her soft body squirming against his was heaven and hell rolled into one shapely little five-foot-two-inch package. He did his best to ignore it. “When you point a gun at a man, you’d better be prepared to use it, sweetheart.”
“I was.” She sounded breathless and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear he felt a slight tremor pass through her.
Shaking his head as much in answer to her statement as in an attempt to clear his mind, he whispered close to her ear, “You and I both know you could never shoot me, Cheyenne.”
“Let me have my gun back…and I’ll show you.” There was no doubt that she shivered against him this time.
He couldn’t resist teasing the side of her neck with his lips. “Not until you calm down.”
Her labored breathing quickly reminded him of the changes in her body since the last time he’d held her. At sixteen, Cheyenne Holbrook had had a figure that sent his hormones racing around like the steel bearings in a pinball machine. But that had only been a hint of the woman she would become. Her breasts were fuller now and her hips had a slight flare that promised to cradle a man and take him to paradise when he sank himself deep inside her.
When his lower body tightened, he cursed himself as the biggest fool God ever blessed with the breath of life. He wasn’t an eighteen-year-old kid anymore. He was a thirty-one-year-old man and should have mastered at least a modicum of restraint.
“Turn me loose.”
When she pushed against him this time, he let her go, but held on to the gun. He shook his head when she reached for it. “I’ll hang on to this for a while longer.”
“Suit yourself.” She reached for the cell phone clipped to her belt. “It’s not going to stop me from calling Sheriff Turner and having you arrested for trespassing.”
“You do that.”
Her finger hovered over the phone’s dial pad as she glanced up at him. “You aren’t worried about being arrested?”
“Why should I be? I own the Sugar Creek.” He shrugged as he placed the shotgun on the tailgate of his truck, well out of her reach. “You, on the other hand, are on my land.” He stopped short of adding that her father and the sheriff would have a hell of a time getting him to leave again.
“I don’t think so.” She impatiently brushed a silky strand of hair from her cheek as she glared at him. “Emerald, Inc. is the corporation that bought your ranch after you and your mother left.”
“The hell you say.” He removed his leather work gloves, then, tucking them into the waistband of his jeans, he folded his arms across his chest. “And just how would you know that?”
She looked hesitant a moment before taking a deep breath and defiantly looking him square in the eye. “I’m the foreman of the Sugar Creek Cattle Company. Don’t you think I’d know who my employer is?”
Nick couldn’t believe it. Cheyenne’s father, the judge, had actually allowed his precious daughter to work? And at a job where she might actually get her hands dirty? Interesting.
It appeared that Emerald Larson had omitted a couple of important details when she told him she was his grandmother and gave him back the ranch. She’d explained her reasoning behind having his mother sign documents stating that the identity of his father would remain a secret until she deemed he was ready to learn the truth. She’d even solved the mystery of who had tipped his mother off about his impending arrest the night they left Wyoming when she told him that she’d had a private investigator reporting his every move from the time he was born. But she hadn’t mentioned anything about Cheyenne Holbrook being the ranch foreman. And as soon as he went back to the house, he was going to call Wichita and find out what other surprises the old gal had in store for him.
“I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but I really am the owner of this spread,” Nick said.
Cheyenne paled, then stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t believe you. When Luther Freemont from the corporate office called me just last week to discuss my quarterly report, he didn’t mention anything about Emerald, Inc. selling the Sugar Creek.”
Nick wasn’t surprised to hear the name of Emerald’s personal assistant. She trusted the man implicitly and relied on him to be the liaison between her and most of the managers of the companies she owned.
“I’ll tell you what, Cheyenne.” He picked up the shotgun and emptied the shells from its chamber before handing it to her. Then, pocketing the ammunition, he pointed to the truck she’d parked several yards away. “Why don’t you go back to your father’s ranch and give old Luther a call?”
“Don’t think I won’t,” she said, raising her stubborn little chin a notch.
“After you hear what he has to say, we’ll go from there.” Nick pulled his work gloves from the waistband of his jeans and prepared to finish mending the section of fence he’d thought looked weak before he went back home to call Emerald. “Be over at my house tomorrow morning at nine.”
“Why?”
She didn’t look at all happy about having to see him again. And he knew as surely as he knew his own name that she didn’t for a minute believe he was telling the truth about owning the Sugar Creek.
“We’ll have to discuss the terms of your contract.” He grinned. “And the last I heard, it’s pretty common for a rancher and his foreman to work together running a ranch.”
In an obvious test of wills, she glared at him for several more seconds before turning to stalk back to her truck.
As Nick watched her leave, he couldn’t stop himself from noticing the gentle sway of her delightful little backside as she walked away. She still had the ability to take his breath away with her beauty and with no more than a touch she could make him harder than hell in less than two seconds flat.
But he’d do well to remember that her father was the mighty Judge Bertram Holbrook, the most ill-tempered, acrimonious son of a bitch on two legs. A man who had half the county officials in his pocket and the other half scared to death he’d turn his wrath their way.
And if Holbrook had his way about it, Nick would still be rotting away in jail, simply because he’d tried to marry the man’s only daughter.
The next morning, as Cheyenne drove the five miles between the Flying H and the Sugar Creek ranch houses, she wondered for at least the hundredth time what she could do about the situation. When she’d talked to Luther Freemont after her confrontation with Nick, she’d developed a splitting headache. He’d confirmed everything Nick had told her and, feeling as if her world had once again been turned completely upside down, she’d ended up lying awake the entire night, reliving the past and worrying about what the future held for her and her father.
It had taken her years to get over the devastation when Nick walked away from their relationship—from her—without so much as a backward glance, and seeing him after all this time had shaken her more than she could have ever imagined. But when he’d grabbed her to take away her gun, she couldn’t believe the awareness that coursed through her traitorous body. At the feel of his rock-hard muscles surrounding her, she’d grown warm from the top of her head all the way to her toes and drawing her next breath had taken supreme effort. It had also scared her as little else could.
When
