Cowboy Strong. Stacy Finz

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СКАЧАТЬ the meantime, she got to work on the chickpea salad, sliding a glance every now and again to Sawyer, who’d once again become engrossed in his laptop.

      “What’s so interesting?” she asked.

      “Working on a few things.” He flipped the cover down again, got up, and stuck his head in the fridge. “How long until that’s done?” He bobbed his head at the lamb.

      “At least two hours, I’m afraid.” She shoved him out of the way, opened the fridge, and peered inside. There wasn’t a whole lot there, not even the leftovers from her soufflé. “I could make you a couple of eggs.”

      “Nah, I’m not that hungry. The fridge thing is out of force of habit. I had a big breakfast over at Jace and Charlie’s after we moved the cattle this morning.”

      “I saw you,” she said. “You woke me up.”

      He looked at her and shook his head. “In the immortal words of my grandfather, ‘This ain’t no country club.’ Get used to it, princess.”

      He let his eyes wander over her cutoffs. She couldn’t tell whether he was sneering or checking her out. Whatever. She didn’t care, she told herself, and finished making her chickpea salad.

      “You have any plastic wrap?”

      He got off the stool, rummaged through one of the drawers, and pulled out a box. She covered the salad and stowed it in the refrigerator.

      “You don’t ever have to go into an office?” she asked, wondering how his journalism job worked.

      “Nope. I’m freelance, so I mostly work from home when I’m not on assignment.”

      “What does an assignment entail, exactly?” Most of the journalists she’d had experience with considered camping on her front lawn an assignment. She considered it trespassing.

      “I spent much of last year embedded with Special Forces in Afghanistan. The year before, I lived in India for three months while working on a piece about sex trafficking and two months in Brazil, chronicling the start-up of a fair-trade coffee plantation owned by the workers. It just depends on what the story is and how deep my editor wants me to go.”

      “It sounds dangerous.”

      “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s following a politician around and sleeping in a Marriott every night.”

      “And you moonlight as a cowboy.”

      “Not moonlight.” He jutted his chin at her. “Cowboying is a way of life. It’s what my family has done for more than a hundred years. It’s what we’ll continue to do long after I’m gone.”

      Journalist-cowboy. Interesting combination, Gina thought. “Not your dad?” Gina had only met Dan Dalton a few times; she mostly worked with Wendy. But he was about as citified as you could get. Designer suits and shoes that had never touched a cow patty.

      “Nope. My grandfather swore that ranching skipped a generation. Unlike his children, his grandkids were infected with the bug.”

      “And turning the ranch into a business court…you’re okay with that?”

      Sawyer jerked his head in surprise. “How’d you hear about that?”

      “Charlie and Aubrey.” She didn’t think she was divulging secrets. Aubrey had made it seem that everyone in the Dalton clan was onboard with the idea.

      “Let’s just say it’s a necessary evil to keep the place running.”

      “I thought beef was a billion-dollar industry.” She put her hands on her hips, enjoying turning his own words on him. Just a reminder that she could out-condescend him any day of the week.

      “It is. But on our scale—we only run about a hundred head—it’s barely enough to keep us afloat. Until we figure out a way for the ranch to make more money…we’re in the poorhouse.”

      She was surprised by the revelation as much as she was by his honesty and felt a twinge of guilt for taking a shot at him. “Are you at risk of losing it?”

      “Not yet,” he said and left it at that, making Gina wonder if the money situation at the ranch was more dire than he was even letting on.

      She didn’t press. It wasn’t any of her business. Besides, she didn’t have any sage advice to dole out. Don’t get accused of screwing someone else’s spouse or you’ll lose everything.

      Gina slid the lamb in the oven to bake for an hour and got started on steaming the couscous using one of Sawyer’s colanders snugly fitted over a pot. In her Malibu kitchen she would’ve used a traditional couscoussier to steam the wheat semolina. But here she had to improvise.

      Sawyer rested his elbows on the counter and followed her step-by-step. Even though millions of viewers tuned in every day to see her cook, something about him watching so closely unnerved her. It was as if he knew she was a colossal phony and he wanted to catch her using the wrong ingredient or burning something.

      “Anything new from ChefAid?” he asked, handing her the small box of star anise as she reached for it.

      “Like what? I told you we were meeting in September.”

      “Just wondered…you know, after the latest.”

      “What latest?”

      “You didn’t hear?”

      Gina cut him a look and his face went slightly pale.

      Shit.

      She lunged for his laptop.

      He rested his hand on the top before she could grab it.

      “Hear what?” she yelled, her pulse doing a tap dance. It was a pretty good guess that whatever Sawyer was talking about was more bad news. Perhaps staying off the internet to avoid the haters wasn’t such a good idea.

      She searched through her handbag for her phone. It had only been four or five hours since she’d last scrolled through her messages. But she’d seen lives ruined in the mere click of a keyboard.

      She tapped on her phone and sure enough, she had five missed calls, ten texts, and at least six emails marked urgent. She sat on one of the stools, girding herself for whatever new crisis was about to get thrown at her, reading each message.

      Sawyer stood over her shoulder. “Sorry, I thought by now you would’ve heard. But this time you’re not sticking me with the dishes.”

      Chapter 5

      Gina DeRose was a walking disaster. Like an eight on the Richter scale of calamities. While some men—like Sawyer’s two cousins—ran to women in trouble, he looked for the nearest exit. Unfortunately, in this case that would mean leaving his own house, which he’d actually considered the minute she’d gotten the news and subsequently blew up like a bottle rocket.

      She’d hightailed it into his bedroom and for the last twenty minutes had been yelling at someone—maybe his mother—on the СКАЧАТЬ