The Maverick Meets His Match (Hearts of Wyoming Book 2)(2)

“I’ve been busy.” She hoped he didn’t miss the edge in her voice. After all, her grandfather’s funeral had only been a few days ago. The grief was still raw.

Of course, with Ty everything was business. That’s what her grandfather, J. M. Prescott, had liked about him. Because that’s the way her grandfather had been.

Nothing personal, just business.

She’d had to swallow a gallon of pride when JM, his health deteriorating from cancer, had installed Ty Martin as head of the family’s rodeo stock company just a few weeks before his passing. Temporarily, her grandfather had said. Nothing personal. But it had felt personal. Very personal.

For ten years, since her father’s untimely death, she’d made it her mission to be ready to lead the company when her grandfather retired. All through high school and college she’d worked after classes and every weekend, missing football games, dances, proms, just about any social occasion. Extracurricular activities had been raking out stalls, training horses, loading trailers, and organizing rodeo events. Every college course she took, even attending business school, had been with one goal in mind—to be ready to lead Prescott Rodeo Company. The few guys she had dated had either been rodeo hands or rodeo cowboys, but none had understood her drive or tolerated it for long.

She’d been the only Prescott interested in running the company, much to her grandfather’s disappointment, apparently, given the “temporary” hiring of Ty Martin—an arrogant man, full of himself, and as strikingly handsome as Michelangelo’s stone statue of Apollo, and just as cold. A man who was a lawyer by degree and a land developer by trade. A rancher’s son who, at the first opportunity, had gotten as far away from herds as a prairie dog facing a stampede. Just like he’d gotten far away from her ten years ago.

Nothing personal.

“I think I’ll freshen up a bit,” Sheila said, taking a step back. “Before the reading of the will starts.”

“I’ll come with you,” Mandy offered. Anything not to be left alone with Ty. Not now. Not here.

“Stay, dear, in case Brian comes in. He’ll want to get started right away, and I’ll only be a minute.” Sheila smiled at Ty before she turned and continued down the hall toward the restrooms at the far end. Mandy didn’t follow. After what her mother had said, she’d be admitting she didn’t want to be alone with Ty, and she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction.

Still leaning against the doorjamb, he shifted slightly so she could pass, pushing back his hat and flashing that disarming grin of his. A grin that had surely lured more than one woman to a broken heart—including Mandy. But that was long ago.

“So maybe we should talk about it now. While we’re waiting,” he said as she slid by so close she could feel the heat of his body, smell the fresh scent of his soap. It distracted her. She didn’t want to be distracted. Not today.

“About Greenville?” Mandy shrugged in an attempt to look unruffled despite the churning inside her, like beaters in a mixing bowl of nerves. It was a good thing she hadn’t had time to eat. She hadn’t had time to change, either, having worked with the parade horses that morning. She still wore her dirt-speckled shirt, faded jeans, and had pulled her long brown hair back in a pony tail to keep it off her face. She must have looked a dusty mess and clearly not her mother’s daughter.

She hadn’t even changed her scoffed barn boots and boots were her one and only fashion obsession. She had ones made of leather, python, lizard, and caiman. She had red ones, white, gray, brown, black, tan, honey, and even a purple pair that she bought on an impulse after a really bad day. Snip-toed, rounded, pointed, and squared. Embroidered, embossed, distressed, and inlaid. Every famous maker, several no one ever heard of, and, of course, a number that were custom made. Most fell into the cowgirl category, but there were a few that were spiked heeled and knee high, and one dominatrix-style thigh-high black pair she’d bought to impress a certain cowboy she’d been dating—but never had the courage to wear. That was the extent of her fashion sense, or lack thereof, depending on how one felt about her taste.

Not that it mattered what she wore and she certainly didn’t care about impressing Ty.

She circled the oval wood table, putting it between them, and looked at Ty through the narrow space framed by two chrome pendant lights dangling from the high ceiling. She’d been in the long, narrow conference room once before, ten years ago, but she remembered nothing about that day. She’d been crying too hard. “What do you want to know?”

Mandy pulled out one of the table’s black leather chairs and sank into it, taking refuge in its overstuffed comfort as she set the large purse she carried on the floor.

“Everything,” he said, still standing in the doorway like some gatekeeper controlling who entered and exited. “What stock you’re pulling, how many of the crew you’re using, your expense estimates, how much you expect to make on the event.”

This from a man who knew nothing about supplying stock. Those beaters inside her whirred faster.

“Everything,” he repeated.

“You can get that from Karen, our admin.”

Ty’s mouth drew in, and his eyes narrowed as he stepped into the room, covering the distance to the table in two long strides. He placed his hands on the table’s polished surface and leaned forward until he was mere inches from her face so that he blocked out everything around her. Even with that strong jaw of his clenched, he was still too attractive for her own good. She tightened her grip on the chair arms as her pulse quickened, determined to meet his steely gaze with a glare of her own.