Her Cowboy Reunion. Ruth Logan Herne

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СКАЧАТЬ she added softly.

      “It won’t be this time.” Lizzie strode toward the freshly built stables. “Not with someone willing to put in the effort. It wasn’t horses that brought down Claremorris,” she reminded Corrie, the stout African American woman who had raised Lizzie and her two sisters at the stately Kentucky horse farm. “It was greed and dishonesty. This will be different, Corrie. You’ll see.”

      “I’ll pray it different, right beside you,” Corrie declared. “Then we’ll see, Sugar. You explore your new place. I’m going to see if there’s a restroom close by.”

      Lizzie walked toward the classic U-shaped stable configuration while Corrie disappeared into the house. Two equine wings stretched from opposite ends of the central barn. A row of stable doors faced the groomed square of grass that was surrounded by a hoof-friendly walking area. Six windows lined the face of the central barn, facing the equine courtyard. Curtains in the upper windows suggested living quarters, much like they’d had in their Kentucky stable. The whole concept was modeled after the Celtic horse farms her great-grandparents had known in Ireland. Uncle Sean might not have liked the newspaper publishing business that made the family’s fortune, but he clearly appreciated their Irish roots.

      A horse nickered from its stall. Another answered softly.

      Then quiet stretched as if wondering about her. Testing her.

      Footsteps approached across the gravel. She turned.

      A cowboy strode her way, looking just as classic as the ranch around him. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Narrow-hipped. And...familiar. As if—

      Lizzie pushed that thought aside. She’d loved a cowboy once, with all the sweet intensity of first love, but that was a dozen years and a lot of heartache past. And yet—

      The cowboy drew closer.

      He raised his head and looked at her, as if throwing down a challenge. And she knew why.

      Heath Caufield. Her first love, with his coal-black hair and gray-blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to see right through her and found her wanting.

      Her heart went slow, then sped up.

      Adrenaline buzzed through her. She stared at him, and he stared right back. Then he said two simple words. “You came.”

      “You’re here.”

      “I live here.”

      “You worked for my uncle?” None of this made any sense. Her uncle Sean hadn’t had contact with Lizzie’s lying, scheming father in decades. He’d purposely gone off on his own after serving in the Marines, as far from the Fitzgerald News Company as he could get. He’d spurned the newspaper empire, took his inheritance from Grandpa Ralph and gone west. And that was all she knew because that was all Corrie had ever told her. So how’d he hire Heath?

      “I’ve been here twelve years. Been manager for three.”

      She flushed.

      He didn’t seem to notice her higher color. Or he simply ignored it. “I came here the same time you went off to Yale to get your fancy degree in journalism like your daddy and grandpa. How’s that working out for you, by the way?”

      He looked mad and sounded madder, as if the demise of her family business, horse farm and estate was somehow her fault. It wasn’t, and she didn’t owe Heath any explanations. In her book, it was the other way around, but she’d put the past behind her years ago. She had to. He’d be wise to do the same. “Journalism with an MBA on the side. From Wharton. And enough expertise with horses and business to handle this, I expect.”

      Her words and Ivy League degrees didn’t seem to impress him, but she wasn’t here to impress anyone. She was here to do a job, a job assigned to her by her dying uncle. If she and her sisters put in a year working the equine side of Pine Ridge Ranch and brought it out of the red and into the black, his estate would be split four ways, according to the lawyer’s formal letter. Her, her two sisters, and the current farm manager, who appeared to be Heath Caufield.

      His look went from her to the stunning barn behind her, then back. “Twenty-eight horses, with eight of them bred to championship lines. And you show up on your own. Where are Charlotte and Melonie?”

      His attitude caused a hint of anger to fire up inside her. Should she snap back?

      No. There was nothing to be achieved in that. She kept her face and her voice even. “They’ll be along. They had things to finish up. And while they’ll be living here, don’t expect them to take on major horse work. Char just finished her veterinary degree and Melonie doesn’t do well in a barn.”

      “She’ll adjust.”

      The lick of anger burned a little brighter. “I believe Uncle Sean’s will said that Charlotte, Melonie and I had to live here for at least a year to earn our bequests. And that we needed to focus on getting the horse breeding business up and running or sell it off. Correct?”

      He held her gaze with hard eyes and nodded. Slowly.

      “Trust us to disburse the jobs as we see fit. They’ll do their share, but make no mistake about it, Heath.” She folded her arms and braced her legs because if there was one thing she was sure about, it was her ability to run horse from every aspect of the business. “I’ll be the one putting in the time in this stable. With whatever help you have available.”

      “Help’s tight at the moment. We’ve got one last herd of sheep going into the hills since the government reneged on our grazing rights, and that leaves us short down here. For the next six weeks at least.”

      “Then we’ll have to figure things out,” she told him. “Because the girls won’t be here for a few weeks, either.” She didn’t tell him why she was available at a moment’s notice, how the illustrious corporation her great-grandfather began had fired her as soon as the Feds indicted her father on multiple charges of embezzlement and money laundering. No publisher in today’s struggling print economy wanted their name connected to Tim Fitzgerald’s misdeeds. She was guilty by association. End of story.

      Not out here. Not on this ranch. Or so she’d thought until she came face-to-face with Heath again. Who’d have thought her road less traveled would lead to this?

      Not her. But that was okay because she’d grown up since then, and this ranch, those beautiful horses...

      This job was made for her. She knew it. She was pretty sure Heath knew it, too. And if they both stayed calm, cool and collected, maybe they could make it work. As long as they both stayed on their own side of the ranch.

      * * *

      She’d come.

      Heath hadn’t wanted her to. He’d have been fine leaving the past in the past, but now it rose up to meet him, and all because his friend and mentor’s life had been cut short...with a herd of pricey horses to comb, curry, exercise and tend. And not one lick of time to do it.

      Sean’s cancer did this. He’d invested a crazy amount of money to begin a horse breeding enterprise, the kind of horses that required substantial bankroll, then took their own sweet time about paying it back.

      Beautiful horse flesh, the kind that ranchers and rodeo riders alike loved. With Sean’s death, they had no one СКАЧАТЬ