The Rancher's Untamed Heart (20 page)

When I got to the office on Friday morning, I walked quickly past the secretary's desk, not making eye contact, not asking about her weekend plans, and, most importantly, not slowing down outside Herman Banks's office.

The day was looking pretty bleak, but I knew what I needed to do. I got into my office without having to talk to anyone, and took off my rain jacket and set my umbrella over the trash can to drip dry.

My heart was beating like a rabbit's as I sat at my desk, trying to appear normal.

Not committing fraud shouldn't be so frightening. It should be just another day at the office.

"Damn it, Herman Banks," I muttered, firing up my computer and waiting to read my e-mails for the morning.

Maybe Sarah had e-mailed me to say she had gone on that inspection with our mutual boss. Maybe our boss had e-mailed me to let me off the hook on this one. Seen the error of his ways.

Fat chance.

As I feared, the only e-mails were adding to my workload, not taking anything away, particularly not the one task I didn't want to have to deal with.

I steeled myself, took a deep breath, and picked up the folder that Herman Banks had left on my desk. I didn't even know what ranch he had inspected.

Seeing the name on the first page, I gasped out loud. I couldn't help myself. This wasn't just any ranch, this was the very same ranch that my boyfriend's land pushed up against, the ranch whose owner had personally threatened me when I was with Clint.

The Yates ranch was definitely large, but the numbers didn't quite add up. I looked over the paperwork, and something just seemed off. Not just Herman Banks asking me to lie about having seen this inspection with my own two eyes, the number of animals was just a little too even, and the growth was a little too regular.

Every other ranch I'd seen had spikes and bumps and grumpy notes stuck into the file about crop rotation and illness and failure and death, why was this ranch ticking along so perfectly?

I couldn't help myself. I had to know what was going on here, and I only saw one way to do it.

I would have to pay the Yates's ranch a visit, in person, as soon as possible. I stood up, turned my monitor off to save power, and marched back out of the office, gathering up my things on the way.

"Where are you headed?" Lisa asked as I passed her desk.

I slowed down.

"Gotta double-check something from an old inspection, I'm finalizing some paperwork," I said, smiling at her. "I should be back to the office, but maybe not before lunch."

She nodded.

"Do you have any plans for the weekend?" I asked. I didn't want her to think that I was being rude, that would make my life more difficult for months.

She shook her head.

I smiled sympathetically and kept heading for the door, marching on towards my official government vehicle. Getting behind the wheel, I put the file on the seat next to me.

Quickly, I checked the address and keyed it into my GPS, heading for the Yates ranch.

The drive was uneventful, but I couldn't quite calm down. The heat was in my cheeks and my heart was still pounding in my chest.

As I drove past the turnoff to Clint's ranch, I hesitated. All I really wanted to do was pull off, take the road down to Clint's front door, and throw myself into his arms. That's what a Friday was about, now, wasn't it?

I had to work. I had to focus. I couldn't just think about Clint, and his easy smile, and his kind eyes, and his muscular chest.

I definitely couldn't think about his muscular chest if I was going to go to a surprise inspection on a possibly hostile ranch.

The closer I got to the Yates place, the more I was questioning my decision. Was this really the best idea I'd ever had, or was I fooling myself? Should I risk my job, and do what would make Clint proud, or risk losing Clint, but keep the job I'd been working for?

I gulped.

It was time to make this decision. What was my priority here?

With only two miles to go before the entrance to the ranch, I pulled over, cut the engine, and sat on the side of the road, flipping through the paperwork Herman Banks had given me and thinking hard.

After a few minutes, I sighed, and turned the engine back on.

I knew what I had to do.

The vision of clarity that I had lasted until my tires hit the paved driveway to the Yates ranch. This could not have looked more different from Clint's beat-up, pothole-ridden disaster of a road. It was still as smooth and well-tended as it was on my last visit, almost better than the state road that I'd just left.

I wanted the similarity to stay there. I wanted to find everything in order and perfect, just like the paperwork described. It was the simplest option.

I could sign the papers with a clear mind, and tell Clint about the honorable decision I'd made, and tell Herman Banks about the smart business decision I'd made.

Would the business decision and the honorable one line up? I hoped. I hoped hard.

The barn looked promising, large and new, but I saw a few signs that made me hesitate before I even parked the van. The manure pile was not in the proper place that was indicated on the diagram I had in the file, and a few of the fences weren't as carefully tended as the buildings. Nothing that would have caught my eye on my first visit, but with the paperwork in front of me it just didn’t make sense.

Yates himself marched out to confront me.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I'm from the USDA," I began.

"I can read, and I remember you" he said. "What are you doing here? Herman said no one was going to stop by for a while."

I hesitated. That didn't sound promising. I really, really wanted this to be simple.

"He must have forgotten that I would actually need to stay last time I was out. Two people have to sign off on inspections, and Sarah is on maternity leave," I said, with a bright, professional smile.

"I don't give a flying fuck that someone named Sarah is popping out a baby, I want you off of this land in fifteen seconds," he said.

"Sir," I began, "I'm a government official. You can't just order me off your land like this without consequences. It's important that you know that."

He leered. "Yeah, well, you can't stay on my fucking land without consequences. It's important that you know that if you're staying here, my boys and I will make you regret it."

Before I said anything else, he grinned more broadly and said "Yeah, you'll regret it all right."

"Really, sir, I just need to take a quick look around," I said, patiently. I'd talked men into letting me look around their ranches before, and they'd never gotten off as badly as they'd feared. "I'm not about to punish anyone for minor infractions, I just need to take a look around before I can sign off on your paperwork."

He grimaced at me.

"Herman told me he'd take care of this," he said. "Go back to him and ask if he wants you to try and stick your nose in here."

I considered getting out of the car, demanding to see the property, but for the first time, I was afraid on a ranch. The way this man looked at me was nothing short of salacious, and he and I were the only people I'd seen for the past ten miles.

Ten miles was a long way from the nearest person if he tried anything. I decided that I really should have gotten some sort of backup, or at least left Clint a message telling him where I was.

Too late for that now, I supposed.

My phone beeped and I smiled at the man. "One moment, please, sir," I said, and pulled it out of my pocket. It was just a reminder that I had voicemail I hadn't listened to, but I sent a quick message to Clint.

'Yates ranch inspection weird'

I tried not to laugh at myself. I was almost certainly overreacting, but I couldn't help but be a little nervous.

Feeling the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, I finally decided to be the coward.

"All right, sir, I will go back to the office and talk to Herman," I said. I slid the keys back into the ignition and fired it up.

He took a step back from the window and glared at me.

"Stay the fuck off of my ranch," he said.

As I turned my van around, I realized that the building I had parked by wasn't on the diagram of the farm that Herman Banks had given me.

I shook my head to clear it. It looked like leaving quickly was the better part of valor.

As I drove past the entrance to Clint’s ranch, I hesitated. This time, I didn’t pull over, but I thought long and hard about pulling down the drive and taking my lunch break on the ranch with Clint.

My pride won out, and I kept going down the road.

I hadn’t gotten two miles when my phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and glanced at the screen.

Clint’s name and face lit up the screen, and I had a warm swell of affection.

I answered, and his voice came down the line, immediate and brusque. “Where are you?” he demanded.

“Just passing your place,” I said.

“You didn’t stay on the Yates place?” he insisted.

I checked my rearview mirror before responding. “No,” I said, “It didn’t seem friendly, I got concerned.”

He let out a loud sigh. “Good,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to be out there. I don’t want you to go back.”

“No reason besides my job, right?”

"That's no reason to go somewhere that dangerous," he said. "I've told you, those men aren't to be fooled with."

"I'm an adult," I bit off in clipped tones. "I've been on ranches where I wasn't wanted before, and I've dealt with men doing illegal things, and I am not a child that you need to protect."

"I know you're not," he said. "You're a woman. A woman who is driving me crazy right now. Turn around, come to the ranch, I'll take an hour off."

I hesitated.

I wanted to say yes. I badly, badly wanted to say yes and be the woman that he wanted me to be. I wanted to be in his arms and let him help me.

"I need to get back to the office," I said.

"All right," he said, sounding irritated.

I hung up and tossed the phone on the seat next to me. I did need to finish some paperwork, and I really needed that to be now.

The rest of my day was uneventful, but the conversation I had with Clint lingered on my mind over the boring weekend I spent alone in my apartment.

Did I really want to be with a man who wanted to tell me what to do?

Wasn’t that why I left Justin? Okay, I left Justin because of the cheating, but I wasn’t happy with him before that.