Logan seemed to find that amusing, and some of the tension went out of those wide shoulders. “You’ll need to call me Kade. Same as everyone else.”

“Kade then.” She didn’t smile. She wasn’t thrilled to be working for a guy who didn’t want to hire her because she was a woman.

“You can use the conference room,” Conn said, rising.

Ellie walked ahead of Kade out of Conn’s office, and she led him into the glass-enclosed room next door. She wondered what sort of cover job he planned to dredge up for her and reminded herself she didn’t have to take the case.

As she studied Logan’s solid jaw, the gleam in his world-weary eyes, and his hard, sexy mouth, it occurred to her she would be making a far safer decision if she turned him down.

* * *

Kade stretched his long legs out beneath an oak conference table surrounded by ten brown-leather captain’s chairs and studied Ellie Bowman. When he’d called Conn Delaney and asked about hiring a detective, it never occurred to him Conn would suggest a woman.

And a damn pretty woman at that. A little shorter than average, she had a small waist, slender hips, and shapely legs. Dark copper hair, clipped neatly at the nape of her neck, curled softly down her back, gleaming in the sunlight streaming in through the window.

He’d felt a jolt the moment he had walked into the office and seen her sitting at her desk. He was a man of strong sexual appetites, and he’d been single for the past eight years. He noticed women, and Ellie Bowman definitely was one.

“I can bunk in with the hands,” she said. “This time of year, you’re probably still looking for strays and moving them down to the lower pastures.”

Kade inwardly groaned. The bunkhouse? Not likely. A good-looking woman would be nothing but a distraction to the hands.

“I don’t suppose you can cook,” he said. “Mrs. Stenson is leaving for a month-long visit with her son and his family in Phoenix. Be a place you could easily fit in.”

One of those smooth reddish eyebrows slid up. “Why am I not surprised the only job you think I can handle is in the kitchen?”

Irritation trickled through him. He wasn’t being disrespectful. His mother had taught him better than that. With an opening in the kitchen, hiring her would be believable. Simple as that.

“Cooking won’t be a problem,” she answered before he had time to respond. “My mother cooked for our ranch hands. I pitched in whenever she needed me.”

He managed to nod. “Mabel has a helper, so you won’t be left to do all the work yourself. In fact, Maria usually does most of the heavy lifting now that Mabel is in her seventies.”