The Maverick Meets His Match (7 page)

I can guarantee you a pleasurable time if you’re open to it.

Sheila slipped into the chair beside her. “Can you? From what you’ve told me, Ty’s going to have full authority to sell the business if the numbers don’t work. I don’t care much if the business is sold, except for the fact I know how upset you’d be.”

“If I am to believe Ty, and I don’t entirely, we’d be well off if we sold out. But it’s not just about me or you, Mom. What about everyone who depends on Prescott for their paycheck? For several families, we are their livelihood. Fathers and sons and even daughters. We’re like a family at Prescott. And Daddy? It was his dream to have a premier stock company. What about that dream?”

Sheila shrugged. “That was your father’s dream. You could make your own dream. But if you really are against selling, then I think you should consider doing what JM proposes. It’s obviously what he wanted you to do. Wouldn’t it make it tougher for Ty to find a buyer if he only has six months?”

“I don’t know if I could marry a man I don’t respect, much less like, even if it is only a few months.” Mandy closed her eyes, hoping she could block out the whole idea. “And he could still sell it within six months anyway. Then what? The best this marriage may allow is for me to keep tabs on him. It’s not enough.”

“Mandy, look at me.” Mandy opened her eyes and stared at the familiar gentle smile on her mother’s face. It was the same smile her mother used when telling Mandy she’d feel better soon or getting a B in math wasn’t the end of the world. “You’ll be working with him for even longer if you don’t marry him. Suppose you do fall for him, you fall for each other? If you think there’s any chance you two will have an affair of some sort, why not go with this proposal?”

We’ll probably end up in bed together anyway, even if we don’t marry.

By the time he’d uttered that sentence, she’d been ready to wrap her fingers around his throat and squeeze. True, she doubted she’d be able to spend a year or more working with the man, but not because she was tempted by him. Because she didn’t like what he stood for. So how could she stand six months living with him?

“I’m not worried about falling for a man I don’t like.” Even if she had a history of falling for the wrong kind of guy.

Her usual type was a guy with a ready smile, easygoing attitude, and no thought of the future. Unfortunately, that combination usually came with a dearth of ambition and a wandering eye.

Regardless, she would never lose her heart again to a man as cold and arrogant as Ty Martin. Six months. That wasn’t enough of a reason to do it, and there were 180 reasons, called cohabitation, not to do it.

“What are you worried most about?”

“Losing Prescott. That’s all that matters to me.”

“Well, why not go with the marriage and at least lessen the odds of selling? And there’s always the potential for using womanly wiles to change the course of events.” Shelia cocked her head to the side and winked.

“Shouldn’t marriage vows be taken seriously? I never thought you’d encourage me to be a loose woman, Mom.”

“I’m just trying to be practical about this.”

Mandy rose and hugged the papers to her chest.

“Would you place your cup in the dishwasher?” her mother asked.

Mandy dutifully complied. Returning to the table, she gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and caught a whiff of her mother’s Channel No. 5. “I best be going. They’re leaving at seven.”

“I know. I’m coming with you,” Shelia announced.

“To see us off?” That would explain why her mother was so put together at this ungodly hour.

“No, I’m coming to Greenville with you.”

Mandy leaned her thigh against the table. “Why?” Sheila hadn’t come on a rodeo excursion in the two years since Mandy had returned from grad school.

Her mother bit her lip. “Because I want to. Because Harold wants me to.” Her mother brushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

“What does Harold have to do with this?” Mandy said, crossing her arms and pressing the papers to her chest.

“Harold and I are…well, we are a couple. Have been for a while.”

How many shocks could she stand? “Come again.”

“While JM was alive, we were discreet. But now, well, there’s no reason to be.”

Mandy felt like the floor had shifted under her boots. Discreet? She hadn’t had a clue. And apparently, neither had her grandfather. “Grandfather wouldn’t have approved?”

Sheila lifted her chin. “Neither Harold nor I wished to cause him any consternation on that score. He was good to both of us. I think, on some level, he may have suspected. But I never wanted him to think I wasn’t in love with your father. I always will be. Just, Harold has a place in my heart too. We plan to marry after the season.”

Her mother and Harold? “He’s so different from Daddy.” Her father had been a hard-charging stockman with focus and determination. Harold was laid back, content to be second banana.

Sheila shrugged. “At this time in my life, maybe I need a man for whom I’m the center of his world, and not some rodeo company. Not that your father wasn’t good to me. He was. And at that time, I was happy to raise our children and be his wife. But now, well, I’m happy to have a man who thinks I’m everything—and who wants to be the center of my world too.”

Mandy gulped and tried to process. “Does Tuck know?”

“Yes, dear. He…well, let’s just say he found out. I’d planned to tell you once we’d decided to marry, but…well, then your grandfather took a turn for the worse, and it seemed best to wait a bit. Now that we’ll be staying together in Greenville…”

Her mother and Harold shacking up in a hotel room. Mandy blocked that thought as Sheila stood, rubbing her hands over and under each other, hope in her eyes.

If Harold made her mother happy, who was she to interfere? “You deserve a good man, Mom. And Harold is one.”

A smile beamed across her mother’s face, creating a warm glow. There obviously was real love there. Who knew?

“Thank you, honey. That means a great deal to both of us. And you deserve a good man. Better than that tie-down roper Mitch Lockhart.”

Given Mitch had chosen her grandfather’s funeral to dump her because he needed “breathing room,” code for dating other women, she couldn’t disagree. He’d used her for sponsorship money, and she, if she was brutally honest, had used him for sex.

“Give Ty a chance, Mandy. You might be surprised.”

Her mother had no idea how wrong she was.

Walking around the outskirts of the arena, Ty looked out on the sizeable Greenville rodeo grounds and listened to the tinny sounds of work that permeated the early morning air. He’d flown his plane, a Cirrus Gold, down to Greenville, Colorado, so he could arrive early, before Mandy and the crew.

He wanted time to familiarize himself with the venue and meet with the committee members, seeing he was the new kid on the block. The large, round arena, built on cinderblocks, sat to the right, and to the left was a field of campers parked in haphazard fashion. Those campers were likely filled with sleeping cowboys and cowgirls ready to enter the night’s events.

Ty spotted the livestock trailers of the subcontractor, the Rustic Rodeo Company, in the distance. Given they were Colorado based, that didn’t come as a surprise. The owner, Stan Lassiter, had been the only person JM had mentioned as a potential buyer of Prescott, which could make for an interesting weekend.

The acrid scent of manure filled his nostrils as he strode on past the stable area filled with competitors’ roping and barrel horses, but with plenty of stalls left for the broncs. Mandy had said that often the horses were just pastured, but Greenville, apparently, was a first-class operation with its own barns. A few cowboys were about, feeding their horses and mucking out stalls. Ty touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgement and turned toward the arena and the chutes, where workers were hammering together the pipes that would secure the horses.

There was a lot more to putting on a rodeo than he’d imagined when he’d been a mere spectator. But the burden JM had placed on his shoulders wasn’t what was occupying his thoughts this morning, though it should have been.

Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to get JM’s provision and last evening’s ride with Mandy off his mind.

Last night they’d ended up in the exact same spot he’d left her years ago, and he wasn’t at all certain it was by accident. And if it wasn’t an accident, that meant she remembered. And if she remembered, it meant they had some unfinished business.

He’d never forgotten the image of her emerging naked from the creek, her long hair damp and clinging to her shoulders, a smile on her sweet face and desire in her green eyes. Her lissome seventeen-year-old body was wet with rivulets of water streaming down perfect white breasts, over rosy nipples, down her flat stomach to the apex of her legs and the damp curls that guarded her virtue. He’d been so turned on he’d frozen in place until she stopped before him…and begged him to make love to her.

Only then did the earlier morning conversation with her grandfather echo in the far reaches of his brain, telling him Mandy was off-limits and anymore encounters behind the barn or anywhere else would spell the end of Ty’s future.

He had jumped back on his horse and ridden like he was being chased by a herd of stampeding cattle, just as she had ridden away yesterday in the full-out panic of a person who knew that if she didn’t leave, they would do something they wanted to do but shouldn’t.

The more he thought about it, the more potential he saw to finish what they’d started ten years ago. However misguided JM’s matchmaking intentions,  JM was giving Ty his blessing to have a relationship with his granddaughter. Marrying Mandy could mean six months of sex with a woman he’d always craved, and then walking away. Six months of a woman who, even at seventeen, could bring a man to his knees with a kiss. And no one would get hurt.

Ty entered the arena gates and headed down the cinder-block alley to the contestants’ entrance. He wore his Prescott T-shirt, informing people with a glance that he was with the show, and he passed a worker or two checking on the railings. He climbed the cement steps to the alley behind the metal-framed chutes. This was where JM always stood, watching over his livestock and the cowboys who rode, or tried to ride, them. This is where Ty would be tonight—not as a spectator but as one of the owners. He had to marvel at the change in his circumstances in just a few weeks.

Greenville was a sizeable rodeo to tackle the first time out of the gate, one that attracted a lot of talent. He’d be ready for it. He grabbed on to one of the railings and gave a shake, testing its sturdiness. He continued down the walkway, testing the railings of each chute and familiarizing himself with how the chutes worked when moving livestock in and out. If Mandy agreed to the marriage proposition, in six months he’d make sure to leave her financially well-off, either from the sale of the business or profits from a stronger enterprise, fulfilling his promise to JM. Ty could move on, having secured a larger stake in either the sale or the ongoing business and gaining some experience in a different industry. Hell, he might even decide to become a stock contractor in his second career.

Ty stopped at the last chute and leaned against the railing to look out over the arena. If he played things right, this could all be a win-win for everyone involved. Maybe even convince Mandy to allow him to develop the ranch.

He’d taken a quick look at the books before he had turned the accounts over to the financial firm he’d hired to run the numbers. PRC turned a modest profit, and JM and the rest of the family had made decent money from it. But whether Mandy could sustain the business and whether operating it would provide the best return on investment versus the alternative of investing money from a sale into land development, for instance, was the question he’d been tasked with answering.

Because if Ty didn’t think Mandy could assure Prescott’s place in the industry—and that meant holding on to contracts, expanding and improving the bucking bulls to be competitive for the AFBR, and going toe to toe with competitors to get in on the big events—JM had instructed him to sell the enterprise and do it before the Prescott name lost any of its luster.

Ty heard the clang of boots on the walk and felt the slap on his back before he could turn around. Stan Lassiter wasn’t heavy, but his height and barrel stomach made him appear big and formidable. Ty had met Lassiter at JM’s funeral but knew him mostly by reputation, a reputation as a cagey stock contractor with a winner-take-all business strategy. And JM had warned Ty not to trust him.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Lassiter said, his voice sounding like pebbles in a ceramic cup.

“Stan.” Ty straightened and slid his hand over Stan’s for a firm shake.

He’d let Stan do all the talking. Ty had learned long ago that, with some people, not saying much could elicit a lot more information than leading the conversation.

“Was hoping to speak with you.” Stan was dressed for work in a plaid shirt, denims, and scuffed boots. Most contractors were hands-on kinds of guys, like JM had been, and Stan was no exception.

“About what?”

From under the shadow of his hat brim, Stan scanned the arena. “Mandy with you?”

“She’s coming with the livestock. I got here ahead of them.”

Stan nodded as if he agreed with the decision. He stuck a boot up on the metal railing and hunched his frame over the top bar. “Word is you’re running Prescott now.”

“Temporarily.” Ty eased back against the rail so he could see Stan’s face. He could tell a lot from a man’s facial expressions.

Stan averted his gaze and focused on some imaginary spot in the center of the arena. “Until you sell, you mean? I’m letting you know I’m interested.

“In what?”

Stan scowled. His brown eyes widened. “In buying the damn company. And the sooner the better. Every day JM is not here to run it is another day a little value is lost. He was Prescott Rodeo Company, and Harold’s not enough to fill his shoes.”

“What about Mandy?” Ty pushed off the railing.