Cowboy Crazy (3 page)

He probably expected her to flutter girlishly like Dot and fall apart, but instead she looked away, pretending something outside the window was holding her attention. There was a cloud shaped like a duck drifting in the wide blue sky.

Think
about
the
duck. Think about the duck.

“So.” Eric shifted uneasily. “I understand you have a problem with the drilling on the Carrigan Ranch.”

Lane hacked out a sound that might have been a laugh but sounded more like the bark of an angry dog. “I sure do. But it’s not the Carrigan Ranch anymore. It’s the LT.”

“It’ll always be the Carrigan Ranch.”

“That’s not your decision,” Lane said. “It might be family land, but the ranch operation’s a partnership now.”

Sarah quickly turned her attention to Eric. He was a master of the poker face, but it was obvious the news surprised him. He’d told her the ranch was everything to Lane. So why would he sell out to someone else?

Maybe he needed money. Maybe he had some kind of gambling addiction, or a drug problem. Her eyes lingered on the bulge of his biceps. Were steroids addictive? Were they expensive? Because he was way more muscular than your normal rodeo cowboy. Riding and roping gave a man long, lean muscles. He was built like a weight lifter, solid and powerful.

His eyes fixed on the hem of her trim tapered skirt. The fabric ended just an inch above her knee, so she didn’t know what he was staring at, or why it made her so uneasy. Checking out an associate’s clothing was a valid means of judging their professionalism, but his gaze followed the line of her calves as if he was assessing her for some other purpose, and she doubted he was judging her chances in the Boston Marathon.

She clenched her knees together reflexively, regretting the reaction when faint crow’s-feet gathered at the corner of his eyes. He’d goaded her into reacting—again.

By her count, the score was Lane three, Sarah zero.

“So why is she here?” Lane spoke to his brother, deliberately turning away from the woman in the chair beside him. He didn’t know who she was, or what she was doing there. Did Eric want a witness to this conversation for some reason? Or was this his latest floozy? He normally went through women like Kleenex and seemed to have about as much respect for them. But maybe this one was better at gold digging than the past dozen or so. She certainly looked a lot smarter than any of them, so maybe she’d conned her way into the boardroom.

Well, she wasn’t staying. He’d see to that.

“I’m a public relations consultant.” The woman shifted in her chair, facing him and demanding his attention. “I develop strategies for dealing with legislators and community leaders to safeguard and enhance corporate images.”

So she’d talked Eric into giving her a title, and even a job description. This might be a woman to be reckoned with—but he’d handle her. He doubted she was any tougher than a rodeo bull.

“That’s a mouthful,” he said.

“It’s really fairly simple.” She leaned toward him, speaking slowly as if he was some kind of idiot. “I find ways to help people understand what we do.”

“What
Carrigan
does.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No, you said
we.
And you’re not a Carrigan. You’re a publicity flack.”

Eric stirred. “She’s part of the team. And she’s worked miracles for other companies. New West Corporation. Holt Communications.”

“Isn’t New West the company that developed a hundred thousand acres of Texas hill country into an industrial park?” Lane asked. “Shame about all the green grass and bluebonnets. And didn’t Holt Communications string transmission lines over half of Colorado?”

The woman straightened her shoulders and gave Lane a tight smile. He could tell her nervous tension threatened to pull it out of shape. “Green grass and bluebonnets don’t provide jobs for people,” she said. “And those transmission lines helped bring high-speed Internet to the reservation, among other things.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re one of those people that sees the bright side.” He gave her a teasing smile and knew he’d scored himself a point when she looked away, frowning. “I should have known. You seem like a real Little Miss Sunshine type.”

He could see why Eric was attracted to her. She was pretty in a buttoned-up, businesslike way, but there was a lot of energy crackling behind those cool, expressionless eyes. Her tightly controlled demeanor was a challenge, and he wondered what it would take to get her out of that square-shouldered, double-breasted suit.

“I’m not Little Miss anything, Mr. Carrigan. And I’m definitely not sunny.” She seemed to realize how silly the statement sounded and shifted uneasily. Another point for him.

“You’re not, are you?” Lane settled back in his chair. “Well, sunny or not, digging up the LT Ranch isn’t going to help anybody but Carrigan and its shareholders.”

“We’re hardly digging anything up,” she said. “The process can move forward with minimal environmental impact.”

“Really. Who told you that?”

“The company engineers.”

“Wow. I wonder who paid them to say that.”

Eric bristled. “The methodology of our scientists is unassailable.”

“You always did go for the ten-dollar words,” Lane said to his brother. “Environmental impact. Methodology. Unassailable. You sound like you’re reading from a report by one of those engineers you’re so proud of.”

“Where do you want us to get our information?” The woman tilted her pretty nose in the air. “
Pro Rodeo News
?”

He narrowed his eyes and shot her a glare. So she thought he was just a stupid cowboy? He’d show her different.

He’d show her a lot of things.

“Mr. Carrigan, it really won’t be a problem.” She seemed to realize she’d stepped over the line and sounded a little less patronizing. “You’ll be able to graze cattle even as they set things up, and you’ll barely notice the difference once drilling is under way. There will be some extra traffic on the ranch roads initially, and we’ll have to dig a shallow pipeline trench, but the land will be restored to its original condition almost immediately.”

Lane set his elbows on his knees and looked her in the eye. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well, I don’t.”

She lifted her chin. “What part of it is a problem for you?”

His eyes met hers with a discomfiting intensity that shot straight to her core. She squeezed her legs together and saw a faint smile tweak his lips.

“The problem is the part where you invade my land, construct a series of eyesore oil rigs, dig trenches across my pastures ’til the place looks like France in World War I, and scare my cattle into miscarrying with your construction racket,” he said. “And then you overrun my hometown with transient workers who degrade the community and bleed law enforcement dollars without paying a dime toward local taxes.”

“Your hometown?”

“Two Shot,” he said. “It’s a little place on…”

“I’m familiar with Two Shot,” she said. “Do you really think it’s worth saving?”

***

Sarah cursed herself inwardly for rising to the bait. Her intimate knowledge of Two Shot was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

But how could Lane Carrigan call it his hometown? It was
her
hometown, and she’d never seen him there. Not once. The Carrigans had lived miles away, isolated on the elegant, state-of-the-art Carrigan ranch, and from what she’d heard the boys only visited occasionally.

It surprised her how proprietary she felt about a town she’d been so anxious to leave behind. “I’d say the town would benefit from some new development,” she said.

He was obviously one of those rich people who thought everyday life in a small town was an episode of
The Andy
Griffith
Show
. It had probably never occurred to him how tough it was to make a living in Mayberry. She could rock his reality if she told him what it was really like growing up in a place like Two Shot, but Eric’s image of her—and his respect for her—would be in tatters if he knew she’d grown up in a trailer.

Dot poked her head into the room. “Mr. Carrigan,” she whispered.

Lane and Eric both started to rise, and Dot gave Lane an apologetic smile. “I meant
Mr.
Carrigan. He has a meeting. But it’s good to see you, Lane.”

He grinned, seeming totally unaware that Dot had just defined the difference between the two brothers. Eric was Mr. Carrigan, taking charge and giving orders. Lane was just Lane. Dorothy’s tone was warmer when she talked to Lane, but Sarah knew the oil business was a cold, hard world where warmth didn’t hold much sway. Eric was the one who commanded respect.

Eric cocked his wrist and winced at the time on his watch. “I’ve got to go, Lane. If you’d give me a little advance warning, we can have a longer talk. Maybe lunch?”

Lane made a noncommittal grunt.

“Meanwhile, Sarah can answer your questions.”

As he left the room, Sarah tried not to look as panicked as she felt. Lane might not command the respect of the Carrigan workforce, but his physical presence was intimidating and she didn’t want to be alone with him.

Besides, the whole Two Shot situation was complicated. Normally companies like Carrigan just threw money at small towns, and folks were so grateful to get funding for schools and street repairs that they didn’t question the project itself or who was involved with it.

But Lane was going to make it an issue, and that could be a serious problem for her. She’d led Eric to believe she’d leapt fully formed from the ivied bastions of Vassar and Harvard, but if he talked to anyone in Two Shot he’d get a very different picture of her past. Hiding her history had been an innocent lie of omission at first, but since then he’d made so many references to her inborn style and high-class roots she’d ended up with an origin myth worthy of Wolverine.

As her boss left the room, she squared her shoulders and faced Lane. She felt like a tiny bird fluffing up its feathers to intimidate a cat.

“So you’re familiar with Two Shot?” Lane’s voice rumbled deep in his chest, and his slow drawl made even the most innocuous phrases sound sexy.

“I’ve—been there. And I do feel the town would benefit from the prosperity this kind of project would bring.”

He pushed back his chair and stood. Sarah immediately shot to her feet so she wouldn’t have to look up at him, but even standing toe-to-toe her eyes were about level with his shirt pocket. She took a step back so she could look him in the eye.

“Yeah, well, I disagree,” he said. “And anyway, I’m not discussing family issues with a stranger.”

She thought of her hometown, with its pitted streets and crumbling buildings. “I’m sorry, but this is about much more than family.”

“How would you know? Trust me, it
is
about family. And you’re not a part of that.”

His dismissive tone jabbed a man-sized hole in her self-control. She felt the real Sarah coming out to kick butt and was powerless to stop her.

“There are real people in Two Shot, Mr. Carrigan. People who need jobs.”

“Money isn’t everything.”

“It is when you’re hungry. When you’re losing your home. When things go wrong and…”

She stopped herself. This was getting way too personal. He’d tilted his head to one side and was looking at her intently, and this time he seemed to be probing her mind instead of her clothes. She needed to get the conversation back on track before she gave something away.

“Extracting oil from the land isn’t always pretty, but the company does its best to keep it clean, and if we do it on Carrigan land people will trust us to do it right.” She cleared her throat nervously. He was still staring at her as if he was trying to figure her out.

She didn’t like being figured out.

“I’m sure your brother will see to it that the ranch’s historic heritage is preserved.”

His eyes slid away and he pretended to be absorbed in brushing imaginary dirt off the thighs of his jeans. He was playing casual, but she could tell by the short, vicious strokes that the mention of his brother made him tense. Unfortunately, she was tensing too. The gesture emphasized the muscles bulging beneath the denim and made her conscious, again, of a testosterone aura that glowed with the steady intensity of a neon sign.

“Dad doesn’t like my view of what it means to be a Carrigan. I always thought the name had as much to do with cattle as it did with oil. But what would I know? I’m just a dumb cowboy.” He tugged at the collar of his blue chambray shirt. “My father hated the color of my collar, and I guess my brother does too.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” she said. “We’re just saying—”

“What’s this
we
shit?” Lane was more than angry now. “You’re not part of
we.
Unless—are you something more than an employee?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you having some kind of relationship with my brother?”

She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Of course not,” she said, struggling to keep her composure.

“No, you’re right. He’s not your type, is he?” He gave her that look again, the one that seemed to laser its way right into her mind. “You keep saying
we
, but you’re not one of
them
. Where are you from?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Well, it’s the company’s business,” he said. “If you’re going to go to bat for Two Shot, you ought to have some idea what makes a small town tick. But you don’t, do you?” He nodded toward the window. “You try to act like you care, but you’re ten stories above the street while I’m down there in the dirt with the rest of them. I can tell you real people don’t want you and your minions coming in and ruining their land and their towns.”

She should have defended her position, said Carrigan wasn’t ruining anything, but she was overwhelmed with a rush of relief. He wasn’t even close to figuring out she’d spent her childhood and adolescence rolling around in the dirt he thought was so all-fired picturesque. Even a no-kidding cowboy couldn’t tell who she really was. And that meant she’d succeeded in leaving her past behind.

“Ever been to Midwest?” he asked.

Of course she had. Midwest was just north of Two Shot, an isolated outpost in the middle of nowhere that had struck it rich in the last oil boom. She hadn’t been there lately, but she’d heard the boom had subsided. “They had a boom, didn’t they?”

“And a bust. Now it’s the world capital of substandard housing.” He shoved back his chair and stood, folding his arms across his chest. “All those cheap rentals they put up are falling apart, half of ’em boarded up. Guys came in and worked Monday to Friday, then went home to their families like they’d had their nose to the grindstone all week, when really they spent half their time with a snootful of beer. God only knows where their other body parts ended up. They’re hell on local women.” He shook his head. “Two Shot doesn’t need your kind of prosperity.”

“Why don’t you let the people make that decision?” she asked. “Ask them if they want to keep trying to raise cattle on yucca plants and cactus, or if they’d rather sit back and enjoy life while Carrigan pumps out black gold, day after day, whatever the weather.”

“And I suppose you care about what they want.”

“Yes, I do.” Those were the truest words she’d said since the conversation started. She didn’t have many fond memories of Two Shot, and the few she had were clouded by failure and shame and a lot of uncomfortable truths. But deep down, she still cared about the people there.

“Well, I’m not letting the company ruin my land. I’ll put up razor wire and go all Ruby Ridge if I have to, but I think there’s probably an easier way.” He opened the door and tipped his hat in a snide mockery of cowboy etiquette. “See you on the nightly news.”

She took a step toward him, then realized how close he was and stepped back. Unfortunately, she backed right into the door and slammed it shut. Next thing she knew, she was plastered against it like the heroine in a melodrama vying to keep her hero at home. He was standing so close she caught the clean laundry scent of his shirt and something else, something masculine—pine, wood smoke, leather. Maybe horses. Wind. She could feel him—not just physically, but deep down inside, the way you felt danger or heartache.