“What are you doing?” Jacob asked, coming to stand in the open door of the stall. He was wearing his favorite Spider-Man shirt for what was probably the fifth day in a row, judging by the spots on the front. And his socks had given up the fight of clinging to his thin legs and were slouching around his ankles. Sort of like everything in Texas during August, they had just wilted.
“Mucking stalls.”
“Mucking?”
“Getting rid of the horse poop.”
“Mom,” he said as if it were his job to let her know what a mistake she was making. “That’s so gross.”
“Tell me about it. Did you bring the stuff?”
He lifted a plastic bag, and she knew in her heart of hearts that this little revenge plot was silly.
She should rise above it, but she was so damn tired of rising above everything. Her husband’s betrayal, the public scorn. Eli’s very private scorn.
She was going to wallow in some base and silly behavior. And wouldn’t you know it, wallowing felt good, too.
“I think you’re supposed to wear gloves, Mom.” He pointed at her red hands.
“They didn’t go with my skirt.” Her joke fell flat and he just stared at her. He wasn’t used to a mother who joked. It made her heart hurt, thinking of how cold she’d been, how paralyzed by fear, for so much of his life.
She touched the curl over his ear. His hair was longer than she’d ever let it grow before, almost down to his shoulders. He looked bohemian, as if he’d never spent a minute in her company, and she kind of liked it.
What she didn’t like was the downward curve to his lips, the slump in his shoulders.
“Jacob? You okay?”
“I was just … I was just wondering when we were going back home.”
“Home?”
“New York City.”
She felt her jaw drop, her eyes open wide. How in the world had she not explained this properly?
“Honey.” She rested the shovel against the wall and crouched down in front of him as best she could in the knee-high rubber boots. “You’re starting school here next month.”
“I thought that was just until you got Grandpa’s will all figured out.”
“It’s figured out, Jacob. We don’t have a home in New York anymore.”
“What about Toronto with Uncle Luc?”
“We were just staying with him. That’s not our home either.”
She blinked and took a big gulp of air, wondering what kind of protest Jacob was going to throw her way. And wondering how she was going to muster up the energy to put it to rest.
“You mean we live here? At the ranch?”
She nodded and slowly, to her great relief and delight, he started to smile.
She laughed. “I guess that’s okay with you?”
“Totally okay. It’s awesome! But what are you going to do?”
For good or bad, the Crooked Creek Ranch was hers now. Well, sort of. Her brother had been given the ranch in their father’s will three months ago. But he had no interest in this land.
And Luc had suggested that she run the ranch for him until it was out of escrow, at which point she intended to buy it.
Not that she knew a single thing about ranching. But she wanted to learn. Needed to. Because she’d utterly failed at everything else in her life, and this place seemed like her last chance to make a home and a future for her son.
But the only way that was going to happen was through Eli Turnbull. And it was pretty safe to say that Eli Turnbull hated her.
He’d made his intentions to buy the ranch very clear and now she was standing in his way, which was a very uncomfortable place to be.
But she wasn’t giving up. She’d done enough of that in her life.
“I am going to run the ranch.”
“Isn’t that Eli’s job?”
“Eli is the foreman.” Like his father and grandfather before him. Eli had roots in this land that were twisted and tied up with her own. “But the ranch belonged to my dad and now it belongs to Uncle Luc, and I’m going to run it for him until you and I can buy it next year.”
“Wow.” She tried not to preen as he looked at her as if he’d just noticed her superhero cape.
That right there, the pride and wonder in her son’s eyes, was worth all of Eli’s disdain. She’d muck a hundred stalls if that was what it took to have her son look at her like that.
“But … what about our friends?” Jacob asked, and just like that the pride, the cape, the wonder—it all vanished.
“What about them?” They’re not our friends, she wanted to say. Not anymore. Not after what your father did. Not after how they treated us.
“We’re not going to see them again?”
“We’ll make new friends.”
Her son’s shoulders curved forward again and she waited for his next question, but he was silent.
Unused to his silence, she cocked her head to see his face.
“Jacob?”
“Do you miss Dad?”
It took a long time for her to get her breath back.
Jacob didn’t talk much about Joel, and the grief book she had on her bedside table said that was okay. But Victoria hadn’t gotten to the chapter about what to say when the kid started to talk.
“Do you miss him?” she asked, because that seemed like a self-help-book kind of thing to do.
Jacob tilted his head and his eyes, so big and dark, the best thing he’d gotten from his father, looked far too old.
“Not really.” She blinked with surprise. “Is that bad?”
Ahhhh … maybe? Honestly, she should have finished that damn book by now.
“He just … he worked all the time.”
She nodded, stroking Spider-Man on his sleeve. “I know.”
“Did he love me?”
“Of course,” she gasped. Not that she had any proof she could hand him, anything she could point to and say “See, that’s what a father does when he loves his son.” But she couldn’t let her baby believe otherwise.
“Then why—?”
“Daddy got into a lot of trouble with people,” she said quickly, hating the thought that her son would attach anything Joel did to his own small shoulders. That he would feel any responsibility for his father’s sins made her ill.
Crouching down in the dirt and hay, she cupped his cheeks, ran her thumbs over the tender rosy skin.
“Because of the Potzie thing?” he asked.
“Ponzi,” she corrected, stroking back his hair, her heart cracking right down the middle even as she smiled. She’d tried once to explain a Ponzi scheme, but Jacob just didn’t understand. Truth be told, she didn’t either. She didn’t understand why Joel had started it, how he’d kept it going knowing he was stealing from people, and why he hadn’t just gotten out when things had started to fall apart. “He tricked a lot of people and he was scared and embarrassed.”
“Because he lied?”
“Yes. He owed a lot of people a lot of money.”
“That’s why he killed himself?”
Bile and grief kicked up stones in her stomach, sending lumps into her throat. For a moment she saw the blood splattered against the den’s plum silk wallpaper, and the smell, hot and coppery, flooded her nose.
The gunshot had woken her up that night. And she’d raced through the penthouse, past Jacob’s room, right to the closed door of the den.
She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but opening that door had been one of the worst.
Jacob’s hands twitched in hers and she grabbed onto his fingers, probably squeezing too hard. She usually did. But he was all she had to hold on to, the only thing she knew she’d done right.
This boy was Joel’s gift to her, and because of that she had to make peace with what he’d done. The anger and fear of being widowed in such a violent way, of being hounded by the press, of being yanked by her hair out of the ivory tower she’d lived in, was nothing compared to her wonder in this boy.
She had t
o remember that. Every day she had to balance the scales in her head. When he’d been sick in the hospital nearly a year ago, it had been easy to keep the balance. But now that he was better, now that life had moved on, everything was harder.
“Did he love you?” The question put a hook in her stomach and yanked, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe for the pain. This was how Eli had wanted to make her feel with his cruel comments, but he had no idea how hard he would have to work to succeed.
“Yes.” She lied. Right to his face, she lied.
“Do you miss him?”
“I miss having someone to talk to.” Not that Joel was a great talker. But now that her brother was gone, she was so alone here on the ranch.
“You have me.”
She smiled. “I mean another adult.”
“Like that Dennis guy?”
Earlier this summer she’d gotten caught up with a con artist trying to steal money from Luc and his girlfriend, Tara Jean Sweet. Victoria had been gullible and desperate, easy pickings for a man like Dennis. When things didn’t work out the way he’d hoped, Dennis had shown up at the ranch and had held a gun to Jacob’s head before Luc and Eli had managed to disarm him. And the memory of that night was so embarrassing that she felt her skin crawl. Her stomach turned at the thought of how Jacob’s life had been endangered because she was so dumb.
“No, honey. Dennis was a mistake.”
Jacob stood inside a bright square of sunlight streaming in through the high windows. His skin was translucent in the light; she could see the blue of his veins, the beat of his heart. “Are you going to get married again?”
“No.” That, at least, was one thing she could bank on. She didn’t have that kind of love inside of her anymore. That kind of faith and trust and compromise. It all just cost too much. “It’s just you and me, kid. Now, you want to help me finish this horse’s stall?”
“Yeah!” he cried and tipped over the plastic bag. Two big pouches of the rose potpourri that Ruby, the housekeeper, loved came tumbling out, along with a big heart pillow with hearts and the words “Home Sweet Home” embroidered on it.
She ripped open the potpourri and started scattering it across the fresh hay.
As far as revenge went, it was pretty silly. But imagining Eli’s fierce face when he saw the rose petals all over his precious horse’s stall made her smile.
And her smile made her son smile.
And that was reason enough for anything.
Cresting the low bluff over the north pasture, Eli swung down from his horse and counted the trucks in the green valley below. Twelve of them. He saw Jones, who’d be acting on behalf of the Triple L, Lou from Spring Creek, Oscar from Los Camillos. Quite a few people he didn’t recognize, who’d probably come down from Oklahoma. But all of them were here to take away a piece of the infamous Crooked Creek herd.
The far green and brown hills were dotted with cattle as far as the eye could see. Nine hundred lots. Half heifers born of stock known for its fertility, easy births, and resilience to infection. Two dozen certified studs, most of them bred from Lyle’s first stud, that award-winning beast on which he’d spent a fortune.
A hot wind blew up from the south, rustling through the grasses that had gone dry and yellow in the last weeks of summer. And the wind seemed to be whispering, What the hell are you doing?
Selling the herd was going to ruin Victoria. Without the income of the cattle she wouldn’t be able to pay the taxes on the land. She probably didn’t even know that.
Christ, how could she refuse two million dollars?
If he got rid of this herd, he didn’t have a job and he didn’t have access to the Crooked Creek breeding equipment.
Without the equipment the next part of his plan wouldn’t get off the ground.
What am I doing?
The clop-clop of horse hooves behind him made him turn. Uncle John’s arrival was a mixed blessing. He didn’t stand for people feeling sorry for themselves, among other things. And Eli was feeling very sorry for himself.
“Well, now, boy, is this the day of your vengeance?” John asked, coming up over the hill on that blue gelding he loved. No one would say it to his face, but Uncle John needed to lose a couple ten pounds. Even on his six-foot, six-inch body, the man was getting big. But when a man’s sixty-five with no wife, no kids, more money than God, and no one around to tell him what to do, Eli supposed he could do what he wanted. And Uncle John wanted to eat chicken wings for breakfast.
No matter the soft belly, though, Eli’s uncle fit the landscape. He was hard and tough, and larger than life.
“Our vengeance. Today is the day of our vengeance,” Eli corrected, feeling the stir of his misgivings settle down. Nothing like having a teammate to make a man feel better when things were going to shit.
Uncle John laughed, heaving himself out of the saddle. And once he was on the ground, he slapped Eli’s back so hard that it reverberated through his body like thunder, shaking loose what was left of that doubt. “That’s my boy.”
Eli wasn’t, not strictly speaking. Yet in all of the ways that mattered, Uncle John was more of a father to Eli than his own father had ever been. Eli had never had much reason to feel like a kid, even when he’d been one. But standing next to his uncle, in the shade of his large smile, he felt small. And just a little—just enough—cared for.
Emotion rolled itself into a ball in the back of his throat.
“Oh man, you’re gonna start crying, aren’t you?” John said. “I always told Mark you were more like your momma than us. We shoulda beat you more.”
Eli laughed at the old joke.
“You just roll out of bed?” Eli took in his uncle’s slapdash look. “You’ve got coffee all over your shirt. And”—he reached out a hand to pick up the jelly-covered crumb of donut that was stuck to his collar—“Uncle John, the doctors told you to lay off the fried food.”
“Donuts ain’t fried, are they? Besides, Janet keeps giving them to me every time I go to the coffee shop.”
“Then stop going to the coffee shop.”
“Well, now, you know if I did that, Janet would probably die of a broken heart.”
Uncle John was a rock in a river; everything rolled off his back. Eli threw up his hands—there was no winning.
John had left the ranch as a kid, and had worked some years roughnecking on oil rigs along the gulf until he had enough money to buy land and build some rigs of his own. Now he had more money than any man in faded denim and a dirty shirt should. Truth was, Eli wouldn’t have a chance of getting back the Crooked Creek if it weren’t for his uncle and all his money.
“I guess you’re right,” Eli conceded.
“Damn right I’m right.” John pulled off his hat and swept his hand through what was left of his haywire, sweaty black hair. “Question is, why the hell are we meeting up here, when the auction is down there?”
“Jared the auctioneer knows what to do. I’d just be in the way.”
“Yeah, and I suppose it’s got nothing to do with all those questions everyone down there is going to have about why Lyle Baker’s trusted foreman is selling off the entire herd.”
“No one down there is going to ask. Half of those trucks belong to men who want to stick it to Lyle Baker’s ghost as best they can. I’m going to get low-balled all damn day.”
“But no one thought it would be you getting in the first shot.”
“Well, I’m not selling the entire herd. I’ve kept about fifty head, heifers mostly. A couple of bulls.”
“Why?”
Eli tipped back his own dusty and sweat-stained hat and grinned into his uncle’s florid face. “Steak.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a truth his uncle would like. And he did—his laughter echoed down through the valley.
Eli smiled, but his guts twisted with doubt. He squinted up into the sun, feeling as though the ground, so sure under his feet a few hours ago, had turned to quicksand.
“She turned down our
offer, didn’t she?” John asked, and Eli nodded. “Son of a bitch, those Bakers are stubborn. Ten years we been making offers—”
“Maybe I’m not making the right arguments?” Eli asked.
“Is there a better argument than two million dollars?”
“If there is, I can’t think of it.”
John’s eyes chased him down, held him still. “You’re not giving up, are you?”
Eli stared at the same green hills he’d been staring at since he was born. The land his entire family had been born on. And this … this was the only land he wanted. But Christ, it was wearing him down trying to get it back.
“Of course not.”
“Maybe you want to try that again so I’ll believe it?”
He couldn’t. The words just wouldn’t come out of his mouth, crushed down by all of the frustrations of his life, and of his father’s life before him. Getting back his family land was a chain around his neck.
“I’ve worked for that family my entire life, for what? Half the proceeds of a herd I practically built? I pay rent on my own damn house!”
“Not after today. You’ll make enough to buy back the house.”
“That’s not the point, Uncle John.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what this little temper tantrum is about, son.”
Eli shut his mouth, chastened like a child.
John wouldn’t understand; he had the money to do what he wanted. All Eli had was this damn herd and a bunch of plans he couldn’t even get off the ground.
John sighed. “I know you staying on as foreman has made it hard for you to get your breeding business started. But I’ve told you, breeding isn’t any way to make money.”
“I don’t need to be rich, Uncle John. I just … I just want something of my own. Free and clear.”
Uncle John’s big hand settled on his shoulder and Eli flinched.
“When you were ten years old, you know what you said to me?”
Eli shook his head, words caught behind the emotion in his throat.
“You said the Crooked Creek Ranch felt like home. The only home you ever wanted. And I thought you were just a little kid, mimicking what you’d heard your daddy and me talk about, but you kept right on saying it. Got to the point where you knew this land better than your dad ever did and sure as hell better than any Baker. I’d watch you take that old dun out along the fence line, and you’d be gone for a week, checking the fence, camping out along the way, missing school, missing out on everything a boy your age was supposed to be doing—”
Can't Hurry Love Page 2