the intense scrutiny. His nervousness promptly communicated itself to the powerful stallion. Black Knight turned skittish, prancing dangerously close to the walls of his stall. Slade smoothed a hand over his flank and murmured to him until he settled down.
“You’ve got a way with these animals, don’t you?” Harlan observed with apparent admiration. “Cody claims he’s never seen anyone better.”
Slade shrugged, though he was pleased by the compliment. “I suppose. I just treat ’em like the magnificent creatures they are.”
“The way a man treats his stock says a lot about him, if you ask me.” The rancher paused, then asked with disconcerting directness, “You as good with your daughter?”
Startled by the abrupt shift in subject to something so personal, Slade snapped his head up. Defensiveness had his stomach clenching again. “Meaning?”
Seemingly oblivious to the tension in Slade’s voice, the old man pointed out, “You kept her hidden away long enough. Didn’t even mention her when you applied for work. Never knew a man to hide the fact that he had family, especially a daughter as clever as your Annie. Why was that?”
“With all due respect, sir, I think that’s my business.”
Harlan Adams regarded him unrepentantly. “Well, of course it is. That doesn’t mean I can’t ask about it, does it? Around here, we like to think of the people working for us as part of the family. You’ve been here long enough to know when it comes to family, we tend to meddle. It’s second nature to us.”
Slade managed a halfhearted grin at that. “So I’ve heard.” He just hadn’t expected to become a target of it. It made him damned uncomfortable having to answer to his boss about his relationship with Annie. He doubted an outsider would understand all the complicated emotions at work.
“Well, then, tell me about your girl,” Harlan prodded again, clearly not intending to let the matter drop. “She made a real good impression when I met her. Val brought her by the house for a visit the other day.”
“What can I say, sir? She’s a handful.” A worrisome thought struck him. “She hasn’t gotten into some sort of mischief around here already, has she?”
‘Of course not,” Harlan said, dismissing that worry. “We’re glad to have her. She reminds me of my Jenny, the way she was when her mama and I first started going out. Whoo-ee, that girl was a hellion back then. Gave her mama and me fits. Not a one of my boys was as much trouble, and believe me, they weren’t saints.”
“Is that so?” Slade doubted Jenny Adams had ever gotten into the kind of mischief Annie could pull off.
“Stole my truck, for starters,” Harlan told him.
Slade stared, thinking of the beautiful, self-possessed young woman he’d met at ranch gatherings. He could think of a lot of ways to describe Jenny, but car thief wouldn’t have been among them. She’d been an activist for Native American affairs. Now she taught school and was darn good at it, from what he’d heard. A bit unconventional, perhaps, but effective.
“You’re kidding me,” he said, sure the old man had to be pulling his leg to make him feel better about Annie’s misdeeds.
“No, indeed. Girl was just fourteen, too. Smacked the truck straight into a tree.” He almost sounded proud of her accomplishment.
“I take it she wasn’t hurt,” Slade said.
“No, thank the Lord. When I caught up with her, she was cursing a blue streak, like the car was to blame. I brought her back into town to face the music. That’s how I met her mama. Janet had just opened up her law practice here in town. Jenny was none too pleased about her mama’s divorce or about being uprooted from New York. She was mad at the world. I brought her out here and put her to work. She tended to be mischievous like your Annie, to put a generous spin on it.” A grin spread across his face. “Took a paintbrush to some of the buildings around here, too. I never saw such a mess.”
Slade shook his head, baffled by Harlan’s amused expression as he told the story. “And you and Janet still got married? Amazing.”
“Nothing amazing about it. Janet and I were suited. I could see that right from the start, though it took a little longer to bring her around to my way of thinking,” he said. “As for Jenny, she came around, too, once she knew I’d go on loving her no matter what she did. Persistence, that’s the ticket.