The Camden Cowboy

The man seemed so easygoing and laid-back. Where was that ruthlessness and relentlessness that her college professor had said marked the Camdens? That had given them such success? This guy seemed to take everything in stride.

Lacey parked and popped the trunk, and she and Seth got out of the car. It took multiple trips to unload her suitcases and two laptop computers, as well as a printer, a fax machine and several cardboard file boxes.

Seth volunteered to make the last trip alone for what remained of the file boxes while Lacey took her suitcases into the bedroom.

It was every bit as nice as the rest of the guesthouse; it had its own set of French doors that swung out onto the private patio, which was completely secluded by well-tended hedges and more shade trees.

After opening those doors to let in the cooler evening air, she went back into the living room just as Seth returned with the file boxes. He held his powerful arms straight out in front of him, biceps cut and bulging as they bore the weight of the boxes. The sight made Lacey’s mouth go dry.

“Just set them down with the others. I’ll organize at some point,” she instructed in a quiet voice, as she tried to focus on the task and not the man performing it.

“I shut your trunk and locked your car doors—although there isn’t really a need around here,” he informed her as he set the boxes atop some others. Then he faced her and slid a hand into one of his front jean pockets, and Lacey’s gaze just followed without thinking about where her eyes would end up.

When she realized that she was basically looking at his crotch, she yanked her head up in a hurry.

“You left these in the ignition,” he said, pulling her car keys from his pocket.

He was being nice and considerate and thoughtful and conscientious, and her mind was in the gutter.

Even as she silently chastised herself, Lacey did a frantic search for something safe and bland to say to distract herself and make sure he didn’t know she was thinking about him inappropriately. She settled on “So how is it that a Camden is a cowboy?”

Had that sounded sort of disapproving? She hadn’t meant it that way.

Seth Camden arched one eyebrow. “Because the only jobs that matter are jobs that require suits and ties?”

So it had sounded disapproving.

“No!” Lacey was quick to respond. “It’s just that the Camdens are … you know—big business. One of the biggest names in business—I even learned about your great-grandfather and grandfather in college. So I was surprised when my father said you had property in a place as small as Northbridge. And then to find you working the way you were yesterday …”

All sweaty and sun-drenched and sexy …

Lacey curbed those wandering thoughts, too. “I just didn’t know that any of the Camdens didn’t wear suits and ties on the job.”

“Oh, it happens,” he said, as if she were being shortsighted. But then he seemed to shrug off any offense he might have taken and answered her initial question. “We have old ties to Northbridge—”

“I remember that this is where your great-grandfather started out—”

“And where my grandmother was born and raised, where she and my grandfather met—”

“Really? Your grandmother was from Northbridge?”

“So was my mother—she met my father when he was here after he graduated high school. My grandmother converted pretty well to city girl, but my mother never did. She liked it here better, so when she was alive—and my father was busy working, which was most of the time—she would bring us kids to stay here. I guess country life just got into my blood. After we lost our folks, my grandmother would only bring us all here periodically, but it was still where I felt the most at home. So when I was old enough to make the choice, this was the life I opted for.”

“Are you the hermit of the family?”

He laughed. Lacey wasn’t sure whether she was relieved to hear it or if it was the sound of his laugh alone that she liked so much. But either way, she reveled in it.

“I’m not a hermit, no,” he answered. “I just like country life, working the land, working with the animals. But we own over thirty farms, ranches and dairies across the country, and they’re all my responsibility. I have managers at each place who report to me every day—sometimes more than once a day. I oversee things from here, then travel a few times a year for a closer look at what’s going on. I keep a small plane on a strip at the Billings airport so I can get anywhere I need to be in a matter of hours if there’s a problem.”

Of course whatever a Camden had a hand in had to be on a grand scale. Lacey didn’t know why she’d thought otherwise. Seth Camden might look like a cowboy, he might run a ranch and do the work of a cowboy, he might even have the cowboy’s sense of decorum that had prompted him to help her move in, but she should have guessed that there would be more to him and to what he did than merely running a simple small-town ranch.

Before Lacey responded to what he’d said, he changed the subject.

“I think I can get out to your construction site tomorrow to take a look at what was left there. It probably won’t be until late in the afternoon, so there won’t be time to clear anything out, but it’ll give me an idea of what’s there and if I’ll be able to do it all myself or if I’ll need help or a dolly or a trailer or what.”

“I’m not sure what you’ll need, either. I do know that there’s some sort of farm equipment thingy—”

He laughed. “Farm equipment thingy?”

“I don’t know what else to call it—it’s behind the barn and it looks like it hooks up to a tractor or something. But I couldn’t begin to tell you what it is or what it does. So you’re right that you probably need to get an idea of what there is to move before you try to do the moving.”

“And tomorrow is okay?”

So she knew for sure that she’d get to see him again tomorrow …

She reminded herself once more that she shouldn’t be thinking about such things.

“Tomorrow is fine,” she said, as if it had no impact on her whatsoever. “Late afternoon is actually better for me because my meetings are all in the morning and early afternoon, and once the crew has left for the day I switch over to office work and that’s the easiest for me to interrupt …”

That hadn’t sounded good either …

“Not that you’ll be an interruption. I just mean that’s the best time for me to get away …”

Of course if she couldn’t get away personally, there were other people who could show him what he needed to move. But somehow Lacey didn’t want anyone else to do it …

“About four-thirty or five?” Seth said, not appearing to notice that she was flustered.

“Four-thirty or five is great,” she agreed, deciding it might be better if she said less because every time she said more she seemed to put her foot in her mouth.

He headed for the door. “There’s a landline on the wall in the kitchen—” He pointed to it. “My cell phone number and the number for my house are on a notepad next to the phone. If you need anything, just call. Try my cell first—that’s the likeliest way to reach me.”

“You don’t have a housekeeper or staff who’s over there even when you’re not?” Her father had an assistant at work and a housekeeper at home who always knew how to reach him. It just seemed likely that a Camden would have at least that, too.

But something about the question made Seth Camden chuckle. “I have a lady who comes in once a week and cleans up the rooms I use. If family is due in for some reason she brings two of her friends to spruce up the whole place, but other than that everybody who works here works on the land.”

Lacey nodded, realizing that again what she’d expected of him and the reality were two different things.

Seeing that his hand was on the doorknob, she said, “Thanks for the help tonight.”

“Don’t mention it.” He opened the door to leave.

And for absolutely no reason, Lacey felt the urge to say something—anything—to keep him there even a moment longer.

So she said, “You know how to get to the site tomorrow?”

Dumb. There wasn’t a single dumber thing she could have said.

Seth paused with his hand still on the doorknob to grin at her. “Uh … I do. I used to own the place, remember?”

Lacey grimaced. “Force of habit—I can’t keep straight who’s local and who’s not, so I just automatically ask if anybody coming out to the site knows the way.”

“Well, I do.”

“Sure. Of course you do. I’ll just see you tomorrow then.”

“Right.”

He stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

There was a big picture window not far from where Lacey was standing, and she instantly looked through it to watch Seth Camden walk around the pool and back to the main house.

With a cowboy’s swagger that made her mouth go dry again.

Which was cause for her to command herself to look away, to put the image and every thought of the man out of her mind.

But still she went on watching until he disappeared inside the French door they’d come out of.

And as for thoughts of the man?

Even out of sight, he wasn’t out of mind.

For the second night in a row.

Chapter Three

Lacey did not ordinarily go through her day watching the clock. Certainly since she’d been given the training center project, she’d been so swamped that she very often worked eighteen hours before exhaustion told her that it was well past quitting time. She’d always been shocked to realize just how late it was.

But on Friday, sitting at her desk in the original farmhouse that was being used as the construction site headquarters, she checked the time so often that it seemed as if she were aware of every minute that passed. Of how much longer it was until four-thirty. Until Seth Camden was due.

And that made her more disgusted and aggravated with herself than she’d ever been before.

What was wrong with her when it came to this guy? She was thinking about him every waking moment. She was dreaming about him when she finally could sleep. She was picturing him in her mind’s eye. Ogling him when she did see him. She’d even spent this morning looking across the pool every chance she got, while she was getting ready for work, just in case she might catch a glimpse of him.

And this was all happening now, of all times. Just when she had the kind of chance she’d strived for since she was a little girl, the chance to prove herself once and for all, the chance to be a real part of her father’s love of football, the chance to actually be on Team Kincaid and prove she could handle the responsibilities her father had previously thought only to entrust to a son.

Now of all times, when the last thing she needed was the slightest distraction, not only was she distracted but that distraction was coming in the form of a man—proving her father right …

Morgan Kincaid had always relegated his daughter to the sidelines—where women belonged, in his opinion. Women, he’d said frequently, didn’t belong in seats of power in the business world and especially not in the world of football. Cheerleaders. Receptionists. Secretaries. Possibly assistants. Decorators. Event planners. Morgan Kincaid had a very limited vision of the role of women anywhere. But in the Kincaid Corporation and when it came to football, those were the best positions that could be hoped for.

A woman, he insisted, would always eventually meet a man, and focus on getting him to marry her. Then, when she did succeed in marrying and having a family, that family would be more important to her than a job.

To Morgan Kincaid, that was just the way it was.

He was sexist, old-fashioned and downright silly. Lacey had argued with him again and again, citing any number of women for whom his theory didn’t hold true. But her father was a stubborn, hardheaded person and there had been no telling him differently. Especially when it came to his daughter. Who he was convinced would ultimately end up a wife and mother.

Yes, Morgan Kincaid employed Lacey—after battles and battles to convince him that she wanted to work, that she could work, that she should be allowed to work. But until now, the best Lacey had accomplished within the Kincaid Corporation was to oversee the remodeling of new office space, the hiring of office and restaurant staff, discussing menus with the chefs, working in public relations and marketing.

But to play a role in any important project—particularly when it came to football? No way.

Until now.

Now, when—even though it was by default—Lacey had been given the opportunity to oversee the building of the Monarch’s training center. The Monarchs—the NFL’s newest expansion football team. Owned by her father. His dream come true.

But Lacey had gotten the job purely by default.

It was her twin older brothers who Morgan Kincaid had been convinced would carry on his legacy—both in football and in business. But long ago her brother Hutch had turned his back on the game, disappointing and alienating himself from their father because of it. Hutch had only recently returned to the family fold but not to the Kincaid Corporation—Hutch owned his own very successful chain of sporting goods stores, and it was clear he had no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with the Kincaid Corporation or working for their father.

Hutch’s twin, Ian, had also had a period of alienation from the family, but had come back to the position of second-in-command at the Kincaid Corporation. Even now Ian was the chief operating officer of the Monarchs—a position he retained because he was needed there.

But as Seth had said, Ian had gotten the girl rather than the property. In the midst of acquiring the land for the training facility, Ian had met and fallen in love with Jenna Bowen. He and Jenna had ended up engaged, and Ian had been instrumental in helping her retain her family farm rather than purchasing it from her because it was the originally approved site for the training center. That had stirred Morgan’s ire.

Then, to make matters worse, the McDoogal property that Ian had been confident they could get had instead been sold out from under them to the Camdens. And Morgan Kincaid had lost his second choice, as well.

Their father had been livid.

Morgan had tempered his anger enough not to out-and-out fire Ian and enter into another of the rifts that had cost him both of his sons for a while. But there had still been consequences for Ian. Morgan had punished him by taking the entire training center project away from him.

And because Morgan was determined that the project be overseen by a member of his family, by someone he was convinced had an unwavering loyalty to him, he’d reluctantly turned to Lacey. But not without letting her know that he would be watching her very, very closely.

Ian seemed to be taking his punishment in stride. He was currently far more focused on his bride and on his new life. Not only had Ian become Jenna Bowen’s husband, he’d also taken on the role of father to Abby, Jenna’s orphaned niece. They had adopted her as their own daughter. Ian had assured Lacey that he wasn’t holding it against her that she’d been granted the project and had offered her whatever services or advice she might want.

But what Lacey wanted was to do this on her own. And to do it so well that she could finally carve out a niche for herself in the Kincaid Corporation and in her father’s eyes. She’d fought tooth and nail for even small jobs on important projects in the past, and her father had left no doubt that it was only his deep desire to keep the business in the family that had garnered this opportunity for her. That this was her greatest test.

But Lacey didn’t care how she’d come to have the project, and she didn’t care how much pressure she was under to succeed. She was still determined to show her father that she was as much a value as his sons.

And nowhere, nowhere, nowhere in any of that did she have even a split second to be attracted to someone. She couldn’t risk taking her eye off the ball.

Not even to look at Seth Camden’s fabulous rear end.

Or any other part of him.

This was her moment. And she couldn’t blow it. She wouldn’t blow it. She was going to make the Monarchs’ training center a crowning jewel. She was going to do this job so well that her father would wonder why he’d ever put so much stock in his sons and discounted her.

And she was not going to get distracted by anything or anyone. Certainly not by a man.

Even if that man was great-looking.

It was just that thinking about Seth Camden seemed to have become second nature to her. And trying not to think about him was distracting on its own.

Those blue eyes. That slow smile. That tight backside and those thick thighs. Those massive shoulders and muscles rippling in the summer sunshine that first day, flexing under the weight of file boxes last night …

The image of him haunted her, and she just couldn’t seem to shake it.

But she was going to! she swore to herself. She was going to right now!

Except that at that exact same moment she glanced at the clock in the corner of her computer screen, registered that it was nearly four-thirty and—without another thought—saved her work, put her computer on standby and headed for the bathroom.

If Seth Camden was going to be there any minute now, she had to make sure her upswept hair hadn’t wilted, that her silver-white blouse wasn’t too wrinkled and was still neatly tucked into her gray slacks, and that her mascara hadn’t smudged. And she wanted to put on a little lip gloss …

“He’d say he was right …” she muttered to her reflection in the cloudy old mirror that hung above the rusty bathroom sink.

Her father would say he was right, that here she was, finally in a seat of power, important responsibilities bestowed upon her, and what was she doing? She was thinking about a man. She was worrying about how she looked for that man rather than working. She was suspending work in order to be with that man …

Delegate, Lacey told herself.

Someone else could show Seth Camden what his family had left in the attic and the barn. That was definitely not a job she needed to do.

But then she wouldn’t get to see him …

Oh, but she hated that the thought had voiced itself.

She told herself to go with delegation. To return to the farmhouse’s dining room that she was using as her office, go back to what she’d been doing—to what she should have finished hours ago except that her attention had lapsed so many times into thoughts of Seth Camden—and not so much as leave her desk to deal with him or with the issue of the things his family had left behind.

That was what she told herself all right.

But when the sound of wheels on gravel announced that someone had just driven up to the front of the house, she did a quick swipe of the lip gloss, judged her appearance satisfactory, and left that bathroom to turn toward the old house’s entrance and not in the opposite direction to her office.

And when she caught her first glimpse of Seth Camden getting out of his big white truck, dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and a Western shirt, and looking even better than he did in her mind’s eye?

She knew there was no way she was getting anyone else to show him around.

And she merely went outside to meet and greet him.

“As far back as when I was a kid, this place was only used for storage and for a few meetings my great-grandfather and grandfather had out here,” Seth was saying as he and Lacey walked to the barn.

Meetings for some of the under-the-table deals the old-school Camdens were suspected of? Lacey wondered. But of course she didn’t ask that.

She’d gone out to meet Seth at his truck the minute he’d arrived. She didn’t even want anyone else to incidentally encounter him and suggest that they show him what he needed to see. Now she had him all to herself. Which made her inordinately happy …

“My brothers and sister and cousins and I all played in the barn and pretended the house was haunted,” he went on. “When it sold, I came out here for the first time in about a year. There was hardly anything left and I needed to leave town on business, so I sent a couple of my guys to deal with what needed to be dealt with. I’m sorry they missed things, but now that I think of it, I didn’t say anything about getting up into the attic or looking behind the barn.”

“There’s also a desk in what I’m told is the tackroom, too,” Lacey said, as they reached the old barn. “I’m using the house as the construction office and the barn for construction supplies and equipment. I’m not really sure how anyone realized there was anything in the attic, but my crew is all over the barn and they thought the tackroom would be a good place to store screws and nails and hardware—the smaller supplies. They’ll be putting up some shelves, but I don’t want them to do that until the desk is out of there so I can be sure they don’t damage it in case it has some value to you.”

“I’ll be surprised if it does, but thanks for the consideration.”

There was lumber already stacked in different sections of the barn, and Lacey led the way through it to the tackroom in the rear. When they reached it, she opened the door for Seth to go in ahead of her.

And yes, when he did—even though she tried not to—her gaze dropped for a split second to his derriere. She hated herself for it, she really did. She silently berated and reprimanded and chastised herself. But still she enjoyed that glimpse of perfect male posterior.

“Yep, I remember that desk now,” he said, as Lacey followed him into the room.

He took a closer look at it, hoisting one end to test the weight—probably with the thought of whether or not he could lift it himself. But when he did that the desk slid back several inches and something underneath it caught his eye.

“What do we have here?” he said, more to himself than to her.

He pushed the desk far enough out of the way to expose what appeared to be a hatch in the floorboards underneath it.

Seth hunkered down and Lacey lost herself once again in staring at his thick thighs stretching the denim of his jeans, the pure breadth of his back, the way his dark hair curved to his nape. And when his biceps bulged with the force required to pull the hatch up, chills danced along Lacey’s spine.

“Buried treasure?” she said when he yanked out an old trunk from a narrow compartment under the floor, her voice cracking and giving away the fact that she was watching him rather than what he was doing.

He didn’t seem to notice, though.

“Kind of looks like a pirate’s treasure chest, doesn’t it?” he said, setting the trunk beside the hole in the floor. “But as far as I know the Camdens have always been pretty landlocked, and this isn’t big enough for too much treasure.”

It was about the size of two shoe boxes stacked on top of each other. Hammered silver corners sealed the distressed metal that it was made of, and it was closed tight with a rusted padlock hooked through the latch.

After palming the padlock, Seth said, “Wonder where the key to that is? Probably long gone. I’ll have to saw it off to see what’s in here.”

“Gold doubloons?” Lacey suggested.

He picked the trunk up and shook it. But whatever was inside didn’t sound like coins. It just made a thunking noise.

“I don’t think so,” Seth said. But beyond that he didn’t seem overly curious as he stood again, balancing the trunk on his hip. “I might as well take this with me now and see if I can find a key that fits the lock. But the desk will have to wait. Want to show me the farm equipment thingy?”

He was smiling.

“It’s through this other barn door,” Lacey said, leading him from the tackroom through a door at the back that opened to the outside.

“Ah, that’s just an old rotary hoe,” Seth said the minute he saw it. “But you’re right, it isn’t going to be easy to get out of here. I’ll need a different truck than I drove today so that I can hook up a trailer bed and haul this away.”