Lone Star Daddy (McCabe Multiples) Read Free Page A

didn’t think to ask me first?”
    Her pause went on a second too long.
    “Or you
did
think to ask and decided not to.”
    Another shrug and a small, mischievous smile. “I might have discovered—after I finished organizing everything last night—that it was too late to call you.”
    He narrowed his eyes, not buying that excuse for one hot second.
    “Or...I might have had a feeling that you’re one of those gotta-do-it-all-myself types.” She became serious. “With the first of the berries ready to be picked tomorrow, we really don’t have time to waste.”
    Uh-huh. Just as he had thought.
    “Deal or not, Ms. McCabe, this is still my ranch.”
    “Oh, I am aware.” Tossing her head, she lifted a lecturing finger his way. “But that doesn’t change the fact you have agreed to sell those blackberries to me, McCulloch! Or in any way alter the fact that I, in turn, have promised those same berries to a number of local stores, as well as the members of the Rose Hill Farm co-op! All of whom, as it happens, know the importance of bringing a crop in at just the right moment.”
    He couldn’t argue. Any berries left to fall on the ground were money down the drain. “You seem to have it all figured out.”
    A shadow fell over her face—as if he’d struck a nerve. “You’ll thank me when I cut your first check.”
    He supposed he would, at that.
    “In the meantime...how about getting off your high horse long enough to come and thank all the neighbors who have so kindly agreed to help us?”
    Clint fell into step beside her. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised,” he murmured, nodding at the farmers coming forward to greet him. “Laramie is a place where neighbors help each other out.”
    Rose smiled, sweetly this time. “You’re darn right about that, cowboy. That’s how we farmers and ranchers all survive.”
    * * *
    “L OOKING GOOD AROUND HERE ,” Gannon Montgomery told Clint later that evening when the two met at the Double Creek to settle their monthly accounts.
    Friends since childhood, both were back on the ranches where they had grown up. Clint paid Gannon a grazing and usage fee for running his cattle and cutting horses on Gannon’s ranch—the Bar M. In return, Gannon paid Clint to keep up the pastures on his land and exercise and take care of his family’s horses.
    Moreover, Gannon was a prominent local attorney who was married to Rose’s sister, Lily. So there was little about the McCabe women or Laramie County he did not know.
    Clint turned his gaze to the neatly plowed rows between the thick, plentiful six-foot-tall bushes. “More like a blackberry farm or something out of the Napa Valley.” Which was a far cry from the ranch he and his family had always intended it to be, before he and his siblings had been forced to sell during probate, after his parents’ death, years ago.
    He sighed. “But it will be easy to get the berry picker through.” Although he wasn’t looking forward to the tedious work of driving that tractor and hauling crates of produce around. He would be much happier on the back of a horse, or even out on the land repairing fence, than trying to care for the delicate fruit.
    Nodding in agreement, Gannon followed Clint inside. “Rose seems happy.”
    Pushing the image of the feisty woman with the delectable curves out of his mind, Clint cracked open two beers. “Tell me about it.”
    They toasted each other silently and then sat down at the kitchen island. “She’s wanted to get her hands on all those berries for years,” Gannon told him. “It was such a shame, seeing them all go to seed.”
    Clint snorted derisively, aware he’d been able to sidestep Rose’s requests the year before, after acquiring the property, simply by not being around during the harvest season. “Had the birds not been given free rein with them, they might not have spread to the degree they have.”
    “I sense you’re irritated with my sister-in-law?”
    Clint chose his words