There were other family businesses that still required his attention, like the hotel. But those mostly ran on autopilot these days. The time commitment was nothing like it was for the ranch. This land had been his priority for decades, second only to his family. Us kids were grown. The ranch was mine.
He’d needed that search committee almost as much as they had needed him.
I had to give my father credit. A lot of farmers and ranchers struggled to pass the baton to the next generation. I had friends from college who’d abandoned their family’s operations to work a desk job simply because their parents refused to step away.
Not my dad. After his retirement, he hadn’t given me a single piece of unsolicited advice. If a hired hand asked him for input, Dad would send the man to me. He’d pitch in whenever I asked, but besides a few slips that first year, he’d stopped giving orders to everyone, including me. There were no critiques when I introduced a new idea. No muttered censures when I made a mistake. No guilt trips when I stopped doing something his way.
I loved my father. I respected him above any other man on earth. But for fuck’s sake, couldn’t he have mentioned, just once, that Winslow Covington was a beautiful, vivacious woman who was going to turn a hell of a lot more heads than just mine?
Instead, he’d praised her energy. He’d said twice that she’d outshined the other candidates. She was sharp. She had the tenacity to take the police department into the future.
In my mind, I’d pictured a brawny woman with a masculine haircut and narrow nose like her grandfather’s. Certainly not the bombshell who’d been sitting at Willie’s.
I’d been blinded by Winn’s looks, that smile and her wit. I’d come in for one drink and thought, what the hell? When was the last time I’d seen such a stunning woman?
I preferred to hook up with tourists because their time in Quincy was temporary. If she had brushed me off or not shown any interest, I would have walked away. But the desire in her gaze had matched my own, and I’d just . . . had to have her.
That was the most erotic night I’d had in years. Maybe ever.
I clenched my jaw and tightened my grip on the steering wheel to keep myself from glancing at the backseat. Winn’s scent was gone but it had taken all of yesterday for her sweet citrus to vanish.
Now it reeked like Conor.
Bless that kid and his sweat glands.
He’d started working for us in high school, stacking hay bales and doing odd jobs around the ranch. He’d tried college in Missoula for a year, but after flunking out, he’d come home to Quincy. Conor was the youngest full-time employee at the ranch and this kid moved nonstop.
There weren’t many men who could keep up with my stamina. At thirty-one, I felt just as fit as I had a decade ago. But the ten-year age gap between Conor and me, combined with his work ethic, meant he could run me into the ground.
He’d spent the morning cleaning out the barn by my place, and what normally took me three hours, he did in half that time. Sweat ringed his plaid shirt and the brim of his baseball cap. The hat was as sun-bleached as my own, the black fabric having faded to brown. The Eden ranch brand—an E with a curve in the shape of a rocking chair’s runner beneath—had once been white stitching and was now a dirty gray.
Conor was a good kid. But damn, did he stink.
I hated that I missed Winn’s perfume.
“Nice day,” he said.
“It is.” I nodded.
Rays of pure sunlight streamed through the cloudless blue sky. The heat had already melted away the morning dew, and as we drove, I could practically see the grass growing. It was summer days like this when, as a teenager, I used to find an open field, lie down and take a power nap.
I could use one of those naps today after waking up at four, hard and aching for the woman who’d invaded my dreams. Sleep was risky, so I’d settled for a cold shower and my fist before retreating to my home office. Paperwork had been a decent distraction. So had work in the barn. But it was moments like this, when the world was quieter, that she crept up on me again.
Try as I might, there was no shoving Winn out of my mind.
Her tight body. Her sweet lips. Her long, dark hair that had brushed over my bare chest as she’d straddled my lap and sunk down on my cock.
Hell. Now I was getting hard again.
A relationship with her or any woman was out of the question, hence my streak of one-night stands over the past year. My focus was my family and the ranch. By the time most days ended, I barely had time for a shower before my head hit the pillow. The bachelor lifestyle suited me just fine. I answered to no one but the land. If I needed company, I had five siblings to call. A woman would require energy I just didn’t have to spare.
Tourists didn’t ask for commitment.
Except she wasn’t a tourist.
Had she known who I was at Willie’s? No way. She’d looked as shocked to meet me at lunch the other day as I’d been to see her. Whatever. None of it mattered. I had no intention of repeating Sunday night.
Winslow was an outsider, and though tempting, I’d keep my distance.
There was work to be done.
“I’m going to drop you off at the shop,” I told Conor. “You can take the fencing truck and head out to the meadow that runs along the road to Indigo Ridge. We’ll be turning out cattle into that pasture in the next few weeks and I noticed some spots that need fixing when I was driving out there the other day.”
“Sure thing.” Conor nodded, his elbow sticking out the open window. “How far should I go?”
“As far as you can. By Friday, I’d like to have that whole area finished.”
Ranch headquarters remained by Mom and Dad’s log house. Though my place saw more and more activity every year, the main shop and the stables would probably always be here, where Dad had built them.
“Call me if you need anything,” I said, parking beside Mom’s Cadillac.
“Will do.” Conor hopped out, then jogged across the wide, open lot that separated my childhood home from the ranch buildings.
Mom walked out of her front door as my boots hit the gravel. “Hi, Conor.”
He slowed, spinning to tip his hat. “Ma’am.”
“That boy is a dear. Has been since he was in diapers.” She smiled at me as I climbed the steps to the wraparound porch.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello, son. Got time for coffee or are you already off to the next thing?”
“I need to keep moving, but I wouldn’t say no to a travel mug.”
“I just brewed a fresh pot.” She waved me inside and headed straight for the kitchen.
Dad sat at the island with the newspaper spread across the granite countertop.
The Quincy Gazette came once a week, every Wednesday. When I’d been a kid, those weekly papers would have gone mostly unread because neither Mom nor Dad had had time to read them. Mostly, we’d used them to start fires in the wood stove. But now that Dad was retired, he spent hours poring over every printed word.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi there.” He straightened, taking his glasses off. “What’s going on today?”
There was an eagerness to his voice like he was waiting for me to extend an invitation for a project. As much as I enjoyed time with my father, today, I needed some time alone. Time to get my head straight and off a certain woman.