Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 2

You tend to find these things out when your fiance 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. h.e.l.l, 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 s.h.i.+t, 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d d.a.m.n 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.

But that wasn't why he was there. He was there because he wanted to stay. Because every part of his life, old and new, lived in that house. The ranch around it, well, he needed something to do.

He slips into the truck and waits for the boys to show up. How much work they're going to do with him away is debatable. But that's already factored into the plan. He's not planning on them doing a whole h.e.l.l of a lot if he's not there to follow behind and check on them.

"Everything alright, boss?"

Their truck pulls up next to him, and the middle-boy, Michael, has his head out the pa.s.senger-side window. He looks almost concerned, the poor boy.

"Yeah. Going out for a bit."

"You want us to keep digging those post holes?"

Philip's eyes shoot wide open, and he makes a face as if the idea had just occurred to him for the first time. "Hey, good idea! Why don't you do that? Don't kill yourselves. I'll be back in a few hours."

He slips the car into reverse and before he knows it, Phil Callahan's on the highway, headed out to some factory in the middle of nowhere.

Some property where someone used to have a ranch, just like his. Somewhere where someone had put down roots. Now those roots had been dug up, and in its place they were putting a big concrete pre-fabricated building with a parking lot all around it.

What the h.e.l.l kind of trade was that? Not the kind that he'd make himself. Not in a million years.

But if she wanted to make it out like he was doing her a favor, then fine. He'd do her a favor and come out to look at the job site.

Callahan was pulling into the site twenty minutes later. A dozen identical white trucks are parked all in a line, all of them with "Lowe Industrial" decals on the doors.

He parks his truck next to them. As he walks away, onto the job site, he looks back with pride at the way his red truck sticks out like a sore thumb against the sea of white.

The girl looks as good as she did the day before. Callahan sucks in a breath through his teeth. She's got a vest on that draws attention to one of the many places a married man shouldn't be looking.

Instead he looks over her shoulder. Even through the narrow gap, at least a dozen guys are walk by as he watches.

"Mr. Callahan. Thank you so much for coming out."

"Yeah," he says. Not sure what to say other than that. She's got her hand out. He takes it reluctantly. It's supposed to be a professional gesture, and he doesn't want to take it any other way. There's no reason to take it any other way.

But his body knows that it's touching a woman's hand, and it reacts accordingly, in spite of his best intentions to the contrary. He gets an unpleasant pleasure out of their contact.

"Do you mind if I show you around?"

"I don't know what good it's gonna do you, but go right ahead. Lead the way."

She strikes off at a brisk pace. Nothing like the pace that he would have used at the ranch, tour or not. There's no reason to hurry, unless someone's about to get hurt. That doesn't seem to be how Miss Lowe sees it.

She takes a hat from a bin and tosses it back to him. Philip catches it. "Put that on. Could be dangerous. You probably have nothing to worry about, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Yeah," he says. He puts the hard hat on. It's a snug fit right out the gate, which is a comfort at least. She heads up a couple of steps into an aluminum box that might have been an office. Inside, a guy with two days of growth in his beard sips on a cup of coffee.

"Mr. Callahan, this is my crew chief, Brad Lang. Brad, this is Mr. Philip Callahan, he owns the Callahan ranch."

Brad puts a hand out. He's got a firm grip, and he looks Callahan in the eye. "Mr. Callahan. Good to meet you."

"You always hanging out inside when your boys work, Mr. Lang?"

His face goes a little red. "Was waitin' for you, sir."

Philip looks over at the girl beside him. She's got an impa.s.sive expression, looking up at both of them. "Well, don't wait for me. I can walk. Already a long way off my ranch, you might as well make me walk ten more feet to get your job done."

"Yes, sir."

Now she's got an expression on her face. It's not one that says 'thanks for setting that straight.'

He looks over at Miss Lowe like he's waiting for permission, or something. If he needs permission, then why the h.e.l.l did she hire him?

"You heard the man, didn't you? Go on."

"You got it."

He heads off. Morgan waits until the door slams behind him to turn to Callahan.

"You think you're more qualified to tell my guys what to do than I am? That it?"

He hadn't meant to step on any toes, but now that he's in the situation, it's fairly obvious that he's managed it anyways.

"I didn't mean any disrespect, Miss Lowe."

"No, of course you didn't." Her face is hard and angry. It makes her look cute. "You just thought maybe I couldn't handle him, that it?"

There's a point where an edge becomes frustrating, and she's approaching it fast. But at the same time, it's hard to fault her. Callahan could imagine the explosion he'd have if someone were marching around giving orders to his boys. So he swallows his frustration.

"You're right. I shouldn't have stepped on your toes like that."

She shuts her eyes and takes a breath. "Yeah. Thanks. You're right. You shouldn't have. I'm sure you didn't mean anything by it."

"Not a thing, ma'am."

"Don't call me that."

"What?" He heard her just fine, but it seems strange. Just manners, isn't it? Or would she prefer 'miss?'

"Don't call me 'ma'am.'"

"Sorry. Miss?"

"Look. Just don't patronize me." She slips the hard hat off finally. Her hair's cut a little short for Philip's taste, only to the jaw. Any longer and it might not be safe for the job site, though, and it's good that she's taken that into consideration. "Woman in construction, I get enough of that as it is."

"I didn't mean anything by it," he says.

She smiles with a resignation that says that either she already knew that, or it didn't matter in the first place.

"Shall we continue?"

Chapter Six.

Morgan Lowe's heart is pounding in her chest. She's got to impress him somehow, and she can't see a single way that she's going to do that. Not after the colossal screw-up that she just got to walk in on.

First they'd walked right in on one of her guys, slacking on the job, and then, as if to make matters worse, Philip had decided to step in.

If she calls him on it, she's a b.i.t.c.h. If she lets it go, she's a wimp who lets outsiders talk down to her employees. Well, one of those is a quality she can live with. So she called him on it.

But that immediately puts them on the wrong foot. Immediately and irrevocably. And that's a whole mess of its own.

"This area here is going to be where the line starts," she begins. The sun's s.h.i.+ning just wrong on them, getting in her eyes no matter where she looks, it seems. She starts walking back, the entire routine practiced. "It opens up into a few different areas, next. You get a few pieces of machinery that handle jobs that are too dangerous. Too hot, too big a risk of getting crushed by something heavy falling..."

"If there's such a big risk, couldn't you find another way? You don't need machines to do it where a person can't."

Morgan stares at him dully. Sure, they could completely retool their entire line. They could do everything by hand, double their costs, and for their clients, knowing it all had the human touch might be worth an extra dollar per unit.

They'd think it was a real big deal, too. They'd be bragging about how they ate the ma.s.sive over-cost of human labor, when in fact that only goes to cover maybe a third of the difference.

Two more dollars per unit just comes out of profit. And while she's always been pleased with how well the company does for itself, two dollars per unit takes it from 'narrow margin' to 'razor-thin margin.'

If the price of a single item on the line went up, they'd have to raise prices, or they'd have to go out of business, because they wouldn't be able to eat the price of aluminum going up like the price of, say, copper had the past decade or so.