The Camden Cowboy

by Victoria Pade

  He gave a negligent shrug. “Nothing big. Some old journals. I barely looked at them. Sent them to my grandmother in Denver. You haven’t run into anything else like that hidden away, have you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Besides the groundbreaking, about the only work that got done around here this week was on the main part of the barn, getting it ready to store construction materials. I’m sure you saw that. But as far as I know no one found anything else that belonged to your family—”

  “And you’d know if they did?”

  Was this more important to him than he wanted to let on?

  “I trust my crew, so yes, I’m sure if anyone found anything they would let me know.”

  “And then you’d let me know, right?”

  “Well, sure. Are you missing something?”

  “No,” he was quick to say. “But we didn’t know we’d left behind this stuff, either.”

  “If we come across anything more, I’ll bring it to you or tell you. You don’t have to worry about me playing finders keepers.”

  He didn’t smile at her joke. He was being very serious today…

  “I’d appreciate it. For my grandmother’s sake, you know.”

  “Sure,” Lacey said.

  Seth changed the subject then. “You weren’t kidding when you asked to use the guesthouse and said I wouldn’t even know you were around, were you? I haven’t seen you all week.”

  “Tell that to my father. He seems to think I’m more interested in you than in the training center.”

  Oh, she wished she wouldn’t have said that! Even if it did finally make Seth smile.

  “I’m running neck and neck with the training center when it comes to your interests?” he asked.

  She definitely wished she hadn’t said that. It might have been true, but she didn’t want him to know it.

  “It’s something stupid that my father accused me of because he saw us together at the wedding.”

  “Ahh…” The smile disappeared.

  Just then, one of her crew bosses came around the side of the house from the barn and called to her in an ominous tone, saying that he thought she better take a look at their brick delivery.

  “I’ll let you get to work,” Seth said, pushing off of the side of his truck without delay and opening the driver’s door.

  “Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said, not meaning for it to sound as hopeful as it did. But she was unhappy with how this brief encounter had gone, and she wanted some indication that it was all in her imagination.

  Seth gave a shrug of one of those big shoulders as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another—which was not at all reassuring. “You know where I live,” he said offhandedly.

  That didn’t sound good, either.

  But the crew boss called to her again, insisting that he wasn’t kidding, that she’d better take a look at their brick order.

  And Lacey had no choice but to move on to her latest problem before Seth had even started his engine.

  * * *

  It was nine o’clock that night before Lacey finished work and went back to the Camden guesthouse. There were no lights on in the main house when she arrived home—and it was Friday night and not too late—so she assumed that Seth was out for the evening.

  And yes, again she was wondering if he might be with a woman, on a date. He’d said he didn’t date much, but that didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t date at all…

  Lacey hated the thought.

  She told herself it was none of her business and that she had no reason to feel one way or another about it.

  But still, demoralized and down in the dumps, she took a long shower and tried to wash away the week.

  Then she did an at-home facial, put a deep conditioning mask on her hair, and sat for a while with pads over her eyes, hoping these measures would make her look rested.

  It was ten-thirty before she concluded her self-pampering, and even though she was exhausted it still seemed too early to go to bed.

  And no, she told herself, it wasn’t because the main house remained dark and she was inclined to staying up to see when Seth got home and if he was alone when he did.

  She just didn’t want to go to bed yet.

  So she blew her hair dry, left it loose around her shoulders, put on a pair of silky white pajama pants and a bright red crewneck, cap-sleeved T-shirt.

  After that, realizing that she hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, she took a box of crackers out of the cupboard and dumped a pile of them onto a plate. Then she sliced a brick of cheese and took her handiwork outside to sit at the poolside table nearest to the guesthouse.

  Not to wait for Seth. Just for the fresh air.

  She didn’t have long to not-wait, though, because by the time she was on her second cracker she heard his sports car come around from the front of the house to the garage.

  Please don’t let him have a date, she beseeched the fates, fully aware that it wasn’t anything she should be asking of any higher power. That it was something she had no right to request. That it was something that shouldn’t matter to her.

  But she listened intently to the sound of his engine turning off, the car door opening and closing, and then the garage door closing, as well.

  What she didn’t hear was a second car door or voices that would lead her to believe he wasn’t alone.

  And her hopes rose like tiny helium-filled balloons freed of their moorings. Even though she was fully aware that their last meeting hadn’t gone well and that she had no right to expect him to do anything more than say hello as he went into his house.

  Then he came into the backyard and approached the pool. He was by himself, dressed in khaki slacks and a yellow sport shirt, carrying a bottle of wine.

  He caught sight of Lacey then and raised his chin at her, not smiling, merely acknowledging her.

  “Hi,” she said, forcing cheeriness.

  “You’re home. I’m amazed,” he responded.

  Lacey ignored that. “Night out?” she asked, trying to sound neutral.

  “Dinner with friends.”

  “Didn’t they like your wine selection?” she asked with a nod at the bottle he was carrying.

  “They gave the wine to me. It was a thank-you for helping them move a couple of weeks ago.”

  “A Camden helped somebody move?” Lacey exclaimed as if it were unheard of, her anxieties over how he’d spent his evening and with whom lessening.

  Seth did crack just a hint of a one-sided smile at that. “Believe it or not—last name notwithstanding—I can lift the end of a couch as well as the next guy. And it earned me a bottle of wine.”

  He seemed to hesitate a moment and Lacey was worried that a simple good-night was about to happen.

  That was when—before she’d even thought about it—she heard herself say, “I have cheese and crackers. You have wine. We could combine our resources…”

  “We could,” he repeated noncommittally.

  Lacey wasn’t sure why it wasn’t a simple yes or no. But it took him a moment before he seemed to concede and said, “Okay. I’ll go in and open the wine and get glasses.”

  It would have been nice to see more enthusiasm, but still Lacey’s energy level was instantly renewed, and the effects of her miserable week suddenly diminished as she watched Seth go to the house. After a few minutes, he returned to join her and pour the wine.

  “You look unusually relaxed,” he observed, as he handed her a glass and sat in the chair across from her.

  Lacey slid the plate of cheese and crackers to the center of the small table. “I had a little winding-down time. It didn’t involve a horse, but it was good anyway.”

  “You probably needed it. A couple of nights this week I wasn’t sure if you made it home at all
. You weren’t here when I went to bed around midnight and you were gone again when I got up.”

  “There was just one night that I didn’t make it home—I slept with my head on my desk. Luckily there’s still a shower that works in the old house, and I keep a change of clothes in my car just in case.”

  “Just one night,” he repeated. “And you keep a change of clothes in your car in case you don’t get home from work because it happens often enough for you to need to be prepared?”

  Lacey shrugged.

  “But you honestly think that it’s worth it—keeping this pace?” Seth asked, as if it were a concept he couldn’t grasp.

  “Wanting my work on the training center to make my father’s jaw drop—plus keeping up with my clothing line—has made the pace worse than it ordinarily is. But I’ve always worked long hours and gone the extra mile. I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself at any other pace,” she admitted after a taste of the mildly fruity-tasting wine.

  Seth took a drink. “That’s good,” he judged. “Good wine. Tonight I was with good friends, had good company and a good meal—”

  “Things you don’t think I take time for.” Lacey guessed that that where he was heading with this.

  “Things you said you don’t take time for,” he retorted. “Instead you drive around with a change of clothes in case you can’t even get home to sleep.”

  “This project is important—I told you that, too.”

  He nodded but his expression showed pity. “No project, no job, should be that important. You need a life, too.”

  Feeling defensive, Lacey decided to turn the tables on him. “Okay, maybe you have more of a life than I do. And more friends—”

  “More fun.”

  “But here you are, in the middle of nowhere—you live in a place we chose specifically because there won’t be a lot of distractions for the team while they’re training. You’re out in the country, isolated. None of your family is here. You have friends who invite you to dinner, but what else? There’s nothing much to do but work around here. I mean, I’m facing a weekend when nothing is going to happen at the construction site, with only some paperwork to catch up on, and I have to tell you, I’m dreading that I won’t have my pace to keep me as busy as usual, because I’m not sure what I’m going to do around here.”

  Something about that made him smile genuinely—albeit a bit mischieviously.

  “You have the weekend off?” he asked, intrigued.

  “After this weekend I’ll have part of the crew working on Saturdays, but this past week was bad and nothing really got started, so there’s nothing that can be done tomorrow. Like I said, I have paperwork to do—for the training center and for my sportswear collection—but other than that—”

  “Give it to me, then,” he challenged.

  Lacey laughed. “Give what to you?”

  “This weekend. Give me this weekend to show you how nice things can be around here when you aren’t doing what you do. To show you how nice it can be when you aren’t running around like crazy, when you just take some time to relax, to enjoy yourself. When you don’t have to think about proving that you can do the work of three men. Or prove anything, for that matter. Tell your father you’re spending the weekend at a convent or camping or something where he can’t reach you—”

  “My father is at a sports conference this weekend where he’s the keynote speaker and will be wined and dined and the center of attention—I won’t hear from him until it’s over on Monday.”

  “Great! Then just be Lacey this weekend—not Lacey the overachiever, not Lacey the underdog-because-she’s-a-girl, not Lacey who-needs-to-show-her-old-man-she-can-be-the-third-son-he-never-had, not Lacey the wonder-businesswoman. Just Lacey.”

  “Who’s she?” Lacey joked.

  “I’m not sure, but I think she might be somewhere between the pretty little princess her father got for her mother to play with, and one of the boys. But I’d kind of like to find out…”

  He said that last part more quietly, as if he were admitting something he didn’t want to admit.

  But rather than think too much about what was going on with him, Lacey considered what he was suggesting.

  She really was worn-out. Two days of rest and relaxation might recharge her and make her that much more able to hit the next week head-on.

  Except that it was two days with Seth.

  Whom she shouldn’t be spending concentrated periods of time with because she knew she was overly vulnerable to his looks, to his charm, to him.

  But whom she really wanted to spend two days with.

  “It’s not as if I have the whole weekend free—I do have paperwork,” she said.

  “Hedging already!” he accused. “Then how about if I give you tomorrow morning to work? I have animals to feed and water, crops to check on. But after that, you’ve already said you don’t know what you’re going to do with yourself, remember?”

  It was only two days and then she’d be back to business on all fronts, full throttle, she told herself.

  “Can we talk about the new road I need?” she said.

  Seth rolled his eyes. “No! You get tomorrow morning and that’s it—the minute we’re together there’s no more work, no talk about work! Do you honestly not have any concept of what it is to take time off, to relax?”

  “I need a road,” she said.

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal—this weekend in exchange for your damn road.”

  “Seriously?” she said hopefully.

  “We will seriously come to terms on your road next week if you give me the next two days.”

  “Excluding mornings,” she reminded.

  “Excluding tomorrow morning,” he qualified.

  “Okay,” Lacey said.

  He offered a second glass of wine, but Lacey shook her head. “It’s getting late,” she pointed out, feeling fatigue creeping back in. “And I do have a lot of paperwork, so I’ll have to get up early to make sure I can clear the afternoon.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Seth said, putting the cork back in the bottle and getting up from the table when Lacey did.

  But Lacey really was exhausted. As she stood she reached for the plate that held what remained of the cheese and crackers, but knocked it over, sending it crashing to the brick pavers that tiled the area surrounding the pool. The plate broke and the cheese and crackers went everywhere.

  “And now you know that I get klutzy when I’m tired,” she said.

  “Better let me handle the broken glass, then.” He came around the table to pick that up while Lacey retrieved the slices of cheese and the crackers. And stole a glance at Seth as he hunkered down on his heels, his thighs testing the fabric of his slacks.

  Once they had the majority of the mess gathered up, they took the debris into the guesthouse to discard it. Then Lacey trailed Seth back to the door where they both stood straddling the threshold, spines against the opposite sides of the jamb so they could face each other.

  “Will this weekend’s portion of my lesson in relaxation involve hairy beasts?” Lacey asked at that point.

  “Just me,” he answered with a laugh.

  He was hardly a hairy beast. Though his hair was really nice in its finger-combed, disheveled sort of way. And when it came to beastly he was anything but—that handsome face of his was all chiseled and gorgeous…

  Lacey made herself concentrate on what he was saying.

  “This is the weekend we celebrate Northbridge’s Founder’s Day. There’s a parade and all kinds of things going on tomorrow. Sunday there’s the Founder’s Day picnic out at the old bridge that the town is named for. It’ll give you a taste of what goes on around here and how nice it is to just be a part of it.”

  “And if I get bored out of my mind?” she joked.

&n
bsp; “Oh, I’m not gonna let that happen,” he answered with a touch of the devil in his voice.

  Lacey laughed, but she realized that somehow in that instant the tone had changed between them altogether. That they’d gone from Seth being distant and her being desperate for him not to be, to sharing friendly banter and teasing and exchanging a few challenges, to the chemistry that was always just beneath the surface.

  Now, standing in that doorway, Seth was looking down at her, his eyes, slightly hooded and mesmerizing, searching hers….

  “What is there about you,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  What was there about him?

  What was there that made her so sensitive to everything to do with him, so sensitive when something was off between them that nothing felt right until she was with him and things were okay again?

  What was there about him that made everything else fade into insignificance, that lifted her spirits and restored her spent energies, that left her wanting nothing so much as him?

  He brought a hand around to the back of her neck and up into her hair, and Lacey gave over control just that easily. She let him tilt her head as he leaned forward, not resisting at all when his mouth found hers, answering the parting of his lips by parting hers, too.

  And why, in that instant, did she feel as if all really was right with the world again?

  Her eyes closed and her head fell back into his big hand as she placed a palm lightly on his chest—feeling the hardness of muscle behind his shirt and absorbing the power and strength hidden there.

  He urged her lips to part more still and when they did, he sent his tongue to tease hers.

  Glittery sensations rained all through her at that bit of increased intimacy, at that kiss that deepened and went where she’d longed for their kiss in the barn to go.

  Lacey’s awareness of everything else fell away and it was the man alone, the kiss alone, that carried her beyond her own weariness, that infused her and lifted her at once and made her melt.

  But just as other hungers began to awaken in her, Seth brought the kiss to a slow conclusion, retreating, then roguishly returning only to retreat again before the kiss grew more sensual than sexy, then chaste and sweet, then ended altogether.