The Lone Rancher - By Carol Finch Page 0,9
magic wand and always came up with something tasty.
“Ezmerelda Quickel, this is one of our neighbors, Quin Cahill,” she introduced hastily. “I doubt Cahill is hungry.”
How could he be? Obviously, he was quite full…of himself.
“Of course, I’m hungry,” Quin insisted as he plucked up a few treats from the tray. “I skipped lunch in order to welcome my new neighbors.”
Adrianna gnashed her teeth when the ruggedly handsome rascal flashed Elda a wide grin and winked down at her. Elda was at least fifty if she was a day, but she let this Texas devil charm her. Elda blushed like a school-girl when Quin oohed and ahhed over the tasty snacks. The annoying rancher gave new meaning to the cooking term buttered up.
Impatient to have Quin gone, Adrianna clutched his arm and grabbed a few crumpets to lure him out the door like a pesky dog that had barged, unwelcome, in the house. She shoved him onto the porch and thought, And stay out!
“Nice of you to drop by, Cahill,” she said dismissively. “Hope to see you in Ca-Cross sometime soon.”
He gobbled down a couple more crumpets, then turned to face her. “Accept my offer to buy you out, Boston. Go home where you belong.”
She really wanted to clobber him for being so persistent and agitating. Somehow, she managed to restrain herself. She was convinced it was divine intervention at work. Either that or the classes on deportment and refinement at the private finishing school her father forced her to attend.
“I have no intention of selling,” she assured him in a tone that could barely be considered civil. “Not now. Not ever. I will make this place prosper and then I will be stopping by the 4C to make you a fair offer for your spread.”
His eyes turned as cold as granite and his dark brows swooped down his forehead. A muscle ticked in his suntanned jaw. He looked quite intimidating, but Adrianna refused to back down to him or anyone else in the state of Texas.
“First off, Boston, a woman overseeing a Texas ranch, especially one the size of this one, has disaster written all over it. Secondly, as long as I have a breath left in my body, 4C will never be sold off part or parcel!”
Clearly, she had hit an exposed nerve, though she had no idea how or why. But since he had hit a sensitive subject with her, she didn’t give a flying fig what had upset him.
She fisted her hands on her hips and met his intense glare. “Then it seems we understand each other perfectly. You are going nowhere and neither am I. You stay on your side of the fence, Cahill, and I will stay on mine.”
“Fine, then, you upkeep your half of our shared fence and I’ll repair my half. That’s how it’s done in Texas.”
“Then that’s how I’ll do it,” she snapped back.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Boston. And don’t come crying to me when you can’t turn a profit with your Herefords or you discover your foreman is as incompetent as you are.”
On that ridiculing comment, he whipped around and stalked off to mount the striking bloodred bay gelding.
“And good riddance!” she called after him when he thundered off. She lurched toward the house, muttering under her breath. Adrianna vowed, there and then, to make this place prosper, if for no other reason than to assure that cocky cowboy that she was made of sturdy stuff.
He represented the opinions of narrow-minded men—and apparently there were as many in Texas as there were in Boston, after all—who didn’t think a woman could survive and thrive in a man’s world. But someday Quin Cahill would apologize for dismissing her as incompetent, she promised herself fiercely.
On that defiant thought, Adrianna stomped into her run-down house and put her bottled anger to good use by setting her bedroom to rights…before she collapsed in exhaustion that night.
Chapter Two
“Addie K.! I’m so glad to see you!” Rosalie Greer Burnett called out excitedly when Adrianna entered the fashionable boutique on Town Square. “I was afraid you’d be so busy settling in that you wouldn’t be in town for a week.”
Adrianna gave her beloved cousin an affectionate hug, then surveyed the shop filled with racks of stylish gowns and hats that Rosa had designed herself. She had struck out on her own to follow her dream and she had a successful shop to show for it. Plus, Rosa had married the previous month and she looked so happy