by Tina Leonard
But as soon as he got back to Austin, Zach promised himself a good look at that proposed state highway. Because something about the whole situation was stinking to high heaven.
Yet he said mildly, “You’re right. Carter is not a nice man. My association with him is not one of the things I’m most proud of in my life anymore. That’s one of the reasons he’s no longer going to be working at Ritter International.”
Zach stopped, giving Annie a chance to think about what he was saying. “But if you’ve met Carter, you’ll realize how important it is to listen to my idea for getting your farm fiscally secure.”
“In the morning.”
He shook his head stubbornly. “You’re already mad. I might as well go ahead and say everything that might rile you up at one time.”
She crossed her arms mutinously. “I’m listening.”
Zach glanced at Cody. “Is the porch the place you want to discuss business?” he asked Annie.
“Yes,” she insisted.
“Go ahead, Slick,” Cody said, tossing his cigarette to the ground. “There ain’t crap on the evening news, so I’ll just sit here and be entertained.”
“Me, too,” Travis said from inside the house.
Zach trained his eyes on the window beside the porch and realized Travis was reclining on the sofa inside. The window was up, and the old man had been sitting there listening to every single word that had been said up to this point. Cagey old buzzard, Zach thought. A man couldn’t let his guard down for an instant around these people.
“All right. A family caucus is as good as any way to throw my thoughts out, anyway.” He squatted down on the porch. “The way I see this thing, some folks have gotten the notion to buy this land. They’re willing to threaten you with right of eminent-domain laws, thinking that with the state highway coming through here, they have the right to pull that particular string. They may even be the reason the bank is putting the squeeze on you right now.”
“You’re talking about Haskins,” Cody stated.
“That’s what I suspect. Unfortunately, I believe he’s got his teeth to your ass on this one, Annie. Carter isn’t going to stop until he gets what he wants.”
She pointed a shaking finger at him. “You go back and tell him to find someone else to bother. He may have his teeth to my ass, but he’ll find himself wearing dentures if he tries to bite.”
God, how he loved this woman’s grit. Zach shook his head. “I’ve got a funny hunch on this, Annie. I’m asking you to trust me.”
Travis cursed blue, and Cody followed suit. Zach spread his hands. “All right. Just hear me out.”
The three looked at him warily.
“If Annie can make her taxes, the land can’t be foreclosed on. In fact, the more financially solvent Annie is, the less of a threat Carter can ever be.”
“How much were you going to make to come out here and do a job on me?” Annie asked.
Zach scented red-alert danger. “Now, wait a minute, Annie. My salary isn’t pertinent to your finances. First things first.”
“Don’t patronize me, damn it. I know about commissions. How much?”
He shook his head before looking her square in the face. “A hundred thousand dollars.”
“Son of a bitch!” Travis shouted from the window. Annie broke her gaze from Zach’s and turned her head. “My rifle’s on the porch, Annie. Shoot the dirty rustler.”
Annie folded her arms across her chest, refusing to look at Zach. “I can’t shoot him. I’ve kissed him.”
“That’s it, you low-down, skirt-chasing, snake-eyed—” Travis cursed as he tried to move from the sofa. “I’ll come out there and shoot you myself.”
“Sit down, Papa,” Annie commanded. “Let’s hear Zach’s idea before we kill him. To give up one hundred thousand dollars, it must be a blue-ribbon winner.”
Cody hadn’t moved, but then the rifle was just behind him, Zach noticed. And he’d given Cody back the hunting knife, so the big man had two promising choices of weapons if he decided Zach was merely an ink blot in Desperado’s history.
“Okay,” Zach said, turning his focus to Annie. “To get you solvent, you need a business. Something profitable, that isn’t at the whim of sun or rain or other uncontrollable acts of nature.”
“Clock’s ticking, Slick,” Cody said. “Cut the sales bull and give us the bottom line.”
Zach stared at Annie, who merely gazed back.
“I’m thinking salsa’s the name of the game.”
Chapter Eleven
“Salsa!”
Cody, Travis, and Annie repeated the word in unison. From his position inside the window, Travis shook his head. “If you mean Annie’s salsa, she’s been selling that locally for some time now. And making about forty bucks a month at it. Chicken feed, compared to what we owe.”
Cody shrugged. “Nice try, I guess, anyway. I still haven’t figured out why you’re so determined to get on Annie’s good side.”
Annie hadn’t said a word. She kept her gaze trained on him, as if she knew there was more to his theory than he’d gotten to tell so far. Zach welcomed the connection he felt between them.
“I’m thinking commercial, Annie,” he stated, his voice soft, yet determined. “Commercial with a twist, maybe a gimmick thrown in.”
“I’m listening,” she said. “Keep talking.”
“I aim to.” He hunkered down on the porch steps and she sat close by, her eyebrows raised with interest. “Now recently, a Texas picante sauce company was sold for a nice chunk of change. So, I know there has to be money in a good, hot recipe. Your salsa is one of the best I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve traveled most of Texas.”
“Been around a bit, have you?” Travis interrupted meanly.
“Texas is an interesting state,” Zach tossed over his shoulder. “Be a shame to miss any of it.”
He grinned at Travis’s sarcastic snort and continued on. “The restaurant angle is what comes to my mind What if you marketed your sauce to better restaurants, specifically those looking for a different, attention-getting product for their customers?”
“What’s so interesting about salsa?” Cody asked. “It’s either good, or it’s not so good, but it isn’t something people are going to interrupt their supper talk over.”
“Ah, but this is Snakebite Sauce, cooked up by Rattlesnake Annie herself,” Zach said with a grin. “I envision a big brown and gold label, with Snakebite Sauce prominently figured in the middle and with Rattlesnake Annie in curving letters over the top.”
“The Aunt Jemima of salsa,” Cody said.
“We can only pray,” Zach replied.
“Cody, you ain’t buying Slick’s line, are you? There’s so much bull crap piling up out there, I’m gonna have to shut the window.”
Cody folded his arms over his chest, his gaze measuring as it rested on Zach. “I’ve always got one ear open when a man’s talking opportunity, Travis. He’s obviously put some hard thought into this for no apparent reason that I can figure—unless you own stock in some kind of company that’s set to make a profit off this scam, Slick.”
The growl in Cody’s voice made Zach chuckle. “Wish I had. All my investments are sunk in oil stocks and commercial real-estate ventures, and they haven’t been worth dirt since the bottom fell out of the market.”
“I still don’t see why Annie needs to do this,” Travis complained. “She’s sitting on a bumper crop of corn out there, more than enough to pay off the taxes this year.”
“This year,” Zach repeated. “Could be next year won’t be so great. Or the next. If you hit the market right, Snakebite Sauce might keep you from worrying your teeth to nubs every year.”
“Humph.” Travis scanned Cody’s face, then Annie’s. “Ah, hell. I can see it ain’t worth telling either one of you that we’ve always gotten by, we always will.”
Annie leaned her head back and peered up at the black sky. “Maybe getting by isn’t enough anymore, Papa. You’re older and not quite as s
trong as you used to be.” She smiled at his curse of denial. “I’m older, myself. I’d like to provide better for my only child. Shoot, Papa, we don’t even carry enough health insurance to get us by the bad times. If we lost that corn crop, I don’t know what we’d do.” Slowly, she turned around to look at her father. “You don’t say it, but I know you think it sometimes too, Papa. It’s been harder since Carlos died. I haven’t been able to provide as well for us. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if it was just you and me—” her expression turned pleading, “—but for Mary’s sake, it hurts to be so strapped all the time.”
Travis’s face stayed set in mulish lines. “This carpetbagger’s gone and scared the horse sense out of you.” He shot an angry look Zach’s way.
Annie shook her head slowly. “No, Papa. It has nothing to do with Zach. I will admit that I’ve been more insecure about the future, but it started when Carlos died. There were two of us to take on the world before, but then everything changed. Haskins came out here. I began having nightmares about not being able to—”
She stopped, obviously incapable of putting into words what she wanted to say. Zach reached over and patted her knee, but inside, he was promising Carter an ear-ringing firing from Ritter International. It would be one of his last acts of kindness if he didn’t throw Carter out the glass window.
“Well, we don’t have to run out and find a factory tonight,” he said, his voice reassuring. “I was just throwing out an idea. It may be stupid as hell, for all I know.” He glanced up to see a thoughtful expression on Cody’s face. The realization swept him that Cody was actually giving his proposal some merit, without dismissing it the way the old man had. Strangely enough, Cody’s opinion mattered to Zach.
“Aw, hell. Let’s go to bed,” Travis said. “I’ve been home less than a day from the hospital and y’all are talking capital enterprises. Come on, Cody. Help me to my room.”
“All right.” Cody threw one last glance at the pair on the porch and went inside.
“Good night, Papa,” Annie called. “I’ll be in later to check on you.”
She grinned at her father’s muttered cussing. Zach rested his head on his forearms, silently listening to Cody help Travis from the sofa. It was time to take himself down to the foreman’s shack, yet he didn’t feel like leaving Annie yet. He wondered what she’d really thought of his suggestion. Annie was an intelligent woman. She knew what the risks of starting a new business were—especially with a small child and an old man to care for. She also knew what the risks of relying on crops for her income were. Maybe she even had an idea of her own rolling around behind those warm indigo-blue eyes of hers.
He took a deep breath of night air just barely cooling from the heat of the day, and realized that whether or not Annie was buying the idea of Snakebite Sauce, all he really cared about was that she knew he cared about her. Really, really cared about her. This was the only way he knew how to help her, to show her he was on her side, regardless of which side he’d started out on.
He suspected Cody had figured that out, although he still sensed animosity from the big man. Annie was smart enough to realize it, too. He wasn’t in a position to offer Annie any type of relationship, but she had changed his life. Much, much for the better. And he would never forget that.
Annie sighed beside him. “So, can you find your way back down to the foreman’s shack?”
“I think so.”
“There’s a shower, and you’ll find towels in the closet.” Annie’s gaze roved over him. “Although I guess you’ve just finished drying out from your swim.”
Zach smiled at the mischievous light in her eyes. “A warm shower sounds inviting, actually, despite the swim.”
She stood slowly, and Zach rose with her.
“Thank you for coming, Zach. You’ve given us all something to think about.” For a moment, her eyes held uncertainty. “It’s something we’ve been needing to face for some time. Maybe over the next few months, we can talk about your idea again.” She paused for a second, her gaze asking him to understand. “When Papa feels better.”
He nodded. “It’s not my idea anymore. It’s yours. Do with it what you will. If it helps you in any way, then I’m glad.” Slowly, gently, he ran one finger across Annie’s cheekbone. “Before I leave tomorrow, I want another tour of the cornfields. I’ve never seen what corn near harvest time looks like.” He removed his hand slowly. “Actually, I think the only corn I’ve ever seen besides yours was in the grocery store.”
Annie smiled. “City boy,” she murmured softly.
He chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying that you can take the country boy to the city, but you can’t take the city boy to the country.”
“I think you completely ruined that saying, Zach,” Annie teased.
“Something did get lost in the translation, I agree.” They stood staring at each other for a moment, their eyes locked. Finally, he had to break the silence. “So. Cornfield tour in the morning?”
“Right after breakfast.”
“We could take Mary,” Zach offered. Shame on you, using a little girl as a buffer! he thought. “If you think she’d like that,” he finished guiltily.
“Mary always loves to romp in the fields,” Annie told him. “She’ll tell you more about those corn crops than you ever wanted to know.” She looked toward the fields where the corn was planted, then looked back at Zach a little sheepishly. “I had acres and acres of it planted. Corn’s one of my favorite things to grow. Cotton’s a good moneymaker, but you can’t eat it,” she said with a smile. “If I had to, I could make meals out of that corn for a very long time. I can see it from the south and west windows of the house, and sometimes I imagine that corn is a security blanket around us.”
She sighed before turning her wistful gaze back to him. “Silly, huh, city boy?”
Zach clenched his hands at his sides to keep from pulling Annie into his arms. “I’m barely resisting the urge to run through those cornfields naked in a ritual appreciation dance,” he said, forcing himself to sound light.
Annie laughed, the sound full of relief. “You always say the right things.” She turned to go into the house. “You’ll be okay?”
Zach waved her on. “I’m going to bed down in that shack like it’s the Ritz, and I’m not waking up till I hear reveille. Or smell breakfast cooking.”
It was untrue, but it kept the smile on Annie’s face until she closed the front door behind her. And that alone made his trip to Desperado worth it.
Annie went down the hall to her room after checking on Travis, then on Mary. The little girl slept peacefully in her bed, clutching a small bear in her arms. Annie turned the nightlight on, in case Mary woke up in the night with a bad dream. It didn’t happen as frequently now, but Annie was in the habit of turning the tiny light on just in case.
She thought about Zach comforting Mary as she walked into her own room. He’d said more to Mary than anyone else had ever managed, including Annie. Although she’d tried to help Mary deal with her grief, there really wasn’t a good way to explain to a child why her daddy died, or how, or why God had let it happen. And was Daddy up in heaven, watching over her?
Annie sighed and sat down on the bed to brush her hair. Of all people, Zach Rayez wasn’t the person she would have guessed could connect with Mary’s pain. And what he’d told the child about his own mother had brought swift tears to Annie’s eyes. At least Mary still had one parent left who loved her, and then a circle of doting family.
Zach had lost both parents. No wonder he’d grown up to be such a tough character.
But not too tough to drive out to Desperado to try to help Annie solve some of her difficulties. Despite Travis’s and Cody’s suspicions, Annie knew Zach was on the level. He might be tough in business dealings, but she herself had seen soft underbelly. Vulnerable heart. All in all, a good man in many ways.
A man who was due to be married very soon.
Annie pursed her lips and put the brush
down. White-hot pain stabbed into her heart as she thought about his fiancée. She would be beautiful, of course. She would be able to help Zach in his career. No doubt the future Mrs. Rayez was loving and kind and just the woman he could entrust his heart to. The heart that had known little love as a child, and likely less as an adult. He would choose a woman who would be careful of those bitter scars and yet know how to encircle him and make him whole with her love.
She slipped into a nightgown and turned out the bedside lamp. Later, after Zach had gone, she would think again about the salsa. Later, when she knew his wedding was past and that their connection was finally severed forever, she would think about her future.
Zach tossed and turned in his sleep. He awakened about every hour, it seemed, to glance at the watch on his arm and then try to fall asleep again. About two in the morning, he got up and walked around the cabin, uncertain as to why he couldn’t relax. The fish pond was still. He walked back to the front, glancing toward Annie’s house. All the lights were out, except for a small glow, like a star, in a west window. Zach smiled, remembering that Mary’s room was across the hall from Annie’s. He’d seen the rows and rows of stuffed animals lovingly arranged on a daybed the afternoon Annie cut her finger. Mary had been afraid of him then. But she wasn’t afraid of him now. He was glad she trusted him. A child’s trust was a very important gift, and very few adults trafficked in the business of trust, Zach knew. He would treasure Mary’s trust forever.
Yawning, he went back inside and crawled in the sheets. The bed was comfortable enough, with crisp, white sheets that smelled of detergent. The cabin itself was cool. Zach lay on his back, his arms crossed under his head, staring into the semiblackness. Oh, there was a reason he couldn’t sleep. He just didn’t want to face it.