by Carole Howey
"Slightly."
Missy leaned against the back of her chair, rested her elbow on the cushioned arm, and crossed her slippered feet at the ankles. It was a pose that a man might have assumed under the circumstances, Flynn realized, staring. He was unnerved by it.
"How much higher?" Her gray eyes were appraising. Direct.
Integrity. That had been the word he'd sought earlier. He forced himself to maintain her gaze, and to answer her without blinking.
"Fifty thousand dollars."
Even Madeleine would be satisfied with that windfall, he reflected bitterly. For a time, anyway.
Missy betrayed her shock by a lift of one tapered eyebrow.
"You can't be serious." Her voice was faint.
"I've made inquiries." He tried to remain nonchalant while monitoring her face and ignoring her posture. "It isn't the property which commands such a price, you realize, although its value has certainly increased, thanks to the improvements you've made in the past several years. As a piece of ground in that area of the country, I daresay the whole place isn't worth more than half that amount."
Missy's toe bobbed rapidly in the air, and she bounced the tips of her fingers off her thumbs as her hands hung from the front of the armrests.
"If that's so, then why are you asking for such an exorbitant amount?" she inquired in an admirably calm voice, despite her nervous display. "If the property isn't worth a hundred thousand dollars, how can you in good conscience expect me to give you fifty for your scrap of paper?"
Muldaur pressed his lips together. For an instant, he considered handing the document over to the distraught woman before him, or balling it and feeding it to the fireplace. He wanted to, as he'd never wanted anything before in his life. As he wanted to take the shadow of fear from Missy Cannon's face. As he wanted to see what that moist, quivering lower lip of hers tasted like . . .
Then he thought of Madeleine. And Antoinette.
And his brother.
Damning them all, Missy included, with one unspoken curse, he turned away again.
"I said the property itself wasn't worth that much," he went on, forcing a cool, businesslike tone despite his mounting agitation. "But the letter specifically states 'the property known as the C-Bar-C.' That means not only the ranch the land, the buildings, the paddocks, the fences it means the name as well. It's the name that's contributed the most to the value of the place in the past few years." The name that Missy, not her kind but improvident uncle, had built to such prominence. the irony of it sickened him.
"I'm afraid I don't understand." Her voice was very small. Distant. He sighed, a trifle louder than he would have liked.
"Look at it this way. If the situation were reversed that is, if I were offering to buy out your half I would stipulate expressly that the name 'C-Bar-C' be retained by me. Why? Because it's the name people in the business have come to recognize, and to associate with excellence. With performance. If such a stipulation were not made in our agreement, there would be nothing to prevent you from taking the name and using it elsewhere, creating at least confusion and certainly competition for my interests."
"But it's just a name," she argued, "My uncle named it for himself and out of love for my father. When Allyn and I took it over, we didn't change it because the two C's were still appropriate Cannon and Cameron."
"Think of it this way." He faced her again, crossing his arms before him and pressing one finger against his lips as he strove for an analogy. "You're familiar with patents and with copyrights, aren't you?"
"Vaguely." She looked confused.
The mechanics of business and corporate law had always held a fascination for Muldaur, and he found himself warming to the explanation upon which he was about to embark.
"There's a fellow in England by the name of Conan Doyle who writes stories, a serial, for a magazine. His leading character is a fellow by the name of Sherlock Holmes. This magazine has a contract with Doyle for stories featuring Holmes, which means Doyle must write these exclusively for them. He may not write them for any other publication."
"But"
"Let me finish." He sat down again but stayed on the edge of his seat, his knees wide apart. "Doyle's contract with the magazine, however, does not grant the publishers the right to print stories by other authors using the character of Sherlock Holmes, which Doyle created. This would constitute an infringement, a violation of their covenant with Doyle. It would unfairly allow someone else to profit from Doyle's creation. Just as a patent is issued to prevent people from profiting from someone else's invention."
"Unless the writer, or the inventor, specifically gave up that right in their contract."
"Exactly." She was no fool. His regard for her rose.
"Then what you are saying is that you're really selling me back my own good name. Is that right, Mr. Muldaur?"
Her assessment took him aback.
"Well"
"And suppose I am not interested in buying?" she wondered aloud, pressing her hands together as if in prayer. Her pretty gray eyes narrowed in a most dismaying, if attractive, manner. "In essence, that means that we each, technically, own all of the name, but only half of the ranch itself. Am I correct in that assumption?"
"I suppose, if you"
"And the tax bill," she went on, gaining alarming momentum. "The one that's due this April. You are responsible for half of the payment? As well as half of the payroll and other expenses?" She sounded positively delighted.
How had he lost control of this interview? And when? "Miss Cannon, I think you've missed the"
"Oh, no, I haven't missed the point at all, Mr. Muldaur." She interrupted him with a quick, pixie smile completely incongruous with her womanly aspect. "You have taught me too well, I think, for your own good. I have exactly what I want from the C-Bar-C, and that is my good name and my reputation. Having you as a partner does nothing, as far as I can see, to compromise that. And since you now have a half-interest in the C-Bar-C, I'll wager that you won't do anything to undermine its continued success."
"Good lord," he muttered.
"Beg pardon?"
He colored. "Nothing. I Does this mean you're not interested in buying out my share?"
"I am very interested in buying out your share, Mr. Muldaur," she corrected him, maintaining his gaze with an uncompromising look which took him aback. "But I am unable to consider it. For now, at least. My resources are stretched to the limit, and all of my capital is in my stock. The mares I've purchased here, for example. I'll begin entertaining bids for the foals sired by Sheik as soon as I'm sure the dams will hold to service. There is no chance that I'll have anywhere near the kind of resources you expect before this time next year, at the earliest. Of course, you could try the bank. But I doubt they'd consider the equity in the name to be of anywhere near the value you estimate."
Flynn could only stare at the lady with the melodious voice, whose hint of a Southern accent was long buried in the Black Hills. Obviously she was an accomplished businesswoman as well as a respected breeder and trainer of horses. And he'd sat there like a prize fool, explaining a basic business tenet she'd probably cut her teeth on! He felt his defeat so acutely that he could not speak.
Missy stood up. She felt grand. She'd groped her way along throughout the interview, as if trying to find her way out of a maze in the dark, and when she'd least expected it, Muldaur himself had handed her a torch. She wanted to leap from her seat and do a little jig about the room, possibly even sing a gay ditty. She commanded herself, doing her best to suppress a grin at Flynn Muldaur's obvious vexation.
She stole a glance at Gideon who, as good as his word, had remained silent throughout. To her surprise, he wore a pensive frown. She thought perhaps he did not understand that she had won the round, and quite possibly the match. Well, she would explain it to him later. She stood up.
"I guess Mr. Muldaur could run the ranch with you," Gideon, in his corner, mused aloud.
Missy felt a draft on her tongue. She
realized her
mouth was hanging open, and she shut it. Muldaur sat straight up and half turned in his chair, as if Gideon's reckless remark had imbued him with a fresh, if alarming, notion.
"Mr. Muldaur's interest is obviously a quick profit," she said hastily. "And a quick profit is not what one gains by going into the business of raising horses. It is a slow process which requires patience, an investment of time, money, and energy. Not to mention a basic knowledge of husbandry, stud value . . ."
While Missy enumerated on trembling fingers, Muldaur saw a bright, emancipating light: Madeleine demanded her pound of flesh with tedious regularity. He was only 37 years old, but was already running out of ways to satisfy her voracious appetite for money. What Gideon was suggesting represented a solution not only for this week or the next, but quite possibly, if he played it right and if she could be even a little patient, for year after year of steady and even increasing income. Tribute.
Flynn detested the sound and the deeper meaning of that word, but tribute, he knew, was what it amounted to. Or blackmail. And like it or not, he was tied to it for life, or at least as long as Seamus lived. Perhaps it was time he considered a long-term solution to the problem.
Even if he did not like it.
He concentrated on Missy again. She looked as if she'd just bitten into a cow pie. Against his better judgment, he grinned.
"I think Gideon may have hit upon the ideal compromise for us both," he said, enjoying the irony of his comment; it was obvious that Missy thought it a far from perfect resolution.
"But you can’t I mean, I don't think I could work with a partner."
Flynn's grin widened. Missy was most fetching when she babbled.
"You worked with Allyn Cameron," he reminded her, laying a finger beside his cheek. "My back's somewhat stronger, I'd guess. And I wouldn't have the distraction of trying to run a saloon at the same time, as she did."
Flynn tried to decide exactly which shade of red best described Missy's face. He settled on carmine.
"Unthinkable!" she pronounced firmly, closing her pretty mouth abruptly.
"More than thinkable, I'm afraid," he corrected, folding his hands behind his head. "Inevitable."
If nothing else, he thought, this unexpected development might make her reconsider her available resources and prompt her to at least make him an offer of financial settlement, just to be rid of him. But Gideon had planted the seed and it was taking root. Flynn was intrigued by the idea of moving in on Missy Cannon's well-ordered life. He doubted his new plan could be confounded, even by a full-price offer. He decided he must remember to thank Gideon for his interference.
"But you can't mean to Think of the scandal! Where will you stay?" She spoke in a heated whisper, as if her nosy, disapproving neighbors up north in Rapid City, South Dakota, might hear her all the way down here in Louisville, Kentucky.
"By rights, the house is half mine. I expect you have more than one furnished bedroom?"
Flynn thought she might faint at that, for she went pale as a bleached bed sheet. He braced himself to leap up and catch her.
Gideon remained planted in his window seat, watching the grown-ups. He wasn't at all sure he'd done the right thing, butting in the way he had. He knew for sure Missy wasn't going to thank him for it. Hell, she'd looked as if she'd like to kill him when he'd handed up that idea to Muldaur about him partnering with her. And he wasn't exactly easy in his mind about Muldaur, except he could tell that Missy, for all her show, had taken to him like a kitten to cream. She could deny it all she wanted; he, Gideon, could tell she was sweet on the guy.
Missy meant to take him back to Dakota with her, he knew. She'd make a fine ma, he guessed, but he wouldn't mind having a pa, and she had no husband to make that happen.
Yet.
Gideon heard Muldaur say something more to Missy about the C-Bar-C and setting himself up there to partner her, but he didn't bother to listen any further. He had his own problems to work out, namely how to get these two mule-headed people together, when neither one of them seemed ready to admit that they even liked each other.
As Missy retorted to Flynn's comment, Gideon remembered something he'd heard in the last orphanage he'd gotten out of, something the matrons never seemed to get tired of telling everybody, whether it was about the swill they fed them or the regular whippings: You don't believe it now, they used to say, but it's for your own good. You'll understand when you grow up.
Observing the uproar he'd brought about, he wondered when, or whether, he would know he was growing up. He wondered if anybody ever did. But he knew one thing for sure: It was going to be real interesting watching Missy Cannon and Flynn Muldaur try to do it. Fun, too. He found himself enjoying it already. And anyway, he reasoned, watching them square off like a couple of contentious birds in a chicken coop, it was for their own good
PART TWO
FRUCTUS VENTRIS TU
Chapter Nine
May, 1892
''End of the line, ma'am."
Missy awoke from a troubling dream with a jolt.
End of the line. Rapid City.
Home.
Gideon, on the seat beside her, was still asleep. She shook his shoulder gently.
"We're home," she whispered as the train slowed. "Wake up, son."
It was a habit she'd fallen into, calling Gideon son. She only did it while he was sleeping, or when she was otherwise certain he could not hear her. It was not a good or wise habit, she knew: Gideon did not react kindly when strangers, meaning only to be familiar, applied the term to him. In the past three months, she had reached a fragile pact with the boy, a treaty of sorts for which none of the provisos were written down or even spoken aloud. One of the conditions they had tacitly agreed upon was that their relationship was intentionally vague.
Allyn had had an expression for it: she referred to Gideon as Missy's "ward." Which meant, Missy decided, tongue in cheek, that the boy was more than a piece of luggage and less than a blood relative.
Gideon stretched, one fist shooting heavenward, the other flush against his thigh. "Are we there yet?" He yawned.
Missy glanced out the picture window against which Gideon's tousled head had recently rested. She saw a lot of mud and wagons beyond the unfinished station house, and several brick edifices interrupting rows of clapboard structures.
"Yes."
She ached to see the ranch, and the changes effected by the winter months. She'd been homesick the last few weeks in Annapolis while Sheik had serviced her new mares and she waited to see if they'd hold. She'd hoped for three out of four, but the stallion had served all four ladies well, including Glory, to Missy's surprise. One had slipped during the long journey to the far side of South Dakota, but Missy was hopeful for the remaining three.
And now she was home.
Gideon plowed his fists into his eyes and yawned once more before he sat up straight and focused his sleepy stare on her.
"You suppose Flynn Muldaur's here, too?"
The train jerked to an abrupt but dignified halt, like an old widower bumping into a spinster at church. Missy looked at the carpetbag beneath her seat.
"We haven't heard a word from Mr. Muldaur since we left Louisville," she reminded him, nursing a combination of relief and regret that she hoped to keep secret from the alarmingly perceptive boy. "I'm sure he had second thoughts about partnering with me in the C-Bar-C and wisely thought better of attempting it. In any event, I'm sure we would have heard from him if he'd decided to exercise that unlikely option. Men like Flynn Muldaur, it seems to me, resist anything that smacks of hard work or putting down roots. Let that be a lesson to you."
"I bet you he's here," Gideon grumbled, yanking at his suspenders and straightening his knickers as he shuffled to his feet. "I know he is."
"And just why is that so important to you?" Missy could not help inquiring.
Gideon gave a careless shrug. "It ain't." He slammed his cap on his head.
Missy sighed. Gideon, she'
d discovered over the past three months, could be talkative or taciturn, usually alternating between the two without warning. His moods convinced her that he did far more thinking than speaking, which was an admirable yet distressing quality in a companion. She'd have liked to have paddled him when, back in February, he'd very vocally pointed out to Flynn Muldaur his option of assuming a co-ownership role at the ranch.
The truth was, though, that a part of her wished Gideon had convinced Muldaur. Time had softened her memory as well as her opinion of the man Joshua Manners had called untrustworthy. She hadn't heard Flynn's side of the story, after all. It wasn't that she did not believe Joshua Manners: the integrity of Allyn's husband was beyond reproach. It was just that she'd learned during her 27 years that things were not always what they seemed, and there were at least two sides to every story. She never thought of Flynn Muldaur anymore without remembering his mesmerizing blue eyes, his engaging smile, and the way the two had worked together to make her heart do some splendid acrobatics.