“Mr. Hernandez, it’s a pleasure to have you on our staff.” The breathy voice of the woman—what was her name—showing Cisco Hernandez to his new office was getting on his last nerve.

“I appreciate the welcome.” Cisco murmured the words because that’s what you did. You were always thankful for compliments, even when they happened to be delivered by an individual obviously seeking something. “I was expecting to meet with the senior partners. Is that on my schedule for this afternoon?”

“Why, yes!” The woman turned and batted her big fake eyelashes at him.

Cisco couldn’t help it. The eyelashes literally reminded him of the caterpillars he and his brothers used to catch in the front yard of their ranch house when they were young. He drew back and tried not to cringe. This blonde would probably call herself a bombshell. Her tight dress made her butt look very round and very inviting if you were into that sort of thing. Her hair was sprayed into an updo that left her neck and the Chinese character tattoo on the back of it exposed to view. Her dangly earrings were silver and turquoise, and her heels were so high that he expected her to plummet to the floor at any second.

For some reason, just looking at this woman—Tandy was her name—reminded him of the young lady he’d come across in the elevator less than thirty minutes before. Cisco wondered how she was doing. Had she found both her geographical and emotional locations? Was she having a good experience in the building? And why was he really worrying about that?

She had been such an odd creature, and yet intriguing was most certainly the word he would have used to describe her. From her shapeless black trousers and green polo shirt to her messy brown hair, she was the polar opposite of Tandy. The woman in the elevator was down-to-earth. You could see it in her big green eyes. He had the feeling that nothing came easily to her and that she worked and fought for each and every scrap from the proverbial table of life.

“Mr. Hernandez?” Tandy blinked her big smoky eyes. How she moved her eyelids with all of that makeup in place was beyond Cisco.

“I’m sorry, were you saying something?” Cisco tried to keep his tone pleasant and engaged. He was having a tough time. This was his new office. He wanted to sit in his chair, pick up a file folder, and start burying himself in the first case he could find.

“The partners wanted to meet with you in a half hour.” Tandy lifted her hand to her mouth and giggled. “I hope that’s all right. I didn’t think to call and ask you if you had other plans since this is your first day.”

“I don’t have other plans.” Cisco wondered why she was giggling. Was there something funny about this?

Her tittering grew even worse. Cisco noticed she had overlapping bottom teeth. How odd. She was a very pretty young woman, but he was starting to wonder if that was her best feature. “Then, I’ll just let you get comfortable. Your meeting with the partners is down the hall in the big conference room. It’s on the right side down there!” She leaned around him and managed to simultaneously give him a perfect view of her cleavage.

Sheesh! He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Tandy. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

The little blonde thankfully exited his office, and Cisco was finally alone. He wandered around the small room. It wasn’t much, but it was an office with a good view of the park below the building. That was more than most people could expect at his age when they came out of law school and passed the bar exam.

Reaching for the nameplate on his desk, Cisco picked it up and ran his fingers across the surface. FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ. He had been named for his father’s father. Considering his mother was Caucasian and his father’s family had originally come from old Mexico, Cisco considered himself and his brothers to be a very odd combination of features. They all had the dark skin and black hair from their father’s family, but every one of the Hernandez brothers shared their mother’s bright blue eyes. It often put people off. Cisco could only hope that he was able to use whatever he had in his roots or otherwise to help him get his law career off the ground.

The alternative to practicing law was to go back to ranching. And if Cisco never saw another ranch in his life, it would be too soon. He snorted with derision as he thought about his brothers and their decisions to participate in the family business. Cisco had never been inclined. In fact, he hadn’t put a foot in a stirrup for years. He had no more interest in horses or rodeo stock or cows in general.

“Never thought I’d see a son of mine standing in an office like this.”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Cisco did not need to turn around to know who the speaker was. Unless his mother had taken to speaking in the sarcastic tones usually attributed to his father, of course. With a deep sigh, Cisco turned around and faced his father.

“What are you doing here?” Cisco muttered. “You can’t let me have one day without an interfering visit or phone call? You know, in some places they call this sort of behavior harassment.”

Joseph Hernandez—patriarch of the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company—did not even bother to smile at the jab. “I call it keeping an eye on my family and our interests,” Joe informed Cisco. “But you never were much of a team player now, were you?”

“I never thought of us as a team.” Why was it that Cisco had no problem standing in front of three hundred strangers and speaking as eloquently as a politician about his thoughts and opinions, but the first time he found himself face to face with his father, he was tongue-tied like a teenager?

Joe waved his hand, and Cisco felt appropriately dismissed. Nice. Then Joe gestured to the office in general. “You’d have a much better and bigger space at our corporate offices. Your job would probably be easier. Less hours. More money. Why stay here when you could work for Hernandez interests and pitch in with the rest of us?”

“Oh?” Cisco shot his father a mocking look of surprise. “You mean like Darren does?”

“Darren still helps out.”

“Gym Teacher Man?” Cisco threw out the half-sarcastic, half-teasing name that they had started using for his third oldest brother who had taken a position as the gym teacher at a prestigious private school after his football career had tanked. “You’re saying Gym Teacher Man has time for you and your ridiculous ranching issues?”

“They aren’t ridiculous,” Joe growled. His dark eyes snapped at his son. “They affect us all! This is your inheritance we’re talking about. Paul Weatherby of the Flying W has launched a smear campaign against us and all of our business associates. We’re talking injunctions and accusations of livestock theft mixed in with subpoenas for our friends to give testimony against us to be used in some bullshit class action suit.”

“Class action suit?” Cisco couldn’t help it. The legal implications of something this ridiculous were too odd and too silly to ignore. Why would Paul Weatherby try to drum up a class action lawsuit against the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company? It didn’t even make sense.

“There is a huge rodeo stock contract on the line here, boy.” Joe Hernandez stabbed the index finger of his right hand into the palm of his left until Cisco was surprised the digit didn’t break off. “Do you have any idea how much this means to us?”

“That would be a no.” Cisco tried to keep his voice strong. “I’m not part of that business venture. I have no knowledge of the rodeo or the stock or other things it might take to run such an enterprise. Nor do I care. This is why I am sitting in this office right here working on cases that have nothing to do with stock or rodeo or cowboys in general.”

Joe pressed his lips together and narrowed his dark gaze until Cisco struggled with the urge to cringe. He felt as though he were fourteen once again and his father was yelling at him for staying in the house to read a book instead of riding out on the range to go round up stray cattle with his brothers.

Then Cisco happened to glance at the clock. He was going to be late for his meeting. It was a good excuse. Not even Joe Hernandez could argue with the need to be on time to a meeting with the big bosses.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Cisco told his father. “I have a meeting with the senior partners that I cannot miss.” Cisco forced his mouth into the semblance of a smile. “It’s been great. Really. Let’s do this again soon.”

Then Cisco left his father in his office and made his way down the hallway. Having never actually been to the big conference room, he could only assume that it was the enormous room on his right with a large oval table inside and four very impatient-looking people standing about.

Shit. It looked like Cisco had made it to the conference room after the partners. Thank you, Joe Hernandez, for screwing that up. Nothing said “loyal employee” like making senior partners at the most prestigious law firm in the city wait on him for a simple meeting.

“Good afternoon,” Cisco said in as smooth a voice as he could muster. He glanced around at the assembled company. Three men. One woman. “It is wonderful to meet you all. I’m sorry if I’m late.”

“Not at all.” The eldest of the men stepped forward and took Cisco’s hand. “Tom Stewart.”

“Good to meet you.” Cisco shook Tom’s hand. Then he met Ralph Porter and Daniel Aquilar.

Finally, Cisco turned to take the hand of the sole female partner. She was nothing like he had expected. Usually it took years to become a partner. This woman was young, perhaps only a handful of years older than Cisco himself. She was dressed in a slinky black power suit with a pencil skirt that made her legs look miles long and a blazer that emphasized her tiny waist and voluptuous breasts. Her hair was dark, and her skin was the color of smooth caramel.

“Vittoria Velasquez,” she said in a voice coated in a warm Spanish accent. “It is wonderful to meet you, Francisco.”

He opened his mouth to say that nobody called him Francisco, and then abruptly closed it again. He was already late. There was no reason to say anything about his name right now. That could happen later. Or never. This woman was a partner. She held the key to his advancement here at the firm. If Cisco wanted to move up, which he did, then he would be whoever this woman and her colleagues wanted him to be.

“We saw that your father was here just a few moments ago,” Vittoria told Cisco, her gaze sliding toward the other partners. “We are very excited to be connected to the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company.”

“In Denver,” Ralph Porter continued, “your family’s ranch and real estate businesses are considered the top of the food chain.”

“Is that right?” Cisco managed to murmur the words through his clenched teeth. “I’m happy to provide your firm with the connection, then.”

Great. That was just what he needed. Next they would be asking him to set up some kind of business meeting. Wouldn’t that be nice? Cisco could sit there while they all planned his future. The partners would cave to his father’s demand that Cisco have an office at the Hernandez Land & Cattle Company offices. He would have to report to his father and the partners at the same time. And pretty much his life would proceed in the way that his father had planned to begin with. It would be as if Cisco had never tried to separate himself from his family’s ranch to begin with.

“So, tell me,” Daniel Aquilar said with obvious interest. “What is it like to belong to one of the oldest ranching families in Colorado?”

Cisco bit back his first response. It would not have been welcomed. Instead, he forced himself to smile. “It’s never dull. My eldest brother, Cal, still lives in the main ranch house where all of us grew up. My other brothers are focused on contracts and maintaining relationships with several other ranches and horse farms where we regularly do business.” Cisco racked his brain for some tidbit they’d find interesting. They were all eating this up as though they were ranching groupies. Then Cisco remembered his second oldest brother’s most recent endeavor. “And in the last several weeks, my brother Laredo has started training a few horses for ranch horse competition. He and one of our business associates are planning to dominate the local circuits this year.” Cisco struggled to remember the rest. Weren’t there kids these days? Oh yes. “And my niece and nephew have started riding and competing too. So, the next generation has already started to continue the tradition.”

There. As much as Cisco wanted to gag at the shameless pandering speech he had just engaged in, the partners looked enchanted. Vittoria was beaming at him. This woman was everything that Cisco should be trying to pursue. In fact, he should ask her out right now. He should take her out tonight. If it meant spending a huge chunk of change to show her a good time, he should do it. This woman was successful and driven. She was everything a man like Cisco would need in order to put more space between him and his roots. If he wanted to solidify his life outside the ranch parameters, this was the way to do it.

“We’re so glad to have you on board here at Aquilar & Associates,” Vittoria told him in a tone of voice that almost gushed. “I cannot wait to have a mutually lucrative association here in Denver. Your family name is a mainstay in Denver society, and we’re honored to add you to our ranks as a junior partner.”

“Thank you,” Cisco murmured.

So much for doing this on his own. So much for distinguishing himself without the use of his family name or connections or the bullshit that went along with it. Apparently, you could take the cowboy off the ranch, but you could not remove the stain of association from his boots.