by Leslie North
And here she was, at it again with the Irish. As Maxwell watched her work the room, a cold dread began to settle in his stomach. Maybe his instinct to run to Lena and share the news was all wrong. The way she smiled and laughed and so liberally traded stories about what happened back at the barn—his barn—was something of an unwanted revelation.
What if she does the exact same thing to me that she did to her last employer?
One word that the Arabs were out, and offers for Whisper would drop precipitously. Maxwell watched that ready smile bloom again and again as she charmed the pants off McMurphy and his crew. She was completely unscripted, going with the flow of the conversation, talking so fast it was as if she was reciting an incantation to bespell them all. What assurances did he have that Lena would keep this business with the Arabs to herself?
None, he realized. He had no assurance at all.
14
MAXWELL
A week after the bar Lena came running into the barn from the apartment shouting his name.
Well, she didn't run, exactly. Sprints were a bit beyond her at this point. But she jostled as fast as the belly would allow, and God forbid anyone get in her way.
"Maxwell!"
Maxwell closed the stall door on Dandy and couldn’t hold back a smile as he watched Lena hurry toward him. She had seemingly overshot her mark; she nearly barreled into him, He held out his hands quickly to catch her by the shoulders before she bowled them both over.
"Easy!" he laughed.
Things hadn't exactly been tense between them recently, but they were different since the Arabs came and went. Maxwell was preoccupied and tried his best to be attentive to all the matters that required his focus, but he just couldn't get the botched sale out of his head. It wasn't a lost cause, he kept telling himself. Not completely. He just had to find a way back in.
"Maxwell, I have amazing news!" Lena burst out. She didn't appear to notice that she had nearly taking them both out in the process of delivering it. She thrust several sheets of paper his way. Maxwell withdrew his hands from her shoulders to accept them.
"What's this?"
"Read it!" Lena said excitedly. "It's an email that just came in five minutes ago."
Maxwell's eyes scanned down the length of the page. He almost couldn't believe what he was reading. The dark printed words begin to swim together as he got toward the end. Vaguely, he was aware of several of the stable hands pausing in their work to mosey over and hear the news.
"It's McMurphy and his guys from Ireland," Maxwell said. "They've made an offer for Whispered Faith."
"Uh-huh!" Lena nodded her head so enthusiastically that she jogged her hair clean out of the ponytail. "And they're offering more than the Arabs!"
"I noticed." Maxwell still couldn't believe the figure. He had initially thought it was a mistake until he saw it repeated on down the chain in an earlier e-mail—and saw that Lena was the one who had suggested it.
"All right!" Tick whistled, removed his hat, and slapped himself on the thigh. The other hands exchanged grins and soon joined him in a chorus of whoops.
"Guys! Come on!" Lena put up her hands and laughed as they pretended to make an exhausted effort to lift her. Weeks ago, Maxwell would have worried that their overacting the joke would hurt Lena's feelings, but she seemed to be taking it in stride. In fact, she looked completely comfortable with herself in that moment as she beamed broadly from ear-to-ear.
"You did it, Miss Fudge! You got those Irish guys to buy Whisper!" Tick crowed.
"Oh, it was nothing," Lena said modestly. "He’s such a beautiful horse, he sells himself." She glanced sideways at Maxwell, suddenly shy, and he could see that she was trying to pull him in to be likewise adulated.
The truth of the matter was, Tick was right. Lena had just pulled an offer on his best horse all on her own. When all eyes turned to him, Maxwell continued to study the email in his hand. Bill McMurphy, too, credited Lena fully with persuading his camp to buy. They’d gone to the second sale, but couldn’t get Lena and Whisper out of their minds and were making a return trip.
"I can't take the offer." Maxwell spoke, and it was as if some other entity who wasn't him worked his mouth. "I need to sit on it."
"What?" Lena's expression was too alarmed to be properly crestfallen. Tick and the others stopped mid-congratulation and stared at him bewildered. "Why not?"
"I need to sit on it," he repeated.
Tick chuckled as if he had just told a joke and cast about with his eyes for some ally as he stepped forward. "Max, this is what we've been waiting for," he pressed. "What you've been waiting for. And it's a better price for Whisper than you could have imagined!"
Maxwell nodded as if he were taking this information to heart. In reality, his brain was already working itself overtime to guide the situation back to his original end goal.
I want to make this sale. Me. And I want to make it to the Arab royals.
He had never thought his goal ran the risk of being challenged by Lena. She looked at him, and it was almost enough to make Maxwell wonder if she could see into him far enough to know his thoughts. He wasn't beyond feeling ashamed of them, but he stuck to his guns. He had to have this. Otherwise, what was he? Exactly the sort of man that write-up in Reins accused him of being: privileged, soft, and incapable.
"We shouldn't pull the trigger just yet," he said. "There's no need to act so fast on this. We've still got time before the buyers head home. I'm willing to wait them out."
"You want me to tell them we're going to think about it?" Lena asked incredulously. "After all the talking I did?"
Maxwell nodded. "This deal might be the leverage we need to bring the Arabs back to the table and pony up more than they were willing to part with. Pun intended."
Nobody laughed at his joke, probably because he delivered it with the same severe expression he had worn since Lena came dancing into the barn with her email. Now, she reached out to take it back from him. Maxwell let the paper slip from his fingers.
"I don't know if you're likely to get a better offer from the Arabs, Maxwell," she cautioned. "And that's assuming they’re even willing to meet with you again."
"They will," Maxwell said. He spoke with more confidence than he felt, but he was determined to lead and make them all see things his way. "We'll invoke the scarcity principle. Show them just how much they have to lose. You've opened up an amazing opportunity for us, Lena."
"Yeah, and you should take it!" Tick burst out. Dennis came forward and laid a silencing hand on his shoulder. The younger hand turned away and threw his hat down in the dirt. Maxwell decided to ignore the display.
"Well...I suppose we could try for a bidding war," Lena reflected. Maxwell could tell some of the wind had come out of her sails, and his chest hurt to think he might have been the cause.
But he had to do things his way. He had to snag the Arabs on this sale and prove himself once and for all. He wasn't just some green, two-bit Montana breeder who could be trifled with. He had a horse fit for a prince in his stable.
"We all win." Maxwell nodded as he turned back to work. "So long as we get a sale."
"So long as we get a sale," Lena repeated faintly. She stared at the email, at the offer, and turned to climb the steps back up to their apartment. Maxwell lost himself in work.
He didn't want to think about the dejected expression he had just witnessed on her face.
15
LENA
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hosterman, but I simply can't part with Whisper for a barrel of whiskey," Lena told the gentleman from Kentucky for the umpteenth time.
Gentleman was pushing it a bit. Frank Hosterman was a smarmy specimen: tall and rangy like any other cowboy, but with a distinct, patronizing twist to his mouth and a cunning in his eyes that wasn't necessarily indicative of intelligence.
Word about the Irish's offer on Whispered Faith had gotten out. Hosterman had come by the ranch unannounced to look Whisper over himself. And to insult all of us, apparen
tly, Lena thought. She was good with people, but something told her ten more minutes of this might put her over the edge into bodily violence.
"I offered to pay cash, too, Miss Fudge," Hosterman reminded her with an insincere little smile.
"You offered to pay half of what Mr. McMurphy offered," Lena pointed out. Her eyes traveled to Maxwell as he moved across the barn. She knew she shouldn't be praying for him to save her. This was her job, but Frank Hosterman was seriously wearing on her last nerve.
"Why don't I let you think about it some more?" Hosterman suggested. He tipped his hat to her, smiled smugly, and strode off. As soon as he was out of earshot, Lena heaved a massive sigh, and put a hand to her forehead. She didn't exactly have a headache…yet. But she could feel one coming on if she didn't call it quits for today.
Maxwell came around the corner. Lena paused, leaning against one of the stall doors to watch his shadowed figure in the falling light. She couldn't make out the details of him, but just witnessing the stateliness of his muscled profile moving about was enough to fill her with an overwhelming sense of joy. She really cared for him, no matter how they might argue over things. A certain four-letter word had been intruding more and more on her thoughts recently, but she couldn't quite bring herself to say it out loud. Not yet.
She noticed, then, that Maxwell was limping. Lena's brows drew together as she crossed the barn to join him. "Maxwell? Did you hurt yourself?"
"No." He waved his hand as he sat down laboriously on an overturned barrel. "Not today, anyway. It's an old injury from a riding accident years ago."
He leaned forward to massage the muscles around his left knee. Lena pursed her lips, then she reached out to take his hand and drag him back off the barrel. "You're done working today. Come on. I know just what you need."
Ten minutes later, she had drawn a bath for them in the claw-foot tub. Fragrant steam rose off the surface of the sweet-smelling water—she had snuck in a scoop of spearmint and lavender Epsom salts—and curled along the ceiling. Lena lit a few candles, cracked the window open to help with the condensation, and began to slowly strip out of her clothes. She was sore and exhausted from being on her feet all day. She could only imagine how Maxwell must be feeling.
When she lifted her head, she saw him standing in the doorway to the bathroom. He seemed almost reluctant to enter. Lena couldn't help the affectionate smile she felt form at the sight. She took his hand again, and led him into the steamy room with her. She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders slowly, sensually, before moving on to unfasten his belt. She could feel the heat of his gaze as he watched her work.
"You don't really know how to relax, do you?" she asked almost rhetorically.
"Cooper men don't know the meaning of the word," he confirmed.
"Then allow me, a Fudge woman, to show you."
They eased down into the tub, one after the other, and arranged their bodies until Lena sat comfortably between Maxwell's stretched-out legs. She had thought her belly might prove cumbersome, but Maxwell reached his arms around her and kept his hands on it. Lena thought she had never known the definition of the word luxury before this moment.
Again, the four-letter word teased the tip of her tongue. She put it out of her mind. She wanted to relax with Maxwell, not jar him with an unexpected confession. "Is this what you always wanted to do?" she asked instead. "Breed and sell horses? Didn't you ever want to go to college?"
"I don't see the need for it, to be honest." Maxwell shrugged, naked skin sliding against her own. "Not in my life. My brothers both went, but something told me it just wasn't the right thing to do to achieve my dream. What about you?"
Lena sighed and sank back against him. "I sort of envy you. I was never in a position to go myself. I always wanted to."
His arms tightened around her. "And now? Do you still have that dream?"
She wondered if telling him the truth—that yes, until five months ago, she had very much intended to follow her dream—would freak him out. Maxwell seemed to worry about her every time she happened to walk out of his direct line of sight. Lena blew a raspberry with her lips and gave her own shrug. Silly sounds helped her come to terms with the fact that her dream had aged with her, unfulfilled, and that it was probably beyond her reach now.
"Now I just hope to give my daughter the opportunity to chase her own dreams," she replied.
Maxwell hugged her close. "Me too," he whispered.
16
MAXWELL
The Cooper Ranch team was getting antsy.
Maxwell saw it, even if he didn't necessarily remark on it. No one approached him with their concerns outright, but the grave faces of his stable hands and the infrequency of light conversation spoke volumes around the barn.
He was starting to wonder if he had a mutiny on his hands.
He sat in his office that morning, and no one disturbed him. Lena was still entertaining prospective buyers, but they were just going through the motions at this point for appearance’s sake. Whisper was going to the Arabs, plain and simple.
Maxwell just wished the princes were back on board with his plan. They hadn’t responded to any of his overtures since the offer from McMurphy became known.
He rocked back in his chair with a sigh and combed his fingers through his hair. He was just pondering what to do next when Lena poked her head in. "Maxwell? Can I bother you for a second?"
He felt his burden lightened immediately just by looking at her. Her hair was down today; tousled, corkscrew curls spiraled free and framed her petite, button-nosed features. She glowed almost ethereally, standing there in the office door, and it wasn't just the morning sun gilding her curvaceous frame in breathtaking gold. She seemed to glow from within as well. Maxwell didn't like to think he was a man to be taken in by easy clichés, but there was definite truth to what they said about pregnant women: Lena looked radiant.
"Bother away," he invited. He wished immediately it wasn't the response he had given. Why did he find it so hard to put into words what he felt for her? His natural stoicism had already troubled the waters between them. He knew he needed to work on it, but he still had trouble expressing just how he was feeling. Lavishing her with gifts was easier.
"Well…" Lena drawled, and scratched the side of her nose. "I kind of wanted to bother you for more than a second, actually."
Maxwell craned forward with interest. Maybe he could use a break from all this Arab business, if only to refresh his brain enough to get back to it later.
"All right," he agreed as he rose. "What are we doing?"
Lena looped her arm in his and led him out the door. "You and I? We're going baby shopping."
Lena steered her cart down the aisle. She was in a wonderland of toys: blocks, rattles, plastic candy-colored musical instruments. In the next aisle over was a zoo of plush animals; Lena was pretty sure she had seen a pastel specimen of every creature Noah had supposedly loaded up on the Ark, as well as every imaginable color of unicorn.
"Okay, so when our daughter inevitably forms a Grammy Award-winning band in the future, do we want her to play guitar or keyboard?" Lena posed the question aloud as she considered the shelf of instruments again. When Maxwell didn't respond immediately, she turned to see if her joke had been as unfunny as it felt leaving her mouth.
Maxwell was nowhere to be found.
"Maxwell?" She scanned the aisle in vain, wondering if he had somehow got lost among the shelves. She ditched their cart momentarily to peek around the corner. Maxwell was still in the last aisle, turned in toward the unicorns. His head was bent, and she could see the he was holding his work cell up to his ear beneath the brim of his hat.
Lena's heart sank. She willed it to re-elevate itself as Maxwell got off the phone. By the time he turned around, she was smiling again.
"Good news?" she asked as she crossed to him.
"The Arabs might be back at the table," Maxwell said. His handsome face looked pained. Lena blinked, but summoned her courage for whate
ver bomb was about to drop next.
"On what condition?" she prompted.
"On the condition that you aren't involved."
Maxwell looked quietly devastated to have delivered the news, but there was no way his emotions on the matter compared to hers. Her mind raced a mile a minute as she tried to reconcile the possible sale with the statement the men involved were making about her.
"I'm sorry, Lena," Maxwell said. "It's a…"
"Different culture than ours. No, I got that." She gave a faint laugh in an attempt to play it off, but the sound came out cracked and cobweb-thin. "And I really screwed up by objectifying you. And working in my ‘delicate condition.’"
"I don't mind being objectified. And I love your condition." Maxwell reached for her, but stopped himself, as if he wasn't sure he still had permission. Lena wasn't sure, either. She wasn't sure how she felt about any of this. She had just wanted a break from the barn and a day out with Maxwell to plan their future…
But what sort of future did she really want? Maxwell had promised her the commission from the sale, but did she really want to buy a home for herself and her future child using some of the princes' money? Even though her commission, at fifteen percent, would give her enough for a down payment, it would feel tainted somehow. Unearned. They didn't want her involved, and she didn't want anything to do with a group of men who looked down on her. Royalty be damned!
"I think I need a sundae," she said. Maxwell nodded. He put an arm around her, and they started for the door. She felt guilty for abandoning their cart, but who knew? Maybe it would still be here when they got back.
If they came back. Something told her their fun day out had just drawn to a close.
