The C.e.o. & The Cookie Queen

“She doesn’t seem too happy to have won,” Greg said out loud.

The man beside him nodded. “She got that steer from Billy Maddox over in Boerne when ever’body else said it weren’t big enough. Look at it now.”

“So she should be proud.”

“I ’spect she is, but she’s got to say goodbye to him now.”

“Why? She won.”

The man looked at him as though he was crazy. “What the hell do you think they do with the grand-champion steer?”

Greg searched his mind but couldn’t come up with an answer. “Give it a ribbon, I suppose. Maybe she can show it somewhere else.”

“None of these steers are going to the State Fair. That’s a whole ’nother class of animal.”

“So what do they do with them?”

The man spat into his can. “Auction ’em off.” He nodded toward the tent. “Big Jim usually bids the highest.”

“So what does Big Jim do with them?”

“Why, he has just about the finest barbecue you’ve ever seen for all his favorite customers over at Big Jim’s Autorama on Highway 281.”

As Greg watched in stunned silence, his cowgirl slipped between the rails of the fence and hurried to the little girl, who still had her face buried in the neck of the huge beast. Her thin shoulders shook, and Greg knew without a doubt that he couldn’t let that pet steer end up on Big Jim’s barbecue grill.

AS THEY WALKED out of the ring toward the barn, Carole could have kicked herself. She should have spent the extra money and bought a heifer instead of a steer. But she hadn’t expected that runty calf to grow into the grand champion at the county show. The look on her daughter’s face when she’d been handed the banner had nearly brought her to her knees, right there in the arena. Jenny had a soft heart, and darn it, Puff was a big old sweetheart—all twelve hundred pounds of him.

“We have a few hours, sweetie. What would you like to do?”

Jenny shrugged as if it didn’t make any difference, but Carole could see her daughter’s white-knuckled grip on Puff’s halter. “I think I’ll just hang around the barn. Put my stuff up.”

Say goodbye to Puff, Carole felt like adding. She had always told her daughter that she could do or be anything she wanted, but that didn’t mean life was always easy.

“I could bring you a snow cone or some cotton candy,” Carole offered as she wrapped her arm around her ten-year-old’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Mom, but I’m not hungry.”

“We’ll celebrate later, then.”

Jenny nodded, but couldn’t hide her sniff.

They stopped at their spot along the cattle rail. Carole hugged her arms around herself as Jenny attached the tie-down to Puff’s halter. “Sure I can’t get you anything? A cold drink?”

Jenny shrugged.

“Do you want to be alone?”

“Please,” she said in a small voice.

“Okay, then. I’m going to get us a soft drink.”

Carole took one more look at her little girl before turning and walking down the long corridor, out of the stock barn. Telling herself that this was an important lesson, that Jenny would feel proud of earning part of her college money, that Puff was a beef animal, not a family pet, didn’t ease the pain. Only time would do that. Perhaps it was best that Jenny was leaving for camp in another week. A change of setting would help her forget. Seeing friends from last year, laughing and playing one last summer before she began the transformation from child into young woman was just what she needed right now.

Carole just wished Jenny could stay gone until Big Jim’s barbecue was history, but she couldn’t. School started in the third week of August, and Big Jim always served up the grand champion at his Labor Day event. Carole didn’t usually go out of town for the long weekend, but this year, she would take her daughter somewhere far away from Ranger Springs. Someplace fun, with no animals to remind them of Puff’s empty stall.

She’d nearly made it out of the barn when she saw a tall, broad-shouldered stranger standing in the wide doorway, staring at her in a way she didn’t usually see in the light of day. Maybe in a smoky honky-tonk with a country-western tune playing in the jukebox…

She slowed, wondering if perhaps he was someone she’d met a while back. Bright sunlight outlined his lean torso and long, straight legs. He’d dressed in jeans and a Western-cut plaid shirt, boots and a well-creased hat, but he didn’t stand like a cowboy. The shade inside the barn, the deeper shadow beneath the brim of the Stetson, made him seem mysterious. Instead of tipping his hat or dropping his gaze, he continued to look his fill, even smiling just a bit like he knew some secret.

Carole tipped her chin up and broke eye contact. She didn’t know this man. He wasn’t from around here. And he was darn rude to boot.

“Congratulations on the win,” he said as she walked by.

His deep, warm voice, totally without an accent, stopped her. “Thanks,” she said, feeling more unsettled than ever now that she knew he’d been watching her—and Jenny—during the competition. “I don’t know you, do I?”

“We haven’t met yet,” he said, turning toward her. The sun highlighted the right half of his face, showing smooth skin stretched over some mighty fine cheekbones. She suspected this man had his hair styled, not just cut like ordinary people, although she couldn’t see much but a few short, dark-brown strands peeking from beneath his tan Stetson and around his well-shaped ears.

This was no weathered cowboy. From the way he was dressed, in new clothes and expensive boots, she’d be more likely to believe he was one of those models in American Cowboy magazine. He looked as good as one. As a matter of fact, he reminded her of her brother-in-law, Prince Alexi of Belegovia, when he’d dressed like Hank McCauley and fooled her sister Kerry last summer. Alexi and Hank looked enough alike to be twins. Both were handsome as sin, but not as compelling as this stranger, in her opinion.

She realized she’d been giving the man a once-over for way too long. Not too many male-model types came to Ranger Springs, Texas, but that didn’t excuse her ogling. Her mother would have called it downright rude.

“Greg Rafferty,” he said with a smile, extending his hand. “And no, as I’ve already been reminded, I’m not from around here.”

She laughed despite her suspicion over strangers and good-looking men who liked to undress women with their eyes. “I didn’t mean to stare. The sun was in my eyes, and I couldn’t tell if I’d seen you before.”

She shook his hand, noticing his firm, enveloping grip that shot warmth all the way up her arm.

“I can’t use the excuse of sun in my eyes. I’ll admit I was staring.”

He stated the offhand compliment with an intimate kind of amusement that made Carole blush.

She hadn’t blushed in years. She thought she’d forgotten how. She’d apparently also forgotten how to shake hands, because she finally pulled away when she realized she’d been in his gentle grasp for about as long as she’d been staring at him moments ago.

“And you are…”

“I’m sorry. I’m still a little…excited about my daughter’s win.” She took a deep breath and looked into the blue-green eyes of the stranger. “Carole Jacks,” she said, forcing herself to smile pleasantly when she wanted to gawk like a sixteen-year-old.

His expression changed from intimate interest to disbelief in a flash. Seconds later he blinked and schooled his features into a painfully benign mask. “You…” He swallowed, grimacing slightly. “I don’t suppose you have another relative by the same name. A mother or aunt, perhaps?”

“I’m the only one around here that I know of,” she said, more confused by the second.

“I was expecting someone a little…older.” His eyes roamed over her body once more, and she felt that darn warmth seep through her, as hot at the Texas sun beating down on the metal roof above.

She shrugged off her hormone-induced condition. “Older?”

“I came to town expecting to find Alice, or maybe Aunt Bea, and instead I found—”

She stopped him before his eyes started wandering again. “What?”