“It’s okay. You won’t be missing all that much at the office. This is so much more important.”
He’d completely misinterpreted her refusal. Eric thought he knew her, she realized. He thought she was simply a dedicated worker who didn’t want to take a business trip because she was worried about falling behind on other projects. He had no clue she was a liar and a fake.
“There’s a little diner there. Suze’s.” He settled back in his chair. “Lane reminded me of it, said it’s still there. It might be a good place to start spreading the word about what Carrigan can do for the town. Get people talking about how many jobs it’ll create, how much money it’ll bring in. See if there’s a pet project—a library, a meeting hall, something like that—and show how we can make it happen. Maybe a shooting range, or a motocross track. That’s what those people like, right?”
He looked at her expectantly. Much as she wanted to call him out on his stereotyping of small-town people, she felt like she had no room to take risks, no room to run. She’d been a little worried about the project’s proximity to Two Shot, but she’d expected to work behind the scenes, lobbying the legislature, attending meetings. She hadn’t expected to have to go right into town and talk to the people she’d left behind all those years ago.
“I don’t know…”
“It’ll work,” Eric insisted. “All you have to do is your job.” He fished a set of keys out of his pocket and slid them across the desk. “I even arranged a place for you to stay so you won’t have to make that drive. Go on home and pack your bags.”
She felt panic rising in her chest. “Where do you want me to stay?”
“There’s an old cabin at the ranch. I think you’ll find it quite comfortable.”
Her eyes widened. “Doesn’t it belong to Lane?”
“It’s on a separate plot of land, across the creek. Don’t worry, you won’t be sharing a room with him or anything.”
No, but she might end up sharing a bed with Lane again if she got within a stone’s throw of him. His energy, his charisma—hell, maybe it was just his muscles. Or his kindness. Whatever it was, she was helpless to fight it.
“Don’t worry,” Eric said. “It’s fully renovated into a top-notch guest house. You’ll have your own kitchen, and there’s a sitting room and a loft bedroom. It hasn’t been used much since we were in high school, so I called Lane’s foreman and asked him to send somebody over to clean.”
“You used it in high school?”
He smiled nostalgically. “Lane and I used to call it the Love Nest.”
***
Lane hunched over his laptop at the tiny desk wedged below the microwave in his trailer, reading the latest PRCA statistics. He was near the top of the pack in bull riding, but there were a couple of young guys pretty close on his heels.
He sighed. Both guys were talented riders, but neither was a true cowboy. One was from New York City, of all places. The kid didn’t know a damn thing about ranching and probably couldn’t ride a horse. He’d trained on machines in schools designed just for bull riders.
Now the kid was a star on the Professional Bull Riders tour, taking home purses that made the National Finals prizes look like chump change. Lane didn’t begrudge him the money, but the PBR pulled the good bulls away from the small-town rodeos Lane loved.
And no real rancher ever needed to ride a bull. Lane had started rodeoing because he loved the way it preserved traditional ranch skills, so maybe he should go back to bronc riding. He’d quit the bareback event because it was too hard on his body; even the roughest bull ride didn’t dish out as bad a beating as the crack-the-whip action a good bronc dealt out.
But saddle bronc was a possibility. The purses weren’t as big as bull riding prizes, but it was the event that required the most artistry on the part of the cowboy. Riding a bull was about flair, skill, and confidence. Riding a saddle bronc was about balance, spurring, and finesse. Cowboys still had to make the buzzer, but they had to do it with grace. A great bronc ride was beautiful, pure poetry.
Beautiful. Pure poetry. His mind’s eye flashed to Sarah lying in the bed of his truck, dressed only in shadows and moonlight. Now that