Men to Trust: Boss Man / The Last Good Man in Texas / Lonetree Ranchers: Brant

To look at him, though, Violet thought, he seemed very self-possessed and confident. He was tall and bronzed with a strong face, square chin, deep-set dark eyes and blondish-brown hair which he wore conventionally cut. He had the physique of a rodeo star, which he’d been before his father’s untimely death and his switch from cowboy to cattle baron. He ran purebred red angus cattle, well-known in cattle circles for their pedigree. He had all the scientific equipment necessary for a prosperous operation, including high-tech methods of genetic breeding, artificial insemination, embryo transplantation, cross-breeding for leanness, low birth weight and daily weight gain ratio, as well as expert feed formulation. He had the most modern sort of operation, right down to lagoon management and forage improvement. He had the most modern computers money could buy, and customized software to keep up with his cattle. But his newest operation was organic ham and bacon that he raised on his ranch and marketed over the Internet.

Violet was staggered at the high-tech equipment in the office he maintained on his sprawling ranch outside town.

“Intimidated?” he drawled, smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s easier to use than it looks.”

“Can you operate it all?” she asked, surprised.

He shrugged. “With the average duration of secretarial assistance around here, I have to be able to do things myself,” he said heavily. He gave her a long look and stuck his lean hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Violet, I’m not an easy boss,” he confessed. “I have moods and rages, and sometimes I blow up when things upset me. You’ll need nerves of steel to last long here. So I won’t blame you if you have reservations.”

Her eyebrows arched. “I worked for Blake Kemp for over a year.”

He chuckled, understanding her very well. “They say he’s worse than me,” he agreed. “Okay. If you’re game, we’ll give it two weeks. After that, you can decide if it’s worth the money. That’s another thing,” he added, smiling. “I pay better than Kemp.” He named a figure that made Violet look shocked. He nodded. “That’s to make it worth the aggravation. Come on, and I’ll show you around the equipment.”

It was fascinating. She’d never seen anything like the tangle of spreadsheets and software that ran his empire. Even the feed was mixed by computer.

“Not that you’ll have to concern yourself with the organic pork operation,” he added quickly. “I have three employees who do nothing except that. But these figures—” he indicated the spreadsheet “—are urgent. They have to be maintained on a daily basis.”

“All of them?” she exclaimed, seeing hours and hours of overtime in statistics before her.

“Not by hand,” he replied. “All the cowboys are computer literate, even the old-timers. They feed the information into handheld computers and send it to the mainframe by internal modem, right from the pastures,” he told her.

She just shook her head. “It’s incredible,” she replied. “I hope I’m smart enough to learn all this, Mr. Wright.”

He smiled approvingly. “There’s nothing I appreciate more than modesty, Miss Hardy,” he replied. “You’ll do fine. Ready to get started?” “Yes, sir!” she replied.

It was a short day, mainly because she was so busy trying to learn the basics of Duke Wright’s agricultural programs. She liked him. He might have a bad reputation, and she knew he could be hard to get along with, but he had saving graces.

She managed not to think about Mr. Kemp all afternoon, until she got home.

Her mother smiled at her from the sofa, where she was watching her daily soap operas. “Well, how did it go?” she asked.

“I like it!” Violet told her with a big smile. “I really do. I think I’m going to work out just fine. And, besides that, I’m going to be making a lot more money. Mama, we might even be able to afford a dishwasher!”

Mrs. Hardy sighed. “That would be lovely, wouldn’t it?”

Violet kicked off her shoes and sat down in the recliner next to the sofa. “I’m so tired! I’m just going to rest for a minute and then I’ll see about supper.”

“We could have chili and hot dogs.”

Violet chuckled. “We could have a nice salad and bread sticks,” she said, thinking of the calories.

“Whatever you like, dear. Oh, by the way, Mr. Kemp came by a few minutes ago.”

Violet’s world came crashing down around her ears. She’d hoped to not even hear his name, at least for another few days.

“What did he want?” she asked her mother.

The older woman picked up a white envelope. “To give you this.” She handed it to Violet, who sat staring at it.

“Well,” she murmured. “I guess it’s my final pay.”

Mrs. Hardy muted the television set. “Why not open it and see?”

Violet didn’t want to, but her mother looked expectant. She tore open the envelope and extracted a check and a letter. With her breath in her throat, she slowly unfolded it.

“What does it say?” her mother prompted.

Violet just stared at it, unbelieving.

“Violet, what is it?”

Violet drew in a breath. “It’s a letter of recommendation,” she said huskily.

Chapter Two

“I can’t believe he actually gave me one,” Violet said huskily, her heart racing from just the thought that he’d backed down that far. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“He told me that,” her mother replied. “He said that he felt really bad about the way you left, Violet, and that he hoped you’d be happy in your new job.”

Violet looked up at her parent, hating herself for being so happy with these crumbs of Kemp’s regard. “He did?” She caught herself. “Did you tell him where I was working?”

Mrs. Hardy shifted on the sofa. “Well, dear, he looked so pleasant and we had such a nice conversation. I thought, why upset the man?”

Violet laughed helplessly. “What did you tell him, Mother?” she asked gently.

“I said you were working in a local office for a very nice man, doing statistics,” she said with a chuckle. “He didn’t actually ask where. He started to, and I changed the subject. He said Libby and Mabel were splitting your work for the time being. He’s going to advertise for a new secretary,” she added.

Violet sighed. “I hope he’s happy with whichever poor soul gets the job,” she said.

“No, you don’t. I know you hated to leave. But, dear, if he doesn’t feel the same way, it’s a blessing in the long run,” her mother said wisely. “No sense eating your heart out.”

“That’s what I thought when I quit,” Violet admitted. She got to her feet, putting the letter and check back in the envelope. “I’ll go fix something to eat.”

“You could make a pot of coffee,” her mother suggested.

Violet gave her a glare. “You don’t need to be drinking caffeine.”

“Don’t we have any decaf?”

It reminded Violet too much of her ex-boss, and she wasn’t enthusiastic. But her mother loved coffee, and missed being able to drink it. She didn’t know about the coffee wars in Kemp’s office, either. Violet forced a smile. “I’ll see,” she said, and left her mother to the soap opera.

The first few days out of Kemp’s office were the hardest. She couldn’t forget how she’d looked forward to every new day, to each morning’s first glimpse of her handsome boss. Her heart had jumped at the sound of his voice. She tingled all over when, rarely, he smiled at her when she finished a difficult task for him. Even the scent of a certain masculine cologne could trigger memories, because he always smelled of it. She felt deprived because her life would no longer contain even a casual glimpse of him. She was working for his worst enemy. Not much likelihood that Kemp would turn up on Duke Wright’s ranch in the near or distant future.

But as time passed, Violet slowly fell into a routine at Duke’s ranch. The spreadsheet programs were easy to use once she learned what the various terms meant, like weight gain ratio and birth weight. She learned that Duke used artificial insemination to improve the genetics of his cattle, selecting for low birth weight, good weight gain ratios for offspring and lean cuts of meat in the beef cattle offspring that would eventually be generated by his purebred herd sires and dams.

She was fascinated to find that science was used to predict leanness and tenderness of beef cuts, that genetics could manipulate those factors to produce a more marketable product for consumers.

She was fascinated by the various pedigrees and the amount of history contained in his breeding programs. It was like an organic history of Texas just to look back over the first herds that had contributed to Duke’s formidable beef concern. He kept photographic records as well as statistical ones, and she found the early beef sires short, stocky and woolly compared to modern ones. It graphically showed the progression of genetic breeding.