“Do you think I’m stupid?” he went on. “I see how you look at this ranch.” His eyes narrowed, the creases beside them fanning out to show all the years he’d spent riding under the brutal Montana sun. “You come here and see a beautiful young girl—vulnerable, lonely. And you think you can charm your way into a permanent position on a ranch you could never afford in two lifetimes.”

The air in LJ’s lungs scorched his cells, boiled up his throat. He’d never given Bill a single reason to think he was using Andra to secure his job here. If anything, spending time with her had endangered his position. But this wasn’t about logic. This was about an overprotective daddy who had hardly spoken to a black man before and decided after one glance that he wanted better for his little girl.

LJ’s hands locked on to the armrests of his chair. He could snap the thick wood beneath this leather and toss it to the ground, flip the heavy mahogany desk onto its side with only one hand. Let this self-righteous asshole know exactly how dangerous he could be.

Which would also prove to him exactly how much he couldn’t be trusted. “I would never—”

“Prove it.” Bill’s eye twitched as he sat back in his desk chair. “You want this job? On your own damned merit?”

LJ stuffed his festering anger down deep and nodded.

“You can keep working here, or you can try and date my daughter. Not both.” Bill’s hazel-green eyes went hard. “If what you want is a career here, then you earn it honestly, by showing me with hard work and years of loyalty that you’re an asset to the ranch. And if you want my daughter, you get your own job and support yourself without her family money paying your bills.”

LJ couldn’t even blink. The closest show barn of this caliber was hundreds of miles away, not that it mattered. The Lawlers were the only ones in the business willing to pay a novice trainer enough that he could send anything home to help his mama with the bills. He would know: he’d spent three years before this working on his uncle’s ranch and searching for a better job anywhere in the country.

The hard truth was that horses were a rich man’s hobby, and he’d never be a rich man.

LJ tried not to picture his mama’s expression when he had to come crawling home because he got fired. She had no problem railing at him about burning the soup or getting up late for school, but when he really disappointed her, she went quiet. Like she was confused because she truly believed in him. When he failed, his steel-willed mama lost her stride a little bit.