Page 31 of Her Boss, Her Rancher: Sunrise On The Ranch

“Emma!” she shouted.

“Reagan,” he all but growled. “What are you doing?”

Emma stepped out and glanced between them, clearly confused. “Yeah?”

“Do you like Cade?”

She paled. “He’s been a decent, if slightly difficult, client.”

“Not what I asked.” One corner of Reagan’s mouth kicked up. “Do you like-him, like-him, as in would you consider going out on a date with him?”

Emma’s eyes widened as Cade choked. He was going to have to come up with one hell of a condolence card to send Eli because he was going tokillReagan for this.

“That’s enough,” he said.

At the same moment, Emma spoke. “He asking?”

“Yeah, he is.” Reagan glanced from one to the other. “He’s taking you to Clayton to go to dinner and then dancing at Bits ’n Spurs Friday night. It’s jeans-and-boots-and-a-sexy-top kind of place.”

She paled. “I don’t dance.”

“He’s excellent. He’ll teach you.” Reagan rounded on Cade. “Only thing you’ve got to figure out is where to go for dinner. Eli can give you a recommendation if you can’t come up with a decent place. Cool?” Before he could answer, she nodded. “Good. Emma, I don’t know what you brought in the way of clothes, so shout out if you need to borrow a top.” Then she took off up the stairs muttering about men being morons.

“I actually feel sorry for Eli,” Emma murmured, watching her go.

The sentiment caught Cade off guard. “Why?”

“She’s going to go have some very domineering sex with him, and he’ll have no idea what he did to deserve it.” She grinned. “Or how to do it again.” Shifting her gaze to meet his, she nodded. “I get the impression you just got railroaded. It’s okay if you want to cancel this now.”

He opened his mouth to do just that, but what came out was, “Be ready by six on Friday.”

Stunned at his brazen stupidity, he spun on his heel, went into his room and shut the door. Standing there, he listened for her door to close. The moment the latch clicked, the second he was truly alone, he grinned.

He had a date with the woman, theonlywoman, who drove him so crazy that he was beginning to think he couldn’t live without her.

10

EMMAWASN’TENTIRELYsure what had happened to the past three days, but they’d disappeared in a rush of work.

Two days ago she’d taken the trucking company responsible for delivering the furniture to its knees. The furniture had shown up this morning, seven days ahead of schedule. That meant she’d been putting the finishing touches on the cabins, ironing and hanging curtains, arranging furniture for appeal and to maximize space.

She’d finished about an hour before dinner, giving her a chance to quietly move all of her stuff to the little one-bedroom honeymoon cabin while the family was preoccupied. It had taken a couple of clandestine trips to transfer everything, but she’d managed.

She was officially out of the house.

Reagan had looked at her funny when she’d come in for a quick meal, but the woman hadn’t questioned Emma in the midst of sandwich-making chaos. Every time the brothers descended on the kitchen, they inevitably left scraps of this and pieces of that. When all was said and done, the kitchen appeared as if an F5 tornado had swept through the space. It was insane that feeding three educated, civilized men could leave such chaos in its wake.

She began cleaning up with one hand while she ate her sandwich with the other, but Reagan waved her off. “I’ve got this. Practice has taught me how to best manage the mess. It’s something no sane woman should have to tackle until she’s so smitten that it doesn’t leave her with that particular expression.”

“What expression?” Emma asked, grateful to set her sponge down.

“The one that wordlessly asks, ‘How do these men behave in public?’” The other woman laughed. “You’re smitten, yes, but not quite enough to handle cleanup.”

Swamped with a strange sense of discomfort, Emma nodded. Some things she simply wasn’t good at, and keeping house was one of them, particularly when that house was a home. She had no idea how to cultivate that kind of warmth, to make a room livable or to make a house the center of the family dynamic. “I envy you this,” Emma said reverently.

Reagan paused in the middle of spraying the counters with 409 and looked up. “You what?”

“I...nothing.”