Page 1 of Finding Her Billionaire Cowboy Mismatch

CHAPTER ONE

The phone had been ringing since before the coffee finished brewing, and Elise Pollard had answered every line without spilling a drop.

She tucked the receiver against her shoulder and pulled the feed vendor’s invoice up on her screen. “No, Dale, the order shipped Tuesday. I’ve got the confirmation right in front of me.” She scrolled. “Forty bags of the alfalfa blend, not the timothy. Your warehouse pulled the wrong pallet.”

A pause on the line. Dale hated being wrong almost as much as he hated paperwork.

“I’ll send you a photo of the bill of lading,” she added, sweet as pie. “Save us both the headache.”

She had the email drafted before he finished sputtering. Send. Done.

The second line had been blinking the whole while. She caught it on her way to the filing cabinet.

“Hickory Hollow, this is Elise.”

The farrier, running behind, wanting to shove his Thursday appointments down the week. She had the schedule rearranged in her head before he finished apologizing. Friday morning for him, the vaccination clinic bumped to the afternoon, so two crews wouldn’t end up elbow to elbow in the same barn.

“You’re a lifesaver, Elise.”

“I’m an administrative assistant,” she said. “The lifesaving is part of the job.”

She hung up and turned to the real problem.

Robert Shipley ran Hickory Hollow with a big heart and a calendar that resembled a crime scene. He double-booked himself the way other men forgot anniversaries, regularly and without remorse.

Elise opened his schedule. There it was. The cattle buyer from Abilene and the equipment rep, both penciled into the same morning slot by Robert’s own hopeful hand.

She slid the demo to the afternoon, rang the rep’s office, and had the man’s assistant thanking her for the trouble. The pileup came apart before it ever happened, Robert two doors down and none the wiser.

He ambled out a minute later with his coffee, reading glasses lost somewhere in hair that hadn’t met a comb.

“Elise. Tell me I didn’t promise the Abilene fella a look at the south barn.”

“You promised him the south barn.”

“The one that flooded?”

“That one.” She passed him the folder he’d come hunting before he could ask for it. “So I steered him to the north barn instead, which is dry and happens to be the one you wanted to show off anyhow. Far as he’s concerned, it was your notion all along.”

Robert aimed his coffee at her the way a man does when he’s landed on a point. “This, right here, is why I keep you on.”

“You say that every Tuesday.” She hadn’t lifted her eyes from the screen. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Is it.” He tucked the folder under his arm, cheerful and thoroughly handled, and wandered off the way he’d come, glasses riding his head where he’d never think to look.

Some men wanted to actually be helped. Managed, so to speak. Robert had the good grace to enjoy it.

That was the job. Not the part written in the description. The other part. The smoothing over of a hundred small disasters before anyone above her had to think about them.

She liked it that way. A spreadsheet never thanked you, but it never let you down either. Numbers stayed where you put them. Schedules held if you held them. Work asked for everything and returned a kind of steadiness, and that struck Elise as a fair trade.

Her own desk ran the same way. Pens in the drawer, never the cup. The inbox tray empty by closing, every paper it had held routed somewhere it belonged. A woman could steady herself on a system that never argued. Folks argued. They changed the terms on you when you weren’t looking.

Brandon had taught her the lesson, though he’d never meant to.

She’d had his coffee order memorized and the exact excuse that would spring him from his cousin’s wedding. Two years she’d spent organizing the man’s whole life. His bills, his dentist appointments. She’d built him a budget and a future, all color-coded, and he’d let her. Right up until the promotion came through and the chaos cleared. He took one look at the tidy life she’d arranged for him, and he walked out on the woman who’d arranged it.

He’d packed in an afternoon.