The Camden Cowboy

by Victoria Pade

  “And the project has been given to me to manage.” Lacey hadn’t intended to sound so proud of that fact, but it was such a big deal to her she couldn’t ever seem to say it without sounding pleased with herself.

  “And that’s what you want to talk to me about?” he asked, handing her her jacket as he did.

  Lacey accepted it and went on. “There are three things I wanted to talk to you about,” she said in her best I’m-the-boss-and-this-is-all-business tone. “I just got into town yesterday and I’m staying in an apartment Hutch owns. But it’s in Northbridge and it takes me fifteen minutes to get from there to the site—”

  “Fifteen minutes is an eternity to you?”

  That was the way she’d said it. “It would just be better if I could be closer, and I’ve been told that the nearest thing to the site is your place, and that you have a guesthouse. I was wondering if you might be interested in renting it?”

  “To you? For you to live in?”

  “It would just be me, yes. And I would hardly be there except to sleep because this project is going to keep me on-site the rest of the time. You probably wouldn’t even know I was there.”

  “Oh, I think I would…”

  Lacey had no idea what that meant but it had come with a hint of a smile that curled only the left side of his mouth. A smile that was even sexier than the brow wipe had been.

  But why things like that were even occurring to her, she had no idea. She opted to ignore the phenomena and go on as if she hadn’t heard his comment.

  “I only need somewhere to sleep and shower and change clothes, really. And of course I’ll pay rent—”

  “You’d need a kitchen, too, wouldn’t you? How else would you fix meals without a kitchen?” he asked, giving no indication whether or not the guesthouse did have a kitchen, merely seeming curious. In a laid-back, slightly amused way that was also sexy but still a little frustrating to Lacey.

  “Okay, yes, a kitchen—or just a kitchenette where I could make coffee would be nice—but most days I eat whatever I can order in at the site,” she answered, as if it were inconsequential. “And if you had some pressing need for your guesthouse while I’m using it, I could always spend a night or two with one of my brothers. If it was absolutely necessary—”

  “And make that looong fifteen-minute commute?”

  He was clearly teasing her because he’d said that with a full smile. A very engaging smile.

  But Lacey was sweltering in that sun and didn’t have time to waste admiring his smile, so she said, “Yes,” as if his question had been serious. “The second thing I needed to talk to you about is the house and barn on the property we bought from you—”

  “Yeah, we thought long and hard about getting rid of those. My great-grandfather was born in that house, his father used the barn as a lumber mill and that was where my great-grandfather started the business. As kids when we’d visit here we’d have sleepovers in the old place. But since nobody’s used anything over there since we were all kids, and since the land is played out both for crops and for grazing, we decided to sell.”

  “Yes, well,” Lacey said, impatient with the family history. “There are some things still in the attic in the house and in the barn—”

  “There are? I thought we got everything out.”

  “Apparently not. Since they’re your family’s belongings, you should be the one to go through them, and throw them out or move them or whatever. And third,” Lacey went on, “my father was… Well, let’s say he wasn’t happy with the way things worked out when he bought this land—”

  “Your brother was supposed to get the Bowen farm for the training center but he ended up getting the girl instead and marrying her,” Seth Camden said with more amusement. Then, apparently to explain how he knew that, he added, “Northbridge is a small town.”

  “Right. Well. Just when Ian thought they could pick up the McDoogal property instead—”

  “I’d already bought it.”

  “Yes, you had.” And Lacey couldn’t be sure whether that had been because the Camdens had genuinely wanted the McDoogal place or if it had been a classic Camden move.

  Buying the property out from under them had put the Kincaids in a position where they had needed to deal with the Camdens rather than the cash-strapped McDoogals in order to get any land at all. They’d ended up paying more for less acreage—not the McDoogal place, but the original Camden homestead.

  It was the kind of situation that Lacey had learned about in her college class, the kind of situation in which the Camdens’ gain was someone else’s loss.

  “At any rate,” Lacey went on, lifting a hand to shade her face because she thought she could feel it beginning to sunburn, “when his temper is up, my father tends to act rashly. In his hurry to get the training center underway, he didn’t wait for a complete report from our people, and now we know that to build the main road leading to the center, we need access to a section of land you still own.”

  “And you came all the way out here today to what? Negotiate?”

  “It’s simple access for a road. That’s all I’m asking. We can buy that strip of land from you—”

  “Or lease the land for the road and pay us a fee for it in perpetuity.”

  Was he just thinking on his feet or was this something he’d anticipated? Again Lacey wondered about the less-flattering things that were said about Camden business practices.

  “It’s hot out here, so let’s see if I have everything straight so you can get out of this sun,” he continued. “You want to live in my guesthouse, you want me to clear out the old attic and barn, and you want to put a road through Camden land for your training center.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, yes and no.”

  “Yes, yes and no…” Lacey repeated.

  “Yeah, sure, you can use my guesthouse—which does have a small kitchen, if you ever want to eat. Sure, I’ll clear out the attic and the barn. But no way, here and now, am I giving the go-ahead to put a road anywhere on my property without a whole lot more information and…”

  “Making sure that it’s to the Camdens’ advantage,” Lacey muttered to herself.

  “…without a whole lot more information and consideration of what all it would involve,” he concluded. “At the time your father bought the property he was figuring the road that leads to the house and barn would work just fine. It isn’t any of my doing if that’s changed.”

  “It was your doing to buy the McDoogal place so we had to make so many changes,” Lacey reminded him. She wanted him to know that she had no intention of letting a Camden get one over on her.

  Seth Camden shrugged. “The McDoogal place was for sale, it connects to my place, I bought it. That’s all there is to it.”

  And appearing innocent even when they weren’t had been his great-grandfather and grandfather’s trademark.

  Still, Lacey knew she would get nowhere pushing him about the McDoogal place, and it was water under the bridge now, anyway. So she dropped it and concentrated on what she needed to accomplish.

  “But yes, I can rent your guesthouse, and you will clear the attic and the barn?” she summarized.

  “Absolutely.”

  “We should probably discuss rent,” she suggested.

  He shrugged again and Lacey couldn’t help noticing that. Boy, oh, boy, were those nice shoulders….

  Then he said, “You can just stay there. As my guest—it is a guesthouse, after all. Let’s just consider it good relations between business associates.”

  Strings. That was part of what she’d learned about the early Camdens—there were always strings attached to what his forefathers did. She didn’t think she could take the chance that Seth Camden might uphold the tradition.

  “I’d prefer paying you,” Lacey insisted.

 
; “Okay, pay me whatever you think is fair, then. It really makes no difference to me. Just tell me when you want to move in.”

  “Tomorrow evening?”

  “Okay. And then we can set a time for me to come out to the old house and see what was left behind. But for now I’m not kidding—you better either get out of this sun or use some of my sunblock.” He nodded toward his tools and gear at the fence.

  “I’ll just go,” Lacey said. “But we will need to talk more about the road.”

  “I’m sure we can work something out,” he said, as if it meant nothing to him.

  They could work something out…

  Lacey didn’t respond to that. Another of the things that she’d learned in the lectures about the Camdens was that H.J. and Hank had been very big into the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours mentality.

  After saying her goodbye, she turned to make her way back to the road where she’d parked.

  “Careful!” he cautioned when she came close to falling yet again.

  Lacey righted herself and glanced back to find him still standing where she’d left him, watching her.

  “I’m fine,” she called over her shoulder, continuing the way she’d come but taking extra care not to stumble again while he looked on.

  She got all the way back to the road before she stole another glance at Seth Camden.

  He was still watching her, so she waved as if to tell him she didn’t require any more of his supervision and got into her car.

  But she couldn’t help casting another glance out into the field. Seeing him finally return to his work, she inadvertently took in the sight of that amazing backside again.

  No more! she ordered herself, forcing her eyes to the road and starting her engine.

  But as she drove away she was thinking about the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours mentality.

  And wishing that she wasn’t imagining scratching that back of his quite so literally.

  Or quite so vividly…

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, Cade, it’s Seth.”

  “Oh, man, you gotta remember that I don’t keep farmer’s hours,” Cade complained in a gravelly voice. Seth’s call had obviously awakened him.

  Seth laughed. It was only 7:00 a.m. on Thursday when he called his brother in Denver. Still he couldn’t resist goading him. “I thought big businessmen had to rise and shine with the sun, too.”

  “No meetings today—I was going to get to sleep until seven-thirty, damn you.”

  “Them’s the breaks, pal—I had to be up two hours ago to talk to our guy running the Kentucky farm, so now I’m headed out to finish fixing a fence and figured I’d get you before I left,” Seth explained.

  Despite the fact that Seth was the oldest of the Camden grandchildren and so had had the option of heading the operation, he’d instead chosen to handle the Northbridge ranch and oversee all the other agricultural aspects of Camden Incorporated, leaving the CEO and chairman of the board positions to brother Cade, who was a year younger.

  All of the Camdens except Seth thrived in the city, in Denver, where they’d grown up. But Seth was the country boy of the bunch by choice. When it came to the business end of things, he oversaw the farms, ranches and dairies that Camden Inc. owned. He far preferred getting his hands dirty.

  “Did we lose more cattle at the Kentucky place?” Cade asked. They’d been talking frequently about a vandalism problem that had been ongoing on the Kentucky farm.

  “No, actually they caught the culprits—it was just kids,” Seth said. “Kids whose family owned some of the land once upon a time and decided to make a statement—you know the song.”

  “Somebody has an old grudge against us and they passed it down,” Cade said without surprise.

  “That’s the one,” Seth confirmed.

  “What are you doing about it?”

  Since the agricultural portion of Camden Inc. was Seth’s baby, he made any decisions that didn’t require a vote by the entire board of directors—which was comprised of himself, Cade and their other eight siblings and cousins. Petty vandalism was not a matter for the board of directors; he was merely letting Cade in on how he was handling the situation.

  “The kids are locals. It’s a small town like Northbridge, and I don’t want any more bad blood than we already have there. I’m having them work off the damages, and if they do that there won’t be any charges filed against them, so they walk away with a clean slate. The guy I have managing the farm knows the kids. He’s willing to put them to work so they don’t end up with a record, and we’ll just hope that takes care of it.”

  “Sounds good,” Cade said.

  Seth could tell by his brother’s voice and the background sounds coming through the phone that Cade had gotten out of bed and was making coffee.

  “You’re coming for GiGi’s birthday in three weeks, right?” Cade asked.

  GiGi was what they called their grandmother—short for Grandma Georgianna. She’d raised them and their cousins after the death of their parents, and she was turning seventy-five.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Seth assured.

  “Anything else going on there?” Cade inquired conversationally.

  And just like that the image of Lacey Kincaid came to mind. That had been happening on and off since she’d left him out in the field yesterday.

  “I met Morgan Kincaid’s daughter,” Seth informed his brother. “I’m pretty sure she thinks we bought that last piece of property just to get one over on her old man.”

  “Same song, different verse,” Cade said.

  “Yep.”

  They were accustomed to the distrust that came with their last name.

  “Did you tell her you just wanted the property?” Cade asked.

  “Nah, it wasn’t an overt accusation, just an attitude—you know it when you run into it.”

  “I do,” Cade agreed.

  “Now they need a road to come through here somewhere and I think that the fact that I didn’t instantly buckle under made her more suspicious. As if I somehow knew they would need to build an access road there and positioned us so we could stick it to them.”

  “We’re a cunning lot, we Camdens,” Cade said facetiously. “So she’s a ballbreaker, this Lacey Kincaid?”

  Seth laughed. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, disabusing his brother of that unpleasant notion. He didn’t like hearing Lacey Kincaid referred to that way, for some reason.

  “I think she would have been a match for old H.J. and Granddad,” Seth went on. “Drive, determination, all business—that seemed to be what she was about. She found me clear out at the north end and hiked from the road about a quarter mile to get to me. In the heat, in a suit, in high heels.”

  “Just to talk about a road?”

  “That and to tell me we left some stuff in the attic and the barn over at the old place. And to ask if she could stay in the guesthouse so she doesn’t have to waste fifteen minutes driving to her site.”

  Cade laughed. “Fifteen minutes is too much?”

  “According to her. I know I haven’t heard the last on the road issue, but I didn’t come away feeling like she was trying to squeeze me. To tell you the truth, it was more like when the girls were little and they’d play dress-up and clomp around in GiGi’s heels—seems like Lacey Kincaid might be trying to fill shoes her feet aren’t big enough for.”

  But she had been a sight to see walking away from him across that field yesterday. At first he’d simply watched to make sure she didn’t break her neck on her way back to her car, but then he’d found his eyes glued to a tight, round little butt that had nearly made him drool.

  Of course that had only been the frosting on the cake because nothing about the front view of her had escaped him either…

 
“We left things at the old place?” Cade said, pulling Seth away from his wandering thoughts.

  “That’s what she claims. I thought everything was out of there, but apparently not. It can’t be much, though. I’ll take care of it.”

  “And what was that about her staying in the guesthouse?”

  “She wants to rent it. I told her she could just use it, that I didn’t care, but she’s insisting on paying us something for it.”

  “You don’t care if she stays in the guesthouse?” Cade said with an edge of suspicion to his tone. His curiosity was clearly piqued suddenly, because he added, “So somewhere between ballbreaker and little-girl-in-too-big-shoes—what’s this Lacey Kincaid really like?”

  “I only talked to her for about five minutes—just long enough for her to say what she wanted to say. I told you—she was all business. I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “What’s she look like?”

  Oh yeah, Cade was suspicious, all right…

  And what was Seth going to tell him? That Lacey Kincaid looked like a blonde goddess in a gray suit?

  That she had hair that seemed to drink in the sunshine and reflect it back?

  That he’d never seen eyes as sparkling a green—like twin emeralds sprinkled with stardust?

  That she had smooth, creamy, flawless skin and a small, perfect nose?

  That she had rose-petal lips that had looked too kissable to be talking business, and high cheekbones that had flushed adorably in the heat?

  That she was only about five feet four inches tall but stood straight and compact with just enough peeking from beneath her white blouse to make him have to concentrate on not looking closer?

  No way was he saying any of that to his brother.

  So instead he said, “Blond hair, green eyes, fills out a skirt about as well as anybody I’ve ever seen—she looks like any don’t-mess-with-me working girl.”

  “Who you won’t mind seeing out your back window for some time to come if you told her it was okay for her to stay in the guesthouse,” Cade goaded with a laugh.

  “She’s not hard on the eyes, no,” Seth admitted. “But she swears I won’t even know she’s here because she’ll be spending so much time working. And I believe that.”