LITMIR.BIZ

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at war.”

      

      AS SUSANNAH SAT with her foreman in his cluttered office just off the barn, listening to him sputter indignantly about the young slacker they’d just interviewed, she really was trying to focus. Every time her mind or her gaze wandered toward the house, she dragged it back.

      She had been more relieved to see Trent show up this morning than she wanted to admit. When she’d awakened and found him gone, she hadn’t been sure whether he was ever coming back.

      But he had come, and that’s all that mattered. As long as her plan to break her grandfather’s will was safe, she didn’t care what Chase and Trent were saying now. Trent had undoubtedly already spilled all the gory details, and they’d begun bashing her, employing the usual macho insults for women who promise things they refuse to deliver.

      But so what? That wasn’t important. This was. The peach crop was going to be good this year, and, even if she wasn’t sure she had buyers for the fruit, she’d still need as many skilled workers as possible to bring it in.

      Even the worker she’d just interviewed. Eli Breslin.

      “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the cheeky little son of a gun.” Zander was so outraged he sputtered. “He has the nerve to walk in here? As if you’d hire that one to shine your shoes!”

      She smiled. “I can’t afford to have my shoes shined by anybody. But I do need someone to pick peaches. And he’s the only one who showed up, right?”

      “Well.” Zander shuffled papers on his desk. “There were a few calls.”

      “Yes, but those men weren’t good enough, either.”

      They’d already discussed this. One candidate used to work for the Ritchie spread, which was notoriously badly run, and the second applicant had been on the wagon for only six months, which wasn’t long enough in Zander’s eyes, and…well, the bottom line seemed to be that most of the callers failed to meet the foreman’s standards.

      Eli Breslin wouldn’t have made the cut, either, except that he hadn’t bothered to phone first. He’d just knocked on the office door, and Susannah, despairing of getting anyone past Zander’s gauntlet, had insisted on interviewing the kid.

      Zander leaned back in his ancient, squeaking leather chair and tapped his pencil against his knee. “He’s got zero experience with peaches.”

      “He can learn,” Susannah said. She moved her hand and almost overturned a teetering stack of paperwork. Ironic that Zander required perfection of everyone but himself. “Things are desperate right now. We may have to lower our standards a bit.”

      Of course, that was the wrong thing to say. The big man sat up straight and puffed out his chest. “I’m glad your grandfather isn’t around to hear you say such a thing. He never abandoned his standards, no matter what. Not even when the Alzheimer’s laid him low.”

      Sighing, Susannah stood and walked to the window, where she could see the east forty, which looked beautiful in May, with all the trees wearing full green. The sight calmed her a little.

      She and Zander had been through this a dozen times in the two years since Arlington H. Everly had died, and she didn’t feel like hashing it out again.

      Her grandfather’s “standards” were, in her view, simply mule-headed stubbornness and excessive pride. His refusal to face economic facts had brought Everly to this current disaster, and she and Zander both knew it.

      When Susannah was a kid, before her parents died, Everly Industries had owned ten thousand acres of fertile land here near Austin, and almost as many in West Texas, where the land was so rich the oil just boiled out of the ground. Today, they had one tenth that, only one thousand acres, a mere three hundred of them producing. Oh, and a dried-up two-acre plot in West Texas that looked like Swiss cheese from all the useless holes Arlington had kept drilling after Alzheimer’s had claimed his brain.

      “I need hands,” she said, trying to stick to the topic. “Lots of hands to prune and thin, and then, in a few weeks, start bringing in those peaches before they rot on the trees. Eli Breslin is a healthy, willing worker with two excellent hands. Hire him.”

      The silence behind her was full of disapproval. Finally Zander spoke, his voice a deep, censorious rumble in his chest. “You can’t mean that. What about Miss Nikki?”

      She bit her lower lip. That was the big question, of course. When Eli Breslin had worked next door at Chase’s Double C quarter horse ranch, Nikki had fallen for him like a too-ripe peach dropping from the tree. In fact, Eli Breslin was one of the main reasons Susannah had decided to spring for Nikki’s expensive art school. It had simply been too hard to keep the two from sneaking off together into the orchard late at night.

      And Susannah knew all too well what could happen in the orchard, under a milky moon, on a warm spring night.

      On the other hand, Nikki was gone, and during his interview Eli had apologized with a lot of grace and maturity. Maybe, without her wild little sister to distract him, Eli Breslin could be a good worker.

      Or maybe Zander was right. Maybe Eli was just too iffy….

      She pressed her hand over her eyes. She’d been staring out into the sun too long, and she was getting a headache.

      She heard someone open the office door behind her, and then the sound of Zander levering himself out of his squeaky chair.

      “Trent! Thank God you’re here! Maybe you can help me talk some sense into Ms. Susannah!”

      Oh, great. She needed this right now.

      Susannah turned to see Trent moving into the office, his lean height dominating it more thoroughly than even Zander’s bulk could ever do. He shut the door behind him, then came over and shook the foreman’s outstretched hand, simultaneously slapping him on the shoulder. They were old friends, and suddenly she felt outnumbered.

      “No one needs to talk sense into me.” She included both men in her scowl. But damn it. What was it about Trent’s lazy, amused grin that made her feel like a kid stamping her foot? “I make my own decisions. I know what I’m doing.”

      Trent raised his eyebrow, as if she’d said something cute, and transferred that annoying grin to the foreman. “Come on, Zan. You know her. When she makes a decision, you and I and Hell’s army couldn’t talk her out of it. Save your energy for a battle you can win.”

      “I would. God knows, I usually do. But this is different. She’s getting ready to hire Eli Breslin.”

      Trent’s eyebrow went up even farther. “Really?” He glanced at Susannah. “Why?”

      “Because I need workers, that’s why. Because Eli applied, and he sounded sincere about needing the job. He went out of his way to apologize for everything that happened with Nikki. He explained that he was just lonesome. Homesick. That’s why he wants a second job now, to save up to buy a plane ticket back home to El Cajon.”

      Trent chuckled. “He actually said that?”

      “You should have heard the little weasel.” Zander grimaced. “Kid should be an actor. He spread honey on her like she was his own personal biscuit. Ninety-three percent of it pure baloney, if you ask me.”

      “But I didn’t.” Susannah tightened her voice. “I didn’t ask either of you. It’s my decision.”

      Zander growled under his breath, like a fussy old hound. “You do remember what he did at the Clayton place, don’t you? You remember he walked away from a sick horse, didn’t care whether the animal lived or died? You remember Trent had to fire him?”

      “She remembers.” Trent’s smile was gone. In its place was cool speculation. “Is that part of the appeal, Susannah? Do you think it would be fun to tweak my nose a bit?”

      It might be fun, she thought, to see if she could slap that insufferable arrogance off his face. But she gritted her teeth

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