by D. L. Roan
“What?”
He pressed his lips together as he scanned her face, smoothing her hair from her forehead. “You do know I’d never take advantage of you like that, right?”
Dani shook her head. “I didn’t think that at all.” They’d both been drinking. “I wanted to.” She still wanted to, once she rinsed the godawful taste out of her mouth and her head stopped pounding. She glanced over at the night table, noticing the candles and the box of condoms. “You tried to make it special. I’m just sorry I ruined everything.”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” he insisted. “You made it hard to say no. Really hard.” He chuckled, making his point with another flex of his hips. “But, necrophilia isn’t really my thing.”
“Ugh, I passed out?”
Clay laughed. “Right after you took off that little black dress I hope you’ll wear again, really, really soon.”
She managed a grin at his playful tone, but embarrassment blunted the comedy he seemed to find in what had happened.
“There is a way you can make it up to me, though” he said, bouncing his brows with cocky suggestion.
Dani reached down to touch him, but he jerked away. “No, not that.”
“But you haven’t...”
“Cum?” he finished with a teasing smirk.
Dani nodded. He’d made his frustration clear the day before, and the last thing she wanted was for him to think she was a tease. “I want to,” she said, reaching down again, but he grabbed her wrist and pinned her hands above her head.
“First of all,” he said, dipping down to take her earlobe between his lips. “I took care of that myself last night, twice.”
“Twice?” Dani laughed.
“Mmhm,” he hummed against her ear and she cringed against the tickling vibration. “That’s how fucking crazy you make me.” He placed a line of sensual kisses along her neck, then pushed up to hover above her again. “Secondly, as many times as I’m sure you’ve dreamed of me making love to you—“
“Ha! Cocky much?” She laughed and bucked beneath him again.
Clay shrugged. “Am I wrong?”
Dani bit her lip.
“Didn’t think so.” He chuckled. “Anyway, I’m sure none of those fantasies included you puking up a hangover, and I’d prefer we didn’t chance it.” He dipped down one last time and kissed her forehead. “And thirdly, we don’t have time.”
Her gaze traveled down the carved plains of his chest and abs, wishing he’d let go of her hands so she could trace all the dips and ripples. “We don’t have to rush out of bed,” she suggested, her hangover evaporating with every passing second.
Clay dropped his forehead onto her chest with a disappointed whine. “As much as I want your hands on me right now, I have to ask for a rain check,” he said and rolled to her side.
“Rain check?”
“Yeah.” He pushed off the bed, pulled his jeans on, but left them unfastened, then sat on the edge of the mattress again. “I got an email yesterday from a client I’ve been trying to sign for a while. I’d actually written him off.” He scrubbed a hand over his face before he lowered himself across the bed, propping his head on the heel of his hand, and took her hand in his other. “He asked for a meeting today, in a few hours, actually, and I’d like you to go with me.”
Cold reality steamrolled its way into the fantasy bubble she’d been living in the last few weeks. Heaviness returned to her stomach and she sat up, clutching the sheets around her, unsure how to respond. She wasn’t ready to go home, but nothing else had changed.
“That’s not exactly the reaction I was hoping for,” he joked.
“I’m not coming to work for you, Clay,” she reminded him.
“And I’m not asking you to.”
“Did you set this up, for this week, thinking I’d change my mind?”
“Of course not,” he insisted with an offended huff. “I’ll show you the email that came in yesterday.”
She studied his expression, not that she was the best judge. He’d already tricked her once. Unable to believe he’d go as far as outright lying, she gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“Look. This thing between us…this was-is-something I want,” she forged on, “and I want more of it, more of you, of this.” She grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together. “I’m not ready to go home yet, and I don’t know how it’s all supposed to work when I do, but I’m not going to change my mind. I’m a third-generation rancher, Clay, not a salesman. My family is counting on me—which reminds me!” She glanced at the antique clock on the wall. “Matt was supposed to have his hernia surgery this morning. I need to call them.” As soon as she could get a cup of coffee. Grey would know in a heartbeat she was hungover if she didn’t.
Clay stared at their joined hands for several long quiet seconds, flexing his fingers between hers. “You’re right,” he finally said. “I do still want you to work with me, not for me, but as a full partner.” Dani sucked in a surprised breath. He’d never said anything about being a partner. She didn’t even know what that meant. “But today is just about timing,” he continued. “Mr. Gardner asked, and I said yes. I’ll cancel it if you want. I know it’s not what you planned.”
Her shoulders rose and fell with her sigh. She didn’t know anything about selling agri-tech systems for ranches on which she’d never stepped foot. Every operation was different, with different needs. She only knew what worked for her, and what she wanted for Falcon Ridge.
“I’ll cancel,” he said, rolling to the nightstand to retrieve his phone.
“Don’t.” Ugh. She couldn’t believe she was doing this.
“It’s really not that big of a deal, beautiful. I can try to reschedule.” He settled back on the mattress and flipped through his phone. “We’ll shower up and ride out to the barns, let you get a look at the communications and control hub. That’s where all the automation begins. It’ll be as good a place as any to start.”
“I’ll go,” she conceded, laying a staying hand on his phone. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to help. I’ve never sold anything in my life, but you need this contract, so…”
“Are you sure?”
Dani nodded. “But can I get some coffee first? And a shower would be nice.”
Clay lunged forward and kissed her forehead. “Take a shower here. I’ll run to the house, clean up, and meet you back here with a whole thermos full of coffee.” He bounced off the bed and shoved his feet into his boots, looking at the sleek aviator watch on his wrist. “It’s about a two hour drive up to Pecos, so we’ll need to leave in thirty minutes. Does that give you enough time?”
Dani’s eyes widened and she scooted to the edge of the mattress, her head pounding with every move. “I’m really gonna need that coffee.”
“I’m already on my way back with it,” he said and kissed her again, his dimples like craters from the size of his smile. “How do you take it?”
“Light and sweet,” she groaned.
“Ooh, that inspires so many dirty thoughts,” he said with a chuckle, then rushed out the door.
An hour later, Dani sat in the passenger seat of Clay’s truck, the Texas landscape stretching out like a burlap sack dotted with scraps of green, all the way to the blue horizon in every direction. Except for a few sips, her coffee sat relatively untouched in the cup holder. Besides her stomach’s revolt against any idea of sustenance, it tasted like dirt.
After making a mental note to stop for some fresh grounds at the first hint of a grocery store, she flipped down the sun visor, wincing at the puffy shadows beneath her eyes, and the rosy sunburn on her nose and cheeks. Between looking like a bloated goldfish and her wrinkled T-shirt, she’d have better luck selling a chocolate covered turd than tens of thousands of dollars in agri-tech.
“You look fine,” Clay insisted, reaching over to give her knee a reassuring squeeze.
“If by fine, you mean your dad is a cruel, sadistic devil,” she grumbled and slapped the visor back into pla
ce.
Clay’s laugh didn’t help. “Aw, come on,” he urged with a grin, lacing his fingers with hers and raising her hand to his lips. “I tried to warn you, and nobody held a gun to your head.”
“It sure feels like someone did,” she said with a pained chuckle, though her headache had subsided considerably since they’d left.
“I’d give him hell, but he meant well. It’s just been a while since he’s been in the game, you know?”
Dani pulled her foot beneath her and leaned against the door, inwardly grinning at the old cowboy’s antics the night before. She liked Virgil. She could see where Clay got his sense of humor.
“How long has it been since he dated? Since your mom died?” He’d told her little about his mother, only that she’d passed away when he was a teenager.
Clay’s grip tightened, only a fraction, but enough to know it was a touchy subject.
“Yeah,” he finally said, releasing her hand to adjust the air conditioner vent. “He’s had a few noncommitted interests, but Nannette is the first woman he’s ever spent any kind of considerable effort on.”
“How long have they been dating?”
Clay shrugged. “Not long, but Pop’s a private man, so who knows. How’s your dad? The one with the hernia,” he asked, an obvious change in subject.
“He made it through surgery okay,” she offered, willing to let it go. “Mom says he’s pretty out of it, but she and Gran should be able to take him home this afternoon.”
The reminder had her retrieving her phone from her purse, checking to make sure she hadn’t missed a call. The good news about Matt was a relief, but the way her mom had dismissed her questions about Uncle Cade triggered a familiar alarm, like a prelude to their usual radio silence when the shit was about to hit the fan. She scrolled over to Uncle Cade’s number and typed out a text message, but remembering Cade’s insistence that she not worry about him, ultimately decided to delete it. Grey and Papa Daniel had promised to call if anything happened.
Silence settled between them, lending opportunity for her initial nervousness to return. She knew as much about sales as she did space travel. “What specific upgrades are you trying to sell this guy again?”
Clay rattled off a bunch of acronyms and names that might as well have been Swahili. Once he broke it down to general systems and ideas, she searched her memories for any data she could use from her classes and research. Some of the ideas were sound for any ranch, but with no specifics about this ranch’s current operation, she couldn’t say if they were a benefit or not.
Feeling woefully unprepared, she sat in silence as the truck rumbled over the main entrance cattle guard fifteen minutes later. Clay steered down a long, rutted driveway to a small outpost she soon learned to be an office, and parked beside a flatbed truck loaded with hay and feed.
“Don’t be nervous,” Clay said, giving her hand one last squeeze. “Just be yourself. You don’t have to say anything, but feel free to if an opportunity presents itself. This guy’s going to be a tough sell either way.”
Dani took a steadying breath and let it out slowly. Sweat coated her palms even before she stepped out into the late morning heat, the sun a blinding disc high in the clear blue sky. Astronaut or agri-tech saleswoman, it was as good a day as any for either, she guessed.
Chapter Eighteen
Clay fingered the collar of his shirt, the heat inside the small, hot box Dwight Gardner called an office, cooking him from the inside out. Nothing more than a rusty freight container with a window and door cut into the side, the temperature inside climbed with the sun. A century-old fan rotated back and forth in the corner, working more as the convection element in an oven than doing anything to cool the place, but he still counted the seconds until it rotated toward them, moving the air just enough to breathe.
The old rancher seemed unaffected, while he, Dani, and Dwight’s eldest son, Phil, were dying by degrees as Dwight spit out one excuse after another not to ‘change a damn thing’ about his operation.
Clay had already spent an hour going over all the equipment and upgrades, again. He’d recited his usual winning sales pitch and couldn’t believe he’d wasted the whole day there, instead of spending that time between the sheets and finally making love to Dani. As stubborn as the man was, he might as well have been talking to a granite boulder with bushy eyebrows.
Quiet as a mouse, Dani hadn’t offered the first reprieve. Hopefully, she just had a bad case of stage fright, or she’d suffocated in the heat.
“Dad, I’m telling you, you’re wrong.” Phil paced a four-foot path behind Dwight’s chair. “What we spend on the hardware and software will pay for itself in a couple years. Trust me.”
Dwight barked a cynical laugh. “Trust you, you say. Who’s to say you’ll even be around here two years from now, or these folks.” He pointed across his desk at Clay and Dani, his leathery, wrinkled hand trembling with a weakness that betrayed his age.
“All of my installations come with three-year service maintenance contracts,” Clay assured him. “And that’s in addition to the supplier’s agreements.”
“Yeah,” Dwight huffed, “until they don’t. For forty years, this ranch has run just fine without all your internets and gadgets.”
“And our cattle are pulling less and less money at auction every year,” Phil snapped, pausing his pacing to release a frustrated sigh. “We can’t compete with the automated quality controls that more and more ranches are using, and getting the better prices.”
Dwight turned and glared over his shoulder at his son. “And you can thank people like them for that,” he grumbled, shaking his finger at Clay and Dani.
Clay was ready to walk when Dani stood, retrieved a pen from Dwight’s desk, and retook her seat. “Do you have a piece of paper?” she asked Clay.
Flipping a tie from her wrist, she secured her hair into a sloppy bun atop her head as Clay retrieved a legal pad from his leather portfolio.
“Time is money, Mr. Gardner, so I’ll be quick,” she continued. “Then we can get out of your hair and let you get back to work.” The old man gave her a grateful nod. “How many head of cattle do you run to auction per year?” she asked the rancher, tapping the pen in a nervous rhythm against the pad.
Dwight rattled off an average number.
“And are those feeder cattle or yearlings?”
“Yearlings,” he replied. “But since the price of feed’s goin’ through the roof, we’ve been considering turning them over earlier, saving the cost.”
Dani scribbled down his answers, doing a few calculations. “What are you feeding them?”
“You saw it on the truck out there.” Dwight tipped his head to where the flatbed they’d parked beside sat.
“And how much is that costing you per head?” she continued.
Dwight pulled open a drawer to his right, the old metal tracks groaning with years of demand. He retrieved a three-ring binder stuffed six inches thick with loose and dogeared pages, and set it on the desk with a thud. Dwight flipped it open and fingered through the pages, one-by-one. Clay watched the rancher out of the corner of his eye, glancing over at Dani as she swiped her phone with her finger a few times.
Before Dwight had turned the third page, Dani turned her phone around and held it out to Dwight. “My family runs a ranch up in Montana, about the size of yours, and this was our feed cost per head, today. If you had to guess, do you think your costs are lower or higher?”
Agitated by the interruption, Dwight cleared his throat and pulled his reading glasses from the top of his head, peering through them at the number on her phone, then looked up over the rim with a skeptical raised brow. “Higher.”
“By how much?” Dani pressed. “A dollar, two, ten?”
Dwight rattled off a relatively low figure and Dani nodded, scribbling a few more figures onto the notepad, double checking one with the calculator on her phone.
The suffocating heat long forgotten, Clay sat in awe as Dani’s passion bubbled
through her anxiety. Firing off her last few questions like a seasoned pro, she pulled up Falcon Ridge’s auction stats from the cloud storage she’d recently set up, showing Dwight the last auction prices they’d gotten on their yearlings, then turned the notepad around and ran through her figures.
“We’ve been using DNA quality grade testing for a while. It’s more expensive, but we switched to automated premixed feed rations a year-and-a-half ago, and we base the mix on staggered testing. The results were instant. Not only did we get a higher grade, but prices at auction increased by twenty-three percent the first year. You apply that to your headcount, and this is your potential increase in profit per head.”
Clay leaned forward and peeked at the figure she’d written on the paper, his lips curling into an uncontainable grin.
“Will that pay for the upgrades Mr. Sterling is offering you?” she asked the rancher, glancing over at Clay.
Dwight sat back in his chair, tossing his glasses onto the desk with a flick of his wrist. “That and then some,” the old rancher confirmed, pinning Clay with his steel-grey eyes.
“Finally!” Phil said with exuberant exasperation. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“And that doesn’t figure in the cost savings on fuel and labor,” Clay added, sliding to the edge of his seat, the rancher’s son iterating his excited inner thoughts. “With the combination of systems I’m recommending, you’ll not only be able to access your profits and expenses in real time,” he said, tapping the old binder of chaotic receipts and handwritten notes, “but you’ll also be able to produce a better product at less cost, in a market that’s seen declining profits for the last five years. You’ll be competing at the top, instead of scraping by at the bottom.”
