Read Lone Tree for Free Online Page B

vacated.
    “Talk about bossy .”
    The fact she hadn’t managed to rile him in return
only doubled the insult. She shoved away from the table. “We’ll see about that.
We’ll just see. You’ve got another think coming, cowboy.”
    But Lainie was the one who thought about it.
    Resentment didn’t go down easy, but as the morning
wore on, she finally managed to swallow it.
    Yes, Miles would back up his foreman. And as much as
she hated to admit it, they were right. If there were snakes out there, she
needed protective footwear. It was that simple. So she’d get the stupid boots,
and she’d wear them when she had to.
    And then she’d look for a way to put that cocky,
bossy cowboy in his place. The opportunity would present itself; all she had to
do was be patient and conniving.
    Lainie spent her first day in the office trying to
make sense out of a filing system that didn’t exist. Cabinets made of rich oak
lined the wall next to her desk, and inside the drawers was a jumble of
outdated voting material, obsolete calendars, household account records,
business receipts, and personal correspondence.
    One drawer was empty, and she frowned into the
hollow space, puzzled. Whatever had been stored in there, Miles evidently
hadn’t wanted to share with his secretary. Well...that was his prerogative. She
closed the drawer and went to the next one.
    When she broke for lunch, she found out what
southerners ate for dinner.
    Lined up on the buffet were platters of fried
chicken and thickly sliced baked ham, bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans,
corn on the cob, a vessel of country gravy, two kinds of bread, and peach
cobbler. Whew.
    Lainie ate a ham sandwich, drank a glass of iced
tea, and went back to work. Miles joined her shortly, carrying a mug of
steaming coffee and a plate with a small amount of peach cobbler on it. He set his
plate atop the cabinet, sipped coffee, and curiously thumbed through files
remaining in the drawer she was working on. As if getting a sudden thought, he
gave Lainie a quick glance, then looked at the plate with its stingy amount of
cobbler.
    “That’s mine,” he warned, and she grinned. “That’s
all I get, and it’s legal today. You go after that and you’ll lose your arm.”
    “I believe you.” Pausing, she rolled stiff
shoulders. “I’ve tossed a lot of stuff. And I found an empty drawer, so what we
need to save is in there for sorting and filing later.”
    His glance darted to the top left drawer, which had
been the empty one. She’d been right; he’d deliberately and recently removed
something.
    “You’ve been at this a long time,” he said. “Isn’t
it time you called it quits?”
    “Yep. After I finish this last stack, I’m going out
to the stables.”
    “You’re not thinking about riding, are you?”
    She gave him a quick glance. “Why do you ask?”
    “Rosalie overheard you and Reed this morning.”
    She grew still. “Gee, you’ve got a right small
community here.”
    “The only reason she mentioned it is because she
thought you looked like you might have some temper in you. And I’m thinking
she’s right.”
    “And if I do?”
    “The hardest thing in the world to do is admit
you’re wrong when you’re in a temper. Take it from one who knows.”
    Because of the long-standing estrangement between
Miles and his daughter, Lainie considered that statement to be hard truth. She
looked away, feeling sad. The feeling was incongruous to the subject at hand,
but she couldn’t deny it.
    Then abruptly she returned to the present. “Don’t
worry about it. I already decided to buy the dad-blasted boots. Tomorrow. I’d
do it this afternoon but I refuse to give him that much satisfaction.”
    He grinned. “You brighten up my life, little girl.”
    While he savored his cobbler, Lainie returned to the
dwindling stack of papers, musing over how he’d addressed her. Little girl
denoted someone to be fussed over and protected and humored—which Lainie wasn’t
and did not