“I can’t waste time chitchatting,” Dillon said. “I’ve got a horse to check on.”
“I can wait by myself.” In fact, if he was the only available company, she’d prefer it.
“Determined, aren’t you?”
He didn’t seem reluctant to be rude. “Aren’t most women?”
He continued to scowl. “I bet you’re a Yankee. Or from California.”
The statement was so unexpected Angie couldn’t help but laugh. “Would that make any difference?”
“I bet you’re not married, either.”
This conversation was getting too bizarre. She couldn’t possibly take him seriously. “My, you Southern boys do get to the heart of things in a hurry. What makes you say that?”
“Most women around here don’t talk like you.”
“Why? Do you beat them? Or do you still subscribe to the barefoot-and-pregnant theory?”
He didn’t smile. Clearly the man had no sense of humor.
He studied her a moment, his head tilted to one side as if he didn’t know how to classify her. She liked that. Despite the mansion, the horses and a pedigree that probably reached back a hundred years before the Civil War, she’d bet he was one of the good old boys who thought of women as “honeys” and “babes” and “fillies” who couldn’t survive without a man’s help. She couldn’t wait to buy this farm out from under him and show him how wrong he was.
But damn he was a hunk. Angie felt something flutter inside. It just might be possible to ignore a little chauvinism when it was attached to a body like that. For a little while at least.
Not that his face was exactly ugly. His dark brown hair was thick and wavy, plus he had a tanned complexion and brilliant blue eyes. Christine must take after her mother. Her blond hair and sharp, almost pointed features owed nothing to this man.
“Did you come down here to cause trouble?” he asked, his hostility undisguised now.
“Could I?” Now she was being provocative. She wasn’t sure why. Neither was she certain what kind of reaction she hoped to provoke. “Don’t answer that. I’m interested in farms, and yours seems to be the biggest one around.”
His gaze took in her boots, hose and form-fitting suit. “You’re not properly dressed for a tour.”
“Did you expect me to show up in jeans and a plaid shirt?” she asked. “I thought Southern women were expected to go visiting in high heels and big hats.”
“I wouldn’t know. My mother was something of a rebel.”
Angie decided she was tired of fencing. She was also disturbed by the physical attraction that persisted despite his hostile attitude.
“I’ve decided not to wait,” she said. “I’ll be staying at the motel. Have your mother call me when she’s free.”
“You can save yourself the trouble. The farm’s not for sale.”
“I think I’ll wait until I hear that from your mother.”
She left him looking furious. Apparently he wasn’t used to having his wishes ignored. She wondered how her stepfather had avoided this compulsion Southern men had to dominate. She also wondered why she didn’t just throw in the towel and move on to the next place she was considering buying.
She got into the car and backed out. Dillon Winthrop was still standing where she’d left him, looking as enticing as ever. She hoped he wouldn’t be around tomorrow. He was definitely a threat to her concentration.
CHAPTER NINE
DILLON WAS STILL standing in front of the barn when his mother came hurrying toward him. Some of the tension drained from his body when he saw her anger. Maybe this foul-up wasn’t her fault.
“A woman came by to look at the place,” he said as soon as she was within hearing distance. “She said she’d talked to Burton Rust about buying it.”
Dillon saw embarrassment mingled with anger in his mother’s expression. His tension returned. Angie’s being here might have been a mistake, but her belief that the farm was for sale wasn’t. He saw it in Harper’s eyes. A sick feeling welled up from the pit of his stomach.
“Dammit, Mom, why didn’t you tell me you were trying to sell this place?”
“Now, Dillon…”
He ignored her placating tone. “You let Burton Rust send some woman in here and make me look like a fool for not knowing a thing about it. I may not own the place, but I’ve got a stake in it.” A moral right, but no legal claim. It made Dillon crazy to have his hands tied like that.
“Dillon, I never authorized Burton to look for a buyer. I asked him to find out what the place would bring. That’s all.”
It didn’t matter what she’d intended. She’d talked to the bank without telling him. That made Dillon feel more on the outside than ever. His daughter didn’t like him, and his mother wanted to sell the farm without consulting him. So much for his plans.
“Well, are you going to sell or not?”
Harper hedged. “I haven’t made up my mind, but I’ve got to consider my options.”
“And one of them is selling the farm?”
“It always has been.”
Dillon knew that. And he knew why. Because WedTech was her baby. And WedTech was in trouble.
WedTech had become Harper’s life after Dillon left for college. She had worked at her father’s side for years, fighting with him over the issue of upgrading. But Sam Weddington was a stubborn man who believed that what had worked once would always work. When he died, Harper had nursed WedTech through tough times, borrowing to make changes a little at a time. But now the equipment was so outdated that the only way to keep the mill competitive was to rebuild from the ground up.
“Did you show her around?” Harper asked.
“She said she’d rather talk to you. I’m sure she felt there was no point in talking to a man who’s little better than your farm manager.”
“Dillon, that’s ridiculous. You know this place is as much yours and Christine’s as it is mine.”
“Then why is Burton Rust acting like it belongs to him?”
Harper rubbed her forehead and walked to the paddock fence. She leaned against it, her shoulders sagging. Times like this, when the financial pressure got to her, she almost looked her age. “I guess you could say Burton owns more of this place than we do.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I borrowed against the farm. I was certain I could pay it back. It never occurred to me Burton might foreclose.”
“Foreclose!”
“After all the help Sam gave him to get his bank started…Anyway, he called last week. Said the loan was due.” She glanced at him, her violet eyes bleak. “When I said I couldn’t pay him yet, he said he’d have to put out some feelers to see what kind of money the farm would bring in. Otherwise he would have no choice but to consider foreclosure. I had no idea anything would happen so quickly.”
So the farm was for sale. It didn’t matter how or why, just that it was. Dillon was going to lose the only thing that had ever given him a real sense of belonging.
Since childhood, Dillon had felt the ache of being fatherless. Then, as a young man, he’d learned the truth. There had been no Kenneth Winthrop, no tragic automobile accident. His mother had made up the story, the man, the name. Ever since, Dillon had felt rootless, unattached. Only the land gave him a sense of belonging.
He loved this farm. He used to ride it with his grandfather and listen eagerly to the stories of the generations of Weddingtons who had farmed the land before him. “We go all the way back to the Revolution,” his grandfather used to say. “There have been Weddingtons on this land for nine generations. You’re the tenth.”
Dillon had always counted on that. Even when he was in college. Even when he took that job in California to be near Christine. He’d counted on it especially when he got custody of his daughter. He’d never wanted her to grow up as a latchkey kid living in an apartment in Redondo Beach.
Now his dream was falling apart. It made him so angry he wanted to fight somebody, anybody.
; Harper put a hand on his arm. “Please don’t worry, Dillon. I’ll work it out. I’ll ask for another extension.”
“That’s not the point, Mom,” Dillon said. “The mill is the problem, and it’s not going to get any better. You ought to get rid of it. You don’t need to work so hard.”
“And do what? Crochet?”
“You could help me run this place. You handle the selling, I handle the growing. It’s more than enough to keep you busy.”
“I don’t like the farm. I never have.”
He knew that. She’d never shared his love for the acres of fields and forest, but it was her home, dammit! She ought to feel something for it.
“Do you want to see this place turned into a housing development with a golf course in the middle?”
“Of course not.”
“Then sell WedTech and put the money into the farm.”
“I won’t sell the mill. The people in this town are my friends. I grew up with them. They’ve depended on us all their lives. They’d have nowhere to turn.”
“What about Christine and me? We’ll have nowhere to turn when you sell the farm and the mill goes bust.”
“It won’t go bust. I’d have the money I need to retool.”
“I don’t give a damn about the mill!” Dillon thundered. His mother couldn’t understand. She never did when it came to that mill. “I’m concerned about us!”
“I care about you, too.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t even think of us most of the time. You’re willing to sacrifice your family for a damned town that could take care of itself.”
“I’d never do that. You and Christine are the most important people in the world to me. We’ll find a nice place, a smaller place that will be easier to manage. We’ll all be happier. You’ll see.”
“I can manage just fine where we are. You’re the one who can’t manage.”
Dillon was sorry if he’d hurt his mother’s feelings, but she was doing a pretty good job on his right now. He never used to question her love, but her loyalty to the people of Collins was making her blind to what she was doing to him and Christine.
Harper could never understand why the farm was so important to him, especially when he hadn’t lived here in ten years. And he couldn’t explain to her the only reason he’d endured ten years away was because he’d known it was here. He’d defied his grandfather and gotten a degree in agriculture instead of textiles because he always intended to come back to the farm.
It was his only heritage. He wanted to pass it on to his daughter. If he could teach her to love the land the way he did, maybe she could learn to love him, too.
“That Kilpatrick woman said she’d be back in the morning,” he said. “Call her and cancel the appointment.”
“No,” Harper said after a moment’s thought. “I don’t like what Burton did, but I need to know how much the farm will bring.”
“Then put the mill on the market. Find out how much it would bring.”
“No. I’ll never sell WedTech.”
“Dammit, Mom, are you going to keep ignoring me until you lose everything?”
Harper shook her head. “I see Mrs. Owens heading this way. Christine’s lesson must be over.”
She was cutting him off. She always did that when they argued about the mill.
“Go help her unsaddle her pony,” Harper said. “And see if you can mend a few fences while you’re at it.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that when you just pulled the props out from under both of us?”
Harper refused to return to their argument. “Keep trying. It’s the only way you’ll ever be the father you want to be.”
“Maybe the father I want to be isn’t what she wants.”
“It’s what she needs.”
His mother wouldn’t talk to him anymore, but Dillon hadn’t given up yet. He’d fight until the ink dried on the page. Some way, somehow, he’d prevent her from selling the farm.
DILLON WATCHED enviously as his mother got more out of Christine in one minute than he had in an entire afternoon.
“Did you have a good day, Christine?” Harper asked as they sat down at the dining table.
“No,” Christine said.
Harper looked at the little girl with concern in her eyes as Floretha dished up vegetables for Christine’s plate. “What happened?”
“The teacher kept fussing at me. She said I had to speak up, that nobody could hear me. Then when I went out to play, they wouldn’t let me go first. They said Emily got to go first because I went first yesterday.
Dillon had asked his daughter the same question. All he’d gotten was a disgruntled “Okay.” He knew Evelyn and her parents had poisoned Christine’s mind against him. Even now, from three thousand miles away, the Stringfellows tried to keep their hold on Christine by sending her presents far beyond what he could afford to give her.
At first they had bombarded her with gifts every week—dolls, a TV, video games, clothes, jewelry—jewelry for a seven-year-old!—until he’d told them they could send gifts only for Christmas and her birthday. But that hadn’t been a success. It had taken an entire UPS truck to deliver her birthday gifts. At least a dozen presents were still locked away in the attic.
“Dumb Eddie didn’t want to jump,” Christine was saying. “Mrs. Owens wanted me to try again, but I told her I was tired.” She made a face. “Grandpa Stringfellow would buy me a horse that could jump that stupid old fence.”
Dillon felt the bile rise in his throat as it always did when Christine compared him to her grandparents.
Harper turned her attention to Dillon. “Did you have a good day?”
No, he’d had a miserable day.
It had started by his discovery that his favorite horse was lame. Next, his tractor wouldn’t start. It was practically held together by chewing gum and baling wire because Harper had used their money to pay somebody’s orthodontist bill. Then Christine had come home in one of her moods. The final straw had been that city-bred blonde telling him Weddington Farms was for sale.
“We need to talk about a new tractor,” he said. He knew his mother didn’t have the money for a new one. But it wouldn’t hurt to remind her there were other things in the world besides that mill and the unending needs of the people of Collins.
“Are we going to move?” Christine asked unexpectedly.
Dillon noticed she’d stopped eating.
“Whatever made you ask that?” Harper glanced at her son.
“Mrs. Owens heard it at the bank.”
Dillon’s curses were vivid and plentiful. Floretha raised her eyebrows in his direction.
“The farm’s not for sale,” Dillon snapped.
“Mrs. Owens said it was.”
“Mrs. Owens is wrong. It isn’t for sale, and it never will be.”
Christine looked at her grandmother. The stricken look on Harper’s face refuted every word Dillon had said.
“Where will I live?” Christine asked. “Can I take my dolls with me? Mrs. Stuart doesn’t want to move again.”
“I told you the farm wasn’t for sale,” Dillon repeated.
“Can I live with Grandpa Stringfellow?” Christine asked.
“No!” Dillon hadn’t meant to shout, but the frustrations of the day had finally gotten the better of him.
Christine burst into tears. She jumped up from her seat next to her father, ran around the table and buried her face in her grandmother’s lap.
“I don’t want to move again,” she sobbed. “I might get lost.”
One of her favorite dolls had gotten lost in the move from California, and Christine had never forgotten it.
“Hush,” Harper cooed, trying to calm the frightened child. “Nobody will ever lose you.”
The feeling in the bottom of Dillon’s stomach got colder and heavier. His daughter had run to his mother for comfort. She wanted to live on the other side of the country from him. Would he ever figure out how to set things right?
�
�No matter what happens, you’ll always stay with your daddy and me,” Harper assured her. “Nobody will lose you.”
Christine stopped crying. But when Harper suggested she finish her dinner, she said, “I’m not hungry. May I go to my room?”
“Are you sure? You haven’t eaten much.”
“I don’t want anything else,” Christine said.
“Then you may go. I’ll be up to tuck you in later.” Harper watched, her expression worried, as the child left the table and trudged toward the stairs. “I don’t like it when she doesn’t eat. She’s too thin now.”
“That’s nothing to what she’ll be when she finds out you do want to sell the farm,” Dillon said. “She probably won’t eat anything at all.”
“We don’t know that we’ll have to sell. Besides, the last thing she needs is to be worrying about us leaving her.”
“Nobody’s leaving her.”
“I know that and so do you, but she doesn’t. The most important person in her life did leave her. She hasn’t gotten over that.”
“She doesn’t seem to be trying very hard. She hates everything I do. She hates me.”
“No, she doesn’t. She’s just afraid of you.”
“Why?”
“Her mother’s dead, she’s separated from her grandparents and she’s living with two people she hardly knows. All she has to hang on to is her dolls, and now she thinks they’ll be out of a home soon.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“She needs to feel loved.”
“I do love her. I show her every day.”
“Not in ways she can understand,” Harper said. “You’re always barking at her. You don’t mean to, but you do. It scares her.”
Floretha rose to clear the table. “You listen to Miss Harper,” she said. “That child wants to love you, but she’s afraid.”
“As far as I can tell, she never tries.” He was tired of taking all the blame. He’d done everything he could think of to change Christine’s dislike for him.
“Dillon, it isn’t up to her to try. She’s only a child. She doesn’t understand. You have to keep on showing her you love her whether she responds or not.”
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