“So the meeting really didn’t go well,” Samantha clarified.
“No.”
“Tess,” Samantha said quietly, and put a soft hand on her arm. “I hate to suggest it, or even think about it because I want you here in Benson, but professionally, the right thing to do might be to excuse yourself from this project.”
“I tried!” Tess sat up straighter as the confusion of their meeting returned. “I told him right away that I would get someone else to take over for me and he said no! And when I insisted, he told me he’d...” She thought of Slaid’s gilded reputation in this town. She couldn’t share the threat he’d made in such a bad moment. She owed him that much. “Well, he just insisted that I stay on. He doesn’t want anyone else on the project. It makes no sense. Shouldn’t he want me to go? I could ruin his reputation if I told people about Phoenix!”
Her friend didn’t answer for a moment and they just sat, leaning on their elbows, staring at each other. Finally Samantha spoke. “That’s just weird.”
And there it was, summed up perfectly. Tess was surprised by her own laughter. “It is! Do you think he wants to keep me here just to torture me?”
“Maybe it’s a case of the devil you know,” Samantha said. “Maybe he’s nervous about having a consultant around and he figures that at least he knows you.”
“But he doesn’t!” Tess said. “Not at all... Well, only in a naked and sweaty kind of way, but other than that, we’re strangers!”
“A naked and sweaty kind of way...” Samantha giggled. “Tess, you are the only person I know who would end up in this predicament. It could be a sign that it’s time to mend your wild ways.”
“To be honest, my ways have been a lot less wild the past couple of years,” Tess confided. “It all gets kind of boring after a while.”
“Boring?” Samantha repeated. “You have definitely been sleeping with the wrong men. Perhaps it’s time for something new. Like getting to know the guys first for a change.”
“That is far too much work,” Tess countered. “No, I’m pretty sure vibrators were invented for people like me. They don’t ask for much, just a few new batteries every now and then.”
“Tess!” Samantha exclaimed in shock. And then the laughter started again and Tess put her head down on the table, resting it on her folded arms, laughing until her hands were wet with tears. When she looked up, Samantha was wiping her own eyes and grinning at her. Tess suddenly felt a deep gratitude. Even if Mayor Slaid Jacobs came to his senses and ran her out of town tomorrow, she was glad she got to have this laugh with her friend today. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed her.
“So how was that night with the mayor two years ago, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Incredible.” Tess sighed, remembering how much she’d wanted him then. How much she could still want him now if she let herself. “Truly amazing.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just try to pretend it never happened, I guess. And keep out of his way whenever possible. Hopefully he’ll realize how much better it would be to have someone else on this job.”
“I know you’d like to get back to the city,” Samantha said softly, “but I kind of hope you stay.”
“You know I could never move out here like you did.”
The teasing light was back in her friend’s eyes. “Never say never. This place has a way of growing on you. Stay too long and it might even get under your skin.”
Tess glanced back out the window, at the vast mountains filling the horizon, and the enormous empty sky graying with the dusk. She shivered. It wouldn’t grow on her. She’d be lucky if she survived a month of all this cold solitude and silence.
* * *
SLAID SAT DOWN heavily on the rock and twisted the top off his beer. The cold bitterness was exactly what he needed after his visit from Tess today. He looked up at the nearby peaks, noticing the way the setting sun lit up the granite. Something he’d seen almost every day of his life, yet had never taken for granted.
He liked this rock. His son called it The Thinking Rock because Slaid had come out here a lot after Jeannette had left them, to brood and try to figure out where it had all gone wrong. Now that Devin was a teenager, they came up here together for the occasional heart-to-heart.
It was up on the edge of their property, where the hills started to give way to the mountains, and it had a good view. He could see his house in miniature below—a low rancher his father had built in classic ’50s style. It wasn’t picturesque like some of the old farmhouses in the area, but big glass doors gave way to all kinds of patios and he liked that mix of inside and out. He never felt removed from the land he loved.
A motion beyond the house caught his eye. Devin was leading Orlando out of the barn. His son tied the horse to a fence and started brushing the gelding’s smooth gray coat. Slaid knew he should be the one doing that task. Devin had plenty of his own chores to finish and then homework to start. It was just one example of how Tess Cole was already throwing him off his game.
Tess. The name suited her. Sleek and strong, just like the woman. He’d wondered about her name for the past two years. Wondered, sometimes, if there was any way to find her.
And now she was here, in Benson, more beautiful than he’d remembered and more unsettling than he could have imagined. Seeing her long, thick, blond hair wound up in that tidy bun today made him remember how it had curtained them as she’d straddled him on the bed, kissing him as if she was ravenous. Her curves in that sexy business suit reminded him of how her breasts had filled his hands, how her hips had moved when she’d ridden him.
“Hell.” He said it aloud, and the sound evaporated into the empty sky. He took another gulp of beer and felt a twinge of regret when he realized it was almost empty. He probably should have stashed a few more bottles in his pockets before he left the house. If he were a less-responsible guy he would have gone for it. But he was very responsible, usually. Just not that night in Phoenix.
That night he’d been lonely, recently dumped, and just drunk enough to step out of the confines of his normal behavior and proposition the unbelievably sexy woman draped on the bar stool next to him. For one night he hadn’t been the guy whose wife had walked out on him, or the dad whose kid was tearing up the town with his seemingly infinite reserves of anger. For one night he hadn’t been the dutiful son, responsible for the hopes and dreams of the generations of ranchers who’d left him their legacy. He’d just been an anonymous man, making love to an anonymous woman in an anonymous hotel room, and it had been the hottest night of his life.
But she wasn’t anonymous anymore.
What he’d done in their meeting earlier came back to him garnished with a twist of guilt. He’d pressured her to stay—hell, he’d made her stay.
Maybe he’d done it out of anger. It confounded him that she didn’t remember him. How was it possible that one night could mean so much to one person and so little to another? He’d thought about her countless times, and she’d walked into his office today with no clue who he was. She’d looked at him as if he was a total stranger while she was etched so clearly in his memory. Well, she’d remember him now, all right. Not for their night together—apparently that had been totally forgettable—but for the way he’d been an asshole and had selfishly pressured her to stay in Benson.
And then it hit him. He didn’t hold all the cards here. She could chat to whomever she wanted about their one-night stand. And it could certainly change his life if she did. He wondered what his constituents would think if they knew what he’d done in Phoenix with Tess—and how much he’d enjoyed it.
The good people of Benson had elected him mayor almost unanimously. And why not? He was a pretty upstanding kind of guy. A high school football hero, college scholarship kid. Head of the Cattlemen’s Association, a city council member and now, mayor of the town. People thought of him as an up-front, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. And he was—except for that one night.
&
nbsp; He should have agreed when she’d offered to leave town. It would have ensured that his reputation was never tarnished. Because it wasn’t just his reputation he had to worry about. Being a leader in Benson was family tradition. His grandfather and his dad had both been mayor, and his great-grandfather had pretty much founded the town.
Maybe he owed his ancestors an apology because he hadn’t been able to let her go. In some bizarre miracle, after two years as a ghost in his fantasies, she was here in Benson. And that had to mean something.
The problem was, he had no idea how he was going to handle having her in town. He’d promised her it would be easy to keep things professional, but he’d pretended a confidence he didn’t have. All the attraction he’d felt that night in Phoenix was still there, sharpening his senses the moment she’d walked into his office, making him hyperaware of every one of her movements, every seductive curve under that power suit she wore.
Which made the reason she was here even worse. Windmills. Looking out to the plains beyond his ranch, he tried to imagine them speckled with huge, white turbines and instantly all the wild emptiness was domesticated and destroyed. It was awful enough to imagine—he couldn’t allow it to happen.
Slaid drained the bottle and stuck it back in his pocket, taking one last look at the view. There was dinner to cook, dishes to clean, homework to help with and a few rounds of a video game to play before Devin went to bed. Then he needed to rewrite the agenda for next week’s city council meeting to make sure the wind farm was on it—there’d be a lot to discuss.
It would be a busy night, but he kind of liked it that way. Staying busy kept him from thinking too much. He’d learned that trick after Jeannette had left Benson, and it seemed as though he would need it again now that Tess Cole had arrived.
CHAPTER THREE
TESS WASN’T PREPARED for a Jeep that looked like an ice sculpture. With a pang of longing, she pictured her underground parking space in San Francisco, where even on the rare frosty morning she never had to worry about a frozen car. Reluctantly she opened her wallet and stared at her rainbow assortment of credit cards, wondering which one she could sacrifice as an ice scraper. The Saks Fifth Avenue card was nice and thick and would work the best, but she didn’t want to risk ruining it. Same with Bloomingdale’s. And there was no way she’d sacrifice Nordstrom—their annual shoe sale was coming up.
She finally settled for Talbots and started scraping at the frosted windshield. The ice came off in a spray coating her bare skin. “Ow!” she exclaimed and pulled her hand away abruptly, shaking it to try to get the frost off and the heat back in.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t bring gloves?” The deep voice had her whirling to confront the mayor. He looked warm and comfortable, his thick parka advertising the fact that he was prepared for the weather. The battered leather cowboy hat on his head was one more reminder that she’d left San Francisco far behind.
“It’s probably seventy degrees at home today,” she said by way of an answer.
“It’s seventy degrees in San Francisco most days. Didn’t you check the weather report before you drove out here?”
She hadn’t. She’d been in denial until she’d pulled into town yesterday. Despite all the arguments with Ed and the cramming she’d done to understand wind power, she’d ignored the fact that she’d be living in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere for the next month or so. Tess could safely say that denial was one of her strongest abilities.
But now there was no denying two things: she was totally unprepared for the weather in Benson, and Slaid Jacobs was one of the most attractive men she’d ever laid eyes on. The navy blue of his parka somehow made his gray eyes even more vibrant, and his broad shoulders filled out the jacket well. He’d tucked his dark denim jeans into brown suede work boots, laced up casually over the cuffs. He was perfectly at home in the cold, in comparison to her shivering self.
She wouldn’t be here shivering if he was chivalrous. If he hadn’t insisted that she stay in town. He might be good-looking, but right now she kind of hated him.
If he noticed, he gave no sign. “Tess, an idea. We’ve got a shop here that sells all kinds of outdoor gear. Let’s leave the car and walk over there. We can have our meeting as we go and you can get set up with the right clothing. You can’t survive out here in that thin wool coat.”
His voice was smooth and rich, like coffee. Like the espresso she couldn’t have this morning because she was stuck in Benson.
“Is this your idea of a peace offering?”
He gave that slow, widening smile she’d noticed right away when she’d first seen him at the bar in Phoenix. It had done things to her then and it was having the same effect now. “Maybe it is. I don’t know you too well, but you seem like someone who might like to shop. Plus, you look really cold.”
Tess glanced down at her beloved gray Burberry, with the nipped-in waist and shiny black buttons, and sighed. The last thing she wanted was a shopping trip with Slaid, or a parka like his, but he was right about one thing—she was freezing. “Fine,” she agreed. “Lead the way.”
He held out his hand, and to her horror she almost took it. Slaid jerked his hand back before she could and shoved it in his pocket, obviously embarrassed, too. This was ridiculous. How were they supposed to work together?
She stumbled along next to him, her brain a chaotic mélange of feeling. Anger that he’d pressured her to stay in Benson, horror that her past had come back to haunt her and her natural appreciation of a gorgeous guy. Memories of what had happened between them that night in Phoenix scrambled her thoughts further. The images and sensations showed up like random jolts of electricity, leaving her nerve endings sizzling and frayed.
If she could just turn off those memories and focus on work and only work, she might be able to think coherently.
She tried to keep up with his long strides in her stiletto boots and keep an eye on the sidewalk, stepping over anything that looked like ice. She could endure a lot, but falling in front of Slaid might be her breaking point.
She didn’t know what to do, so she did what she was best at. She went into business mode. “So thank you for taking his meeting with me...again. As I told you yesterday, I’m in town because I work for a public relations firm that has been hired by Renewable Reliance.”
“Yes, the wind project,” he said, his voice as dry as the desert. “I remember.”
She plowed on. “I’m in charge of community relations.”
“Well, you’re off to a great start. Considering that you’ve already had relations with the town mayor.”
Tess stopped abruptly as the initial hurt turned to fury. “Is this how you’re going to handle this? Did you want me to stay so you can be self-righteous and hold that night over my head? Because I seem to remember that I wasn’t alone in that hotel room. In fact, you invited me back to your room.”
Slaid stared at the ground, and they walked a few steps in awkward silence. Then he broke it. “I was rude. It was a stupid thing to say. We agreed to keep things professional and I dropped the ball. It won’t happen again.”
She was momentarily disarmed by his apology. “Well, it was a fumble, but maybe you can recover.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You know football?”
She needed a cordial relationship with him to make any progress with the community, which is how she justified her little white lie. “Sure. Some. I’m a San Franciscan. We love our Forty-Niners.”
“So much that you ran ’em out of town.”
Tess stared at him a moment, racking her brain for what she knew about the football team—something to explain his comment. A lightbulb lit in some dim corner of her mind. San Franciscans hadn’t been able to agree on replacing foggy and crumbling Candlestick Park, and a neighboring city had happily jumped in to build the football team a new stadium. She gave a little laugh of relief. “Oh, yes. They’re the Santa Clara Forty-Niners now. It doesn’t have quite the same ring.”
“But they�
�re keeping their old name, right?”
“Oh, right. Of course.” She was the one fumbling here. Hoping he’d attribute her red cheeks to the wind, she switched back to the topic she actually knew something about. “About the windmills— My job will be to interface with the community and make sure you, and the people of Benson, have up-to-date information about the project. I’ll be responsible for presenting the environmental impact reports and creating opportunities for public input.”
“And if I tell you that the only input the people of Benson will give you is a resounding no?”
“Then my job is to tell you that you’re putting the cart in front of the horse. Renewable Reliance has a right to perform this exploratory process. They’ve already been granted the necessary permits from the Bureau of Land Management. And there will be plenty of opportunities for you and the citizens here to weigh in.”
“But personally, you think this project is bogus.”
“There is no personally. I’m here to do my job—to present information about the project to the public. I don’t weigh in on the projects I represent.”
“But, I take it, the information you present will be your client’s side of the story.”
“Of course. But it will be a true story. Just the facts.”
“Facts can be bent.”
“By everyone involved,” she argued, “including you.” She wanted to kick herself as soon as she said it. What was it about Slaid that made her lose her cool? She should be buttering him up right now, making him and his town feel special, lucky to be chosen as the site of a wind farm. Instead she was trading insult for insult.
They’d reached the door for Benson Wilderness Outfitters, and Slaid grasped the handle and pulled it open for her, but his expression was far from chivalrous. “I don’t bend facts,” he said.
“Well, neither do I.” He waited and she waited, hands on her hips. Finally a slight smile of dawning understanding curved one corner of his full mouth. “You’re not going to let me open this door for you, are you?”
Convincing the Rancher Page 3