Pamela Britton - Cowboy Lessons

Ack. Where the heck had that thought come from?

“Why not? Maybe I need to take life a little less seriously. Stop and smell the roses, if you will. Or the manure as the case may be.”

“So you looked around for a ranch to steal?”

“I didn’t steal it. And, no, that’s not why I did it. Frankly, it wasn’t until this very moment that I realized I have a hankering to learn to ride the range.”

“Ride the range?”

“Sure. Herd cattle. Cook over a campfire. That sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing,” she repeated because she really couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think it’s that easy?” She snapped her fingers to illustrate. “Have you any idea how much work a ranch is?”

“So, then, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll sell the land back to you.”

For the second time, Amanda felt speechless. “You’ll do what?”

“Sell it back to you.”

“Mr. Beringer—”

“Scott,” he insisted.

Scott seemed like the wrong name for him. Attila. Genghis. Those seemed more appropriate.

“Scott,” she said mildly, even though inside she felt as if she’d woken up in the middle of a Saturday Night Live skit. “My father is old. And he’s been ill lately. Certainly not well enough to teach you the ropes.”

“Then you teach me.”

“Oh, no. No. No. No.” She waved her hands and shook her head, that mane of hair of hers bouncing around her shoulders.

“Sure, why not? I leave for Singapore tomorrow. We can start my horse lessons when I get back in a week.”

“Horse lessons?”

“Yeah. I’ll need to learn to ride my new horse.”

He really must be insane.

And yet, what if he were serious? What if he really would give her the opportunity to buy the ranch back? Could she pass that up?

“No. I can’t do it.” And she wouldn’t, no matter how tempting Beelzebub’s offer. “I have a busy life, Mr. Beringer, and I don’t have time to baby-sit.” Although with the ranch gone, maybe she would.

“But I promise to be a good baby. No crying. No whining. And most important, no dirty diapers.” He smiled a jack-o’-lantern grin.

But Amanda was impervious to his charms. “No.”

He looked disappointed. He really did. “Well,” he said, pulling a business card from his shirt pocket as if he’d expected to run into a fellow tycoon out here. Unbelievable. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

She almost didn’t take the card. Almost, but he waved it in front of her in a way that’d make it rude if she didn’t. Besides, her father had always taught her to be polite. He was the new owner. She should be nice to him.

New owner.

Her hand clenched the card, twisting the paper.

He must have seen it because she thought she saw his face lose some of its spark. Well, too bad. She’d find another way to get the place back, that she vowed. She crossed her arms in front of her, telling him with her eyes that he should just leave.

They stared at each other for a full ten seconds before he finally said. “Okay. Well, then. I guess I’ll be going.”

“Well then, see you later.”

“Bye.”

But he still didn’t leave right away. Instead he looked at her kind of strangely. As if he was memorizing her or something.

“Have a nice day,” he said.

Have a nice day? Was he playing a scene from Leave It to Beaver?

She watched him turn and walk away.

Scott Beringer wanted to be a cowboy.

She should teach him how to be one. And make sure he hated every moment of it.

He climbed into a brand-new Mercedes, which, by the looks of it, probably cost more than all the back taxes he must have paid. The thought depressed her. How could they possibly hope to pay the man back?

“What’d he say?”

Amanda turned to her father, a man nearly as tall as she was, but who seemed to be shrinking daily. His blue eyes had gone rheumy in recent years, but they were still bright. Beneath a cap of gray hair his face looked red, though whether caused by drink or disappointment, she couldn’t say. “He said you have a week to get out.”

“He what?” Roy Johnson asked, straightening his stooped frame, the belly he’d had since before she could remember hanging over a tarnished belt buckle he’d won back in his rodeo days.

“Kidding, Dad. But it’d serve you right if he did.”

Her father squinted his eyes at the departing car, his hands hooking into his leather belt. “He’s younger than I thought he’d be.”

“He wants cowboy lessons.”

“Cowboy lessons?”

She eyed the man she loved more than any person on Earth. Her only family, and yet a man who’d managed to disappoint her more times in life than she cared to admit. She added today’s fiasco to the list. “Yeah. Ranching lessons. Horse lessons. The whole bit.”

“Are you going to teach him?”

“I told him to find someone else.”

He blinked gray lashes, still staring at the car. “Humph. I wondered why he wanted to buy that horse.”

“That horse could have killed him.”

“Nah. He was safer than a tick on a deer.”

She shook her head in disgust. She almost left it at that; experience told her that trying to make her dad accept responsibility for anything was a task best left alone. But she couldn’t keep quiet.

“You should have told me what was going on, Dad.”

“I never wanted this life for you, Amanda,” he said, still not meeting her gaze. “You know that. It’s why I sent you to that fancy college.”

Fancy, in her dad’s opinion, was anything away from the small town they lived in. Los Molina was fifty minutes from the Bay Area, but you’d never know it. Nestled in a small valley, the town enjoyed mild winters and cool summers. Perfect ranching country with rolling green hills and shady oaks.

“Dad, I happen to like this life.”

“I think you could do better. Heck, I didn’t let you go off to Cal Poly and get a degree in business agriculture so you could come home and use it.”

“But I want to use that knowledge.” Even though that hadn’t always been the case. When she’d first realized she’d need to come home because of her father’s failing health, she’d been bitterly disappointed. She’d wanted to use her degree to find her dream job: working for a thoroughbred breeding farm. Instead she’d been forced to come back home. But that was ancient history. She’d learned to love this place in the past few years.

“It’s a hundred thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“You asked me earlier how much I owed. One hundred thousand dollars.”

She just about fell over. Lord, how the heck was she going to get the place back?

I want to learn to be a cowboy. The words bounced off the inside of her head as if she were in a drum. But she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

Could she?

She could. And a week later—a week during which she regretted agreeing to the ridiculous scheme the day after he’d proposed it—Amanda woke up to the buwap-wap-wap-wap of helicopter blades, which rattled her bedroom window and shook dust off her ceiling.

She knew immediately who it was.

“Give me a break,” she muttered, tossing back the antique-ivory lace cover her grandmother had made almost seventy years ago. Leave it to Scott “Mr. Billionaire” Beringer to arrive in a helicopter.

She’d been dreading this day for a week, and so she took her time crawling out of bed. The hardwood floor felt cold beneath her bare feet as she crossed to the window and looked up. Sure enough, a white-and-black helicopter glided into view, the Global Dynamics logo visible against the gray-and-red sky of an early morning dawn. Pique made her jerk the lace curtains back as she moved to turn away, but just as quickly, she moved back to the window.