The Camden Cowboy. Victoria Pade
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to make matters worse, the McDoogal property that Ian had been confident they could get had instead been sold out from under them to the Camdens. And Morgan Kincaid had lost his second choice, as well.
Their father had been livid.
Morgan had tempered his anger enough not to out-and-out fire Ian and enter into another of the rifts that had cost him both of his sons for a while. But there had still been consequences for Ian. Morgan had punished him by taking the entire training center project away from him.
And because Morgan was determined that the project be overseen by a member of his family, by someone he was convinced had an unwavering loyalty to him, he’d reluctantly turned to Lacey. But not without letting her know that he would be watching her very, very closely.
Ian seemed to be taking his punishment in stride. He was currently far more focused on his bride and on his new life. Not only had Ian become Jenna Bowen’s husband, he’d also taken on the role of father to Abby, Jenna’s orphaned niece. They had adopted her as their own daughter. Ian had assured Lacey that he wasn’t holding it against her that she’d been granted the project and had offered her whatever services or advice she might want.
But what Lacey wanted was to do this on her own. And to do it so well that she could finally carve out a niche for herself in the Kincaid Corporation and in her father’s eyes. She’d fought tooth and nail for even small jobs on important projects in the past, and her father had left no doubt that it was only his deep desire to keep the business in the family that had garnered this opportunity for her. That this was her greatest test.
But Lacey didn’t care how she’d come to have the project, and she didn’t care how much pressure she was under to succeed. She was still determined to show her father that she was as much a value as his sons.
And nowhere, nowhere, nowhere in any of that did she have even a split second to be attracted to someone. She couldn’t risk taking her eye off the ball.
Not even to look at Seth Camden’s fabulous rear end.
Or any other part of him.
This was her moment. And she couldn’t blow it. She wouldn’t blow it. She was going to make the Monarchs’ training center a crowning jewel. She was going to do this job so well that her father would wonder why he’d ever put so much stock in his sons and discounted her.
And she was not going to get distracted by anything or anyone. Certainly not by a man.
Even if that man was great-looking.
It was just that thinking about Seth Camden seemed to have become second nature to her. And trying not to think about him was distracting on its own.
Those blue eyes. That slow smile. That tight backside and those thick thighs. Those massive shoulders and muscles rippling in the summer sunshine that first day, flexing under the weight of file boxes last night …
The image of him haunted her, and she just couldn’t seem to shake it.
But she was going to! she swore to herself. She was going to right now!
Except that at that exact same moment she glanced at the clock in the corner of her computer screen, registered that it was nearly four-thirty and—without another thought—saved her work, put her computer on standby and headed for the bathroom.
If Seth Camden was going to be there any minute now, she had to make sure her upswept hair hadn’t wilted, that her silver-white blouse wasn’t too wrinkled and was still neatly tucked into her gray slacks, and that her mascara hadn’t smudged. And she wanted to put on a little lip gloss …
“He’d say he was right …” she muttered to her reflection in the cloudy old mirror that hung above the rusty bathroom sink.
Her father would say he was right, that here she was, finally in a seat of power, important responsibilities bestowed upon her, and what was she doing? She was thinking about a man. She was worrying about how she looked for that man rather than working. She was suspending work in order to be with that man …
Delegate, Lacey told herself.
Someone else could show Seth Camden what his family had left in the attic and the barn. That was definitely not a job she needed to do.
But then she wouldn’t get to see him …
Oh, but she hated that the thought had voiced itself.
She told herself to go with delegation. To return to the farmhouse’s dining room that she was using as her office, go back to what she’d been doing—to what she should have finished hours ago except that her attention had lapsed so many times into thoughts of Seth Camden—and not so much as leave her desk to deal with him or with the issue of the things his family had left behind.
That was what she told herself all right.
But when the sound of wheels on gravel announced that someone had just driven up to the front of the house, she did a quick swipe of the lip gloss, judged her appearance satisfactory, and left that bathroom to turn toward the old house’s entrance and not in the opposite direction to her office.
And when she caught her first glimpse of Seth Camden getting out of his big white truck, dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and a Western shirt, and looking even better than he did in her mind’s eye?
She knew there was no way she was getting anyone else to show him around.
And she merely went outside to meet and greet him.
“As far back as when I was a kid, this place was only used for storage and for a few meetings my great-grandfather and grandfather had out here,” Seth was saying as he and Lacey walked to the barn.
Meetings for some of the under-the-table deals the old-school Camdens were suspected of? Lacey wondered. But of course she didn’t ask that.
She’d gone out to meet Seth at his truck the minute he’d arrived. She didn’t even want anyone else to incidentally encounter him and suggest that they show him what he needed to see. Now she had him all to herself. Which made her inordinately happy …
“My brothers and sister and cousins and I all played in the barn and pretended the house was haunted,” he went on. “When it sold, I came out here for the first time in about a year. There was hardly anything left and I needed to leave town on business, so I sent a couple of my guys to deal with what needed to be dealt with. I’m sorry they missed things, but now that I think of it, I didn’t say anything about getting up into the attic or looking behind the barn.”
“There’s also a desk in what I’m told is the tackroom, too,” Lacey said, as they reached the old barn. “I’m using the house as the construction office and the barn for construction supplies and equipment. I’m not really sure how anyone realized there was anything in the attic, but my crew is all over the barn and they thought the tackroom would be a good place to store screws and nails and hardware—the smaller supplies. They’ll be putting up some shelves, but I don’t want them to do that until the desk is out of there so I can be sure they don’t damage it in case it has some value to you.”
“I’ll be surprised if it does, but thanks for the consideration.”
There was lumber already stacked in different sections of the barn, and Lacey led the way through it to the tackroom in the rear. When they reached it, she opened the door for Seth to go in ahead of her.
And yes, when he did—even though she tried not to—her gaze dropped for a split second to his derriere. She hated herself for it, she really did. She silently berated and reprimanded and chastised herself. But still she enjoyed that glimpse of perfect male posterior.
“Yep, I remember that desk now,” he said, as Lacey followed him into the room.
He took a closer look at it, hoisting one end to test the weight—probably with the thought of whether or not he could lift it himself. But when he did that the desk slid back several inches and something underneath it caught his eye.
“What