Blackwolf's Redemption

But she was right.

He’d keep his distance. She’d keep hers. It was a big ranch. And he actually did need a secretary, assuming she was competent, someone who could type his letters, sort his mail, keep the ranch’s books so his accountants wouldn’t scratch their heads and give him lectures at the end of every quarter when they came by….

Hell.

He wasn’t going to be here another quarter. He was selling this place; why had he forgotten that? She’d be out of a job in another couple of days….

“Jesse?”

He swung around as he stepped from the cab. His foreman was trotting toward him. He’d given Chuck and the rest of his men the weekend off. He’d wanted to be alone so he could figure out how to tell them he was selling the ranch, that there’d be no more work for them, and, instead, he’d spent his time first chasing after spiritual hocus-pocus and then after a woman.

A woman.

He was a fool, he thought grimly. Worse than a fool. He’d wasted precious time instead of dealing with reality.

“Chuck. I’m glad to see you. We need to talk.”

“Yeah. I saw the damage in the southeast pasture. I’ve got a couple of men out there already, fixing those fence posts, but—”

“No. Not about that. I meant…” Jesse looked toward the front door just as Sienna opened it. He frowned and ran his hand through his hair. “Give me a half hour, then come to the office, okay?”

His foreman looked at Sienna’s receding back, then at him. “Sure,” he said, and headed for the barn.

Jesse stepped inside the quiet house. “Sienna?”

“I’m here,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted. She’d found the office without him; she was seated behind his big desk, a stack of papers before her. Not the ranch-sale documents, he saw with relief. They were untouched, safe inside a file folder. What Sienna had in front of her was his mail, all of it. It had been accumulating since his last secretary had quit a couple of weeks ago.

She’d said he had the disposition of a rabid skunk.

Maybe not a skunk, he’d thought, but yeah, okay, the rabid part fit.

Mrs. Marx had worked at a small desk in the corner of the big office. Not Sienna. She’d settled in his chair, at his desk. It dwarfed her. Even the windows behind her seemed determined to do their part. Add in that she was wearing those ridiculous oversized sweats and she should have looked silly…

She didn’t.

She looked spectacular.

The sun, streaming through the glass, touched her with gold. She was frowning as she studied the paper in her hands, but he knew, when she looked up, her eyes would be that deep violet….

Violet, and filled with disdain. He saw that, too.

“Do you ever even open your mail?”

Damn, he could feel color rise in his face. “Of course.”

“And your bills. Do you pay them or do you just save them until you have enough to paper a wall?”

His mouth became a hard, thin line. “I did not ask you to critique my management style, Cummings.”

She snorted. “Is that what you call it? Trust me, Mr. Blackwolf. You don’t need a secretary, you need a bulldozer.”

“Look, I haven’t had the chance to get to this stuff lately, okay? And it isn’t going to matter. That’s what I have to tell you about this job. See—”

“You had a couple of phone calls. I took the messages. Didn’t you ever hear of voice mail?”

Jesse sighed. “I have no idea what—”

“An answering machine. You need one.”

“I have one. The storm must have—”

“The call was from a Mr. Henley.”

Jesse cocked his head. “Henley? What did he say?”

“Something about the investment you’re interested in. He said the company might be up for grabs.” Sienna glanced at a small piece of paper. “‘Up for grabs.’ Those were his exact words. And he said, if you’re interested, you’d better be in San Francisco by late afternoon.” She looked at him. “San Francisco?”

Jesse clasped his hands behind his back and paced from one side of the room to the other. In what he thought of as his other life, he’d put a bid on the controlling shares in a startup, a small company working in the new field of computer technology. He wanted it; he knew it had one hell of a future even if he still didn’t quite understand what it could do.

“And you had a call from a Mr. Harper. Something about the bill of sale for Blackwolf Ranch…?”

Damn it, this was the last thing he wanted. The two most important deals in his life, coming together at one time….

“Jesse?” Sienna’s voice dropped. “You aren’t really going to sell it, are you? The ranch? The canyon? All those ancient, beautiful sites?”