“Mandy.” He touched the brim of his hat. “Mrs. Prescott.”
“I’ve told you, it’s Shelia, Ty. Mrs. Prescott makes me sound old.” At forty-eight her mother was still an attractive and vibrant woman. Dressed in a tailored black sheath, her blond hair meticulously styled in a bang-less page-boy, Shelia Prescott exuded quiet elegance. It was a wonder she’d never remarried, given it had been over ten years since Mandy’s father had died.
“Sheila it is.” The lines around Ty’s eyes crinkled as his smile broadened and he trained those dark orbs on Mandy. “I was worried about you, Mandy. Thought you might not be feeling well since you’ve yet to meet with me about the Greenville rodeo.”
“I’ve been busy.” She hoped he didn’t miss the edge in her voice. After all, her grandfather’s funeral had only been a few days ago. The grief was still raw.
Of course, with Ty everything was business. That’s what her grandfather, J. M. Prescott, had liked about him. Because that’s the way her grandfather had been.
Nothing personal, just business.
She’d had to swallow a gallon of pride when JM, his health deteriorating from cancer, had installed Ty Martin as head of the family’s rodeo stock company just a few weeks before his passing. Temporarily, her grandfather had said. Nothing personal. But it had felt personal. Very personal.
For ten years, since her father’s untimely death, she’d made it her mission to be ready to lead the company when her grandfather retired. All through high school and college she’d worked after classes and every weekend, missing football games, dances, proms, just about any social occasion. Extracurricular activities had been raking out stalls, training horses, loading trailers, and organizing rodeo events. Every college course she took, even attending business school, had been with one goal in mind—to be ready to lead Prescott Rodeo Company. The few guys she had dated had either been rodeo hands or rodeo cowboys, but none had understood her drive or tolerated it for long.
She’d been the only Prescott interested in running the company, much to her grandfather’s disappointment, apparently, given the “temporary” hiring of Ty Martin—an arrogant man, full of himself, and as strikingly handsome as Michelangelo’s stone statue of Apollo, and just as cold. A man who was a lawyer by degree and a land developer by trade. A rancher’s son who, at the first opportunity, had gotten as far away from herds as a prairie dog facing a stampede. Just like he’d gotten far away from her ten years ago.
Nothing personal.
“I think I’ll freshen up a bit,” Sheila said, taking a step back. “Before the reading of the will starts.”
“I’ll come with you,” Mandy offered. Anything not to be left alone with Ty. Not now. Not here.
“Stay, dear, in case Brian comes in. He’ll want to get started right away, and I’ll only be a minute.” Sheila smiled at Ty before she turned and continued down the hall toward the restrooms at the far end. Mandy didn’t follow. After what her mother had said, she’d be admitting she didn’t want to be alone with Ty, and she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction.
Still leaning against the doorjamb, he shifted slightly so she could pass, pushing back his hat and flashing that disarming grin of his. A grin that had surely lured more than one woman to a broken heart—including Mandy. But that was long ago.
“So maybe we should talk about it now. While we’re waiting,” he said as she slid by so close she could feel the heat of his body, smell the fresh scent of his soap. It distracted her. She didn’t want to be distracted. Not today.
“About Greenville?” Mandy shrugged in an attempt to look unruffled despite the churning inside her, like beaters in a mixing bowl of nerves. It was a good thing she hadn’t had time to eat. She hadn’t had time to change, either, having worked with the parade horses that morning. She still wore her dirt-speckled shirt, faded jeans, and had pulled her long brown hair back in a pony tail to keep it off her face. She must have looked a dusty mess and clearly not her mother’s daughter.
She hadn’t even changed her scoffed barn boots and boots were her one and only fashion obsession. She had ones made of leather, python, lizard, and caiman. She had red ones, white, gray, brown, black, tan, honey, and even a purple pair that she bought on an impulse after a really bad day. Snip-toed, rounded, pointed, and squared. Embroidered, embossed, distressed, and inlaid. Every famous maker, several no one ever heard of, and, of course, a number that were custom made. Most fell into the cowgirl category, but there were a few that were spiked heeled and knee high, and one dominatrix-style thigh-high black pair she’d bought to impress a certain cowboy she’d been dating—but never had the courage to wear. That was the extent of her fashion sense, or lack thereof, depending on how one felt about her taste.