by Kadie Scott
Although he’d been with good families in foster care before Beth and Autry adopted him, Dylan was still wary of letting strangers into his life. He eyed Logan with narrowed eyes and a look way too grown up for a kid his age.
“Dylan, this is my friend Mr. Cartez. We work together sometimes.”
Autry had definitely been rubbing off on her adopted nephew. Immediately, Dylan offered his hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Cartez.”
Beth, watching over her shoulder, gave her son a nod that clearly said good job.
Except Dylan immediately dismissed Logan to turn back to Carter with eager eyes. “Can I show you?”
“Breakfast, then school,” Beth said firmly. “You can show her this afternoon.”
Dylan’s expression dropped. “Awwww, man.” His voice cracked on the words. At nearly thirteen, he was somewhere between boy and man, more boy right now.
“Excuse me?” Autry said as he came in through the mudroom, likely already up for a few hours getting chores done.
“I mean, yes, ma’am,” Dylan grumbled, then went back to his place at the table and shoved some bacon in his mouth.
Autry shared a smile with Beth, then turned to Carter. “I went and picked him up this morning and had a chance to talk to Dad. Because of her age and the severity of the concussion, they want to keep her under observation two more days.”
Carter nodded. “I figured. Logan and I need to visit the ranch for his next case. I thought we might take care of that today.”
Autry nodded. “We could use a little help with the chores, with both Dad and Mom out of the loop.”
“Of course. Before we go, I’ll help Beth get things set up for lunch and dinner. When I get back, I’m guessing around four, just let me know what you need.”
“I can help too,” Logan offered from where he’d sat beside Dylan at the kitchen table.
Carter and Autry both did a double take. Carter recovered first, grinning at her city lawyer. Even in “casual clothes” of dark pants and a black polo shirt, he looked like a city boy. “You gonna brush off those old ranching skills?”
Logan shrugged like this was no big deal, although she suspected maybe it was. Something about the way he held his shoulders clued her in. “I think I remember how to do a few things,” he said.
“Ranching skills?” Autry asked.
Logan’s cell phone pinged and he picked it up, checking the screen.
“He grew up on a ranch.” She filled Autry in while Logan was distracted.
“Huh. Makes sense,” Autry said.
Logan put the phone down and cocked his head in question.
“You walk like someone who’s been on a horse.”
High praise from her younger brother who’d practically been born in the saddle. Will was the horse crazy one, but Autry and Jennings were the cowboys, through and through.
Logan obviously took it the way it was meant. He made a gesture that mimicked tipping his hat.
The rest of the morning passed in a whirlwind of breakfast, getting Dylan out the door, and helping Beth before she and Logan hopped in her truck to make the drive to the Owens’s ranch.
Most of the way there, Logan filled her in on what had gone on with the case so far, punctuated by easy silences. No morning-after awkwardness. In fact, the night before didn’t come up, and, for once, Carter didn’t force the issue. She’d rather things be easy when they arrived at their destination. It wasn’t like there was much to talk about anyway. They’d both acknowledged they had no idea where this was going, but neither wanted to stop. So, she let a sleeping dog lie, and stuck to work. When it came to work, they’d always been perfectly in sync.
“Turn here,” Logan said, beating her phone to it.
Carter did as he asked. A few miles later, they turned onto the property, rumbling over the cattle guard strip and then down a dirt road lined with live oaks and fields of wildflowers. Finally, they made it up to a small ranch-style house, the limestone aged and blackened and the trim needing a fresh coat of paint. A handful of dogs ran up to her truck, barking their heads off.
“Bo, Luke, Cooter,” a gruff male voice shouted from somewhere in the house. “Quiet.”
Carter grinned at the Dukes of Hazzard names, though she didn’t ever watch that show anymore. Immediately, the dogs quit their yapping and trotted up to the covered front porch. Wiping his hands with a dishcloth, an older gentleman, a bit thick around the middle, with a stark white beard and full head of hair came out to see what the commotion was about. Basically, the country version of Santa Claus in worn jeans and boots.
With a smile, Carter hopped down from the truck, Logan right behind her.
“Mr. Owens?” Logan called.
“Yessir.”
He held out a hand as he approached. “My name is Logan Cartez.”
“The lawyer?” Jed Owens harrumphed.
Logan’s expression didn’t change, but Carter had to hide a grin.
“Yes, sir,” Logan confirmed.
The older man’s gaze shifted to her and his gaze softened infinitesimally. “And who’s this?”
No surprise he didn’t recognize her. The Owenses lived just far enough away that they weren’t really local to La Colina, likely going to Johnson City or maybe even Fredricksburg any time they needed to go into town.
“My name is Carter Hill, Mr. Owens. I’m a doctor of hydrology and water management.”
Bushy white eyebrows shot up. “That’s a mighty big title for such a little thing.”
Carter laughed. She’d been dealing with old, ornery ranchers all her life. Throwbacks to a time when the world both demanded and offered more respect—not using a given name until asked, saying “yes ma’am” and “yes, sir,” and respecting elders—while simultaneously treating women, and pretty much every other minority demographic, like they didn’t have two brain cells to knock together.
He hadn’t meant it unkindly, so the best way to deal with it was to laugh and give it right back. “I’m tougher than I look.”
The beard around his mouth twitched with a smile he hid behind a look of skepticism. “That your truck?”
“Yes.”
His gaze skated over Logan in his fancy city clothes and Carter in her country jeans and boots. “Least one of you knows how to dress the part.”
To give him credit, Logan didn’t react. He probably got this attitude a lot, as he worked a lot of ranch and farm-related cases. Unfortunately, his phone chose that moment to ping with an incoming text.
Mr. Owens’s lips thinned as Logan apologized and pulled it out to check the screen. He frowned at what he saw but tucked it back in his pocket.
Carter covered by responding to Jed Owens’s last comment to her. “I grew up on a ranch, sir.”
That earned her a narrowed-eyed stare. “You say your last name’s Hill?”
She almost expected him to spit tobacco on the ground. “Yes, sir. My family owns High Hill Ranch near La Colina.”
“I heard of ’em. Good people.”
“Thank you. I think so.”
“Jed?” A woman’s voice reached them through the screen door. “What’re you doing standing around outside? Where are your manners?”
If Jed Owens was a country version of Santa Claus, his wife was Mrs. Claus from the top of her white hair pulled into a bun, to her rosy cheeks, to her plump body covered by a white apron with cherries all over it.
“I’m Emma Owens.” She held out a hand to shake both of theirs.
Logan and Carter introduced themselves.
Emma offered them a kind smile. “Come on in. Come in.”
Jed gave another harrumph and Emma rolled her eyes. “Ignore him. Can I get you something to drink? Water? Tea? Lemonade?”
“Water would be wonderful,” Carter accepted. “Thank you.”
“For me as well, ma’am,” Logan said.
Hearing his usually accentless voice drop into a hint of a Southern drawl—her own accent got thicker when she went home
, too—Carter had to hold in a hum of appreciation. Damn. The man was already sex on a stick. Adding Southern, gentleman, and cowboy to the mix might just bring her to her knees.
Glasses of water in hand, Emma sat them all down on plaid covered couches that had seen better days in an otherwise pristinely clean living area. “I sure hope you can help us, Mr. Cartez.”
“Call me Logan, please. And I aim to do my best, Mrs. Owens.”
“Heard that before,” Jed muttered from the deep leather La-Z-Boy armchair he’d commandeered.
Emma shook her head.
Logan’s sharp gaze intensified though. “I’m aware this is the second time you’ve tried to bring suit against the neighboring ranch.”
Carter caught Logan’s glance, even though she hadn’t visibly reacted to that statement, even keeping her hands in her lap. That was news to her. Usually he filled her in better than that.
“We got ourselves a fancy lawyer who talked a lot and still lost,” Jed said in the straight-talking, no-nonsense way of a country man. “We came to you because you helped the Sniders last year with a similar problem. I’m still not convinced it’ll be worth the money.”
Logan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fully committed to swaying the older man. “The lawyer you hired specializes in disputes over land ownership, not water rights.”
Emma frowned. “There’s a difference?”
Shifting his gaze to her, Logan nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Kind of like ranchers may specialize in a certain breed of cattle.”
“Now… how would you know about that, son?” Jed pondered, his tone altering slightly away from suspicious.
“I grew up on a ranch.” Logan had to be hating having to justify himself to anyone. The man was one of the most sought after attorneys in this field.
Carter eyed him speculatively. Before this week, she would’ve expected him to shut down Jed Owens, or freeze the man with one of his pointed stares. Instead he was wielding a patience she’d rarely seen from him. Was this how he treated all his clients?
Just another part of the cowboy in him that she hadn’t cottoned onto earlier? Or maybe this setting was mellowing him out? Whatever the reason, she was glad he was making an effort. She already liked the Owenses.
*
Three hours with his new clients and Logan was having trouble putting aside his usual professional distance. Yes, he was always passionate about a case, but never allowed himself to become emotionally involved. Maybe visiting the ranch was making him like this. Hell, the house even smelled like home—clean with a hint of cigar smoke that lingered in the material of the furniture. His dad had been a cigar lover.
Logan had forgotten about that.
His lowered guard could also be thanks to Carter’s watchful gaze. He’d caught a few smiles that had looked almost like pleased approval.
Which should’ve raised his hackles. He didn’t need anyone’s approval. Instead a glow of warmth, almost like pride, caught him like a punch to the gut. Two nights in his bed and he was starting to care what she thought of him.
You always cared, the part of him that insisted on honesty whispered.
“I’ll be back day after tomorrow,” Carter promised as she waved at the couple standing on their front porch, then got in the truck beside him.
She started it up and guided it down the long dusty drive. Logan waited. No way would she resist a comment. This was Carter. She never resisted.
“I like the Owenses,” she said.
Logan made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat.
“Seem like good people.”
Another grunt. She was fishing. He wasn’t going to bite.
“I think you liked them, too.” She got more to the point.
“They’re clients.”
Carter rolled her eyes. “And you’ll do your best for them. Blah, blah, blah. You always do your best for your clients.”
True. He said nothing.
“I think doing your best is usually more about you than it is about them, though,” she said, her voice turning thoughtful.
Not entirely true, but it was also the image he put forward. He didn’t need anyone in his private business.
“It’s about changing laws one case at a time.” Logan frowned even as the words came out of his mouth.
Why was he justifying anything? Because this was Carter and she always got him to talk more than he wanted.
“Yes. But for you it’s about winning. Being the best. Right?”
Irritation surged, but he sat back. “Sure.”
“I don’t think that’s right.” She sounded almost as though she was arguing with herself, rather than him. “I think for you it’s personal.”
She was getting too close for comfort now.
“Don’t start making me into something I’m not.” If she was getting some kind of rose-colored view of him, he’d disabuse her of that right now.
“Aren’t you?” Her voice, for once, didn’t give away her thoughts. “Let me ask you this… why’d you decide to become a lawyer?”
“The big bucks,” he popped off.
She tossed him a look that said she didn’t appreciate his humor. “I mean it. Why law?”
He loosed a sigh, ready to be done with this conversation. “I mean it. I wanted a profession that guaranteed stability.”
“But you grew up in ranching. Was anyone else in your family in law?”
“No. And ranching doesn’t guarantee stability.” Given the size of the spread her family owned, and the old money involved, would she even understand that?
“I know,” Carter said quietly, interrupting his thought. “I’ve had friends, neighbors around the area, impacted, seen them lose their land or have to give it up.”
To be swallowed by the Hill empire? Logan shifted in his seat, because suddenly lumping Carter in with the people like the neighbors who’d taken everything his family had sat about as comfortably as cactus needles in his skin. He didn’t want to see her in that light. In Austin, she was his expert witness, and the friend who’d show up randomly and force him to take a break from work. Annoying sometimes, but always kind, and on his side, part of his team.
And now what is she?
Logan mentally shoved the question aside.
Beside him, Carter cleared her throat. “When I was ten, my best friend had to move away because her family had to sell the small ranch they’d been on for four generations. Five straight years of drought had cost them more than they could recoup. So they sold and started over somewhere else.”
“Did you stay friends?” Granted he’d been off at college when his parents died, but not a single childhood friend had kept in touch after the funerals.
“We did.” She grinned. “Thanks to the internet. And every so often I go visit her. They ended up on a large ranch in the panhandle, managing it, rather than owning. She’s married now, to a rancher who owns a smaller property in the same county and they’re expecting a baby any day.”
Why was he not surprised? “I should have figured.”
“What?”
“You’ve got Goody Two-shoes practically stamped on your forehead. Of course you’d still be friends with her.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Confusion lingered in her voice.
“No.” In fact, he liked that about Carter.
He could rely on her decency. But liking her was part of the problem. It was cluttering up the attraction with complications.
His cell phone pinged for the fifth time and he pulled it out. Angela again. He hadn’t heard from her except the occasional Christmas card or quick social media “like” every once in a while. She wanted to get together for coffee. Why?
A movement to his left had him glancing over to find Carter studying the road a little too seriously. Had she seen the text?
Not that it should matter. He had no interest in talking with his ex. The trouble was, as his friend, Carter didn’t like Angela on principle. Now that he’d slept with her�
�
Still none of her business.
Except that didn’t sit right either. Which should have him rethinking this not-a-one-night thing immediately.
Whatever happened with her, he needed to have a plan. No more of this off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment, emotion-driven shit. And for that, he needed space. “I need to go back to Austin for a few days.”
She swerved a bit harder than necessary to avoid a pothole, then tossed him a confused glance. “Why is that?”
“Until your mother comes home from the hospital, you don’t need me. I could get some things cleared up in the office. I left in a bit of a hurry. Mrs. Landingham would prefer it.” There. Logic and distance. What he should’ve been applying to Carter from the moment he got the urge to stake any kind of claim.
Carter was silent long enough that he glanced over. Only she wasn’t looking at him. Instead she was focused on the road beyond. They were the only vehicle in sight. What was she looking for?
“Is that a problem?” he asked. Had she heard him.
She glanced over and produced a smile. “Of course not. I’ll call when we have news about when she’ll be out of the hospital.”
No disappointment. No coyness. Not even a blink of hesitation.
You should be thankful. Except a contrary side wanted… something else from her. A different reaction. As if he mattered.
Which was damn idiotic.
A plan where Carter was concerned was definitely what he needed.
Chapter Eight
A bucking bull changed direction less than Logan Cartez did. Or was he running back to Angela?
She’d seen the text. Or at least Angela’s name and the word please. Carter’s first instinct had been to throw the damn phone out the window. But that wouldn’t fix anything. Neither would turning into a jealous shrew. So she’d let him go and, over the last three days, tried her best not to think about it. Wait and see how he was when he returned.
Carter paused outside the room they’d put her parents in. Now that her mother was out of the hospital, they’d brought her home last night, deciding to bring her to High Hill, rather than the smaller house Carter’s parents had recently bought located halfway between the ranch and La Colina. Autry and Beth had taken over the master bedroom, so they had her parents in Jennings’s old room now that he had a house of his own.
