Cathy Thacker – The Texas Cowboy's Quadruplets (страница 2)

He stepped closer, deliberately invading her personal space, inundating her with his wildly intoxicating masculine scent. “Mitzy, come on. You’ve been ducking my calls and messages for weeks now.”

So what? She gave him her most unwelcoming glance. “I know it’s hard for a carefree bachelor like you to understand, but I’ve been ‘a little busy’ since giving birth to four boys.”

He shrugged right back, meeting her word for cavalier word. “Word around town is you’ve had plenty of volunteer help. Plus the high-end nannies your mother sent from Dallas.”

Mitzy groaned and clapped a hand across her forehead. “Don’t remind me,” she muttered miserably.

The sympathy on his face matched his low, commiserating tone. “Didn’t work out?”

“No,” she bit out, “they didn’t.” Mostly because they had been even more ostentatious—and intrusive—than her mom. Telling her how things should be, instead of asking her how she wanted them to be. “Just like this lobbying effort on your part won’t work, either.”

“I know you’d rather not do business with me, Mitzy,” he said, even more gently. “But at least hear me out.”

Silence fell between them, as fragile as the still-shattered pieces of her heart. He rocked forward on his toes and lowered his face to hers. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think it were crucial.”

Mitzy caught her breath at the unexpected reminder of what it had been like to kiss him. Or how much the reckless side of her wanted to do so again.

Just to see...

“You could use a break,” Bess pointed out.

Bridgett, who’d recently found her own happily-ever-after with Chase’s older brother, Cullen, agreed. “And you may as well get this talk over with. If—” she paused heavily “—that’s all it is.”

That’s all it could be, Mitzy told herself bluntly. Since there was no way she was opening up her heart to this impossibly sexy cowboy CEO again. “Fine.” She ducked inside long enough to grab a fleece to ward off the chill of the November afternoon and hurried back outside. “You’ve got five minutes, Chase, and that is all!”

* * *

Five minutes wasn’t much, but it was better than what he’d had in a very long time. Plus, he had promised her late father he’d take care of Mitzy, and her quadruplets, whether she wanted him to or not.

Chase followed Mitzy to the end of the porch on her Craftsman-style home, taking a moment to survey the recent changes in her. The birth of her four sons had given her five-nine body a new voluptuousness. Her thick medium brown hair was still threaded with honey-gold strands, but she’d cut it since he last saw her in town a month ago, and now it just brushed the tops of her shoulders. Her fair skin was lit with the inner glow she’d had since she was pregnant, her delicate features just as elegant as ever, and her lips soft and full and enticingly bare.

Which meant she still favored plain balm over lipstick. A fact he had always liked...

She bypassed the chain-hung swing and settled instead on a wicker chair. Acutely aware of how hard this was going to be for her to hear, he removed his hat, set it aside and took the seat kitty-corner from her.

Resisting the urge to take her small hand in his, he leaned toward her, hands knotted between his spread knees. Looked her in the eye and got straight to the point. “Word on the street is that Martin Custom Saddle is in big trouble financially.”

Anger flared between them, even as her long-lashed aquamarine eyes widened in surprise. “I think—as CEO—that I would know if that was the case.”

She certainly should have, Chase thought reprovingly. “Have you been there recently?”

Mitzy straightened. “I’ve been in touch with Buck Phillips—the chief operating officer—at least once a week.”

Chase focused on the pretty pink color flooding her face. Matter-of-factly, he ascertained, “But you haven’t actually been to the facility where the saddles are made.”

She ignored his question. Stood, walked a short distance away, then swung back to face him. “What’s your point, Chase?”

He hated to be the bad guy. In this situation, he had no choice. Gently, but firmly, he said, “You can’t simultaneously run MCS—at least not the way your late father would have wished—and be Laramie County’s best social worker. And all the while care for four infants all by your lonesome to boot. No one could.”

Mitzy stalked toward him. “I’m not trying to do all that. I’m on maternity leave from the Department of Family and Child Services for the next ten months. Maybe longer. I haven’t decided yet.” Ignoring the seat close to him, she perched on the porch railing. “And Buck Phillips is running the business side at the saddle company, same as always.”

Noting the way the dark denim hugged her slender thighs, and the swell of her breasts beneath the snug-fitting black fleece top, he rose and ambled toward her. “Are you sure about that?”

“Someone would have told me if there were issues. Financially, or otherwise.”

Unless they were trying to protect her.

Her lower lip slid out in a sexy pout. “The employees there are not just personally invested in the success of the company, they’re like family to me and each other.”

With effort, Chase ignored the urge to kiss her. “It takes more than good intentions to run a company, Mitzy,” he said quietly.

She tilted her chin at him, a myriad of emotions running riot in her pretty eyes. “You don’t think I have it in me?”

He came closer and perched beside her. Bracing his hands on the rail on either side of him, he murmured, “Your father had a passion for saddle making.”

“I know that.”

He knew this would hurt. Still, it had to be said. “And you don’t.”

She gasped, indignant. Hands balled into fists at her sides, she bounded to her feet and swung on him once again. “I don’t need to have that same passion. All I need to do is keep everything exactly the way it was when he was alive, and honor him by carrying on his legacy. And we—the company and all its employees—will be fine!”

Taking charge of a business was a lot more complicated than that. Clearly, though, she wasn’t ready to hear that.

Help my daughter make it through the holidays, Gus Martin had said. The first, after my death, will be the most difficult.

And with Thanksgiving almost upon them...

Chase could see Mitzy was struggling. Even if she wouldn’t admit it. He tried again, even more gently this time. “The point is, darlin’, I’m interested in doing that, too.”

Abruptly, Mitzy looked like she wanted to deck him. “Like you did when you worked for my dad? Before he was forced to fire you?”

Of course she would bring up the business crisis that had precipitated the end of their engagement. Their breakup had ripped him up inside. Chase shrugged regretfully. “I admit, I was overly ambitious.”

An even rosier hue flooded her high, sculpted cheeks. “You insulted him and everything he stood for with your plans to turn his artistry into a mass-manufacturing business.”

Chase squinted. “I’m not sure your dad saw it that way.”

You’re meant for bigger things, Chase. You’ll never be happy here...was what Gus had said, when he’d cut him loose.

And Mitzy’s father had been right.

Then.

Chase had since had time to reevaluate and reconfigure his earlier career plan to something much more laudable and practical. But, sensing Mitzy was in no mood to hear that now, if ever, he slowly rolled to his feet. “Regardless of the way I left MCS, I learned a lot from your dad when I worked for him, Mitzy. I also built my own company, McCabe Leather Goods.”

Her expression both contemptuous and resentful, she scoffed, “Yes, I know. It’s the premier provider in the entire Southwest of all sorts of leather products. Everything from boots to saddles to leather interiors on pickup trucks and automobiles. And you did it by buying up lots of little entities and folding them into the one bearing your name!”

So she had been following his rise in the business world, Chase noted in satisfaction. He met her level gaze. “Every one of those business units is better off, their employees happier and more financially secure.”

Her expression guarded, she raked her teeth across her lower lip. “So what does that have to do with me?”

“If your family business is in even half as much trouble as is rumored, you’re going to need help getting it back on track.”

She rolled her eyes skeptically. “You’re volunteering?”

Yes, although first I was drafted. “Your dad was always good to me, even after I stopped working for him,” Chase admitted, acutely aware of how much he missed Gus. And Gus’s beautiful, intractable daughter.

Missed the extended family they might have been. “I’d like to repay his kindness.”

Mitzy tilted her head at him, thinking. Seeming to know instinctively there was more to this than what he was letting on. Not about to tell her about the deathbed promises he had made, however, Chase waited for her to make a decision.

Finally, she swallowed, let out a soft little sigh. Wearily, she asked, “Don’t you think it would be a little awkward under the circumstances?”

He could handle awkward. Hell, he could handle anything if it got him back into her life, and her into his. Because actually getting to have a sit-down with her, brief as it might be, had shown him certain things had not changed.