The C.e.o. & The Cookie Queen

“All I wanted to do was talk to you.”

“Then why did you buy Puff?”

“Puff?” He looked toward the ring, his smile returning. “That big black beast’s name is Puff?” he asked with nearly contagious amusement.

“Jennifer named him,” Carole admitted, turning to watch her daughter walk toward them. “And don’t upset her any more than she already is. She got too attached to him. I knew this was going to be a problem, but I couldn’t stop her from loving that stupid steer.”

“I have no intention of upsetting her. In fact, that’s why I bid on him.”

“What are you talking about?” Carole asked, turning back to search his face for the truth.

“Before I knew who you were, I noticed how sensitive she was. When the guy standing nearby told me what happened to the grand champion steer, I decided to buy him myself.”

“What…what are you going to do with a steer?”

Before he could answer, Jenny stopped at the fence, Puff in tow.

“Mom, what are you doing over here?” she asked in an accusing tone that only a child could achieve. “Everyone’s looking!”

Carole moaned inside. She wanted to sink into the soft dirt and pretend this day had never existed. “I’m just talking to Mr. Rafferty, honey. That’s all.”

“Mom, you grabbed him!”

Carole narrowed her eyes and frowned at the object of her frustration. “Just his shirt.”

He smiled back. She wanted to shake him, then swing him around and put a boot to his backside. So much for her nonviolent tendencies. The faster he got out of town, the quicker life could return to normal. She and Jenny would go back to their nice, calm life.

Dismissing her glare, he turned to Jenny. “Hi. My name is Greg Rafferty, and I think your steer is…well, he’s a good-looking animal.”

“Yeah, he is, and he’s nice, too.” Her young face fell. “But I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Carole acknowledged that he sounded genuinely confused, which was an act, of course. He’d known what he was doing all along—searching her out, buying the steer, making her pay attention to him when all she wanted was to be left alone.

“Since you bought him, I guess you’re going to have a…a barbecue like Big Jim.”

Carole heard the quaver in her daughter’s voice, saw the way her lip trembled when she stumbled over the word that signified the fate of all the grand champion steers. She wanted to reach across the metal railing and hug Jenny close, but her daughter wouldn’t appreciate the public display any more than Carole appreciated public attention of any kind.

“No, no, I’m not,” Rafferty said in a gentle voice that surprised Carole as much as his claim. “I don’t want to take your steer away from you.”

“But you bought him,” Jenny said.

“Only because I needed to outbid Big Jim,” he said with a wink. “I couldn’t let that big airbag buy a steer as nice as Puff.”

Jenny giggled.

Carole blinked, not sure she’d heard him correctly. This was the businessman who wanted to violate her contract? This man who spoke so gently to her daughter, and made her laugh? And what did he mean that he didn’t want to take Puff away from Jenny?

“Wait a minute,” Carole said. “What are you going to do with him if you aren’t planning some…event like Big Jim’s?”

He smiled broadly, looking between her and her daughter. Just like the cowboy he was pretending to be, he puffed up a little bigger as he spoke to Jenny. “I saw how attached you were to your steer. I’ve never had anything that large myself, but I did have a dog when I was about your age. I thought maybe you’d like to keep Puff.”

“Keep him?” Jenny asked, looking really confused as her hand tightened around Puff’s lead rope.

“Sure. I know I bought him, but I’m going to sign him back over to you and your mom. That way, you won’t ever have to worry about Big Jim getting his hooks on Puff again.”

“Wait just a minute,” Carole interrupted, holding up her hand for silence. “You can’t just give Puff back to Jenny. Besides, I don’t trust your motives.”

“I already told you—”

“And I told you I don’t trust you.”

“But, Mom—”

“Not now, Jenny.” Carole put her hands on her hips and faced Greg Rafferty. “You bought that steer fair and square at the auction, Mr. Greg Rafferty. You can’t give him back.”

“Of course I can. I know some people might think it’s extravagant, but—”

“That’s not what I’m thinking at all,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “And I don’t mean that you shouldn’t give him back. I mean you can’t give him back.”

“Mom—”

“Now, Jenny, I know this is hard for you, but we all have to accept the fact that Mr. Rafferty owes three thousand dollars toward your college fund, and he now owns Puff.”

“I don’t want to own Puff!”

“Mr. Rafferty,” Carole said, leaning close and saying each word succinctly, “that steer eats about thirty-five pounds of feed each day. Even though I’ve grown a little attached to him, too, I don’t want to own him, either.”

GREG USED his monogrammed handkerchief to wipe the sweat and dirt from his forehead, wincing at the sight of dark, wet smears across the white linen. So this is why cowboys wear bandannas, he thought as he leaned against the fence and watched his three-thousand-dollar rack of prime rib graze contentedly in the rented pasture.

“This is all your fault,” he muttered to the unconcerned steer, even though he knew the culprit didn’t have four legs. No, Greg acknowledged, at least to himself, yesterday he’d gotten himself into this mess by making a bunch of assumptions. The words of a college professor came back to haunt him: “Assume makes an ass out of u and me.” Well, he’d made one big fool of himself this afternoon. Every action he’d taken had dug him deeper and deeper into a pit of mistakes and culture clashes.

Of course, Carole Jacks hadn’t helped him dig his way out of the hole. In fact, she seemed happy to shovel dirt in around him as he’d flailed away, wondering which way was up. The only thing he’d been sure of was that he was even more attracted to Carole Jacks, reclusive cookie queen, than he was to his blond cowgirl.

Damned if he could figure out why, though. She fought him at every opportunity. She made a point of showing how much she disliked him, making a scene yesterday at the arena even though she claimed she hated publicity. Maybe she felt comfortable enough around her neighbors to be a bit more…expressive.

So maybe the attraction he felt for her wasn’t one-sided. Maybe she felt it, too, and that frightened her. He had no doubt she really didn’t believe him, or trust his motives. That obstacle didn’t bother him, because she was obviously the kind of person who needed proof. Simply telling her that he hadn’t bought Puff, the grand champion steer, to impress her didn’t carry much weight with Carole Jacks.

A smile spread across Greg’s face as he recalled the way she’d grabbed his shirt. And the way his hands had settled so naturally around her waist, as though they belonged there and nowhere else.

At least, nowhere he could put them in public.

Thinking about Carole Jacks made him even hotter than this Texas summer. Not even noon and the temperature must be nearly ninety degrees! Pushing away from the wooden fence post, Greg walked through the brown, dying grass toward the brick and frame house he’d rented late yesterday afternoon. As soon as he’d realized he was stuck with Puff—at least temporarily—he’d looked up realty companies in the phone book and made an appointment with a cute, efficient redheaded lady named Gina Summers.

Fortunately, this house had been available on a monthly lease. Fully furnished, it was more than he needed, but at least he’d be comfortable during his stay in Ranger Springs, Texas. He walked up the three steps to the front porch, pulled open the storm door and slipped into the absolute necessity of air-conditioning.

Of course, if Carole Jacks hadn’t been so bullheaded, he thought as he walked across the hardwood floors toward the back patio, she could have taken the steer home with her. Greg would have been more than happy to check into a hotel or motel until he could convince her to modify her contract with Huntington Foods. Everyone, including Jenny and Puff, would have been much more content with that arrangement. But leasing a house and forty acres for a month was just another example of how unusual this trip had become.

At least the house had a pool. He loved to swim, and having the water to himself rather than sharing it with fifteen screaming kids at a hotel was worth a lot. He didn’t particularly enjoy children, maybe because he hadn’t been around them very much. His older brother, Brad, the hotheaded former C.E.O. of his mother’s family-owned company, hadn’t married yet. Neither had his younger sister, Stephanie, the current C.F.O. of Huntington Foods. Some of his college friends were married, but most of them had babies, and they got baby-sitters when he went out with them.

Older children like Jennifer were okay, he guessed, but he struggled to talk to them intelligently. At least with her he’d had a topic of conversation. One of his biggest fears was being left alone with a small child who wanted to talk. He was afraid he’d say the wrong thing.

Just like everything else he’d done or thought since arriving at the county livestock arena, his attention came back to Carole Jacks. His blond cowgirl. The object of his professional quest. The mother of a ten-year-old girl with a pet who ate thirty-five pounds of feed a day. Plus grass and hay, he’d been informed by a helpful rancher at the arena.

With a sigh, cursing his luck for becoming mentally obsessed and physically attracted to a woman who was all wrong for him, Greg began removing his clothes, all the way down to the stretchy black Speedo beneath those stiff new jeans.

He’d take a swim right now. The exercise would do him good, and maybe the water would be cold enough to take his mind—and other parts of his body—off the exciting, unusual Ms. Carole.

Chapter Three

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Carole said as she drove up the gravel road toward the formerly empty brick house. Only Jenny’s overly dramatic reminder that she’d be leaving for camp soon and might not ever see Puff again had prodded Carole into finding out where Rafferty had holed up.

“Why don’t you like him, Mom?” Jenny asked, leaning forward to see over the dash of Carole’s pickup. “I thought he was pretty nice.”

Carole sighed, remembering the way her normally reserved daughter had actually giggled—giggled, for heaven’s sake!—at Greg Rafferty’s teasing comments yesterday. He had charmed her daughter, but his obvious talents weren’t going to work on the mother. No way. All she had to do was keep reminding herself that he was a businessman whose only concern was his company. He didn’t even care that she had a very clear, very valid contract with Huntington Foods! Before he’d come to Ranger Springs, she’d been perfectly happy with her arrangement, which allowed her the financial freedom to work part-time baking desserts for the Four Square Café and giving cooking classes at upscale retail stores periodically in Austin and San Antonio. Most of all, she got to be a full-time mother to Jenny.

But she did owe her daughter an explanation of why Greg Rafferty wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread, just because he’d saved Puff from Big Jim’s big Labor Day chow-down.

“He’s in Texas to convince me to change my agreement with Huntington Foods, Jenny. Even after I told him I wasn’t interested in his proposal, he came back to the arena and bid on your steer. His motives seem pretty obvious to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Carole winced as the pickup hit a pothole in the gravel road. She steered to the other side of the drive and slowed down. “I mean he bought Puff because he thought it would get him in our good graces.”

“Mom, he spent three thousand dollars! Are you sure he’s just trying to get you to change your agreement? And what kind of things does he want you to do?”

“He wants me to do all kinds of things! Go on a publicity tour, make television appearances and get interviewed by everyone and their cousin. He wants my picture on the cookie packages, and worst of all, he wants people to write articles about us. He tried to make it sound very normal, like I should be glad to do this for him.” She snorted in a very unladylike way that she hoped Jenny didn’t emulate. “I’m not about to change my life just to help his company get out of some bad publicity.”

“That’s kind of stubborn of you,” Jenny observed with the wisdom of youth. “If I said something like that, you’d get after me for being bullheaded.”

Carole smiled. “You’re probably right, honey, but believe me, I don’t want to become a public figure. Once you do, there’s no end to the things people can say about you.”

“So did you explain all that to him?”

“Oh, I think he knows exactly how I feel.”

Carole pulled behind a luxury auto parked on the concrete pad in front of the garage. A discreet sticker on the bumper identified the rental car company. Greg Rafferty obviously went first-class, from his extravagant gestures of “goodwill” to his expensive new boots. And he was the kind of man who could pull off such shows of wealth, with his lean but muscular build and model good looks.

He probably spent a lot of time posturing in front of a full-length mirror, she speculated as she turned the key to kill the engine. He’d better not object to her parking their four-year-old, slightly battered pickup in the same driveway as his fancy rental car, because she wouldn’t mind giving him another piece of her mind.

“Mom, you’re getting that look on your face again.”

Carole nearly jumped at the sound of Jenny’s voice. She’d blocked out everything but the infuriating man who’d come to town just to torment her. For the second time in as many days, he’d made her forget her daughter. Another black mark against Greg Rafferty.

“Sorry, honey. I was just thinking about what I was going to say to Mr. Rafferty when I saw him.”

“You’re not going to yell at him again, are you?”

“I never yell.” She didn’t meet her daughter’s eyes, scanning the darkened windows of the house for signs of movement.

“Yes, you do, and you look really mad.” Jenny placed her hand on Carole’s arm, bringing her attention back to the interior of the pickup. “You should think about what he wants you to do. Maybe you could do just a little bit. He seemed like a nice man.”

“Jenny, just because he was nice to you doesn’t mean his intentions are good.”

“But you always tell me to keep an open mind when I meet new people. I’m just saying you should do the same thing.”

Carole reached for the door handle. “Okay, I’ll talk to him again. But I’m not promising to agree with him. I like our life just fine, thank-you-very-much.”

Jenny giggled at their familiar banter. From the beginning, they’d been closer than mother and daughter. Without a father around to distract them, they’d clung to each other through good times and bad. Carole had once worried that Jenny would suffer from not having a dad, but with the help of friends and relatives, they’d coped just fine. Jenny rarely talked about her biological father anymore, and for that, Carole was grateful. Her ex hadn’t wanted a child ten years ago; he didn’t deserve one now.

“I don’t see Puff,” Jenny said as Carole rang the door bell.

“He’s probably in the shade of those cottonwood trees by the stock tank, or maybe inside the barn.”

“I hope Mr. Rafferty knows how to take care of him. Puff isn’t used to being outside all day. His coat will just fry in this sun.”

Carole smiled, glad that her daughter was thinking about her former steer’s welfare rather than his imminent trip to the meat packer’s. “You can tell Mr. Rafferty what he needs to know. I doubt he knows anything about cattle other than what he learned yesterday at the arena.”

There was no answer to her summons, so she rang the bell again, folded her hands across her chest and tried not to concentrate on all of his faults, much less wishing him a miserable stay in Texas. Thinking such thoughts wasn’t exactly the charitable thing to do for a Sunday visit.

“Maybe he’s outside with Puff,” Jenny speculated.

“Okay. Let’s walk around back and see.”

The drone of the air-conditioning unit kept Carole from hearing anything that would give away Rafferty’s location. They walked toward the small barn that had been vacant a long time. The former owners hadn’t run any cattle or horses on their small ranch since their kids had outgrown 4-H.

“Puff!” Jenny called out, looking over the fence to the dark interior of the barn.

A dusky shadow moved, then slowly materialized into the large shape of Jenny’s steer—or her former steer, Carole corrected herself. She held her breath, wondering if Rafferty was also in the barn, until she realized what she was doing. She resisted the urge to call out to the man, to find out where he was lurking. With a disgusted sigh, she looked around the pasture, finding no trace of him.

“Do you want to stay and see Puff? I’m going back to the house to find Mr. Rafferty.”

“I’ll stay in the barn, Mom.” Jenny unlatched the gate and hurried toward the steer.

“Don’t wander off,” Carole warned as she walked toward the house.

The sun beat down on her back and shoulders, reminding her that she hadn’t worn a hat. And why was that? Because she wanted to look less like a cowgirl and more like a woman. A twenty-eight-year-old mother, a single head of her household, who had no business worrying about how she looked to visit a man who no doubt wanted her to dress up in an old-fashioned ruffled apron, display a plate of cookies and smile for the cameras.

But a little bit of doubt remained about her motives. Far back in her mind, she wondered if she’d dressed in soft, worn, body-hugging jeans and fitted, Western-cut shirt to make Greg Rafferty’s gaze roam over her the way he’d done yesterday at the arena. Could she possibly enjoy enticing his interest when she didn’t like him as a person? Surely she wasn’t that shallow.

She nearly stumbled over an exposed rock when she realized that she was exactly that superficial. With no conscious awareness, she was soliciting the interest of a man who was here to coax her into doing something she didn’t want to do, who would go to endless trouble and expense to impress her from a professional standpoint. Why, he was probably acting interested in her as another coercion tactic!

By the time she arrived back at the house, she was flushed from more than the heat. Something about Greg Rafferty rubbed her the wrong way. She’d never had this reaction to another man. In the past ten years, not once had she been even slightly tempted by the wrong kind of guy. Eleven years ago, as flighty as a green-broke filly…now that was a different story.

Carole pushed open the gate on the side of the house, grateful for the slight shade under the roof overhang. As soon as she turned the corner into the backyard, however, she was back in the sunlight again. She blinked, then squinted, then stared. Standing beside the pool, dressed in what could only be described as a scrap of black fabric stretched across an incredible male butt, stood the best-looking man her imagination could have dreamed up.

He must have heard her enter the yard because he turned, giving her a different view. His backside wasn’t the only part of his anatomy that scrap of a swimsuit struggled to cover. She sucked in a deep breath through her mouth, then started coughing.

Rafferty advanced on her until she put up a hand to stop him. If he got too close, she wasn’t real sure what she’d do. His lean, muscular body glistened with drops of water that slid from his wide shoulders to his smooth chest, then down his stomach, racing toward the low band of black fabric. She had the insane urge to taste those drops of water before they made their final destination.

After all, she was awfully thirsty.

She closed her eyes, thankful that she’d stopped coughing, hoping she could control these wild, out-of-character urges that had suddenly taken over her psyche. She wasn’t a loose woman. She wasn’t desperate. But she had been celibate for most of her adult life. Maybe there was something to those articles about hormones kicking in when a woman approached thirty.

“Are you all right?”

Without opening her eyes, she could tell he was close. Too close. Water-drop-licking close. “I’m fine,” she managed to whisper. Directing her gaze about six feet off the ground, she opened her eyes.

“I thought I was going to have to pound you on the back,” he said in an amused tone. “Or maybe give you the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I’ll take my chances on choking.”

Rafferty laughed. “You still don’t trust me.”

I don’t trust myself, she wanted to say, but kept silent. She found the idea of him locking his arms around her from behind, pressing that damp, hard body against her as his hands put pressure right below her breasts, way too tempting.

“You surprised me,” she said, trying to explain why she’d gone loco at the sight of him. “I rang the bell earlier, but no one answered.”

“I like to swim.”

Which meant he spent lots of time in such abbreviated attire. Or, if he had his own pool, maybe none at all. “Really?” Carole swallowed again, this time more successfully.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, his gaze taking in her shirt and jeans. She felt extremely overdressed, considering his state, but then reminded herself that she certainly didn’t need to be wearing any less around Greg Rafferty. He’s all wrong for you, she warned herself, even as she stopped her wayward eyes and thoughts from drifting southward.

“I’m glad you came to see me, but I am rather surprised. You weren’t thrilled that I bought your daughter’s steer.”

“My daughter? Yes, my daughter! She’s in the barn. That’s why we came to see you. Both of us. Because she wanted to make sure you knew how to take care of Puff.”

“Both of you,” he repeated, sounding disappointed. He ran a hand through his thick, wet hair.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I’d better go check on her.” She tore her gaze away from his face and turned around, ready to hurry back to the barn. Ready to drive her pickup down that gravel road as if the devil himself was chasing her.

The devil in a black Speedo.

His hand stopped her, clamped around her upper arm gently but firmly. She felt the dampness through her suddenly thin cotton shirt and shivered. “Wait a minute. Let me get a towel and I’ll go with you.”

So much for making a hasty retreat. “You need more than a towel,” she said before thinking.

He let go of her arm, then shrugged when she looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Apparently not,” Carole murmured, cursing herself for giving him another once-over with her wickedly independent eyes. Why couldn’t her body obey her firm resolve not to pay the least amount of attention to this totally unsuitable man?

“Are you shocked by what I’m wearing, Ms. Carole?” Rafferty asked in a teasing tone.

“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest and looking over the high fence toward the barn. Not that she could see anything.

She wasn’t about to tell him that she hadn’t seen anything exactly like he displayed. If the rest of him was as good as—Don’t go there, she warned herself. Stop thinking about him that way!

“I’ll bet you don’t have a lot of cowboys running around in competitive swimwear,” he said with a chuckle. “I assume the community is a little more conservative than that.”

“You’ve got that right,” Carole agreed, still not looking at him. “We tend to be a bit more modest.”

“So you think I’m an exhibitionist for swimming in my own pool?”

“I didn’t call you names.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his voice coming from very close beside her. She couldn’t resist looking.