by Jeannie Watt
“I plan to convince them that their lives on the ranch will not be as private or as quiet as they were before.” Neal tapped a finger on the table. “They are used to isolation.”
“Dani lived in the city.”
“Then why isn’t she still there?”
Stewart cleared his throat. “I think we need to start building a structure—”
“A water slide!” Neal interrupted. Stewart frowned and Neal continued, “An adult water slide.” He leaned his head back and laughed. “We could make an adults-only playground out of the place.”
Stewart actually smiled a little. “I’d prefer a resort with a golf course, but if push came to shove...”
Gabe rolled his eyes. This was turning into a bona fide nightmare.
* * *
“I NEED TO talk to you.”
Maybe Gabe needed to talk to her, and he seemed convinced that he did, since this was his fourth message in a day and a half, but she didn’t need to talk to him. Dani pushed Delete on her answering machine, wondering how much longer this would persist. She’d already blocked him on her cell phone, but this was her business phone and she couldn’t block calls on the landline. All she could do was screen via the answering machine.
She had new clients and two of her previous clients were so pleased with the first thirty days that they’d asked for another stint. She’d explained to Jolie that her extended internship was the result of pulled strings and likely to evaporate at any time, so soon her sister would return home and they’d continue with their plans to build the Lightning Creek Training Facility.
No matter what, they would not sell to Widmeyer Enterprises. She’d rather burn the place to the ground.
It was close to ten o’clock when the phone rang again. Dani jerked awake, the book she’d been reading when she fell asleep slipping to the floor. Gabe. Again. Only this time it took over a minute for the message light to start blinking.
Leaning her head back against the chair cushions, she closed her eyes, debated. What could he possibly have to say to her that mattered? Or would change how she felt about him?
Nothing. She didn’t care if he crawled across the state on his belly, she was done.
If you’re done, they you should have no problem listening to the message.
Okay, maybe she wasn’t so much done, as she was wishing she was done.
She inhaled deeply, then exhaled as she acknowledged the truth. It ripped her up to hear his voice—and not only because the guy had lied to her, betrayed her. But part of her was also still grappling with the fact that he wasn’t who he said he was. Part of her was in mourning.
Listen to whatever it is he has to say. Hopefully it would outrage her, give her the kick in the ass she needed to wipe him out of her mind.
Yeah. Good plan.
But her hand was shaking as she pushed the play button and gingerly put the phone to her ear.
“Dani, hear me out before you hang up.” The words came out rapidly and then his voice slowed to its normal cadence. “Widmeyer is going to send someone else to talk to you about selling, and now that word of the proposed resort is out, I wouldn’t be surprised if other people contact you to buy, with the hope that Widmeyer might need the property someday. Just a heads-up. And, Dani—they probably aren’t going to play nice.”
Just a heads-up that you’re about to be further harassed. Dani pushed her hair back from her forehead, determined to stay on the line until she heard the message end.
“I wish I hadn’t helped bring this into your life. I didn’t expect...” Dani sat up a little straighter, dropping her hand as the utter sincerity of his words stabbed at her.
This is what he does. He’s very, very good.
He cleared his throat. “That’s no excuse. Anyway, if you ever want to talk about this, you have my number.”
That was when Dani hung up. As if she would ever call him.
* * *
DANI WAS SWEEPING the porch when a car pulled into the drive—a Lexus she’d never seen before. She leaned her broom against the wall and headed down the walk, expecting to give directions or greet a potential client, until the woman got out of the car. Tall with angular features and her silvery hair pulled into a chignon, she fit the description of Gabe’s assistant—the woman whose appearance had tipped off Kyle as to Gabe’s duplicity.
If this woman hadn’t visited Gabe, if Kyle hadn’t recognized her, would Dani have ever known how she’d been played? Would Gabe have really told her the truth as he’d said he’d planned to?
She didn’t believe so.
And then the bigger question—would she have been happy not knowing? Blithely unaware that the man she thought she’d loved had manipulated her? It smacked too much of trusting Chad while he was screwing Megan on the side. She hadn’t known. She’d been happy—but once she’d discovered the truth, the memory of those happy, oblivious days made her feel humiliated and stupid.
Dani stayed where she was on the porch as the woman opened the gate and strode up the walk, moving pretty damned well considering both the state of the sidewalk and the height of her heels. The muscles in Dani’s jaw tightened as she prepared for whatever she was about to face.
“Hello,” the woman called politely as she approached.
Dani gave a cool nod and waited, marveling at the chutzpah of these people.
“I’m Serena Widmeyer.”
“I figured.”
Serena stopped at the bottom step, lifted her chin and then smiled a little. “You know who I am.”
“Gabe’s assistant. Or pretend assistant. He told me so many lies, I’m not certain what to believe.”
“I’m his assistant—or I was. I’ve since moved to another part of the company.”
“And you’re here because...?”
“I’d like to make an offer on the ranch.”
Dani tried to stifle a startled laugh and it came out as a choking sound. “And I’d like you to get in your car and leave.” Gabe’s warning had proved to be true, although her cynical side now wondered if maybe he was now sliding into the good-cop role in a good cop/bad cop scenario. Before her stood the bad cop.
“Will you at least hear the offer?”
“No.” Dani folded her arms over her chest and set her jaw. “Any more questions before you go?”
“No, but I have something to tell you.”
“Which is?”
“If you don’t sell, we’ll be moving forward with a new project on the Staley property.”
“It’s yours. Do as you like.”
“You understand that there will be radical change in the amount of traffic and noise you experience here.”
“Not much I can do about that but endure.”
“Or you could swallow your pride and take a very generous offer.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What do your sisters think?”
“We’re in agreement.
“I’ve been in contact with Allison.”
“If you have, she would have contacted me.”
Serena merely raised an eyebrow, making Dani wonder if perhaps she was telling the truth. Just because Gabe was a liar, it didn’t mean everyone associated with the corporation was. If Allie had been tempted by an offer, she might not tell immediately.
“We’ll need an answer in ten business days,” Serena continued as if Dani had not made it clear they weren’t selling.
“What happens if you don’t hear in ten days?”
“Construction of the water park begins.” She turned and walked back to the gate. Once there she pulled a card out of her jacket pocket and slipped it into the hinge. “Just in case,” she said.
Dani jerked her chin up in a fat-chance gesture, but other than that stayed stock-still as she waited for Serena Widmeyer to drive away. Once the dust had settled and she could no longer hear the distant sound of the engine, Dani picked up the broom again and began sweeping vigorously.
Water park? She didn’t want to live next to a water park. Who
above the age of eighteen did?
Plus, the roof on the barn was leaking and as things stood right now, she and her sisters couldn’t afford any more new fencing to replace the sagging stuff that Kyle was supposed to have replaced five years ago. The posts he’d bought at that wonderful price hadn’t been pressure-treated and they were all rotting off at ground level. Yes, they’d replaced the worst sections this past spring, but there was so much more to do. And they needed that indoor arena in order to work year-round.
She wasn’t selling to the Widmeyers.
Both Jolie and Allie called that afternoon before she could call them. Jolie wanted reassurance that they wouldn’t sell and Allie cursed the fates because they hadn’t before they’d known what was going on, because now she was in agreement with Dani. She wasn’t going to sell to the Widmeyers.
Serena had indeed contacted her, offering a good deal, but Allie wasn’t going to get pushed around or seduced by a corporation with underhanded tactics.
“Besides,” she’d said before ending the call, “we can always sell to someone else eventually. Or put in a pig farm next to their water park. Screw them up that way.”
Dani smiled in spite of herself as she hung up. Sometimes she liked the way Allie thought.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ON EXACTLY THE eleventh day after Serena had showed up on the ranch, giving Dani the ten-day deadline, the surveyors arrived, setting up their equipment and staking out an area of Staley ground adjacent to the Lightning Creek’s north boundary—about a hundred yards from the house. Dani’s great-grandfather had designed the ranch so that the house would be buffered from neighbors by the fields spreading out into the valley. The land behind them had been owned by his brother and it had seemed unreasonable at the time to think that his brother would sell. He hadn’t, but his son had. So now Dani could well have close neighbors to the north...unless this was all a bluff.
Dani ignored the orange-helmeted men as they strode around, calling directions to one another, planting stakes and running lines. It could be a bluff. It was one thing to stake out a project, another to actually build it.
The Widmeyers were trying to force her into a decision by building close.
“Shut the old gate across the road,” Jolie said when Dani had called to tell her what was going on. “Keep them from driving across the place.”
“One—its hinges are rusted. Two—we can’t do that legally and I have a feeling that Widmeyer is just waiting to jump on something like that.”
“No doubt. Well, when I get home, we’ll see what we can do to cause them some pain.”
“We can’t do anything, Jo. They have all the power here.”
“Maybe they are just bluffing, like you said. Trying to force our hand.”
“That’s my hope.”
A hope that was shattered the next week when the heavy equipment arrived and the gravel trucks started to roll. The ripping and tearing of the earth and the rumble of the trucks had the horses severely on edge—to the point that Dani got dumped by a new horse on her daily ride and had to walk back to the ranch, hoping that the horse was there waiting for her.
It was and so was her sister. Jolie had tied up the mare and was just starting out to look for her when Dani walked into the yard, pissed beyond measure.
“You’re all right, I see.”
“Physically.” She waved at the construction site on the other side of their back fence. “Mentally, not so much so.”
“We can’t even put pigs there,” Jolie said. “Unless we want them in our own backyard.”
A low rumble shook the ground as a front-end loader dug into a pile of gravel. “This is no environment for horse training,” Dani said, planting her hands on her hips in disgust. “Those assholes.”
And Gabe was the king asshole.
“They won’t be doing this forever,” Jolie said. “Construction has to stop sometime.”
“No. Then the loud people come.”
“If they really build a waterslide.”
“I think they’re going to. This is too much equipment for a bluff and I checked with planning and zoning. They can do it.”
“Damn. Well, at least I’ll be here to share the pain.” She gestured at her overloaded truck. “This is the second-to-last load of my stuff. One more load tomorrow and then I can turn in my key to the landlord and start work at the café.” Which was how she was going to support herself until the spring when her clinic schedule began.
Another rumble shook the earth beneath their feet and Dani shook her head. “I hate these guys.”
* * *
A WEEK LATER, the construction stopped almost as abruptly as it began, making Dani think that, yeah, it had all been a ploy. Right up until she spoke with Mike Culver, the owner of the local feed store.
“According to what I hear, they’ll be building. A few minor approvals and they’re good to go. And while they wait, the earth beneath the pad has time to settle.”
“Good to know,” Dani murmured ironically.
“There’ll be a lot of activity on your end of the valley when they get that thing finished. All the kids are real excited and they’re talking about putting an old-fashioned drive-in there, as well. Kind of a retro thing.”
Dani somehow managed not to smack her forehead. “Again—good to know. Well, I’ll see you,” she said brightly, her smile evaporating the instant she turned around.
She wasn’t giving in and she wasn’t going to think about what this might do to her property value. It was just possible that people with the money to buy her place didn’t want to live next to a water park and drive-in theater any more than she did.
* * *
“THEY AREN’T BUDGING,” Serena told Gabe as they shared a drink after he’d finished up his last official Widmeyer contract. He was now his own boss again and frankly, he wished he’d never gone back to consulting for Widmeyer, no matter how lucrative it had been.
“They, meaning...?”
“The Brody sisters.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she said the name, as if gauging his reaction.
“I didn’t think they would.”
“They won’t take my calls,” she said conversationally.
He knew the feeling. He’d tried to call Dani another time but she still refused to pick up.
“Stewart’s starting to get a little weird about the situation.”
Gabe snorted. “He’s been weird about it since day one.”
“I guess. But I understood why he was so angry and it seemed like a reasonable face-saving response to what Jeffries had done to him.”
“I thought the same way,” Gabe said. It had seemed reasonable. He would have been tempted to employ a similar tactic had he been betrayed by a longtime friend and partner. But he’d also like to think that he would have seen when his behavior had started to get obsessive.
“Even Neal has noticed, and you know how blindly he follows Stewart.”
“Yeah.”
Serena lifted her glass. “Here’s to Stewart’s great white whale. Let’s hope it doesn’t kill him.”
“Amen to that.” Gabe drank deeply. When he put his glass down, Serena was studying him with an expression that made him decidedly uneasy. “What?”
“You look like hell.”
“I need a haircut.”
“You need some sleep.”
“Yeah. Well.” He ran a hand over his chin. The stubble was thick and apparently not doing too good of a job of drawing attention away from the circles under his eyes.
“Did you and that Dani person have some kind of a thing going on?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re acting like a guy who has a problem and no idea how to solve it, so he’s all cranky and snarly and hard to deal with.”
“What if I did?”
She exhaled deeply and then drew a squiggly line in the condensation on her glass. “Having met her, I’d say you’re screwed if you intended to pursue something there.”
“I
agree.”
“So you’re not going to do anything?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t know what to do?”
“Yeah, I do. I can change the subject to something that is your business rather than leave it on something that isn’t.”
Serena let out a soft sigh. “Whatever. Just trying to help.”
* * *
ALMOST A MONTH after Gabe had finished his last Widmeyer contract, Stewart got the official okay from the Eagle Valley planning commission to commence construction on his water park. The only problem was that Gabe knew as well as Stewart did that he didn’t want to build a water park—he wanted a resort with a golf course to compete with Timberline. He was still hoping the Brodys would change their minds.
And Gabe was starting to worry about his former mentor and his pursuit of his great white whale.
Stewart didn’t have much to say to him, but Gabe had a couple months left on his office lease, so he continued to work out of the Widmeyer offices, continued to see Stewart every day or so. He did not look good. He was scheduled to have the tumor removed from his lung, but the doctors had postponed surgery, telling him that his blood pressure was too high.
That was telling, according to Neal, since high blood pressure had never before been a problem. Timberline’s much-lauded grand opening, after a summer-long soft opening, hadn’t helped. The resort got rave reviews, had been featured in two travel magazines and on a Travel Channel Best New Places to Explore segment.
Finally one night, when both he and Stewart were working late, Gabe approached Stewart’s office and knocked on the door. When there was no answer, he opened it a crack to see the older man sitting at his desk totally focused on the screen in front of him.
“Can we talk?” Gabe asked.
For a moment he thought Stewart was going to say no, but instead he gave a grudging nod.
“You’re making yourself sick,” Gabe said as he walked into the room and approached Stewart’s desk.
“I’m making myself sick?” He let out a scoffing snort.
“I’m going to say what Neal won’t. You’ve got to let this go.”
Stewart didn’t ask what this was. He knew.
“I’m going to give that bastard some competition.”