Chapter One
Emily
Houston traffic was like a moody lover. Sometimes accommodating. But most of the time, not so much. Today, on the day I needed it most, it wouldn’t give me a break.
I pulled into my parking spot in the garage structure with just two minutes to spare. I hustled to the elevator and went up to my company’s office floor.
“Faster,” I urged the elevator, patting my hair and hoping I’d done my make-up okay while in a rush at home. A big day like this meant I hadn’t been able to sleep a wink.
The doors parted, revealing the receptionist’s desk. Penelope waved to me and muted the phone with her shoulder. “Hey, Em! The big guy’s looking for you.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he is,” I said, taking a quick, deep breath. There were already a ton of people in the office. Some were heading to the break room and kitchen to get coffee or to heat up their breakfasts. Others were chatting, doing the normal morning things.
I spotted the door to the CEO’s office, and to my relief it was closed. If I was lucky, I could scoot past it to my office, and no one important would know that I had technically come in late.
I ducked my head, hoping that no one else would notice me and call out my name. I got halfway across the office, and had just walked past the closed door to my boss’s office, when I heard him say, “Emily,” in a deep, booming voice.
A second later, the door opened. The man who stood before me was tall and imposing, with salt and pepper hair. I’d once overheard a couple of assistants describe him as a “silver fox,” but the thought had grossed me out. Not that I had anything against silver foxes, but I certainly wasn’t interested in this one.
I tried to cover my shock and nervousness. “Morning, boss,” I said.
“Come in, Em—need to talk to you for a minute,” he said.
I nodded and followed him into the office, closing the door behind me.
“I was just about to come and see you,” I said. “Sarah told me you were looking for me.”
“We’re going to leave in about thirty minutes to head out to Mustang Ridge,” he said. “Have you got everything ready?”
I nodded. “I’m ready to go, I just need to check my emails and make sure I’ve responded to the urgent ones,” I said.
“I’m going to want you ready to take up a lead position on this, Em,” he said. “This is one of the biggest deals this company has had going for it in three years—it’s important.”
“I know,” I said. “I was up half the night reviewing the proposal.”
“As long as you managed to get enough sleep not to fall on your face later,” he said with a grin.
“I’ve run on caffeine and nerves before, and I will do it again.” I answered his grin with a weak smile.
“Let’s go over the details one more time before I let you go,” he said.
I nodded and sat down. I’d had those same details running through my mind most of the night, so I could recite the facts and figures from memory, which made him happy.
“Okay. We meet up with them today, and we should have an answer within a few weeks, right?”
He nodded. “This is going to be the first time I let you take such a prominent role. I want to make sure you’re ready for it.”
I felt a little lurch in my stomach. Most of the deals the company had made in the past year had kept me in the background, mostly doing research and getting things ready for the pitch. But I’d been waiting for a chance like this ever since I’d taken the job.
You know what you’re doing. You’re not going to let him down, you’ve rehearsed all this mess a dozen times, I reminded myself as we went over everything one last time.
“I’ll let you get to your office now, ,” he said, rising to his feet. “See you in a few minutes.”
I stood up also, feeling the little wobble in my knees—a combination of nerves and lack of sleep—but I covered it up immediately, before he could even notice. “See you,” I said.
“By the way, Em—try not to be late again.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I said, giving him a wry smile. “I left early, but apparently not early enough.”
“The one thing you can count on with Houston traffic is that it’s going to be worse than you think,” he said. “Just keep in mind that people are watching you, and what you could get away with if you weren’t my daughter, everyone’s going to try and call out. Nothing personal against you—but there are folks in any business who’d resent the daughter of the CEO being in a cushy job while they’re still climbing the ladder.”
I nodded again. “I know,” I said. “It won’t be a problem.”
I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before opening the door to his office and letting myself out. Some of the cheerful chaos in the main part of the office had started to calm down as people went to their desks, and I hurried to my office, intent on wrapping up any little chores before we left for Mustang Ridge.
“Hey, slugger!”
I looked up at the sound of Jacob’s voice and gave him a smile. He was on his way back to his own office, a giant mug of coffee in one hand. I slowed to a near-stop when it became clear to me that he wanted to chat. Hopefully he wouldn’t want to talk for too long—I only had twenty minutes before it was time to leave.
Jacob had taken as much care with his looks as I had with mine, but that wasn’t anything unusual for him. His dark brown hair was slicked back, his face was so clean-shaven that I wasn’t even sure he really had to shave in the first place. He was in a tailored suit that looked like a slightly updated version of something from a 1920s gangster movie. I had long suspected that Jacob might spend even more time on his skincare routine than I did, but of course being a native Texan, he would never admit it.
“I heard you’re coming with us to podunkville,” he said.
I rolled my eyes, still smiling. “It’s Mustang Ridge. Really something you should know, since you’re going to be helping pitch them on the development there.”
“Have you seen that place?” he asked. “It’s only maybe three thousand people living in the whole town—it is podunkville, whatever its proper name is. They might not even have electricity.”
I laughed and shook my head. “They have electricity, and even the Internet.”
“Will wonders never cease,” he said, shaking his head. “I was hoping maybe we could sneak off for lunch, after the big proposal and before the boring tour.”
“It’ll depend on what the big guy wants,” I told him. “He might take a notion to have a big lunch with some of the town fathers, you know? Wouldn’t want to go missing from that.”
“Well, if nothing else, promise me that I can sit next to you, huh?”
“If you can get a spot next to me before someone else takes it, it’s yours,” I said. “I gotta get into my office, Jake—we’re heading out in less than twenty.”
“Oh yeah, I know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll talk your dad into stopping at Shipley’s on the way out, if you promise to be sweet to me on that long ride out to nowhere.”
“If you don’t talk him into it, I will,” I said. “Catch you in twenty!” I turned and hurried the rest of the way to my office before Jacob could waylay me any longer, unlocking my door and turning on the light inside all in one movement. I would have just enough time to get everything squared away before we left. I closed the door behind me to signal to everyone else in the office that I wasn’t to be disturbed. Of course, knowing that I was going to be heading out on a proposal trip, no one was likely to try and talk to me, but it was always good to make sure.
By the time we approached the town of Mustang Ridge, I had to admit that Jacob wasn’t far off in his skepticism—it was tiny. Looking out through the tinted window of my dad’s SUV, it was easy to see that we’d left behind any semblance of major towns a good hour before, and the turnoff from the highway was so unexceptional that I was pretty sure most of the people who were even looking for the town could miss it. Dad had taken the time to change out of his usual oxfords into a pair of good boots, ones he’d owned since I was a kid—worn, but well-maintained with lots of oil and curing. He’d told me more than once that they were the proper shoes for any native Texan man, to keep him in touch with the ground, and they were definitely more convenient for the tour we were supposed to be going on than his office shoes.
“This place definitely needs building up,” Jacob said from behind me. He’d insisted that I take the shotgun seat, that he would be perfectly comfortable sitting in the back. I hadn’t argued that much—I tended to get motion sickness in the back, though not usually bad enough to actually throw up.
I glanced over at my dad. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was about fifty-five, since he still had most of his hair, and it was only starting to go gray. I knew that he dyed it at home, carefully—never wanting to make it look like he dyed it—but he mostly managed to look like a man’s man, in spite of the suits he wore. He didn’t get manicures, but he took care of his hands. He kept himself clean-shaved, and I knew one of his own personal luxuries was a twice-weekly trip to the barber shop for a professional shave, which came with a hot towel treatment and all that masculine luxury. He’d throw a fit if you suggested he’d ever even heard of moisturizer, but I’d seen the little tube of it—comfortably labeled “for men”—in his medicine cabinet at home. It was a big part of how he managed to look like he was in his fifties when he was actually about ten years older—that, and the fact that he’d hopped on board the sunblock bandwagon back when it had first started, and he’d gotten me in the habit, too.
We finally arrived at the town of Mustang Ridge. It was actually pretty cute, maybe in part because it was so small. We went past cotton and wheat fields, all of them with a little farmhouse tucked away far from the road heading into the town proper. This was farming territory, not ranch land, and I had to agree with my dad—and ultimately with Jacob—that it was probably a blessing for them that we were coming in to develop some of the real estate, to bring some more business to the town.
But as we got to the center of the town, there was another part of me that almost regretted it was bound to change, after we got done with it. The little town’s center, with the courthouse, town hall, and administrative offices, was surrounded by a little huddle of businesses that looked timeless. I could almost tell when each of the buildings had gone up, based on the architecture: a diner that looked like something out of the 50s, a repair shop that seemed like it had been around since the Great Depression—even if it had managed to keep up with the times with the signage—and a tiny grocery store that in Houston would be little more than a convenience store.
As we made our way around, I couldn’t help but notice the people who were out and about, most of them on foot. They looked almost cute, dressed in jeans and work shirts, a few of the women in frumpy-chic dresses or mid-length skirts, everyone in sneakers or boots. There was a little landscaping around the town square, but it was pretty plain looking apart from the buildings themselves.
Dad parked the car and we got out and headed for the town’s administrative offices—a big building that housed the town planning office, the sheriff’s office, and the town’s postal services.
“Okay, this is where we’re going to get the plans for that parcel we’re looking at,” Dad told me as we walked up from the cracked, sunbaked parking lot nearby. There were a few cars scattered around, but more trucks, and I thought to myself that there were probably lots of people in the town who wore multiple hats—not just town officials but also farmers, or business-owners.
“Do you have the email, Em?” Jacob asked.
My mind blanked for a second, but then I swung my purse down from my shoulder as I remembered that I hadn’t printed it off—we didn’t actually need the email itself, just the information in it. I opened my purse and searched for my phone in it, so I could call up the email for what we needed. My father and Jacob went on ahead. I probably should have asked them to stop and wait for me, but I nearly had my phone. I could feel it lodged in one of the smaller inside pockets. I opened my purse wider and peered inside.
There it was. I snagged it with the tips of my fingers and had just started to pull it out when I hit something full-on, colliding with it hard enough to rebound and tumble backward. My purse fell completely off my arm. Its contents scattered over the parking lot.
I barely caught a glimpse of the obstruction . It was a person, rather than a thing—but my first impression was that the person I’d run into might as well have been a statue. He was a good foot taller than me, and twice as wide, though he was lean and muscled rather than obese.
After I landed on my butt with a jolt, my teeth snapping together painfully, I got a better look at the man.
He had shoulder-length blond hair, and as he turned around to face me, looking startled, I saw that he had beautiful blue eyes. His lean, surprised face was covered from cheekbones to chin with long stubble—not quite a beard, but more than a guy would get after not shaving for a day or two.
My phone had come out of my hand as I’d fallen and I looked around in a panic, but instead of finding it smashed on the ground, I saw it in the man-mountain’s hand. He’d caught it.
“I’m so sorry, hon,” the man said, bending over and then almost dropping to his knees to start picking up the things from my purse.
“No—no, it’s my fault, I wasn’t paying attention,” I said, gathering myself up and fumbling to get my things together.
“I should have heard you coming,” he continued, as if he hadn’t even heard me. “I’ve got my head in the clouds today.”
“No, really, I was looking for my phone instead of watching where I was going,” I insisted. Up close, the man was actually pretty gorgeous. His cheeks were pink with some sunburn, and his face looked weathered, but he was lean and quick and obviously young, maybe around my own age.
“Hey! Em, you okay here? What’s going on?” Jacob hurried over to me, scowling, and I wasn’t sure what to say. It was embarrassing enough to run into someone—even a big guy like the one helping me get my things together—hard enough to knock myself on my ass, but worse to have to admit it to someone else.
“It’s nothing, Jake,” I said quickly.
“What, you thought you’d just mow down anyone in your way, hot shot?” Jacob glared at the man I’d run into. Instead of being embarrassed for myself, I started to feel embarrassed for the man.
He stood up with my stuff still in my hands. Jacob’s eyes widened slightly when he realized how big the guy was.
“Neither of us were paying attention, and we ended up proving a law of physics,” the man said calmly. “I don’t think she’s hurt—but I’m sure she’s glad you came back to check on her.”
“Yes,” I said, glad for the change in subject. “I think I’ve just about got everything together.”
The man turned to me and handed me my phone and the other things he’d picked up with a smile. Then he offered me his hand to help me up onto my feet.
I accepted, even though I could tell Jacob wasn’t fond of that little moment, and I gave the man I’d run into a smile to match his own. “Thank you for helping me out,” I said. “I’m sorry again that I ran into you.”
“All my fault,” the man said again. “You sure you’re okay?” He looked me over—not in a leering way, but like he was checking for evidence that I’d broken a bone or something.
I nodded, testing to make sure I hadn’t turned my ankle or bruised myself in some way that would make taking the tour with my dad and Jacob out of the question.
“My pride was hurt more than I was,” I told him. “Thank you again.”
He nodded and turned away, and I dusted myself off quickly.
“Let’s not keep Dad waiting,” I told Jacob, starting in the direction we’d been going. I couldn’t help watching the gorgeous man-mountain as he headed off on a different path. Well, if I was going to make an ass of myself by running into someone—literally—at least the person I’d plowed into was unharmed, charming, and good-looking to boot.