The Camden Cowboy

by Victoria Pade

  “I’ll be surprised if it does, but thanks for the consideration.”

  There was lumber already stacked in different sections of the barn, and Lacey led the way through it to the tackroom in the rear. When they reached it, she opened the door for Seth to go in ahead of her.

  And yes, when he did—even though she tried not to—her gaze dropped for a split second to his derriere. She hated herself for it, she really did. She silently berated and reprimanded and chastised herself. But still she enjoyed that glimpse of perfect male posterior.

  “Yep, I remember that desk now,” he said, as Lacey followed him into the room.

  He took a closer look at it, hoisting one end to test the weight—probably with the thought of whether or not he could lift it himself. But when he did that the desk slid back several inches and something underneath it caught his eye.

  “What do we have here?” he said, more to himself than to her.

  He pushed the desk far enough out of the way to expose what appeared to be a hatch in the floorboards underneath it.

  Seth hunkered down and Lacey lost herself once again in staring at his thick thighs stretching the denim of his jeans, the pure breadth of his back, the way his dark hair curved to his nape. And when his biceps bulged with the force required to pull the hatch up, chills danced along Lacey’s spine.

  “Buried treasure?” she said when he yanked out an old trunk from a narrow compartment under the floor, her voice cracking and giving away the fact that she was watching him rather than what he was doing.

  He didn’t seem to notice, though.

  “Kind of looks like a pirate’s treasure chest, doesn’t it?” he said, setting the trunk beside the hole in the floor. “But as far as I know the Camdens have always been pretty landlocked, and this isn’t big enough for too much treasure.”

  It was about the size of two shoe boxes stacked on top of each other. Hammered silver corners sealed the distressed metal that it was made of, and it was closed tight with a rusted padlock hooked through the latch.

  After palming the padlock, Seth said, “Wonder where the key to that is? Probably long gone. I’ll have to saw it off to see what’s in here.”

  “Gold doubloons?” Lacey suggested.

  He picked the trunk up and shook it. But whatever was inside didn’t sound like coins. It just made a thunking noise.

  “I don’t think so,” Seth said. But beyond that he didn’t seem overly curious as he stood again, balancing the trunk on his hip. “I might as well take this with me now and see if I can find a key that fits the lock. But the desk will have to wait. Want to show me the farm equipment thingy?”

  He was smiling.

  “It’s through this other barn door,” Lacey said, leading him from the tackroom through a door at the back that opened to the outside.

  “Ah, that’s just an old rotary hoe,” Seth said the minute he saw it. “But you’re right, it isn’t going to be easy to get out of here. I’ll need a different truck than I drove today so that I can hook up a trailer bed and haul this away.”

  “So another day for that, too,” Lacey said, sounding cheery at that prospect. Despite the fact that she needed him to get his things moved, she was still happy to think that there would be another time when he’d come out here.

  And again, she hated herself for that feeling.

  “Any chance I can put off moving things until next Friday?” he asked, as they went from the barn to his truck to drop off the trunk and then on to the house for him to see what was in the attic. “The truck with the trailer hitch on it is having some work done and won’t be back until then. And I’d like to do everything at once.”

  If she said that wasn’t all right did that mean he’d have to make more than one trip?

  It was tempting to find out. To see if she could get him out there twice. But that was where Lacey drew the line with herself. She was being silly and she knew it.

  So she said, “Sure.”

  “You can let your guys start building the shelves in the tackroom—that desk is too battered already to be salvaged, so it doesn’t matter if they bang it up some more before I get it out of there. I’ll just use it for kindling anyway.”

  They’d reached the house by then. Lacey was ahead of Seth as they climbed the steps to the second floor. It didn’t occur to her until they were already under way that her position in front of him put her own rear end at his eye level. It made her self-conscious and she suddenly wished she’d let him go first.

  But she still hadn’t thought of a way to switch places with him when they were at the foot of the four steps that led up to the attic from the second floor, so she had to take the lead on those, too. And when she stepped up into the attic itself and turned around, she caught him raising his eyes in a hurry so she knew what he’d been looking at.

  But she did feel a hint of secret gratification in the fact that he had a small smile on his face.

  The ceiling in the attic was high enough for them both to stand up—although Seth had to slouch as he took stock of what was there.

  An old, rolled-up rug. Boxes filled with Christmas decorations, toys, books, clothing, bedding and various discards. An antique mirror. A rocking chair. And other stuck-in-storage odds and ends.

  “Doesn’t look like anybody got up here at all,” Seth commented. “Apparently it’s been overlooked for quite a while. But I’ll take care of it next week.”

  “Or whenever,” Lacey heard herself say. “We need the space in the barn, but this stuff can stay as long as the house does—which will be until construction is finished. Then we’ll demolish the house and the barn, and this whole area will be practice fields—which is actually why we need a different road…”

  “I saw the model downstairs. Why don’t you show me what we’re talking about?” Seth proposed.

  Lacey was pleased with herself for having remembered the road issue in the midst of her distractions. She was only too glad to take him back downstairs where the architect’s model had been put on display in the living room of the farmhouse.

  She was also only too happy to talk about the training center project once they got there. To explain all that the center would encompass.

  Referring to each toylike section of the model, she pointed out the administration building, and the conditioning center and training facilities that would include locker rooms, hot and cold tubs, meeting rooms, training areas, weight rooms, equipment rooms and a video department.

  She told Seth about the three full-sized practice fields that were planned, one with synthetic grass, the other two with natural grass—and that one of those would be heated in order to maintain a year-round unfrozen practice field.

  She showed him where the living quarters and cafeteria would be, and talked about the two racquetball courts that would be used both for training and for leisure by the team and the staff.

  “But a new, more concise survey told us that the ground is flatter here, where the house and barn are—which means that it’s a better place for the practice fields. The change can be easily accomplished at this stage by just turning the whole compound around to face the other direction,” she concluded. “The only problem is the road into the facility. We don’t want that to lead to the fields. We want it to lead to the administration building, because the administration building will be the main point of entry. It will house the visitor’s area, the media room for press conferences and our trophy display area—for all the trophies the team hopefully wins.”

  Lacey was afraid she’d gone on longer than she should have, but since Seth didn’t give any indication that he was bored, she added, “And what that all boils down to is that we need a new road that comes in off the highway right through there—” she drew the route through the model with her index finger “—which is your property…”

  “I can see
that,” he said without committing to or refusing anything. Instead, he went from looking at the model to looking at her with interest. “So this is all your baby, huh?”

  “With my father looking over my shoulder because this is the first time he’s actually trusted me with anything important. But yes, it’s all my project.”

  “What were you doing before this?”

  Was he only trying to get her off the subject of the road, or was he actually curious about her?

  Lacey couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe it was only ego, but she thought he might actually be curious about her.

  Going with that assumption, she said, “What was I doing before this? A little public relations, events planning, hiring some low-level personnel, decorating, office management.”

  What she didn’t tell him was why she’d been given only those jobs. Then, possibly to avoid the subject, she heard herself mention something else that really was her baby and hers alone.

  “A year and a half ago I also started a sideline of my own,” she said, her voice slightly hushed, as if she shouldn’t be talking about this, even though it was no secret.

  “Your own football team?” he teased.

  “No, but I’ve always wanted more involvement with the sports side of things, and it occurred to me that there are a lot of female sports fans out there. But the clothes with team logos on them are primarily aimed at male fans. So I started to design, manufacture and market a line of women’s clothing using the colors and the emblems of major sports teams—some casual wear and some workout.”

  “Really?” Seth asked. He sounded genuinely interested.

  “I’ve called it Lacey Kincaid Sportswear.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “It’s actually taken off. I started with Internet sales—which were good—but now my brother Hutch has placed some things in his stores, and he just told me the other day when I got to town that he can’t keep them on the shelves. He wants to carry my entire line, and I’m going to have to increase production to keep up.”

  “On top of building the Monarchs’ training center?” Seth said. When he put it like that, it seemed daunting.

  “I know I should probably put the clothing line on hold—of course the training center is my number one priority. But—”

  “You like the clothing line.” His tone of voice suggested that he could tell just how important it was to her.

  “I do,” she confessed. To everyone else she acted as if Lacey Kincaid Sportswear was nothing more than a hobby that had flourished. She didn’t understand why she was confiding in this man now.

  But she was. And she continued to. “In a way,” she went on, “the training center is my father’s baby—as you say. And the sportswear is mine.”

  “So why take this on?” Seth asked with a nod at the model of the facility. “Why not just go with the clothing line and let someone else have this headache?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t pass on this opportunity. I’m like a rookie player called up from the bench to show what I can do at the Super Bowl. Nothing could keep me from doing this. It’s just that I don’t want to give up the other, either.”

  “That makes for a very full plate.”

  “Very full. Especially if I step up production on the clothing line to meet the demands of Hutch’s stores.”

  “But you’re going to do that, right? You wouldn’t want to pass up that opportunity, either.”

  “I put it into motion this morning. Between meetings for things here.”

  He studied her for a moment, and Lacey had no idea what was going through his mind.

  Then he said, “Maybe I don’t have any business saying this, but I can’t help noticing that when you talk about the training center you seem kind of tense and…I don’t know, like you’re swimming upstream. But when you talk about your clothing line you actually smile and get into it, as if you’re enjoying yourself more with that. Do you feel obligated to do the training center for your father?”

  “Obligated? No! Seriously, this is the chance of a lifetime for me. The clothing line is just…for fun. It isn’t as if it’s important.”

  “Seems important to you.”

  “It’s just a silly girl thing. Clothes. You know. But the training center—that’s huge, and I’m lucky to get to do it.”

  “It is huge,” he agreed, as if he didn’t envy her the job.

  “But I can handle it.”

  Why had she felt the need to assure him of that?

  “If you say so. I’m just wondering, if it was a different situation, would you want to…?”

  “Oh, I would. I do. I wouldn’t pass this up for anything in the world.”

  Seth nodded—he seemed convinced. Then, pointing at the front door with his chin, he said, “Well, given that you are one very busy person, I probably shouldn’t keep you.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he could keep her all he wanted.

  But she caught herself before she said it, and silently read herself the riot act for even thinking such a thing.

  “We do need to discuss the road, though,” she reminded him.

  “I’m going to have to think about that,” he said, as he headed for the door with Lacey tagging along.

  “It’s really only a strip of land—”

  “Through one of my cornfields, which could cut down on quite a bit of yield. I’ll have to do the calculations to know for sure what it would cost me.”

  As they went out into the late-afternoon heat and walked to his truck again Lacey persisted. “We’d be interested in buying that strip to add to what we’ve already purchased. So we would own the road, but you could retain the land on both sides of it.” She knew that to merely lease access could get sticky in the future and become costlier than an outright sale. Not to mention that she’d learned in her class that any open-ended deal with the early Camdens had resulted in some form of takeover later on, and she didn’t want to risk anything.

  “We aren’t in the habit of dividing our properties,” Seth said.

  But if the only road leading to the training center was owned by the Camdens, they could make demands under threat of cutting that road off and have the Kincaids at a disadvantage.

  “Maybe you could make an exception…” Lacey said, wondering where that flirtatious tone had come from. And hating herself for it, both because that wasn’t how she did business and because she should in no way be flirting with Seth Camden.

  And yet it almost seemed to gain her some headway because it made him grin as he opened his truck door. And rather than hurrying to get into the truck, he hooked a boot heel on the runner, draped a long arm over the top of the open door and lowered those Camden blue eyes on her.

  “I’ll take a look at some things. Run some numbers. Study some property lines, and see what I can come up with,” he said in a tone that might have had a bit of the flirt to it, too.

  “I’d appreciate that,” Lacey said, again more coyly than she should have.

  “How much?” he countered with an attitude that told her they were venturing further and further from any sort of professionalism.

  And yet she couldn’t stop herself from smiling when she said, “How much would I appreciate it? A lot.”

  But that just made him laugh a laugh that sent ripples of something purely pleasant through her. “Are you just workin’ me, Ms. Kincaid?”

  Lacey laughed, too, because she couldn’t help it. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But I would be grateful.”

  He merely smiled at that while those blue, blue eyes of his gazed down at her as if he liked what he saw. “That might be enough,” he said under his breath.

  For no reason Lacey understood, her own gaze drifted from his eyes down to his mouth and she was suddenly thinking that there was an electric
ity between them that could easily lead to more than an exchange of banter. That could lead to kissing…

  And what might it be like to be kissed by him? she found herself wondering.

  Those supple lips eased into a lazy smile just then and made her wonder all the more. Made her actually wish he would kiss her. Just so she’d know…

  Now that was unprofessional!

  What was there about the Camden cowboy that kept getting to her?

  Without an answer for that—and with even more self-rebuke just for what was going through her mind—Lacey was the first to break eye contact. To take a step back.

  “I should get to work,” she said in a voice that sounded like someone who had been thinking about something they shouldn’t have been.

  “Sure,” he answered, pivoting around to climb behind the wheel. “I’ll probably see you at home,” he added as he closed the door.

  Lacey nodded in confirmation even though she wasn’t sure it was true, since she’d looked for him so many times this morning without catching a single glimpse of him.

  Still, she hoped he was right.

  Then he turned the key in his ignition and put the truck into gear, casting her one final glance and raising a big hand in a wave before he drove off.

  And yet even then she didn’t budge. She stayed where she was, keeping her eyes trained on the plume of dust his tires left until it had settled and he was long gone.

  You have a training center to build, she pointed out to herself.

  And she had a booming new business of her own, too.

  But there she was, watching after a truck—and a man—she couldn’t see anymore.

  And trying not to acknowledge the part of her that was imagining herself sitting in that truck’s passenger seat, driving off with Seth Camden.

  The same part of her that continued to wonder what it might be like to have him kiss her.