Passion Flower. Diana Palmer

      “It’s not my business...” she began gently.

      “We’re selling off one of our best bulls,” he said, “to give us enough down payment on another top breeding bull. Everett is trying for a purebred Hereford herd. But we don’t have the cash, so I’ve come down here to do some fancy trading. I sold the bull we had. Now I’m trying to get a potential seller to come down on his price.”

      “Wouldn’t a phone call to your brother be quicker?” she asked.

      “Sure. And Everett would skin my head. I came out here on a bus, for God’s sake, instead of a plane. We’re just about mortgaged to the hilt, you see. Everett says we can’t afford not to pinch pennies.” His eyes twinkled. “We’ve got Highland Scots in our ancestry, you see.”

      She smiled. “Yes, I suppose so. I can see his point. Phone calls are expensive.”

      “Especially the kind it would take to relay this much information,” he agreed, nodding toward what he’d dictated. “If I get it off today, he’ll have it in a day or two. Then, if he thinks it’s worth giving what the man wants, he can call me and just say a word or two. In the meantime, I’ve got other business to attend to.”

      “Shrewd idea,” she murmured.

      “Just a couple more,” he continued. He leaned back and studied a magazine. “Okay, this one goes to...” He gave her a name and address in north Georgia, and dictated a letter asking if the breeder could give him a call at the hotel on Friday at 1:00 p.m. Then he dictated a second letter to a breeder in south Georgia, making the same request for 2:00 p.m. He grinned at her faint smile.

      “Saving money,” he assured her. “Although why Everett wants to do it the hard way is beyond me. There’s a geologist who swears we’ve got one hell of a lot of oil on our western boundary, but Everett dug in his heels and refused to sell off the drilling rights. Even for a percentage. Can you beat that? We could be millionaires, and here I sit writing letters asking people to call me, just to save money.”

      “Why won’t he sell?” she asked, curious.

      “Because he’s a purist,” he grumbled. “He doesn’t want to spoil the land. He’d rather struggle to make the cattle pay. Fat chance. The way things have been going, we’re going to wind up eating those damned purebreds, paper and all.”

      She laughed helplessly at his phrasing and hid her face in her hand. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

      “It is kind of funny,” he confessed. “But not when you’re cutting corners like we are.”

      She got up and started to lift the typewriter onto the desk by the window, struggling with it.

      “Here, let me do that,” he said, and put it onto the flat surface for her. “You’re pretty weak, little lady.”

      “I’m getting back on my feet,” she assured him. “Just a little wobbly, that’s all.”

      “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’m going down to get a sandwich. Can I bring you something?”

      She’d have loved a sandwich, but she wasn’t going to put any further drain on his resources. “No, thank you,” she said, politely and with a smile. “I just had lunch before I came over here.”

      “Okay, then. See you in a half hour or so.”

      He jammed a straw cowboy hat on his head and went out the door, closing it softly behind him.

      Jennifer typed the letters quickly and efficiently, even down to the cattle’s pedigrees. It was a good thing she’d taken that typing course when she was going through the school of interior design in New York, she thought. It had come in handy when the pressure of competition laid her out. She wasn’t ready to handle that competitive rat race again yet. She needed to rest, and by comparison typing letters for out-of-town businessmen was a piece of cake.

      She felt oddly sorry for this businessman, and faintly sympathetic with his brother, who’d rather go spare than sell out on his principles. She wondered if he looked like his younger brother.

      Her eyes fell on the name she was typing at the bottom of the letter. Robert G. Culhane. That must be the man who’d dictated them. He seemed to know cattle, from his meticulous description of them. Her eyes wandered over what looked like a production record for a herd sire, and she sighed. Texas and cattle. She wondered what the Circle C Ranch was like and while she finished up the letters, lost herself in dreams of riding horseback over flat plains. Pipe dreams, she thought, smiling as she stacked the neat letters with their accompanying envelopes. She’d never see Texas.

      Just as she rose from the typewriter, the door opened, and Robert Culhane was back. He smiled at her.

      “Taking a break?” he asked as he swept off his hat and whirled it onto a table.

      “No, I’m finished,” she said, astounding him.

      “Already?” He grabbed up the letters and bent over the desk, proofreading them one by one and shaking his head. “Damn, you’re fast.”

      “I do around a hundred words a minute,” she replied. “It’s one of my few talents.”

      “You’d be a godsend at the ranch,” he sighed. “It takes Everett an hour to type one letter. He cusses a blue streak when he has to write anything on that infernal old machine. And there are all the production records we have to keep, and the tax records, and the payroll...” His head lifted and he frowned. “I don’t suppose you’d like a job?”

      She caught her breath. “In Texas?”

      “You make it sound like a religious experience,” he murmured on a laugh.

      “You can’t imagine how much I hate the city,” she replied, brushing back a strand of dull hair. “I still cough all the time because of the pollution, and the apartment where I live has no space at all. I’d almost work for free just to be out in the country.”

      He cocked his head at her and pursed his boyish lips. “It wouldn’t be easy, working for Everett,” he said. “And you’d have to manage your own fare to Big Spur. You see, I’ll need a little time to convince him. You’d barely get minimum wage. And knowing Everett, you’d wind up doing a lot of things besides typing. We don’t have a housekeeper...”

      Her face lit up. “I can make curtains and cook.”

      “Do you have a telephone?”

      She sighed. “No.”

      “Kind of in the same boat we are in, aren’t you?” he said with a sympathetic smile. “I’m Robert Culhane, by the way.”

      “Jennifer King,” she said for the second time that day, and extended her hand.

      “Nice to meet you, Jenny. How can I reach you?”

      “The agency will take a message for me,” she said.

      “Fine. I’ll be in town for several more days. I’ll be in touch with you before I go back to Texas. Okay?”

      She beamed. “You’re really serious?”

      “I’m really serious. And this is great work,” he added, gesturing toward the letters. “Jenny, it won’t be an easy life on the Circle C. It’s nothing like those fancy ranches you see on the television.”

      “I’m not expecting it to be,” she said honestly, and was picturing a ramshackle house that needed paint and curtains and overhauling, and two lonely men living in it. She smiled. “I’m just expecting to be needed.”

      “You’ll be that,” he sighed, staring at her critically. “But are you up to hard work?”

      “I’ll manage,” she promised. “Being out in the open, in fresh air, will make me strong. Besides, it’ll be dry air out there, and it’s summer.”

      “You’ll