He thought about how long it had been since he’d been close to anyone and swore silently to himself. What had they gotten themselves into?
“What’s wrong?” Rose demanded early the next morning.
How about everything? Clint thought, directing his full attention to the woman striding toward him. Although it was due to heat up later in the day, right now it was damp and cool. Rose had hooked a pair of sunglasses into the neck of her bright-yellow T-shirt and thrown a denim jacket over her slender shoulders. Snug-fitting jeans and boots covered her lower half. Her straw hat hid her cloud of ash-blond curls.
Not stopping until they stood toe-to-toe, she persisted, “Why do you have that look on your face?”
Clint cut a glance at the long line of pickups and tractors driving onto the Double Creek Ranch, then turned back to her, keeping his temper in check. “You really have to ask?”
She shrugged, her expression more innocent than the situation warranted. “I told you I’d get you a loaner tractor delivered today.” She waved a hand in the direction of the tractor dealership flatbed leading the way. “And I have.”
It looked like a nice one, too. Brand spanking new. With an air-conditioned cab, a fact he was sure to appreciate as the sun rose higher in the sky.
Clint jerked his head at the convoy. “And the rest of this?”
“Oh.” Rose spared him a look. “I called in a few favors to get other farmers in the area to help us make the rows. This way we can get it done in one day.”
He lifted his brows. “You didn’t think to ask me first?”
Her pause went on a second too long.
“Or you did think to ask and decided not to.”
Another shrug and a small, mischievous smile. “I might have discovered—after I finished organizing everything last night—that it was too late to call you.”
He narrowed his eyes, not buying that excuse for one hot second.
“Or...I might have had a feeling that you’re one of those gotta-do-it-all-myself types.” She became serious. “With the first of the berries ready to be picked tomorrow, we really don’t have time to waste.”
Uh-huh. Just as he had thought.
“Deal or not, Ms. McCabe, this is still my ranch.”
“Oh, I am aware.” Tossing her head, she lifted a lecturing finger his way. “But that doesn’t change the fact you have agreed to sell those blackberries to me, McCulloch! Or in any way alter the fact that I, in turn, have promised those same berries to a number of local stores, as well as the members of the Rose Hill Farm co-op! All of whom, as it happens, know the importance of bringing a crop in at just the right moment.”
He couldn’t argue. Any berries left to fall on the ground were money down the drain. “You seem to have it all figured out.”
A shadow fell over her face—as if he’d struck a nerve. “You’ll thank me when I cut your first check.”
He supposed he would, at that.
“In the meantime...how about getting off your high horse long enough to come and thank all the neighbors who have so kindly agreed to help us?”
Clint fell into step beside her. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised,” he murmured, nodding at the farmers coming forward to greet him. “Laramie is a place where neighbors help each other out.”
Rose smiled, sweetly this time. “You’re darn right about that, cowboy. That’s how we farmers and ranchers all survive.”
* * *
“LOOKING GOOD AROUND HERE,” Gannon Montgomery told Clint later that evening when the two met at the Double Creek to settle their monthly accounts.
Friends since childhood, both were back on the ranches where they had grown up. Clint paid Gannon a grazing and usage fee for running his cattle and cutting horses on Gannon’s ranch—the Bar M. In return, Gannon paid Clint to keep up the pastures on his land and exercise and take care of his family’s horses.
Moreover, Gannon was a prominent local attorney who was married to Rose’s sister, Lily. So there was little about the McCabe women or Laramie County he did not know.
Clint turned his gaze to the neatly plowed rows between the thick, plentiful six-foot-tall bushes. “More like a blackberry farm or something out of the Napa Valley.” Which was a far cry from the ranch he and his family had always intended it to be, before he and his siblings had been forced to sell during probate, after his parents’ death, years ago.
He sighed. “But it will be easy to get the berry picker through.” Although he wasn’t looking forward to the tedious work of driving that tractor and hauling crates of produce around. He would be much happier on the back of a horse, or even out on the land repairing fence, than trying to care for the delicate fruit.
Nodding in agreement, Gannon followed Clint inside. “Rose seems happy.”
Pushing the image of the feisty woman with the delectable curves out of his mind, Clint cracked open two beers. “Tell me about it.”
They toasted each other silently and then sat down at the kitchen island. “She’s wanted to get her hands on all those berries for years,” Gannon told him. “It was such a shame, seeing them all go to seed.”
Clint snorted derisively, aware he’d been able to sidestep Rose’s requests the year before, after acquiring the property, simply by not being around during the harvest season. “Had the birds not been given free rein with them, they might not have spread to the degree they have.”
“I sense you’re irritated with my sister-in-law?”
Clint chose his words carefully. “Let’s just say I have never met a woman so determined to have her own way.”
“Or as likely to get it by whatever means necessary,” Gannon deadpanned. “But, as Lily would say, that’s part of her sister’s charm. Or it has been since she was left with three kids to bring up entirely on her own.”
Clint paused to take that in. “Rose’s ex-husband isn’t involved?”
Gannon shook his head, his expression grim. “Barry walked away clean nearly three years ago, right after their divorce.”
Clint exhaled. “That’s rough.”
“So you can understand, then, why Rose is as single-minded as she is.”
“Because she has to be.”
Gannon nodded.
Clint admired a woman who went all out to provide for her family. That didn’t mean, however, that he had to like the way Rose went about her dealings with him. He’d been down this road before. Almost married a woman who didn’t just love being in the midst of excitement and drama but created it wherever she went. No way was he getting involved with someone like that again. Even if it was a woman as beautiful and feisty as Rose.
The two finished their beers and traded invoices.
“When are you going to get your ranch up and running?” Gannon asked.
“If it all turns out the way Rose is predicting—” Clint was holding his breath on that one “—and I get even half the cash she is promising...I’m hoping for early fall.”
And then it would be bye-bye to the farming he had never wanted to do—and renting out his neighbor’s land—and hello to horse and cattle ranching on the Double Creek, the way it was meant to be.
In the meantime, he had to deal with Rose McCabe.
And the delivery