The Rancher's Untamed Heart

"If you refuse," I said, "You will be in direct violation of health inspection protocol. If you do that, I can have your ranch's safety certification revoked."

He rolled his small dark eyes.

"All right, now," he said, raising both of his hands. "Just calm down, I'm sure you misunderstood me. When I said that I didn't have time to show you around - " here he smirked, as though he hadn't cussed at me " - I, of course, meant that my number two man here, Juan, would show you around." He jerked his thumb at one of the men standing next to him.

"Thank you, Mr. Yates," I said.

I was standing in front of eight men in dusty clothes as they scowled at me. Yates and his 'number two man,' were slightly better dressed than the hands, who wore ancient jeans and patched shirts.

I'd heard that Yates always wore old clothes on his ranch, to keep up with his persona as one of the boys, aw shucks, who could take him seriously, he was just a poor old farm boy.

When he went out to dinner, he wore Armani suits.

I smiled at the man who was supposed to show me around.

"Are you ready, sir?" I asked. I held up my clipboard. "I have a lot to see."

"Yeah," one of the hands said, loudly, "You've gotta get done before suppertime. Wouldn't want to miss out on your date tonight."

"It's eight o'clock in the damn morning," the man growled, but he sighed and waved me along as he turned to walk over to one of the big cattle sheds.

As I followed him, I saw Yates take his phone out of his pocket and fiddle with i

t for a moment before placing it to his ear and turning away from me.

“I bet he’s calling your boss,” said Juan.

“He is welcome to do so,” I said, in my best matter-of-fact tone. “That won’t change the fact that I have a job to do here.”

He scowled even harder when he saw me watching his boss. "You bet your sweet ass he can get you off his ranch with a phone call if he wants to," he said. "Now come on, you might see two or three whole cows before we get to be done with you."

We stalked through the open barn doors together, walking around an enormous cow pat. I resisted the urge to look closely at it and made a note on my clipboard, which always pissed men like Juan off.

Juan was wrong. I saw nearly twenty cows before my work phone rang in my pocket and I excused myself to talk to my boss.

"Naomi Scott, USDA," I answered.

"You're not on speaker," Herman grunted. "I'm changing your schedule. Head to your next assignment, I'll take care of this one myself."

"Sir, may I ask why?" I said. It was my turn to turn away from my audience.

"He's not due yet. He's angry that we're here, we just inspected him three months ago. Don't worry about it," he said. "This one's on me."

I pursed my lips. “Mr. Banks, I’m already out here,” I said, “Why don’t I go ahead and take a look around? We need to up our percentage of surprise inspections as it is.”

“No, no,” Herman said. “No point. It’s a good, clean operation. Just go ahead to your next one, get it a little early, that’ll be enough of a surprise.”

When the call ended, I faced Juan again.

"Let me guess, your boss came to his senses," he said. His smirk was almost too much to bear.

I smiled brightly at him.

"Apparently you were just inspected a few months ago, our mistake. Mr. Banks said that he'd be in touch with Mr. Yates personally to apologize for the inconvenience."

"Shame," Juan grunted. His eyes traveled up and down my body, lingering on my chest. "Might have to do some real work today."

I handed him my card.