“Thank you.”
“You’ve earned it.”
He held her gaze for a moment.“You know I’m going to buy the ranch.”
“I know.”
“Which will make me your boss.”
Her heart beat a quick rhythm.“I know that, too.”
The fire in his eyes was a controlled blaze.“I’ve seen personal involvement ruin a lot of business relationships.”
“With your experience, I’m sure you have.”Her mouth was as dry as the desert floor.“And I want to be the foreman of the True Love for a very long time.”
“Then I guess we put our personal feelings on hold.”
“Yes, I guess we do.”
ChapterEight
By the time they reached the pond, Ry’s troubles had shifted from his thighs to his feet.He could see no point in toughing it out for the sake of vanity — Freddy had witnessed one of the more vulnerable moments of his life when she’d applied the Bag Balm to his thighs.So when they reached the water, he tethered Mikey and leaned against the tree to pull off his boots.
“Now you understand why cowboys ride instead of walk,” Freddy said.
“I do indeed.”Without rolling up the stiff cuffs of his jeans, he waded straight into the water.“Good God!”The icy water immediately numbed his feet, and although he tried to grip the algae-covered rocks with his toes, they refused to cooperate.Arms flailing, he landed on his tender rear.On impact, his hat sailed into the water and he grabbed it just before it floated away like a child’s toy boat.He slapped the dripping hat on his head and sat there, too disgusted to move.
Freddy dismounted and sauntered over to the pond.“How’s the water?”
She’s a real smart aleck.As he sat and fumed, a plot formed in his mind, a plot born of twelve hours of the most extreme discomfort he had ever remembered.Now his butt was numb, which wasn’t all bad, but he’d never immersed his body in such cold water in his life.She’d seen what he was about to do.She could have warned him.Now it was payback time.
“Ry?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her step closer.
“Are you okay?”
The sudden lunge was excruciatingly painful, but worth it.On the football field, his unsportsmanlike tackle would have earned him a flag, but this wasn’t a sanctioned game.In two seconds, Freddy was splashing and sputtering next to him in the water.
“Ry McGuinnes, that was the nastiest, meanest—” She started to struggle to her feet and he grabbed her arm to jerk her back down.
“Leaving so soon, Miss Singleton?”He looked her over and noted with satisfaction that her jeans and shirt were soaked.Her hat had flipped backward onto the embankment and water dripped from the ends of her hair.He held her wrist in an iron grip.“The water isn’t too cold for you, is it?Since you failed to warn me about it, I assumed you’d want to join me in a little swim.”
She glared at him.“My boots will be ruined.And I thought you were a gentleman.”
“And I thought you were a lady.A lady would have cautioned me about the cold water and the slippery rocks.A lady wouldn’t have taunted me once I fell in.”
He’d begun to notice something else.Beneath the soaked front of her blouse, her nipples shoved against the material in protest against the chill.Now that he’d given in to the need for revenge, other needs began asserting themselves, as if they’d only required the merest crack in his armor of self-control to slip through.
“I’m only trying to save my ranch!”she protested, her chest heaving.
This dunking was either a very good idea or a very bad one, he thought, longing to unfasten the snaps of her shirt.He looked into her eyes.“And I’m only trying to save my hide,” he said pleasantly.She had such beautiful eyes, the same dusky color as the sagebrush growing along the trail.
“Why don’t you just give up?”she cried.
“Why don’t you?”He studied her expressive mouth.The water was cold as a snowbank, but her mouth would be warm… so warm.
“What do you need this ranch for?”Her eyes misted, dew on sage.“Can’t you go buy some more pork bellies or something and be just as happy?”
