside from the situation with Lee.
She’d been as good as her word, too. Lee had told him two days ago she’d told him there was no need for him to make her a position at the tack and feed since she’d been able to get this job at the Double R. Still, Will wasn’t quite yet to giving Matt Boyle the go-ahead to shoot the rest of the paperwork through on the business’s change of ownership, even if Lacey had passed that particular test of her integrity. Although in putting hers through one, Will had a feeling his own character could stand a little improving.
But he wasn’t Iron Will Proffitt, almighty cattle baron!
He leveled a surly stare at Lacey’s slight figure. So in her opinion women had little power? Well, begging her pardon, but in his opinion they had it all. Really, here it was years later and still, with just the hint of inflection in a soft voice or the flash of a feminine eye, his ex-wife’s last words and all the accompanying feelings of coming up short were brought back to him in an instant: I need more than you can give me, Will Proffitt.
Or was it actually nothing so general but Lacey herself who called such words up with a vividness?
Did she honestly not know what her effect was on men? he wondered ruefully as he watched her reach up to lever her end of another panel into the bed.
Muttering a terse oath, Will straightened and dragged his leather gloves out of his back pocket as he headed over to the truck, intent on putting himself out of his misery.
“Here,” he said, grabbing hold of a panel and hefting it up and on top of the stack already in the truck. “We need to get a move on. It’s nearly eleven and I’d like to have the chute set up so the boys can start right in after dinner gettin’ that bunch of calves over on the Granger place dosed and tagged.”
Lacey obligingly stepped back as Will hoisted the last panel into the truck. Yancy gave it a straightening, all the while scrutinizing his boss with a sardonic lift of his bushy eyebrows.
Yancy had known Will since forever, and he should have guessed his foreman would pick up on some of the dynamics flying around since Will hired Lacey. Of course, Yancy wasn’t exactly immune to Lacey, either, because there were a lot better things he could be doing than help her load panels on a truck.
“If you’re in such an all-fire hurry, boss,” Yancy said, “why’n’t you and Lacey grab your lunches and tea jugs and go on out to pasture while I load up the other truck with the dosing guns and taggin’ equipment? Y’all can start puttin’ the chute together, and I’ll meet ya there soon’s I can.”
He turned his head to spit tobacco juice on the ground, but Will caught the hint of a smirk lurking beneath the bristle-brush mustache as the old wrangler added, “There’s that little spot along the west fence line under the shade of a hackberry that makes for a right nice place to eat.”
Now it was Will’s turn to raise a wry eyebrow at his foreman. “Thanks for the recommendation.”
Yet he couldn’t dispute Yancy’s logic, and so it was a few minutes later that Will found himself jolting down an old cow path behind the wheel of the cattle truck, the fence panels banging around in the bed and Lacey across the seat from him holding on to the window jamb to keep from being jarred out of her place. He downshifted in an effort to keep the teeth-rattling bumps to a minimum, and abruptly got put out with himself for doing so.
Once they reached the pasture, it was relatively quick work unloading the panels and putting together the chute. Will and Lacey worked alongside each other, attaching the metal panels together with pliers and a couple of wrenches.
He slanted her a covert glance as she crouched and gave one nut a tightening twist. She’d been distant since the incident by the barn, making a point of not getting into a tit for tat with him—and could he blame her, the way he practically jumped down her throat each time he came face-to-face with her?
“So,” Will said, giving a grunt as he wrung one last turn out of a nut, “am I in line to get my head chewed off if I was to ask you to elaborate on a subject?”
Lacey eyed him warily. “Like what?”
“Like women havin’ to fight to keep us men from completely runnin’ roughshod over you.” He pocketed the wrench and fit another panel into place, concentrating a bit more than needed and taking a tad more care than usual to secure the bolt.
Finally he said, “Y’know, you’re right. I can’t know what that feels like, not...exactly, at least. But I can imagine it’s not a real good feeling.”
“No,” she said quietly, “it isn’t. It’s never a good feeling to be always on your guard, not to have control of your life, to have your choices limited or cut off from you.”
“Choices—to do what?”
“Anything. Everything. What to do with your life, how to live it.”
“You’re not tellin’ me you didn’t have hundreds of choices when you were a countess and had all that fame and money and power?” he asked, not twigging in to how blunt he’d been until he observed her meticulously lining up the holes on the two panels before inserting a bolt through them with more care than strictly necessary—and not answering him.
She was drawing into herself even more—protecting herself, he realized. He didn’t like to think she felt she had to do so with him, but then, he’d shown about as much tact as a hick cowpoke too long out on the range and in the company of cattle.
He thought a bit longer about how to pose his next question. “So how do you handle it, then?” he asked. “Not havin’ choices, that is, or feeling you don’t have any control over that.”
She hesitated, as if constructing her response carefully, then said, “Well, you can’t let it get the better of you. You have to find some...some trust within yourself that’s got nothing to do with size or strength or power or money, and believe that trust will help you make it through whatever trial comes your way.”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “Otherwise you’d always be afraid. And no one can live their life that way.”
Will chewed on the inside of his cheek. Yes, now that s
he mentioned it, he had seen her in some of the photos, had watched some of the news clips of her and how she’d always been surrounded by people. He could imagine it would have been hard for her to keep herself together with everyone wanting to touch the magic, wanting a piece of her to take home for their own.
Yet he still couldn’t imagine why she would come back and bury herself here. She sure didn’t give the impression she was pining away for the man who’d made her into a fairy tale come true, or even for the life-style she’d grown accustomed to. But surely she would have made a friend or two who might have taken her in, if only for a while, or gotten her a position doing something more along the lines of what ex-countesses did to make ends meet.
Will scratched one finger down his cheek. “What would you do if you had a choice?”
Her downturned features became more distant still, and Will wondered what he could ask this woman that didn’t make him feel she thought his next move would be to devour her or something.
She had a piece of hay stuck to one damp cheek, and it took all his willpower to ignore it.
“How about some lunch?” he suggested, figuring he could do with a bit of a distraction. He headed for the truck and had taken the cooler from it and over to the shade of the hackberry before he realized Lacey was indeed anything but distant. He turned to find her standing behind him, grimly yanking her gloves off finger by finger.
“What would I do if I had a choice, instead of working here at something that’s pretty much outside my capabilities and skills?” she said. “That’s a real good question.”
She tossed the gloves to the ground. “As you pointed out, it’s not like a person in my position couldn’t have learned how to do something which would qualify me for some kind of job somewhere!”
“Well, what did you do all day when you were a countess?” Will asked, lifting one of the jugs of tea from the cooler, twisting the cap off and handing it to her.
“I brunched or I lunched or I dined with only the most appropriate people.” The haughty spin she put on the word didn’t sound as if it’d originated with her.
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