by Leah Braemel
“You didn’t look a lot like your aunt yesterday, so I’m guessing your momma’s genes aren’t as strong as your father’s.”
“Reba’s my father’s sister, not my mother’s,” she corrected. “But according to my father I look a lot like my mother.” She muttered, “unfortunately” under her breath but he heard her.
“Not close to your momma?” Censure sounded strong in his voice.
Yup, a real southern boy who thought family came above all. Though how hard would it be to idolize a mother who had spent most of her daughter’s life in prison and would stay there for the rest of it? “I haven’t seen her since I was seven, so no, we’re not close.” She waved a hand. “It’s a long story.”
He hitched his hip on the edge of her desk, his gaze drifting to her mouth and lingering before raising to meet her eyes again. “I’m willing to listen if we go out on that date...”
If he wasn’t a client, she’d have been crawling up him. Hell, she would have straddled him while he was still in his chair. The sensible thing would be to turn him down flat—but Reba might be pissed if she screwed up the contract because Jake got pissed off. Besides, she liked him. Like really liked him. Which she couldn’t say for most of the guys in the county. And she was entitled to a private life, wasn’t she? “I’m game. How about Friday night? Or are you singing at Slick’s again?”
Huh, guess her father was right. She had too much of her mother’s impulsive nature.
His eyes lit up. “Yeah, we are. We could get there a couple hours early? Have dinner?”
Come back to his place. And she could play cowgirl and ride his ass into the sunset? “All right.”
He picked up her hand and swept his lips over the back of her knuckles, sending a thrill through her body. “It’s a date then.”
Oh yeah. And she’d probably have a hard time concentrating on the accounts instead of picturing getting him naked. Shoot. Focus, Paige, and on work, not the positions you want to do him in. “You were going to show me how to work the radio.”
He picked up a hand held unit that had so many buttons it looked like it had been designed by NASA and pressed it into her palm, curling his fingers around hers. The heat of his flesh against hers was startling. “It’s all pre-programmed so don’t start switching channels or you’ll never find us. You press this button and speak into the mike. Let go of the button and wait for me to respond. Like this.” He depressed the button. “Radio check for Ben.”
The radio crackled to life seconds later. “Ben here.”
“Just demonstrating the radio for Miss Paige here.” He winked at Paige. “You can get back to work, boss.”
The radio clicked twice. “That’s Ben’s way of sayin’ he’s done transmitting. Ask for him or me specifically because all the hands carry one, too, and they’ll also be listening in, so we’d prefer if you don’t get into too much detail about our finances over the air. Just say you have a question and if we’re in range we’ll phone you or one of us will head up to the house.”
She got lost in his dark gray eyes that held promise of all sorts of secrets. “And this will reach you in spots that cell phones won’t?”
“We’ve still got some dead zones but we’ve got repeaters set up around so it pretty much reaches everywhere.”
“I didn’t realize farming had gotten so high tech.”
He laughed, the deep resonance sending liquid warmth through her. “This ain’t exactly high tech, but yeah, some of the devices like GPS cause a divide among us younger guys and the old school ranchers. Ben and I went to a fair a while back where they were demonstrating a self-driving tractor. You just showed it the perimeter of your fields and it ploughed or cut the crop, stayin’ within those boundaries. At least that’s what they claimed.”
“Like one of those robotic vacuums? What happens if there’s a tree or some debris that they need to go around?”
“I don’t know. At the moment they’re too pricey for us but that type of technology is coming. Hell, Ben even has us keeping track of the herd on our phones these days.” He pulled out his phone and called up an app. “I have to admit, it’s handier than having to keep a notepad in your back pocket. Especially if you end up planting your ass in the mud.”
Be still her beating heart, the guy wasn’t a complete technophobe. Maybe it would be easier to keep track of their receipts than she’d worried. “I doubt landing in mud would be good for your phone either.”
“Nah, it ain’t. I’ve lost a few phones that way, but the data’s in the cloud so we’re good.” He plucked the radio from her hand and set it back on its cradle. “I gotta get going—the inspectors come in tomorrow and the water tanks aren’t gonna clean themselves.”
“So you really are a working boss?”
“Can’t afford not to be. Besides, it’s not fair to ask someone else to do work I wouldn’t do.” He pulled a green John Deere ball cap from his pocket and set it on his head, covering that gorgeous head of hair. “Can’t wait until Friday night, Miss Paige. Just thinking about it is gonna make cleaning out those tanks a helluva lot more enjoyable. I’ll drop by later this afternoon to check in, see if you have any questions” A quick-silver grin flashed over his face. Was that a wink? “See you tonight.”
She was alone before she realized neither Ben nor Jake had shown her where she’d be sleeping. Oh well, she could ask him when he came back. “He’d better not tell me I’m sleeping in his room.”
Though she had a feeling they’d be debating whose room to sleep in after their date.
Chapter Three
By the end of the day, Paige had started transferring data from the bookkeeper’s cobbled-together spreadsheet to a proper bookkeeping program. Considering the poor data on the spreadsheet, she suspected that the accountant might have just trusted the bookkeeper to have done her job and never checked the data. Or, perhaps since the ranch’s accountant was the bookkeeper’s brother, he had been in on the skimming. Piles of paper covered the desk where she had sorted the receipts Ben’s mother said hadn’t yet been entered. In the corner, the printer hummed, printing off the rest of the year’s spreadsheets, the acrid scent of its ink filling the room.
“Can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone so fascinated over paperwork before.”
With a gasp, Paige swiveled in her chair to find Jake leaning against the door, his eyes twinkling. Her whole body heated up at his lazy grin. “You might as well come in and sit down instead of standing there watching me.”
She’d heard the term ambled before, but Jake had this laid-back confident lazy stroll that amble fit perfectly. He crooked a hip on the desk and stroked her jaw with the back of his knuckles. The simple touch set fire to the breath in her lungs.
“So what’s got you concentrating so hard?”
“I’ve run off some reports so I can compare the receipts to the entries. I’ve already found some discrepancies.”
She found the line entry and placed a ruler beneath it, then found the matching receipt. “See how she’s entered two thousand dollars for a gas payment in October? But the receipt—”
“—is for two hundred.” Jake leaned over her shoulder, the scent of earth and horse and man strangely enticing. “Damn, it’s that simple?”
“Yes.” If his mother had been carefully checking the entries she should have caught the error, but she didn’t point that out. Then again, the receipt was dated October—that would have been around the time Ed Grady had been killed. Had the bookkeeper deliberately counted on Cissy’s grief to distract her from paying close attention to the books?
She glanced up to find him looking at her, not the papers spread out on the desk. “What?”
“Nothin’. Just admirin’ the view.”
Heat blossomed in the wake of the finger he dragged along her jaw. Her breath caught and she had to press her thighs t
ogether when he traced the curve of her ear.
She rested her chin on her palm. “Do you ever wish you weren’t a rancher’s son? I mean the pressure to stay on the ranch, knowing you were going to inherit it must be have been intense.”
“I like it here. I like being busy. Oh sure I had the usual dreams of being in the rodeo when I was a kid. Then I got thrown from a horse and decided those guys were nuts to get back up. And there was a time where I was convinced I was Spiderman. Until the string I coated with superglue as a spider web didn’t stick to the beams and I busted my ass falling out of the hay loft. I think at one point I wanted to be a jet pilot, too, but that didn’t last long.”
“What convinced you not to go for it? You discover you got airsick?”
“Nope. I got my first guitar.” His grin widened, deepening his dimples. My God, it wasn’t fair that a man had dimples that deep. Her breath caught as his smile widened. She’d heard of how a smile could reach a person’s eyes but had never seen it. Until now. Jake’s whole face brightened, his eyes gleamed. It was like he was changing into someone else right in front of her eyes.
“So then you wanted to be a country music star?”
“Sure. Until I grew up. Realized everyone and their brother in Texas has that dream.”
“Stop putting yourself down. You’re good.”
“I’m fair to middlin’. Besides, I can’t see myself ever leaving Bull’s Hollow. It’s like I belong here, you know?”
She found herself staring at his mouth and jerked her gaze back to the monitor. You’re supposed to be checking his books, not checking him out. Focus, Reynolds. On what? She riffled through the stack of printouts until she found one with a question she’d scribbled on it. “I hope you don’t mind me poking around but I found a spreadsheet listing your crop yields. How can you get 600 bales off a field one year but only 40 bales off the same field the next?”
He rechecked the figures, then tapped the year. “Oh yeah. There’d been a real bad storm come through that year. A downburst flattened the crop.” He shrugged. “If it had been a week later, the crop would have been down already. Nature of the business. You win some, you lose some.”
Okay, body, come on, it’s not been that long since you were with a guy. Him leaning over your shoulder shouldn’t cause you to melt like this. “Just how big is Bull’s Hollow? I mean, I know it’s seventy thousand acres, but it’s hard to imagine, even sitting here.”
“Come here.” He grabbed her hand and led her outside. Two dogs, a beagle and a mongrel that looked to be part shepherd, part...well, she wasn’t quite sure, but something orange and fuzzy, trotted up. The beagle wound around Jake’s feet, while the shepherd stuck his nose directly into Paige’s crotch.
“Brewskie, stop it!”
With one last sniff, the dog withdrew and sat at Paige’s feet, turning a set of large soft brown eyes on her.
“You named your dog after beer?” Why was she surprised?
“Hey, he’s got shades of light and dark brown just like different beers.” He reached down and scratched behind the beagle’s ears. “And don’t fall for that Puss-in-Boots poor me look,” Jake warned. “He’s a champion scrounger that one.”
“Consider me warned.” Paige bent down to pat the shepherd who twisted to lick her wrist. “What’s that one’s name?”
“Pebbles. Another champion scrounger. She...”
She glanced up when he didn’t resume what he’d started to say and found him staring at her, his head tilted. “She what?”
“Give me a sec.” He patted his pockets and frowned. After a quick one-fingered “hang on” gesture, he dashed to his quad, dug a notepad from the glove box and scribbled something down. After a frown, a glance at her followed by more scribbling as if he were writing something about her, he shoved the pad in his pocket. “Sorry. There’s this song I’ve been working on, but there’s a section that’s been givin’ me problems and all of a sudden I figured out a line and didn’t want to forget it. Now, what were we talking about?”
“You were saying something about Pebbles...” she prompted.
“Oh, right. She’s a sucker for cheese, but don’t give it to her. Not unless you’ve got a gas mask handy.” He held out his hand. “Come on, you wanted to know how big the spread is, this is the best way to see it.”
Paige placed her palm in his and followed him around the house until they were on the edge of the hill, overlooking the entire valley.
Outside, with his hat off, the sun gleamed gold off some of the strands of his hair.
It took an effort to draw her attention away from him and follow where he pointed over a flat area of sun-browned fields filled with cattle off in the distance. “The farthest border that way is almost five miles away.”
He swung his arm to the north, with green-clad hills, reddish soil peeking out between the trees. “And if you are a crow flying from the farthest edge, you’d have to fly over thirteen miles, give or take, in that direction to hit the next farm. And another two and a half miles to the east.”
“I can’t believe this lake is all yours—that you don’t have to allow the public access to it.”
“Not this one, though Gramps went head-to-head with some developers back in the eighties who wanted to put a resort and a ton of houses around another we’ve got out by the road leading to Joshua Falls. We didn’t own it back then, but the development was one of the reasons why Gramps bought the property.”
Her family’s project. “I’ve heard about it.” Ad nauseum.
He grunted. “Let me guess. They probably said something like, my grandfather forced the owner of the land to sell to him on his death bed.”
Word for word. She gave him the least objectionable of her father’s explanations. “I’d heard that he’d influenced the environmental protection agency saying that too many houses in the area would overtax the aquifer or something and got the project killed. I also heard that even after the developers had put nearly ten million into building the resort and a stable, he refused to pay them whatever they’d put into it already.”
“He did request an environmental study, but that wasn’t what killed the project.”
“It wasn’t?” Why had she never heard any of this side of it?
“No. They forged a bill of sale with the real owner’s signature and filed it with the county as if they already owned the land and started work.”
What the ever-loving hell? “What do you mean they forged a bill of sale?”
“The real owner, Mr. Munro, wouldn’t sell it. But the developers got wind that he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer. So I guess they figured they’d do an end run around him. They went to Munro’s son who lives in California and convinced him to sign an agreement to sell the land to them once his father passed on. Then someone got the bright idea to forge the land agreement with Fletch Munro’s signature and filed it as if the deal had already gone through. The moment Mr. Munro went to the hospital, they brought in the bulldozers.”
Oh my God, he seriously believed her grandfather had forged a legal document? Then again, that was probably what old George had told his gullible grandsons—make everyone else out to be the bad guy.
“Gramps was furious when he found that they’d cut down all the trees around the lake, and dug out the foundation for their planned resort. He figured Fletch had sold the land even after he’d agreed to sell to Gramps years ago, only to find out no, Fletch hadn’t sold it at all. When Gramps told him what was going on Mr. Munro sold it to him and Gramps put an end to the bulldozers right fast.”
According to her father, the resort had been ninety percent finished before George waltzed in with the deed. Or had her father lied to her all these years? Maybe Reba would know. Forcing herself to turn her family drama aside, she focused on the business implications. They owned a lake with land that had highway
access, and already had the start of a resort—the Gradys had been using it as their hunting lodge, much to her father’s disgust.
“If it turns out Bonnie stole a lot, and you need money, would you consider looking into creating a resort there after all?” Maybe she could find a way to appease her father’s anger. Build a bridge or something.
He shook his head. “I doubt it. That means we have to worry about their septic systems and water usage interfering with the water table. Traffic. People tramping where they shouldn’t be. Insurance costs because someone’ll probably get injured tripping over a rock or some damned thing. Pollution. Because people will want to have speed boats and then you’re talking gas and oil leaking into the water.”
“And that concerns you more than money?”
“Yeah, if the land gets sick, the cows get sick.” He tilted his head and examined her, the sun warming the steel gray of his irises. “You know those reports can only show so much. Sometimes you have to get away from the computer. See what’s really going on. Maybe if I show you how the ranch works, it’ll give you a better idea.”
He skimmed over her outfit, grinning as his gaze lingered on her Doc Martens. “I like a woman who wears sensible shoes. You aren’t going to turn an ankle in those boots.” He held out his hand and led her to the garage. The door opened to reveal another quad. “It’s Ma’s but I don’t think she’ll mind us borrowing it. Hop on. Let’s see if you’re as bad ass on a quad as you are on your bike.”
* * *
His laughter echoing across the lake, Jake parked his quad where they’d have the best view of the house. He turned in his seat to find Paige parking his mother’s quad right beside him. Damn, she’d kept up with him, no matter what crazy stunts he’d pulled. He figured she’d slow down, or at least divert when he went over that last gully but she’d followed him. And even faster than he’d taken it.