“I’d prefer paying you,” Lacey insisted.
“Okay, pay me whatever you think is fair, then. It really makes no difference to me. Just tell me when you want to move in.”
“Tomorrow evening?”
“Okay. And then we can set a time for me to come out to the old house and see what was left behind. But for now I’m not kidding—you better either get out of this sun or use some of my sunblock.” He nodded toward his tools and gear at the fence.
“I’ll just go,” Lacey said. “But we will need to talk more about the road.”
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he said, as if it meant nothing to him.
They could work something out …
Lacey didn’t respond to that. Another of the things that she’d learned in the lectures about the Camdens was that H.J. and Hank had been very big into the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours mentality.
After saying her goodbye, she turned to make her way back to the road where she’d parked.
“Careful!” he cautioned when she came close to falling yet again.
Lacey righted herself and glanced back to find him still standing where she’d left him, watching her.
“I’m fine,” she called over her shoulder, continuing the way she’d come but taking extra care not to stumble again while he looked on.
She got all the way back to the road before she stole another glance at Seth Camden.
He was still watching her, so she waved as if to tell him she didn’t require any more of his supervision and got into her car.
But she couldn’t help casting another glance out into the field. Seeing him finally return to his work, she inadvertently took in the sight of that amazing backside again.
No more! she ordered herself, forcing her eyes to the road and starting her engine.
But as she drove away she was thinking about the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours mentality.
And wishing that she wasn’t imagining scratching that back of his quite so literally.
Or quite so vividly …
Chapter Two
“Hey, Cade, it’s Seth.”
“Oh, man, you gotta remember that I don’t keep farmer’s hours,” Cade complained in a gravelly voice. Seth’s call had obviously awakened him.
Seth laughed. It was only 7:00 a.m. on Thursday when he called his brother in Denver. Still he couldn’t resist goading him. “I thought big businessmen had to rise and shine with the sun, too.”
“No meetings today—I was going to get to sleep until seven-thirty, damn you.”
“Them’s the breaks, pal—I had to be up two hours ago to talk to our guy running the Kentucky farm, so now I’m headed out to finish fixing a fence and figured I’d get you before I left,” Seth explained.
Despite the fact that Seth was the oldest of the Camden grandchildren and so had had the option of heading the operation, he’d instead chosen to handle the Northbridge ranch and oversee all the other agricultural aspects of Camden Incorporated, leaving the CEO and chairman of the board positions to brother Cade, who was a year younger.
All of the Camdens except Seth thrived in the city, in Denver, where they’d grown up. But Seth was the country boy of the bunch by choice. When it came to the business end of things, he oversaw the farms, ranches and dairies that Camden Inc. owned. He far preferred getting his hands dirty.
“Did we lose more cattle at the Kentucky place?” Cade asked. They’d been talking frequently about a vandalism problem that had been ongoing on the Kentucky farm.
“No, actually they caught the culprits—it was just kids,” Seth said. “Kids whose family owned some of the land once upon a time and decided to make a statement—you know the song.”
“Somebody has an old grudge against us and they passed it down,” Cade said without surprise.
“That’s the one,” Seth confirmed.
“What are you doing about it?”
Since the agricultural portion of Camden Inc. was Seth’s baby, he made any decisions that didn’t require a vote by the entire board of directors—which was comprised of himself, Cade and their other eight siblings and cousins. Petty vandalism was not a matter for the board of directors; he was merely letting Cade in on how he was handling the situation.
“The kids are locals. It’s a small town like Northbridge, and I don’t want any more bad blood than we already have there. I’m having them work off the damages, and if they do that there won’t be any charges filed against them, so they walk away with a clean slate. The guy I have managing the farm knows the kids. He’s willing to put them to work so they don’t end up with a record, and we’ll just hope that takes care of it.”
“Sounds good,” Cade said.
Seth could tell by his brother’s voice and the background sounds coming through the phone that Cade had gotten out of bed and was making coffee.
“You’re coming for GiGi’s birthday in three weeks, right?” Cade asked.
GiGi was what they called their grandmother—short for Grandma Georgianna. She’d raised them and their cousins after the death of their parents, and she was turning seventy-five.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Seth assured.
“Anything else going on there?” Cade inquired conversationally.
And just like that the image of Lacey Kincaid came to mind. That had been happening on and off since she’d left him out in the field yesterday.
“I met Morgan Kincaid’s daughter,” Seth informed his brother. “I’m pretty sure she thinks we bought that last piece of property just to get one over on her old man.”
“Same song, different verse,” Cade said.
“Yep.”
They were accustomed to the distrust that came with their last name.
“Did you tell her you just wanted the property?” Cade asked.
“Nah, it wasn’t an overt accusation, just an attitude—you know it when you run into it.”
“I do,” Cade agreed.
“Now they need a road to come through here somewhere and I think that the fact that I didn’t instantly buckle under made her more suspicious. As if I somehow knew they would need to build an access road there and positioned us so we could stick it to them.”
“We’re a cunning lot, we Camdens,” Cade said facetiously. “So she’s a ballbreaker, this Lacey Kincaid?”
Seth laughed. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, disabusing his brother of that unpleasant notion. He didn’t like hearing Lacey Kincaid referred to that way, for some reason.
“I think she would have been a match for old H.J. and Granddad,” Seth went on. “Drive, determination, all business—that seemed to be what she was about. She found me clear out at the north end and hiked from the road about a quarter mile to get to me. In the heat, in a suit, in high heels.”
“Just to talk about a road?”
“That and to tell me we left some stuff in the attic and the barn over at the old place. And to ask if she could stay