The Camden Cowboy

by Victoria Pade

  Then he’d told himself all the reasons why she’d been right not to let things go any further than they had.

  Seth decided to one-up his brother. “I was out with a woman last night. This is Northbridge’s Founder’s Day weekend, and I took Lacey Kincaid to yesterday’s events. We danced until after midnight.” And then came home to do more than dance…

  But he didn’t say that. There was something about Lacey, about what was happening between them, that he didn’t want to cheapen. That he wanted to keep private and just between the two of them.

  Apparently Cade had more on his mind, though, because he let the brotherly bantering end there and said, “I had dinner with GiGi last night—she hasn’t been herself since she got those journals you sent, and I thought it might do her some good to get out.”

  “Is something wrong with GiGi?” Seth asked, suddenly concerned for their grandmother’s health.

  “The journals are what’s wrong with GiGi.”

  “Should I not have sent them?”

  “No, it’s not that. In fact she told me something last night that she hasn’t told any of us, something that she said she’s tried to forget about since H.J. died, but now the journals confirm it.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Apparently during those last weeks with H.J.—when he was in and out of it, sometimes making sense and sometimes not—he told her about some things he’d done. Business things. How he’d wheeled and dealed to make things go his way. He talked about paying off politicians, tampering with a jury, driving people off land he wanted—”

  “The worst of what’s been said of him and of Gramps.”

  “GiGi said he also kept saying something about a record of things or maybe a record book—”

  “So he told her about the journals?”

  “That isn’t what he called them, and she thought he was talking more about there being a record of his life—like a religious kind of thing that might affect his afterlife or something. You know how H.J. was at the end—he was rambling and confused, he was seeing things and people who weren’t there, talking crazy a lot of the time and not making sense. GiGi said she didn’t pay any attention to the record-book talk, and she just hoped the more serious things he was saying weren’t true.”

  “But they were,” Seth said direly.

  “She’s only just scratched the surface of the journals, but she showed me a couple of things in what she’s read so far,” Cade said. Then, as if he were admitting something he didn’t want to admit, he added, “It isn’t good, Seth. In fact, it might be worse than what everyone’s always said about us.”

  Seth didn’t want to believe that. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was. But apparently the old man—and Gramps, too—didn’t let anything or anyone get in their way.”

  “And Dad and Uncle Mitchum?”

  “I don’t know yet. But what I do know is that just from the little I read last night, if anything in those journals ever got out, donations and charity work and funding wings in hospitals and buildings for colleges and the fact that our practices now are strictly on the straight and narrow wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Geez…”

  “Yeah. The guys we knew our great-grandfather and grandfather to be, might really—really—not have been the same guys they were when it came to building Camden Incorporated.”

  “So we can’t let anything in those journals get out,” Seth said, going back to his brother’s earlier comment.

  “No, we can’t,” Cade agreed. “But I’m not sure GiGi is going to let it go, either.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She’s rocked by this. She said she never paid much attention to the negative things that were said about us, that she chose to believe that what H.J. was confiding in her at the end wasn’t true. But now the blinders are off and some things might need to be made right.”

  “What things?” Seth asked, new concerns rising in him.

  “She wouldn’t say. She said she’s going to make sure she’s read through everything by her birthday and we’ll talk about it then.”

  “How shook up is she?” Seth said. “This isn’t going to cause her to stroke out or something, is it? I mean, I know she seems to be in good health, but she is going to be seventy-five and we can’t let old sins that weren’t even hers take a toll on her.”

  “I tried to get her to give me the journals, to stop reading them. I told her I’d go through them and just give her the Cliff Notes. But she wouldn’t even consider it. You know GiGi—”

  “Stubborn and probably thinking to protect us. So she’ll read the journals, try to filter out the worst and only give us the Cliff Notes.”

  Cade laughed. “Right. But beyond her being quiet and preoccupied—and showing the kind of determination she showed when she took us all in after the plane crash—I didn’t see any signs that this was taking a toll on her health. Her cheeks were still rosy, she spotted a loose button on my jacket that she had to sew and she’d baked me cookies to take home with me—”

  “Chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin?”

  “Oatmeal raisin.”

  “Damn you! I haven’t had GiGi’s oatmeal raisin cookies in a year!”

  “That’s what you get for living in Montana,” Cade said in a gloating tone. “Anyway, I think she’s okay, but I’ll keep an eye on her. I just thought I’d let you know that we dodged a bullet by finding those journals ourselves, and if anyone else knows we did—”

  “Lacey asked if there was anything in the trunk and I told her the truth. But I didn’t make the journals sound interesting at all. She’s probably forgotten by now. And no one but me saw them.”

  “Lacey Kincaid again. Huh…”

  “She’s was with me when I found the trunk,” Seth explained, a little annoyed by his brother’s suspicious tone.

  “Well, from here on we’d better keep it plenty quiet that those journals exist,” Cade said. “Even when it comes to Lacey Kincaid.”

  “No problem,” Seth assured.

  And that was the truth. When he was with Lacey the last thing on his mind was an old trunk, the journals that were inside of it, or what those journals might reveal about the sins of his forefathers.

  “And be warned,” Cade said. “When you come for GiGi’s birthday we’ll probably have to deal with this.”

  “Sure. In the meantime, don’t let GiGi get upset over any of it. Make sure she knows that we’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m doing the best I can, but she’s all up in arms already. Last night she said H.J. and Gramps should be glad they’re dead, because if they weren’t she might kill them herself. Something in the journals hit her too close to home. She said there was one thing that was personal, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to live with it now that she knows about it.”

  “What could that be?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. She wouldn’t elaborate. She pursed her lips together that way she does when she’s so mad she’s afraid of what she might say, and I know better than to push her when she does that.”

  “Her birthday ought to be interesting, then—is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  * * *

  After working all of Sunday morning in raggedy shorts and a tank top for the Founder’s Day picnic, Lacey showered and shampooed her hair, and changed into a lightweight, mid-calf-length black halter dress with a bright paisley print.

  She wasn’t sure about wearing the dress. Not only did it leave her arms and shoulders bare, it had an Empire waist with a neckline that dipped to within two inches of the band that ran just below her breasts. She wondered if it might be a little risqué for a small-town family picnic.

  But she loved the dress. It kept her cool, the skirt was
flowy and it made her feel feminine and about as far from work and business suits or construction-site jeans as she could get. And since the goal of the weekend was to escape work mode, she decided to wear it.

  She also left her hair to fall free around her shoulders—the way she never, ever wore it on the job—and applied a touch more blush and mascara than usual.

  “Holy cow! Look at you!” Seth said when he showed up at the guesthouse with picnic basket in hand, ready to go.

  “Too much?” she asked, gratified by his response but worrying again that she’d overdone it.

  “Too much of what? You look great!” he assured her, his eyes going up and down her body as if he couldn’t get enough.

  And because of that Lacey opted to stay just the way she was.

  The Founder’s Day picnic festivities were held at the old covered bridge that was the town’s namesake. It had been recently refurbished, and the entire area around it developed into a lush park.

  There were games galore for the many kids in attendance and some for the adults, too. There were stands selling hot dogs, ice cream, snow cones, cotton candy, pretzels, funnel cakes and a number of other treats. There was a raffle for a motorcycle, a craft fair, and contests for the best the local cooks had to offer in the way of cakes, pies, and home-pickling of everything imaginable.

  After a full afternoon taking it all in, Seth and Lacey did what everyone else did—they claimed a spot for themselves on the grassy knoll, spread out the blanket they’d brought and settled in to eat the picnic supper Seth had packed. Cold fried chicken and potato salad helped occupy them while they waited for darkness to fall and the fireworks display that promised to be more elaborate than the one on the Fourth of July had been.

  “I can see why my brothers both love this town,” Lacey told Seth, as they each sipped a glass of the wine he’d brought. “It’s like one big family here, isn’t it?”

  “Yep,” Seth confirmed.

  “Lots of couples, though.”

  “Yep,” he repeated.

  “Cuts down on the possibilities of finding someone yourself if you’re single, doesn’t it?”

  Lacey watched Seth’s handsome face stretch into a slow, knowing grin. “Are you headed somewhere with this, Kincaid?”

  She was, and since he’d been straightforward with his questions about her history with men the night before, Lacey shouldn’t have been surprised that he would call her on her own beating around the bush.

  But her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she couldn’t help it—the man was gorgeous, personable, fun to be with, sexy, successful, intelligent, kind and caring and even more, and she couldn’t help wondering why he was single.

  So she asked him point-blank.

  “How come you’re not married or engaged or with someone?”

  “I’m right here with you,” he said, as if she were missing the obvious, teasing her.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Stretched out on his side on the blanket, dressed in jeans and a white Henley T-shirt, he was the very picture of relaxation. Before answering her he sat up, leaning most of his weight on one hip, his elbow braced on top of an upraised knee.

  Then he shrugged a shoulder that filled out the Henley impeccably and looked her in the eye to answer. “You’re right, small-town living isn’t the best for dating—everybody knows everybody, if you haven’t hit it off with anyone by the time you’ve been around the block a few times, you aren’t going to find a whole lot more prospects in the pool.”

  “So you have dated people here?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Some really terrific women. Just not the One.”

  “And outside of Northbridge?” Lacey persisted.

  “Sure,” he repeated. “I’ve dated outside of Northbridge, too.”

  “And the One wasn’t in either place?”

  “Actually, the one I thought was the One was in both places—we met in Denver but I didn’t date her there. Then I did start dating her when she came to Northbridge to get my computer network set up so I could run and monitor our other farms and ranches across the country from here.”

  Now they were getting somewhere…

  “She was a computer techie?” Lacey asked.

  “She was when I met her the first time in Denver. Two years later when she came here, she was the head of our whole computer division.”

  “She went from mere techie to head of the whole division in only two years?”

  “She was smart. And ambitious. Driven,” he said emphatically. Lacey knew he was saying that she and this Charlotte person were alike in that way.

  But it didn’t seem like a compliment.

  “Charlotte and I met when I was still working and living in Denver. A hacker got into my system and she had to come in to work on it. She and I had a few late nights working, sort of had a good time together, but that was it. Then I came here and needed a much bigger system set up. She said that when she saw the order, she decided to do it herself—even though by then she could have just sent another low-level techie.”

  “She came herself because she liked you,” Lacey said, hoping to hide the flash of jealousy that had suddenly come out of nowhere.

  “Yeah, that was pretty much what she said. But I liked her, too—we’d joked around and talked a lot when we were working together before. We had some things in common. But she worked for me, and you know how dicey that can be, so before she came here I’d figured I better not get into anything personal with her.”

  “Something here made it less dicey?”

  “No, I knew it was still dicey. But…I don’t know, things here seemed different somehow. More casual. Not so restricted. And Charlotte and I still had the same…I suppose you could say chemistry…that we’d had the first time around.”

  “So the second time the two of you crossed paths one thing led to another,” Lacey said for him.

  “Charlotte actually instigated things, so I sort of lost sight of the risks of getting involved with an employee and, yeah, one thing led to another.”

  “Don’t tell me she ended up suing you for harassment or something.”

  “No, that wasn’t Charlotte’s style. But she definitely saw an opportunity to become part of the Camden family, and she wasn’t about to let it pass her by.”

  “She became part of the family? You married her?” Lacey said with some shock. She’d never asked if he was divorced.

  “No, it didn’t get that far. She spent a lot of time here getting my system in working order and connecting it to what was being set up on each of the other farms around the country. By the time she’d finished, we were pretty hot and heavy, so we decided to try to keep it going long-distance. We did, for about eight months. Then we got engaged,” he explained. “It was after that that things took a turn.”

  “How?”

  Seth drank some of his wine, studied the glass for a moment and then said, “I knew Charlotte worked a lot—that was how she rose through the ranks as fast as she did. And I knew she was working a lot while she was in Denver and I was here, but I was under the impression that that was just how she kept herself busy because we weren’t together.”

  “But it was more than that.”

  “Work was her priority. Everything—and everyone—took a backseat to that. And,” he added in a voice filled with regret, “she wanted me to be more like that. More driven. More ambitious. More like she was. It didn’t come out until after we were engaged, but she hated Northbridge, she hated country life. And she really, really hated that I’d handed over the CEO seat to Cade—”

  “You were the CEO of Camden Incorporated and you handed it over to someone else?”

  “My younger brother Cade,” Seth confirmed. “As the oldest of the kids I stepped into it initially just by virtue of being the first
of us to fully get on board with the company after college—it was how H.J. had it set up. He was determined that Camden Incorporated stay a family business. He arranged for us to have mentors he trusted, people to help us, advise us, but as each of us finished school and went to work, we went to work in a position of power. I was first, so I went in as head of everything.”

  “Only you didn’t want that particular position of power—CEO.”

  “Right. I didn’t want in on the business end of things—at least not any more than I have to be with the agricultural part of Camden Incorporated. Even though I knew I’d have to deal with business, I wanted that to be secondary to my working the ranch. So when Cade got his MBA and was ready to come on board, it just made more sense for him to become CEO so I could move here and do what I do.”

  “But Charlotte didn’t approve of what you do?”

  “She wanted me to kick it into gear—that’s what she said. She figured my rightful place was as CEO, that together we could—and should—head the company.”

  “She was ambitious,” Lacey marveled.

  “Ambitious. She worked all the time. And I wasn’t about to stage some sort of coup in my own family or become the business titan she thought I should become—which was really the only way she could respect me, she said. What it boiled down to was that the One was the Wrong One, and I broke it off with her.”

  “Oh, those engagements,” Lacey said, making a joke to lighten the dour tone that had developed. “Sometimes they bring out the worst in people.”

  Seth smiled, going along with her attempt at humor. “I guess we should be glad it was the engagements that brought out the worst in Charlotte and Dominic, and that we didn’t end up married to them before we saw it.”

  “That would have been much worse,” Lacey agreed.

  “So that’s how come I’m not married or engaged or with someone,” he summed up.

  “And why you’re trying to corrupt my work ethic?” she teased.

  He laughed and gave her a wicked wiggle of his eyebrows. “Yes. Ever since Charlotte I’m determined to corrupt every overworked girl I come across by forcing them to take a day off.”