the lilt in her voice stopped just short of laughter. “Surely you understood emu isn’t the name of the ranch...it’s what we raise here.”
“Excuse me?”
Cameron wheeled around to pinpoint the source of that strange sound which had him so befuddled. A huge ostrichlike creature strutted out of the barn to regard their visitor with curiosity and what Cameron was certain was mutual distrust.
Tom, tom, tom, tom, tom, thrummed the bird territorially.
Cameron glanced back and forth between the bird and the woman, searching for the hidden technology that would ultimately land him on Candid Camera Was this somebody’s idea of a practical joke? It was a good one, he’d grant ’em that. A real knee-slapper. The Triple R a bird farm? It was as believable as him winning that gargantuan National Championship belt buckle for breaking Shetland ponies. Had it not been for the fact that the woman standing next to him gave no indication whatsoever that anything was amiss, he would have laughed out loud.
“You are joking, aren’t you?”
Pat merely shook her head at the scowl that defied her to answer truthfully.
“I’ll be a son of a—”
It took an act of conscious self-control to bite back the oath scalding the tip of his tongue. Even then, gentlemanly restraint didn’t stop him from leaning his full, formidable height of six feet and three inches over her and bellowing, “Just what have you done to my ranch, lady? Grandpa’d do back flips in his grave if he knew you’d turned the Triple R into some kind of damned Yuppie petting zoo. Not to mention the field day the press could have with the news that I’ve signed on to be a bird wrangler.”
Pat wondered if she would have to sew the top of this man’s head back on. What was he ranting about? The jumble of words was coming so fast and furious that it was hard to make sense of them.
“Hell and damnation, I signed on to work for a real ranch, not some overgrown chicken farm!”
“They’re emus,” Pat repeated as patiently as if she were explaining it to a two-year-old.
“If you think for even one minute that I’m sticking around to work with a flock of dodo birds on steroids, you’re out of your mind!”
Pat’s hands went to her hips. She’d had quite enough of this cowboy’s tirade. Why, the way the man was acting, you’d think he had a personal stake in the ranch. Clearly the fellow wasn’t quite right in the head, but seeing how he was the only one who had applied for the job, she couldn’t afford to let him off the hook just because he was capable of throwing a bigger temper tantrum than any of her children.
“Let me remind you, Mr. Wade,” she said speaking slowly and standing on her tippy toes to lessen the intimidating factor of his height, “that whether you like it or not, I am your boss for at least the next three months. And any respectable man would honor that contract.”
“You deceiving, little—” Cameron shook the contract in question right in the woman’s startled face. “Maybe I should have let you fall on that thick head of yours to knock some sense into it!”
Pat exhaled with enough force to ruffle the bangs over her forehead. “I didn’t deceive anyone. In fact I purposely capitalized all the letters in the word emu so you’d know exactly what you were getting into. It’s not my fault you didn’t take the time to find out that emu was no more the name of this ranch than Pat is singularly used as a man’s name! As we both well know, ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. You signed on, mister, and by God, you’re mine from at least now until winter sets in.”
The last time someone had the audacity to talk to Cameron like this, he’d sent the joker through a plate-glass window. He hated the way women used their sex as an excuse to blurt out whatever they felt like saying without regard to consequence. No matter how pretty this one was, he for one wasn’t about to be bullied by someone who barely came up to his chin.
“For your information, I don’t belong to anyone. And if you don’t think so, just watch how fast I walk away from this bird-brained operation of yours!”
The exact opposite of this belligerent cowboy, whose voice paralleled his temper, when Pat was angry, her voice dropped several cool degrees. When she spoke again, her words were cold enough to freeze-dry the blazing Wyoming sun overhead.
“That contract is legally binding, and the only way you’re walking away from here is if I fire you.”
In fact, nothing could have made Pat happier at the moment than to send this macho cowboy down the road with an imprint of her boot upon his sexy derriere. Unfortunately, she was far too desperate to let pride get in the way of good sense. Circumstances had left her a widow with three small children and a ranch in dire need of repairs. She had tried telling Hadley that making a go of an emu ranch smack-dab in the middle of cattle country wouldn’t be the cakewalk he thought it would be. He hadn’t listened of course. Once he was off on one of his get-rich-quick schemes, there was as much chance of stopping Hadley Erhart as the guard rail that had given way and left him dead at the bottom of Red Canyon one snowy night.
Cameron’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean to tell me you’d try keeping a man here against his will?”
His words conjured up for Pat all sorts of improper sexual images utilizing ropes and handcuffs. She dismissed the innuendo with a haughty swipe of the hand.
“Nobody forced you to sign that contract.”
Lady or no, Cameron was just about to tell this brassy little firecracker where she could put her legally binding contract, when he felt the barrel of a gun poked into the small of his back.
“Freeze, varmint!”
Two rascals wearing battered cowboy hats, shorts emblazoned with cartoon characters, and worn, dusty boots regarded him from behind matching scowls. Drawn by the commotion, Johnny and Kirk Erhart had been covertly watching the heated interplay as intently as any full-fledged theatrical production. With a trail of improvised cowboy paraphernalia dragging behind them, the two boys rushed to their mother’s defense.
“Reach for the sky!”
While one boy kept his plastic gun steady against the interloper’s back, the other gathered a loop of rope into his hands. Hoping they weren’t contemplating a hanging, Cameron raised his hands in mock surrender.
Clearly he had been ambushed.
“Johnny!” his mother scolded. “How many times have I told you not to point that at anyone?”
“Mom...” the child said in embarrassment before regaining his stage presence. “Keep ‘em up there where I can see ’em.”
His finger twitching on the trigger of his cap gun, the older boy informed Cameron with genuine Western resolve. “Around these parts, mister, a man stands by his word.”
What the woman’s ire had not evoked in Cameron, a child’s innocence had—a sense of guilt. Johnny, the woman had called him. Darned if the kid didn’t remind him some of himself at that age. Cameron fought the urge to run his hand through the lad’s shaggy, sandy-colored hair.
An image of another little boy standing in the shadows of the Wind River Mountains came back to him as clearly as if it had been recorded for posterity. Tears streaming down his face, the child had linked hands with his mother and vowed to someday “show ’em all that a Wade could never be beaten.” Almost two decades had passed since the seed of that particular promise had been planted. Time enough for Cameron to cultivate a way of returning home an unprecedented success, reclaim the land he considered his birthright, and turn it into one of the finest operations in the country.
There was more than just a little self-indulgent gratification involved in his game plan, and he knew it. Knew it and accepted it as part of why he was the man he was. The kind of man who wouldn’t let a couple of broken ribs in the semifinals of the National Rodeo Championship stop him from achieving his dream. The kind of man determined to overcome any obstacles