Cold Hearted Cowboy (Not Looking For Love #7)

CHAPTER ONE

Dalton

I fucking hated Valentine’s Day.

Always had. It wasn’t about the flowers or the cards or the fake romance shoved down your throat everywhere you looked. It was about expectations. Promises people made—and broke—without thinking twice. The kind that taught a man never to make another one.

I didn’t do love. I didn’t do promises.

And I sure as hell didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day.

I stared at the calendar on my desk. The fourteenth was circled with a bright red slash through it. Thirteen days. Thirteen days until the world lost its collective mind over hearts and chocolates and bullshit declarations that wouldn’t last past March.

Thirteen days until I had to endure the pitying looks from people who thought being alone made me somehow broken.

I wasn’t broken. I was smart. Smart enough to know that women wanted one of two things from a man like me—money or sex.

My ex had wanted both, for a while. Then just the money. She’d been a buckle bunny when I was riding the circuit and had followed me from one town to the other. Then, she’d left when I’d stopped being on top. That had told me everything I needed to know about how conditional love really was.

She’d walked away five years ago on Valentine’s Day and took whatever faith I had left in romance with her. Since then, I’d learned to keep things simple. No attachments. No expectations. No promises I couldn’t keep.

It was easier to just be alone.

The door to my office opened without a knock. My brother Cade leaned against the doorframe, coffee mug in hand, grinning like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about.

“Counting down the days?” he asked.

“Get out.”

“Come on, Dalton. It’s just one day. You could try not being miserable about it.”

“I could. I won’t.”

He laughed and pushed off the doorframe. “Rhett called. His forensic accountant is arriving this morning. Nine o’clock.”

I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter till. “Great.”

“You could try to sound a little more welcoming. This person’s doing you a favor.”

“This person’s getting paid to do a job. That’s not a favor.”

“Whatever you say.” Cade took a sip of his coffee. “Just try not to scare them off in the first ten minutes, okay? We actually need this fixed.”

He left before I could tell him to mind his own business.

Even though getting our books fixed was his business as much as it was mine.

Cade and I had been running the ranch together for years.

And we’d made it work. More than work—we’d turned it into something bigger than what we’d inherited.

Better equipment. More land. Smarter deals. The ranch was solid. Thriving, even.

I turned back to the spreadsheet on my laptop.

Three months of financial chaos stared back at me.

Our previous accountant had either been stealing or was catastrophically incompetent—probably both.

Either way, he was gone, and we were left with a disaster that needed sorting before tax season buried us—and the ranch—alive.

Rhett Morrison was our attorney, friend, and former rodeo rider himself.

I’d left it to him to find someone who could untangle this mess.

I’d balked when he suggested the person live at the ranch but eventually agreed.

Being able to drive back and forth from town would be hit pr miss this time of year, and we didn’t have any days to lose.

At nine o’clock sharp, I heard a car pull up outside.

I stood and moved to the window. A sedan—not new, but well-maintained—parked near the house. The door opened and a woman stepped out.

I cursed Rhett the second I saw her. A woman. He sent me a damn woman. With Valentine’s Day breathing down my neck, the last thing I needed was some female cluttering up my space, expecting me to be polite or accommodating or any of the other bullshit women always seemed to require.

As the red haze of anger subsided, I realized I’d been taking her in.

She was curvy. That was the first thing I noticed.

The jeans she wore hugged hips that swayed in a way that made my attention snap into place whether I wanted it to or not.

She had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore a professional-looking blouse under a coat that was far too thin for Montana in February.

I watched her longer than I should have. I told myself I was assessing whether she could handle ranch life, but that was bullshit. I was looking at the curve of her ass as she bent to grab a suitcase from the backseat, and the way her blouse pulled tight across her chest when she straightened.

Fucking hell.

I turned away, jaw clenched. This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted a woman here. I might not believe in love or happily-ever-after anymore, but I wasn’t dead. And the last thing I needed was my dick overriding my common sense.

She stood there for a moment, looking at the house like she was steeling herself for something. She looked cold and unprepared but that was my problem. I wasn’t going to coddle her.

Then she squared her shoulders and headed for the house. My steps were slow as I walked to the front door, giving myself time to cool down. As Cade had pointed out, we needed help.

I opened the door just as she was about to knock. She looked up, startled, but she recovered quickly, straightening her spine. Brown eyes met mine—sharp and assessing, not soft or scared.

Big, brown, bedroom eyes that had no business being on a woman who was here to work.

I didn’t say a word. Just let the silence stretch until most people would’ve started babbling to fill it.

Finally, she said, “Mr. King?”

I didn’t smile or step back to let her in.

“I’m Amber Maxwell. Rhett Morrison sent me.”

My gut was telling me this was a mistake. She was a mistake.

I knew immediately I should have sent her away. Called Rhett and demanded a man be hired for the job. But I didn’t. I stepped back without a word. Her shoulder brushed my chest and sent an unwelcome jolt through me that I immediately shoved down.

She didn’t linger next to me. She didn’t look up at me with fluttering lashes or manufactured interest. Which somehow made my reaction to her worse. At least if she’d been obvious about it, I could have dismissed her as just another woman with an agenda.

“The office is this way.” I motioned her ahead of me and couldn’t help but notice she barely came up to my shoulder, which wasn’t surprising considering my size. I stood six foot three and had the mass and muscle that made me cast a big shadow.

When we reached the office, I gestured to the chair across from my desk. “Sit.”

I didn’t offer to take her coat or ask if she wanted coffee or water. I just pointed at the chair and watched her lower herself into it like she was trying not to take up too much space. That made me frown.

She sat, her suitcase standing on the floor beside her. Her posture was perfect—back straight, hands folded in her lap as if she’d done this a hundred times before.

Maybe she had.

I sat behind my desk and studied her. She looked back without flinching. No nervous fidgeting. No trying to fill the silence with small talk. Just calm, patient waiting.

That irritated me more than it should have.

“Rhett says you’re good at what you do,” I said finally.

“I am.” Not false modesty. Just fact.

“You know what you’re walking into?”

“He said your books are a disaster. Three months of discrepancies, possibly theft, definitely incompetence.”

I leaned back in my chair. “How long have you worked with Rhett?”

“Almost five years. I started doing bookkeeping for his firm. He encouraged me to do freelance work and move into forensic accounting after I helped him with a divorce case. Turned out I was good at finding money people tried to hide.”

“This isn’t that type of case.” I shook away the spike of feeling that ran through me at the mention of Rhett helping her.

She nodded. “I know. I now work mostly on corporate or business accounts. Like yours. Embezzlement. Some fraud.” She met my gaze evenly. “If your accountant was stealing, I’ll find it. And I’ll document it well enough that you can press charges if you want to.”

“How long will it take?” The sooner I got her off the ranch, the better.

“Depends on how bad it is. It could take a few weeks. Maybe longer.”

“Rhett suggested you live here while you work.”

She nodded. “I agree with him. I live about two hours away and the weather turns fast. The roads could become impassable. I understand we’re in a time crunch, so being here would allow me to work longer hours.”

“You’ll be living here. With me and my brother.”

“Understood.” She didn’t flinch when I told her she’d be living here. That alone made me suspicious. What kind of woman agreed to live on a remote ranch with two men without hesitation? Either she was desperate, stupid, or playing an angle. My money was on the latter.

Memories of my ex rose to the surface.

“Before we go any further with this interview, let me make one thing perfectly clear, my brother and I are not up for grabs. If you have any plans to try and get into our beds, you’re out of luck.”

She stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, voice dry, “Mr. King, I’m not exactly fantasy material.”

My first thought was—wanna bet? And that pissed me off because I hadn’t thought about any woman like that in years. The curves she was trying to hide under that professional blouse, the fullness of her lips, those big brown eyes—yeah, she was fantasy material alright. Which made her dangerous.

“My brother is somewhat of a womanizer.”

“Good for him. And I think you are the cold-hearted cowboy, right? So I guess we’re all safe.”

Cold-hearted. If only she knew how right she was. “That’s exactly what I am. Remember that.”

“Let’s set a few ground rules. I’ve got a number of ranch hands, and we work close to the house this time of year. I prefer you don’t go outside unless necessary.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

“The bunkhouse. Stay away from it. Don’t step foot out there when the men are around.”