Free Cowboy Redeemed by Parker Kincade Page A

about her future more in the twenty hours since she’d met Clay than she had in the last ten years. He made her want … everything.
    “Ains? You okay?”
    She nodded, too embarrassed by her thoughts to trust her voice. She busied herself with twisting noodles around her fork. They ate quietly for a few minutes.
    “That was Ed Marks who stopped by earlier. You know him?”
    Clay nodded. “He still help out around here?”
    Ed had managed the ranch for years. While he refused to talk much about her uncle, he’d agreed to stay on. He hadn’t been happy about Ainsley’s decision to sell off part of the herd, and they’d gotten sideways over it. He’d walked out on her that day.
    “No, but apparently his wife insisted he bring me some of her homemade bread.” Ainsley had been surprised by the rare gift. Friendship hadn’t come easy in her nomadic life, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want or need it. Bread did not equal friendship, but Ainsley hoped it was a start. She made a mental note to take a few jars of spaghetti sauce over to Ed’s wife tomorrow.
    “He worked here for as long as I can remember. I hadn’t heard he retired.”
    “I don’t think he’s retired from ranching, just from ranching for me .”
    His fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “How’s that?”
    She shrugged. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things. He decided it’d be best to move on.”
    “Ed’s good people. He knows his stuff.”
    “I’m sure he does.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. The old man was set in his ways. He also hadn’t understood the financial trouble Ainsley had walked into. If she hadn’t sold the cattle, none of them would be here now. Not her, certainly not Ed, and not the smokin’ hot cowboy sitting across the table from her.
    “I’m guessing this is a touchy subject?”
    “Touchy in that I don’t like the implication I don’t know what I’m doing.”
    “And … do you?”
    His gentle tone eased the bite of his question.
    Ainsley laid her fork against her plate and took a drink from her glass of iced water. She had no reason to lie. Her fate would be decided within the next three months anyway.
    “Not entirely,” she finally admitted. “But here’s the thing. Business is business. Whether it’s raising cattle or selling cars. The way I see it, the financial principals are the same, no matter the commodity. I don’t know all I need to know about running a successful cattle operation—yet—but I understand how finances work.” Or don’t work, as the case may be.
    If the bank loan she applied for came through, Ainsley’s problems wouldn’t be over, but she could breathe a little easier. She knew enough to know it would take years to breed the herd back to what it had been. So what if she had a few lean years? She’d had twenty-four of them so far, and she was still standing.
    If the loan didn’t go through, well … she wouldn’t think about it unless it happened. She could make herself nuts with what if’s . If she’d learned anything, she’d learned not to buy problems she didn’t have yet. Best to focus on the ones she did have.
    “Where’d you learn about business?”
    Ainsley relaxed, happy to steer the conversation away from ranch talk. “I got a job straight out of high school with a local cable company. I started as a low-level data entry clerk for their accounting department.”
    “You go to college?”
    “No. College wasn’t really an option for me. I could’ve gotten loans, I’m sure. But after a few months in accounting, working with all of the delinquent accounts, I realized taking on debt that massive wasn’t for me.”
    Oh, the irony. The loan for the ranch would pay college tuition several times over.
    “I didn’t go either. I never felt the need, much to my parents’ dismay. The way I see it, the cattle don’t care if I have a piece of paper saying I learned something I’d probably forget a year out of school anyway. Why bother? Experience and