Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!. Victoria Pade

to Meg’s suggestion.

      “No, you’re not. You look fine.”

      But somehow fine was not good enough when she thought of meeting the man who still had her staring.

      “Come on,” Meg urged. “Tia and Abby love him—”

      “Abby knows him?”

      “Well, sure. Even though you haven’t met him, he’s been around the showroom visiting his brother when I’ve babysat Abby.”

      Despite the fact that Meg babysat Abby whenever Jenna worked, and Ian Kincaid stayed in the above-the-garage apartment whenever he visited, Jenna hadn’t met him.

      “Tia and Abby both have the cutest little crushes on him,” Meg continued. “Tia draws him scribbly pictures and bats her eyes at him and follows him around like a puppy dog if she can. And Abby holds out her arms for him to carry her the minute she sees him. She calls him Un, and out of the blue, she’ll hug him and kiss him—it’s so funny.”

      So his looks knocked the socks off little girls as well as big ones, Jenna thought. But what she said was, “Abby likes him?”

      “She really does. And he’s good with her, too. And with Tia. I know you don’t like the idea that he wants the farm for something other than farming, but he really isn’t a bad guy. You should meet him.”

      It didn’t seem as if she was going to have a choice.

      The Realtor glanced through the picture window and waved at Jenna and Meg. She said something to Ian Kincaid that made him look inside, too, and the two of them went to the front door and poked their heads in after an obligatory knock.

      “Hi! I’m just showing Mr. Kincaid a few things he had questions about,” Marsha Pinkell called. “Do you mind if we come in?”

      The answer to that was yes, but that wasn’t what Jenna said. She could hardly refuse access to the Realtor she’d listed the farm with, so she said, “It’s okay, come in.”

      They did just that as Jenna and Meg got up from the floor, so they could come face-to-face with Ian Kincaid.

      “Hi, Ian,” Meg greeted the man warmly.

      “Hi, Meg,” he answered with equal warmth and familiarity. “Logan said I might bump into you over here—I guess he was right.”

      “This is Jenna,” Meg said. “Jenna Bowen. My best friend and Abby’s aunt-slash-new-mom.”

      “And the owner of this place now—I know the name,” Ian Kincaid added. “I also know that your father passed away not long ago. I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, his eyes going from Meg to Jenna.

      “Thank you,” Jenna said perfunctorily, trying not to get too drawn into the not-at-all-cold gaze of those ice-blue eyes. They seemed to hone in on her. Again she wished for less baggy clothes, and that she’d done something different with her hair today.

      “Marsha has also told me that—in honor of your dad—you’re trying to hold tight to the contingent that this place continue as a working farm,” he said.

      “That’s right,” Jenna confirmed, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. “And I know that that isn’t what you want to do with the place. That your father brought an NFL expansion football team to Montana and he wants to build a training center here.”

      “The Montana Monarchs,” Ian Kincaid said the team’s name as if she might not know it. “You’re right on all counts. My father is Morgan Kincaid; he finally has his dream of owning an NFL team, and we need a training facility. We’ll meet the asking price on the property without haggling if you’ll just back off on that farm contingency.”

      “I won’t. Not for any price. I realize if the place goes to auction, whoever buys it can do what they want with it. But as long as I still have the option, I’m holding to the contingency.” Even if he was talking to her amiably, respectfully, pleasantly and as if they were on the same level when, in fact, she also knew that he was a bigwig in his former-football-star father’s massive corporation and one of the heirs to a fortune, while she was merely a small-town nurse in debt.

      “What if we sweeten the deal by, say, five thousand?” he said then.

      “Doesn’t that fall under the heading of haggling?” She goaded him just slightly.

      To his credit, he smiled. A brilliant smile that exposed perfect white teeth and drew wonderful lines down the center of each cheek.

      “I think haggling technically means I try to get you to lower the price, not that I offer you more money than you’re asking,” he countered.

      “But I’m afraid it still falls under the ‘not for any price’ part,” Jenna said, actually enjoying this exchange with him, the way she’d enjoyed debate team in high school.

      “How about ten thousand?”

      Jenna laughed, having no idea if he was serious. It didn’t matter, but she liked the challenge he seemed to be throwing out.

      She shook her head. “Not for any price,” she repeated. “The farm has to be up for sale, but the contingency that it stay a farm isn’t negotiable.”

      “I can be a pretty persuasive guy …”

      She didn’t doubt that! Not looking into those blue eyes that crinkled just a bit at the corners when he smiled and made her feel as if he didn’t know there were two other people in the hallway with them.

      “Persuasive or not, that’s my sticking point,” Jenna insisted.

      “Hmm … Maybe I’ll just have to try to figure out how to get you unstuck …”

      “Good luck with that,” she said as if she were impervious to anything he might come up with. Even to the hint of flirting in his voice.

      He laughed. Not boisterously, but a small, light laugh that almost seemed if they’d shared a private joke. And again, Jenna couldn’t help being a bit drawn in by the man.

      But maybe that was how he got what he wanted, she told herself, unwilling to think that sparks might actually be flying between them—which was the way it somehow felt.

      His gaze remained on her a moment more before he angled his head in the direction of the closet. “We should let you and Meg get back to what you were doing,” he said then.

      “Yeah, I won’t have her help for much longer this afternoon, and I want to get as much work out of her as I can,” Jenna joked.

      “It was good to finally meet you, though, Jenna Bowen,” Ian Kincaid said as if he meant it.

      “You, too,” Jenna responded.

      And while she’d intended that to be only as perfunctory as her gratitude for his condolences had been, it had somehow come out as more than that. As genuine.

      Good to meet the man who would very likely be instrumental in dashing her late father’s one wish?

      She wasn’t sure how that could be.

      And yet the truth was that as he said goodbye to Meg, as Jenna watched him turn and walk out her front door with the Realtor, she was a little sorry to see him go.

      “Didn’t I tell you?” Meg whispered from beside her. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”

      “Nice to look at,” was all Jenna would admit to as she drank in the sight of the tall, straight-backed, commanding man going outside again.

      But whether she admitted it or not, there hadn’t been anything unlikeable about Ian Kincaid.

      In fact, a little part of her that she didn’t want to acknowledge had liked him quite a bit …

       Chapter Two

      Sunday