Chapter Eight
The downtown Dallas headquarters of Montez Denim were in a high-rise building that afforded a view of the grassy knoll where the whole John F. Kennedy thing went down. She stood there facing the city, looking down there at the pretty grassy area and the gorgeous sunny, summer day. It was funny how life could change in an instant.
It had been three weeks since she’d seen Gage on the AEBR Tour. One night of crazy, hot passion and then the next morning…well he’d been gone. He’d left her hotel room in the middle of the night and then avoided her the rest of the weekend until her flight on Sunday.
She was hurt and angry. Not even pretending to deny it. She’d done her best to keep her phone far away when she’d gone out for tacos and margaritas the previous night with some of her Dallas friends. But the truth was, she’d thought…she’d thought because of her own feelings for Gage that he’d somehow be different.
He probably thought she was no different than Savanna who was truly just looking for a good time. But she’d never been a good-time girl. And now she understood why. She was never going to be casual about sharing her body with a man. Hell, she knew it was only Gage that she wanted. She wouldn’t have done it in the front seat of a truck with any other man.
She had thought about texting him. She had the numbers of the bull riders who were sponsored by the company, but she couldn’t make herself do it. It felt like he’d sent her a message and the least she could do was respect it.
So, she was. Besides it wasn’t as if they’d started a relationship. She was the first to admit she’d been acting out against her life. Her father’s lack of faith in her ability to run the campaign, her sister saying that good girls finish last, her own fear that life was passing her by and she was making sacrifices for nothing.
But today it felt empty.
She tried to tell herself it had nothing to do with the fact that Gage was up at the top of the leader board again. And that she’d spent the last three days in meetings where his picture was on every presentation deck she looked at or flashed on the walls of the hallway outside her office.
Her father and the board had been singing her praises with the campaign, which they’d snickered at to begin with, thinking that the target market for the Extreme denim line was men and they wouldn’t respond to half-naked bull riders. But she’d stuck to her guns, knowing women would want their men to wear the brand and men would want to be associated with those young, badass bull riders.
And she’d been right.
There was a knock on her door and she turned away from the window, moving to her chair as she called out for the person to enter.
It was her dad.
He was tall at almost six foot and looked comfortable in what he liked to call western casual. He wore a pair of the Montez Legacy denim jeans, a designer dress shirt, a pair of Kelly Boots. She knew he had a black Stetson in his office. He held a tablet in one hand as he walked toward her.
“Sierra, I need you on a Skype call. I hope you don’t mind. I had Bruce check with Marcos and he said you were free for twenty minutes before you had to go and talk to one of the accounts.”
“I am. My meeting is a video call as well, so I can probably talk for eighteen of those twenty minutes.”
“Just what I was hoping you’d say.”
He went to the small love seat and guest chairs set in a conversation area in her office and set the tablet up on the tripod she had situated there for these video calls. Because of the nature of her job she spent a lot of time in meetings and the area she had set up was designed so that she could change out the background depending on the account or partner they were working with.
“Who are we talking to? I can change our backdrop.”
“Gage Powell,” he said. “Why isn’t his picture on your wall anyway?”
Because every time she looked at him she wanted to punch him or tear his clothes off and neither was suitable for a productive day at the office.
But she couldn’t say that to her father.
“I’m set up for my meeting with the account,” she said. She would be speaking to one of the major retailers who carried Montez jeans. And while it would probably be advantageous to have Gage’s backside behind her during the call, she was honest and admitted that staring at him all day was making her think of things she was trying to forget.
“Well switch it to his poster. Let me do it,” her dad said. “I asked Marcos to bring us some drinks. Will you go and check on him?”
“I have a mini fridge in here,” she said. Her dad still treated the assistants like they were old-fashioned secretaries sometimes. “What do you want to drink?”
“That peach-flavored tea. Put it in one of our—”
“I know, Dad. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
He winked at her. “I keep forgetting that you’re not like Savanna.”
She paused as he said that. “Did you think I was?”
“Made sense to me that both you girls would follow after your momma. Though you are a little more…shy I guess is the right word than those two are. But you’re just as pretty and men do notice you when you walk in the room.”
All that time trying so hard to be different from them and her father had always just looked at her and saw…girl. No doubt it was the way he looked at all women. She loved him but there were times when she was pretty sure he was stuck in the last century.
She went to the credenza where the mini fridge and Montez logo glasses were. She poured her father’s favorite peach tea into one glass and then poured herself some sparkling water and walked over to sit down next to her dad.
“So what’s the conversation about?”
“I need you to help me talk Powell into doing a TV ad and probably a web advertising video campaign. He’s got a break coming up and I thought you could take a crew to Oklahoma and go film him on his ranch.”
Uh, no. She was avoiding him. She’d woken up alone in that big king bed after a night like she’d never experienced before.
But she was a grown-ass woman and she was going to woman up.
Because that idea was gold. Gage was hot right now—not only on the AEBR Tour but with all of their accounts as well.
*
Gage heard his phone make the video call noise and cursed under his breath. The break in the tour after El Paso meant most of the riders went home, but he was avoiding Bar P. So instead he was in Whiskey River, taking a few days to relax with Nick Blue. Nick and his wife Reba had a little two-year-old girl they had named after Marty.
They’d asked him to be the godfather and he’d said yes. He knew that Martina had no real connection to Marty but she always made him remember his brother and not with the anger, guilt and rage that he normally associated with him when he was on tour.
Montez Denim. Damn but Davis Montez was one determined man. He’d already told him no five ways from Sunday but the man just kept on calling.
He hit the answer button and fumbled around to turn on the video. His goddaughter was sitting across the child-sized table from him pouring him a cup of ‘tea’.
“I’ve got to take this call,” he said to Reba who was also seated at the table. “Can you save my cookies until I get back?”
“I will try.”
“Miss Mousy loves cookies,” Martina said, gesturing to her stuffed cat, and Gage suspected it was Martina who loved them.
He stood up as the video came on and walked to the wraparound porch where he could find some privacy. But then he glanced down at the screen and stopped walking.
All he could see was Sierra.
Damn.
He missed her. It was hard for him to admit it, especially to himself since he’d made a life by staying alone and always leaving. But he’d been unable to keep her from his mind after their night together.
He’d woken up in a cold sweat and realized that his night of fun had turned into something else as he’d watched her sleeping. Something had shifted, revealing the emptiness he hadn’t realized he’d been running from. And he realized that he didn’t want to let her go.
But he was a man in the middle of something he couldn’t stop. A man who wasn’t sure who he was anymore. And holding Sierra had made him realize that he might never know again. That everything he’d thought was real had been a chimera. Something false and shining pretending to be the truth when it was nothing but a lie.
“Hello, Gage. I hope we didn’t catch you at a bad time,” Davis said. “Sierra and I have been talking about how well you are doing on the tour—congratulations by the way—and how well consumers are responding to your ads. We’d like to take it to the next level with some video spots to go along with the print campaign.”
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“We’d like to film you on the ranch,” he said.
“Kind of in your element and emphasizing that you wear the jeans to put in a long day’s ranching too. We’d probably want to show you in three environments and then cut it together. So on the tour, at home on the ranch and then out for the night. Montez Denim is the right choice for every part of your life, something like that,” Sierra said.
He noticed she’d cut her hair. It now hung to just above her shoulders. He also noticed she was wearing a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses and kept looking at the tablet on her lap instead of up at the screen.
Was she avoiding him?
Hell of course she was. He’d walked out on her. It had to be awkward. He knew how to make a hash out of things, didn’t he? This was precisely why he’d left originally.
“I’m not a rancher,” he said.
“Well, son, the Powell name is synonymous with bull riding and ranching. Your old man was a champ and your brother—God rest his soul—was on his way to becoming one. We’ve all seen the Bar P in photos. Could you just let us set up some shots of you out there?”
No. In fact, hell no. But he didn’t say that and instead just shook his head.
“We don’t want you to be dishonest about who you are, Gage,” Sierra said. “But it would make the campaign more cohesive if we could get you out there. We could say downtime and show you practicing for the tour or just riding on the ranch.”
She’d leaned in to talk and had removed her glasses. Her hair swung forward and he remembered how it had felt brushing against his skin.
“Okay.”
Okay? Where the hell had that come from?
“Great. I will get in touch with our video ad department and assign someone to oversee the production—”
“I don’t want anyone but you, Sierra. If I’m going to do it, I want you to be in charge and to be the one who supervises the filming,” he said. He knew he’d screwed up when he left but seeing her again had just reinforced that there was something about her he didn’t want to let go of.
“I have other—”
“She’ll do it,” Davis said. “We will be in touch with the itinerary, but it will probably be quick because we want to get the TV spots booked when the tour starts back up.”
“Fine. I’m in Texas right now so I’ll need a day or two to get back to the Bar P,” he said.
“Can you get to Dallas?”
“Sure, why?”
“You and Sierra can fly up on the corporate jet,” Davis said. “I’ll be in touch with your management and get the new contract out to you by the end of day. Have a good one.”
Davis ended the call but not before he’d seen the look on Sierra’s face. She wasn’t pleased about flying up in the jet with him. He tried to tell himself that it was a good thing she hadn’t looked angry. But a part of him wondered if the emotions she’d stirred in him were one-sided. And if they were…well, he’d faced down worse situations and brought them around his way.
Now that he’d seen her again he was determined to convince her to give him another shot.
*
“Good job, girl. I thought we were losing him but you talked him around to our thinking. I’ve already sent you an email with my thoughts, but this campaign has been your baby so I’m sure you’ll come up with something brilliant,” her dad said moving ahead with the same lightning speed he always used.
“I’m sure I will,” she said. “Dad, I really can’t go to Oklahoma or on the tour with Gage. I have other accounts that I have to take care of.”
“This is the priority, Sierra. Maybe you can let Marcos take a stab at covering some of them while you are working on this. I don’t think it will be more than a few days. We have to move quickly and if Gage wants you on the shoot than that’s what we are going to give him. I’m going to talk to legal to get the contract drawn up. Why don’t you talk to creative and get some storyboards ready?”
“Thanks, Dad, like I don’t know how to work on TV spots.”
“Never hurts to have a reminder,” he said with a wink before he walked out the door, closing it behind him.
Most of her life had been like this with that man. He came into her day like a tornado, stirring everything up, and then left just as quickly never seeing the destruction he left behind.
Though she knew this was a mess of her own making. She’d been the one to talk Gage into going out with her that night. She’d gone with him. She’d danced with him like she was young and free when she’d never been anything other than a forty-year-old trapped in a twenty-year-old’s body according to Savanna. And right now she’d have to agree with her older sister.
She had regrets. Most of them centered around not tracking Gage down—just letting him walk away. She’d let him treat her like she was disposable and he had. She should have had a conversation with him over the weekend in Sacramento instead of just waiting for him to come to her. Maybe she’d watched too many period dramas on PBS but just once she wanted a relationship to work the way they did in books and movies. She wanted the guy to somehow twig she wanted more than just one night of fun.
Oh, God, what if he wanted to hook up again?
What if now he thought she was his booty call?
She groaned and fell against the back of the love seat, staring at the ceiling. She was making herself crazy. And hot. Just thinking of being back in Gage’s bed was enough to awaken all the desires she’d been steadily denying she had. All the longings that had kept her up at night and avoiding looking at his picture in the hallway of the office building.
And now she was going to have to spend at least five days alone with him…and a film crew. She was going to have to be professional.
Anything else would be…
Well that didn’t bear thinking about.
Her door opened and Marcos walked in. “You’ve got five minutes until the conference call. I have Abi and Taylor on their way up from creative.”
“Thanks, Marcos. Do you think you can start the call for me? You’ve been working with me on this project so maybe you can take the lead on it.”
“I’d love to,” Marcos said. “I guess there is more going on with the AEBR campaign.”
“More than I have time to explain in five minutes.”
“Margaritas after work?” he said.
Marcos was more than her assistant; he was one of her best friends. He was smart and funny and had the knack for saying just the right thing at the right time.
“We’re going to be here late.”
“All the more reason to go out after,” he said.
She gathered her notes for the call and went over them briefly with Marcos just as Abi and Taylor arrived. Her afternoon was busy, filled with meetings and calls with little time to do anything other than focus on the many tasks she had on her to-do list. But memories of Gage teased her constantly. Making it hard for her to pay attention. She knew she needed to figure out how to face him and stop the fixation she had on him.
There was only one person who could give her any kind of advice and that was Savanna. She’d gone to New Orleans with the Brazilian riders who wanted to party and Sierra wasn’t too sure that calling her sister and asking for advice was the wisest thing. And despite what Marcos had said, by the time they finished mapping out the work for the next two weeks and making plans for her to shoot the TV spots it was late and Marcos’s husband had come home early from a business trip.
He’d offered to hang out with her, but she knew he wanted to get home and had let him off the hook.
Instead she sat in her apartment with an unopened bottle of tequila, remembering the way Gage’s hands had felt on her skin and the way his lips had tasted. She spent a restless night telling herself that one time was enough and that seeing him again was going to be just fine. But lying to herself in the middle of the night wasn’t something she’d ever been able to do. She knew that she was riding straight toward a big ol’ heartache unless she could figure out a way to make Gage unappealing.