His by Valentine's Day (2 page)

He started walking and she scurried to keep up with him. "I'll think about it, but not for very long."

They walked in silence to his little black Porsche. Her mind was spinning with the desperate need to find a way to save the world she knew and loved. She had an idea, but the chances were so slim...

Interrupting her thoughts, he reached down and grabbed her by the shoulders. As she watched in surprise, he lowered his head to kiss her. Boy could he kiss! She sizzled all the way to her toes.

All too soon, in her opinion, he released her and grinned. "I'm not apologizing, Ms. Donley."

"Did I ask you to?" she snapped, blushing when he chuckled.

Annoyed with him all over again, she spun on her boot heels and marched toward her house, listing all of his wrongdoings: Stop in unexpectedly and dare to announce the pending destruction of her life, go all caveman-in-charge on her, spank her, and then kiss her. The man had a lot of nerve!

"We're not through yet," he called out to her before climbing into his car.

She didn't know what he was talking about. And she didn't have any more time to think about him...other than figuring out how to save her ranch.

* * *

"If we each put in our winnings from National..." Shawna began to the six men seated around the dining table in the bunkhouse.

Alan, her slightly shaggy blond right-hand man, shook his head and patted her hand, stopping her from the same speech she'd been giving them for the last week. "Honey, we all want to keep this ranch. We've told you that over and over."

"But it's damn unlikely we're going to bring in the kind of money needed to buy the ranch from Calloway," Scott added, looking distressed. He was always the more serious, more black-and-white thinker amongst the group. But she could see that the possibility of letting her down was worrying him.

Shawna swallowed against the sadness that seemed to have taken root in her ever since Cade's disturbing announcement. These men were not only who she lived and worked with but also her friends. Beyond that, they often traveled the rodeo circuits together, taking turns with who stayed behind to watch over the ranch. They were all in the top ranks of their individual rodeo fields. Her proposition to them to jointly purchase the Rolling Hills Ranch was a good one for them all. None of them had anywhere else to go. None of them would be physically able to keep competing for much longer. They needed this investment in their futures.

"With what we could, hopefully, make and with what we've already put back..." she tried again.

"We might come up with the down payment, maybe even a hefty chunk of the sale price. But certainly not all that the ranch is worth or that Calloway is asking," Alan finished.

She stood, her stomach filled with tingling nerves. The idea of losing the only home she'd really ever known was wearing her down. She hadn't been able to eat, to sleep, really to even concentrate on either the ranch business or the barrel racing practice before she left tomorrow for the first day of the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. She'd been at the top of her game this year, but the pressure now may just be too much for her.

Tears threatened and she hurried across the room toward the door. "We can do it, guys. I know we can."

* * *

By the time Shawna accepted her second place title and the winnings that went with it on the final day of the NFR, she was sore everywhere. The competition this year had been tough. She'd done extra practice sessions, and she'd taken more spills and bumps against barrels than ever before. Sloppy. She was gravely disappointed in herself, but she blamed Cade Calloway. If she wasn't so desperate to keep the ranch, she wouldn't have been so distracted. Darn him.

"You did real good, honey," Alan soothed, joining her as she walked out of the arena with her award and wounded pride. They both knew she should have taken first.

"I cost us all. I let you down." She battled back the tears so near the surface. She'd have to try calling Cade again to see if he'd lower the selling price. So far he'd been unwilling to negotiate, but he hadn't found a buyer yet. So there was still hope.

Alan draped his arm around her shoulders as they walked out. "None of us did as well as we should have. Just not our year, I guess."

Only Tom had taken first place in bareback riding. The other five men had a mixture of seconds and thirds. But she'd tried not to let them see her disappointment. With or without the ranch, she loved them all like brothers.

"I have another idea, maybe a couple of ideas. We're not giving up yet."

She could draw money from her grandfather's trust fund, but it still wouldn't be enough to make what they really needed. She could ... Could what? Offer herself to one of the most sought after bachelors as some kind of love-slave in exchange for the ranch? Yeah, so not going to happen for any number of reasons. First being men--other than her friends--were scum in her book at the moment. Two being why would he even for a second be interested in a short, scrawny redhead with a quick-flash temper? He'd already seen a bit of her temper and not been impressed. No, the whole love-slave thing was OUT. Shame, though. She'd bet he was pretty hot in bed.

She smiled up at Alan, a weak smile. "I'll try to win him over with my sweet personality, my charm."

He chuckled and she elbowed him, but felt better.

"It could happen."

Then the supposed object upon whom she'd use her charm stood a dozen feet in front of her. Cade looked terribly out of place and uncomfortable, standing beside a man who also looked equally misplaced in his fitted dark suit. He held a bouquet of roses and thrust them at her as she walked closer.

"Are you lowering the sales price?" she asked instead of taking the roses. So much for charm.

He blinked, confused, and shook his head. "I'm not here to talk about the ranch."

Stupid is as stupid does. Being Queen Stupid, she gave him a cold look and walked by him. Alan tried to slow her down, but she drug him along with her.

"Didn't I tell you she was an impossible woman?" Shawna heard Cade tell the other man.

Shawna took a second to glance in his direction. "Pot calling the kettle black, Mr. Impossible Calloway." Then she huffed off, wishing she hadn't found him quite so handsome in that obviously expensive suit, with his hair a little too long, with that too-damn-sexy stubble on his face.

Moonlight danced off the silver cover over the pool outside Cade's bedroom suite. Through the uncovered wall of windows--clearly a mistake, now that he'd experienced this--the light fell over him, no matter how he positioned himself in the over-sized bed. Yet another irritation added to his life of late.

He glared at the clock only a few feet from his face. His tired eyes took in 4:34 a.m. and he groaned. Normally when he hit the bed, he immediately dropped off to sleep. He worked hard, played hard, and slept hard. Until tonight. Okay, until lately.

Tossing a feather pillow over the glowing blue digital numbers on the clock, he rolled away from the window. Again. The light reflected off the big mirror on his dresser, right back into his face. He tried squeezing his eyes shut, but he almost felt the heat from the reflection. And his mind was too restless to shut down. Too many thoughts of the most impossible woman in the world tumbling through his brain. He hadn't been able to get her off his mind almost from the second they'd met exactly five weeks ago, Thanksgiving Day.

The pint-sized, contrary strawberry-blond had ruined his peaceful life. He wasn't worth a dime to any of the businesses he owned at the moment, a fact which his executive staffs had been so not-so-subtly pointing out. He couldn't concentrate, but, fortunately, his executives were top-notch and were covering his ass for now. The situation couldn't go on, though.

Not only had she disrupted his business life, but she'd upset his personal life as well. Suddenly he'd grown bored with hopping in his private jet and flying off to seek another business to purchase, or to accept a party invitation somewhere, or even to sweep one of his many women friends off for a hot, romantic weekend. Shawna had even put a damper on that weekend with the stewardess in Kansas City.

He rolled over again. Stop thinking about her! Impossible. She was right there behind his eyelids, almost as if her image had been imprinted on his eyelids. A barely over five feet, too-shapely-for-any-man's sanity, busty--oh so very nice--woman with more strength of will than sense. He'd never met another woman with half her boldness or with a quarter of her sass. Both facets of a woman's personality that normally held absolutely no appeal to him. Normally. But her grass green eyes filled with spirit and that long hair he wished he'd seen flying free around her instead of confined in that braid were too much for him to resist. Evidently S. C. Donley was his Achilles' heel. His downfall from the world of globe-trotting, much sought after wealthy bachelors he'd been happily a part of for years. That life now felt shallow, empty.

He heaved a disgruntled sigh. This upset to his life was all his best buddy's fault. If Pete hadn't convinced him to invest in the Rolling Hills Ranch in the Kansas Flint Hills, Cade would still be satisfied with his existence. He didn't know anything about ranching, and hadn't really cared to know anything. He'd merely planned to buy the ranch, make a few improvements that Pete had mentioned it needed to increase its value, and then sell it off to some ranching corporation. His mistake had been deciding on a whim, as he was driving from Denver to Kansas City the day before Thanksgiving to meet up with a stewardess he'd really wanted to connect with, to stop at the ranch. If he hadn't discovered that the ranch manager, S. C. Donley, was a woman instead of a man as he'd foolishly assumed... If he hadn't been practically struck dumb at the sight of her... If...

The if's could go on and on. Apparently so could this latest sleepless night.

He punched his pillow one more time in an attempt to find a more comfortable fit for his throbbing head. All this tossing and turning, and way too much thinking, had given him a headache. He supposed the day spent playing high-stakes poker and tossing back one whiskey after another in the Wynn with several of his long-time gambling buddies who'd stopped in Las Vegas to spend a few days with him had initially brought the headache on. But he preferred to blame it on little Miss Sass.

Giving up, he flopped onto his back and stared up at the paddle fan slowly turning above him. Fact was Shawna Donley intrigued him. She hadn't been the least bit impressed with him when he'd stopped in out of the blue. His being one of the wealthiest men in the country meant little if anything to her, other than he signed her paycheck--or one of his accounting staff did, as she'd boldly told him. His being considered quite the catch in most circles--even having been named Most Desirable Bachelor last year--meant even less to her. She'd taken a quick look at him and then went back to being all business. No flirtations for her. Uh-uh. And she hadn't been impressed with his extremely limited knowledge of anything to do with ranching.

All in all, she'd seriously wounded his ego.

He curled his hands into fists and called himself a thousand kinds of idiot. Because the absolute worst part about all of it was that he'd fallen in love with her in those few hours they'd been together. They'd butted heads over the ranch. He'd gotten so irritated with her that he'd leaped off the deep end of sanity and burned her butt, when she probably did have the right to be upset with him for turning her world on end, so to speak. Right now, he figured they were even: She'd turned his world on end.

She'd barely said a word when he'd called to apologize for spanking her. And he'd avoided her calls since then because he didn't know what to do about the ranch, or about her. For a man who normally made decisions lightning quick, he was definitely struggling.

Then he'd seen her on the last day of the National Finals Rodeo a little over three weeks ago, something he'd been dragged to by another friend of his. Who'd have known that bitty spitfire was a barrel racer. One who was nationally ranked and finished second, only due to her horse developing a problem right at the last turn. She'd been amazing to watch. He'd wanted to congratulate her, give her flowers. She'd only wanted to talk about that damn ranch.

He still couldn't believe she'd sassed him and walked away. Walked away on the arm of one of the handsome cowboys who worked the ranch with her. But he was not jealous of the man! Like hell! He'd done some checking and knew all of the men there were more like brothers, but that man's possessive hold on her arm and the look in his eye seemed a lot more than brotherly to Cade. Maybe he'd check them all out again.

This was a new year and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he'd set a personal goal for the year. Shawna Donley. He wanted her, any way that he could have her. The goal seemed impossibly unattainable, considering how contrary she could be. But it was a done deal as far as he was concerned. In fact, now that he thought about it, he should make a deadline for meeting that goal, not just the whole year. Because if that was the case, she'd probably find a way to make him lust after her and make him miserable for the entire year. Not happening. Valentine's Day. She would be his by Valentine's Day.

Chapter Two

Snow had fallen heavily since last night. As Shawna looked out the large window in the great room of the foreman's house, she grumbled under her breath. She coughed, and then coughed again. Snow or not, cattle in the far range needed to be checked on. Horses in the stable needed to be tended to. Chores of all sorts needed doing. A day in the life of a rancher was not an easy one any time of the year.

She spotted Scott striding head-down through the swirling snow storm from the bunkhouse toward the first stable. He held his hat down against the wind as he walked with determination. The big, top-ranking steer wrestler held faster to the old postal code of "through rain and sleet, hail and the wind's fury"--or something like that--than actual postal workers did. He had a job to do, and, by damn, he would get 'er done. She didn't know what she would do without him. Or Alan, the crazy-ass-cocky bull rider. He strutted through the storm right after Scott, not bothering to hold onto his hat. He had confidence that his hat would stay on his head, just as he had confidence he could ride even the meanest bull on the circuits. What an ego! The ranch was manned by rough, tough, men with more confidence in their rodeo abilities sometimes than good sense. Testosterone Central, that's what the Rolling Hills Ranch really should be named.