Riding High

by Stacy Finz

  “What kind of acreage are we talking about? And where on the property do you want to put this tree farm?” Flynn asked.

  “I don’t know the answer to either question. We’re still in the planning phase.”

  “As long as there’s enough grazing pasture for my cattle, I’m not concerned about it. We’ll fence off what you want to farm.”

  “What do you consider enough grazing pasture?”

  Flynn glowered with impatience. “You’ve got a thousand acres, Gia; we’ll make it work.” He leaned across the table, close to her ear, and said, “This is what you didn’t want people to hear?”

  She was surprised he’d given in so easily about the land and didn’t want to push her luck. Not here. “No. There’s more, but we should talk about it at home. Later.”

  “Then eat up.” Clearly he wanted to hear what she had to say.

  More than halfway through his steak, he said, “This doesn’t have anything to do with us not sleeping together, does it? Because that rule hasn’t changed.”

  She put her finger to her lips. “Hush. People can hear you. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. Is that all you can think about?”

  “Pretty much.” His lips quirked into a half grin as he took in her dress again. “But it’s not gonna happen.”

  “Of course it’s not,” she said, then whispered, “After Evan, I’m never having sex again.” Although with Flynn it was all she could think about.

  He scowled. “I don’t want to talk about that dirtbag.”

  “Works for me.”

  They finished eating, passed on dessert, and Flynn covered the bill.

  “Shouldn’t I pay, because this was a legal meeting?”

  “It was off the books.” Flynn waved her off. “I’ll follow you home.”

  They walked out together and Flynn made sure she started her car before getting in his truck. All the way back to Rosser Ranch, Gia thought about what a different breed Flynn was from the men she knew in New York. He was an old-style gentleman. It should’ve bugged her because she’d worked hard to assert herself as an independent woman—none of this the-man-pays-for-dinner crap and I’ll follow you home—but she liked it. She didn’t get the sense that he thought he was smarter or higher on the evolutionary ladder than she; he was just mannerly. Perhaps it was a cowboy thing, because in New York the men were all too happy to let her foot the bill.

  She pulled into the garage and Flynn parked in the driveway. By the time she walked through the house and opened the front door, he’d grabbed his duffel and was headed up the stairs to the guest quarters over the garage.

  “Hey, aren’t you coming in?” she called to him.

  “I just want to put my stuff away and say hello to Dude. Put on a pot of coffee and I’ll be over in a bit.”

  In the kitchen the answering machine blinked. Lately, when the machine flashed, it gave her heart palpitations. She pressed the button anyway.

  “Gia, it’s Mom. Call me as soon as you can. The FBI came by the condo today—”

  She quickly shut off the machine and laid her face in her hands. Flynn was right; this was never going away.

  Chapter 10

  Flynn walked to the barn. He needed a little distance from Gia and to get his head twisted on straight. There was too much flirting going on between them and nothing good could come of that, not while he was her attorney. There were ethics and rules.

  He was also losing his objectivity. It was one thing to give her the benefit of the doubt but another not to keep an open mind to the possibility that she was dirty as sin. Instead, he kept telling himself that criminals sitting on billions of dollars of cash didn’t talk about planting Christmas tree farms. Not unless she planned to launder the money through the farm, which was as ridiculous as it was brilliant. But with the feds keeping eyes on her the way they were, every dime she spent would have to be accounted for. No cash transactions.

  He’d need records of her day trading, because that seemed to be the way she planned to pay for her agricultural endeavors.

  Dude neighed at the scent of Flynn. He found a bag of baby carrots near the grain feed and helped himself to a few, offering the treats to his gelding with the flat of his palm.

  “How you doing, boy?” Flynn scratched the horse behind his ears. “We’ll go out tomorrow, get you a little exercise.”

  Dude shoved his muzzle into Flynn’s hand, looking for more carrots or scratches.

  “Greedy fellow.”

  Clay’s boys had been doing a good job. Dude’s stall was clean and his water fresh. Flynn checked on Rory, who had thrown her head over the stall to see what was going on. Both horses liked to come in at night instead of grazing in the paddocks.

  “You’re a nosy girl, just like your owner,” he told the mare. Gia’s veiled attempts at digging into his and Annie’s relationship had both amused and turned him on. At least in some areas she was very much transparent.

  After Evan, I’m never having sex again.

  She would with Flynn as soon as he stopped being her lawyer. And then she’d forget all about Evan Laughlin.

  He gave Rory one last pat and hiked back to the house. The sun was starting to set, painting brilliant pinks, oranges, and blues across the sky. The earth still held the pungent scent of the recent rain. Flynn wished for more, especially if Gia used some of the pasture land for farming. Christmas trees; he smiled and scratched his head. Somehow he couldn’t picture America’s premier financial guru driving a tractor. Then again, she’d look damned good on top of a John Deere. Damned good.

  He knocked on the door and let himself in, finding Gia sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

  “The FBI has started harassing my mother,” she said without preamble.

  He cocked his hip against the counter. “Where does your mother live?”

  “In Florida. Boca Raton.”

  “Did she talk to them?” He zeroed in on the coffeemaker, found the mugs, and poured them each a cup.

  “No. She hid in her house, afraid to answer the door. I don’t want them bothering her. She has nothing to do with this. She didn’t like Evan; hated him, in fact.”

  “Smart lady.”

  “Can you make them leave her alone?” she asked, her voice cracking.

  “Probably not. They’ll likely be sniffing around all your family, friends, and associates. They can try to talk to anyone they want. No law against it.” No sense sugarcoating it. If they wanted to, the feds could make Gia’s life miserable.

  “They’ve already interviewed everyone I’ve ever had a conversation with. When does it border on harassment?”

  Flynn sat next to her, put his hand on the back of her neck, and rubbed the muscles there. “They want to flush Evan out, which means making you cooperate.”

  “For the last freaking time, I don’t know anything.”

  “I believe you, Gia.” Or at least he was starting to.

  “You got enough money to send your mom on a cruise for a couple of weeks?”

  She made a sound in her throat as if she thought he was nuts. “So now she has to go into hiding?”

  “It was just a thought. You could always have her come here. They won’t harass her on your property because they’ve been told they have to go through me.”

  “That feels good,” she said as his hands continued to knead the knots. “How about my shoulders?”

  He moved his hands down and worked on her deltoids. She let out a moan of gratitude and he went instantly hard. Okay, bad idea. But he didn’t want to stop. His fingers itched to unzip her dress and touch her bare skin. Fondle her breasts and squeeze that perfect ass, which he’d been admiring since that first night in the Ponderosa.

  She pulled her hair away to give him better access and he nearly groaned out loud. Gia sure wasn’t making it easy on him. Or, depending on how he looked at it, she was making it too easy. He stepped behind her barstool, hoping to hide the growing bulge in his jeans.

  “Bette
r?” he asked.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Good, because we’ve gotta stop now.”

  “Why?” Gia leaned her head back and smiled into his face.

  “You know why.” He reached for her hand and pressed it against his crotch.

  “Uh-oh.” She giggled and squeezed his package.

  “How much wine did you have at dinner?” He moved her hand and stepped away.

  “Not nearly enough. You know, they have a name for men like you.”

  “No more!” He returned to the stool next to her and took a slug of his coffee. “What do you want to do about your mom?”

  She sobered quickly. “I don’t know yet. I’d send for her, but she has an active social life in Boca. What would she do here?” Gia stared out the big picture window. As beautiful as Rosser Ranch was, it wasn’t a thriving senior community.

  “Why did she hate Laughlin?”

  “She didn’t think he treated me well. But you know how mothers are. They want men to put their daughters on pedestals.”

  “How did he not treat you well?” And how did a smart woman like you fall for a con artist?

  “She thought he only wanted me as a trophy because of my celebrity. And in the end she was right. I opened a lot of doors for him.”

  “You were never suspicious of him?” he asked, trying hard to understand why she hadn’t seen through his duplicity.

  “Not as an investment banker.” She shook her head. “I actually thought he was mediocre in that area, solid but not taking the world by storm. Evan was the opposite of slick. Looking back on it, that’s probably what made him seem so trustworthy.”

  “Then what were you suspicious of?”

  “His feelings toward me. He told me he loved me often enough, but it always seemed like hollow words, like something he knew I wanted to hear. I never really felt it where it counted.” She pressed her hand against her heart.

  “Why did you stay with him, then?”

  She shrugged. “It was familiar and comfortable and I wanted to believe it was real.”

  It bothered Flynn that she’d been in love with Laughlin. And there was more to it than the fact that the man had been a no-good grifter. There was a jealousy factor that Flynn wasn’t quite ready to explore, especially because he’d known Gia less than a month. It seemed a little soon to be territorial about a woman.

  “What was the last thing he said to you?” It was a question he used to ask witnesses when he was an FBI agent. Sometimes those last words could help crack a case.

  Gia thought about it for a while. “Evan had just gotten out of the shower and I was rushing off to work. He called to me, ‘Remember, we have dinner with Porter and Joan tonight. I’ll meet you at the restaurant.’”

  “And then he never showed?”

  “Right. The next morning someone from the SEC was pounding on my door. You know the rest.”

  Gia got up and refilled their coffees. He drank, not worried that the caffeine would keep him up. It wasn’t like he’d be able to sleep with Gia lying in bed only yards away from the guest apartment.

  “I told you mine,” Gia said. “It’s your turn to tell me yours. What’s the deal with you and Annie?”

  He laughed. “There’s no deal. Our families are friends. Annie’s my friend.”

  “You never slept with her?”

  “Not that I would tell you if I had, but no, we never slept together.”

  She squinted at him as if she thought he was lying. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not like that with us.”

  “So what’s up with her family? It sounds like there are problems there.”

  “That I can’t talk about,” he said and drained the rest of his coffee.

  “Attorney-client privilege?”

  “Yup. And it’s none of your business. So what did you want to tell me that needed to be said in private, besides the fact that you’re desperate to sleep with me?”

  “For a guy who says sex is off the table, you sure bring it up a lot.”

  She was right about that. He was playing with fire, but he couldn’t seem to stop flirting with her. “Someday I won’t be your attorney.” He winked at her and watched her face flush.

  “At the rate the FBI is harassing me I’ll need a lawyer for the rest of my life. And you seem to know what you’re doing.”

  He knew what he was doing, but sometimes that wasn’t enough. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “That I need your help with something that has nothing to do with the law.”

  “If you need me to build a fence, rope a calf, or bulldog a steer, I’m your man.” He grinned.

  “None of the above.” She got up again and turned off the coffeemaker; the carafe was nearly empty. “I need you to help me persuade my neighbors to rubber stamp a project I’m planning.”

  “What’s the project?”

  “You promise you’ll keep it confidential?”

  He brought his mug to the sink, rinsed it out, and put it in the dishwasher. “Yeah, as long it won’t get me disbarred.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” she said. “I want to start a residential program for down-and-out women and teach them how to be financially independent. They’ll run the farm and I’ll provide them with classes on how to enhance their earning potential, how to budget their money, how to invest, stuff like that.” She spent the next hour giving him the details.

  “Where will you get these women?” He liked the idea but didn’t think her neighbors would if the participants were right out of Frontera State Prison.

  “I’ll put the word out on social media, go through social services and the Welfare Department. My name may be mud, but I don’t think desperate people will pass up a chance for room, board, a job, and a way to better their life.”

  “You thinking this will be something that’ll resurrect your public image?” It certainly wouldn’t hurt it, Flynn thought.

  “I’ve been planning this long before Evan and his Ponzi scheme. . . . I’ve been planning this since I was twenty. But yeah, it wouldn’t hurt my public image. It would be nice to stop getting death threats.”

  “Why since you were twenty?” Flynn wondered what the impetus was.

  “It’s when I made my first million dollars from investing my student loans in the stock market.” She laughed. “I know you’re appalled. But it worked out, didn’t it?”

  “I hope that’s not what you’ll be teaching these women because you may as well take them to the nearest racetrack. Okay, you made your first million. That still doesn’t explain why you wanted to go into social work.” Especially because she’d spent her next years in the financial world and on television, making more money than most people could imagine.

  “My life wasn’t always this.” She spread her arms wide at the yards of granite countertops and the pricey appliances. The house was a showplace. “When my father died he was up to his neck in debt.... He’d made some very bad investments. My mother had no idea we were living off his life insurance. She’d always let him oversee the finances, convinced he was better and smarter than her. Ha. I think I would’ve done a better a job and I was just thirteen. After the funeral the world started caving in us. We lost everything. The house, my mother’s jewelry, the country club, even the furniture.”

  “What did you do?” The story hadn’t been in Gia’s Wikipedia entry. As far as Flynn knew, this wasn’t public information.

  “The only skill my mother had was keeping house. Eventually, a family hired her to keep theirs. But until then, we lived hand to mouth, sometimes sleeping in the car, often relying on soup kitchens. It was a long way to fall . . . from Bedford to homeless.” She stopped and studied his reaction. “Does it shock you? Does it make you think I would steal investors’ life savings . . . their retirement?”

  “No. But it helps me understand what drives you.” It was impressive how much she’d accomplished. “I’m sorry, Gia. No one should have to go through that.”

  “I d
idn’t tell you so you’d feel sorry for me. It’s ancient history. I told you so you’d understand how important this program is to me. If my mother had been better equipped . . . well, things would’ve been different.”

  “Look,” he said, “I like the idea and I’m happy to help any way I can. But I’m not a local—”

  “But you sort of are,” Gia interrupted. “People here like you.”

  “You’d be much better off getting Clay on your side. His family was among the first settlers of Nugget. He’ll have sway.”

  “Will you help me talk to him?”

  He didn’t see how that would hurt. But he wouldn’t force it down Clay’s throat. “Yeah, because I can’t seem to resist you. Where will you put these women? And what if they have kids?”

  “I’ve thought about that,” she said. “I’m going to spruce up the bunkhouses and the cottages on the property. The bunkhouses for the single ladies and the cottages for families. It won’t be fancy, but it’ll be a roof over their heads. They’ll have their dignity.”

  That last part made Flynn’s heart twist. Everyone should have dignity.

  He looked at his watch. “You know it’s one in the morning? I’ve got to be up and out by six.”

  “To give the cows shots?”

  His mouth quirked. “They’re cattle, Gia, not cows. Come over to the squeeze chutes in the morning and watch. You want to fit in around here, learn how it’s done.”

  She walked him to the door. “You have everything you need up there?”

  “Yep.” Although he’d like her in his bed. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night.”

  He got halfway out the door when he turned back. “Gia?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Besides the fact that I want to sleep with you, I’m starting to like you. From what I see, you’re a good person. But if you’re conning me . . . don’t! You won’t like the consequences.”

  * * *

  Gia forced herself out of bed at the crack of dawn, showered, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a hoodie. The idea of watching calves get vaccinated wasn’t all that thrilling, but she wanted to see Flynn in action. He was an amazing rider; she’d noticed that from the first time she’d seen him astride Dude. Nice seat, she giggled to herself. Flynn had a way of making her revert to her teenage years, back when a boy could make her giddy.