Cowboy Crazy

by Joanne Kennedy

  No such thing as bad publicity, she told herself. No such thing. Somehow, she’d turn it their way. She had to. This job was a perfect match for her skills. It would carry her far beyond her past and into a world where she could finally stop worrying—about herself, about her family, and about her place in the world. In the business world, hard work paid solid dividends nobody could ever take away.

  Nobody. Not Lane Carrigan, or anybody else.

  ***

  Late afternoon sun slanted over Sarah’s desk, casting the long shadow of her mile-high in-box over the paperwork she was trying to finish. Eric appeared at her door just as she was about to dot an i and cross a final t.

  “He’s coming in.”

  The drama in his tone made it sound like he was talking about a fugitive from justice.

  “Lane,” he clarified. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. I’d like you to be there.”

  She started to protest, but he held a hand up to stop her. “He’s turned this into a public relations issue, and that means you’re going to be involved.”

  She followed him to his office and perched on the chair in front of his desk, back straight, legs crossed. Her pose radiated poise and self-control, but she caught herself covertly biting her cheek the way she always did when she was tense. Sometimes she worried she’d chew her way right through it, but until then nobody would know how uptight she was. The nervous habit kept her hands steady and her gaze level.

  “It’s good he’s willing to talk,” she said.

  “Not really. He says he’s not going to allow the drilling.”

  “He doesn’t really have a choice.” Sarah felt a stab of remorse. Sometimes she felt like she was on the wrong side of these arguments. She’d driven past the Carrigan Ranch a hundred times, maybe a thousand, admiring the smooth, concentric curves of plowed land that traced the contours of the earth. Now those graceful lines would be replaced by long, random scars and right-angled roads that cut through the land with no regard for dips or valleys, rocks or trees.

  But she couldn’t think about that now. She needed to keep her mind on her job. “The company owns the mineral rights. What’s he going to do—chain himself to a tree?”

  “He says that reporter wants to talk to him again.”

  “I’ll bet she does.” Sarah blushed, hoping her boss hadn’t caught the sex-starved subtext in her words.

  “Well, look out.” Eric patted his hair into place and crossed his legs. “He tends to bowl people over. Especially women.”

  “I know the type,” Sarah said. She’d met enough professional cowboys to understand that the macho, rough-and-tumble rodeo life had probably puffed up Lane’s ego to the size of a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. And no doubt he’d try to blast her to kingdom come along with his brother.

  Eric grimaced and adjusted his tie again, then shifted a trio of pens around his blotter. He lined them up parallel to each other, then shifted them to an angled arrangement. Picking up a stack of papers, he riffled through them and placed them to the left side of his blotter. After a second or two, he picked them up, tapped them on the desk to square the edges, and moved them to the right side. She’d never seen him like this. One of the reasons she liked working for Eric was his self-assured, take-charge confidence. The only time it seemed to waver was when the subject of his brother came up.

  The door swung open and his helmet-haired assistant Dot tipped her head in.

  Eric straightened. “Yes, Dorothy?”

  “Mr. Carrigan, your brother…”

  Lane Carrigan filled the doorway, standing with his legs slightly apart and his arms folded over his chest. He was taller than Eric by a couple of inches, but what made her jaw drop were the muscles straining his worn denim shirt and the uncanny vibrancy of his blue eyes. Eric had those same eyes, but in his aristocratic face they were merely interesting. Contrasted with Lane’s deep tan, they were striking. Eric was handsome, lean, graceful. Lane was a force of nature.

  She wondered how old he was. Eric was the little brother, so that made Lane what? Twenty-nine? But he looked older. While Eric’s face was unlined, Lane had faint crow’s-feet when he smiled and long furrows that bracketed his mouth when he didn’t. Eric’s face was genteel and perfectly proportioned; Lane’s was craggier, with a nose that was just a little too big and brows that jutted over his eyes, making the blue of them seem all the more piercing. It was like you’d taken the same man and let one live a refined, easy life while you put the other one through the wringer. She wondered if it was just outdoor life that made Lane look so much older, or if the lines on his face had been written there by some kind of stress or even sadness.

  She folded her hands in her lap, doing her best to look prim and professional and praying she’d managed to wipe the lust from her face. Her tummy wasn’t just doing a happy dance; it was cutting a rug in an all-out, hell-for-leather tango.

  Lane nodded politely at the secretary. “Thanks, Dot.”

  The assistant made a high-pitched giggling sound that was totally at odds with her usual stolid personality and fluttered away. Lane headed for a chair, his stride a little uneven. Somehow the slight limp only made him seem more masculine—maybe because Sarah knew it was the result of an encounter with an angry bull.

  But he was clearly at ease in the corporate surroundings, maybe because he overwhelmed them. His presence dominated the room in spite of Eric’s imposing desk, and his animal intensity made the fluorescent light seem suddenly pale and artificial. He glanced at Sarah and her belly twisted again, hard this time, with an urgency that was almost painful. The man’s eyes seemed to see right through her skin and into her soul—or maybe just into her underwear. Certainly the spasm of heat that bolted through her made her feel naked.

  But she didn’t like rodeo cowboys, she reminded herself. Not anymore. They’d been her heroes once upon a time, but since then she’d seen firsthand what their devil-may-care attitude and risqué charm could do to a woman’s life. She’d sworn off men in general and cowboys in particular—at least until she got her career rolling.

  Lane lowered himself into the chair beside her, shoving it backward so he could stretch out his legs. Now she couldn’t see his face, and she felt immediately uneasy, as if he’d somehow earned an advantage.

  “Lane.” Eric reached for the pens and aligned them in a new, precise arrangement on the left side of the blotter. “This is Sarah Landon, our new public relations consultant. We’re glad you could make it.”

  “Are you?”

  Lane stared at Sarah with an unwavering and decidedly hostile gaze. She wished she had some pens to fool with, but all she could do was tighten her interlaced fingers in her lap and hope the heat in her face didn’t show. The man was so loaded with pheromones that his gaze burned like a branding iron. She told herself the tugging low in her belly was just a reaction to the famous Carrigan charm, but her inner hussy was sashaying around in her belly like the boogie-woogie love child of Richard Simmons and Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

  It took all her self-control to give Lane a cold, formal nod. Normally she would have offered her hand, but his gaze made it clear they were already in a fight of wills and she wasn’t about to give him the chance to snub her and score a point.

  “Nice to meet you.” He pushed his chair further back and crossed his scuffed cowboy boots at the ankles. They weren’t the tooled, polished fashion statements the wannabes wore to happy hour. They were plain brown leather, rough, scuffed, and unadorned. Workingman’s boots.

  But he didn’t work, she reminded herself. He played, riding real-life rocking horses like a three-year-old on steroids.

  She worked her way up the faded denim of his jeans, flicking her attention to his face when she found herself eying his belt buckle. His answering gaze slid down the lapels of her jacket and dove into the modest neckline of her camisole. From there, it drifted from side to side, making her renegade nipples perk up and stand at painful attention.

  He probably expected her to
flutter girlishly like Dot and fall apart, but instead she looked away, pretending something outside the window was holding her attention. There was a cloud shaped like a duck drifting in the wide blue sky.

  Think about the duck. Think about the duck.

  “So.” Eric shifted uneasily. “I understand you have a problem with the drilling on the Carrigan Ranch.”

  Lane hacked out a sound that might have been a laugh but sounded more like the bark of an angry dog. “I sure do. But it’s not the Carrigan Ranch anymore. It’s the LT.”

  “It’ll always be the Carrigan Ranch.”

  “That’s not your decision,” Lane said. “It might be family land, but the ranch operation’s a partnership now.”

  Sarah quickly turned her attention to Eric. He was a master of the poker face, but it was obvious the news surprised him. He’d told her the ranch was everything to Lane. So why would he sell out to someone else?

  Maybe he needed money. Maybe he had some kind of gambling addiction, or a drug problem. Her eyes lingered on the bulge of his biceps. Were steroids addictive? Were they expensive? Because he was way more muscular than your normal rodeo cowboy. Riding and roping gave a man long, lean muscles. He was built like a weight lifter, solid and powerful.

  His eyes fixed on the hem of her trim tapered skirt. The fabric ended just an inch above her knee, so she didn’t know what he was staring at, or why it made her so uneasy. Checking out an associate’s clothing was a valid means of judging their professionalism, but his gaze followed the line of her calves as if he was assessing her for some other purpose, and she doubted he was judging her chances in the Boston Marathon.

  She clenched her knees together reflexively, regretting the reaction when faint crow’s-feet gathered at the corner of his eyes. He’d goaded her into reacting—again.

  By her count, the score was Lane three, Sarah zero.

  Chapter 3

  “So why is she here?” Lane spoke to his brother, deliberately turning away from the woman in the chair beside him. He didn’t know who she was, or what she was doing there. Did Eric want a witness to this conversation for some reason? Or was this his latest floozy? He normally went through women like Kleenex and seemed to have about as much respect for them. But maybe this one was better at gold digging than the past dozen or so. She certainly looked a lot smarter than any of them, so maybe she’d conned her way into the boardroom.

  Well, she wasn’t staying. He’d see to that.

  “I’m a public relations consultant.” The woman shifted in her chair, facing him and demanding his attention. “I develop strategies for dealing with legislators and community leaders to safeguard and enhance corporate images.”

  So she’d talked Eric into giving her a title, and even a job description. This might be a woman to be reckoned with—but he’d handle her. He doubted she was any tougher than a rodeo bull.

  “That’s a mouthful,” he said.

  “It’s really fairly simple.” She leaned toward him, speaking slowly as if he was some kind of idiot. “I find ways to help people understand what we do.”

  “What Carrigan does.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said we. And you’re not a Carrigan. You’re a publicity flack.”

  Eric stirred. “She’s part of the team. And she’s worked miracles for other companies. New West Corporation. Holt Communications.”

  “Isn’t New West the company that developed a hundred thousand acres of Texas hill country into an industrial park?” Lane asked. “Shame about all the green grass and bluebonnets. And didn’t Holt Communications string transmission lines over half of Colorado?”

  The woman straightened her shoulders and gave Lane a tight smile. He could tell her nervous tension threatened to pull it out of shape. “Green grass and bluebonnets don’t provide jobs for people,” she said. “And those transmission lines helped bring high-speed Internet to the reservation, among other things.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re one of those people that sees the bright side.” He gave her a teasing smile and knew he’d scored himself a point when she looked away, frowning. “I should have known. You seem like a real Little Miss Sunshine type.”

  He could see why Eric was attracted to her. She was pretty in a buttoned-up, businesslike way, but there was a lot of energy crackling behind those cool, expressionless eyes. Her tightly controlled demeanor was a challenge, and he wondered what it would take to get her out of that square-shouldered, double-breasted suit.

  “I’m not Little Miss anything, Mr. Carrigan. And I’m definitely not sunny.” She seemed to realize how silly the statement sounded and shifted uneasily. Another point for him.

  “You’re not, are you?” Lane settled back in his chair. “Well, sunny or not, digging up the LT Ranch isn’t going to help anybody but Carrigan and its shareholders.”

  “We’re hardly digging anything up,” she said. “The process can move forward with minimal environmental impact.”

  “Really. Who told you that?”

  “The company engineers.”

  “Wow. I wonder who paid them to say that.”

  Eric bristled. “The methodology of our scientists is unassailable.”

  “You always did go for the ten-dollar words,” Lane said to his brother. “Environmental impact. Methodology. Unassailable. You sound like you’re reading from a report by one of those engineers you’re so proud of.”

  “Where do you want us to get our information?” The woman tilted her pretty nose in the air. “Pro Rodeo News?”

  He narrowed his eyes and shot her a glare. So she thought he was just a stupid cowboy? He’d show her different.

  He’d show her a lot of things.

  “Mr. Carrigan, it really won’t be a problem.” She seemed to realize she’d stepped over the line and sounded a little less patronizing. “You’ll be able to graze cattle even as they set things up, and you’ll barely notice the difference once drilling is under way. There will be some extra traffic on the ranch roads initially, and we’ll have to dig a shallow pipeline trench, but the land will be restored to its original condition almost immediately.”

  Lane set his elbows on his knees and looked her in the eye. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  She lifted her chin. “What part of it is a problem for you?”

  His eyes met hers with a discomfiting intensity that shot straight to her core. She squeezed her legs together and saw a faint smile tweak his lips.

  “The problem is the part where you invade my land, construct a series of eyesore oil rigs, dig trenches across my pastures ’til the place looks like France in World War I, and scare my cattle into miscarrying with your construction racket,” he said. “And then you overrun my hometown with transient workers who degrade the community and bleed law enforcement dollars without paying a dime toward local taxes.”

  “Your hometown?”

  “Two Shot,” he said. “It’s a little place on…”

  “I’m familiar with Two Shot,” she said. “Do you really think it’s worth saving?”

  ***

  Sarah cursed herself inwardly for rising to the bait. Her intimate knowledge of Two Shot was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

  But how could Lane Carrigan call it his hometown? It was her hometown, and she’d never seen him there. Not once. The Carrigans had lived miles away, isolated on the elegant, state-of-the-art Carrigan ranch, and from what she’d heard the boys only visited occasionally.

  It surprised her how proprietary she felt about a town she’d been so anxious to leave behind. “I’d say the town would benefit from some new development,” she said.

  He was obviously one of those rich people who thought everyday life in a small town was an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. It had probably never occurred to him how tough it was to make a living in Mayberry. She could rock his reality if she told him what it was really like growing up in a
place like Two Shot, but Eric’s image of her—and his respect for her—would be in tatters if he knew she’d grown up in a trailer.

  Dot poked her head into the room. “Mr. Carrigan,” she whispered.

  Lane and Eric both started to rise, and Dot gave Lane an apologetic smile. “I meant Mr. Carrigan. He has a meeting. But it’s good to see you, Lane.”

  He grinned, seeming totally unaware that Dot had just defined the difference between the two brothers. Eric was Mr. Carrigan, taking charge and giving orders. Lane was just Lane. Dorothy’s tone was warmer when she talked to Lane, but Sarah knew the oil business was a cold, hard world where warmth didn’t hold much sway. Eric was the one who commanded respect.

  Eric cocked his wrist and winced at the time on his watch. “I’ve got to go, Lane. If you’d give me a little advance warning, we can have a longer talk. Maybe lunch?”

  Lane made a noncommittal grunt.

  “Meanwhile, Sarah can answer your questions.”

  As he left the room, Sarah tried not to look as panicked as she felt. Lane might not command the respect of the Carrigan workforce, but his physical presence was intimidating and she didn’t want to be alone with him.

  Besides, the whole Two Shot situation was complicated. Normally companies like Carrigan just threw money at small towns, and folks were so grateful to get funding for schools and street repairs that they didn’t question the project itself or who was involved with it.

  But Lane was going to make it an issue, and that could be a serious problem for her. She’d led Eric to believe she’d leapt fully formed from the ivied bastions of Vassar and Harvard, but if he talked to anyone in Two Shot he’d get a very different picture of her past. Hiding her history had been an innocent lie of omission at first, but since then he’d made so many references to her inborn style and high-class roots she’d ended up with an origin myth worthy of Wolverine.

  As her boss left the room, she squared her shoulders and faced Lane. She felt like a tiny bird fluffing up its feathers to intimidate a cat.