CHRISTMAS FOR THE DEPUTY
Page 16
And that was the real reason she didn’t like Colt, didn’t want Colt as part of Martin Family Farm.
Pure jealousy. She’d tried to be the son her father had never had, but she didn’t have a penis. So it didn’t matter what she did. Colt—no relation, no blood—got the man-to-man stuff. And she was relegated to daughter, who couldn’t even be trusted with the financials of a goat-raising and milking operation she practically ran single-handedly these days.
Much as she loved her father, he treated Colt and his other strays differently than his three God-given daughters, and that would never stop bothering her. He’d had his daughters, loved them and overprotected them and been a good father in a lot of ways, but it wasn’t the same as being treated like an equal.
Now Colt was sneaking his way in here and he was going to usurp her. Take everything she’d worked so hard for, and she’d be left with nothing.
She’d do everything in her power not to let that happen.
Dad was moving toward the door. “We’re going to have some man time, sweetheart. Why don’t you go check on those two sick kids we’ve got separated? Then it’ll be about time for the afternoon milking. You’ll handle that today, won’t you?”
She shouldn’t be surprised by Dad’s dismissal, but some things a woman just never could get used to.
“Let’s head to the whiskey room, boy. We’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
“Dad, you’re not supposed to—”
“Not for you to worry about, Sadie girl,” he said, waving off the fact he wasn’t supposed to be drinking.
He exited the office, but Colt stopped in front of her. She tried not to scowl at him, but it was impossible with her current emotional churn of jealousy and anger and hurt.
“I’m not here to step on your pretty little toes, squirt,” Colt said.
Pretty little… “You’re insufferable.”
His mouth curved, slow and full of himself. Which was not appealing. “Most women call it charming.”
“Most women talking to you are inflatable.”
He laughed good-naturedly. “Always good to chat with you, Sadie, but I’ve got to go shoot whiskey with your daddy.” He patted her shoulder, a vaguely brotherly gesture that made her even angrier as he walked on by.
“I hate you,” she muttered, not expecting him to hear it.
But he grinned at her. “No you don’t, darling.” He tipped his hat and followed her father and she was very, very assured she did in fact hate Colt Vance.
Or at least that she really wanted to.
*
Colt didn’t drink hard liquor as a rule. He’d had the fear of what alcohol did to a man beaten into him at a very young age.
He made one exception, and only one. Fritz Martin. Colt had been a broken, abused boy on the road to ruin when Susannah Martin had invited him to dinner instead of throwing him into juvie.
When Susannah had died, Colt figured that was it. Back to the hell he’d grown up in, back to the troublemaking that would likely end his life someday.
Instead, Fritz had made a promise to him, right there in front of Susannah’s gravestone, with tears on his cheeks. This big bull of a man devastated over his wife’s death.
“You’ll do two things now, boy. You’ll make something of yourself. I’ll make sure of it, but you’ll have to work hard. Long as you keep your hands off my daughters, I’ll always be there for you.”
The first had been easy enough—Colt had a sharp mind and a willingness to do that hard work and run with luck when he had it. Practical enough to accept his losses without making them worse. Making something out of himself had been an inevitability with Fritz’s help.
He thought of Sadie and her sharp eyes and sharper mouth as Fritz handed him a tumbler of good whiskey. The addendum to Fritz’s promise had been easy.
Until about five years ago.
On a trip home, Fritz had invited him to Sadie’s twenty-first birthday party.
That’s when things had gotten…complicated in the hands-off department. He considered it his very good fortune Sadie hated his guts, or they’d really have a problem.
The uncomfortable and possibly fatal attraction to Sadie Martin had also prompted Colt to head out of Last Stand for another five years, and stay far away. He wouldn’t break a promise to Fritz. Ever. So, Colt had gotten out of Dodge though he’d itched to stay home.
Flipping houses, buying and selling properties, it had been exhilarating in the beginning. First, it was the hustle, the dance of negotiating and haggling. Then, with some of the historical properties he’d worked on renovating in Fort Worth, it had changed. He’d discovered his desire to make something.
His desire to make a home—and no matter where he traveled, Last Stand was always home.
Last month, when Fritz had asked him for financial help, Colt had hedged. Fritz hadn’t just wanted money, he’d wanted Colt home and act as a partner. Colt knew from his occasional quick holiday visit that being close to Sadie for a prolonged period of time would not be good for him and he’d pushed Fritz to take the money—a gift, a loan, anything that wasn’t Colt’s presence.
But Fritz, being Fritz, had known just what bomb to drop to bring him home.
The old Vance property was for sale.
For five years Colt had wanted to come home. To settle down and build something for himself. But he hadn’t been able to resist a request for help from Fritz and the draw of the old Vance property.
Uncomfortable attractions to women he couldn’t want would have to be ignored. He was older and wiser now. Surely he could handle Sadie.
He shifted in his seat, very much not so sure.
“You know my one and only concern about making this partnership?” Fritz asked casually, settling himself in a big cowhide-covered chair. He studied his whiskey, but Colt had been in this room, with this man, too often to think Fritz wasn’t really studying him.
“There isn’t a single financial or business-related reason you should have concerns, Fritz. This deal is the best you’re going to get.” Colt flashed his cocky smile and hoped it didn’t come off a little brittle around the edges.
“It is, and I know in part it’s because you feel like you owe me.”
I do owe you. He didn’t say it aloud if only because Fritz would bluster and bellow, and Colt had learned a thing or two about managing this man who’d saved him.
“Sadie,” Fritz said grimly.
Colt tried not to fidget in reaction. He forced his smile to be bland and his grip on the glass of whiskey casual. “How so?”
“She gives as good as you’ve got, boy. Now, I wanted a partner in Martin, and you suggested this expansion into cattle. If we’re going to merge, fully and formally, you and Sadie are going to have to put your differences aside. You can’t run a business together and always be sniping at each other—and if you’ve got any ideas about trying to oust her, well, you’re not near as smart as I thought.”
“I’d never oust any of your girls off their land, and I’d certainly never try to separate Sadie from her goats,” Colt said, able to relax. “Sadie and I will find a way to get along.”
“You might. Her, I’m not so sure.”
Colt grinned. Couldn’t help it. “She will, because it’ll benefit business. She won’t like it, but she’ll find a way to get along for the sake of Martin Family Farm.” And he couldn’t sit here and talk about Sadie around Fritz who always saw right through him. “How’re the other girls?” Better to think of them all as girls. “Ethan told me Pen’s moving home.”
Fritz sighed. “Spent the better part of two years convincing her. She’s wasting away out there in San Antonio trying to take care of those three girls of hers on her own.”
“Grief will do that to a person,” Colt said gently. Fritz had done a little wasting away himself after his wife had died. Neither of them liked to dwell on those remembered moments—a man who’d lost faith in life, and a boy who’d needed someone to have faith in him. “Pen being
home might soften Sadie up some.”
Fritz snorted. “Didn’t work when they were girls. Won’t work now. Besides, Sadie might be a bit prickly, but she knows her place. It’s Mackenzie I worry about.”
“Still kicking ass in the rodeo?”
“No place for a woman,” Fritz grumbled. Colt knew Fritz’s girls thought it was sexism, but Colt had been older and more separate when Mrs. Martin had died. It was protection, plain and simple, and neither father nor daughters wanted to see it was rooted in the death that had rocked their family.
So, Colt played along. “They’d all three kick your butt to Oklahoma if they heard you say that.”
“Which is why I don’t say it to them. You agree with me, don’t you, boy? You like the softer sort.”
He thought of Sadie’s I hate you and brawler’s chin. Didn’t he wish. But he grinned at Fritz. “I like all sorts.”
Fritz laughed wholeheartedly. “Now there’s a boy. There’s a boy.” He sobered some, taking a drink of the whiskey then swilling it around in his glass.
Colt still hadn’t managed to stomach his.
“I want to keep our name, Colt. That isn’t fair to you with how much you’ll be putting into us, but it’s what I want. My ancestors built this farm, raised these goats and cultivated this cheese. You’re going to bail us out with what you’re investing, the land and cattle you’re adding, and you should have a bigger say, but I’m asking you this as a personal favor.”
“Fair or not, it’s not a favor. It’s smart business. Expanding the land and moving into cattle doesn’t need my name. The Martin name means something in this town far more than the Vance name does.”
“You’ll change that.”
Colt took a drink of the whiskey and winced at the bitterness, both in taste and in his gut. “I don’t need to.”
Fritz seemed to mull that over, while Colt tried not to.
“I don’t want Sadie to know. Not how bad it is. Not how much you’re putting in. We’ll play it off as a merger, more than an investment.”
“Fritz.”
“She’ll believe I’m giving you a bunch of oversight because I’ve got a soft spot for you. I’d rather her think that than know how bad things have gotten, how many mistakes I’ve made. I know it’s pride. But sometimes pride is all a man’s got.”
“You’ve got three girls who love you. Three granddaughters who think you’re comparable to Santa Claus.” Colt paused, uncomfortable with the emotion, but if there was one person he’d manage it for, it was Fritz. “And three men who’d do anything for you, Fritz. If you really need this to be a secret, I’ll keep it, but not if you think pride is all you’ve got.”
Fritz drained the whiskey, something lurking in his eyes Colt wished he knew how to reach.
“You’re saving my ass. Sadie won’t thank you for it. A better man—”
“I don’t need Sadie’s thanks. Or yours. I made a bunch of money so I could right some wrongs. Buying the old man’s junk property and joining it with yours was the first. Now, we’ll fix the ones here. Because a better man helped a worthless kid once upon a time.”
“You were never worthless.”
“Maybe not, but it felt that way. You made it so it didn’t. You and Ethan and Bracken. So, I don’t want your gratitude or your apologies. I’m doing it for you, but it’s a good business deal. And I’ll get that head of cattle I’ve always wanted.” And home. “We’re both getting what we want and need, Fritz. Couldn’t ask for more.”
Silence wrapped around them, Fritz studying his glass, and Colt looking out the window. It wasn’t the big picture window like in Fritz’s office, but this view was of the slab of land that looked out over the milking barns, and on the other side of that, the hardscrabble patch of land Colt’s father had ruled with fists and whiskey, and then lost with the same.
“Going to plant some roots here, boy?” Fritz asked speculatively.
Colt put his glass down. “I don’t know yet. We’ll see.” He had some demons to exorcise first.
Find out what happens next…
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About the Author
Nicole Helm writes down-to-earth contemporary romance—from farmers to cowboys, midwest to the west, she writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons, surrounded by light sabers, video games, and a shared dream of someday owning a farm.
Visit her website at NicoleHelm.wordpress.com
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