by S A Monk
Jenny frowned. “Either way, working together now is going to be impossible. Knowing how stubborn he can be, I imagine he won’t be speaking to me for some time.”
“Yeah, I don’t imagine he will,” Jack concurred, exchanging a sad look with his wife.
“Well, thanks,” Jenny told him and gave both of them a departing handshake. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I decide what to do. Maybe once he settles down, he’ll listen to reason.”
“Good luck.”
She left, knowing she’d need all the luck and perseverance she could get.
∞∞∞
Four offices down, Brad was just concluding his meeting with the two men Jenny and Hawk had seen in the hallway earlier. The blonde banker raked a hand through his hair as his two guests rose to leave.
“You have your final timetable, Caldwell. My people have given you all the time you’re going to get. We invested a lot of money up front on this Hot Springs Resort project. You get this deal started or give us our up-front money back. It’s that simple, isn’t it, Mac?” the older man said to the younger man beside him.
“Yep, it sure is, boss.” The big man gave Brad a quick humorless grin. “‘Course I wouldn’t mind trying to convince that pretty little gal to cooperate that I saw with you at the Cattlemen’s meeting. I bet I could get her to agree to just about anything after a little time alone with her. Got a way with the ladies, I do.”
“You know, Caldwell,” the older man speculated. “You might want to think about using her to get that cowboy to sell. Mac and I saw them in the hall a little while ago, going into an office down from yours. He looked pretty tight with her, like he’d hate to see something happen to her.”
Brad had definitely considered the idea. Using Miss Fletcher as some kind of hostage to a deal just might get that stubborn half-breed to sell. Tom’s pretty daughter hadn’t wanted much to do with him personally, even though Brad had been trying to influence her since she’d arrived. And according to his jealous sister, Larson and Miss Fletcher were indeed pretty tight. The two of them had probably been going to see Jack Higgins, their attorney. Jack wouldn’t tell Brad anything, but there were other ways to find out what they’d been up to.
“I haven’t had much luck talking her into anything,” he admitted reluctantly, wishing his visitors would leave. He hated the threat they posed. He liked to do the threatening, not be on the receiving end of it.
“Well, quit talking and start forcing,” the older man stated impatiently. “You don’t have to get her to like you. Just use her as leverage. Time is running out. Think of it this way, Caldwell— it’s either you or them. Get rough. Get it done. I’ll be glad to lend you Mac if you need him. He knows how to get the job done better than that washed up wrangler you got working for you. Hell, the idiot couldn’t even kill that half-breed a couple weeks ago, and he sure as hell is no good at breaking and entering.”
Brad gave Mac a long look. He might come in handy with his size and all. Then again it might be better to stay the hell out of his path. He had no illusions about who would be doing the leg breaking if it came to that. He walked the two men to the door.
“I’ll get something going here real quick. The deal will go through on schedule.”
“You’re already behind schedule, Caldwell. Fix it— fast.”
The big man smiled maliciously over his broad shoulders as he left with the smaller man.
CHAPTER 23
Jenny was in the kitchen, fixing herself dinner that evening, when Hawk walked in, dressed as he’d been that morning. She hadn’t seen him since he’d stalked out of Jack Higgins’ office this morning. She’d wondered all day where he’d gone. He hadn’t come back to the ranch. She had come to the miserable conclusion that he must have gone to see his ex-girlfriend, the woman he always returned to. That disheartening thought had made her wonder if his walking out on her meant their affair was over and his with Cindy was on again.
Overall, it had been an awful day. She had spent all of it, every hour, vacillating between being furious with him and feeling guilty for breaking her promise to him.
Earlier, in the afternoon, she had sat on the porch swing, rocking back and forth, thinking and staring across the ranch yard to the majestic mountain peaks beyond. The first of November was a week away, and the first snowfall was just around the corner. She remembered that, as a child, Halloween had often been spoiled by a snowstorm, forcing all her friends inside, putting a damper on their trick or treating.
A silly thing to remember as an adult, but she’d been sitting on the porch all afternoon thinking about things like that; memories of things she cherished; things that made her want to stay. She didn’t want to leave, even now. She’d agreed to the partnership, and she wasn’t going to change her mind just because Hawk didn’t want to be her partner now. This was her home, too, and she was going to fight for it. To hell with him and his unreasonable pride! She had waited sixteen long years to come home, and now that she was here again, she was going to stay.
The house was hers. She could continue her design work from here. She’d find some way to manage the ranch without Hawk’s help. If he didn’t come around, maybe she would have to buy him out. She could get a loan for the property. If he refused to sell, maybe she’d have to sue him in court.
Oh God, how awful that would be! No matter how stubborn and nasty he’d been about her money, she still loved him desperately. She’d never be able to take his home from him. What a mess!
By the time Eli and Hank had joined her on the porch, she’d been deep in misery. They had heard what had happened at the attorney’s office. Hawk hadn’t fared well in the two cowhands’ analysis of their failed partnership. Like the attorney, they thought he was being bullheaded and unreasonable. Eli was ready to jump all over his butt.
But Jenny didn’t want them angry with Hawk. She tried to explain what his reasoning may have been, but they didn’t understand his refusal to let her help any more than she did, particularly in the face of the bank’s threat of foreclosure. It was frightening for all of them to think of losing the ranch. It was their livelihood, their life. They had faith in Hawk’s ability to solve the crisis over time, but time was running out. She may have stopped foreclosure, but Brad could still devise some other scheme to harass them. Without Hawk’s cooperation in forming a partnership, the ranch would still be in jeopardy. The three of them could only hope that after he calmed down, Hawk would finally sign the papers that guaranteed the Bar F/Bar L’s survival.
Looking at him as he entered the kitchen, though, didn’t give her much hope that he had come to his senses. Without acknowledging her, he walked across the room, to the refrigerator. She noticed he seemed a bit unsteady on his feet. He swayed sideways, slightly off balance, as he pulled the refrigerator door open and grabbed a bottle of beer out of it.
Jenny watched him twist the top off and flip it with thumb and forefinger toward the garbage can. He missed. Obviously, he’d had one too many beers already. She sighed disgustedly, and returned to the frying pan on the stove.
Behind her, she heard him pull a chair out from the table. Wooden legs scrapped across freshly waxed linoleum. Crap, he was going to stay! She flipped the lone hamburger she was preparing for herself. Damned if she was going to ask him if he wanted one, or if he’d eaten.
“Sit down.” She heard his brusque demand and ignored it. He tried again. “I want to talk.”
That made her turn around. He was straddling a chair, resting one arm over the backrest. In the other hand, he held his partially finished bottle of beer.
“Sit.”
Her back stiffened and her chin came up defiantly, then she swallowed her pride, turned off the gas under her burger, and sat. She was hoping that he had decided to sign the partnership papers after all. He still looked angry, though, so she took a seat on the opposite side of the table from him.
“I want to buy you out.”
His announcement stunned her and dashed her hope of reconc
iliation. Disappointment dissolved into anger. So this wasn’t going to be a resolution of their differences? Damn him!
“With what? You’ve already told me you can’t afford to,” she reminded him.
“I’m selling my airplane. That will give me enough to pay back the money you spent on the loans. I can also pay off a portion of your interest in the ranch with the extra money I’m making. I’ll give you a promissory note, with a good interest rate, on the balance. But you’ll have to get the rest of your money out of my account. I don’t want it there. I can’t afford it there.”
Jenny shoved to her feet, placed her hands on her hips, and glared at him furiously. “Well, you’ve thought this all out, haven’t you? What did you do? Go to some bar and sit there all afternoon coming up with this ridiculous obstinate solution?”
“So what if I did? It’s a good plan.” Hawk rose to his feet, knocking over his chair. He placed his hands on the table top and leaned toward her, mirroring her anger.
“It’s a stupid plan! I’d never let you sell your plane. And I won’t sell out to you.”
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you what I’m going to do.”
“Well, I’m not taking your damned money, so screw you!”
“You’ve already done a hell of a job of that, honey, so no thanks!”
Jenny recoiled as if slapped. “You bastard! Get out!” she swore at him. “This is my house. Daddy left it to me. So get your gear and move out to the bunkhouse.”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” Uncontrollable tears welled in her eyes.
Blowing out a breath, he slammed his beer bottle down on the table, then spun around and strode out of the kitchen, into the living room, toward the stairs. Jenny reached over the table and grabbed his beer bottle. Blinded by her tears, she threw it across the room, where it hit the sink and broke into dozens of pieces, just like her heart. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she sank into the chair behind her and dropped her head on the table. Every curse word and bad name she could think of passed through her mind as she heard Hawk stomp up the stairway, then come down a few minutes later and leave through the front door, slamming it behind him forcefully enough to shake the walls.
Crying didn’t dispel the anger or ease the hurt that ripped through her, but she cried anyway. She’d just told that stupid gorgeous cowboy she loved him twenty four hours ago, and now she wished she could take it all back. Damn his bullheaded stubborn unreasonable pride!
∞∞∞
On Saturday, she made herself scarce while he removed the rest of his things from his room. She spent most of the day grooming her horse and riding him around the foothills. By the time she returned late in the afternoon, his room was empty of everything except the furniture. All his books and clothes and gear were gone. The computer in the study was also gone. Apparently, he was going to run the ranch from the bunkhouse. Well, so be it, she thought. Let him try. When the court took away his right to operate the ranch and made him sell, she’d be ready to purchase it and run it herself. Hank would work for her. Eli, too. They could help her do what she couldn’t do herself.
Standing at the big picture window in the living room as the sun set later that evening, she looked toward the bunkhouse and saw Cindy Caldwell’s fancy BMW parked outside. A few moments later, the woman emerged from the bunkhouse, dressed in a short black leather skirt and a tight black turtle neck sweater under a black leather jacket. Her feathered blonde hair blew across her exquisitely flawless face. No matter how much Jenny resented the woman, she couldn’t deny the fact that the blonde was stunning. Hawk followed Cindy out to her car, wearing a leather jacket himself and a hat. Both of them got into her sleek black car and just sat in front of the bunkhouse for several minutes. Finally, the car backed up and tore down the dirt road that lead to the highway, leaving a trail of dust in its wake.
Jenny hated herself for watching and caring.
She cursed as she fought her stupid tears. It hadn’t taken either of them long to resume their long-standing relationship. Well, damn it! She’d been warned. Why should she have thought herself any different from all the other women Hawk had dated, slept with, then broken up with? Despite his reassurances, he obviously wasn’t finished with his former girlfriend. So get over him, she admonished herself. She was home finally. She didn’t need him. Thirty days, Jack had said. Could she survive thirty days of seeing him around the ranch, knowing he had resumed his relationship with Cindy? Or would her heart break every one of those thirty days a little more and a little more until it was completely irreparable?
∞∞∞
Hawk rounded up his laundry from the messy array of clothes he had only partially put away since moving into the bunkhouse yesterday. Eli was the only ranch hand with rooms of his own. Hank had a bed, a dresser, and a closet in the rear. Of course, for most of the year, he was the only one in the large communal room. There were spaces for nine more beds, although they never employed that many cowboys anymore. As a result, the center of the long dormitory-style room was now furnished as a sitting room and eating area, complete with a couple of couches, chairs, a television set, and a long dining table with benches on either side.
Hawk had taken a vacant sleeping area in the front of the bunkhouse, although it was a sad set-down from his own room at the house. Space and distance provided the only privacy, and the single bathroom had to be shared by all three men. It took cooperation to live communally the way ranch hands often did, and Hawk hadn’t done it since he was a boy living in the Caldwell bunkhouse with the other foster kids there.
He resented the new arrangement as much as Hank and Eli seemed to, although he thought their resentment had more to do with their anger at him for not forming the partnership with Tom’s daughter. The two cowboys had barely spoken to him, and had been especially irritated when Cindy had shown up yesterday. To placate them, Hawk had ushered her out within minutes after her arrival, then left with her. It had been a better alternative than letting her make the emotional scene she had been working herself into in front of the two men.
He’d talked to her on the phone earlier in the day, so she’d known where to find him. Of course, she’d loved the news that he had been kicked out of the house in an argument with Tom’s daughter. It might have ended there between them, except that she’d then told him she had information about her brother’s latest plans to get him to sell the land he wanted. Because he was goddamned afraid for Jenny after what she’d done, he had invited Cindy over.
They’d gone for a drive, and she’d revealed that her brother was enraged at having discovered the ranch’s loans had been caught up and paid off, and that there was now a hundred thousand dollars sitting in his bank account. It was as Hawk feared. Brad had figured out that it had to have been Jenny who had bailed him out and taken the ranch out of jeopardy. Brad knew Hawk didn’t have that kind of money.
Jenny was now the target of all Brad’s fury. She’d thwarted his plans to foreclose and force a sale of the ranch, setting Brad back to square one. Added to that, his shady backers for the resort were in town, pressuring him to get something done as soon as possible. Cindy had also happily informed Hawk that Tom’s daughter had been advised to sue him for incompetence. Brad had hopes that he had convinced Jenny to follow his advice. His sister thought Hawk might want to be ready for that.
So there she’d been, ready and eager to resume their relationship. It hadn’t been a pleasant evening, sorting through all her stories and fending off her dramatic pleas for a resumption of their affair. But at least he had been forewarned. Having some advance knowledge of Brad’s state of mind might make it possible for him to protect Jenny from the man’s vindictiveness.
Those two men he’d seen outside Brad’s office yesterday had trouble written all over them. Cindy had repeatedly told him Brad was involved with some disreputable businessmen. He had no doubts that those were the men he’d seen. And what had given him a knot in his gut was that both of them had looked
way too interested in Jenny. Their speculative assessment of her had sent off all his alarm signals. The younger one, in particular, had seemed especially interested in her in a way that had sent chills up and down his spine. The damn woman had put herself in a world of personal danger!
He was nearly as furious with her today as he’d been two days ago. The question was, though, what was he going to do about their personal and business relationship now? She was as angry with him as he was with her. She’d gone back on her word to stay out of the problems with Brad. She’d stung his pride, and made herself the target of men who would want to make her pay for what she’d done. And damn it, he could completely understand and even empathize with her desire to save her home. He wished that he could have resolved their problems sooner, so she wouldn’t have had to, but he admired how selflessly she had put her own money into the ranch. Except, he couldn’t tell her any of that because he was also still furious with her, and scared to death he wouldn’t be able to protect her.
Once all his dirty laundry was gathered and sorted, he headed across the yard with a basket of it to the back porch of the house where the washer and dryer were located. Everyone had a different laundry day, and his was Sunday. Dressed in a pair of faded navy blue sweat pants and an old sweatshirt that he had cut the sleeves out of, he felt the approach of winter on his bare arms as he crossed the yard. It was definitely getting colder in the evening. He should have dressed warmer. Even the ground felt cold beneath his moccasins. It wouldn’t be long until the first snowfall, he speculated as he opened the porch door and stepped inside.
Through the connecting door to the kitchen, he saw Jenny at the stove waiting for the water in the tea kettle to boil. What caught his attention, though, was the way she was dressed. She was still in her bedclothes. She had that long sexy see-through robe on, the one with all the dragons slithering around it. Underneath it, she was wearing a short black slip or nightie of some sort. And her hair was loose and tousled, like she’d just gotten out of bed. He wondered if she wasn’t feeling well.