The Texas Rancher's Return

by Allie Pleiter

  “She sold us out, Billy. And I invited her in.” He picked up the digger again. “I knew what she was doing, and I let her go right on doing it.”

  “And what was she doing?”

  “Getting under my skin so DelTex could steal my land. All her talk of conversations and compromises and no one wins a standoff. Easy talk for someone who has a government land grab in their back pocket.”

  “She has called the house twice today. Your grandmother saw her name on the screen and wouldn’t pick up the phone. Has she tried calling you?”

  Gunner had turned off his phone. If Gran needed him, she could send Billy out here to find him. Anyone else he didn’t care to talk to right now. He wanted the whole world to leave him alone. He pulled the soil up, dumped it out of the digger and walked over to where the next hole was needed. “She can call here twelve times a day for the next hundred years for all I care. Gran’s not gonna take any of the calls and neither am I. And another thing—I’m giving the calf another name.”

  “I don’t know. Russet is a fine name. I like it. He likes it.”

  Gunner was in no mood to debate whether or not Russet liked his name. “That name doesn’t get to stay.”

  “You want to go back to Rainbow Sparkle?”

  Gunner swallowed the urge to hurl the clod of dirt by his feet at Billy. Instead, he pointed at the man with the darkest look he could muster. “Not one word. Ever again. Don’t try me on it, neither.” He sank the digger blades into the ground. “I’m thinking Thorn. Thorn fits.”

  “A painful name.” Billy pointed to his chest. “Pain right here, hmm?”

  Gunner wasn’t quite sure he was ready to admit to anyone how much Brooke’s deception had hurt him. To think he had invited it, had left himself open to another humiliation at the hands of a pretty face, galled him as much as DelTex’s greed. He’d believed Brooke’s claims of honesty. He’d even entertained the notion that they might be something special together—she was so smart, had seemed so sweet, and anyone could see that she connected with the land and even the animals.

  That was what made her lies all the more hard to swallow—she’d convinced him she believed in what Blue Thorn stood for. And he’d bought it—hook, line and sinker. No one who truly wanted what was best for everyone would stand there and talk compromises while her bosses pulled the kill switch on his future. He should have seen through her act. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to start caring about her the way he had. “Something like that,” he mumbled to Billy without looking up.

  “She hurt you.”

  Billy’s three words sent a wave of pain across Gunner’s chest. He simply nodded.

  “Do you think she meant to hurt you all along?”

  Gunner was tiring of all these questions. He moved on to the next hole, half hoping Billy wouldn’t follow him. They could talk about this until the sun went down, and it wouldn’t change the outcome headed his way. The end had begun; she’d launched it, he’d allowed it and now no one could stop it.

  Gunner stopped digging for a minute. Did he really believe Brooke meant to hurt him all along? The facts lined up that way. But there was some stubborn part of him that wouldn’t accept that what had grown between them was just an act. There was something there, something that came through loud and clear at the gala. It just didn’t square with everything else that had happened since then. And when in doubt, he’d learned to assume the worst. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Yeah,” he said, as much to himself as to Billy, “I think she did.”

  “Could be true. Then again, if she means to hurt you, why is she still calling?”

  Billy’s prying was starting to get really irritating. “How should I know? Maybe she wants to rub it in.”

  The walkie-talkie hanging from Billy’s belt chirped, followed by the scratchy audio of one of the ranch hands. “Hey, Billy, you with Gunner?”

  Billy pulled the device from his belt and pressed the button. “I am. What’s up?”

  “There’s a lady at the gate with a little kid. She’s asking to come in, and she ain’t taking no for an answer.”

  Billy looked at Gunner. Gunner looked at Billy. “You want me to send her away, boss?” Billy asked. “Or do you want to make good and sure she’s only here to rub it in?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was a risky tactic to show up at the Blue Thorn gate with Audie in tow. Brooke knew that. She had no business calling in sick to work and keeping Audie out of school today to do what she was about to do, but this was the only plan she could think of right now. Besides, Audie hadn’t stopped asking about Russet, no matter what explanation Brooke offered. If there was even the smallest possibility this would work, Brooke wanted to give Audie one last chance for a visit with the calf. No matter how angry Gunner might be, she felt she could trust him not to blow up at Audie.

  “He said he was coming out here,” the ranch hand said from his side of the locked gate where Brooke stood while Audie sat in the car. Was Gunner coming to let her in or ensure she stayed locked out? It seemed as if hours until a pair of trucks drove over the pastures toward the gate.

  The Gunner she’d seen in a tuxedo had been a dashing sight, but this Gunner—the dusty, lean-muscle cowboy in jeans and boots with a T-shirt sweat-damp and clinging to his chest—was the one who truly took her breath away. This Gunner was real. Grounded. Authentic.

  And furious. If they ever made a colored pencil called “angry blue,” they needed to use the way Gunner’s eyes looked as he glared at her through the gates.

  “Just when I think I’ve seen it all...” he growled.

  “I have something you need to see.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen all I want to see from the likes of you.”

  Brooke knew this would be hard. She knew he’d put up a fight, maybe not even agree to see her. She’d been praying for the tiniest bit of consideration from him the whole drive out. If there was any chance she’d found what she thought she’d found, she’d endure his rage. This chance to make it right was a long shot, but she was willing to risk it to know she had tried everything. It was the only way she could walk away from this whole mess and still sleep at night.

  “You need to see this.” Brooke looked over Gunner’s shoulder to send a pleading glance toward Billy. “Billy, he needs to see this.”

  She thrust the large manila envelope through the gate bars just as Audie yelled, “Hi, Mr. Flatrock!” from her car window.

  “Hello, Audie!” Billy called in a friendly voice that gave no hint of the tension bristling between her and Gunner. He waved at Audie, but sent a “tread carefully” look to Brooke as he stood behind his boss.

  Gunner didn’t take the envelope. “Give me one good reason why I should look at anything you give me.”

  “Because maybe—just maybe, I’m not sure—the way to fight Markham and DelTex is in there.”

  “And you’d hand me a way to fight your boss. You expect me to believe that after all that’s happened?”

  That man could be so stubborn. “No, I don’t expect you to believe me. But I do expect you to look at the photos in there and believe them.”

  Gunner gave her a long, suspicious look before he took the envelope and undid the metal brad to slide out the two photographs Brooke had printed out last night.

  He instantly recognized the aerial shots. “I know what my land looks like.”

  Brooke had to reach through the bars to point out the blurs she’d seen at her desk yesterday. “Look there.” When she could barely reach the photos, she grabbed at the metal gate and said, “Can’t you just open up? I promise I won’t go ten steps onto your land.”

  Gunner grunted, looked at the photos again and gave a small nod to the ranch hand, who promptly punched a series of numbers into the keypad beside the gate.

  “Hooray!” Audie called
from the car, misunderstanding the gate opening as an invitation to pay a visit.

  “I’ll go talk with her,” Billy offered, walking through the gate before Gunner could reply one way or the other.

  “Here’s the thing.” Brooke moved forward, determined to state her case before Gunner tossed her and Audie off the property. “These shots have been altered. This part here—” she moved cautiously closer to Gunner to point to the spots that had been blurred out “—is smudged on both images. Now, sometimes we blur out cars or people or animals but the same spot is hidden on both photos taken three weeks apart.”

  “Why should I care how you doctor your sales photos?”

  “Because look.” Brooke held the two aerial shots side by side. “Look at your creek in this one from February. Now look at your creek in the one from earlier this month.”

  “I know my creek is running high. The mud is what stuck you in front of Daisy. Or so you claim.”

  “Look again. Look at the creek on your land, and then look at the creek on the other side of the blurred part.” Brooke shot up a prayer that Gunner would see what she saw, that he would come to the same conclusion she had: that the photo had been doctored to hide a dam.

  She could see the moment Gunner saw it. He held the March photo closer, squinting at it, something between a growl and a curse escaping his lips.

  “The blurred-out spot isn’t on your land. You told me the road I was on divided your land from another rancher’s. That other rancher was damming up the creek that runs from your land to his, mostly affecting the part on your side. Only, that makes no sense—I need you to help me figure out why.”

  “I know exactly why,” Gunner said, starting toward his car. “Come on up to the house. Gran needs to see this.”

  Come on up to the house. Brooke took in those words like oxygen. It should have frightened her—she was possibly handing the Bucktons ammunition to fight her employer. What she had just done would certainly toss her job out the window. But from the moment she’d looked at those photographs on her laptop, the stranglehold her conscience had been keeping loosened up. When she’d asked Jim once why he took such risks in fighting those warlords back in Chad, he’d said because it was the only choice that let him breathe. It had only worried her back then, but she understood it now.

  “Are we going to see Russet?” Audie’s face was all smiles as Brooke got into the car.

  “I sure hope so,” Brooke answered. In the yard beside Daisy and Russet’s pen would be the perfect place for Audie to be while she, Gunner and Adele worked out what the photos showed and what to do about it. “Mr. Gunner and Grannie Buckton and I have adult things to talk about, but I’m sure Mr. Flatrock would take you to see Russet. Maybe there are some other calves that have been born, too.”

  “Adult things. You mean make up from your fight.”

  Some days Brooke wondered who had hidden the eighty-year-old wise woman inside her eight-year-old daughter. “Well, hopefully that, too.” Even if a reconciliation never happened—and she realized as the car pulled up the drive how very much she wanted it to happen—she could breathe knowing she’d done everything she could to save the Blue Thorn.

  Adele’s expression was blank but her eyes were too full as she came out onto the porch. Anger, disappointment, surprise, curiosity—they all seemed to be there in the old woman’s expressive eyes. “Well, hello.” Her words were flat and cautious. Markham had told her that Adele Buckton was no one to tangle with lightly, and today she could see why.

  “Brooke brought us something that might help with DelTex.”

  “Help with DelTex?” Adele said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “You need to see this.”

  “Billy,” Brooke began as Audie climbed out of the car, “do you think...”

  “Hey, Audie, you don’t want to listen to these grown-ups talk about grown-up stuff, do you? Wouldn’t you rather go out by the corral and see how much Russet has grown?” The foreman gave an unusual emphasis on Russet’s name and shot a funny look toward Gunner when he did. Brooke wondered what that was about, but didn’t think now was the time to ask.

  “Sure!” Audie cheered, heading off with Billy without a single look back.

  Brooke mouthed a silent “thank you” to the man as she watched Audie slip beside him and take his hand as if they were longtime buddies. Please, Lord, don’t let this be Audie’s last visit to the Blue Thorn. Or mine.

  * * *

  Gran had every right to look confused as Gunner led her and Brooke into the kitchen and spread the pair of photographs on the table.

  “These are aerial shots DelTex took earlier this month and in February,” Brooke explained. “I asked the permitting department for them last week in order to make some sales brochures. When I saw them yesterday, I noticed something.”

  “Look at the creek running between our land and Larkey’s,” Gunner said.

  “You mean the one DelTex is stealing?” Gran never was one to mince words.

  “Yeah, but look at it in this photograph and then again in the later one.”

  Gran peered. “I don’t see whatever it is I’m supposed to see.”

  Brooke pointed to the altered spot. “Someone has intentionally blurred out part of the photograph on one spot. On multiple photographs. Now, often we blur out a private car or animals or things like that on an aerial shot, but it shouldn’t have to happen over multiple days unless there’s something else there—something permanent.”

  “Something DelTex doesn’t want anyone to see,” Gunner added. “It’s a dam.”

  Gran looked up. “A dam? Why? Larkey needs that water same as we do.”

  “Maybe, but DelTex needs something else more.”

  Brooke’s eyebrows knit together. “He’s downstream from you. I still don’t get it.”

  Gunner motioned for everyone to sit down at the table. “The way the law works, the government can claim a certain amount of land on either side of any body of ‘navigable water’—even a little creek—in the name of drainage, water rights or anything they declare is in the interests of the public good. The bigger the body of water, the more land can be taken. The creek’s been especially big this year, and now we know why.”

  Gran sat up straight. “He’s damming up the creek so that our banks are larger. Why? It doesn’t help Larkey. It hurts him.”

  “There’s only one reason Larkey would intentionally hinder his own water supply,” Gunner continued. “DelTex has to be paying him off.”

  Brooke frowned. “This already smells like collusion between the state and DelTex, but if they’re also playing one rancher off another...”

  “Doesn’t Larkey realize he’s next? Once they swallow us, they’ll turn on Larkey.” Gran turned to Brooke. “Sorry, dear, but if you didn’t know it before, you know now. You work for swine.”

  Gunner thought that was putting it a bit harshly, but then again, he’d already called Markham and his cohorts far harsher words out by the fence posts.

  “We have to get this out, and fast,” Gunner advised. “Rostam said the state documents would show up by Friday, didn’t he?”

  “That’s what he said,” Gran replied. “I’d better get Ash on the phone tonight.”

  “Ash?” Brooke asked.

  “Ashton Palmer, our family lawyer,” Gunner explained. “We’d planned on calling him when the papers came, but I don’t think we can wait that long.

  Brooke gave Gunner a determined look. “If you call your lawyer—and you should call him—you might win. But if you call a reporter, you will win.”

  “Take this public?” Gunner hadn’t expected Brooke to suggest that.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. DelTex knows they run the risk of looking like a bully with politicians in their pocket when they do something like eminent domain. Aft
er all, it’s supposed to be a government policy, not something twisted to benefit a private scheme. If it got out that they’ve done what we think they’ve done, it’s not only alleged corruption, it could create a public backlash strong enough to kill the whole project. Plus, it’s an election year in the fall. No politician would want to look like DelTex’s puppet so close to an election—it’d be good for their image to side with us, even if they’ve helped DelTex in the past. Maybe especially if they’ve helped DelTex.” She took a deep breath. “You can fight this in the press. Community relations is what I do. I know who to call.”

  “You’d stick your neck out for us?” Regret began to uncurl in his stomach for all his suspicions about Brooke. She’d be committing professional suicide if she went public against DelTex.

  “You ready to burn that bridge?” Gran asked, evidently coming to the same conclusion. “There’d be no going back if you did this. They might not know right away that you are responsible, but they’ll know soon enough.”

  Brooke looked a little shaky, and rightly so. “What they’re doing is wrong. I can’t stand here and let it happen if I might have a way to stop it.”

  Gunner looked at her, taking in the unsteady confidence in her eyes, the mixture of nerves and determination that both grounded her and made her fidgety at the same time. It struck him that she was braver than he in many ways. He’d come back to the Blue Thorn when Gran begged, but he’d never made such an unforced choice, such a voluntary, costly stand as Brooke was making right now.

  He could believe her, believe in her. She may have stepped onto the Blue Thorn with mixed motives way back, but now she was on his side. For a man who’d spent the better part of his life feeling folks line up against him, to know this woman stood beside him changed everything. He felt the shift in his chest, in his world, in his heart. “You sure?” he said, holding her gaze.

  “I need to do this. I can’t not do this. I know I’ll lose my job. Only, what will I have lost, really? I don’t think I can work at DelTex anymore. Not after what I’ve seen.” She looked up at Gunner, and everything he’d felt for her back at the gala surged up again, sending the hurt and anger into thin air. “I can’t work for someone who would do this to you.”