"These are the power of attorney forms for you to sign. And this packet includes copies of your father's will, the past five years' financial statements for Bennington Chemical, and a current management roster. You should read them and—"
He plucked the power of attorney forms from her hand. "Leave the rest on the shelf by the door on your way out."
"Cal…"
But he was already absorbed in the cumbersome prose. He shot her one quick glance – she suspected that was when he reached the provision limiting her authority to matters dealing with assets inherited from his father – then read it a second time more slowly.
"Got a pen?"
"Just a minute. Lisa?" she called.
The other woman gave a wave to the young man she'd been talking to and headed toward them.
"Cal's going to sign this form, and I'd like you to witness it, Lisa."
"Sure."
Cal frowned. "I thought you said this was confidential."
"Lisa needs to know all the ins and outs of this. The same confidentiality that applies to me, applies to her."
Cal obviously had reservations. But instead of studying Lisa, his intent stare was aimed again at Taylor. She returned it coolly. Encountering that frown could frazzle her in a lot of contexts, but they were on her turf now.
After another moment, he signed and dated the two sheets in rapid order, and handed them to Lisa. She glanced them over – one eyebrow rising as she looked at the signature – then added her signature before handing them to Taylor.
"Is that it?" Cal demanded.
"For now. After you've read this information—" she tapped the packet she still held "—if you have any questions, call me at the office. Lisa or I should be able to explain. And there will be a lot more information later. These represent what's public record. Now that I have power of attorney, we'll be getting more detailed records."
"Fine."
"I'll make sure there's a valuation for tax purposes, but I'd also like another kind of valuation if that's all right with you. It's for—"
"Fine. Do it. Whatever's needed. I've got to get back."
Without another word he walked away.
Aware of Lisa's diplomatically concerned look, Taylor smiled at her. "We've finished our work here. Let's get back to the office.
She paused only to leave the packet of information on the shelf as Cal had instructed.
She made a vow as she drove back to town.
Over the next few weeks, as she did this work for him, she would try to remember the look on Cal's face when that calf was born. Try to use the memory as a counter-balance to what she could already see was going to happen: her frustration building, her patience waning, and her heart breaking.
* * *
Taylor Anne Larsen: Seer Into the Future.
That's what it should say on the sign in front of her office, instead of Attorney-at-Law, she decided as she drove back to the Flying W nine days later.
Her vision of frustration and impatience had been right on the mark. The matter of heartbreak she refused to consider at the moment.
This, after all, was a business meeting. A meeting she'd arranged in the hope that she could pin Cal down better in person than she'd succeeded in doing during brief, unsatisfactory telephone conversations.
Boy, there'd been times in Dallas when she'd have sung hallelujahs for a client who didn't give her any guidance about his wishes. More often, she'd had clients who had all sorts of wishes – many of them conflicting, most of them unreasonable and a few illegal.
Could Cal have somehow known that? Did he think autonomy – power – would send her rushing back to big-time corporate law? Was that why he pushed every decision back to her?
On that happy question, she parked her car and headed for the barn, which was where Cal had said he'd be.
She did her best to ignore a swell of longing when she passed the stall where she'd found Cal and Sin the day of the storm. She tracked Cal down at the other end of the building, where he was taking advantage of a recent warm spell by shoeing a horse near the open doors to a corral beyond.
She was pleased when he turned the work over to the man he'd been working with and directed her to sit on a nearby bench. "Thank you for putting aside your work to go over this, Cal."
"I'm not putting it aside. I'm getting out of Sam's way. He was showing me how it's done – he's the expert."
Taylor clenched her teeth. "Fine. Let's get started. Here's the draft of your will with the provisions you requested."
He dropped the envelope beside him without looking at it.
"You need to read that. And here's a list of matters we need to discuss."
At least he held on to this piece of paper, though discuss was not a good description for what happened. Only by asking direct, specific and numerous questions, did she draw out more information than she had on the telephone.
"Last item," she said crisply. "The actual running of the company – keeping the business going while the legal machinery turns. Is the management team now in place topnotch?"
"Hell if I know. I haven't been around there in ten years."
"Yes, but would you expect your father's choices to be capable of taking the company through a transition."
"I'd expect him to hire good people and then not give them an inch of latitude or responsibility."
She nodded at the confirmation of what her digging had hinted at. "In that case, you might want to bring in a few handpicked people to loosen everyone up, to let them see that a new management culture is going to—"
"Leave the people in charge in their same positions," Cal said with no interest.
"You mean until you go to Connecticut and can see firsthand—"
"Go? I'm not going there."
"But you've inherited a company. A very valuable company that's the livelihood for its employees. There'll be transitions, things to take care of. Even if you leave it running under the same management, the employees will want to know the new owner."
"I want nothing to do with it. That's why I hired you. If somebody has to go to Connecticut, it's going to be you, not me. I'm not going back there."
"Cal, I know there were a lot of reasons for your leaving—"
"There was one reason – I left to have my freedom."
She sat back, studying him, then gave a small sigh.
"You also left to punish your father – oh, I don't blame you. But who are you punishing now, Cal? The people who work for your family's company? They're all strangers, aren't they? Christina? She treated you horribly, but she's practically a stranger, too. So it comes back to your father and—"
"I'm not punishing anybody, certainly not Christina. Her dumping me for my father was the greatest break of my life. Married to her I don't know if I ever would have escaped."
For someone who spent so much effort at not letting anyone see inside him, sometimes Cal was remarkably transparent. He was dangling his ex-fiancée Christina in front of Taylor now in hopes of distracting her from a discussion of what had happened between him and his father.
She leaned forward, resting one hand above his knee, feeling the solid muscle there.
"Cal, you can't keep trying to punish someone who can't feel it anymore – if he ever could. You'll only hurt yourself."
Two long beats passed. She felt as if she was on the brink of a cliff, fighting to keep her balance.
Then Cal's mouth twisted and, even before he spoke, she felt the stomach-plummeting sensation of falling off a cliff – or being pushed.
"I could've sworn I hired myself a lawyer, not a therapist."
She forced herself to remove her hand slowly, when she wanted to snatch it away. She forced herself to straighten equally slowly, when she wanted to run. It wasn't only pride that wouldn't let her. It was Cal.
If she turned tail and ran, who would fight for him?
"You hired a lawyer, and a good one. So I suggest you listen to me when I say you need to go to Connecticut. No �
�� don't say anything now. Just think about it. I'll be in touch when I have something more to tell you."
* * *
Two weeks later, and Taylor no longer knew if she was fighting for Cal, or merely fighting against him.
She had never been so miserable and confused in her life. Which was exactly what she'd thought he'd intended when he hired her. Or was she personalizing a situation that no longer had anything to do with her? Had he succeeded in restoring his shell so completely that he no longer had feelings for her – if she hadn't imagined his feelings in the first place?
Or was that what he wanted her to think?
All in all, she was in no mood to mince words when she spotted him climbing into an aged Flying W pickup.
"Cal, we need to talk."
He looked through the open window, his face as neutral as ever.
"We need to talk? Most people who say that mean they have something to say, and they're not particularly interested in hearing anything the other person might say back. Is that what you mean, Taylor?"
"Yes, I need to say something, and no, I'm not particularly interested in hearing anything you might say."
"Then you better climb in, because I've got a field to check."
Recalling too vividly the last time they'd been together in the cab of a truck, and how hopeful – how foolishly hopeful – she'd been, she hesitated. Until she caught a glint of triumph in his face.
She marched around to the passenger side of the truck, climbed in and slammed the door. "Have you read the draft of the will?"
The thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers countered the light sleet falling from a bleak sky that exactly suited her vision of these past weeks.
"No. Told you, I'm not planning on dying anytime soon."
"Other people might have other plans," she said grimly.
"Do you have something in mind?"
"Don't tempt me. You know the saying about First, you kill all the lawyers? Well, the lawyers' version is First, you kill all the clients."
And damned if the man didn't chuckle. Then he stared out the still-open driver's window as if he might be embarrassed.
"Read the draft, Cal," she ordered in a remarkably neutral tone. "Now, what I needed to talk to you about…"
As the truck bounced over the rutted road, she succinctly updated him on her progress, keeping to an absolute minimum her comments about the roadblocks his lack of participation had erected.
"And I've arranged to have a former colleague who's a partner in a firm in Connecticut represent you in contacting the board. He's up on all the latest nuances of business law, and I trust him."
"I told you, no one else—"
"He doesn't know where you are or your Cal Ruskoff identity. He just knows everything has to go through me. If it's the expense you're worried about—"
"Screw the expense. My father hired the best legal talent to ensure he always got what he wanted, so any of his money that goes to lawyers will feel right at home." He stopped the truck, staring through the windshield toward an empty field. "I don't want anyone else to represent me. I hired you to represent me."
She turned to face his profile. Only when he looked her way did she speak.
"You hired me because you could keep me at bay – or keep your feelings for me at bay, but maybe that's flattering myself."
"That's crazy." The challenge in his voice matched his expression when he turned his upper body to face her across the gap of empty seat between them.
"Yes, it is, but that's what you did. You hired me because you figured that my having to look at you as a client would counter what happened between us during the storm."
"I told you who I am. Doesn't that show I trust you?" She delivered her opinion of that argument with a humph. "It was a no-lose situation for you. You said your stepmother and the board wouldn't have rested until they found you, so I likely would have known eventually. And by doing it this way, any feelings for you I might express, you could write off as my being after the money. And, hey, if I got caught up in the rush of a high-profile board fight, all the better – because that would really prove there wasn't anything real – not inside me and not between us.
"I can forgive you being scared, Cal. And I can forgive you not trusting yourself or me. But I opened my deepest closet and showed you my demons, and you used it against me. You used it to keep me from getting too close to your demons—" she reached across the space to thump him on the chest "—what's in here."
His hand immediately covered hers – to stop her motion or to hold it there? She pulled her hand free.
He leaned forward, draping his forearms atop the steering wheel.
"So you're handing me off to this other lawyer and walking away?"
"No. You hired me to do a job and I'll do it. I'll see that you get the best representation possible, and do my utmost to protect your privacy. I'll be your lawyer, and not your lover. So, you've gotten what you wanted, Cal." Her voice held no tremor, but she had to swallow before she could finish. "It would have been so much easier on both of us if you'd just said you didn't want anything to do with me."
His silence defeated her as completely as the harshest words could have. Her shoulders slumped and she sighed. "As I was saying, Greg Salisbury, my former colleague, is a partner in a firm in Connecticut. He can deal with things in person if necessary."
"You can go yourself. I'll pay the expenses."
And she'd be out of his hair.
"I've involved Greg to protect your privacy. Think about it, Cal. If I go there – a lawyer from small-town Wyoming – how long would it take them to start looking around Knighton for you?"
"Not long," he acknowledged.
"Right. So we needed another layer of protection. Consider it a sort of fire wall."
His grunt gave voice to his skepticism.
"Although I would strongly advise you to plan at some point on going back. Some of the issues should be finalized in person."
"No."
"It doesn't have to mean they'd know about your life here."
"Another of your fire walls?"
"You could call it that."
He turned the key in the ignition, but instead of turning the truck around, he continued on the way they were headed.
"Cal, I need to get back."
"Got another field to check."
Neither of them said more as he steered the truck around hills and between pastures. They had climbed to the rounded top of a hill, when he stopped.
Outside her window, the ground sloped away to a creek bed, then rose toward a neighboring hill. All of it was desolate, with only occasional blackened skeletons of trees remaining to give a clue to what had once been there, and what had happened.
"This is the field you needed to check? There's nothing here."
"They tried a controlled burn two years ago. Said they needed to get rid of some of the brush that would've been fuel for the next lightning strike or spark. It got away from them. The firefighters worked like dogs just trying to contain it.
"The Flying W was lucky that only this section burned. I stood right here and watched it coming. You've heard people talk about something spreading like wildfire, but you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it. It's hot and angry and cruel. Consumes everything in its path. There was an old line shack from the early days down there by the creek. It had stood for a hundred years. And it went like that." He snapped his fingers. "Along with trees and grass and brush."
"Why are you telling me this, Cal?"
"This is what happens when a fire wall doesn't work."
* * *
Cal spent the afternoon stringing fence. There were other hands to do the chore, unlike his earlier years at the Flying W. But it suited him today – solitary work that could burn off residual anger from this morning's talk with Taylor.
The reason for his anger was hard to pinpoint. Sure, she'd acted distant. She'd yanked her hand away as if it had touched something slimy when he'd put his hand over hers
on impulse.
But Taylor feeling that way was all to the good.
Taylor being angry at him should be a hell of a lot easier to keep his hands off than Taylor looking up at him by firelight, her smile warm and her eyes…
He cranked the handle on the wire stretcher taut enough to make the wire sing.
It would have been so much easier on both of us if you'd just said you didn't want anything to do with me.
She'd waited then, as though she expected him to pipe right up with, "You're right, Taylor, I don't want anything to do with you."
He couldn't say that, and he wouldn't say anything else, so he'd said nothing.
When he'd thought she was passing him on to another lawyer, his gut had felt like he'd been gored by a Texas longhorn. What did he care if she hired a string of lawyers every two feet from here to Connecticut and back. As long as she was the one he dealt with. As long as he kept seeing her, and at the same time didn't let himself hope to have her.
When she'd started talking about fire walls, that's what he'd thought about. That was the fire wall that needed to stay intact. Because that was the tire that could burn him to a cinder.
* * *
Two days later, Cal waited until Matty had mounted Juno to return to the Slash-C before saying, "One more thing."
They'd crossed paths a half-dozen times during their workday around the Flying W. But he'd chosen now, with daylight waning.
"What?" Matty's readiness to leave for home showed in the way she held Juno in place without calming the mare to a standstill – for a rider and horse so in tune it was the equivalent of an engine left idling, waiting to be revved.
"I've had some news."
He had all her attention now, whether he wanted it or not. "Bet I know what it's about. Dave made me swear I wouldn't bug you or Taylor after the storm, but I could tell when we saw you. I just knew—"
"Family news."
Her eyes widened and her mouth closed. He could almost hear her thinking I never knew you had family.
"My father's dead."
"Oh. Oh. Cal, I'm sorry." She stilled Juno. "I didn't – I'm so sorry. When did you find out? You take whatever time you need. For the funeral or—"
"Funeral was weeks ago, and I've known for a while."
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