Convincing the Rancher. Claire McEwen

of their meeting returned. “I told him right away that I would get someone else to take over for me and he said no! And when I insisted, he told me he’d...” She thought of Slaid’s gilded reputation in this town. She couldn’t share the threat he’d made in such a bad moment. She owed him that much. “Well, he just insisted that I stay on. He doesn’t want anyone else on the project. It makes no sense. Shouldn’t he want me to go? I could ruin his reputation if I told people about Phoenix!”

      Her friend didn’t answer for a moment and they just sat, leaning on their elbows, staring at each other. Finally Samantha spoke. “That’s just weird.”

      And there it was, summed up perfectly. Tess was surprised by her own laughter. “It is! Do you think he wants to keep me here just to torture me?”

      “Maybe it’s a case of the devil you know,” Samantha said. “Maybe he’s nervous about having a consultant around and he figures that at least he knows you.”

      “But he doesn’t!” Tess said. “Not at all... Well, only in a naked and sweaty kind of way, but other than that, we’re strangers!”

      “A naked and sweaty kind of way...” Samantha giggled. “Tess, you are the only person I know who would end up in this predicament. It could be a sign that it’s time to mend your wild ways.”

      “To be honest, my ways have been a lot less wild the past couple of years,” Tess confided. “It all gets kind of boring after a while.”

      “Boring?” Samantha repeated. “You have definitely been sleeping with the wrong men. Perhaps it’s time for something new. Like getting to know the guys first for a change.”

      “That is far too much work,” Tess countered. “No, I’m pretty sure vibrators were invented for people like me. They don’t ask for much, just a few new batteries every now and then.”

      “Tess!” Samantha exclaimed in shock. And then the laughter started again and Tess put her head down on the table, resting it on her folded arms, laughing until her hands were wet with tears. When she looked up, Samantha was wiping her own eyes and grinning at her. Tess suddenly felt a deep gratitude. Even if Mayor Slaid Jacobs came to his senses and ran her out of town tomorrow, she was glad she got to have this laugh with her friend today. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed her.

      “So how was that night with the mayor two years ago, if you don’t mind me asking?”

      “Incredible.” Tess sighed, remembering how much she’d wanted him then. How much she could still want him now if she let herself. “Truly amazing.”

      “What are you going to do?”

      “Just try to pretend it never happened, I guess. And keep out of his way whenever possible. Hopefully he’ll realize how much better it would be to have someone else on this job.”

      “I know you’d like to get back to the city,” Samantha said softly, “but I kind of hope you stay.”

      “You know I could never move out here like you did.”

      The teasing light was back in her friend’s eyes. “Never say never. This place has a way of growing on you. Stay too long and it might even get under your skin.”

      Tess glanced back out the window, at the vast mountains filling the horizon, and the enormous empty sky graying with the dusk. She shivered. It wouldn’t grow on her. She’d be lucky if she survived a month of all this cold solitude and silence.

      * * *

      SLAID SAT DOWN heavily on the rock and twisted the top off his beer. The cold bitterness was exactly what he needed after his visit from Tess today. He looked up at the nearby peaks, noticing the way the setting sun lit up the granite. Something he’d seen almost every day of his life, yet had never taken for granted.

      He liked this rock. His son called it The Thinking Rock because Slaid had come out here a lot after Jeannette had left them, to brood and try to figure out where it had all gone wrong. Now that Devin was a teenager, they came up here together for the occasional heart-to-heart.

      It was up on the edge of their property, where the hills started to give way to the mountains, and it had a good view. He could see his house in miniature below—a low rancher his father had built in classic ’50s style. It wasn’t picturesque like some of the old farmhouses in the area, but big glass doors gave way to all kinds of patios and he liked that mix of inside and out. He never felt removed from the land he loved.

      A motion beyond the house caught his eye. Devin was leading Orlando out of the barn. His son tied the horse to a fence and started brushing the gelding’s smooth gray coat. Slaid knew he should be the one doing that task. Devin had plenty of his own chores to finish and then homework to start. It was just one example of how Tess Cole was already throwing him off his game.

      Tess. The name suited her. Sleek and strong, just like the woman. He’d wondered about her name for the past two years. Wondered, sometimes, if there was any way to find her.

      And now she was here, in Benson, more beautiful than he’d remembered and more unsettling than he could have imagined. Seeing her long, thick, blond hair wound up in that tidy bun today made him remember how it had curtained them as she’d straddled him on the bed, kissing him as if she was ravenous. Her curves in that sexy business suit reminded him of how her breasts had filled his hands, how her hips had moved when she’d ridden him.

      “Hell.” He said it aloud, and the sound evaporated into the empty sky. He took another gulp of beer and felt a twinge of regret when he realized it was almost empty. He probably should have stashed a few more bottles in his pockets before he left the house. If he were a less-responsible guy he would have gone for it. But he was very responsible, usually. Just not that night in Phoenix.

      That night he’d been lonely, recently dumped, and just drunk enough to step out of the confines of his normal behavior and proposition the unbelievably sexy woman draped on the bar stool next to him. For one night he hadn’t been the guy whose wife had walked out on him, or the dad whose kid was tearing up the town with his seemingly infinite reserves of anger. For one night he hadn’t been the dutiful son, responsible for the hopes and dreams of the generations of ranchers who’d left him their legacy. He’d just been an anonymous man, making love to an anonymous woman in an anonymous hotel room, and it had been the hottest night of his life.

      But she wasn’t anonymous anymore.

      What he’d done in their meeting earlier came back to him garnished with a twist of guilt. He’d pressured her to stay—hell, he’d made her stay.

      Maybe he’d done it out of anger. It confounded him that she didn’t remember him. How was it possible that one night could mean so much to one person and so little to another? He’d thought about her countless times, and she’d walked into his office today with no clue who he was. She’d looked at him as if he was a total stranger while she was etched so clearly in his memory. Well, she’d remember him now, all right. Not for their night together—apparently that had been totally forgettable—but for the way he’d been an asshole and had selfishly pressured her to stay in Benson.

      And then it hit him. He didn’t hold all the cards here. She could chat to whomever she wanted about their one-night stand. And it could certainly change his life if she did. He wondered what his constituents would think if they knew what he’d done in Phoenix with Tess—and how much he’d enjoyed it.

      The good people of Benson had elected him mayor almost unanimously. And why not? He was a pretty upstanding kind of guy. A high school football hero, college scholarship kid. Head of the Cattlemen’s Association, a city council member and now, mayor of the town. People thought of him as an up-front, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. And he was—except for that one night.

      He should have agreed when she’d offered to leave town. It would have ensured that his reputation was never tarnished. Because it wasn’t just his reputation he had to worry about. Being a leader in Benson was family tradition. His grandfather and his dad had both been mayor,