Nothing Sweeter (Sweet on a Cowboy)

by Drake, Laura

  Bree shifted her attention from the newspaper and her half-finished lunch to the man standing across the table from her. She glanced around. Every table in the bar was full. His hand rested on the back of the only vacant chair in the room. The needle on her worry gauge ticked from calm to concern.

  Raising her voice to be heard over the babble of the lunch crowd, she said, “I guess.”

  “I’m much obliged.”

  Around her age, he was good-looking in a baby-faced kind of way. He flashed a movie-star smile. She checked out the Western-cut business suit, string tie, and expensive boots. Probably harmless.

  “I knew today was going to be lucky.” He laid an immaculate ivory felt cowboy hat on the table and sat. “Here I am, and the only open chair in the place is across from a gorgeous lady.” He tossed her an “aw shucks” grin. “I’m gonna go straight out and buy a lottery ticket, ’cause it doesn’t get any better than this.”

  Ignoring the menu proffered by the waiter who’d appeared at his elbow, the man ordered a well-done steak, then turned his soft brown eyes back to Bree. “Pardon me, miss. My mother would tan my hide. I swear she taught me better manners. My name is Trey Colburn.” He extended a smooth hand across the table.

  “I’m Aubrey Ma—” She sucked a breath before shaking his hand. “Bree Tanner.”

  “You sure now?” The corner of his mouth lifted, and he held her hand a beat too long.

  “Well now, Bree, I know you’re new in town because I wouldn’t have missed a diamond in a drugstore for very long.”

  She managed not to roll her eyes. His combination of cherub and charm must slay the local female population. A little slick for her taste, though. She preferred strong features and a little less oil in her men. “I’m the new groom at High Heather Ranch.”

  His face sobered. “We were all so sorry to hear about Angus. He was a pillar in the ranching community, and he’s going to be missed.”

  Something in his tone made her think that though the town might miss Angus Jameson, Trey would not. She toyed with her salad.

  “Here I am babbling on, disturbing your lunch. You just go on and eat.”

  As if on cue, the waiter reappeared, brandishing a huge steak on a platter, still sizzling from the grill. When he left, Trey said, “You and I are neighbors, you know.” He cut a piece of meat, put it in his mouth, and closed his eyes. “It’s worth paying for my own beef just to taste this.” He opened his eyes. “You’ve got to try it.” Pulling a fork from an extra place setting of silverware, he cut a small piece of meat and offered it to her.

  It sure did smell good. Bree took the fork from his fingers, popped the meat in her mouth, and chewed. It was tender and full of flavor. “It’s—”

  “Aren’t we cozy?” Max strode to the table. “What won’t work one way, you slither around to try another, eh, Colburn?”

  At Max’s sharp tone, Bree looked up. “Max, I thought—”

  He cut her a cold look. “Are you done here? Or are you staying with your partner? I just need to know, either way.”

  Partner? She didn’t know what was going on, but she intended to find out. Fast.

  Picking up her bags, she opened her purse for her wallet. Trey’s hand covered hers, and she snatched her hand back.

  “Please. Allow me to buy you lunch.”

  Max’s growl was low but more dangerous for it. “You’ll never buy anything on the Heather, Colburn. I told you that.” Max reached in his pocket and without looking, dropped a few bills on the table. “I’m not gonna tell you again.” He turned to her but kept his eyes on Trey, as if he were a rattler that bore watching. “Are you staying, or coming?”

  Colburn. The man Wyatt had said offered to buy the ranch. Oh no. At the closest tables, heads turned, taking in the show. Bree realized that any protest on her part would make it worse. Max’s stillness didn’t fool her. A storm was imminent, and she wanted to get outside before it hit. “It was nice meeting you Trey.” She stood.

  Trey scooted his chair back and rose. Max turned on his heel and stalked out. After a glance around to be sure she’d gotten everything, Bree followed.

  First the bankers, now Colburn. Two plagues of vermin in one day. Max jammed the key in the ignition, then stopped and turned on her. “Did Colburn hire you to spy on us?”

  “Are you nuts? I’ve never seen the man before he sat at my table today, and I don’t appreciate your accusations.” Bree crossed her arms and glared. “You’ve got to see someone about your delusions, Jameson.”

  He studied her.

  “Not that I’d expect manners from you, but I’d appreciate your not embarrassing me in front of a roomful of people I don’t know.”

  He twisted the key, wishing it were someone’s neck. After only a few tries, the engine coughed to life. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, princess, but your tender feelings aren’t high on my list of concerns at the moment.” He punched the clutch and shifted the truck in gear.

  “What the hell is your problem, Jameson?”

  He geared down for an old lady in a crosswalk who wagged a finger at him as she tottered in front of the hood. Glancing to the spitting cat next to him, he said, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the bank turned us down for a loan. Maybe it’s because I may lose land that’s been in my family for three generations. Or maybe it’s wondering whether you’re a traitor or a naive little girl.”

  “Where do you get off—”

  “You do realize he’s married, right? I should know. I attended his lavish wedding last fall, back before he got in bed with the developers.” He shot her an assessing glance. “But maybe that doesn’t matter wherever you come from.”

  “How dare you!”

  He could almost feel the heat in the waves of fury that rolled off her as he punched the accelerator. “From the looks of things, his bed hasn’t been empty much since.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, having just met the man.” As she turned, the seat belt strained across her chest. “The world does not revolve around you, bucko. If you’re so paranoid you think that I somehow—” She stopped, clearly so pissed that she couldn’t get the words out. “What? My plan is to somehow dazzle you into signing away your ranch? With what, my sexy wardrobe and demure deportment?” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the windshield. “Butt wipe.”

  They drove in silence for a good five minutes. The breeze from the open window cooled his temper a bit, allowing reason to seep in. Well, I guess my conclusion might have been a bit farfetched. But when he’d walked into the bar and seen Colburn leaning across the table, feeding her, he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it a bit. And he definitely wasn’t going to think about why he felt that way—angry and possessive of Bree. Shit.

  He watched a small herd of antelope streaking through the open pasture parallel to the road, his chest aching. He missed the simple days, working alongside his father in silence. Back when the future seemed as solid as the mountains. Double shit.

  If wishes were horses, every man would ride.

  “Why are you always spouting quotes?”

  He realized he’d spoken out loud. From the acid tone, she was still miffed.

  “Mary Poole said, ‘The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.’ ”

  He smiled when she rolled her eyes. Sitting with her arms wrapped around herself, frown in place, jaw clamped tight, she looked like a pouting teenager. Nothing cuter than a het-up female. After a quick glance in the rearview mirror, he eased the truck off the road and let it roll to a stop. Time to chew some crow.

  “Aubrey?” Her head whipped up at her full name. “I might have overreacted a tad back there. I apologize. I don’t think you’re Colburn’s spy.”

  “Oh, so I guess that just makes me a naive little girl, then.” The frown was gone, but her bottom lip still jutted.

  He bit back the obvious answer. He had some sense of diplomacy. And self-preservation. “A naive city girl—isn’t that
an oxymoron?”

  “I accept your apology.” She must have noticed his stare, because her eyes got huge and she flushed a pretty shade of peach. “Why do you always treat me as if I’m a young girl? I’m so clearly not.”

  “Clearly.” Watching that plump lower lip, he felt something tug low in his gut. Pulling his attention back to the road, he did a quick traffic check, and then merged back into traffic. “How old are you?”

  “Old enough that you shouldn’t be asking.” She smiled. “I’m thirty-one. How old are you, Methuselah?”

  Old enough to know that what I’m thinking is inappropriate, especially with an employee. Down, Sparky. “Forty.”

  They kept their own counsel the rest of the way to the ranch. As he pulled up next to the house, the front door opened. Wyatt took the porch steps in one leap and trotted to the driver’s side of the truck, worry plain on his face, a sheet of paper fluttering in his hand.

  Max shut down the engine, opened the door, grabbed his hat, and stepped out. He wanted to be standing to face what was clearly bad news. “What is it, Wyatt?” He slapped his hat on as Bree jogged around the front of the truck.

  “It’s from the IRS. They’re auditing the High Heather.”

  Max’s sphincter tightened. How much bad can one day hold? He knew he should reach for the paper, but he couldn’t seem to uncurl his fists.

  “Let me see that.” Bree reached around him to take the letter from Wyatt’s fingers. She scanned the sheet. “They’re questioning your 940 Form, Section 179, for the past two years. Providing you have receipts and adequate backup, this shouldn’t be too bad.” She squinted at the small print at the bottom of the letter. “I’d need to look up Publication 225 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. I’m not familiar—”

  Max snatched the paper back.

  Bree looked up at him, then at Wyatt. “What?”

  Max tipped his hat back. “Where the hell did you come from, lady?”

  “Who cares?” Wyatt jabbed an elbow in his ribs. “If she can help, I don’t care if she’s Al Capone. Do you?”

  CHAPTER

  7

  You’re as good a liar as you were a detective.

  After Wyatt’s unwitting comment, Bree put her anger and nervous energy to good use. Grunting, she lifted the hay bale a few inches. In spite of the canvas gloves, the twine bit her fingers. Sweat tickled down her back as she shuffled the bale to the trapdoor of the loft, set it down, and with a kick, pushed it through the opening. It hit the ground with a satisfying thump.

  Her hands were busy, but her mind wasn’t. She couldn’t help but think back to that day. The windowless interrogation room at the Century City Jail had been tiny, and they’d kept her there for hours.

  The Federal agents only sat and looked at her.

  So she started talking.

  About the call from a customer, who got knockoff gaming boards instead of his ordered computer boards. Boards that would sell for eight hundred dollars a pop on the open market.

  About her warehouse reconnaissance: the Taiwan shipment of knockoff game boards she’d found in boxes labeled with the cheaper item’s barcode.

  About her tracking the illegal boards to an account on eBay. This wasn’t her first brush with Vic’s schemes. It hadn’t occurred to her that the seller name, Madison Avenue Distribution, had anything to do with her.

  She revealed the rest of the story: her resignation and the hushed conversation she’d overheard on the other side of Vic’s closed office door. So much for amateur sleuthing. What she’d uncovered those past months was just the tip of an iceberg.

  And she was the Titanic.

  They had questions then, all right. Where was the money? Was she paying off someone in Customs to look the other way? How long had she been doing this? Where was the money?

  Horror mixed with her gut load of worry and panic.

  After three hours of interrogation, the investigators gave up in disgust. They turned her over to the deputies, along with a plastic bag of her possessions, and told her she’d better spend some time working on her story.

  Then the nightmare began in earnest. The drunk tank. The fingerprinting. The cavity search.

  Spit out at the end of the booking gauntlet, she was allowed a phone call. Stabbing the keys, Aubrey imagined the phone ringing in Phoenix. Her mother, stirring a pot on the stove, would put the spoon down and cross the room to answer. But she didn’t. The phone rang and rang.

  What now? She shuddered, thinking of calling any of her “friends.” She’d be the joke of the postwork happy hour. Ignoring the shouts behind her to “Hurry her honky ass up,” she scanned the smudged business cards thumbtacked to the wall. Her lifestyle left her with enough money for bail or an attorney, but not both. Wagering an attorney would help more in the long run, she dialed the number on the most professional-looking card.

  That night, thoughts scrabbled in her brain like crabs trying to escape a tank. The pounding panic and cold rushing adrenaline made her sleepless night a blur: the cell, the bright lights, the noise.

  The next morning, guards herded Aubrey, with other prisoners, on a bus, to court. Her cut-rate attorney showed up in large cheap shoes, looking young enough to have attended high school and law school concurrently. He listened to her babbled explanation. He didn’t yawn in her face, but it was a near thing.

  His interest peaked only when he explained his fee structure.

  Didn’t he understand that she’d been in jail? That she might have to go back?

  In court, she stood on silly-putty knees as the charges were read: customs fraud, patent infringement, Internet fraud, money laundering. Her attorney’s defense consisted of a bored, “not guilty.” He told her that he’d hire an investigator and not to worry.

  Not worry? While he investigated, she would be living with felons.

  He might as well have given her water wings to face a tsunami.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Mom, I’m fine.” Lying under the covers, Bree brushed a hand over the rough wool of the blanket on her chest. “I’m sorry I haven’t called, but I’ve been busy. I got a job.”

  “Are you in Denver? How large is the company? Should I send you your work clothes?” Her mother’s concern carried over the wireless, plain as if she were in the room.

  She loved her mom, and after what Bree’d been through, appreciated the support. But her worry added pressure, as if Bree had to hurry and be successful, so her mother could relax. It was what pushed her to pack up her Jeep and leave Phoenix. It was also why she avoided calling her mother as often as she should.

  “No, I’m outside Steamboat Springs, and my old clothes wouldn’t help me a bit in this job. I’m a groom!”

  “Oh, honey, you worked so hard to get your degree. Don’t you want to at least try to—”

  “No, Mom. I don’t.” Hearing the sharp edge to her words, she took a deep breath and tried again. “I chose this job on purpose. I want to rest awhile before I decide what to do with the rest of my life.” She hurried on to avoid her mother’s opinion. “And guess what? I like it. I’m out in the air all day, and the horses are great. One of the owners is a really nice guy, and the boarders are mostly nice too.” There was no need to worry her, talking about the difficult ones.

  “I’m glad, Aubrey.” Her mom sighed. “You rest, hon, and put on some weight while you’re at it. You’re sure not going to want that job in the winter, in Colorado. You can come home to Phoenix in the fall.”

  “Phoenix isn’t my home, Mom. It’s yours and Briscoe’s.” Her mom had remarried long after Bree left for college, when she’d met and fallen in love with a long-distance trucker at her job as a waitress at the local truck stop. He was a great guy, and Bree was happy that her mother was happy, but Bree was way too old to see Briscoe as a stepfather. “I’m going to find a new place to settle. No reason I have to be in a rush.”

  “Well, don’t let your first experience sour you to being a controller, Aubrey. Once you exp
lain what happened, potential employers will see how lucky they’d be to have you.”

  Her mom loved her daughter, so she couldn’t understand why a controller with a fraud conviction wouldn’t be seen as an asset to a business owner. “I know, Mom. I know. Listen, I’ll let you go. I just wanted to call so you wouldn’t worry.”

  Walking past his father’s office, Wyatt glanced in. He stopped dead, the hair on his neck rising. “Jesus, Max, I thought I’d seen a ghost.”

  Max looked up from the piles of paper on the desk.

  “You even have his mannerisms. I remember him looking over his reading glasses at me, just like you’re doing now.” Wyatt stepped into the inner sanctum of his childhood.

  Max tore off the glasses and, tossing them on the desk, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, I hope I’m better at taxes than he was. This is a disaster, Wyatt.” He lifted the top page and tossed it across the desk. “What the heck was he thinking? Why didn’t he turn this over to a CPA in town?”

  Wyatt ignored the paper and rested one hip on the desk. “Dad was proud. I’m sure he didn’t want anyone in town knowing about his losses.”

  Max sighed, eyeing the messy desk. “You’re right. But it’s not like every other rancher hereabouts is in any better shape.”

  Wyatt nodded toward a dusty, beat-up footlocker resting in the corner by the desk. “What is that filthy thing doing in here?”

  “It came from the office your new groom cleaned out. Because it had a lock on it, the men thought it might be something we’d want.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I haven’t had the time to look at it.”

  “Max, why don’t you just hire Bree to do this? It’s obvious that she’s some kind of accountant.”

  “Are you nuts? We hire her because she knows a couple of buzzwords? She does a good job with the horses, but I’m not trusting High Heather’s future to some city girl with a black hole for a past. If you would, you’ve lived in Boston too long.”

  Some things never change. “You sound like him too, Max.” Wyatt smiled. “Never trust a stranger, especially one from a city.” He glanced around the office amazed to see how little things had changed in the years that had passed. He remembered standing at attention in front of this desk, speared by his father’s disapproving look. “What is it about living in the country that makes people so suspicious? I never understood that.”