A Match Made in Alaska (17 page)

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Trusting the Cowboy

by Carolyne Aarsen

Chapter One

S
he wasn’t supposed to be here yet. Her sister Jodie had told him she was arriving in a couple of weeks.

But there she sat, perched in one of Drake’s worn chairs, as out of place in the shabby lawyer’s office as a purebred filly in a petting zoo.

Lauren McCauley appeared to be every inch the businesswoman Vic knew her to be. Tall. Slim. Blond hair twisted up in some fancy bun, a few wisps falling around her delicate features. She wore a brown blazer over a fitted dress tucked under her legs. Her high heels made her look as if she might topple to the ground if she stood.

A silver laptop rested on her knees and she frowned at the screen.

When she was a teenager, coming to Montana to visit her dad during the summer, she’d had a look that promised great beauty. But she always managed to seem cool and unapproachable. And she had never been his type.

Vic leaned more toward girls who rode horses and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty mucking out horse stalls, running a tractor or feeding cows.

In spite of that, Vic couldn’t help a faint flutter of attraction when he peeked over at her again. She’d always been pretty. Now she looked stunning.

Lauren McCauley glanced up from the laptop she was typing on with her manicured fingers. She gave him a polite smile, her lips glistening a pale peach color, and she turned back to the computer.

Dissed and dismissed, he thought, glancing down at his cleanest blue jeans with the faded knees and the twill shirt he’d figured would be good enough. Now it seemed scruffy with its worn cuffs and grease stain on the arm. He felt exactly like the cowboy he was.

He pulled his hat off his head and walked over to where Jane Forsythe, Drake’s secretary, pounded on her keyboard, glowering through her cat’s-eye glasses at the computer screen. The overhead light burnished the copper of her hair, making it look even brassier than the fake color everyone knew it to be.

“Hey, Vic, you handsome cowboy, you.” Jane tugged off her reading glasses and tossed them on a pile of papers that threatened to topple. “Drake will be right with you.” She angled her head to look past him to where Lauren sat, then leaned forward, her hand cupping her mouth. “He has to see
her
first.” Jane put emphasis on the
her
as if Lauren were some strange species of woman.

“That’s fine. I’m early,” Vic said. “But let him know I’m here.” He took a chair along the other wall. There were two empty ones on either side of Lauren, but he felt more comfortable giving himself some distance.

Besides, he had a better view of Lauren from this angle.

“Always so responsible,” Jane said approvingly, slipping her glasses on. “How’s your mother?”

“She has her days. It’s been hard.”

“Losing a parent can be difficult,” Jane said. She looked past him again at Lauren. Vic guessed from the way the secretary scrunched up her face in sympathy, she was getting ready to take a stab at distracting Lauren from her work. “And how are you doing, Miss McCauley? It’s only been a few months since your own father died. Vic here lost his father, too, about four months ago. You two could compare notes.”

Vic forced himself not to roll his eyes. Jane had a good heart and meant well, but for the secretary of a lawyer she was completely unaware of personal privacy and space.

Lauren’s gaze rested on Jane, then shifted to Vic, her eyes a soft gray blue fringed with thick lashes.

“You’re Vic Moore, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” he said. “I rent your father’s ranch.”

“I thought Rusty Granger did.”

“Not for the past three years.”

Vic wasn’t surprised Lauren didn’t know that. After her parents’ divorce, when Lauren was about nine, she and her sisters had lived for ten months of the year with their grandmother in Knoxville. Two years later, after their mother died, they came to the ranch for the summer to visit their father. But when Lauren turned eighteen, she and her twin sister, Erin, stopped coming. The last time he remembered seeing Lauren here was maybe four years ago, and then only for a few days.

Their younger sister, Jodie, ducked out of her last visit when she was seventeen and never came back at all. She had returned a couple of months ago, to fulfill the terms of their father’s will, and was now living here permanently.

Everything he knew about Lauren, Vic had learned over time while working with Keith McCauley on his ranch as well as the occasional coffee-shop chitchat at the Grill and Chill, Saddlebank’s local restaurant. Though chitchat was the wrong thing to call the steady litany of complaints Keith leveled at anyone who would listen about life, the government, the lax sheriff’s department and his wayward daughters.

The rest he’d learned recently from Lauren’s sister Jodie, now engaged to Vic’s good friend Finn Hicks. He knew Lauren worked as an accountant. That she was single and dedicated to her career.

Still not his type.

“I shouldn’t be surprised Rusty isn’t renting it anymore,” Lauren said, giving him a polite smile and closing her laptop. Either she had finished whatever it was she was working on or she had given up. “My father never particularly cared for him.”

Vic held his tongue. Keith hadn’t cared for too many people, so Vic had handled the man carefully. Vic and Keith had had a lease-to-own agreement for Vic to buy Keith’s ranch.

Vic wanted to ask Lauren more about her plans. He knew that she was here to satisfy the terms of her father’s will, as well. Her sister Jodie, who was coming to the end of her obligation, had told him all about the conditions their father had put on the girls inheriting the ranch.

Two of the three girls had to stay at the ranch for two months each before all three of them could make a final decision.

He’d spoken to Jodie about his deal with her father. But all she could tell him was that she’d have to defer to Lauren’s wishes, and all she knew was that Lauren was agreeable to selling.

But he wasn’t about to bring that up now. He still had a couple of months.

“I heard you’ll be staying at your father’s place while you’re here,” he said. “Jodie was excited to see you.”

“Yes. Jodie said she got my old room ready. I’m headed there next.”

“Is Erin coming back?”

Lauren shook her head. “If I stay the two months, she won’t have to, and Jodie and I will make the final decision on what to do with the ranch.”

She didn’t seem to know anything about the deal he’d made with her father, either.

Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her purse.

She turned away from him, speaking in a low voice, and he tried not to listen. However, in the small room, it was hard not to. The man on the other end had a loud voice and Vic heard snatches of conversation.

“I’m at the lawyer’s office...I can’t make a final decision until I speak to him...Of course I’m leaving after my time is done. I’ve no intention of sticking around.” She pressed her lips together and fingered a strand of hair away from her face. “Your offer is fantastic, but I need to talk to my sisters first, but yes, I think you’ll get it.”

A chill slid through his veins.

Was she talking about the ranch?

He swallowed down a knot as she spoke again.

“Come down in a week or so and I can show you the ranch. That’s all I can say for now...fine...see you then.” She ended the call, a frown creasing the perfection of her forehead. Then she dropped the phone in her purse.

The room felt short of air as the reality of what she was talking about sank in.

“Was that a buyer for the ranch?” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

Her look of surprise clearly showed him what she thought of what he had just done. But it didn’t matter. It was out there now.

“Actually, yes. It was.”

“But I had a purchase deal with your father,” he said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice. “That’s why I was renting it.”

She lifted her chin, her hands folded primly on her laptop. “Jodie mentioned your situation to me, but we could find no paperwork substantiating your claim.”

“Your father told me he’d taken care of it.” Vic remembered discussing this with Keith after his cancer diagnosis, knowing that they needed to get something in writing to protect their agreement. Keith had promised him he was putting his affairs in order. That he’d written something out for him and signed it.

“As I said, we didn’t find anything. But if you’re interested in purchasing the ranch, you’ll have an opportunity to counteroffer.”

Vic stared at her, doubts dogging him. Keith had given him a deal on the price and Vic knew it. He doubted Lauren would do the same for the future buyer or for him.

Fury at Keith’s failure to keep his promise surged through him.

The intercom beeped. Jane answered it, then she looked at Lauren.

“Drake will see you now,” she said, her eyes darting from Lauren to Vic and back again.

Vic pressed his lips together as Lauren slipped her laptop in her leather briefcase, picked it up and stood all in one smooth motion.

But as she took a step, her purse strap caught on the chair. She stumbled and Vic jumped up to help her, catching her by the elbow, which made her totter. Her briefcase fell. She jerked her arm away. “I’m okay. I don’t need your help.”

He didn’t say anything but bent down to pick up her briefcase. But she moved too quickly and snatched it off the floor.

She spared him a glance as she straightened. Then she strode across the carpet in her towering heels, shoulders straight, head high.

And as the door closed behind her, Vic slumped back in his chair, dragging his hand over his face, feeling stupid and scared.

He’d just about made a fool of himself in front of this woman.

Lauren had a buyer for the ranch.

And there was no paper from her father.

He had promised his younger brother, Dean, that they were getting the ranch. Guaranteed it. Now they might lose it.

If that happened, how was he supposed to help his brother?

* * *

“Lauren, how lovely to see you,” Drake Neubauer said, getting up from behind his desk.

Outwardly Lauren was smiling but her insides still shook and her hands still trembled.

Mr. Vic Moore had looked so angry when she told him about the buyer for the ranch.

You did nothing wrong
, she told herself, taking a deep breath as Drake walked toward her outstretched hand.
He has no claim.

You could have let him help you.

She dismissed that voice as quickly as it slid into her brain. She’d been doing fine until he’d interfered and almost made her fall.

And wouldn’t that have come across all dignified?

“So glad you could make it here,” Drake said as he shook her hand, his other hand covering it, squeezing lightly. “Goodness, girl, your hands are like ice.”

“I’m just cold-blooded,” she joked as she returned his warm handshake.

Harvey had always accused her of that. At least that was the excuse he gave her when he dumped her a few days before their wedding.

“It’s good to be back,” she said, relegating those shameful memories to where they belonged. The past.

“I’m sure you missed all this,” Drake said, waving one hand at the window behind them.

Drake’s offices were situated above the hardware store, and through the window Lauren saw the valley the Saddlebank River snaked through. Her eyes shifted to the mountains, snow frosted and craggy, cradling the basin, and her mind slowed. Though she and her sisters had resented coming here every summer, when they were back home in Knoxville she’d found herself missing these very mountains.

“It was a part of my life,” she said, her voice quiet.

“Does it feel good to be back?” Drake asked.

Lauren gave him a brief smile as she lowered herself to the chair, setting her briefcase on the floor and tucking her skirt under her legs. “Yes, it does.” Though the restless part of her wasn’t sure how she would stay busy on the ranch, the weary part longed for a reprieve from the stress and tension of the last year and a half.

And a break from the pitying stares of friends each time they met. Harvey hadn’t only taken a wedding away from her, he’d also robbed her of her money, her dignity and her self-esteem. She had been scrambling to show to the world that he hadn’t won.

“And how are you doing since your father’s passing? Ironic that it wasn’t the cancer that killed him but a truck accident.” Drake sat down, opened the file lying on his desk and flipped through it.

She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she said nothing.

Though losing her father had bothered her more than she’d thought it would, the true reality was neither Lauren nor her sisters had ever been close with Keith McCauley.

“Has the accident been cleared with the insurance company yet?” Lauren asked as Drake made a few notes on a piece of paper in the file. “Jodie had said there were some difficulties?”

“They’re still dealing with it, but last I heard, it should be finalized in the next few weeks.”

“Where is the truck?”

“At Vic Moore’s. The accident happened as your father was going down his driveway.”

“Any liability at play?”

“No. That much has been determined already. The truck was in perfect working order.”

“And Vic’s driveway?”

“Your father hit a deer, then lost control and rolled the vehicle. Neither Vic nor the Rocking M were at fault.”

“I wasn’t thinking of filing a lawsuit, if that’s what you were worried about,” Lauren said, her mind ticking back to the tall man still sitting in the waiting room. With his dark eyebrows, firm chin and square jaw, he commanded attention. When he had stridden into the office, she had been unable to look away.

But all it took was a glance at her bare ring finger and her father’s will to remind her of the hard lessons life had taught her about men. Men were selfish and undependable. Between her father, Harvey and her now-former boss, she should be crystal clear on that point.

In Christ alone...