suggestions. It would mean swallowing his pride, but he’d choked down worse. That’s what a real man would do, and nobody—but nobody—would ever be able to say that Samuel Ray Jayce wasn’t the real deal. Meanwhile, he’d make sure that he got his business sense out of his pants.
Sierra looked up from her desk a couple days later to find Sam Jayce hanging his elbows in her doorway. The sides of his cattleman’s coat were pulled wide, highlighting the powerful depth of his chest and the slimness of his hips. The cold, breezy weather had reddened his face and brought a sharp clarity to those unusual sage-green eyes. For a moment he said nothing, merely stood there, hipshot, regarding her implacably. Then abruptly he dropped his arms and strolled toward her desk, one hand reaching around behind him.
Time slowed to a crawl, affording her fanciful mind space to conjure impossible scenarios. He would walk to her desk, skirting it to reach her side, reach down, pull her up out of her chair and slam his mouth down over hers. No. He would skirt her desk, circle behind her chair, tilt it backward with his big hands and slowly lean in for a melting kiss. Or perhaps it would be a combination of the two. He would pull her to her feet, cup her face in his hands and deliver that melting kiss erect.
Her heart was pounding by the time he slapped a folded packet of papers onto her desk. She jumped, and the spell was broken. Color flamed in her cheeks.
“S-Sam.”
“Page three,” he said, pointing at the papers.
With trembling fingers, she unfolded the papers and peeled back the top two. An addendum had been typewritten in the space between the paragraphs indicating that a special account for expenses would be set up, the sum of which would be determined by an accountant furnished with estimates by Sam himself. Sierra could name the accountant. Scrupulously fair. Relief swam through Sierra as she reached for a pen and scribbled her initials in the space provided.
“Is this it?”
“Page four.”
She lifted the page and scanned the words. He had added four hundred dollars a month to the modest salary she had proposed, the sum of which would be taken from his year-end profits. She had expected him to double it but realized that she couldn’t very well make that proposal herself. He’d think she was patronizing him. She would have to make certain that the expense budget was generous.
She inscribed her initials again and, without comment, flipped over to the final page to sign her name in the space provided. He produced a second set of papers, and she memorialized those while he made good on the first set. When the second set was fully formalized, he folded the first and slid them into a coat pocket before sinking down onto the corner of her desk.
“Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, I need some idea from you about what you’re hoping to plant.”
She leaned back in her chair and tried not to look at those hard thighs on her desk. Inches from her hand. “Annuals tend to provide the showiest single-stem blossoms for flower arranging, but there are a number of perennials useful in arrangements, as well. I’ve put together a list of about a dozen plants.” She opened a drawer and extracted the paper she’d been working on. “I hope you can read my writing.”
He glanced at the sheet, nodded and said, “I’ll manage.” Folding the paper, he stowed it with the partnership agreement. “I’ll need to do some more research and get back to you.”
“When would you like to meet next?”
“Saturday work for you?”
“I don’t usually work on Saturdays, but the shop is open, so it’s no problem.”
He shook his head. “Not here. Out at the farm. I need to get a close look at the fields.”
“Of course. All right. Just come on up to the house whenever you like.”
“It’ll be early,” Sam warned. “There’s lots to do.”
“Really? At this time of year? I thought the real work wouldn’t begin until early spring.”
He stood. “You thought wrong. It’ll take pretty much every daylight minute between now and planting time to get the planning done and those fields ready.”
Surprised, Sierra nodded. “I see. Um, how early?”
“Daylight,” Sam said cheerily. She didn’t quite manage to keep the dismay off her face, and he chuckled. “Okay, eight.”
“Not much better,” she muttered.
He moved toward the door, tossing a wry smile over his shoulder on the way. “You’re the one who wanted to be a farmer. Of course, daylight comes a lot earlier in spring and summer, which is when the real work is done.”
Completely willing to humiliate herself in order to foster the easygoing banter, she made an exaggerated face of distaste.
Laughing, Sam reached into his coat pocket, extracted the agreement and saluted her with it. “See you Saturday. Partner.”
Partner. It sounded even better than she’d imagined.
Sam gazed around the high-ceilinged, octagonal foyer without expression. Sierra watched him take in the little artistic setbacks displaying vases of fresh flowers, naturally, and the open, sweeping staircase before he looked pointedly at the mug in her hands.
“Coffee smells good.”
Sierra tried not to show her surprise, though why she should be surprised by the fact that Sam enjoyed a cup of coffee early of a morning she didn’t know. Coffee was “in” with the younger generation these days. Funny, the longer she knew him, the older Sam seemed.
“Come on in, and I’ll get you a cup,” she said, turning down the central hall.
Glancing over her shoulder, she caught him looking from room to room as they passed, but her smile of pride died when she saw the frown he was wearing. So, he didn’t approve of her house, either. For Pete’s sake, it wasn’t as if she’d built a replica of the Taj Mahal. A quarter-million dollars happened to buy a lot in their corner of Texas, but not that much. The house was only 3,500 square feet, with three bedrooms and a study upstairs, where Tyree and Bette’s teenage daughter, Chelsea, now slept, and the living areas all downstairs.
The house looked elegant and expensive, much like the house in which she’d grown up, but with contrast-colored picture-framing on the walls and lots of arches and display niches and plenty of ceramic tile and lush carpeting on the floors. She’d put her money into the infrastructure, believing that it was best to build to last, and cut some corners on the fixtures, going for unique rather than expensive, but still she’d caught major flak from her father and bankers for spending too much.
She led Sam into the bright, white-tile-and-natural-woods kitchen with its cheery yellow-and-orange accents, took a cup from the cabinet and filled it with the best freshly brewed coffee that money could buy. “Take anything in it?”
“No, thanks.” He gestured toward the breakfast nook, pulling papers from his coat pocket. “Why don’t we sit and take a look at what I’ve come up with?”
“Sure.”
While he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the back of a chair
