Hidden Treasure (4 page)

Chapter Five

W
hat do you
mean, ‘no’?” Brielle thundered at the man standing before her.

All he did was let loose with a long stream of spit that nearly landed on her toes. She squealed and jumped back.

“Do you realize that these are three-
thousand
-dollar Jimmy Choo shoes?” she gasped.

“Yeah. I figured they were some ridiculous amount, and they certainly shouldn’t be worn in a horse barn,” Tony said before spitting again.

“Well, that’s not your concern now, is it?”

“I don’t really give a damn what you wear,” he told her, then turned and walked away.

“You
work
for me!” Brielle yelled at his back, but her words didn’t even slow his pace. She found herself chasing after her foreman once again.

“I’ve got work to do, ma’am. I don’t have time to coddle you.” Tony moved into his office at the back of the barn.

She hated this room, hated how bad it smelled, and hated how cluttered it was. Still, she never complained about his space, because if it weren’t for this man, she’d be totally screwed. No doubt about it. Not that Tony listened to her. None of the men did. Including the first ranch hand she’d met on the very first day she was here. What was his name again? Colt. Like she’d really forgotten…

Two weeks she’d been there, and yes, she’d admit that she’d been less than pleasant at first, but the last few days she’d decided she was stuck, and she was through being bored. After speaking with Crew just now, she really wanted to prove she could do this.

She’d even watched about two dozen cowboy films this last week — wouldn’t that help her learn something about ranching? So far, though, she knew she was falling very short of what she was supposed to be doing.

“Listen, Tony. I think we’ve just gotten off on the wrong foot. How about we start over and be friends?” She gave him her most winning smile.

Tony looked up and gave some sort of movement to his lips that she supposed could be considered a smile, and she thought for sure that she’d finally won him over until a shadow fell over her and the room seemed to shrink.

Nope. Tony’s smile, or whatever it could be called, wasn’t for her. It was for the man standing behind her. And she knew exactly who it was. Not because she’d seen him yet, but because she could
feel
him.

“Afternoon, Tony. Problems?” Colt asked as he walked up beside Brielle.

She did her best not to look at him. If that happened, she’d lose her breath and get all airheaded. She wasn’t an airheaded type of girl. Yes, there were some people who might think that about her, but it was far from true. She’d actually been a straight-A student in high school and during her first year of college.

She’d made it into Brown, after all. Did these guys have any idea how much of an accomplishment that was? They had only a 9 percent acceptance rate for undergraduate applicants.

Perhaps her major hadn’t been the most practical: she’d studied English. But if anyone thought that was easy, far from it. She’d worked her tail off, and she’d planned on going into journalism, and working for a paper or magazine at some point. No, things didn’t end up working out, but it wasn’t over yet.

She’d ended up mixing with some people who partied hard after that first year, and fallen off a bit, but when she’d slipped up in a few classes, she’d manned back up and done better the next year. Everyone might think she didn’t have a care in the world, but she did take pride in accomplishing a difficult task. She would finish her degree!

But she’d never imagined she’d be doing something as difficult as running a ranch, especially when no one at the Ponderosa Pines Ranch would allow her to do anything involving the day-to-day operations. It wasn’t as if she could fire them all and start over.

She wouldn’t even know where to begin. She couldn’t say she want to wrestle around with the few livestock they had, or mend the fences, but she did want to see how it operated, wanted to understand it, wanted to know why it was failing, and how she could turn it around.

If she was stuck in this place for an entire year, then she was going to walk away with at least some knowledge. She might not like that her father had thrown this at her, but she had accepted the challenge. Still, that wouldn’t stop her from grabbing her calendar and marking off each day she was trapped here.

“The little woman here wants someone to take her out on the land,” Tony said, rolling his eyes in disbelief.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Brielle said. What sort of a chauvinist was he? “Tony just said
no
. He didn’t explain why, just told me
no
.” She lifted her head and met Colt’s gaze.

Dammit. It had taken only about thirty seconds before she was making eye contact. The man really did muddle her brain. She seriously wanted to stamp her feet. But she was trying to grow here, and throwing a tantrum was the opposite of growth.

So Brielle just stood there, hating that her eyes were pleading for one of the two men to listen to her. She needed to inspect her property.

At least that’s what her brother Crew had told her to do. And since Crew was all happy with his project and kicking ass at it, she’d decided she’d better listen and check out the land she now owned.

Her father had called several times and left messages, but she was still angry with him and had refused to take his calls, refused to call him back. Let him sweat. She hoped he was worried that wild coyotes were going to drag her off into the hills at any minute. Wait. That thought stopped her cold.

“There aren’t wild coyotes who eat people here, are there?” she asked, and felt like a fool when both men grinned.

“Not usually,” Colt said, the start of a chuckle evident in his throat, though he was doing his best to keep his mirth at bay.

She wanted to imitate her last name and storm from the barn. The only thing that stopped her was that she knew both men would be a whole hell of a lot happier if she did just that. Well, tough. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“Again, I want to explore my land. I need to know why the operation is failing. Who is going to take me?”

This time Brielle faced Tony with her shoulders back and a determined glint in her eyes. She wasn’t going to back down again, even if he did intimidate the hell out of her.

This time, she was going to get her way, and she was going to learn something about all these acres of land she’d unwillingly inherited from her father. She would make this damn ranch successful even if it killed her. And it might just.

“I’ll take you,” Colt said, surprising not only her but Tony as well, if his expression was any indication.

“You sure you have time for that, Colt?” Tony asked, making Brielle want to slug him.

“Yeah. I’ve got my projects done for the day,” he said with a shrug before turning back to her. “But there’s no way you’re getting on a horse wearing that ensemble. You need to change into jeans and boots. A hat wouldn’t hurt either. It will shield your face from the sun.”

“I don’t need fashion advice from a cowboy.” What was wrong with the cute shorts and tank top she was wearing? It was an unusually warm summer, she’d been told. And that was okay with her. She loved hot weather, and she hadn’t gotten enough of it in Maine.

“I’m not giving you fashion advice, Princess. I’m just stating how it is. You’ll break your neck if you even attempt to get on a horse in those heels. And your thighs will be scraped raw if you wear shorts on the long ride.”

Colt leaned against the wall and crossed one foot in front of the other, his thumbs tucked into his front pockets. He looked as if he could stand right there all day long and not be bothered in the least.

“Well, I don’t have that sort of clothes,” she said with a frustrated sigh.

The thing she wouldn’t admit to either man was that she was excited to take her first horseback ride. She’d seen it done in the movies all the time, and it actually looked like fun. But if she told them that, they’d just ramp up the mockery. She was through with being pegged as the dumb city girl.

“We’ll have to hit Peggy’s shop, and then I’ll take you out,” Colt said as he pushed off the wall and moved to the door. He turned around before he walked through it. “I’ll see ya later, Tony.”

With that, he left the room. Brielle stood there for a minute, watching his retreat through the open doorway. She knew he expected her to follow him without question.

The stubborn Storm blood in her told her to stand her ground. After all,
she
was the boss here. But the practical part of her told her that he didn’t give a damn. If she didn’t follow him, she’d lose her tour guide.

Curiosity and a desire to ride the land made her decision for her. She turned to follow him, but still stopped in the doorway and turned to give Tony a narrow-eyed glance. “We
will
talk further.”

He just stared back at her with surprisingly alert brown eyes. The man was wrinkled, balding, scrawny, and downright rude, but she had a feeling nothing got past him. She couldn’t fire him. That would be foolish.

“Looking forward to it,” Tony finally said before setting his hat back on his head and standing up.

She knew he was getting ready to leave the room too, so she decided to make her exit first. It was a matter of pride. Spinning around, she walked away feeling as if she’d just had a small victory. A smile even tilted the corners of her lips, if just the smallest fraction of an inch. But it was still a smile.

By the time her ride ended, that smile would be long gone.

Chapter Six

D
ead silence was
their companion as Brielle rode in the shotgun seat of Colt’s huge diesel pickup truck. The black beast boasted more bells and whistles inside the cab than her last Mercedes had.

How could a ranch hand afford such a smooth ride?

It was killing her not to ask him, but she refused to. She’d be damned if she spoke first. No way. No how! Brielle Storm was used to having people cater to
her
needs. That had been the story of her life. Well, it had been the story of her life up until a year ago, when her father had pulled her sweet Persian rug right out from under her.

Now she was twenty-five, living in a slightly ramshackle home, owner of a failing 10,000-acre ranch, and in charge of a whole hell of a lot of men who wouldn’t even look at her, let alone listen to a word she said. This was not something Brielle was used to, and it wasn’t something she planned to ever get used to.

Still, she was finally getting somewhere today. She was going to inspect her property, learn what ranching was all about, and when she did see her father, she wouldn’t sound like a twit. After all, the stars of all those cowboy flicks she’d watched made ranching look easy — well, when they didn’t end up in one mishap or other, that is.

She was too smart to make a fool of herself, so she had nothing to worry about, did she?

The truck cruised down the long Montana road without her feeling a bump. It was a much different ride than the one she’d approached the house in. Why had her father bought that old and rusty truck? Was that part of her punishment? She was sure it was. He had to be sitting back in his nice, comfy office chair with a cigar in his mouth and a grin on his face as he thought about his spoiled daughter fighting the elements and who knew what else in Montana.

When they pulled off the roadway and Colt suddenly swung in front of a store that simply said
Peggy’s
in big bold red letters, Brielle looked up and down the street. Surely this couldn’t be Sterling.

Could it?

She was seeing a post office, a very
small
post office, a pharmacy, a dental office, a sheriff’s office, maybe a salon, and a small café. There were a few other small buildings scattered on the street, and what looked to be a fire station not far away, but this one little street just couldn’t be the town she was expected to live in for the next year.

Her throat was practically burning with her need to talk, but she was still unwilling to speak first. She couldn’t! But when Colt climbed wordlessly from the truck and moved around to her side of the vehicle and opened the door, she was unable to take it any longer.

“Where are we?” she practically shouted, clearly startling him with the decibel level of her voice.

“Sterling,” he answered as he held out a hand to help her down.

Ignoring the hand he was offering, she grabbed the handle above her and stepped onto the wide running board before landing on the sidewalk next to Colt.

“This isn’t the whole town, though, is it?” Please, please,
please
don’t be the whole town, she added silently.

“You’re looking at the town center,” he drawled, and she practically wept with relief until he continued. “Around the corner sits the school, and ball fields, and two churches. Then Sterling stretches for miles in each direction. We’re a ranching community with lots of cattle, wheat, and oil. We don’t need a whole heck of a lot of shops.”

“But there are more stores than this, right?” This was what she wanted to know.

“Nope. This is it.”

“This can’t be it!” She began walking, reached the end of the street in less than a minute, and then spun on her heels and headed the other way, passing Colt where he was still standing next to his truck, leaning against the side as if he had all day to wait for her. Of course he could lean like that — it wouldn’t take her long at all to traverse the entire town!

Brielle moved to the other end of the pathetic “main street” and looked out to see some houses dotted along the next street over, along with the school and churches he’d just mentioned, and that was it. Colt hadn’t been duping her. This one street, one simple street, contained every freaking business in the tiny town.

She found that the place she’d thought was a hair salon was proudly announcing in their window that they did nails. Then there was what looked like a
Little House on the Prairie
sort of store, and a grocery store with a huge neon Coors Light sign blinking in the front window.

She really was in hell. No, this was worse than hell. At least in hell a person could find evidence of exciting vices, but none of those could be seen in this pitiful excuse for a place. She felt totally defeated.

“How far away is the nearest
real
town?” she asked when she reached Colt again.

“Sterling
is
a real town.”

His chuckle made her want to claw his eyes out.

“Okay, how far is it to find the nearest
large
town?” Why, oh why hadn’t she done some research, any at all, on where she was going? Probably because she hadn’t planned on staying, and probably because she’d never have figured that a town this small actually existed.

“Well, Billings is about half an hour’s drive away.”

“I want to go there for clothes.” Brielle indicated that she’d like for him to move from the passenger door so she could climb back into his truck. She expected nothing less than his full compliance. He did work for her, after all.

“Too bad” was all he said. He clicked the lock button on his key fob and headed toward Peggy’s.

Brielle was so stunned that she didn’t move from her place on the surprisingly pristine sidewalk for a full thirty seconds. “Oh, this is
so
my last straw,” she muttered as her eyes narrowed and she took determined steps in his direction.

She was through with cowboys, through with Sterling, and through with this business of ranching. Someone was damn well going to listen to her today — and that someone just happened to be Colt Westbrook.

Fury rolling off her in waves, she practically took the glass door off its hinges when she barreled into Peggy’s clothing store. When she came up against a solid wall of muscled chest, she didn’t slow down; she just plowed into him with such force that she knocked him off balance, causing them both to go sailing toward the floor.

All the air was ripped from Brielle’s lungs when she landed on Colt’s chest, her breasts bouncing off him before she settled in and found herself pressed tightly against his body.

Once the shock wore off, a new light entered his eyes — a light Brielle didn’t want to think about. She knew that look, knew exactly what was on his mind. No flipping way.

Too late.

“If you wanted to get me horizontal, all you had to do was ask.”

That was all the warning Brielle got before Colt gripped the back of her neck and pulled her face to his, then gave her the most searing kiss of her life.

Peggy’s store, and the entire town of Sterling, disappeared in a single heartbeat.