Michelle Celmer - The Millionaire's Club - Connor, Tom & Gavin - Round-the-Clock Temptation / Highly Compromised Position / A Most Shocking Revelation

Even though he was now technically her employee, she wasn’t immune to all that strapping muscle and tanned skin. Not that a man being her employee had ever stopped her before. In fact, that made it all the more exciting. The stolen moments in the stable when no one was around. A quick roll in the field at sunset. Nights on a blanket under the stars after everyone else had gone to bed.

A little shiver of excitement passed through her when she thought of taking a tumble with Connor.

Those relationships—if you could even call them relationships—were always brief and uncomplicated. That was all men seemed to want from her, which worked out just fine since she’d never wanted to get married. She didn’t even want to settle down. Not that she wouldn’t enjoy the companionship. She might have thought about kids someday way in the future, someone to take over the farm someday. But in her mind, to have kids you ought to be married, and marriage meant compromise, losing your identity. She wasn’t going to do that for anyone. Not after knowing what it had done to her momma.

Katherine had been from a wealthy Dallas family—a city girl. But when she’d met Will Windcroft she’d fallen desperately in love with him. She’d married him after only three months of courting and left the excitement of the big city for a simpler life on the horse-breeding farm. According to what Nita had been told, as happy as they appeared on the outside, deep down her momma missed her life in Dallas and never quite adjusted to the harsh conditions of the farm. But she knew Rose and Nita were happy there, and she loved Will too much to leave him. Not one to cause a fuss, she’d never told her husband how she felt, and tried to keep up the facade of the happy wife.

Nita sometimes wondered if the cancer had only been a symptom, and what her momma really died of was a broken heart. She would probably never know. What information she did have came from her sister and her mother’s old friends. Her daddy, all these years later, still wouldn’t talk about it. She knew there wasn’t a day that passed that he didn’t think about his wife and miss her terribly. Sometimes Nita would pass by his room and hear him talking to the picture of Katherine that he kept next to his bed.

She was sure Katherine was the reason why her daddy had raised Rose and Nita to be independent, to stand up for what they wanted and believed in. He taught them to follow their dreams and not compromise themselves for anyone or anything. Katherine was the reason why he hadn’t made a fuss about Rose moving to the city instead of staying to help on the farm. Rose always had been like their mother in that way.

Nita heard a soft snoring sound and realized Connor had fallen asleep.

She sat back on his thighs and grinned. She really had worn him out. He’d done pretty well today considering his lack of experience. She had a feeling he was the adaptable sort, though she hadn’t completely figured him out yet. He was so guarded, so… controlled. He seemed to say exactly the right thing all the time, whether it was what he was feeling or not. The concept was foreign to her, since, as they had determined earlier, she wasn’t shy about speaking her mind.

She grazed her fingers over the puckered skin on his back. Burns, bullet holes—what he must have seen, must have been through. No wonder his eyes looked so old. So…wounded.

She very gently climbed off the bed and tiptoed to the door. She wouldn’t mind getting into Connor’s head, seeing exactly what made him tick. She wouldn’t mind getting to know other parts of him as well. She wondered if a guy like him would be interested in a woman like her. It might have been her imagination, but when she’d stepped up on the porch that morning, before he realized who she was, she could swear she’d seen male appreciation in his eyes.

That, she decided, flicking off the light and glancing back at his peacefully sleeping form, would be something worth looking into.

“The number one rule on the farm is safety,” Nita told Connor. She stood in the corral with Buttercup, a chocolate-brown mare.

Apparently her back massage had done the trick last night. He’d awoken that morning feeling refreshed and full of energy. So far he’d followed her through her daily routine and had learned how to feed and water the horses, how to muck a stall and how to put on a halter and saddle.

A great deal of what they did was hot, dirty, physically demanding work. But it was good, honest work. And though he couldn’t put his finger on the exact reason, there was something about it that made him feel so… peaceful.

His orders now were to sit on the fence and observe as she trained the horse, and so he had for the past hour. Normally that would have had him crawling out of his skin, the way sitting behind a desk had. This was different. It was a beautiful fall day, with blue skies as far as the eye could see, and though the air was cool, the sun felt warm on his back and shoulders.

Simply watching Nita was a treat in itself. She had a way with the big graceful animals, some kind of second sense. She could anticipate the horses every move, every thought. It was obvious she really loved what she did, loved them, and the feeling was most definitely mutual.

It was all he needed to see to convince him there was no way she would ever do anything to hurt her animals. The poisoned feed, the holes—there was no way she could have done it herself. She just wasn’t capable.

“When you approach a horse, especially in the corral, you never do it from behind,” Nita said. “Horses have a blind spot and they get startled easily. Make sure she can see you. And approach from the left if you can.”

“Why the left?” he asked.

“Because that’s the side they’re used to being handled on. Although Buttercup here is a big cream puff. It would take an awful lot to spook her. Isn’t that right girl,” Nita crooned, stroking the mare’s neck. As if answering her, the mare lowered her big head and nudged Nita’s shoulder.

“It’s all about respect,” she told him. “If you respect them, they’ll respect you.”

“You make it look so easy.”

“Believe me, it’s not always like this. I may not have bullet holes in me, but I’ve been bitten, kicked, thrown from the saddle and stomped on more times than I can count. I like the challenge.” She stroked the horse’s neck, affection in her eyes. “Not that I don’t appreciate a horse like Buttercup every now and then.”

“Is she yours?”

“She belongs to a family in Fort Worth. I’m training her for their daughter. I’ll miss her, though. She’s a real sweetheart.”

“How long do you usually have a horse you’re training?”

“It could take a month, sometimes two. Sometimes even longer. It just depends on what they’ll be using the horse for, and how it takes to the training.” She looked over at him. “You sure this isn’t boring you to tears?”

He was finding it all quite interesting. Horse farming had never been something he imagined himself enjoying. The truth was, he never much considered anything but his chosen course, first with the army, then taking his father’s place at the engineering firm, though technically speaking, that hadn’t been chosen by him. He followed in his father’s footsteps because that’s what had been expected of him. To make up where his rebellious twin brother lacked.

Not that his father ever noticed.

“I’m sure,” he told Nita.

She shrugged. “Okay. I guess we’re about done here.”

She called to one of the hands and instructed the young man to take Buttercup and set her out to pasture with the other horses, then she and Connor walked toward the stable together.