That no matter that he had steeled himself to run into her—because he knew how small towns worked—the impact was like a brick to the side of his head every single time.
She appeared a moment after the door opened, looking severe. Overly so. Her blond hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and she was wearing a black sheath dress that went down past her knees but conformed to curves that were more generous than they’d been thirteen years ago.
In a good way.
“Hello, Liam,” she said, her tone impersonal. Had she not used his first name, it might have been easy to pretend that she didn’t know who he was.
“Sabrina.”
“Lindy told me that you wanted to talk about a potential joint venture. And since that falls under my jurisdiction as manager of the tasting room, she thought we might want to work together.”
Now she was smiling.
The smile was so brittle it looked like it might crack her face.
“Yes, I’m familiar with the details. Particularly since this venture was my idea.” He let a small silence hang there for a beat before continuing. “I’m looking at an empty building on the end of Main Street. It would be more than just a tasting room. It would be a small café with some retail space.”
“How would it differ from Lane Donnelly’s store? She already offers specialty foods.”
“Well, we would focus on Grassroots wine and Laughing Irish cheese. Also, I would happily purchase products from Lane’s to give the menu a local focus. The café would be nothing big. Just a small lunch place with wine. Very limited selection. Very specialty. But I feel like in a tourist location, that’s what you want.”
“Great,” she said, her smile remaining completely immobile.
He took that moment to examine her more closely. The changes in her face over the years. She was more beautiful now than she had been at seventeen. Her slightly round, soft face had refined in the ensuing years, her cheekbones now more prominent, the angle of her chin sharper.
Her eyebrows looked different too. When she’d been a teenager, they’d been thinner, rounder. Now they were a bit stronger, more angular.
“Great,” he returned. “I guess we can go down and have a look at the space sometime this week. Gage West is the owner of the property, and he hasn’t listed it yet. Handily, my sister-in-law is good friends with his wife. Both of my sisters-in-law, actually. So I got the inside track on that.”
Her expression turned bland. “How impressive.”
She sounded absolutely unimpressed. “It wasn’t intended to be impressive. Just useful.”
She sighed slowly. “Did you have a day of the week in mind to go view the property? Because I really am very busy.”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” she responded, that smile spreading over her face again. “This is a very demanding job, plus I do have a life.”
She stopped short of saying exactly what that life entailed.
“Too busy to do this, which is part of your actual job?” he asked.
On the surface she looked calm, but he could sense a dark energy beneath that spoke of a need to savage him. “I had my schedule sorted out for the next couple of weeks. This is coming together more quickly than expected.”
“I’ll work something out with Gage and give Lindy a call, how about that?”
“You don’t have to call Lindy. I’ll give you my phone number. You can call or text me directly.”
She reached over to the counter and took a card from the rustic surface, extending her hand toward him. He reached out and took the card, their fingertips brushing as they made the handoff.
And he felt it. Straight down to his groin, where he had always felt things for her, even though it was impossible. Even though he was all wrong for her. And even though now they were doing a business deal together, and she looked like she would cheerfully chew through his flesh if given half the chance.
She might be smiling, but he didn’t trust that smile. He was still waiting. Waiting for her to shout recriminations at him now that they were alone. Every other time he had encountered her over the past four months it had been in public. Twice in Ace’s bar, and once walking down the street, where she had made a very quick sharp left to avoid walking past him.
It had not been subtle, and it had certainly not spoken of somebody who was over the past.
So his assumption had been that if the two of them were ever alone she was going to let him have it. But she didn’t. Instead, she gave him that card and then began to look...bored.
“Did you need anything else?” she asked.
“Not really. Though I have some spreadsheet information that you might want to look over. Ideas that I have for the layout, the menu. It is getting a little ahead of ourselves, in case we end up not liking the venue.”
“You’ve been to look at the venue already, haven’t you?” It was vaguely accusatory.
“I have been there, yes. But again, I believe in preparedness. I was hardly going to get very deep into this if I didn’t think it was viable. Personally, I’m interested in making sure that we have diverse interests. The economy doesn’t typically favor farms, Sabrina. And that is essentially what my brothers and I have. I expect an uphill fight to make that place successful.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Like you said, you do your research.”
Her friendliness was beginning to slip. And he waited. For something else. For something to get thrown at him. It didn’t happen.
“That I do. Take these,” he said, handing her the folder that he was holding on to. He made sure their fingers didn’t touch this time. “And we’ll talk next week.”
Then he turned and walked away from her, and he resisted the strong impulse to turn back and get one more glance at her. It wasn’t the first time he had resisted that.
He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last.
* * *
AS SOON AS Liam walked out of the tasting room, Sabrina let out a breath that had been killing her to keep in. A breath that contained about a thousand insults and recriminations. And more than a few very colorful swear word combinations. A breath that nearly burned her throat, because it was full of so many sharp and terrible things.
She lifted her hands to her face and realized they were shaking. It had been thirteen years. Why did he still affect her like this? Maybe, just maybe, if she had ever found a man who made her feel even half of what Liam did, she wouldn’t have such a hard time dealing with him. The feelings wouldn’t be so strong.
But she hadn’t. So that supposition was basically moot.
The worst part was the tattoos. He’d had about three when he’d been nineteen. Now they covered both of his arms, and she had the strongest urge to make them as familiar to her as the original tattoos had been. To memorize each and every detail about them.
The tree was the one that really caught her attention. The Celtic knots, she knew, were likely a nod to his Irish heritage, but the tree—whose branches she could see stretching down from his shoulder—she was curious about what that meant.
“And you are spending too much time thinking about him,” she admonished herself.
She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She should just focus on congratulating herself for saying nothing stupid. At least she hadn’t cried and demanded answers for the night he had completely laid waste to her every feeling.
“How did it go?”
Sabrina turned and saw her sister-in-law, Lindy, come in. People would be forgiven for thinking that she and Lindy were actually biological sisters. In fact, they looked much more alike than Sabrina and her younger sister Beatrix did.
Like Sabrina, Lindy had long, straight blond hair. Bea, on the other hand, had freckles all over her face and a wild riot of reddish-brown curls that resisted taming almost as s
trongly as the youngest Leighton sibling herself did.
That was another thing Sabrina and Lindy had in common. They were predominantly tame. At least, they kept things as together as they possibly could on the surface.
“Fine.”
“You didn’t savage him with a cheese knife?”
“Lindy,” Sabrina said, “please. This is dry-clean only.” She waved her hand up and down, indicating her dress.
“I don’t know what your whole issue is with him...”
Because no one spoke of it. Lindy had married Sabrina’s brother after the unpleasantness. It was no secret that Sabrina and her father were estranged—even if it was a brittle, quiet estrangement. But unless Damien had told Lindy the details—and Sabrina doubted he knew all of them—her sister-in-law wouldn’t know the whole story.
“I don’t have an issue with him,” Sabrina said. “I knew him thirteen years ago. That has nothing to do with now. It has nothing to do with this new venture for the winery. Which I am on board with one hundred percent.” It was true. She was.
“Well,” Lindy said, “that’s good to hear.”
She could tell that Lindy didn’t believe her. “It’s going to be fine. I’m looking forward to this.” That was also true. Mostly. She was looking forward to expanding Grassroots. Looking forward to helping build the winery, and making it into something that was truly theirs. So that her parents could no longer shout recriminations about Lindy stealing something from the Leighton family.
Eventually, they would make the winery so much more successful that most of it would be theirs.
And if her own issues with her parents were tangled up in all of this, then...that was just how it was.
Sabrina wanted it all to work, and work well. If for no other reason than to prove to Liam Donnelly that she was no longer the seventeen-year-old girl whose world he’d wrecked all those years ago.
In some ways, Sabrina envied the tangible ways in which Lindy had been able to exact revenge on Damien. Of course, Sabrina’s relationship with Liam wasn’t anything like a ten-year marriage ended by infidelity. She gritted her teeth. She did her best not to think about Liam. About the past. Because it hurt. Every damn time it hurt. It didn’t matter if it should or not.
But now that he was back in Copper Ridge, now that she sometimes just happened to run into him, it was worse. It was harder not to think about him.
Him and the grand disaster that had happened after.
Look for CHRISTMASTIME COWBOY, available from Maisey Yates and HQN Books wherever books are sold.
Copyright © 2017 by Maisey Yates
Wrangling the Rich Rancher
by Sheri WhiteFeather
One
He was gorgeous, Libby Penn thought, this cowboy she’d come to see. Yes, indeed: tall, dark and ruggedly appealing, with a long, lean body, straight short black hair and whiskey-colored eyes. All man, all denim and leather, all Western. If she were in the market for a lover, he would be darned hard to resist. But she hadn’t been with anyone since she’d lost her husband, and she wasn’t ready to sleep with Matt Clark or anyone else. Not that Matt was asking her to share his bed. She barely knew him. They’d only just met yesterday afternoon, and briefly at that. Besides, she was here for business, and she needed to keep her professional wits about her.
Still, from the moment they’d first laid eyes on each other, a strange sort of chemistry—the kind that zapped you when you least expected it—had risen up between them. Even now, she could sense his uneasy attraction to her, and he wasn’t even looking her way. Clearly, he didn’t like feeling something for one of his guests.
The thing was, she hadn’t even told him the real reason she was here, staying at his recreational ranch. As far as he knew, she was just another tourist visiting the Texas Hill Country.
She and some of the other guests were finishing up breakfast, and soon would be dispersing to engage in whatever activities interested them: horseback riding, hiking, swimming, fishing, skeet shooting, horseshoes, Ping-Pong. There was a playground and petting corral for the kids. On top of that, the ranch had a world-class champion quarter horse standing at stud. They also bred him to their mares, and during foaling season, guests could ooh and aah over their offspring. Of course, hayrides, barbecues, campfires and country hoedowns were part of the regular program. According to the schedule she’d been given, a boot-scooting dance and fried chicken dinner were on the calendar for tomorrow night, with all ages welcome.
The Flying Creek Ranch was highly successful, earning plenty of cold, hard cash. Libby knew because she’d researched it. And although it was designed for families and looked quite rustic, there were luxurious undertones. Amid its vast and stunning acreage, it offered private cabin accommodations with limestone fireplaces. There was a big, beautiful main lodge, too, which was where Libby was now, preparing to approach Matt. But from what she’d gathered so far, Matt didn’t live at the lodge. He lived in a cabin, the one next to hers, in fact. She’d spotted him last night, sitting quietly on his porch. She’d stayed inside, making notes to herself about Matt’s character and how she perceived him. Friendly when he needed to be, but withdrawn, too. An enigma, she thought, a chameleon, his moods shifting with the summer wind.
Her observations were hasty at best, and influenced, no doubt, by what his father had already told her about him. Matt was Kirby Talbot’s illegitimate son. The half-Cherokee boy the famous country singer had done wrong. Kirby had even written a yet-unpublished song about it.
Libby knew all sorts of personal details about Kirby. He’d hired her to write his biography. He’d handpicked her himself, based on a series of articles she’d crafted for Rolling Stone. For her, the book was a dream come true. Kirby was her idol, his rough-and-ready music complementing her willful personality and determined life.
Still studying Matt from across the room, she smoothed the front of her boho-inspired blouse, the silky fringe attached to it fluttering around her hips. The salesclerk at the store where she’d bought it called it cowgirl chic; it was bold, beautiful and sweetly feminine. Whatever the style, the blouse made her feel pretty. Libby was small in stature, with long, pale, wavy blond hair and a wholesome face. Sometimes she made cat eyes with her eyeliner just to doll herself up, giving her wide blue eyes a dramatic transformation.
Eager to learn more about Matt, she headed in his direction. Some of her research on him had come from his father and the rest from public records and the web. So far, she knew that he was thirty-one years old and had lived in the Hill Country his entire life. He appeared to be an unpretentious man, but his net worth was staggering, going far beyond the trust fund his father had set up for him.
As a youth, he’d excelled in junior rodeos. These days, he was divorced. His ex was a local girl, a widow when he’d married her, with two small children. That interested Libby, of course. But everything about him did.
He was Kirby’s secret son. No one except the family and a handful of lawyers knew about him. After her book was released, everyone would know. Kirby wanted to come clean, to acknowledge Matt’s paternity in a public way.
Initially, he’d kept Matt under wraps because he was married at the time and didn’t want his wife or other kids to find out. Eventually they learned the truth. But that hadn’t changed the dynamics of Matt and Kirby’s relationship. He saw Matt sporadically when he was growing up, visiting between road tours. At some point, he stopped seeing him at all, and now Kirby wanted to make amends. Just this year, he started reaching out to his son, but Matt refused to take his calls, let alone see him.
Libby approached Matt, who was standing near a painting of Indian ponies dancing in the dust. He adjusted his hat, fitting it lower on his head.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked.
He turned more fully toward her, the make-believe horses prancing at his s
houlder. “For one of my guests? Always.”
“Is it okay if we take a walk?” She didn’t want anyone to overhear their conversation. Some of the others were still milling around the lodge.
“Sure.” He gestured to a side door leading to a rustic garden, where flowers sprouted amid wagon wheels, old water pumps and wrought iron benches. Once they were outside, he asked, “Is everything all right? Are you enjoying your stay so far?”
She fell into step with him. “It’s a wonderful ranch, and I’m looking forward to the activities. I missed your Independence Day celebration.” The ranch was famous for hosting a huge fireworks display, drawing crowds from neighboring communities. “You were booked solid then.” She’d arrived just after July Fourth and would be staying until the beginning of August. “This is so different from where I live, so vast and rural.” Libby was from Southern California, where she’d been born and raised. Kirby, however, resided in Nashville, on an enormous compound he’d built. She’d already been there several times. “My son will be joining me in a few weeks. My mother is going to bring him. She’s going to stay with us, too.”
“How old is your son?”
“Six. This place is going to thrill him. He wants to be a cowboy when he grows up.”
He smiled a little crookedly. “I’ll be sure to give him the grand tour.”
“His daddy passed away. It’ll be three years this fall.” She wasn’t sure why she felt inclined to tell Matt that, especially with how weirdly attracted to him she was. Then again, he’d been married to a widow, so maybe he would understand more than most people would?
By now, he was frowning, hard and deep. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. His name was Becker.” Kirby Talbot had been his idol, too. She’d met Becker at one of Kirby’s concerts. “He got sick. But it happened really quickly. A bacterial infection that...” She let her words drift. Becker wouldn’t want her talking about the way he died. He was a vibrant person, filled with hope and joy. “But this isn’t what I intended to discuss with you.” She managed a smile, knowing Becker would be encouraging her to move forward, especially with her career. Then, suddenly, she hesitated, fully aware that Matt wasn’t going to be pleased with her news. Finally, she slapped the smile back on her face and went for it. “I’m doing a book about your father. He hired me to write his biography, and—”
Twelve Nights of Temptation Page 20
