by Liza Kendall
The two women sprang apart. “Nothing,” Helen said, shooting her daughter a nervous look that warned Jules not to upset her father in his condition.
“Just talking,” Jules mumbled.
Dad grunted and went on through to the refrigerator.
Jules managed to give her mother a wan smile and then she shut her mouth and picked up her jelly jar of milk, sidling toward the door.
“Breakfast is almost ready, Julianna.” Mom gestured with her spatula.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not as hungry as I thought.”
“But I made enough for three.” She narrowed her eyes and suddenly the spatula became a scepter, wielded by the queen of the household.
“I—” She cast a look of mute appeal toward her father.
“C’mon, baby doll. Break a biscuit with your old man,” he said, utterly failing to rescue her from Mom and her relentless expression of unhappiness with who Jules was.
Miserably, she put the jelly jar in the fridge, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
Mom produced a smile and served her some eggs with only one piece of turkey bacon; no biscuit.
After she’d served Dad two biscuits and two slices of turkey bacon; then herself the same, Jules got up and snagged what she considered to be her biscuit and the leftover two pieces of bacon.
“Carbs,” murmured Mom.
Jules took a breath and reached for the butter.
“Fat,” Mom whispered.
Jules scooped out extra, politely ignoring her.
“She looks just fine, Helen,” Dad observed.
“Yes, but she’s got my frame, which means it’s never too early to watch her weight. Remember that I had to take drastic measures . . .”
Jules stuffed half a biscuit slathered with butter and jam into her mouth. “Mom,” she said through it, “I never sit down all day. I’m on my feet, digging out stalls and riding and training and giving lessons.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Helen reprimanded her.
Back in her cabin, Jules stewed. She’d eaten too much because she’d been outraged, and now she felt sick. She shoved the stupid jelly jar of milk into her mini fridge. Was it true? Had she contributed to her family’s treating her like a baby? She didn’t like to think about it. What was wrong with living here, in a perfectly good cabin near her parents?
Or was her mother simply so upset about her father’s illness that she was getting mean?
Jules dug a bra out of her trunk and holstered the girls. She glared at her wet hair in the tiny bathroom mirror. It was just fine in its clump on top of her head. She didn’t need to look like some Stepford wife. And she didn’t need a Stepford husband to “give her” a future, either.
She would create her own future, as Aunt Sue had taught her.
Chapter 7
Jules heard Rhett before she saw him. As she sat at the corner desk in the tack room, the floorboards directly behind her creaked, and she shot out of her chair, doing a half turn in midair. She landed facing him.
“Paranoid?” he asked mildly. “Or too many cups of coffee?”
He had no right to look—or smell—that good. His dark hair was still damp from a shower, and his aftershave spoke of luxury travel: private jets and polo matches and five-star hotels. He wore pressed khakis and a blue button-down with driving moccasins, no socks. A watch that could probably pay someone’s mortgage for a year.
“Neither,” she said stiffly. “Good morning.”
“Mornin’.” Rhett gestured at the desk. “You got another chair? Or you want to pull up your wheelbarrow?” His eyes twinkled with mischief.
Jules fought a losing battle not to laugh. “I have another chair.”
“Tell me where to find it, and I’ll be happy to bring it in.”
“Oh no. You only get to carry your gentleman act so far.”
“My gentleman act? How do you figure it’s an act, Jules?”
All her mirth disappeared. “I judge from recent history.”
He sighed. “Look, I’ve explained to you why I reacted the way I did.”
And I can’t explain to you that I’ve been in love with you since fifth grade. Even if I could, I wouldn’t . . . it makes what you did so, so much worse. And I refuse to give you the satisfaction.
“Yup,” she said. “So. How can I help you, Rhett?”
“I think I can help you, if you’d care to let me see the books for the stables.”
She fetched the chair, unfolded it next to the desk, and reached for her laptop. “My dad went from an old-fashioned ledger to an Excel spreadsheet. Which worked okay. But I converted everything to QuickBooks three years ago.” She typed in her password, tried not to think about how good he smelled, and tried to ignore his . . . toxic . . . masculinity. Toxic. That was exactly the right word. He might smell good, but he was rotten inside.
She frowned as she pulled up the software. Not rotten. Not exactly. Just not for her. Rhett was her childish fantasy that had finally been put to rest.
He was a man’s man. Grady’s man. Not hers. He’d made it totally clear where she stood in the order of things.
“Jules?” Rhett prompted. “Hello? Jules.”
She blinked. Snapped out of her reverie. “Sorry. Back to business.”
“Yes, but first . . .” He frowned.
Jules rolled her eyes. “What, Rhett?”
“You get any new info about your dad?”
“No, but I’m going to join him at his next consult. I’ll let you know his status after that. I don’t see that it will affect anything we’re trying to do here,” she said briskly.
“That’s not why I asked.”
She paused and looked him in the eye. “Why did you ask?”
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry you’re having this scare. And if you need . . .”
She raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to finish. “If I need?”
“If you need anything, I guess. Related to . . . that. Just let me know.” He cleared his throat, looking a little lost.
“Thanks,” she said awkwardly.
“Of course. Anyway. The books.”
Jules stared at Rhett for a moment and then shook herself out of it. “Yeah. The books. Here. I’ll let you get acquainted with things.” She reluctantly turned the screen to face him. “Do you know QuickBooks?”
He quickly repressed a smile. “Yeah, I think I can handle it.”
No doubt he was used to far more sophisticated programs, high math and derivatives and algorithms. She’d forgotten. Boy genius had gone back East to boarding school, then college at what, seventeen? And straight to Wall Street after graduating—to some hedge fund thing. Whatever that was. She wouldn’t know a hedge fund from a hedge apple.
Grady had told her that Rhett’s employers had been so taken with their hire that they’d paid in full for his MBA. He had two degrees, and she had none.
Jules got up and paced the tack room a few times, trying not to resent him for it. She was perfectly happy with who she was. She didn’t need letters after her name to make her whole or justify her existence. She was just fine, being Julianna Holt the barn manager.
“Hmm,” said Rhett, tracing a column of numbers with his index finger.
Or was she?
Was he about to tell her that she was terrible at her job? That she couldn’t add up or subtract figures? Resentment began to build in her again. She could just kill Dad for putting her in this position, having to justify her business decisions and expenditures to this guy, of all the guys on the planet.
Stop it, Jules. Dad did what he thought was best. And he’s sick enough to head out to MD Anderson, so don’t even joke about that . . .
“Got a notepad?” asked Rhett. “A pen?”
She silently produced both. “I can’t just stand around doing n
othing, Ever-Rhett. I’m going to go groom some horses, ‘kay?”
He nodded. “Let’s meet up here in an hour or two.”
“I have until three P.M.,” she said. “Then I’m giving a trial lesson to a potential client, and after that, I have a meeting with the city council about starting up a Silverlake horse show.”
“Fine.”
She grabbed the caddy that held her horse brushes, comb, currycomb, and hoof-pick, along with hoof oil, clean rags, and rubber bands. She trudged with it to Blossom’s stall, first. Blossom was a sweet old mare, a chestnut with white markings and a bloom of white that looked like a full-flowering rose across her forehead.
“Good morning, girl.” Jules fed her a couple of baby carrots before entering her stall and brushing the sawdust and dirt off her back. It took the rubber currycomb to loosen the patches of dried mud here and there. “Had yourself a good roll, did you?”
Blossom tossed her head up and down.
“Bet that felt good.”
The chestnut snorted her pleasure at the circular contact of the currycomb, which offered up a pretty good back-and-body scratch, as well as the benefits of grooming.
Jules brushed her and picked her hooves, next, removing all of the packed dirt and tiny rocks that could bruise the mare’s feet. Then she slipped a halter and lead on her, led her out of the stall and into a fresh one that she’d already dug out. Some of Jules’s former students rented time with the Holt horses for trail-riding on the paths that zigzagged a little farther out of town. Blossom was ready to be taken out later by less experienced riders. The others could ride Curly and Frost.
Blossom began to drink a truckload of water.
“Really?” Jules said to her. “Gonna make me dig out that stall, too?”
Blossom eyed her, blinked lazily, and resumed drinking water from the bucket that hung in the corner.
“Thanks,” Jules said with a rueful grin. “I know you do it on purpose.” She moved on to Curly, so named because he was a North American Bashkir, dun in color, with curly hair. It was impossible not to hug Curly, stroke his dark muzzle, and run her fingers through his funny, textured coat as she brushed him. She could swear he hugged her back. She checked his fetlock, which was healing better, now, and rebandaged it.
And she thought about what it would take to heal her dad. Surgery, certainly. But then, maybe more treatments that would make him feel sick. Probably medication and monitoring for life, if all that worked. It was bound to be a long, exhausting, expensive road, whichever route he went.
As she finished up with Curly, she checked her watch and reluctantly forced herself to go meet Rhett again in the tack room, where he sat with her laptop, poking his nose into her business. Reviewing her decisions. It was just plain galling.
* * *
Jules smelled of horse liniment as she stepped back into the tack room with her plastic caddy of grooming items. The stuff was like Bengay on steroids—eye-watering—but it was as familiar to him as his own aftershave and it knocked him back over a decade, to when he’d groomed Frost and soaped his own saddle; applied Fiebing’s oil to keep it supple. He’d been a pro at roping steer—won rodeo awards. How a woman could reek of horse liniment, sport a smudge of dirt across her left cheek, and look that good in a filthy Austin Lone Stars baseball cap, he didn’t know. Her hair trailed out the back of the cap in an uncombed ponytail—did she even own a brush? He wanted to put down the laptop, stand up, and wrap her hair around his hand. Pull her close . . .
“So. How bad are my books?” she said, interrupting the fantasy he’d been about to indulge in.
“Your books are perfect,” he said. “Why would you assume I’m here to criticize?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No. I’m here to . . . encourage best business practices.”
“Meaning what?”
“I’m looking for ways to economize, but I’m also looking for ways to maximize profits.”
“You won’t find any. There are none. But you knew that.”
Rhett sighed. “You want to sit down? And this will be a lot easier if you lose the attitude and stop being defensive.”
Jules set her grooming caddy down with a snap on its shelf. “Lose the attitude. Okay, Mr. Fancy Pants. Let’s you and me do a . . . what’re they called in the corporate world? A groundbreaking exercise? You know, so that we can feel what it’s like to step into each other’s . . .” She cast a pointed look at his expensive shoes. “Loafers.
“How would you react, Ever-Rhett, if I sashayed all bowlegged into your office and announced that I’d somehow bought your business out from under you? And that you had to open up every aspect of it to me, an outsider, so that I could wreak havoc on everything you’d done or planned to do? Would you have an attitude? Would you be defensive?”
“Not at all,” he said calmly.
Her eyebrows shot up to heights hidden by the Lone Stars cap. “Bullcrap.”
“I wouldn’t ever be in that position, Jules. Simple as that. Because I’m down in the weeds of every aspect of my business. I run queries in the data all day long to find patterns and answer questions that I haven’t even thought of, yet . . .”
Her face flushed. “Oh, I’m not down in the weeds? Down in the manure doesn’t count?”
“Cut it out,” he said. “C’mon. Sit down. Face the facts: This isn’t about me being ‘better’ than you for any reason. This is about me having a different perspective and different training. That’s all, okay?”
Jules folded her arms across her chest and stared at him, refusing to sit.
“We can work together, Jules. Or we can work at cross-purposes and I’ll make decisions without even consulting you. Is that what you want?”
“No. Of course not.”
“We have a common goal, here: to make a profit for this place and to help your dad recoup some losses.”
She squinted at him. “You’ve already bought it out from under him, so how exactly are you going to do that?”
“First of all, I don’t like the implications of bought it out from under him. I gave him a much fairer price than he’d have gotten from anyone else. You should know that. And if you’ll kick off your boots and stay awhile, I’ll give you some possible answers to that question.”
Looking as though she’d rather eat her boots than spend any time with him, Jules blew out a truculent breath, dropped into the other folding chair, and waited.
Rhett took one look at that raised, stubborn chin and repressed a smile. She was going to be one helluva management challenge. It probably served him right—he hadn’t been easy himself. He’d been called a cowboy on more than one occasion. Headstrong and bullheaded. Without humility.
“So?” she prompted him.
“So. You’ve got a few different income streams here.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Jules, with all due respect, shut your way-too-pretty face and let me talk.”
She blinked at that, and he fought the urge to wipe the smear of dirt off her face.
Don’t treat her like a kid. Clue in. That’s what she’s pissed about.
“Income streams,” he repeated. “One: You’re boarding horses for other people. Two: You’re giving group riding lessons to kids, letting riders sponsor horses, and doing weekend trail rides for adults. Three: You’re training and selling high-end hunter-jumpers. Four: You lease land for grazing. And five: You’ve got the saddlery in town.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So all of that brings in money. But let’s look at your expenses and your ROI.”
“My what?”
“Return on investment.”
“O-kaaay.” Jules eyed him cautiously.
“What do you enjoy doing the most?” Rhett asked her.
Jules’s face lit up. “Giving lessons to the kids. Teaching t
hem to love and respect horses. Come by Sunday afternoon and see it in action,” she said. “I’d love to expand the school.”
“I’ll do that. What else?”
“Training the horses.”
“How much does that bring in?”
She told him.
He nodded. “That’s not bad . . . especially when you make a good sale.”
“Like I did in Dallas.”
The tension between them ratcheted up again. But he nodded.
“What’s your capital outlay when you purchase a horse like that?”
“It’s all there in the books.”
“Okay. But my point is, the horse costs quite a bit and then you have to put months into training it before you recoup your purchase price or make any kind of profit. What do you charge for your time? How do you build that in?”
She stared at him. “I don’t.”
“Mistake,” he said. “Your time and expertise is worth a lot of money.”
“But I make that on the back end.”
“After all the expenses of feeding and training, you personally aren’t making squat. Let’s find a way to change that. You need a better salary.”
News to her, clearly. But she wasn’t arguing, for a change.
“Let’s talk overhead. You’ve got maintenance, feed and equipment, veterinary bills . . . insurance and taxes. It makes sense on this property, though I think you could lose the grazing land.”
“But—”
“Hear me out, Jules. You can think about it. But the single biggest expense you have—and the greatest capital outlay on inventory, which doesn’t move much, by the way—is the saddlery in town. That, my girl, has got to go. Sell it. Yesterday.”
Jules stared at him. Then she laughed. “Oh no. No way. You’re out of your mind. Holt Saddlery has been part of this family for decades. It’s . . . it’s a tradition. Not to mention that my aunt Sue would be out of a job if we sold it! And that is one hundred percent not cool.”
“Aunt Sue?” Aunt Sue . . . Rhett vaguely remembered her. Kind of a gypsy-looking woman, loose, flowing clothes. Head scarf. And some kind of scandal attached to her name . . . it had rocked the town, years back. What had Sue Holt done in her misspent youth to shock the church ladies? He couldn’t remember.
