caught his ear, and Liam turned his head to the southwest. Thunderheads were gathering on the horizon, big and black and threatening. As if proving itself to him, the coming storm sent a gust of wind to slap at him. The scent of rain was on that wind, and everything inside him told Liam they were in for a hell of a storm. No surprise, he thought, the weathermen hadn’t forecasted it at all.
Shaking his head, he called out, “Hey, Mike!”
His replacement turned toward him. “Yeah?”
“I’m heading into Houston for that meeting. Going to try to beat that storm back home. If I don’t, you make sure the yearlings are locked down, you hear?”
He waved. “Don’t worry about it, Liam. I’ve got it.”
Nodding, Liam briefly lifted one hand and then headed for his black truck. Mike had already proved to him that he knew what he was doing, and that he’d be a good foreman once Liam’s time here was done. And if Mike needed help in the short time Liam would be gone, then the other cowboys could step in.
Soon, he told himself, this ranch wouldn’t be his problem. Soon, he’d be working at his own spread instead of simply checking in with his own foreman every couple days. He steered the truck down the oh so familiar drive and wondered how many thousands of times he’d driven this route over the years. Then he figured it didn’t matter. He hit the Bluetooth speed dial, listened to the ring and when the foreman at his own ranch answered, Liam started talking. “Joe, you get everything tied down over there? Looks like a beast of a storm headed in.”
“Just saw that, boss.”
Liam smiled to himself. If there was one thing you could count on with a man who worked the land, it was that he always kept a sharp eye on the skies. Hell, weather was the one thing a rancher—or a farmer—couldn’t control. So when there was a potential enemy always ready to rain down misery on you, well, that kept a man permanently on his guard.
“The boys are bringing in the mares now,” Joe said. “Looks like we’ve got some time yet. Heck, storm might pass us altogether. But if it doesn’t, we’ll have everything set before it hits. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not,” Liam lied. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his foreman or the other men working for him, it was only that he’d feel a hell of a lot better if he was there, taking care of things himself.
He’d worked most of his life toward getting a ranch of his own where he would call the shots. He’d made sharp investments years ago, patented a couple of ideas he and his friends had come up with while he was at MIT and now had enough money to do what his heart had always demanded.
Funny how that had worked out. Liam’s father had been the Perry ranch foreman for years, and when he died, Sterling had offered to put Liam through college with the understanding that once he graduated, Liam would come back to the ranch and work off the debt as foreman. With no other options, since his father had left more debts than money, Liam had gratefully accepted the deal.
And it was that college education and what it had enabled him to do that was allowing Liam to finally strike out on his own. He’d come out of MIT with a degree in genetics, and enough money to do what he wanted. Now he was set to undertake the breeding program he’d always dreamed of. By the time he was finished, people would be clamoring to buy mares from his herd.
There were four prize mares in foal on his ranch right now, the beginnings of that remuda he’d been working toward, and he sure as hell didn’t want some storm coming in and wiping it all away before he had a shot to enjoy it. “I’ll come by once the storm blows over,” he told Joe.
He hung up and noticed the wild oaks lining the Perry Ranch drive were beginning to do a dip and sway in the rising wind. Scowling some, he cursed Chloe Hemsworth for dragging him away from what was important for a meeting about some camp.
Liam had never met Chloe, but he knew her type of woman. Money. Pedigree. Always moving from some charity dinner to a luncheon at the “right” place with the “right” people. She’d run with high society until she’d up and decided to open a business in Houston. According to Sterling, Chloe was running her own event planning business out of the city now.
“Figures,” he muttered, steering his truck onto the road that would take him into the city. “The woman’s been doing nothing but partying most of her life. Who better to throw the damn things?”
He didn’t know much about her. Only that she’d been calling the Perry Ranch almost daily for weeks to pitch her idea for a cowgirl camp.
Liam had no problem with women as working ranch hands. Hell, he had a couple women working for him at the Perry place. What he didn’t like was the idea of a bunch of young kids running around a ranch where they would disrupt the workdays and, worse yet, get hurt. But Sterling had ordered him to take the meeting with Chloe and hear her out. If Liam approved her ideas, Sterling would go along with it.
“Just another good reason to stop being anybody’s foreman,” he muttered.
His tires whined along the asphalt, and in his rearview mirror, those clouds looked darker and bigger. “This is going to be the shortest damn meeting on record.”
By the time he hit Houston, Liam was on edge. The hairs at the back of his neck were standing up as the air felt electrified by the coming storm. Or maybe, he told himself, it was just this meeting that was riding him.
He didn’t much care for rich, useless women trying to carve out a name for themselves. This Chloe had probably never worked a real job in her life, and was no doubt setting up shop in some fancy office where she could pretend to be the boss while she ordered a bunch of minions around. Hell, Sterling should have taken the meeting himself.
He steered around slower traffic, mumbling to himself. “Just get in, hear her out, say no and get back to the ranch. That’s all you have to do.”
And it was more than enough. Liam was no stranger to rich women. Hell, before he’d had money of his own, he’d come across quite a few. In Texas, you couldn’t take a step without stumbling across an oil or cattle princess. He’d even hooked up with one for a while when he was in college. Liam had believed she was different. Had thought there was a future for them somewhere down the line. Until he’d had the rug pulled out from under him. After that knock on the head and heart, Liam had learned his lesson. Wealthy, self-involved females were like Christmas ornaments. Shiny, but empty inside.
He drove into the downtown, cursing every roll of the wheel. Cities were all right for some people, but give him the empty roads of the country any day.
“Too many damn people,” he muttered, and spotted the building that would be the new Houston home of the Texas Cattleman’s Club.
They were spreading out from the original site in Royal, and there was already a driving fight for leadership of the new club. As a wealthy ranch owner himself, he’d be joining as soon as the club was up and running, but Liam wasn’t interested in being in charge of the thing. Let the old lions of Texas fight over the club like it was fresh meat.
“Nice place, though.” Even if it was in the city. He’d been to the TCC in Royal, and it was a low-slung building filled with history.
This new TCC was once a three-story boutique hotel now being rehabbed by Perry Construction. Liam had a key to the place, since as Sterling Perry’s foreman he often had to come into the city with instructions for the construction crew.
When
