Kitabı oku: «The Camden Cowboy», sayfa 3

“You don’t have a housekeeper or staff who’s over there even when you’re not?” Her father had an assistant at work and a housekeeper at home who always knew how to reach him. It just seemed likely that a Camden would have at least that, too.

But something about the question made Seth Camden chuckle. “I have a lady who comes in once a week and cleans up the rooms I use. If family is due in for some reason she brings two of her friends to spruce up the whole place, but other than that everybody who works here works on the land.”

Lacey nodded, realizing that again what she’d expected of him and the reality were two different things.

Seeing that his hand was on the doorknob, she said, “Thanks for the help tonight.”

“Don’t mention it.” He opened the door to leave.

And for absolutely no reason, Lacey felt the urge to say something—anything—to keep him there even a moment longer.

So she said, “You know how to get to the site tomorrow?”

Dumb. There wasn’t a single dumber thing she could have said.

Seth paused with his hand still on the doorknob to grin at her. “Uh … I do. I used to own the place, remember?”

Lacey grimaced. “Force of habit—I can’t keep straight who’s local and who’s not, so I just automatically ask if anybody coming out to the site knows the way.”

“Well, I do.”

“Sure. Of course you do. I’ll just see you tomorrow then.”

“Right.”

He stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

There was a big picture window not far from where Lacey was standing, and she instantly looked through it to watch Seth Camden walk around the pool and back to the main house.

With a cowboy’s swagger that made her mouth go dry again.

Which was cause for her to command herself to look away, to put the image and every thought of the man out of her mind.

But still she went on watching until he disappeared inside the French door they’d come out of.

And as for thoughts of the man?

Even out of sight, he wasn’t out of mind.

For the second night in a row.

Chapter Three

Lacey did not ordinarily go through her day watching the clock. Certainly since she’d been given the training center project, she’d been so swamped that she very often worked eighteen hours before exhaustion told her that it was well past quitting time. She’d always been shocked to realize just how late it was.

But on Friday, sitting at her desk in the original farmhouse that was being used as the construction site headquarters, she checked the time so often that it seemed as if she were aware of every minute that passed. Of how much longer it was until four-thirty. Until Seth Camden was due.

And that made her more disgusted and aggravated with herself than she’d ever been before.

What was wrong with her when it came to this guy? She was thinking about him every waking moment. She was dreaming about him when she finally could sleep. She was picturing him in her mind’s eye. Ogling him when she did see him. She’d even spent this morning looking across the pool every chance she got, while she was getting ready for work, just in case she might catch a glimpse of him.

And this was all happening now, of all times. Just when she had the kind of chance she’d strived for since she was a little girl, the chance to prove herself once and for all, the chance to be a real part of her father’s love of football, the chance to actually be on Team Kincaid and prove she could handle the responsibilities her father had previously thought only to entrust to a son.

Now of all times, when the last thing she needed was the slightest distraction, not only was she distracted but that distraction was coming in the form of a man—proving her father right …

Morgan Kincaid had always relegated his daughter to the sidelines—where women belonged, in his opinion. Women, he’d said frequently, didn’t belong in seats of power in the business world and especially not in the world of football. Cheerleaders. Receptionists. Secretaries. Possibly assistants. Decorators. Event planners. Morgan Kincaid had a very limited vision of the role of women anywhere. But in the Kincaid Corporation and when it came to football, those were the best positions that could be hoped for.

A woman, he insisted, would always eventually meet a man, and focus on getting him to marry her. Then, when she did succeed in marrying and having a family, that family would be more important to her than a job.

To Morgan Kincaid, that was just the way it was.

He was sexist, old-fashioned and downright silly. Lacey had argued with him again and again, citing any number of women for whom his theory didn’t hold true. But her father was a stubborn, hardheaded person and there had been no telling him differently. Especially when it came to his daughter. Who he was convinced would ultimately end up a wife and mother.

Yes, Morgan Kincaid employed Lacey—after battles and battles to convince him that she wanted to work, that she could work, that she should be allowed to work. But until now, the best Lacey had accomplished within the Kincaid Corporation was to oversee the remodeling of new office space, the hiring of office and restaurant staff, discussing menus with the chefs, working in public relations and marketing.

But to play a role in any important project—particularly when it came to football? No way.

Until now.

Now, when—even though it was by default—Lacey had been given the opportunity to oversee the building of the Monarch’s training center. The Monarchs—the NFL’s newest expansion football team. Owned by her father. His dream come true.

But Lacey had gotten the job purely by default.

It was her twin older brothers who Morgan Kincaid had been convinced would carry on his legacy—both in football and in business. But long ago her brother Hutch had turned his back on the game, disappointing and alienating himself from their father because of it. Hutch had only recently returned to the family fold but not to the Kincaid Corporation—Hutch owned his own very successful chain of sporting goods stores, and it was clear he had no desire whatsoever to have anything to do with the Kincaid Corporation or working for their father.

Hutch’s twin, Ian, had also had a period of alienation from the family, but had come back to the position of second-in-command at the Kincaid Corporation. Even now Ian was the chief operating officer of the Monarchs—a position he retained because he was needed there.

But as Seth had said, Ian had gotten the girl rather than the property. In the midst of acquiring the land for the training facility, Ian had met and fallen in love with Jenna Bowen. He and Jenna had ended up engaged, and Ian had been instrumental in helping her retain her family farm rather than purchasing it from her because it was the originally approved site for the training center. That had stirred Morgan’s ire.

Then, to make matters worse, the McDoogal property that Ian had been confident they could get had instead been sold out from under them to the Camdens. And Morgan Kincaid had lost his second choice, as well.

Their father had been livid.

Morgan had tempered his anger enough not to out-and-out fire Ian and enter into another of the rifts that had cost him both of his sons for a while. But there had still been consequences for Ian. Morgan had punished him by taking the entire training center project away from him.

And because Morgan was determined that the project be overseen by a member of his family, by someone he was convinced had an unwavering loyalty to him, he’d reluctantly turned to Lacey. But not without letting her know that he would be watching her very, very closely.

Ian seemed to be taking his punishment in stride. He was currently far more focused on his bride and on his new life. Not only had Ian become Jenna Bowen’s husband, he’d also taken on the role of father to Abby, Jenna’s orphaned niece. They had adopted her as their own daughter. Ian had assured Lacey that he wasn’t holding it against her that she’d been granted the project and had offered her whatever services or advice she might want.

But what Lacey wanted was to do this on her own. And to do it so well that she could finally carve out a niche for herself in the Kincaid Corporation and in her father’s eyes. She’d fought tooth and nail for even small jobs on important projects in the past, and her father had left no doubt that it was only his deep desire to keep the business in the family that had garnered this opportunity for her. That this was her greatest test.

But Lacey didn’t care how she’d come to have the project, and she didn’t care how much pressure she was under to succeed. She was still determined to show her father that she was as much a value as his sons.

And nowhere, nowhere, nowhere in any of that did she have even a split second to be attracted to someone. She couldn’t risk taking her eye off the ball.

Not even to look at Seth Camden’s fabulous rear end.

Or any other part of him.

This was her moment. And she couldn’t blow it. She wouldn’t blow it. She was going to make the Monarchs’ training center a crowning jewel. She was going to do this job so well that her father would wonder why he’d ever put so much stock in his sons and discounted her.

And she was not going to get distracted by anything or anyone. Certainly not by a man.

Even if that man was great-looking.

It was just that thinking about Seth Camden seemed to have become second nature to her. And trying not to think about him was distracting on its own.

Those blue eyes. That slow smile. That tight backside and those thick thighs. Those massive shoulders and muscles rippling in the summer sunshine that first day, flexing under the weight of file boxes last night …

The image of him haunted her, and she just couldn’t seem to shake it.

But she was going to! she swore to herself. She was going to right now!

Except that at that exact same moment she glanced at the clock in the corner of her computer screen, registered that it was nearly four-thirty and—without another thought—saved her work, put her computer on standby and headed for the bathroom.

If Seth Camden was going to be there any minute now, she had to make sure her upswept hair hadn’t wilted, that her silver-white blouse wasn’t too wrinkled and was still neatly tucked into her gray slacks, and that her mascara hadn’t smudged. And she wanted to put on a little lip gloss …

“He’d say he was right …” she muttered to her reflection in the cloudy old mirror that hung above the rusty bathroom sink.

Her father would say he was right, that here she was, finally in a seat of power, important responsibilities bestowed upon her, and what was she doing? She was thinking about a man. She was worrying about how she looked for that man rather than working. She was suspending work in order to be with that man …

Delegate, Lacey told herself.

Someone else could show Seth Camden what his family had left in the attic and the barn. That was definitely not a job she needed to do.

But then she wouldn’t get to see him …

Oh, but she hated that the thought had voiced itself.

She told herself to go with delegation. To return to the farmhouse’s dining room that she was using as her office, go back to what she’d been doing—to what she should have finished hours ago except that her attention had lapsed so many times into thoughts of Seth Camden—and not so much as leave her desk to deal with him or with the issue of the things his family had left behind.

That was what she told herself all right.

But when the sound of wheels on gravel announced that someone had just driven up to the front of the house, she did a quick swipe of the lip gloss, judged her appearance satisfactory, and left that bathroom to turn toward the old house’s entrance and not in the opposite direction to her office.

And when she caught her first glimpse of Seth Camden getting out of his big white truck, dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and a Western shirt, and looking even better than he did in her mind’s eye?

She knew there was no way she was getting anyone else to show him around.

And she merely went outside to meet and greet him.

“As far back as when I was a kid, this place was only used for storage and for a few meetings my great-grandfather and grandfather had out here,” Seth was saying as he and Lacey walked to the barn.

Meetings for some of the under-the-table deals the old-school Camdens were suspected of? Lacey wondered. But of course she didn’t ask that.

She’d gone out to meet Seth at his truck the minute he’d arrived. She didn’t even want anyone else to incidentally encounter him and suggest that they show him what he needed to see. Now she had him all to herself. Which made her inordinately happy …

“My brothers and sister and cousins and I all played in the barn and pretended the house was haunted,” he went on. “When it sold, I came out here for the first time in about a year. There was hardly anything left and I needed to leave town on business, so I sent a couple of my guys to deal with what needed to be dealt with. I’m sorry they missed things, but now that I think of it, I didn’t say anything about getting up into the attic or looking behind the barn.”

“There’s also a desk in what I’m told is the tackroom, too,” Lacey said, as they reached the old barn. “I’m using the house as the construction office and the barn for construction supplies and equipment. I’m not really sure how anyone realized there was anything in the attic, but my crew is all over the barn and they thought the tackroom would be a good place to store screws and nails and hardware—the smaller supplies. They’ll be putting up some shelves, but I don’t want them to do that until the desk is out of there so I can be sure they don’t damage it in case it has some value to you.”

“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 electricity 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 …