Wild Ride Rancher
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Maureen Child
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HarlequinOne
Liam Morrow had better things to do than sit in on a meeting with some spoiled rich girl just because she’d found a new cause. But there was no way out and he knew it.
Irritation roared into life inside him, and Liam did his best to tamp it down. It did no good to get riled up at something he couldn’t change. No matter what, Liam believed in doing his duty. He’d been raised to believe that a man’s word meant everything. And he’d given his word to Sterling Perry a long time ago.
“This is what happens when you owe somebody,” he muttered.
At least that old debt was nearly paid. In a month Liam would be free and clear and running his own place rather than being foreman on one of the biggest ranches in Texas.
“What was that?”
Liam looked at the man walking alongside him. Mike Hagen was new to Texas—hell, new to the Perry Ranch. But he was catching on quick, and that was a good thing, since he was set to become the new foreman here when Liam left at the end of the month.
Mike was no-nonsense and all about the job. He had ranching in his blood, just like Liam, which was probably why the two of them had hit it off right from the start. The only real difference between them was that Mike was a family man, with a wife and a baby on the way, and Liam was alone. By choice.
“It’s nothing,” Liam said. “Just grumbling to myself.” He glanced up at the cloud-studded sky. “It’s that meeting in the city I told you about.”
“Ahh.” Mike nodded sagely.
“Yeah, I hate getting pulled away from the ranch. Especially when we’re busy. Hell, I’ve been trying to get out of this particular meeting for a couple of weeks.”
Mike snorted a laugh. “Of course you hate going to the city. Why else would we be working with horses and cattle rather than people?”
“Good point.” It was going to make it easier for him to leave the Perry Ranch knowing he was leaving the responsibility for it into good hands. Mike would take care of the land, the animals and the men who kept it all going. Sterling Perry, the owner, liked being called a rancher, but he did it from behind a desk, trusting his employees to do the actual work.
Not so different from a lot of the big ranchers in Texas, Liam told himself. In fact, the bigger the spread the less likely it was for the owner to be involved. Whether they had loved ranching when they first got into it or not, most of the owners were seduced away from the day-to-day workings by their own success, drawn into board meetings and investments and God knew what else. But that wasn’t how Liam was going to run his own place.
He’d waited too long for a ranch of his own. And just a year ago, he’d finally achieved that dream. It was almost time to start living it.
Now, Liam took a deep breath and scanned the familiar yard, the outbuildings, the barns and stables. It would be hard leaving. Even strange at first. The fact was, he was proud of this ranch and all he’d done here. But it was time to move on and claim his own dreams—so he was grateful that he liked and trusted Mike Hagen. It would make it easier to walk away.
While they walked across the yard, he saw Mike lean down to pick up a hamburger wrapper tumbling along the ground, driven by the sparking wind. Mike crumpled it in one fist and looked around as if he could identify the cowboy who’d let his trash get away from him. Liam nodded to himself in approval. If the man cared about the little stuff, he’d be on top of the big stuff, as well.
“You never did say—what made you decide to leave Montana for Texas?” Liam asked.
Mike shrugged and stuffed the wadded-up paper into his jeans pocket to throw away later. “My wife’s family is here and she was pining for them. With her pregnant and all, she wanted to be closer to her mother. So, being offered the job on a ranch like this one made the move easy.”
“It is a fine place,” Liam agreed, letting his gaze once again sweep the yard, the stables and the big main house that made up the Perry Ranch.
It was a damn showplace, but in his mind, Liam saw his own ranch. For the last year, he’d been doing two jobs—his responsibilities here and then putting his heart and soul into the future he was creating for himself. He had the land, he’d hired men and a foreman. He’d started stocking the ranch with cattle and the horses that would be the bedrock of his place.
All Liam had to do was hold on for one more month—even if that meant taking meetings with spoiled rich girls like Chloe Hemsworth. Sterling Perry had insisted Liam meet with the woman, and just remembering that conversation from a week ago could still put Liam’s back up. He replayed it in his head.
“I need you to talk to this woman,” Sterling had told him that day, tapping his fingertips against his desktop. “She’s been calling here nearly every damn day, and I’m tired of getting her messages. I finally told her that I was leaving the decision up to you.”
Not a surprise, Liam had thought then. He’d been tossed under the bus before by a boss who only wanted the money the ranch brought him, not the satisfaction of running it.
Striving for patience, Liam had kept a tight grip on the brim of his hat and said, “I’m your foreman, Sterling. I handle the ranch, not meetings with socialites.”
Sterling’s eyes had narrowed on him. “As my foreman, you handle what I say you handle. And until next month, you still work for me.”
Exasperated, Liam had huffed out a breath and slapped his cowboy hat against his right thigh. Frustration had swept through him, but he’d fought it down. One more month and he’d be his own damn man and call his own shots. “Fine. How do you want it handled?”
Instantly, Sterling had relaxed and an affable expression settled on his features. It was deceptive, of course. Sterling Perry was many things but affable wasn’t one of them. He was stubborn and ruthless in business, but he had a way of keeping his opponents off guard until it was too late for them to get the best of him. Sterling had amassed a fortune through diversification. To him, this ranch was nothing more than a place to live and lord it all over everyone else. Sterling was, as they said in Texas, all hat no cattle.
“Take the meeting, hear her out,” Sterling had said. “If her idea doesn’t seem workable, tell her no. Seems crazy to me, but I wouldn’t be running it. Mike Hagen would be in charge once you’re gone.”
“Well, hell,” Liam had argued. “Have Mike meet with her.”
“He hasn’t been here long enough to know what would work and what wouldn’t,” Sterling had pointed out and narrowed his gaze on him. “And you know it.” He’d picked up a pen and a sheaf of papers, effectively dismissing Liam. Then he’d glanced up again. “I’ve told her the final call is yours. You’re the one who knows the ranch best.”
A real rancher would have been embarrassed to admit that he didn’t know his own ranch as well as his foreman. Not Perry.
One more month, Liam had told himself that day. After that, whatever happened at the Perry Ranch wouldn’t matter to him. But even as he’d thought it, he’d known that wasn’t entirely true.
His own father had once been foreman here, and Liam had practically grown up on this ranch. It would always mean something to him even though it would no longer be his main focus. So he still would look out for the ranch’s long-term interests. Even while planning for his own.
“Fine. I’ll meet her in Houston,” Liam had said as he’d watched his boss. “I’ll give her a half hour. No more.”
Sterling had shrugged. “Works for me.” Then he’d busied himself with paperwork, and Liam took the not so subtle hint.
He’d stalked out of the big man’s office and closed the door behind him. Meeting Chloe Hemsworth wasn’t high on his list of things to do since here at the ranch they had two mares ready to foal and the vet coming to start inoculations on the cattle, not to mention the fact that Liam was busy training his own replacement. “How the hell am I supposed to work in a meeting with some society woman with too much time on her hands?”
“She’s not like that.”
Liam had stopped and turned toward the grand staircase that curved in an elegant sweep up to the second floor of the mansion. Esme Sterling had stood at the bottom of those stairs, and she smiled as she walked toward him.
Esme was tall, with long, straight blond hair, blue eyes that never missed much and an easy smile. In Liam’s experience, she was the one exception to the rule that rich, high-society females were useless. And she was a friend.
“Didn’t see you there,” Liam had said, grateful he hadn’t been complaining about her father out loud.
“Yes, I know.” She’d shrugged, tucked her hands into the pockets of her pale gray slacks and said, “I found out a long time ago that you can learn all kinds of interesting things if people don’t realize you’re around.”
Liam had grinned. “Sneaky, are you?”
“I prefer covert,” Esme had said, still smiling. “Look, Liam, I know my father can be...challenging.”
He snorted. As a PR executive at Perry Holdings, Esme spent most of her time explaining her father’s actions and guarding the family company. But of all the Perry kids, Esme had always been a friend.
“But he’s right in this. I know you don’t want to talk to Chloe, but she’s not what you think she is.”
Not convinced, he’d snorted again. “You mean she’s not the daughter of a rich man with more money than sense?”
“I didn’t say that,” Esme had allowed. “But Chloe’s more than that. She’s working hard to make a life for herself, and I would think you more than anyone could understand that.”
He could and that bothered him. Still, in his experience, wealthy women were mostly concerned with their hair and being seen at all the right parties.
“She’s really nice and very driven,” Esme had said, then paused. “Like you.”
“Driven?” Liam had been unconvinced. He and Esme had been friends for a long time, so he didn’t take offense at the word. But he also didn’t believe it applied to him.
“Oh, please.” She’d waved one hand as if wiping away his disbelief. “You’ve always known exactly what you want, and you’ve devoted yourself to getting it.”
All right, he’d silently conceded, maybe driven was the right word to describe him. Liam had planned out his life a long time ago, and finally that plan was becoming a reality. “Okay, I’ll give you that. But how are Chloe and I in any way alike?”
“Because she’s plotting her own course, too. She’s a friend, Liam, and all she’s asking is to be heard.”
“About a camp for little girls. On the ranch.”
One eyebrow had lifted. “So only little boys are allowed to dream of being a cowboy?”
Neatly boxed in, he’d bowed his head. “You got me. I’ll hear her out.”
“And give her a fair chance,” Esme had said.
“And give her a fair chance.”
“Thanks, that’s all I’m asking.” Esme had walked closer. She’d reached up, kissed his cheek and patted his shoulder at the same time. “Now, don’t pout because you gave in. It’s so unattractive.”
He’d laughed and left the house, shaking his head at the Perry family. Sterling got his way through intimidation. Esme did the same thing with a smile and reason. He preferred Esme’s way.
“Hey, man!” Mike elbowed him and instantly Liam came up out of his thoughts like a drowning man breaching the water’s surface. Memories of those conversations with Sterling and Esme washed away, and he faced the foreman-to-be.
“What?”
Mike laughed shortly. “You were somewhere else.”
“Yeah, too much on my mind,” he admitted, and couldn’t wait for the day when all he had to think about was his own ranch, his own life, his own damn future.
Until then, Liam would meet the Hemsworth woman, hear her out and then get back to the real world of ranching.
Liam and Mike walked across the ranch yard toward the corral where one of the men was putting a steel-gray stallion through its paces. The horse was stubborn as hell, didn’t like a bridle and pretty much thought running in circles in a corral was a waste of time. Liam couldn’t blame him. It was exactly how he felt about the last several years.
Mike, already comfortable in his new role as “almost foreman,” climbed the corral fence to lend the cowboy a hand. Liam watched the show, but his mind wasn’t on the horse or the men in front of him. Instead, he thought about his own place, and how damned eager he was to be there.
Liam threw a long glance over his shoulder at the big house that Sterling had inherited from his late wife. Sterling Perry might not be much of a rancher himself, but the man had always loved this place and he knew how to put on a show. The house was big enough for four families to live in. It gleamed such a bright white when the sun hit it, a man could be blinded. Not to mention the hot Texas sun glancing off the million or so windows on the place. It was showy and fancy and suited Sterling down to the ground.
On Liam’s own place though, the house he’d had built was a two-story log house with wide porches that wrapped around both the upper and lower floors. It was big enough for the family he might decide one day to have, but not so damn big a kid could get lost in it.
A flicker of shame slapped him as he told himself he shouldn’t be thinking badly of Sterling Perry. The man had his problems, but he’d given Liam a chance when he’d needed it. For that, he’d always owe the older man.
A distant rumble caught his ear, and Liam turned his head to the southwest. Thunderheads were gathering on the horizon, big and black and threatening. As if proving itself to him, the coming storm sent a gust of wind to slap at him. The scent of rain was on that wind, and everything inside him told Liam they were in for a hell of a storm. No surprise, he thought, the weathermen hadn’t forecasted it at all.
Shaking his head, he called out, “Hey, Mike!”
His replacement turned toward him. “Yeah?”
“I’m heading into Houston for that meeting. Going to try to beat that storm back home. If I don’t, you make sure the yearlings are locked down, you hear?”
He waved. “Don’t worry about it, Liam. I’ve got it.”
Nodding, Liam briefly lifted one hand and then headed for his black truck. Mike had already proved to him that he knew what he was doing, and that he’d be a good foreman once Liam’s time here was done. And if Mike needed help in the short time Liam would be gone, then the other cowboys could step in.
Soon, he told himself, this ranch wouldn’t be his problem. Soon, he’d be working at his own spread instead of simply checking in with his own foreman every couple days. He steered the truck down the oh so familiar drive and wondered how many thousands of times he’d driven this route over the years. Then he figured it didn’t matter. He hit the Bluetooth speed dial, listened to the ring and when the foreman at his own ranch answered, Liam started talking. “Joe, you get everything tied down over there? Looks like a beast of a storm headed in.”
“Just saw that, boss.”
Liam smiled to himself. If there was one thing you could count on with a man who worked the land, it was that he always kept a sharp eye on the skies. Hell, weather was the one thing a rancher—or a farmer—couldn’t control. So when there was a potential enemy always ready to rain down misery on you, well, that kept a man permanently on his guard.
“The boys are bringing in the mares now,” Joe said. “Looks like we’ve got some time yet. Heck, storm might pass us altogether. But if it doesn’t, we’ll have everything set before it hits. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not,” Liam lied. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his foreman or the other men working for him, it was only that he’d feel a hell of a lot better if he was there, taking care of things himself.
He’d worked most of his life toward getting a ranch of his own where he would call the shots. He’d made sharp investments years ago, patented a couple of ideas he and his friends had come up with while he was at MIT and now had enough money to do what his heart had always demanded.
Funny how that had worked out. Liam’s father had been the Perry ranch foreman for years, and when he died, Sterling had offered to put Liam through college with the understanding that once he graduated, Liam would come back to the ranch and work off the debt as foreman. With no other options, since his father had left more debts than money, Liam had gratefully accepted the deal.
And it was that college education and what it had enabled him to do that was allowing Liam to finally strike out on his own. He’d come out of MIT with a degree in genetics, and enough money to do what he wanted. Now he was set to undertake the breeding program he’d always dreamed of. By the time he was finished, people would be clamoring to buy mares from his herd.
There were four prize mares in foal on his ranch right now, the beginnings of that remuda he’d been working toward, and he sure as hell didn’t want some storm coming in and wiping it all away before he had a shot to enjoy it. “I’ll come by once the storm blows over,” he told Joe.
He hung up and noticed the wild oaks lining the Perry Ranch drive were beginning to do a dip and sway in the rising wind. Scowling some, he cursed Chloe Hemsworth for dragging him away from what was important for a meeting about some camp.
Liam had never met Chloe, but he knew her type of woman. Money. Pedigree. Always moving from some charity dinner to a luncheon at the “right” place with the “right” people. She’d run with high society until she’d up and decided to open a business in Houston. According to Sterling, Chloe was running her own event planning business out of the city now.
“Figures,” he muttered, steering his truck onto the road that would take him into the city. “The woman’s been doing nothing but partying most of her life. Who better to throw the damn things?”
He didn’t know much about her. Only that she’d been calling the Perry Ranch almost daily for weeks to pitch her idea for a cowgirl camp.
Liam had no problem with women as working ranch hands. Hell, he had a couple women working for him at the Perry place. What he didn’t like was the idea of a bunch of young kids running around a ranch where they would disrupt the workdays and, worse yet, get hurt. But Sterling had ordered him to take the meeting with Chloe and hear her out. If Liam approved her ideas, Sterling would go along with it.
“Just another good reason to stop being anybody’s foreman,” he muttered.
His tires whined along the asphalt, and in his rearview mirror, those clouds looked darker and bigger. “This is going to be the shortest damn meeting on record.”
By the time he hit Houston, Liam was on edge. The hairs at the back of his neck were standing up as the air felt electrified by the coming storm. Or maybe, he told himself, it was just this meeting that was riding him.
He didn’t much care for rich, useless women trying to carve out a name for themselves. This Chloe had probably never worked a real job in her life, and was no doubt setting up shop in some fancy office where she could pretend to be the boss while she ordered a bunch of minions around. Hell, Sterling should have taken the meeting himself.
He steered around slower traffic, mumbling to himself. “Just get in, hear her out, say no and get back to the ranch. That’s all you have to do.”
And it was more than enough. Liam was no stranger to rich women. Hell, before he’d had money of his own, he’d come across quite a few. In Texas, you couldn’t take a step without stumbling across an oil or cattle princess. He’d even hooked up with one for a while when he was in college. Liam had believed she was different. Had thought there was a future for them somewhere down the line. Until he’d had the rug pulled out from under him. After that knock on the head and heart, Liam had learned his lesson. Wealthy, self-involved females were like Christmas ornaments. Shiny, but empty inside.
He drove into the downtown, cursing every roll of the wheel. Cities were all right for some people, but give him the empty roads of the country any day.
“Too many damn people,” he muttered, and spotted the building that would be the new Houston home of the Texas Cattleman’s Club.
They were spreading out from the original site in Royal, and there was already a driving fight for leadership of the new club. As a wealthy ranch owner himself, he’d be joining as soon as the club was up and running, but Liam wasn’t interested in being in charge of the thing. Let the old lions of Texas fight over the club like it was fresh meat.
“Nice place, though.” Even if it was in the city. He’d been to the TCC in Royal, and it was a low-slung building filled with history.
This new TCC was once a three-story boutique hotel now being rehabbed by Perry Construction. Liam had a key to the place, since as Sterling Perry’s foreman he often had to come into the city with instructions for the construction crew.
When it was finished, it’d be impressive. The third floor was bedrooms for the club president and the chairman of the board. The second floor was going to be conference rooms and offices for the TCC officers. There was still a lot of work to do on the place, but Liam knew that at least one of the suites on the top floor was finished, because Sterling had insisted on having a place for either him or other board members to stay if they had to. Sterling’s insistence on his and his friends’ comfort was no surprise.
Still, he turned his head from the club to the old, brick office building across the street. Liam checked the GPS just to make sure, but yeah. That was Chloe Hemsworth’s address. Surprised, Liam studied the building. It had a lot of years on it, but looked sturdy enough. It wasn’t what he’d pictured. He’d imagined a rich girl would want some plush, sleek, penthouse office in a modern building.
But wherever the hell she was, he had to take this meeting. Frowning, he climbed out of his truck, and tugged his hat brim down low over his eyes. The wind was still kicking, and the sudden gusts were enough to snatch a man’s hat and send it to Albuquerque. Stepping around the people hurrying along the sidewalk, Liam headed for the office where the words It’s a Party were scrawled across a wide front window in bright pink paint. Shaking his head, he opened the glass door, stepped inside and stopped dead.
This he hadn’t been prepared for.
A woman—Chloe?—was bent over, picking something up off the floor. His gaze locked on that luscious curve of behind, showcased in a short, black skirt. She glanced at him over her shoulder, sent him a bright smile and said, “Hi! Can I help you?”
Slowly, she straightened up and the view only got better. She wore a dark blue, off the shoulder blouse, and her long, light brown hair lay in loose waves that kissed those bare shoulders. She wore sky-high black heels, and her gorgeous legs were tanned. Her amber eyes were wide, her mouth still curved in a welcoming smile, and all Liam could feel was the heat swamping his body.
He’d seen pictures of her of course. Like every other wealthy woman, Chloe’s face was in the society sections of the Houston newspapers, and splashed all across the news website he checked every day. But she was even more gorgeous in person. Every inch of him felt tight and hot, and when she talked, he realized he hadn’t heard a word.
“Sorry. What?”
She stared at him, and Liam saw a flicker of the heat that still had his body at a slow burn.
“I’m Chloe Hemsworth,” she said just a little breathlessly.
That voice conjured up all sorts of interesting images in his mind, and his body responded to them instantly. She was exactly the kind of woman he avoided—and he wanted her. Bad.
Liam knew he was in deep trouble.
