Boss Man

by Diana Palmer

  Violet had a passing acquaintance with the employees who ran the lab, one of whom was a graduate biologist named Delene Crane, a young woman with a quirky sense of humor. They were nodding acquaintances, because she didn’t have much free time to socialize. None of the staff did, for that matter. Routine at the ranch was chaotic because spring was the busiest time for everyone, with calves being born and recorded and branding in full swing.

  She knew that Duke used not only hot branding, but also had computer chips on plastic tags that dangled from the ears of his cattle. These chips contained the complete history of each cow or bull. The information was scanned into a handheld computer and sent by modem to Violet’s computer to be compiled into the spreadsheet program.

  “It’s just fascinating,” Violet told Duke as she watched the information updating itself on her computer screen from minute to minute.

  He smiled wearily. He was dusty. His chaps and boots were dirty and blood-stained because he’d been helping with calving all day. His red shirt was wet all over. His hair, under his wide-brimmed Stetson, was dripping sweat. His leather gloves, tight-fitting and suede-colored, were dangling from the wide belt buckle at his lean waist over his jeans.

  “It’s taken a lot of work to get this operation so far,” he confessed, his eyes on the screen as he spoke, his voice deep and pleasant in the quiet office. “And a lot of cash. I’ve been in the hole for the past year. But I’m just beginning to show a profit. I think the pork operation may be what finally gets me in the black.”

  “Where are the pigs kept?” she wondered aloud, because she’d only seen cattle and horses so far. In addition to the cattle herd, Duke maintained a small herd of purebred Appaloosa horses.

  “Far enough away that they aren’t easy to smell,” he replied with a grin. “They have their own complex about a mile down the road. It’s remarkably clean, and purely organic. They have pastures to roam and a stream that runs through it all the year, and they’re fed a carefully formulated organic diet. No pesticides, no hormones, no antibiotics unless they’re absolutely necessary.”

  “You sound like the Harts and the Tremaynes and…” she began.

  “…and Cy Parks and J. D. Langley,” he finished for her, chuckling. “They did give me the idea. It’s catching on. Christabel and Judd Dunn jumped on the wagon last year.”

  “It’s been very profitable for them, I hear,” Violet replied. “Mr. Kemp handles all the paperwork for the Harts and Cy Parks…” She bit her tongue as his face hardened and the smile faded. “Sorry, boss,” she said at once.

  He moved jerkily. “No harm done.”

  But she knew how he felt about Kemp. She opened a second window on the computer screen and diverted him with a question about another procedure.

  He explained the process to her and smiled. “You’re a diplomat, Violet. I’m glad you needed a job.”

  “Me, too, Mr. Wright,” she replied, smiling.

  He pulled his hat down over his eyes. “Well, I’ve played hooky as long as I can,” he said with a grimace. “I’ll get back to work before Lance comes in here and lassos me and drags me back out to the pasture. You go home at five regardless of the phone, okay?” he added. “I know you worry about your mother. You don’t need to do overtime.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and meant it. “It’s hard for her to be alone in the evening. She gets scared.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Oh, if you get a minute,” he added from the door, “call Calhoun Ballenger and tell him I’m sending him a donation for his campaign.”

  She grinned. “I’ll be happy to do that! I’m voting for him, too.”

  “Good for you.” He closed the door carefully behind him.

  Violet made the call, finished up her work, and left on time. She had to run by the post office on the way home to put Duke’s correspondence into the mail.

  As luck would have it, Kemp was in the lobby when she walked in the door, having just put a last-minute letter into the outgoing post.

  He stopped short when he saw her, his pale blue eyes narrow and accusing. She was keenly aware that her lipstick was long gone, that her hair was sticking out in comic angles from her once-neat braid, that one leg of her panty hose was laddered. She couldn’t run into him when she looked neat and pretty, she thought miserably. To top it all off, she was wearing white jeans that were too tight and a red overblouse with ruffles that made her look vaguely clownish. She ground her teeth as she glared back at him.

  “Mr. Kemp,” she said politely, and started to go around him.

  He stepped right into her path. “What’s Wright been doing to you?” he asked. “You look worn to the bone.”

  Her thin eyebrows arched as she registered genuine concern in that narrow gaze. She cleared her throat. “It’s roundup,” she replied.

  He nodded understanding. “The Harts are breaking out in hives already,” he mused, and almost smiled. “They’ve had some problems with their exports to Japan as well. I suppose the cattle business is wearing on the nerves.”

  She smiled shyly. “Everybody’s rushing to record all the pertinent information for every new calf, and there are a lot of them.”

  “He’s opened a meat shop here in town,” he remarked. “It sells organic hams and sausage and bacon.”

  “Yes. His employees run a Web site, too, so that he can sell his pork on the Internet.” She hesitated. Her heart was racing like mad and she felt her knees weakening just from the long, shared looks. She missed him so much. “How…how are Libby and Mabel?”

  “Missing you.” He made it sound as if she’d left him in a bind.

  She shifted to the other foot. If they’d been alone, she’d have had more to say about the accusing look he was giving her. But people were coming and going all around them. “Thank you. For the recommendation, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think Wright would take you on,” he said honestly. “It’s no secret that he hates having women around the ranch since the divorce.”

  “Delene Crane works with him,” she replied, curious.

  “She’s a woman.”

  “He’s known Delene since they were in college together,” he told her. “He doesn’t think of her as a woman.”

  Interesting, she mused, because Delene wasn’t a bad-looking woman. She had red hair and green eyes and a milky complexion with a few freckles. She froze out the cowboys who gave her flirting glances, though. She was also strictly business with Duke, so maybe it was true that he didn’t think of her as a romantic prospect. She wondered why Delene didn’t feel comfortable around men…

  “How’s your mother?” Kemp asked abruptly.

  She grimaced. “She does things they told her not to do,” she lamented. “Especially lifting heavy stuff. The doctors said that she still has a tendency toward clots, despite the blood thinners they give her. They didn’t say, but I know that once a person has one or two strokes, they’re almost predisposed to have more.”

  He nodded slowly. “But there are drugs to treat that, now. I’m sure your doctor is taking good care of her.”

  “He is,” she had to agree.

  “Your mother is special.”

  She smiled. “Yes. I think so, too.”

  He looked past her. “It’s clouding up. You’d better get your letters mailed, so you don’t get soaked when you leave.”

  “Yes.” She looked at him with pain in her eyes. She loved him. It was so much worse that he knew, and pitied her for it. She glanced away, coloring faintly. “Yes, I’d better…go.”

  Unexpectedly, he reached out and pushed back a long strand of black hair that had escaped her braid. He tugged it behind her ear, his gaze intent and solemn as he watched her heartbeat race at her bodice. He heard her breath catch at the faint contact. He felt guilty. He could have been kinder to Violet. She had enough on her plate just with her mother to care for. She cared about him. She’d shown it, in so many ways, when she worked with him. He hadn’t wanted to encourage her, or give her fals
e hope. But she looked so miserable.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said quietly.

  She swallowed, hard. “Yes, sir. You, too.”

  He moved aside to let her pass. As she went by, a faint scent of roses drifted up into his nostrils. Amazing how much he missed that scent around his office. Violet had become almost like a stick of furniture in the past year, she was so familiar. But at the same time, he was aware of an odd, tender nurturing of himself that he’d never had in his adult life. Violet made him think of open fireplaces in winter, of warm lamplight in the darkness. Her absence had only served to make him realize how alone he was.

  She walked on to the mail slots, unaware of his long, aching stare at her back. By the time she finished her chore, he was already out the door and climbing into his Mercedes.

  Violet watched him drive away before she opened the door of the post office and went outside. It was starting to rain. She’d get wet, but she didn’t care. The odd, tender encounter made her head spin with pleasure. It would be a kind thought to brighten her lonely life.

  There was a lot of talk around town about Janet Collins. She’d gone missing and Libby and Curt were the subject of a lot of gossip. Jordan Powell had been seen with Libby, but nobody took that seriously. He was also seen with old Senator Merrill’s daughter, Julie, doing the social rounds. Violet wondered if Libby felt the rejection as much as Violet felt it over Kemp. Her co-worker had a flaming crush on Jordan in recent weeks, but it seemed the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

  Violet’s mother seemed to be weakening as the days passed. It was hard for Violet to work and not worry about her. She’d started going back to the gym on her way home from work three days a week, but it was only for a half hour at a time. She’d splurged on a cell phone and she kept it with her all the time now, just in case there was ever an emergency when she wasn’t home. Her mother had a hot button on the new phone at home, too, so that she could push it and speed-dial Violet.

  She had her long hair trimmed and frosted, and she actually asked a local boutique owner for tips on how to make the most of her full figure. She learned that lower cut blouses helped to diminish a full bosom. She also learned that a longer jacket flattered wide hips, and that straight lines made her look taller. She experimented with hairstyles until she found one that flattered her full face, and with makeup until she learned how to use it so that it looked natural. She was changing, growing, maturing, slimming. But all of it was a means to an end, as much as she hated to admit it. She wanted Blake Kemp to miss her, want her, ache for her when he looked at her. It was a hopeless dream, but she couldn’t let go of it.

  Kemp, meanwhile, spent far too much time at his home thinking about ways and means to get Violet to come back.

  He stretched out on his burgundy leather couch to watch the weather channel with his two female Siamese cats, Mee and Yow, curled against his chest. Mee, a big seal-point, rarely cuddled with him. Yow, a blue-point, was in his lap the minute he sat down. He felt a kinship with the cats, who had become his family. They sat with him while he watched television at night. They curled up on the big oak desk when he worked there at his computer. Late at night, they climbed under the covers on either side of him and purred him to sleep.

  The Harts thought his cat mania was a little overdone. But, then, they weren’t really cat people, except for Cag and Tess. Their cats were mostly strays. Mee and Yow, on the other hand, were purebred. Blake had brought both of them home with him together from a pet store, where they’d been in cages behind glass for weeks, the last products of a cattery that had gone bankrupt. He’d felt sorry for them. More than likely, he told himself, they’d set him up. Cats were masters of the subtle suggestion. It was amazing how a fat, healthy cat could present itself as an emaciated, starving orphan. They were still playing mind tricks on him after four years of co-existence. It still worked, too.

  He thought about Violet and her mother, and remembered that the elderly Mrs. Hardy was allergic to fur. Violet loved animals. She kept little figurines of cats on her desk. He’d never asked her to his home, but he was certain that she’d love his cats. He imagined she’d have Duke Wright bringing calves right up to the porch for her to pet.

  His eyes flashed at the thought of Violet getting involved with the other man. Wright was bitter over the divorce and the custody suit his wife had brought against him. He blamed Kemp for it, but Kemp was only doing what any other attorney would have done in his place. If the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Wright was as happy as she seemed in that high-powered property law job she held in New York City, she wasn’t likely to ever come home. She loved the little boy as much as Duke did, and she felt it was better not to have him dangling between two parents. Kemp didn’t agree. A child had two parents. It would only lead to grief to deny access to either of them.

  He shook his head. What a pity that people had children before they thought about the consequences. They never improved a bad marriage. Kemp’s clientele shot that truth home every time he handled a divorce case. The children were always the ones who suffered most.

  Beka Wright had never admitted it, and Kemp never pried, but local gossip had it that Duke had deliberately hidden her birth control pills at a critical time, hoping that a baby would cure her of ambition. It hadn’t. He was an overbearing sort of man, who expected a woman to do exactly what he told her to do. His father had been the same, a domineering autocrat whose poor wife had walked in a cold rain with pneumonia while he was out of town one January weekend in a last, fatal attempt to escape him. Death had spared her further abuse. Duke had grown up with that same autocratic attitude and assumed that it was the way a normal man dealt with his wife. He was learning to his cost that marriage meant compromise.

  Blake looked around at his house with its Western motifs, burgundy leather mingling with dark oak and cherry wood furniture. The carpet and the curtains were earth tones. He enjoyed a quiet atmosphere after the turmoil of his working life. But he wondered what a woman would do with the décor.

  Mee curled her claws into his arm. He winced, and moved them. She was sound asleep, but when she felt his hand on her, she snuggled closer and started purring.

  He laughed softly. No, he wasn’t the marrying sort. He was a gourmet cook. He did his own laundry and housework. He could sew on a button or make a bed. Like most other ex-special forces officers, he was independent and self-sufficient. A veteran of the first war with Iraq, he mustered out with the rank of captain. He’d been in the Army reserves after he graduated from law school and started practicing in Jacobsville, and his unit had been called up. He and Cag Hart had served in the same mechanized division. Few people knew that, because he and Cag didn’t talk much about the missions they’d shared. It forged bonds that noncombatants could not understand.

  He reached for the remote control and changed the channel. He paused on the weather channel to see when the rain was going to stop, and then went on to the History channel, where he spent most of his free time in the evenings. He often thought that if he ever came across a woman who enjoyed military history, he might be coaxed into rejoining the social scene.

  But then he remembered the woman he’d lost, and the ache started all over again. He turned up the volume and leaned back, his mind shifting to the recounting of Alexander the Great’s final successful campaign against the Persian king Darius in 331 B.C. at Gaugemela.

  Violet was late getting home the following Friday. She’d stopped by the gym and then remembered that there was no milk in the house. She’d gone by the grocery store as well. When she pulled up into the driveway of the small, rickety rental house, she found her mother sitting on the ground beside the small flower garden at the porch steps. Mrs. Hardy wasn’t moving.

  Panicking, Violet jumped out of her car without bothering to close the door, and ran toward her parent.

  “Mama!” she screamed.

  Her mother jerked, just faintly. Her blue eyes were startled as she turned her head and looked at her daughter. She was breathing
heavily. But she laughed. “Darling, it’s all right!” she said at once. “I just got winded, that’s all! I’m all right!”

  Violet knelt beside her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Her face was white. She was shaking.

  “Oh, baby.” Mrs. Hardy winced as she reached out and cuddled Violet close, whispering soft endearments. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to weed my flower bed and put out those little seedlings I’d grown in the kitchen window. I just worked a little too hard, that’s all. See? I’m fine.”

  Violet pulled back, terrified. Her mother was all she had in the world. She loved her so much. How would she go on living if she lost her mother? That fear was written all over her.

  Mrs. Hardy winced when she saw it. She hugged Violet close. “Violet,” she said sadly, “one day you’ll have to let me go. You know that.”

  “I’m not ready yet,” Violet sobbed.

  Mrs. Hardy sighed. She kissed Violet’s dark hair. “I know,” she murmured, her eyes faraway as they looked toward the horizon. “Neither am I.”

  Later, as they sat over bowls of hot soup and fresh corn bread, Mrs. Hardy studied her daughter with concern.

  “Violet, are you sure you’re happy working at Duke Wright’s place?” she asked.

  “Of course I am,” Violet said stolidly.

  “I think Mr. Kemp would like it if you went back to work with him.”

  Violet stared at her with her spoonful of soup in midair. “Why would you say that, Mama?”

  “Mabel, who works at your office, stopped by to see me at lunch. She says Mr. Kemp is so moody they can hardly work with him anymore. She said she thinks he misses you.”

  Violet’s heart jumped. “That wasn’t how he sounded when I ran into him in the post office the other day,” she said. “But he was acting…oddly.”