The Camden Cowboy

by Victoria Pade

  “Then let’s find a way to fix that,” he said. “I’ve thought about it and I’m figuring there isn’t much wiggle room with the clothing line. But when it comes to the training center, I think there are some options.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I know what it means to you that your father gave you this project. But it’s too much. What you’re having to do by yourself is unreasonable. So what if you take another look at it? See if you can extend some deadlines—”

  “That isn’t possible. My father wants this facility open in the spring. Or earlier—he wants me ahead of schedule, not extending the schedule.”

  “Okay, then what about including Ian again, sharing the load?”

  “My father took Ian off the project.”

  “Because your father was angry about what went on with the property issue—but surely by now he’s cooled down. I saw him at the wedding, at the groundbreaking—he and Ian seem to be on fine terms. And now that the project is underway, now that all the problems with acquiring the property are ironed out—”

  “Not all the property problems are ironed out. There’s still the access road we need.”

  “Anything you need, Lacey—that’s what I’ll give you. Anything, any way you need it, if you’ll just work with me on this. Your father doesn’t seem at odds with Ian now—negotiate getting Ian back on the project, doing it jointly with him.”

  “I might as well just buy a billboard that announces that I can’t do the job.”

  “You can do the job, but do you want to do it at the expense of everything else? I’m just asking you to do it in more moderation so we can have a life, too. If you choose to share the load and make your father see that it’s a choice, not a necessity, that it’s something you’re opting for in order to have a life of your own, isn’t that a position you can take?”

  “The only way I can prove that I can do the job is to do it. Myself. Without asking for concessions or help or extensions.”

  “Then what about just not doing it?” Seth said.

  “Just not doing it?” she parroted in disbelief.

  “What’s the worst that would happen if you said to hell with it all, with proving your father wrong, to hell with whatever role your father put you in, to hell with everything but just doing what you want, what makes you happy? Because from where I’m sitting, I’m wondering why—if what you really enjoy doing is sportswear—why go on with this project at all? Why not hand it back to your father, focus on the clothing line, have a life with me and forget the rest.”

  “I’ll tell you why!” Lacey said, her temper flaring in the face of what seemed like Seth discounting her goals the same way Dominic had. “The training center is my chance. The only chance I’ve been given to step up and do what I know I can do. To grab the brass ring, if that’s how you want to look at it. That’s first and foremost. I’ve worked for this opportunity, fought for it. I’m not just going to shrug my shoulders at it now, slip away and be your little woman!”

  She had a full head of steam and she couldn’t contain it.

  “And besides that,” she shouted, “to say that poor-little-me can’t do the job would mean that my father won every fight I’ve ever had with him, that he was right—that no matter what a woman says, she ends up focusing on a man, a family, clothes! He’d say he was right not to trust me with anything important before this. Not to trust any woman with anything important because the minute a man comes on the scene, that’s where she ends up.”

  “So what? So what if he says that? If he believes it? In the long run, what difference does it actually make? Is it better to prove a point than to be happy? I saw a new you last weekend, a relaxed Lacey, a happier Lacey when you were out from under your father’s thumb for a while, and you can’t tell me otherwise.”

  She could, but it wouldn’t have been true. She had been a more relaxed version of herself with Seth last weekend. She had enjoyed it and felt good about it and hated having it come to an end.

  But that one weekend didn’t change the fact that now that she had this opportunity with Kincaid Corporation, she couldn’t just throw it away. And to do anything but handle it all herself, all by herself, was to throw it away because she knew that to bring Ian in would mean Ian would get the credit.

  “So you’ll become a football fanatic, and in return for that you think I should give up building the training center,” she said.

  “All I’m asking,” Seth said, interrupting her thoughts, “is just that you go at a different pace. A more human pace. That you do whatever it takes to end your workday sometime before midnight, that you take weekends off, so we can have some time together.”

  “I can do my job, but at your pace, the way you want me to do it,” she said, unable to see how this could end well.

  He reached to take her arms again, but something in Lacey made her step backward, out of that reach.

  “What I want,” he said slowly, enunciating each word, “is you. Time with you. A life with you. And I want you to do what you want to do, but I think that this pace you keep and your determination to make this point with your father is keeping you from admitting what you do want—even to yourself. Because just maybe what you do want is what your father thought you might end up wanting.”

  “Really? Is that so?” she said sarcastically, hating that he was telling her about herself as if he knew more than she did, telling her that her father was right, pushed buttons he shouldn’t push. “You’re so convinced that what I want is you and being your little woman, and maybe doing some token job to keep me busy.”

  “No, that’s not what I said. I want us to have a life together and for that to come first for us both. And no, I can’t be sure that’s what you want. I can only hope it might be. What I am saying is that maybe you can’t be sure, either, because you’re so intent on competing and proving your point that you haven’t thought beyond the damn training center and making your damn point with your father. That even if it creeps in just slightly—like last weekend—you push aside what actually does make you happy, what you just might want, and go back to burying yourself under that drive to show your old man that you’re as good as his sons.”

  “What I want,” Lacey said, enunciating each word the way he had, “is what I’m doing.”

  He studied her for a long moment before he said, “This might be easier if I thought that was true. But I think you’d deny what you actually do want rather than let your father be right. And at the end of that you just lose, Lacey. You lose by your own hand and I’m not sure you see that.” He shook his head, his voice went low and gravelly, and he added, “The trouble is, I lose, too. But you aren’t going to let me do anything about that, are you?”

  This was definitely falling apart, and inside, so was Lacey.

  But she swallowed back the tears that filled her throat and whispered, “I guess not.”

  He shook his head again—this time in disgust—then he turned and went out the way he’d come in.

  And Lacey stayed frozen where she was, chin high, hanging on for dear life to that newel post until she heard the sound of Seth’s truck far in the distance.

  Then she slid down the post, feeling the heat of salty tears sting her eyes and trail to her jawbone.

  And she told herself that she’d just done the only thing she could have done.

  No matter how bad it felt.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lacey just worked.

  All of the weekend that followed her breakup with Seth, all of the next week, Saturday and Sunday of the weekend after that, and even until four in the afternoon on Labor Day, she threw herself more into work than she ever had before.

  Day and night—overseeing every tiny detail of the construction of the Monarchs’ training center, and managing every aspect of her clothing line’s production, marketing,
sales, distribution and website over the phone and via the Internet—she worked. She barely slept more than three or four hours a night, and she’d spent those three or four hours on an air mattress she put upstairs in the old house, near the functioning bathroom.

  It was only on Labor Day that she took her first real break. And she might not have done that except that Hutch was back from his honeymoon and both of her brothers had threatened to roll her in a rug and carry her if need be to Ian and Jenna’s Labor Day barbecue.

  So Lacey had a plan: if she was going to be forced to take time off, she was going to catch up on a few nonwork things that she’d let lapse.

  She would attend the barbecue from four until seven or eight o’clock that evening.

  Then she’d drop some things at the furnished apartment in the upper floor of the house-turned-duplex that Hutch owned—the apartment that she’d again arranged with Hutch to use after her falling-out with Seth, but had yet to manage to move into.

  At the apartment she would take a hot shower—a luxury, since the ancient shower she’d been using at the old house-slash-office was rarely more than lukewarm.

  She would also wash and condition her hair.

  Then she would bide her time with more paperwork until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., when she could be reasonably sure that Seth would be sound asleep.

  During the middle of that first Friday night she’d gone to the Camden ranch, made sure there were no lights on in the main house, then slipped into the guesthouse to pack a bag with just enough to tide her over. She’d sent her assistant to pack up her business-related things during the following week. But there were still some personal things that needed to be retrieved. So, at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. she would finish off her Labor Day hiatus by finally and completely clearing her things out of his guesthouse.

  And after that she would go back to the office for another night on the air mattress so she could start the next week at the crack of dawn.

  Because working like a fiend was the only chance she had of outrunning the misery that overwhelmed her every time a thought of Seth crept in, so it was important that any window of time that opened up be planned, filled and kept a tight rein on.

  Which was what she had every intention of doing with her first dreaded downtime since the Founder’s Day weekend she’d spent so blissfully with Seth…

  “Oh, my gosh, you look awful!”

  Lacey could tell that her new sister-in-law hadn’t meant to greet her like that when she first opened her front door, because Jenna turned a bright shade of red and quickly followed with “I’m sorry! That came out wrong. Of course you don’t look awful, just tired. I can see why Ian and Hutch are worried about you. Come in, come in.”

  Lacey went into the farmhouse her brother Ian now shared with Jenna and Abby and waved a hello to her even newer sister-in-law, Issa, who was watching from the kitchen at the end of the hallway.

  “Yacey!”

  Lacey’s nearly three-year-old nephew Ash couldn’t pronounce her name. Yacey was his version, and he shouted it as he charged her to wrap his arms around her knees.

  “Hi, babycakes. How’s my guy?” Lacey greeted him, bending over to give him a hug.

  “We gots marshallows to cook later,” he confided.

  “Marshmallows,” Jenna translated. “For s’mores.”

  “I can’t wait,” Lacey said to them all, faking enthusiasm and energy she didn’t have.

  Then Ash let go of her knees and reached for her hand. “I’m s’posa bring you out the back,” he said, as if he’d been given a very important mission.

  “Ian and Hutch are out there,” Jenna explained.

  “Is there something I can do in here to help first?” Lacey offered.

  Jenna shook her head as if it were unthinkable. “No, no, go with Ash.”

  Lacey had the sense that something was going on, but she gave in and let her nephew lead her through the farmhouse and out the back door, where her brothers were sitting on two of three folding chairs.

  They greeted her as Ash drew her all the way to the third folding chair and ordered her to sit. Then Hutch said to his son, “Go play with Abby now, Ash.”

  “’Cuz you gotta talk to Yacey,” Ash said, echoing something he’d heard.

  “What is this, an intervention?” Lacey asked with a laugh when Ash trotted off in the direction of the sandbox.

  “Sort of,” Hutch answered with a laugh of his own.

  “No, not sort of,” Ian corrected. “This is definitely an intervention. We’re worried about you.”

  Jenna had told her that. Apparently it was a subject of discussion.

  “Nobody needs to worry about me, I’m fine,” Lacey assured them in an airy tone that sounded fake even to her own ears.

  “Oh, come on, Lace, that’s not true,” Hutch cajoled. “You said you didn’t want to stay at the Camden ranch after all and wanted to use the apartment. But Issa and I are still living downstairs until we move next month, remember? I know you haven’t been there a single night since you said that—”

  “And my assistant talked to your assistant when she called to find out where the copy of that first land survey was,” Ian interjected. “We know you’re sleeping at the construction site.”

  Was that all they knew? Had they heard or pieced together anything about her and Seth?

  It didn’t seem as though they could have, so she said, “We’ve had a rough start and I’ve been trying to make up time. Plus I’m dealing with my sportswear, don’t forget. Sleeping at the office is just a temporary thing for convenience. There were nights I didn’t even make it back to the Camden guesthouse—that’s why it seemed silly to pay rent and I bought the air mattress. I plan to move into your apartment when the barbecue is over tonight, Hutch, but there will still be nights when I’m sure I’ll end up staying at the site, using the air mattress.”

  “You can’t let him do this to you,” Hutch said.

  Maybe they did know about Seth and what had gone on with him. But how could they?

  “If you let him, Dad will take your entire life and use it as his own,” Ian added, letting her know that it wasn’t Seth they were referring to.

  “He’s done it to both of us and now he’s doing it to you with the training center,” Hutch put in.

  Her brothers went on to talk about how the bigger-than-life Morgan Kincaid might not be aware of just how much he demanded of his children, but that they’d both lost years and relationships and things that were important to them in the course of doing what their father wanted of them.

  “There comes a time with him when you just have to stand up and say no,” Hutch advised her. “Because if you don’t, you don’t get a life of your own.”

  “You know Hutch figured that out before I did,” Ian contributed. “But I had to come to it myself with Jenna, with the land for the training facility. You’ve avoided his wrath before—”

  “Because I’m the girl.”

  “Because you’re the girl,” Ian agreed. “But now that he’s got you doing the center, we feel like we’re watching you fall into the hole we had to fight our way out of.”

  “And we’re hoping we can save you from it before it goes too far,” Hutch put in.

  “I’m fine,” Lacey lied.

  “No. You’re doing a great job for him, but you’re not fine,” Hutch corrected. “Look in the mirror—you’re pale as a ghost, there are circles under your eyes, I swear you look like you’ve lost ten pounds since the last time I saw you. And we had to double-team you and threaten you just to get you to come here today. You would have worked otherwise.”

  “The thing is,” Ian said, “we just want you to learn from our mistakes. You have to draw the line with the old man because no matter how much you give, he’ll want more.”

  “It’s something we le
arned when he was drilling us for football when we were little kids. And no, it isn’t easy to buck him, and he’ll pull out all the stops to keep you doing what he wants.”

  “He’d say that I can’t do the job. That he knew it all along.”

  “He would and he will,” Ian confirmed. “But you can’t let that get to you. I let what he said get to me for too long. I tried to please him at any cost for too long. You can work with Dad, for Dad, but it has to be you who draws the line and sticks to it, because he never will. He’ll take all you’ve got and just want more, and you won’t be left with anything for yourself.”

  Jenna and Issa came out the back door then, carrying trays full of appetizers, drinks and food to be grilled, effectively ending the intervention that Lacey was sure now didn’t have anything to do with Seth.

  But she couldn’t help making a connection between what her brothers had said and what Seth had said to her that last Friday night at the office.

  And it didn’t help that she was sitting in Ian’s backyard, with Ian who now had Jenna and Abby, with Hutch who now had Issa and Ash.

  Her brothers had families. Lives. They had weathered storms with their father and absorbed his disapproval, his disparagement, his belittling. They had weathered years of separation from Morgan Kincaid.

  Hutch and Ian had withstood the worst their father had dished out and pushed through it, gone beyond it, to find and have what they wanted. What made them happy.

  And maybe she was really, really tired—no, there was no question about it, she was really, really tired—but she suddenly started to see something in the message of her brothers’ intervention that they hadn’t intended to give.

  No one escaped Morgan Kincaid’s criticism. No one was totally free of his narrow-mindedness or his biases. And no one could please him or win his approval unconditionally or for all time.