Page 91 of Cowboy Elite 2: Mike

“Joe Watkins.” He took her hand. His was warm and dry and ridiculously, distractingly steady. His palm engulfed hers, and held for just a touch longer than strictly necessary. “I take care of the accounting on the ranch.”

“And hire wedding planners?” she asked, feeling a tingle climb up the inside of her wrist.

“That too. Although I won’t be the final say in that department. My brother, Mike, and his fiancée, Liv, will be your clients.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting them.”

He bent and set her steamer upright, and had her garment bag up off the dust before she could reach for it. There was no taking it back from him without a wrestling match she was not prepared to have in front of the goat.

“You really don’t have to,” she began.

“City shoes. Gravel drive. Two hundred yards uphill.” He settled the bag over one shoulder. “I’ve watched this go badly before.”

Emma elected to be charmed rather than annoyed, because charmed was useful and annoyed was not. And also because his gallantry was, irritatingly, a little bit charming. “Has anyone ever mentioned to you that you’re a generous conversationalist?”

“No.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

There it was again, that far-off cousin of a smile. Emma found that she wanted the whole smile, the way you want the rest of a song, but she filed that thought away.

Behind him the ranch went on about its morning, sublimely indifferent to her arrival. Off past a rail fence a man had a horse on a long line in a round pen, the two of them turning slow, patient circles in the early light. A windmill ticked. The live oaks held still in the gathering heat. It was, Emma reminded herself, a job. A beautiful one, for a family she already wanted to do right by. A venue to size up. A wedding to build out of bare Texas ground.

She would simply need better shoes.

* * *

Joe Watkins had carried a great many things up this drive in his time. Feed sacks and fence posts, a calf with a busted leg, Lyle’s goddaughter asleep and drooling on his shoulder. He had never once carried a garment bag, and he was fairly certain this one had cost more than the calf.

The wedding planner walked beside him and did not, to her considerable credit, complain. She picked her way up the gravel in those wrecked shoes like a woman crossing a creek on stepping stones, chin level, smile bolted on, telling him about his own lake as though she gave this exact tour every morning of her life.

She was not from anywhere near here. Joe had known that before she got the car door open. He had watched her step out into his yard the way a person steps out onto a stage, every piece of it arranged in advance, the city haircut that hit just at her shoulders, the good linen pants and the smile she’d carried up out of the car already lit. Then he had watched the goat take her down a peg, and all six of the dogs take her down another, and he had watched her square her shoulders and decide, then and there, to be gracious about the whole business. That last part was what had brought him down off the porch. A man could learn a lot about somebody by what they did when the morning got away from them.

The dogs, for the record, were six. That was four more than a working ranch had any earthly need of, and the exact number his family had somehow settled on. And that didn’t include his sister-in-law’s search and rescue dogs in training, or the various fosters she took in.

He took his read of Emma while she talked. Younger than the brief had led him to expect, or maybe just a good deal more alive. The email had said highly experienced, and he had pictured somebody starched. This one had velvet brown eyes that went everywhere at once, taking a careful inventory of his ranch. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was already losing its salon-perfect battle with the Texas heat. She smelled, faintly and expensively, of some flower he could not have named on a bet. But he liked it. She was pretty, and Joe had the notion that pretty didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of her, and he caught himself wanting to know more. He set that thought down where he had set his coffee an hour ago. Carefully. Off to the side.

“So you take care of the books,” she said. “That means you know the budget.”

“It means I wrote the budget.”

“Then you and I are going to be great friends.” The warmth came on smooth and easy, the professional charm clicking back into its track now that she had found a use for him. “Friends with the budget. It is the single most important friendship a wedding has.”

“Mm,” Joe said.

She slid him a look. He could see her trying to take a reading off him and coming up with nothing, and he could see that it bothered her. Clearly she was far too well brought up to let her curiosity show, and Joe, who came by most of his entertainment quietly, enjoyed it more than was strictly neighborly.

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?” It was not quite a question. There was something underneath it, though, something close to enjoyment, and Joe felt it.

“Haven’t decided yet,” he said, which was the most honest thing he had told anybody all morning.

“I’ll be straight with you, Joe, seeing as you’re the budget man.” She negotiated a rut in the gravel and kept her feet, which he gave her credit for. “I’m not only here for your brother’s wedding. Your family asked me to take a look at whether this place could become a wedding venue for the public going forward.”

“I heard.”

“And?”

Joe considered the live oaks, the lake glistening silver below them, the big barn that had stood ninety years now, minding its own affairs. “It’s a fine ranch,” he said, “the way it is.”