Page 10 of Last Chance for Her Rancher Boss

Nash checked his phone. It was already past eight, late in the morning by farming standards. The expert evaluator would be showing up any minute now. It would be the polite thing to be there to greet the guy. Nash usually wouldn’t care one bit about being polite, but at the end of it all, he still wanted to get a good price. It was better to play nice and make this go as smoothly as possible. Playing nice wasn’t going to be fun, but it was going to be necessary. He pulled himself together and got in the truck,driving to the house. The short trip felt like a death march. As soon as this guy turned up, it was officially the end of an era. There was no turning back now.

Nash didn’t have to wait long. Just as he climbed out of his truck, the old engine rattling as it cooled, a newer, cleaner-looking vehicle was motoring up his driveway.Midwest Ag Solutionswas emblazoned on the side door. Nash had always thought it was a stupid name for the company, considering they were now nationwide. Poor long-term planning, if you asked him. But then again, he was the one whose business was going under, so what did he know?

He waved the truck over to where his was parked, and the driver obliged. Their engine made no rattling, cooling sounds as it was turned off. Nash tried not to feel jealous. He was a twenty-nine-year-old man; he wasn’t going to feel jealous over a truck. He just wasn’t.

The person who jumped out of the company truck was a woman, her auburn ponytail swinging with the motion. Nash felt embarrassment curdling in his stomach that he’d assumed the expert was going to be a guy. At least he hadn’t said it out loud, so he could at leastpretendhe wasn’t a total idiot. The best he could do was to force his face into a tight-lipped smile as the woman reached into the truck and pulled a carry bag out, swinging it over her shoulder. Nash stood a good distance away, hands awkwardly hanging by his side. He almost offered to help her carry her bag, but he’d already been unintentionally sexist enough for one day. Besides, she looked like she could handle herself just fine.

Actually, the evaluator looked weirdly familiar. Had she been one of the people who came knocking on his door asking for him to sell? No, all those people were office workers and lawyertypes, not people with veterinary degrees. Maybe she was in some of the company’s advertisements or something? Had he seen her smiling on a billboard somewhere? The feeling that he knew her wouldn’t fade; in fact, it kept growing like a tidal wave, itching at his brain uncomfortably.

Then she looked up. At first there was a wide smile on her face, and she was ready to say hello. As soon as she locked eyes with Nash, though, a confused look crossed her face, and the smile faded like it was dying.

Meg? Meg from high school Meg? No. It couldn’t be. But it was… Meg Whitmore, ten years older, even more freckled, which seemed impossible, and now staring at him with realization dawning on her face. Nash’s already knotted-up stomach sank even further when Meg’s realization morphed into a look of cold, piercing anger.

This wasn’t going to be a happy reunion.

CHAPTER 4

MEG

It took about thirty seconds to fully realize who was standing in front of her, and it felt like the longest thirty seconds of Meg’s life. Time slowed down to a crawl as her brain tried to process the impossibility standing before her.

Nash? No. No way. There was no way that Nash Callahan had ended up running aranch. Running a ranch took tremendous amounts of responsibility. Running a ranch tookdrive, and those were traits that Nash had never had all that much of. This was ridiculous. But the denial burned away pretty quick when the man standing in front of her grew pale and still, looking just as confused and horrified as she felt.

Holy crap, itwasNash. Over the last decade whenever she’d had a fleeting thought of him, she’d still seen him as a gangly teenage boy. But here he was, the fully grown version. His hair was a shaggy mess, overgrown and darker than she remembered. His skin was tanned several shades darker as well, which really was proof that he spent his time outside. A silver scar ran through his eyebrow and down to the top of his cheek. That definitely hadn’t been there the last time she had seen him.

Oh, God. What was she supposed to do now? They were just standing there in silence. Nash’s arms were at awkward angles beside him, as if he’d forgotten how they worked, while the strap of Meg’s bag cut into her shoulder. The bag that was stuffed with clothes and necessities because she was supposed to be staying here for the foreseeable future.

Meg was a nanosecond away from turning around and sprinting back to the truck when Nash finally broke the silence.

“Um, hi.”

Well, that was anticlimactic, wasn’t it?

“Hi,” Meg replied. Every other option right now seemed either ridiculous or just plain awful. Saying hi was a relatively safe thing to do.

“So…” Nash said, seeming to collect himself in slow motion. “You’re the fancy veterinarian, evaluation… person?”

He waved a hand in the direction of Meg’s company truck, the logo obnoxiously large on the passenger door.

“Yep, that would be me,” she said, aiming for a smile and ending up with a grimace. “And you… work here?”

“Uh, actually, I own the place. Technically my brother did too, but he signed everything over to me… Will? You remember Will? But, yeah, just me at the moment.”

He paused his awkward ramble and cleared his throat. Because yes, Meg remembered Will, of course she did. Just acknowledging that though, for Nash to mention the past out loud, brought everything back in a rush. Their friendship, which had seemed unbreakable, eternal even. Her stupid crush that she’d gotten carried away with. Memories of standing alonein the corner of the school gym, hope fading with every unanswered text message.

“Yes,” she said curtly. “I remember.”

She said nothing else because any desire to be nice had fled her body. She wasn’t going to try and fake another smile. She certainly wasn’t going to help along this limping conversation. Nash could struggle and do it himself.

Meg took a few seconds to give a cursory glance around the place. It looked like a postcard, with green pastures and blue skies. There were some horses milling around, a stable, and an old tractor broken down and rusting, and somehow that only added to the fairytale look of the place.

Nash, apparently, had finally found his voice again.

“They, the company, they said you were happy to stay in the main house?” It came out as a question.

Was he giving her an out, an opportunity to turn around and run away? Well, that wasn’t going to happen. The shock was starting to wear off, and in its place was a whole lot of anger that Meg had been ignoring for the better part of a decade. She was here to do a job. If that made Nash Callahan uncomfortable, then that was just a bonus.

“Yep. That’s right,” she said coolly. Nash just nodded as if he were accepting his fate. Meg couldn’t even bring herself to make her face look neutral. She could feel a frown forming with every passing second.

---