Victoria Pade – The Camden Cowboy (страница 2)

But behind the stores themselves, the Camdens owned much of what supplied the products they sold—factories, manufacturers, farms, ranches, dairies, timberland, lumber mills, bottling plants, and numerous other production-level businesses and industries that facilitated their low prices. They also had a hand in distribution centers and had now added a network of medical, dental and vision clinics to each store to go along with pharmacies that offered low-cost prescriptions—because they even owned pharmaceutical companies and research facilities.

There just wasn’t much the Camdens didn’t have a hand in, so it was surprising to find one of the ten grandchildren who now ran Camden Incorporated acting like a small-town cowboy.

Not that she knew the intricacies of the family, because she didn’t. An entire section of a course she’d taken in college had been devoted to studying the business model of Camden Incorporated, but when it came to the Camdens themselves, only H. J. Camden—Seth Camden’s great-grandfather and the founder of the business—and H.J.’s son, Hank, who would have been Seth Camden’s grandfather, had been discussed.

The present-day Camdens tended to crop up occasionally in the news in conjunction with charities they sponsored. But beyond that they kept a very low profile, and Lacey couldn’t name them or what any of them did.

Still, it seemed strange that a member of a family like that would be out here working in the hot sun digging postholes.

“Excuse me …” she tried again.

But no sooner had the words come out of her mouth than she raised one foot to take another step and lost her shoe completely, costing her precious balance.

In fact this time she pitched forward, her jacket went flying and only at the last second did she catch herself and somehow manage to keep from landing face-first in the dirt.

“Whoa! Nice save!”

Oh, sure, now he noticed her.

Lacey stood straight again, brushing her hands together to get the dirt off of them and retrieving her shoe with a yank to get the heel unstuck. Then she brushed the dirt off her bare foot, replaced her shoe and rubbed her hands together again.

When she was finally put back together she looked up to find that Seth Camden—if that was who he was—had abandoned his hole digger and gloves, and was picking up her jacket. It had flown off her arm and landed on the ground a few feet away.

He grabbed her jacket, shook the soil from it and then stood up to look in her direction.

The Camden blue eyes—Lacey did recall mention of those somewhere. Now she knew why they were noteworthy; when her gaze met his, the sight of bright, brilliant cobalt eyes staring quizzically back at her was something to see.

And since they went with a face that was drop-dead gorgeous enough to steal her breath, for a moment all Lacey could do was stare.

With his sharply drawn, chiseled features, the man before her couldn’t have been more handsome if he’d tried. He had a squarish jaw and chin, a perfectly shaped mouth with lips that were full but not too full, a just-long-enough nose. And those eyes peering at her from beneath a straight, strong brow.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a deep voice that was so masculine it made very girly goose bumps erupt along the surface of her skin, even in the summer heat.

“Oh. Fine. I’m fine,” Lacey said, coming to her senses. “Are you Seth Camden?”

“In the flesh.”

Don’t get me started thinking about that!

“Did you come all the way out here looking for me?” he asked, that brow furrowing from beneath his hat.

He took his hat off and ran the back of his hand across his forehead. There was an inexplicable sexiness to that gesture. His hair was the dark, rich color of espresso coffee beans, and was cropped short and close to his head on the sides, with the top left just long enough to be swept back in a careless mass of waves and spikes. And he didn’t have hat-hair.

Then the Stetson went on again, and the blue eyes were once more leveled at her.

Just then she realized that he’d asked her a question and was probably waiting for an answer. She’d been so lost in gawking at him.

“I went to your house first. I found someone at one of your barns to tell me where you were and how to get to you. I needed to speak with you, so—”

“Here you are,” he finished for her. “What can I do for you …? Or maybe you can tell me who you are first …?”

Another bit of negligence. Lacey wasn’t ordinarily so flustered, and she didn’t understand why she was now. She just hoped it would stop.

“I’m sorry. I’m Lacey Kincaid—”

“I’ve met Morgan Kincaid—he and I did the closing on the property he just bought from us. And Ian and Hutch Kincaid—they’ve been around town—”

“Morgan is my father. Ian and Hutch are my older brothers. I don’t know if my father told you or not, but the property he bought from you is to be used as the new training center for the Monarchs—”

“Right, your father’s football team.”

“And the project has been given to me to manage.” Lacey hadn’t intended to sound so proud of that fact, but it was such a big deal to her she couldn’t ever seem to say it without sounding pleased with herself.

“And that’s what you want to talk to me about?” he asked, handing her her jacket as he did.

Lacey accepted it and went on. “There are three things I wanted to talk to you about,” she said in her best I’m-the-boss-and-this-is-all-business tone. “I just got into town yesterday and I’m staying in an apartment Hutch owns. But it’s in Northbridge and it takes me fifteen minutes to get from there to the site—”

“Fifteen minutes is an eternity to you?”

That was the way she’d said it. “It would just be better if I could be closer, and I’ve been told that the nearest thing to the site is your place, and that you have a guesthouse. I was wondering if you might be interested in renting it?”

“To you? For you to live in?”

“It would just be me, yes. And I would hardly be there except to sleep because this project is going to keep me on-site the rest of the time. You probably wouldn’t even know I was there.”

“Oh, I think I would …”

Lacey had no idea what that meant but it had come with a hint of a smile that curled only the left side of his mouth. A smile that was even sexier than the brow wipe had been.

But why things like that were even occurring to her, she had no idea. She opted to ignore the phenomena and go on as if she hadn’t heard his comment.

“I only need somewhere to sleep and shower and change clothes, really. And of course I’ll pay rent—”

“You’d need a kitchen, too, wouldn’t you? How else would you fix meals without a kitchen?” he asked, giving no indication whether or not the guesthouse did have a kitchen, merely seeming curious. In a laid-back, slightly amused way that was also sexy but still a little frustrating to Lacey.

“Okay, yes, a kitchen—or just a kitchenette where I could make coffee would be nice—but most days I eat whatever I can order in at the site,” she answered, as if it were inconsequential. “And if you had some pressing need for your guesthouse while I’m using it, I could always spend a night or two with one of my brothers. If it was absolutely necessary—”

“And make that looong fifteen-minute commute?”

He was clearly teasing her because he’d said that with a full smile. A very engaging smile.

But Lacey was sweltering in that sun and didn’t have time to waste admiring his smile, so she said, “Yes,” as if his question had been serious. “The second thing I needed to talk to you about is the house and barn on the property we bought from you—”

“Yeah, we thought long and hard about getting rid of those. My great-grandfather was born in that house, his father used the barn as a lumber mill and that was where my great-grandfather started the business. As kids when we’d visit here we’d have sleepovers in the old place. But since nobody’s used anything over there since we were all kids, and since the land is played out both for crops and for grazing, we decided to sell.”

“Yes, well,” Lacey said, impatient with the family history. “There are some things still in the attic in the house and in the barn—”

“There are? I thought we got everything out.”

“Apparently not. Since they’re your family’s belongings, you should be the one to go through them, and throw them out or move them or whatever. And third,” Lacey went on, “my father was … Well, let’s say he wasn’t happy with the way things worked out when he bought this land—”

“Your brother was supposed to get the Bowen farm for the training center but he ended up getting the girl instead and marrying her,” Seth Camden said with more amusement. Then, apparently to explain how he knew that, he added, “Northbridge is a small town.”

“Right. Well. Just when Ian thought they could pick up the McDoogal property instead—”

“I’d already bought it.”

“Yes, you had.” And Lacey couldn’t be sure whether that had been because the Camdens had genuinely wanted the McDoogal place or if it had been a classic Camden move.

Buying the property out from under them had put the Kincaids in a position where they had needed to deal with the Camdens rather than the cash-strapped McDoogals in order to get any land at all. They’d ended up paying more for less acreage—not the McDoogal place, but the original Camden homestead.