to college I learned things. That I earned my degree in business.”
Something flickered in his eyes, and she was pretty sure it was respect. Well, good. Chloe had dreams and aspirations well beyond the next charity luncheon. But why should anyone else believe in her when her own father didn’t? And why did she care what Liam Morrow thought of her anyway? A question she couldn’t answer.
“I’ve come across the same kind of thing,” he said, and his voice was a low rumble that rattled along her nerve endings.
“Really?” Chloe smiled and shook her head. “People think you’re just pretty and empty-headed?”
He grinned briefly, and that quick twist of his mouth sent a flash of heat zipping through her. Oh, probably not good. But in her own defense, she didn’t think any woman would be immune to this man.
“No,” he said with a laugh. “But most people take one look at me and see a simple cowboy.”
She thought about that for a second as she stared up into his cool, blue eyes. “Nothing about you is simple, is it?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “I wouldn’t say so.”
“Well, same here,” Chloe told him, squaring her shoulders. “People don’t underestimate me for long.”
He gave her a slow, up and down look of approval and finally nodded. “I bet they don’t.”
Why that acknowledgment touched her, Chloe couldn’t have said. She’d known him about ten seconds, right? Why should she care what he thought of her? What he saw when he looked at her? Why did she feel like her entire body was on a slow simmer?
Oh, she didn’t want to think about any of that at the moment.
“Okay,” she said briskly, once again turning back to the computer screen. “Back to my point. The idea is to introduce young girls—I’m thinking maybe eight to sixteen years old—to ranch life.”
He frowned. “Eight’s really young.”
“Not too young to dream,” she countered quickly. She had been eight when she’d first planned a future working on a ranch. “Every little girl I’ve ever known has dreamed of owning a horse. There’s a connection there that should be nurtured.”
“A ranch can be a dangerous place,” he warned, and the frown etched into the space between his eyebrows deepened.
“I know that, I do,” she insisted. “You can’t grow up in Texas and not know that ranch life isn’t easy. But accidents can happen anywhere. You can step off a curb in Houston and get run down by a bus.”
“True, but you don’t often stroll into a herd of buses.”
“Well, I promise I won’t let any of the girls take a walk in the middle of a herd. The fact that it might be dangerous doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for what you want,” she insisted. “As for the kids, there would be adults to supervise.
“I’m planning to have camp ‘counselors’ for lack of a better word. College kids maybe.” She paused, then went on faster, her words tumbling over each other in a fight to be said before she lost his attention. “Anyway, I was thinking we could have a few horses—of your choice—that are gentle with kids and we can show the girls how to ride. How to care for the animals and clean up after them. Taking care of animals teaches us empathy and patience and—”
“I get it,” he said, nodding.
“Okay, well, the girls can do ranch work during the days and have cookouts and campfires at night.” She clicked to the next page on her website. “This can give them the satisfaction of working, completing a task, and the opportunity to build friendships with people they might not have met otherwise. They’ll learn how to do new things, get along with others and to appreciate everything they can accomplish.”
“Uh-huh.” He looked at the pictures of the Perry Ranch as if he were imagining a herd of girls running wild. He didn’t look happy, so Chloe started talking again. Fast.
“Like I said, there would be plenty of supervision of course—”
Liam cut her off. “And some of that supervision would have to be done by the ranch hands who already have plenty of work to do.” He shot her a wry look as if challenging her to dispute that.
Chloe took a breath and blew it out. Couldn’t he see what she was trying to do? Of course it wasn’t easy. Or simple. But how many great things were? “All right, yes, you’re right. We would need some help from the ranch hands. But surely there are a few guys there who could trade off showing the girls what ranch life is like without sending the whole outfit into bankruptcy.”
Outside, the wind was kicking up and spatters of rain began to pelt the windows, like dozens of fingers tapping, tapping, demanding to be let in. Inside, the room darkened, and Chloe leaned over to turn the desk lamp on.
Both of his eyebrows lifted at the sarcasm. “There’s a lot of liability involved here, too.”
“I realize that.” And now, her own temper was beginning to spike, and it threatened to burn as hot as her blood. He was deliberately trying to squash her before she’d even had a chance to convince him. “But parents would sign legal release documents before the camp, and the ranch would be completely covered.”
“I don’t know about that.” He shook his head, and folded his arms across his really impressive chest. If it hadn’t been a sure sign that he was closing down, shutting her out, she might have allowed herself an inner sigh of appreciation. “In my experience, you bring lawyers into anything, and it all goes to hell in a flash.”
Chloe sensed she was losing, and she couldn’t let that happen. The Perry ranch was the best place for her to try her experiment. Mostly because Sterling had been willing to let her use his land. Most ranchers weren’t open to anything that might interfere with the business. But also because she knew that ranch well, and there were a couple of female ranch hands working there too. If everything worked out there, she could start raising money to buy her own land. Of course, she’d come into her inheritance from her grandmother in five years when she turned thirty—but she didn’t want to wait. She’d already waited long enough.
“This isn’t about lawyers or liability,” she said, meeting his gaze and silently daring him to argue. “That could all be handled. It’s logistics. This is about the fact that you are simply determined to not like the idea.”
“I’m determined to see the reality while you’re looking at it all like a child’s fantasy.”
Hard to disagree, since he’d hit on the very reason she’d come up with this idea in the first place. All of her life, Chloe had been told what she couldn’t do. And she wasn’t standing for it anymore. Not from her family. Not from the hottest cowboy she’d ever seen.
“That’s because it was my fantasy as a child,” she admitted, staring at the images on the computer screen, letting herself imagine what might have been. “When I was ten years old, my father bought a ranch outside Galveston. He drove us all out there to look around, get a feel for the place.” She turned her face up to his. “I fell in love instantly. The foreman showed me the horses, let me feed them, then helped me ride for the first time in my life.” Her voice dropped, became a little
