Mountain Heiress: Mountain Midwife by Cassie Miles Page A

other man said.
    “It’s so easy for you. If I lose my reputation, I lose everything.”
    “Then get rid of them.”

Chapter Eight
    If Gabby had been alone, she would have been terrified. Get rid of them? Those words sounded nasty and much too lethal for her to deal with. Luckily, Zach was here. She grabbed his jacket and tugged. In her opinion, it was time to bolt.
    But he had a different idea. He shuffled his feet to make the sounds of footsteps on the hardwood floor. Loudly, he said to her, “I think he came back this way.”
    “What are you doing?” she whispered.
    “Making them think we didn’t overhear.”
    When he strode across the dining room, she followed, making sure to keep his large, muscular body between her and the threat. In the kitchen, Osborne stood behind a marble-topped island. The man leaning against the countertop had the thick neck and heavy shoulders of a bodybuilder. His dark hair was cut military style. This was the guy who said that he wanted to get rid of them, but Zach stepped right up to him, introduced himself and asked, “Is that your truck out in front?”
    “That’s right.”
    She remembered the clean red truck with a logo stenciled on the door, and a name she didn’t recall.
    Zach’s memory was better. “Ed Striker.”
    “Right, again.”
    “We’ve met before.”
    “About four years ago,” Striker said. “I delivered a couple of horses to your ranch for Adele Berryman.”
    “I remember.” Zach grinned. “Mrs. Berryman had some strange ideas.”
    Striker didn’t grin back, but he nodded. “Yeah, she did.”
    “Well?” Osborne opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water and took a long drink from it. “Aren’t you gentlemen going to tell us what these strange ideas were?”
    “She had a pair of remarkable horses,” Zach said, “thoroughbred Arabians, a male and female. Mrs. Berryman called them Angelina and Brad. By all rights, they should have been producing pretty little colts and fillies, but they didn’t have an interest in each other. I told Mrs. Berryman that there were a number of places she could go for an insemination procedure, but she had it in her head that there needed to be a natural attraction. And she thought I could help.”
    Gabby couldn’t believe it. “You did sex therapy for a horse couple?”
    “I’m not taking credit,” Zach said, “but Brad and Angelina have produced two sets of twins in the past four years.”
    “I’ll be damned,” Osborne said.
    Zach confronted the other man. “What are you doing here, Striker?”
    “He does handyman work for me.” Osborne took another sip of water and held the bottle to his forehead. Though it wasn’t hot, he was perspiring. “Packing and shipping these artworks, especially the sculptures, is difficult, and Striker has a knack for it.”
    With a body like Striker’s, heavy lifting was a given, and she wondered what other skills he might have. She was still having trouble reconciling the neatly organized portfolio with Osborne’s flighty personality. “Is Ed also an accountant?”
    “Why would you think that?” Osborne asked.
    “The catalog of my great-aunt’s work is so precise. I expected you to have someone who handled those details.”
    “I handle all the records myself.” Osborne stuck out his skinny chest and preened. “I’m an MBA and trained accountant, which is why my clients stick with me. I make them money.”
    She revised her first impression of him. The baggy clothes and sandals were a costume he wore to make people think he was artsy-fartsy. Osborne was, in fact, a raging capitalist. “So it’s not all about the art?”
    “Aren’t you a sweet, naive, little thing.” He reached over and patted her cheek. “I appreciate the talent, but this is a business.”
    “Is that what your spirit guide told you?”
    “Ouch.” He yanked his hand back and looked toward Zach. “She bites.”
    “Yes, she does.”
    Actually, she was more comfortable with the MBA