administrative assistants fluttered around him like moths to a lightbulb, but Sarah wasn’t interested. For one thing, he was her boss. For another thing, she’d sworn off men, and Eric didn’t make her heart flutter anyway.
“The way I see it, your brother’s handed you publicity on a silver platter,” she said.
“Lane would never touch a silver platter. If he gave us anything, he shoved it at us with a manure fork.” Eric tapped a remote and his brother’s image appeared on a big-screen television mounted in a discreet wooden frame above a carved credenza.
“I’m not letting that happen to Two Shot,” the image said.
Sarah shifted uneasily. The reference to her old hometown had kept her awake half the night. Why was Lane Carrigan talking about a Podunk little town twenty miles from the ranch? What did he care about Two Shot?
“Really, your brother’s doing my job for me.” Sarah felt like she had a manure fork herself, only she was using it to shovel actual bullshit. “You wanted publicity, and there it is.”
The two of them watched the screen in silence as the camera shifted to follow Lane and his cowboy cohorts across the packed-dirt parking lot in back of the arena. The lens zeroed in on the fringe framing the West’s best-known Wrangler butt and she shifted in her chair. “Proving the process doesn’t affect Lane’s cattle operation will be a major public relations victory. They can’t complain when we’re willing to risk your family ranch, right? And everyone will be talking about it now. It’s just what we wanted.”
Actually, she suspected everyone was talking about the way Lane Carrigan’s butt looked in those chaps. Everyone female, anyway.
She slapped the thought away and turned back to her boss, who was tapping a pencil on the desk top and scowling.
“We’ll make it work,” she said, shoveling on more fake confidence. “We’ll talk to him.”
“How? I left message after message. No response.” Eric lurched out of his chair and started to pace, raking his fingers through his dark hair. “Now that he’s been attacked by that reporter, he’ll probably claim we sandbagged him. He’s impossible, Sarah. It’s going to be a tough fight.”
His shoulders slumped, and for a moment Sarah saw past the professional facade. Eric was only human, and being vilified as a land-raping oil executive while your brother reaped glory as a rodeo star couldn’t be easy—especially when that brother slammed you on national TV.
No such thing as bad publicity, she told herself. No such thing. Somehow, she’d turn it their way. She had to. This job was a perfect match for her skills. It would carry her far beyond her past and into a world where she could finally stop worrying—about herself, about her family, and about her place in the world. In the business world, hard work paid solid dividends nobody could ever take away.
Nobody. Not Lane Carrigan, or anybody else.
***
Late afternoon sun slanted over Sarah’s desk, casting the long shadow of her mile-high in-box over the paperwork she was trying to finish. Eric appeared at her door just as she was about to dot an i and cross a final t.
“He’s coming in.”
The drama in his tone made it sound like he was talking about a fugitive from justice.
“Lane,” he clarified. “He’ll be here in ten minutes. I’d like you to be there.”
She started to protest, but he held a hand up to stop her. “He’s turned this into a public relations issue, and that means you’re going to be involved.”
She followed him to his office and perched on the chair in front of his desk, back straight, legs crossed. Her pose radiated poise and self-control, but she caught herself covertly biting her cheek the way she always did when she was tense. Sometimes she worried she’d chew her way right through it, but until then nobody would know how uptight she was. The nervous habit kept her hands steady and her gaze level.
“It’s good he’s willing to talk,” she said.
“Not really. He says he’s not going to allow the drilling.”
“He doesn’t really have a choice.” Sarah felt a stab of remorse. Sometimes she felt like she was on the wrong side of these arguments. She’d driven past the Carrigan Ranch a hundred times, maybe a thousand, admiring the smooth, concentric curves of plowed land that traced the contours of the earth. Now those graceful lines would be replaced by long, random scars and right-angled roads that cut through the land with no regard for dips