Free Fool for Love (Montana Romance) by Merry Farmer Page B

impressed.  “I thought you only found them in Scotland.”
    “Maybe twenty years ago,” Eric shrugged.  “But my family’s been working with them since they was first brought over to the states.  They like Montana.”
    “Where do you sell them?” Ben went on.
    Out of the corner of his eye Eric caught Amelia holding her breath, one hand over the round lump of her stomach.  Her eyes shone like the sun.  So that’s what she was up to.
    He blinked.  By gum, she had a point.  Ben owned a supply business right over the border from him in Canada.  His pulse soared.
    “We been selling to a firm in Chicago these last few years, but they haven’t given us half what they’re worth.  My cousin Curtis, who co-owns the ranch, sent me over here to England to see if I couldn’t find new business opportunities.”
    “And did you?”  Ben hung on his every word.
    Eric scratched his head.  The all-too familiar wave of anxiety that paralyzed him any time he came near a business deal filled up his gut again.  Any second now Ben would figure out he was an idiot and turn up his nose.
    “Well, no,” he confessed.  “Seems most folks over here would rather get their Angus stock straight from Scotland instead of having it imported from the states.”
    “Have you explored all of your options in North America?” Ben asked.  “Why, I’ve got retailers who would kill for Angus beef.”
    “Do you now?”  Eric brightened.  He stood straighter.  His heart had worked its way up to pounding in his throat.  He glanced to Amelia, who looked like she might bust out in tears of joy, and it ratcheted up another notch.
    “Absolutely.”  Ben nodded and thumped him on the back.  “Tonight after supper we’ll have a drink and talk a little more about what we can do for each other.”
    A strange feeling, something Eric hadn’t experienced for ages, broke over him.  It was like taking a warm shower in pure sunlight.  It was hope.  He walked to Amelia’s side in a daze while Ben lined his discs up to take a shot.  Amelia took his arm and hugged it, leaning into him.
    “Excellent shot,” she whispered.  She even winked at him.
    He stared down at her with a rippling sense of disbelief.  “Did you set that up?”
    She shrugged, playing coy.  “I saw an opportunity.”
    Ben took his turn, sending his disc across the deck to land in a part of the triangle marked eight.  He hooted in victory.  “There you go!  Twenty-three!  I win!”
    “Not so fast there, mister.”  Eric swaggered forward.  He’d never felt so confident in his life.  “I still got a chance to knock your disc out.  And there’s that minus ten space too.  The game’s not over yet.”
    “You think so?” Ben ribbed him.
    “I know so,” he replied.  “I’m suddenly feeling extraordinarily lucky.”
     

 
     
    Chapter Six
     
    Amelia paced the deck in the moonlight.  She hadn’t felt so light in years.  At that very moment Eric was closeted in the gentleman’s lounge with Benton Chase, discussing a deal that would save his ranch.  She stopped at the end of the railing, placing a hand over the bump of her stomach and looking up at the stars with a grateful sigh.
    She’d been able to see the deal coming as they ate their supper.  Eric and Ben had chatted like two old school friends over everything from what they saw as ridiculous English manners to the open range of the North American west.  They had entertained the others at their table more effectively than a stage show.  But all the while there were hints and grins and inferences that the two men would be a team for far longer than the remaining days of the crossing.
    Relief swirled through Amelia at the prospect.  She leaned against the railing, closing her eyes and letting the sea air touch her smiling face.  At last she had done something good.  Eric would be repaid for his amazing kindness and she could enter her new life with the assurance that she had helped the