The Chisholm Brothers:Friends, Lovers... Husbands?

by Janis Reams Hudson

  He glanced over at Melanie, but her shoulders were set so hard against him he figured that if he said anything his voice would just bounce right off her, so he kept his mouth shut and bounced his way toward her house.

  Chapter Two

  It had been the longest ride of Melanie’s life. The only saving grace had been that Caleb didn’t bring up the kiss.

  She didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry. She supposed she was a little of both, she thought as she watched his taillights disappear down the driveway in a cloud of dust. Grateful that she’d escaped having to talk about something that she didn’t understand, something that embarrassed her to the core, and angry with both of them for not bringing it out in the open so they could put themselves and their friendship back on an even keel.

  Shaking her head, Melanie trudged to her bedroom to change into work clothes. Since her father wasn’t home, the remainder of the day’s chores fell to her.

  She didn’t mind the work. In fact, she loved each and every chore—well, okay, maybe she didn’t love each one, but she couldn’t think of a single chore she actually hated. Except on the rare occasion when an animal had to be put down. And housework. She hated anything that hinted of housework.

  Other than that, she didn’t mind the effort it took to keep a ranch running. It was good honest work. It made a person stronger, and not just physically. What she did mind was having to do her father’s share so he could run around losing money all over the damn territory.

  She would start with the most important chores and work her way down until dark. The most important were the mares. There were three of them, and they were her star boarders.

  Well, Melanie thought with a chuckle, they were her only boarders. Their owners paid extra to make sure their beauties were well taken care of, including being stabled each night so they wouldn’t have to spend the nights out in the open.

  If given a choice, nearly all of Pruitt Ranch’s own horses would stand outside in a blizzard and let icicles form on their muzzles before they would willingly step a single hoof inside a barn. PR horses were an independent lot.

  At the back door, in the kitchen, Melanie stomped her feet into her boots and headed out. She juggled the list of chores in her mind. It wasn’t fair to the mares to bring then in from the paddock and lock them up in the barn in the middle of the day just because she wanted to take her list of chores in some particular order.

  But part and parcel with putting them up for the night was cleaning out their stalls, so she started there. After that she drained the water trough in the corral and gave it a good scrubbing. Ever since the West Nile virus made its appearance in Oklahoma she tried not to let water stand in the troughs, or anywhere else, for more than a couple of days. Lord knew there were enough natural breeding places for mosquitoes; she wasn’t about to provide more if she could help it.

  By the time she did a few more chores, drove out to the back pasture and checked on the cattle there, then came back and stabled the mares, it was nearly dark. While she was brushing down the last mare she heard a vehicle rumble up to the barn on the other side of the corral.

  It was her dad. She recognized the sound of his pickup. After the way he’d dumped her at the café earlier, she wasn’t sure she was ready yet to talk to him. She took her time with the last mare.

  Finally, she could delay no longer. In the deep twilight she walked the fifty yards from the barn to the back door and entered the house.

  Her father was on the phone. As she came in, he said, “I told you I’d get you the money.”

  Melanie’s stomach clenched. She froze in the open doorway.

  Her father hung up the phone and turned toward the refrigerator. “What’s for supper?”

  For one long moment, Melanie could do no more than gape. When she didn’t answer, her father turned to look at her. She snapped. Somehow, behind her, the door slammed shut.

  “Maybe if you’d eaten dinner after church this afternoon you wouldn’t be hungry.”

  “Hmmph.” He appeared unimpressed with her sudden anger. “You ate, and I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

  “Bet?” It was all she could do to keep from shrieking. “Haven’t you placed enough bets for one day?”

  A flush of guilty red stained his cheeks. He turned back toward the fridge and pulled open the door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t, huh?” She jammed the heel of one boot into the bootjack and worked her foot free. “Then who was that on the phone that you were promising money to?”

  His shoulders stiffened, but he didn’t turn to face her. “None of your business.”

  “Oh, it’s my business, all right.” She took off her second boot and stalked across the room to grab his arm and tug him around. “You’ve been taking money out of the ranch account for months like you think we’ve got our own printing press.”

  Melanie stopped and took a deep breath. This was the man who played horsey while she rode his shoulders. The man who taught her to ride a real horse, gave her her first pony, taught her to rope a steer. Taught her to love the land. Taught her what it was to love family.

  “Daddy, I love you, but this has to stop before you bankrupt us.”

  “Aw, don’t give me that,” he said, pained. “It hasn’t been that bad.”

  “Hasn’t been that bad?” Her voice rose in pitch as she waved her arms. “Look around. Do you think we let the hands go three weeks ago because we didn’t need them anymore? Because we like working ourselves half to death and never catching up?”

  “I know you said we were short,” Ralph said, “but that was before we sold the calves. We’re fine now.”

  “We might be,” she said, “if we hadn’t been in the red before the sale, thanks to your gambling and Mama’s credit card charges.”

  Fayrene and Ralph Pruitt had been separated for nearly two years. Not legally, on paper, but physically. One day Fayrene had decided she was tired of Ralph paying more attention to his cattle and horses—even his pickup—than her. She had packed a bag and hauled tail to Phoenix to live with her sister. She called every couple of weeks to talk to Melanie, but never Ralph.

  There had never been a discussion about how Fayrene was to support herself. She had the same credit card she’d always carried, in the name of the ranch; Ralph had never asked her to give it back or stop using it. As long as she was his wife, she was entitled, he said.

  It was Melanie, however, who had to figure out how to pay the mounting bills.

  “I’m telling you, Daddy, we won’t make it through the winter at this rate. What are we supposed to do, sell off land? Or maybe Big Angus.”

  “We’re not selling so much as an acre of the PR, and we’re damn sure not selling Big Angus.”

  Big Angus was the enormous bull that was the foundation of their breeding program. His championship bloodline, not to mention his perfect confirmation, made him one of the most valuable bulls in the state.

  “You sound just like your mother,” Ralph went on, “always exaggerating, making things sound worse than they are.”

  “Daddy—”

  “I’m hungry. Do we still have any of that roast beef? We can have sandwiches.”

  And that, Melanie knew from past experience, was the end of any discussion on money.

  * * *

  Melanie had been right about the end of any more money talk with her father. He stuffed two thick roast beef sandwiches, one after the other, into his mouth then kissed her on top of her head and went to bed.

  Monday morning she faced the chores alone again. Instead of her father, in the kitchen making coffee as he did most mornings, she found a note:

  Gone to the city. Don’t wait up.

  He meant Oklahoma City. If he’d been going to Rose Rock, he’d have said he was gone to town. In Oklahoma, there was generally only one “city,” and that was Oklahoma City. Tulsa was Tulsa; everything else was called by its name unless you lived in the country and were referring to the
nearest town, then it was “town.” But “the city” was Oklahoma City.

  There was legitimate ranch business he could take care of in the city. The big tractor-supply places were there, and they needed a new part. But he usually had the parts store in town order whatever he needed.

  He was up to no good again. Gambling. There was no other logical explanation for this latest disappearing act.

  Melanie was so angry, so frustrated, she wished heartily for a punching bag. Or a cord of wood to chop. Since neither of those was handy, she bit down on her emotions and turned the mares out for the day. She found little satisfaction in mucking out their stalls, but it had to be done.

  When she went to the feed room in the back of the barn, she swore. Her father was supposed to have brought home a new load of sweet feed for the mares two days ago. Obviously he’d had more important things on his mind, because there were no new bags.

  She should wait until later, after she’d put in another few hours of work, but maybe the trip to the feed store in town would settle her down. Between anger at her father, and the dream she’d had of kissing Caleb, she felt ready to explode. Mucking out stalls had not helped.

  She drove to town, cursing herself for postponing her work, knowing that she would have to stop early enough that evening to get ready to go with Justin to the birthday party. Maybe she would drown her sorrows in beer. Except she never got drunk. She wasn’t much of a drinker at all. She was a sipper. It took her all night to get through two glasses of beer. If she was drinking bottles or cans, she couldn’t finish two unless she stayed up all night to get the job done. Still, she was looking forward to the evening.

  What she was not looking forward to, she thought as she stopped at the mailbox at the end of her driveway on her way back from the feed store, was opening the mail. It was, as usual, all bills. No prize patrol, no letter from Ed McMahon waiting to tell her she’d won a million dollars. Just another bill from the electric company, who, for some reason, expected money from them about this time every month. An insurance statement. An invoice from the credit card company. That was going to hurt.

  And hurt, it did. She put off opening it for as long as she could. She unloaded the sweet feed. She made sure the bags were stacked straight. She straightened up the rest of the storage room. She went to the house and made herself another roast beef sandwich. She would be glad to see the last of that roast; she was getting tired of it, no matter how good it tasted.

  Then there was nothing legitimate standing between her and the bills. With grim resolve, she carried them to the desk in the small den off the living room and grabbed the letter opener. As if about to take a dose of particularly foul-tasting medicine, she held her breath and opened the worst of them—the credit card bill—first.

  She nearly staggered at the amount due. Good grief! Last month she had paid off the entire balance, and now the account was completely maxed out. All five digits of the allowable amount. What the— In one month?

  “Mama, what have you done?”

  The list of charges was as long as her arm and took up two pages. None was for less than five hundred dollars. Department stores—high-end ones. Victoria’s Secret? What could her mother have bought there for six-hundred-fifty-seven dollars? There were other places listed, whose merchandise or services Melanie could only guess at.

  The charge that stopped her heart was from a Scottsdale clinic for more than ten thousand dollars.

  Oh, God. A clinic? Her mother was ill. How serious was it? It must be bad to cost that much. Why hadn’t Mama called to tell them?

  She reached for the phone with trembling hands and dialed her mother’s number in Arizona. She got the damn answering machine.

  “Mama, it’s Melanie. Are you there? If you’re there pick up. I just got the credit card bill. Mama, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Hurt? What’s happened? All that money charged to the clinic. Why didn’t you let the insurance cover it? Please call. You’ve got me terrified here. Call. And hurry, Mama.”

  A sick feeling bubbled in the pit of Melanie’s stomach. Oh, God. Her mother was sick, and the Pruitt Ranch was in big financial trouble. Heaven help her, there was no way she could pay off the credit card balance this time. And with interest rates that would do a loan shark proud, it was going to take years to pay off.

  And how could she even consider worrying about such a trivial matter as that when for all she knew her mother could be dying?

  Melanie sat heavily and buried her face in her hands. What was she going to do? How could she help her mother? She had to assume that if her mother was in a really bad way she would have called. Or Aunt Karen would have. But nobody ran up a ten-thousand-dollar tab at a clinic for a hangnail or a bout with the flu.

  And why, oh why, hadn’t she used their health insurance instead of charging it all to the credit card? Had she lost her mind?

  She was obviously feeling well enough to buy out half of the finer shops in Phoenix, whose charges were dated after the charge at the clinic. That was something, then.

  If her mother’s health weren’t enough, Melanie felt as if the very survival of the PR rested on her shoulders. In truth, it did. Her parents certainly weren’t helping. They were, in fact, the problem. Both of them.

  She loved her parents deeply, but right now all she wanted to do was knock their heads together. They had to stop this. She had to make them stop.

  But how? She had tried talking, begging, demanding. Nothing had worked. What else could she do? She couldn’t sit around and let them take the ranch under. She knew they didn’t want the ranch to go under any more than she did, it was just that they had both become as irresponsible as a couple of teenagers since Mama had moved out. She supposed she should be grateful they’d…

  That was it. She didn’t have to convince them of anything. When her parents had separated they had agreed that they wanted to ensure that if anything happened to one of them, Melanie would still have the ranch. They’d had their lawyer draw up papers giving Melanie fifty percent of the ranch, with twenty-five percent going to each of her parents. Unless the two of them joined forces—an event not likely to happen in the foreseeable future—control rested in Melanie’s hands. It was time she exercised it.

  She reached for the phone.

  Thirty minutes later it was done. They weren’t out of debt, weren’t going to be for a good long while. But neither of her parents would be able to add to the problem. She had closed the credit card account and canceled the ATM cards. No one could charge anything to the ranch, except at the feed store in town, and no one could withdraw cash from the bank without writing a check. And she had the only checkbook. If her mother’s health caused more expenses Melanie would handle it. Somehow.

  Heaven help her, her mother and father were going to hit the roof when they found out what she’d done.

  She wished her actions made her feel better but they didn’t. That sick feeling still rumbled in her stomach. Who was she to tell her parents what to do? They had worked hard all their lives, built this ranch up from the small, one-man operation Grandpa had left Daddy. They were her parents, and she was treating them like children, taking control of their money, cutting them off.

  Heaven help her.

  Billy Ray’s birthday celebration that night at the Road Hog Saloon was, by all accounts, a rousing success.

  By all accounts except Melanie’s. She was most definitely not enjoying herself. Her beer kept disappearing right out of her glass. She reached for the pitcher on the table to give herself a refill, but, oh, great. The pitcher was empty.

  “More beer!” she yelled. But the band was so loud, she doubted anyone heard her. It was a local group called the Aloha Shirt Boys, named for the shirts they wore, not the music they played; they played country and western, with a little Cajun thrown in now and then, and they played it loud. L-O-U-D loud.

  “More beer!” she yelled again, pounding the pitcher on the table. Why wasn’t there any more beer?

  “Hey, sweetcakes
.” Her buddy, Justin, slid in next to her in the booth. “Whatcha hollering about?” He had picked her up at seven, as planned, and they had driven to the Road Hog for Billy Ray’s party, both grateful that whoever had done the choosing had chosen the Road Hog over Deuces at the other end of town. If the Road Hog was a dump, Deuces was three notches below a dive.

  “I’m outta beer.” She frowned at her empty glass, the empty pitcher, then at Justin. Her pal. Caleb’s brother. Caleb, with the magic lips.

  No, no, no. Mustn’t think about Caleb’s lips. Nope. Bad lips. Shame on those lips. No more lips for her, by golly. She shouldn’t even be thinking about lips,

  but she needed lips to drink her beer.

  “I’m outta beer,” she said again.

  It was easier to think about beer. If she just kept thinking about it, pouring it down her throat, she wouldn’t have to think about Caleb’s lips. Or her father. Or her mother’s health. Now there was a subject to get a girl to drinking.

  Her father didn’t yet know what she’d done, but she had called her mother back and left a second message, warning her not to use the credit card because it would be turned down.

  Oh, boy, howdy, that was going to go over like a lead balloon.

  They were going to hate her. Mama and Daddy were both going to hate her for this.

  “I want more beer.”

  Good grief, was that her voice? That ugly, whiny sound?

  Her parents weren’t here. And neither were Caleb’s lips. She was safe for now.

  “Where you been?” she demanded of Justin. “This’s the firs’ I’ve seen you since we got here.”

  Justin hooted. “Sweetcakes, did you know your words are slurring?”

  She blinked and opened her eyes wide. “Are not.”