Rugged Cowboys (Western Romance Collection) Read online

  "And what do you think, exactly, makes you the expert on this?"

  "You want to keep your job, Brad?"

  "Sure, but tell me first. What makes you so damn smart, what makes you so damn special? You think, just cause you're a woman, I ain't gonna stand up to you? That it? Or because your daddy built a company for you to inherit, that makes you some kinda expert on crew management?"

  Morgan's teeth grind together. She should fire him. But will that help? Or will it make her look weak? Maybe it makes her look like she's backing down to let him say that sort of shit. Or maybe, firing him makes it seem like she can't handle what he's got to say.

  Damned if you do and damned if you don't—she'd rather go with 'don't' until she's got a better option.

  "Get out there, and get to work." She bores holes in him with her eyes. "I want those grounds inspected. Crew three and four are mostly new guys, I want you there making sure that they're doing solid work."

  He looks like he's got something to say, but Morgan's expression doesn't leave any room for being questioned.

  "Yes, sir," he says. He says it in a way that tells Morgan that he neither thinks of her as 'sir' nor as someone who he particularly has to be polite or respectful towards.

  She lets out a breath as he goes out the door. He could be a good worker. He could handle most of it. The problem is, he thinks he's sitting at her desk, making her decisions and doing her job for her.

  Well, he isn't. He's crew manager, and that's not the same thing as "owner." Not even in a large company like this one. Not even when the new plant has yet to open and she technically still has overseeing to do back down in Nevada and Colorado.

  Because she's got to be up here to make sure that the plant gets built right. The managers in Nevada and Colorado know what they're doing. Morgan's father wouldn't have hired them if they didn't. And Morgan wouldn't have kept them on if they didn't know how to handle themselves without too much supervision.

  Because she was expanding, and that meant that the work back home needed to watch itself for a while. Just like the work here did, today.

  And if the crew manager, who's supposed to be keeping an eye on the new guys to make sure that they're not fucking it up, is hanging out here inside the trailer waiting for someone to bring problems to his attention, she can't exactly trust him to do his job when she's away for a day or two getting the Callahan ranch.

  Morgan takes a deep breath. Maybe this is a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't be leaving. After all, proof right there—the man apparently thinks having tits took too much brain power by itself, so she doesn't have much left to run a business with.

  But there are plenty of bigger mistakes that she could be making, and the biggest one would be not going to close this deal, and do it fast.

  The Callahan ranch would mean being able to double or triple the size of the Lowe Industrial campus, because they own the land to the east, and they own the land to the west.

  You own the space right in the middle, and now it's not two small campuses. It's the largest campus in the country, and for someone who only took the company over, officially, four months ago…

  That would be a real feather in Morgan's cap, no doubt about it.

  Chapter Three

  Visitors to the ranch aren't common. So though he can hear the sound of the engine driving up, Philip Callahan doesn't see much need to go out and see what was going on.

  The boys are already here, after all. He hadn't called anyone to come out and take a look at the horses, and nobody had called him to schedule something, either.

  That means that they were some kids who'd gotten hopelessly lost and were trying to find some space off the road to look at a map, or it was someone trying to sell something. In either case, Phil wasn't interested.

  He shifts another bundle of stretchers onto his shoulder. The weight hits him all at once, and then his body adjusts. Nice and easy, and then it's just a matter of keeping his steps short and his stride even on the way out to the truck. No problem.

  The problem comes in when you damn near take some woman's head off with your hundred-pound bundle of ties. She lets out a yelp and Philip jerks to a stop, steps back, and dumps them off his shoulder. They land with a loud bang that makes her yelp again.

  "Jesus! I'm sorry, I didn't see you, on account of the—"

  "No, I'm sorry. I'm Morgan Lowe. I've been trying to reach you?"

  Philip's face hardens. He has been avoiding calls from a woman, that's true.

  And what a woman. If he weren't a married man—well, once a married man—then she'd be somebody he would certainly want to talk to. His breathlessness might not entirely be the result of the exertion, nor entirely the result of the scare, either.

  "I'm not selling. Sorry you had to waste your time comin' out here. You need directions back to the highway?"

  "I'm not leaving without at least talking to you."

  "We've talked. I'm not selling. I've got work to do."

  Almost as soon as the words are coming out of his mouth, she's shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on one of the hooks, over the horses' bits and bridles.

  "Fine. We'll get this taken care of, then we'll talk."

  What exactly she intends to do isn't immediately clear. The woman probably only weighs as much as the whole bundle. How she plans to carry it is beyond him.

  "I don't need any help."

  "You're gonna take that from the ground onto your shoulders?"

  He looks down at it.

  "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to, ain't I?"

  She picks up one of the ties at the far end. "Two people, half the effort. Come on."

  Philip rolls his eyes. "Fine."

  She seems to think she's proving something. Fine. Let her prove whatever the hell she likes, it's not going to matter in the end, because regardless of how many bundles of stretchers, no matter how much she probes that she can do the work, he's not selling. That seems to have gone right over her head.

  Philip grabs the other end and stands up with it. She grabs hers, and they walk together. She seems to be struggling a little bit with it. The ties dig into her fingers—Philip has a good position to watch everything she's doing.

  The way her hips are swaying as she walks, the way her knees move together, the view of just the start of her thighs under that charcoal-colored skirt…

  And so, with all that on display, he's very careful to keep his eyes on anything else. The ties are digging into her hands something fierce, but when they finally lift it up a little ways more and she dumps it into the bed of the truck, she hops up into the back to guide it into the corner.

  And, to his surprise, aside from a little rubbing, she doesn't make any mention or hint at her hand hurting. Even though he knew it must have. There'd been a time that Sara might have helped that way, too.

  Before the baby, when he'd told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn't helping out around the ranch any more. Before he'd hired on three brothers looking for work.

  "How many more of them have we got to do before you'll talk to me?"

  "Oh, only eight or nine more before we take them over to the site. That should take most of the rest of the day, I think."

  She balls up her hands in a fist, and then flattens her hand back out and looks down at it. No blisters yet, he sees. She's got pretty hands. Soft hands. Hands that it'd be a shame to ruin, even if she is some corporate—

  Philip holds himself back. Corporate or not, it's impolite to think that way about a woman. And more than that, about a woman that looks like this… practically unconscionable.

  "You want to keep helping, I'm not going to stop you. I ain't selling my ranch, but if you think it'll help, you can do what you like." Philip opens up the chest by the door. "But you'll tear your hands up. Here's a pair of gloves, see how those fit."

  He tosses the old gloves at her. Once upon a time they were supple. A good pair of gloves. None of them at the ranch have had need for a pair of small, women's gloves in a lon
g time, and they've stiffened up. Still, they'll be nice and sturdy to keep the ties from digging into her hands.

  She fits them on, and they seem to be good enough. She takes the front, he takes the back. It's a mistake, same as it was the first time, because he's got all the opportunity in the world to watch her walk, watch her back-side moving, and get ideas that married men don't get.

  Ideas that make his chest hurt and make him want to call it a day. But he's not going to.

  The next bundle he fixes that mistake and takes the front for himself before she can get to it. But she does come back for the third bundle, and the fourth.

  And the fifth. And eventually ten bundles have filled up the back of the truck as much as he's comfortable doing. He settles into the driver's seat of the new truck.

  It's good and comfortable inside, climate controlled—everything that he could have asked for in a truck. The woman climbing into the passenger seat, notably without permission, might have been a welcome addition once upon a time, too.

  The seat-belt goes across her body in a way that draws attention to some of her more obviously attractive features. Philip tries his best not to notice. It's easiest that way, if he can try to ignore it. Try to ignore her, at least as much as possible.

  He shifts the truck into drive and starts.

  "I don't know what you think you're going to get by followin' me around."

  "Are you saying I'm not permitted on your property, Mr. Callahan?"

  "If you're going to help, then frankly, I don't give a damn where you are. Long as you know, in the end, the answer's still going to be the same."

  "Then I'm staying until you change your mind."

  "It's not going to happen."

  She should really learn to listen. The woman seems to have a stubborn streak in her a mile wide. It's a trait that Philip likes in a woman. A little bit of bite, a little fire.

  But it doesn't matter what he likes in women, because he's not interested in finding out what she's like, as a woman. He had his chance with women, and those days are gone now.

  He had his shot, and now she's up on that hill, by that sapling. A man is lucky to get one. He doesn't get two.

  Chapter Four

  Morgan Lowe is starting to feel really confident, today. Absolutely confident, in fact. He may not know it yet, but Phil Callahan is definitely starting to warm to her. She can see it right on his face.

  Whether it was the obvious assumption that she couldn't do the work, and she did, or it was just his general lack of regard for people in her profession, she couldn't say. But she could say one thing for sure, and that was that he was practically eating out of the palm of her hand.

  Now she just had to help out a little while longer, they'd sit down, and she'd start talking. By the time he was done, with the rapport she'd earned for herself, she'd be able to walk off with a deal signed. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Very soon indeed.

  She wipes the sweat from her forehead, lifts the rail up and slots it into the post. On the other side, Callahan seats the next post in the holes. Morgan can almost see, a ways down, the boys digging the holes.

  It's hard to be sure, but for all that they're far away, and for all that they're not being supervised, they're working hard enough. If Morgan had a hundred of them, then she'd have the factories built in no time.

  But she doesn't. She has an insubordinate cuss who can't be bothered to inspect the grounds.

  "You need a break?" Callahan's not breathing as hard as she is, but he's not breathing easy, either.

  "Not unless you need one," she says. She just ignores the burning in her chest. She's worked harder than this before. Working the factory floor was faster. You barely even had time to take a breath.

  He looks at her a long minute; Morgan thinks that he's trying to decide how she's feeling. He shouldn't be worrying about her, though. She's going to be fine. She's worked every job at Lowe Industrial, and half of her time was day labor. She's done this before. Worse than this.

  "Take five," he says. Growls, more like. "You want a cup of water?"

  "If you're offering, sure." She tries to make it sound like she hasn't thought of it, like she's completely nonchalant about it. Just the word water cools her throat. She can hardly imagine how the stuff will taste. Like manna from Heaven.

  Callahan gestures with his head for her to follow and heads for the truck. He pulls her seat forward and out of the back, like a miracle, comes a big orange jug. He pours a paper cup full of cool, clear water and hands it over to her.

  She pulls the gloves off to take the cup from him, and for a moment their skin touches. It's unpleasantly electric and for a moment she feels a shiver run through her. She wouldn't mind doing it again.

  Instead, she swallows down the water in two big mouthfuls, each better-tasting than she'd thought it was possible for water to taste.

  She leans against the truck.

  "Why are you hear, Mrs. Lowe?"

  "Miss," she says. She shows him her finger. It's bare. It's been bare since the engagement party where she'd found out that her taste in men wasn't very good, and ever since she'd found out that men weren't very reliable.

  You tend to find these things out when your fiancé gets caught with a woman's thighs wrapped around him. At your engagement party. By your father.

  Callahan looks at the hand and looks at her, and doesn't seem to know how to respond. "You didn't answer my question."

  "You know why I'm here. I'm here to talk to you about what it would take to buy your land."

  "I already told you—"

  "You're not selling. I know. You told me. Is it a matter of price? You can buy more land. Hell, we own a little plot north of here. Nothing we can do with it. Zoned agricultural, and in spite of our best efforts, that's not changing. We could sell it to you for a real sweetheart deal, plus a little extra for your troubles."

  He takes a breath and looks at her. It's troubling, the way he looks at her, because it's the way that Evan used to look at her, once. That, mixed in with the expression of a man who isn't going to sell you his property.

  "It's not the price. I'm sure you could afford what the land's worth."

  "The horses, then? They need a place to stay. That's absolutely true. They need a place, and you need a place to keep them."

  "That's absolutely true. It's not the horses."

  "What is it, then?"

  His eyes shift for a moment. Away from Morgan, over to the horizon. Only for a moment, as if some movement's caught his eye.

  "I ought to get back to work."

  Morgan slips the gloves back on, turning to look back. There's nothing moving on the horizon. Just a little hill, off in the distance. There's a little tree there, maybe only five feet tall. A little thing. But there's nothing to see there.

  Then she takes a breath. It's time to get back to work, he says. Well, he's right. It's time to get back to work, and if he's working, then she's working, because he hasn't said yes, yet. And he hasn't told her to leave.

  So she's going to make him see that she's serious about this. She's not just some girl, playing business-woman. That's what Brad thinks. That's what half the men she meets think. They take one look at her, barely five-two, only a hundred and five pounds on mornings when she's feeling a little bloated.

  And they see her like a five-year-old boy who's trying on his daddy's suit.

  Well, that's a load of shit, and plenty of men have learned their lessons much too late. Philip Callahan looks like a smart guy. A guy who can figure out which way the wind is blowing without too much trouble.

  She would hate to see Lowe Industrial blow him over, just because he decided he couldn't make a deal with a woman, just because she was a woman, or just because she was younger than him.

  But if that was what it came down to, then that would be what she did.

  She takes a breath and holds it as she hefts up a rail and slots it into the post. Callahan slots it into the other side. She picks up the
second rail and slots it in as well. Callahan slots it and drops the post into the hole.

  Then they move onto the next one. It's just the same procedure. Deep breath, lift, slot. Over and over again. She's got plenty of time to breathe, plenty of time to think, and plenty of time to know that no matter what happens, she's not letting this property get away from her.

  The first step to making a deal is knowing which way the wind is blowing. The second step is knowing what the other guy wants.

  That's where she's running into trouble. Phil Callahan is proving to be a difficult man to understand, because as far as she can tell, he doesn't want a whole hell of a lot of anything. What he wants, as far as she can tell, is to get this fence built.

  It's a shame that he's putting so much effort into it, too. Because in the end, all of this land is going to belong to her, and in spite of all the work she's doing now, she's not going to shed a tear when she has to rip these posts up and have them carted off.

  Because that's business, and this is just what she needs to do to get her business done. Simple as that.

  Chapter Five

  Philip Callahan gets up early, same as he does every day. But today, he's actually got to get dressed for something, which is a surprise. It's not even a Sunday.

  She made it sound like he would be doing her some big God damn favor. Well, if it's a favor then he'll do it. But there's no reason to think that it'll change his mind, in any case.

  Miss Lowe—the fact that she's unmarried throws a monkey-wrench in everything, because now she's not only young and attractive and everything that Callahan doesn't need in his life. Now, in addition to all of that, she's available, to boot.

  Miss Lowe seemed to have some very confused ideas about why he was there. Sure, it was about the money. If he didn't keep things going there, then he would be having all kinds of trouble.

  He'd have to pay the property taxes somehow. He'd have to buy food somehow. And all of that just expanded out into, he needed the ranch to be in business in order to stay there.