Stupid.
So she went back to packing, saying as she bent over, “We’re moving the steers off your land today.” His land. It still hurt to say.
“A cattle drive?”
“If you want to call it that.”
“Do you mind if I come along?”
Mind? Yes, she minded. She wrapped the statue with some newspaper, the sound crinkling in her ear like his letter had done when she’d rolled atop of it in his bed. “It’s up to you. We’ll be heading out this afternoon, maybe spending the night outdoors if we don’t get the strays together.”
He nodded, his hand with the hat in it hanging by his side.
“Then you might want to go into town and get yourself a sleeping bag and some other overnight gear. The keys to my truck are on the wall in the kitchen. Feel free to drive into Los Molina, unless you’d rather take your helicopter?”
“No, the truck’s fine. If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
He stared at her for a few seconds longer. She could feel that gaze down to her boots.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
“As soon as you get back.”
“Then I’ll be right back.”
And I’ll be leaving right after the cattle drive. Come this time tomorrow, she’d be gone, living on a ranch in San Gabriel. And after that? Who knew? But she had a feeling her life would be far removed from helicopters and mountaintop mansions.
Chapter Sixteen
Scott almost cursed as he purposely stomped down the porch steps. Childish, but it felt good, his boots clomp-clomp-clomping on the wide plank boards like Wyatt Earp’s on Tombstone’s boardwalk.
Unbelievable. She’d broken it off with him. Granted, he knew he was partly to blame, unfortunately, Amanda had suffered the consequences of being involved with a business tycoon. But he’d planned to make it up to her. He always made it up to his girlfriends. Amanda was the first to refuse to let him.
He found her truck by the barn, the smell of her engulfing him in a wave of perfume that seemed uniquely Amanda, and that remind him all too quickly of how her scent had lingered on his sheets for days after she’d gone.
She’d dumped him.
He didn’t like it, because even as he told himself he should likely be grateful she didn’t want to try to lasso him like a lot of women did simply because he was rich, he didn’t feel that way. What he felt was…miffed. Maybe it was the whole she-did-the-dumping thing that caused the chafing. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been dumped since he’d made his first million. Whatever, as he gripped the steering wheel, he suddenly became…perturbed.
Scott Beringer liked a good challenge.
Two hours later, feeling woefully embarrassed to be driving a vehicle that he’d noticed had a license plate frame that read Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts, Scott returned to the farmhouse he now owned. In the yard a horse trailer sat by the arena, horses tied to the side of it, their reflection and that of the blue sky above shining back at him in the trailer’s brushed aluminum surface. But it wasn’t the horses that caught his attention, it was Chase saddling one of the animals up.
Next to him stood Amanda, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a pair of faded blue jeans that covered her long, long legs. Seeing her suddenly caused something to shift inside him, some emotion normally reserved for declaring war on a competitor. Maybe it was the way she stared at him so unemotionally, as if they’d never shared anything more than a handshake. Maybe it was seeing Chase in the yard. Maybe it was good old competitive spirit, but suddenly Scott decided he didn’t want his relationship with Amanda to end.
“What took you so long?” she asked as he approached a few moments later.
“Traffic,” he said by way of explanation.
She nodded—as if Los Molina had traffic jams, which it didn’t—that ponytail of hers bobbing.
“Get your horse saddled up.” Roy Johnson came up behind her, his thick denim jacket framing his belly bulge. He sidled past Amanda, an Amanda who had suddenly turned away, and moved toward the barn.
“What the hell’d you do to her?” Roy asked as he paused on his way by. “She’s been driving me nuts. Nagging at me. Badgering me to take my medication. Hell, I’d hoped once the two of you got together, she’d leave me alone, but it’s only gotten worse.”
“She doesn’t want to see me anymore.”
Roy just shook his head. “Lord, I’m too old for this.”
“I’m not giving up,” Scott said firmly.
“I wouldn’t have picked you for the job if I thought you would,” Roy said. “By the way, she’s leaving tomorrow after we get back.”
Leaving?
“And stay out of my way,” her father yelled, startling Scott until he remembered the act.
Leaving, he repeated to himself. She couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not until…What? he asked himself. What did he expect her to do? Stay, after her father left? Ask him to sell the place back to her? Yes, he admitted, all of the above. But she hadn’t asked for him to sell. That surprised him.
He got Rocket saddled up in record time, some of Scott’s pique fading when he even managed to get the bit in the horse’s mouth on the first try. Next he attached all the stuff he’d bought, a challenge in and of itself, one he managed to accomplish despite the bulky nature of the solar-powered cooker, the pots and pans and his solar-reflective sleeping bag. By the time he led Rocket out of the barn, he was feeling marginally better, something about being around horses had that effect on him, he’d noticed.
Feeling better, that is, until Amanda turned and asked, “What the heck is that?”
Scott pulled Rocket up. “What’s what?”
Chase came up alongside of her then, his black hat pulled low over his brow.
“That,” she said, pointing to the back of his saddle.
“That’s my sleeping bag.”
“You’re planning to sleep in a giant roll of tin foil?”
“It’s a self-warming skin. Solar. It’s made of the same stuff weather balloons are made of.”
Both she and Chase were staring at him as if he was planning on sleeping in a bed of snakes.
“And that,” she said, pointing to a tall, thin bag tied vertically to the saddle the way Scott had seen cowboys tie their rifles.
“My solar cooker.”
She and Chase’s eyes widened. They looked at each other then laughed.
Scott just watched them, feeling as if he were ten years old again and the class bully had just given him a wedgy.
“I told you to buy a sleeping bag, not camping equipment.”
“Yeah, but I’m a firm believer in creature comforts.”
“I bet you are,” Chase said.
“MEN,” AMANDA SAID as she swung up on Fancy, and though she didn’t kick her horse into a gallop, she did turn her toward the gate, opening it up without looking back at the three men who rode behind her.
She heard hoofbeats coming up alongside her, hoped it wasn’t Scott…or Chase. And turned.
It was her father. “You and whirlybird man take the east pasture. Chase and I will take the west.”
He was leaving her alone with Scott?
“But, Dad, I thought you could ride with Scott—”
“We can meet in the back-forty tomorrow morning.”
“But I—”
“See you then.” He jerked on the reins, his horse’s head lifting as he turned away.
“But…” she called out after him.
Chase rode by, tipping his hat at her, feet forward in the stirrups as he slouched back in the saddle and rode off.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe what?” Scott said, coming alongside her, too.
“Nothing,” she said.
“What’d he say?”
“You and I are to ride the east pasture together.”
“Really?” Scott asked.
“Really,” Amanda said, kicking her horse into a canter, suddenly mad as a
stepped-on hornet.
Men. If it wasn’t Scott messing up her life, it was her father. She should just swear off them all.
To her surprise, Scott kept up with her. Granted, he’d never win an equitation class, but he managed to hang on pretty well.
Darn it. Why’d he have to do everything so well?
Like make love?
No. She wasn’t about to go there.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” she called out to him, her voice uneven with the horse’s canter. And they did. Gathering cattle wasn’t the romantic stroll through the park like the movies made it sound. It involved teamwork and coordination and nerves of steel when the time came to climb a hill that rose straight up before you. But it had to be done. The cattle were one of the few assets they had left. They needed the money from their sale to pay off other debts.
“How long’s the ride?”
“’Bout an hour,” she said, Fancy shaking her head as she asked to be let go. For a moment she almost did it, almost gave the mare her head. When she was little, it was her favorite way to forget her troubles: racing around the pasture at breakneck speed. But, despite Scott’s improvement, that’s exactly what would happen to him: he’d break his neck if she let their horses race each other.
So they rode, Scott keeping quiet as she opened a barbed-wire gate, then climbed back on. Yet as she worked, she had a feeling he was watching her, studying her, looking her over as if she were a complicated program he was trying to figure out.
That feeling only increased, so she finally pulled Fancy up, turned to him and said, “What?”
He lifted a brow, pulling up Rocket with an ease that took her by surprise.
“You’ve been staring at me the whole ride out here,” she told him.
He smiled, a wide, warm smile. “That’s because you look more beautiful today than I’ve ever seen you.”
The comment melted her heart, until she reminded herself that that was likely his intent.
“Look, Scott—”
“No, don’t say anything. I know you’re about to remind me that it’s over between us. A real shame, too, because I was kind of getting fond of the place.”
She lifted a brow, and she must have clutched at the reins because Fancy tossed her head, the saddle squeaking as she did so. “Fond of the place?”
“Yeah. Fond of the ranch.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shrugged. “Just that with your father leaving I don’t have anybody to run the place. And since I don’t have time to do it myself, as much as I enjoy my time here, I’m thinking I might turn it into offices for my executive staff.”
“Offices?”
They’d climbed a bit as they’d ridden, the grass-covered valley beneath them a scenic view of gently rolling hills, and way off in the distance, the house she’d grown up in.
“I’m thinking I could put offices over there.” He pointed to the left of the house. “Just a few offices, enough for my executive staff. Maybe one- or two-hundred-thousand square feet.”
Two-hundred-thousand square feet?
“Housing’s less expensive in this area,” he added, “although now that I think about it, a nice perk would be to build them a house out here. Heck, maybe right even where we’re standing.”
She felt her mouth drop open, then snap close, then open again. It hung that way a full five seconds before she said, “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I wouldn’t if you agreed to stay behind and manage the ranch. With help, of course.”
And that’s when she stiffened, when she realized he was trying to arm-wrestle her into staying.
“You’re amazing, you know that?”
Now it was his turn to lift a brow.
“You’re trying to blackmail me.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t think I got to where I am today being a nice guy, did you?”
Maybe she had. Maybe she hadn’t. “It won’t work, Scott.”
“What won’t?”
“Trying to force me into staying. See, I always suspected that one day this land would end up under concrete. This close to the Bay Area, a developer could make a fortune selling off bits and pieces of it, like my father should have done, if he’d had the money to subdivide it. But he didn’t, and so I knew that one day it’d end up this way, though I always assumed dad would sell the land, not lose it to someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
She turned on him then. “Yeah, someone like you, Scott. Someone who uses the land as a barter for sex with a woman he desires.”
“Wait a moment—”
“Wait? For what? For you to tell me that’s not what you’re doing?”
“I never mentioned anything about sex. I was just trying to hire the best man for the job, or woman as the case may be. I need you, Amanda. With your father’s health failing, that makes you his best replacement. Without you, I won’t keep the place.”
“It’s blackmail.”
“No, it’s business.”
“And that’s what it always is with you, Scott. Don’t you see, that’s the whole point? Business is king for you. When you got caught up in it this past week, I was the first thing to go. Pfft. Shove Amanda aside.” She waved her hand in the air, Fancy shifting beneath her. “Amanda won’t mind, not when I can just make it up to her afterward by giving her some earrings or maybe a trip to someplace exotic.”
He remained silent, and Amanda knew she’d scored.
“That’s what you always do. I read about it, Scott. I read about the way you treat your women in every major magazine there is. You use them like they’re part of an escort service. Call them when you’re in town and you want a little nooky. But that’s not going to happen with us.”
“Research?”
“Stephanie gave me a bunch of articles she’d clipped. It’s impossible to read about your life and not read about the women you’ve dated.”
“And that’s what scared you off?”
“No. What scared me off is that you’ve never kept a girlfriend longer than six months, at least not that I read about. You break up with them right around the time most men would settle into a relationship. Right around the time things might get serious.” She looked him right in the eyes as she asked, “Or is my information wrong, Scott? Because if it is, now’s the time to tell me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Scott felt as if he was staring at a computer monitor that had just crashed. “How do I know, Amanda? I don’t analyze every relationship I’ve had.”
“No, you probably don’t. You probably don’t even realize what you’re doing.”
“Sally Bettincourt.” He pronounced the name proudly. “I was dumped by Sally Bettincourt.”
The look on her face changed to one of long-suffering impatience. “And how old were you when that happened?”
That she would pick up on that one little detail amazed him. “Old enough to get my heart broken.”
“Mmm-hmm. But not your license, I’m betting.”
One thing about Amanda, she wasn’t dumb. Far from it. He had a feeling her IQ was right up there with his own. “I’m sure there were others.”
“Tell me their names, the ones you got serious with after you made your first billion.”
He furiously searched his data banks and came up with…no one. Not a single name. That made him feel sort of clammy, even though he told himself surely there was someone…he just couldn’t think of a name right now.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked.
“How do I know?” he replied. “I don’t exactly keep a list.”
“I bet you don’t.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Scott. Nothing.”
“Look, maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. I don’t know.”
“No, but I know that if you and I get involved I’ll have to play second fiddle to your business, or to your latest invention, or to your next public appearance. I
’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of lifestyle, and I’m not going there again.”
“That comes with the territory of dating me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she all but yelled. “Not if you care for me as much as I care for you.”
“Care?”
“Cared,” she corrected. “Because I’m not letting my emotions get any more entangled until you tell me I’ll come first.”
He stared at her. What could he say? For once in his life, he didn’t have an answer.
“Well?” she asked, her eyes looking huge all of a sudden, and blue, and so imploring it made his throat tighten.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she said softly. “Well I do.” She turned her horse and, before he could say another word, galloped off.
THEY FOUND THE MAIN HERD less than a half hour later, Amanda barely saying a word to him other than how to push cattle toward a small stock pond they were using as a gathering place. So Scott learned how to ride off the back end of a lead steer to get them to move, and as usual, he was impressed with Amanda’s ability to do a job. She was quick, professional and a hard worker, traits he admired in an employee, but traits, he sheepishly admitted, he’d never noticed before in a woman he’d dated.
He pondered that and other things as they worked side by side throughout the rest of the afternoon, Amanda calling a halt only when the sun sank below the horizon.
“We’ll finish gathering the strays tomorrow morning.”
“What about the herd?” Scott asked, looking off at the bucolic view of a herd of cattle grazing near a pond, some in the water, some out, many chewing their cud.
“They won’t go far.”
He nodded, more sore and tired than he cared to admit. Amanda, looked her usual fit and energetic self as she did one of those sideways dismount moves he’d tried on that long-ago day when they’d had their first lesson.
Had it really been only a few weeks? It seemed as if he’d known Amanda a lifetime. And as he went about his task of unpacking his gadgets, unsaddling his horse, then rubbing him down, he found himself peeking glances at her from above the back of his horse.
Cowboy Lessons (Harlequin American Romance) Page 14