by Diana Palmer
Fred chuckled. “She’s full of surprises lately.”
“That she is. I’ll be in touch.”
Leo was gone and Fred let the emotion out. He hadn’t realized how much his family ranch meant to him until he was faced with the horrible prospect of losing it. Now, it would pass to Janie and her family, her children. God bless Leo Hart for being a friend when he needed one so desperately. He grabbed at a tissue and wiped his eyes. Life was good. Life was very good!
* * *
Fred was still up when Janie got home from work. She was tired. It had been a long night. She stopped in the kitchen to say good-night to Hettie before she joined her father in his study.
“Hettie said Leo came by,” she said without her usual greeting. She looked worried. “Why?”
“He wanted to check on his bull,” he lied without meeting her eyes.
She hesitated. “Did he...ask about me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I told him you had a job working in a restaurant.”
She stared at her feet. “Did you tell him which one?”
He looked anxious. “No.”
She met his eyes. “You don’t have to worry, Dad. It’s none of Leo Hart’s business where I work, or whatever else I do.”
“You’re still angry,” he noted. “I understand. But he wants to make peace.”
She swallowed, hearing all over again his voice taunting her, baiting her. She clenched both hands at her sides. “He wants to bury the hatchet? Good. I know exactly where to bury it.”
“Now, daughter, he’s not a bad man.”
“Of course he’s not. He just doesn’t like me,” she bit off. “You can’t blame him, not when he’s got Marilee.”
He winced. “I didn’t think. You lost your only friend.”
“Some friend,” she scoffed. “She’s gone to spend the holidays in Colorado,” she added smugly. “A rushed trip, I heard.”
“I imagine she’s too ashamed to walk down the main street right now,” her father replied. “People have been talking about her, and that’s no lie. But she’s not really a bad woman, Janie. She just made a mistake. People do.”
“You don’t,” she said unexpectedly, and smiled at him. “You’re the only person in the world who wouldn’t stab me in the back.”
He flushed. Guilt overwhelmed him. What would she say when she knew that he was going to let Leo Hart buy into the ranch, and behind her back? It was for a good cause, so that she could eventually inherit her birthright, but he felt suddenly like a traitor. He could only imagine how she’d look at him if she ever found out....
“Why are you brooding?” she teased. “You need to put away those books and go to bed.”
He stared at the columns that wouldn’t balance and thought about having enough money to fix fences, repair the barn, buy extra feed for the winter, buy replacement heifers, afford medicine for his sick cattle and veterinarian’s fees. The temptation was just too much for him. He couldn’t let the ranch go to strangers.
“Do you ever think about down the road,” Fred murmured, “when your children grow up and take over the ranch?”
She blinked. “Well, yes, sometimes,” she confessed. “It’s a wonderful legacy,” she added with a soft smile. “We go back such a long way in Jacobsville. It was one of your great-uncles who was the first foreman of the Jacobs ranch properties when the founder of our town came here and bought cattle, after the Civil War. This ranch was really an offshoot of that one,” she added. “There’s so much history here!”
Fred swallowed. “Too much to let the ranch go down the tube, or end up in the hands of strangers, like the Jacobs place did.” He shook his head. “That was sad, to see Shelby and Ty thrown off their own property. That ranch had been in their family over a hundred years.”
“It wasn’t much of a ranch anymore,” she reminded him. “More of a horse farm. But I understand what you mean. I’m glad we’ll have the ranch to hand down to our descendants.” She gave him a long look. “You aren’t thinking of giving it up without a fight?”
“Heavens, no!”
She relaxed. “Sorry. But the way you were talking...”
“I’d do almost anything to keep it in the family,” Fred assured her. “You, uh, wouldn’t have a problem with me taking on a partner or an investor?”
“Of course not,” she assured him. “So you found someone in Colorado, after all?” she added excitedly. “Somebody who’s willing to back us?”
“Yes,” he lied, “but I didn’t hear until today.”
“That’s just great!” she exclaimed.
He gave her a narrow look. “I’m glad you think so. Then you can give up that job and go back to college...”
“No.”
His eyebrows went up. “But, Janie...”
“Dad, even with an investor, we still have the day-to-day operation of the ranch to maintain,” she reminded him gently. “How about groceries? Utilities? How about cattle feed and horse feed and salt blocks and fencing?”
He sighed. “You’re right, of course. I’ll need the investment for the big things.”
“I like my job,” she added. “I really do.”
“It’s a bad place on the weekends,” he worried.
“Tiny likes me,” she assured him. “And Harley comes in at least two or three times a week, mostly on Fridays and Saturdays, to make sure I’m doing all right. I feel as safe at Shea’s as I do right here with you.”
“It’s not that I mind you working,” he said, trying to explain.
“I know that. You’re just worried that I might get in over my head. Tiny doesn’t let anybody have too much to drink before he makes them leave. Mr. Duncan is emphatic about not having drunks on the place.”
Fred sighed. “I know when I’m licked. I may show up for pizza one Saturday night, though.”
She grinned. “You’d be welcome! I could show you off to my customers.”
“Leo wanted to know where you were working,” he said abruptly. “He wanted to come by and see you.”
Her face tautened. “I don’t want to see him.”
“So I heard. He was, uh, pretty vocal about the way you snubbed him.”
She tossed back her hair. “He deserved it. I’m nobody’s doormat. He isn’t going to walk all over me and get away with it!”
“He won’t like you working at Shea’s, no matter what you think.”
“Why do you care?” she asked suspiciously.
He couldn’t tell her that Leo might renege on the loan if he knew Fred was letting her work in such a dive. He felt guilty as sin for not coming clean. But he was so afraid of losing the ranch. It was Janie’s inheritance. He had to do everything he could to keep it solvent.
“He’s my friend,” he said finally.
“I used to think he was mine, too,” she replied. “But friends don’t talk about each other the way he was talking about me. As if I’d ever gossip about him!”
“I think he knows that now, Janie.”
She forced the anger to the back of her mind. “I guess if he knew what I was doing, he’d faint. He doesn’t think I can cook at all.”
“I did tell him you had a cooking job,” he confided.
Her eyes lit up. “You did? What did he say?”
“He was...surprised.”
“He was astonished,” she translated.
“It bothered him that you snubbed him. He said he felt really bad about the things he said, that you overheard. He, uh, told me about the fight you had at the ball, too.”
Her face colored. “What did he tell you?”
“That you’d had a bad argument. Seemed to tickle him that you had a temper,” he added with a chuckle.
“He’ll find out I have a temper if he comes near me again.” S
he turned. “I’m going to bed, Dad. You sleep good.”
“You, too, sweetheart. Good night.”
He watched her walk away with a silent sigh of relief. So far, he thought, so good.
6
The following Wednesday, Leo met with Blake Kemp and Fred Brewster in Kemp’s office, to draw up the instrument of partnership.
“I’ll never be able to thank you enough for this, Leo,” Fred said as they finished a rough draft of the agreement.
“You’d have done it for me,” Leo said simply. “How long will it take until those papers are ready to sign?” he asked Kemp.
“We’ll have them by Monday,” Kemp assured him.
“I’ll make an appointment with your receptionist on the way out,” Leo said, rising. “Thanks, Blake.”
The attorney shook his outstretched hand, and then Fred’s. “All in a day’s work. I wish most of my business was concluded this easily, and amiably,” he added wryly.
Leo checked his watch. “Why don’t we go out to Shea’s and have a beer and some pizza, Fred?” he asked the other man, who, curiously, seemed paler.
Fred was scrambling for a reason that Leo couldn’t go to Shea’s. “Well, because, uh, because Hettie made chili!” he remembered suddenly. “So why don’t you come home and eat with me? We’ve got Mexican corn bread to go with it!”
Leo hesitated. “That does sound pretty good,” he had to admit. Then he remembered. Janie would be there. He was uncomfortable with the idea of rushing in on her unexpectedly, especially in light of recent circumstances. He was still a little embarrassed about his own behavior. He searched for a reason to refuse, and found one. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I almost forgot!” he added, slapping his forehead. “I’m supposed to have supper with Cag and Tess tonight. We’re going in together on two new Santa Gertrudis bulls. How could I have forgotten... Got to run, Fred, or I’ll never make it on time!”
“Sure, of course,” Fred said, and looked relieved. “Have a good time!”
Leo chuckled. “I get to play with my nephew. That’s fun, all right. I like kids.”
“You never seemed the type,” Fred had to admit.
“I’m not talking about having any of my own right away,” Leo assured him. “I don’t want to get married. But I like all my nephews, not to mention my niece.”
Fred only smiled.
“Thanks for the offer of supper, anyway,” he told the older man with a smile. “Sorry I can’t come.”
Fred relaxed. “That’s okay, Leo. More for me,” he teased. “Well, I’ll go home and have my chili. Thanks again. If I can ever do anything for you, anything at all, you only have to ask.”
Leo smiled. “I know that, Fred. See you.”
They parted in the parking lot. Leo got in his double-cabbed pickup and gunned the engine.
Fred got into his own truck and relaxed. At least, he thought, he didn’t have to face Leo’s indignation today. With luck, Leo might never realize what was going on.
Leo, honest to the core, phoned Cag and caged an invitation to supper to discuss the two new bulls the brothers were buying. But he had some time before he was due at his brother’s house. He brooded over Fred’s dead bull, and Christabel’s, and he began to wonder. He had a bull from that same lot, a new lineage of Salers bulls that came from a Victoria breeder. Two related bulls dying in a month’s time seemed just a bit too much for coincidence. He picked up the phone and called information.
* * *
Cag and Tess were still like newlyweds, Leo noted as he carried their toddler around the living room after supper, grinning from ear to ear as the little boy, barely a year old, smiled up at him and tried to grab his nose. They sat close together on the sofa and seemed to radiate love. They were watching him with equal interest.
“You do that like a natural,” Cag teased.
Leo shifted the little boy. “Lots of practice,” he chuckled. “Simon’s two boys, then Corrigan’s boy and their new girl, and now your son.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Rey and Meredith are finally expecting, too, I hear.”
“They are,” Cag said with a sigh. He eyed his brother mischievously. “When are you planning to throw in the towel and join up?”
“Me? Never,” Leo said confidently. “I’ve got a big house to myself, all the women I can attract, no responsibilities and plenty of little kids to spoil as they grow.” He gave them an innocent glance. “Why should I want to tie myself down?”
“Just a thought,” Cag replied. “You’ll soon get tired of going all the way to town every morning for a fresh biscuit.” Cag handed the baby back to Tess.
“I’m thinking of taking a cooking course,” Leo remarked.
Cag roared.
“I could cook if I wanted to!” Leo said indignantly.
Tess didn’t speak, but her eyes did.
Leo stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Well, I don’t really want to,” he conceded. “And it is a long way to town. But I can manage.” He sprawled in an easy chair. “There’s something I want to talk to you about—besides our new bulls.”
“What?” Cag asked, sensing concern.
“Fred’s big Salers bull that died mysteriously,” Leo said. “Christabel and Judd Dunn lost one, too, a young bull.”
“Judd says it died of bloat.”
“I saw the carcass, he didn’t. He thinks Christabel made it up, God knows why. He wouldn’t even come down from Victoria to take a look at it. It wasn’t bloat. But she didn’t call a vet out, and they didn’t find any marks on Fred’s bull.” He sighed. “Cag, I’ve done a little checking. The bulls are related. The young herd sire of these bulls died recently, as well, and the only champion Salers bull left that’s still walking is our two-year-old bull that I loaned to Fred, although it’s not related to the dead ones.”
Cag sat up straight, scowling. “You’re kidding.”
Leo shook his head. “It’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
“You might talk to Jack Handley in Victoria, the rancher we bought our bull from.”
“I did.” He leaned forward intently. “Handley said he fired two men earlier this year for stealing from him. They’re brothers, John and Jack Clark. One of them is a thief, the other has a reputation for vengeance that boggles the mind. When one former employer fired Jack Clark, he lost his prize bull and all four young bulls he’d got from it. No apparent cause of death. Handley checked and found a pattern of theft and retribution with those brothers going back two years. At least four employers reported similar problems with theft and firing. There’s a pattern of bull deaths, too. The brothers were suspects in a recent case in Victoria, but there was never enough evidence to convict anyone. Until now, I don’t imagine anyone’s connected the dots.”
“How the hell do they keep getting away with it?” Cag wanted to know.
“There’s no proof. And they’re brawlers,” Leo said. “They intimidate people.”
“They wouldn’t intimidate us,” Cag remarked.
“They wouldn’t. But do you see the common thread here? Handley crossed the brothers. He had a new, expensive Salers bull that he bred to some heifers, and he sold all the young bulls this year, except for his seed bull. His seed bull, and all its offspring, which isn’t many, have died. Christabel Gaines’s young bull was one of Handley’s, like Fred’s. And Jack Clark was fired by Judd Dunn for stealing, too.”
Cag was scowling. “Where are the brothers now?”
“I asked Handley. He says John Clark is working on a ranch near Victoria. We know that Jack, the one with a reputation for getting even, is right here in Jacobsville, driving a cattle truck for Duke Wright,” Leo said. “I called Wright and told him what I know. He’s going to keep an eye on the man. I called Judd Dunn, too, but he was too preoccupied to listen. He’s smitten with that redheaded supermodel who’s
in the movie they’re making on Christabel’s ranch—Tippy Moore, the ‘Georgia Firefly.’”
“He’ll land hard, if I make my guess,” Cag said. “She’s playing. He isn’t.”
“He’s married, too,” Leo said curtly. “Something he doesn’t seem to remember.”
“He only married Christabel because she was going to lose the ranch after her father beat her nearly to death in a drunken rage. Her mother was an invalid. No way could the two of them have kept it solvent,” Cag added. “That’s not a real marriage. I’m sure he’s already looked into annulling it when she turns twenty-one.”
“She was twenty-one this month,” Leo said. “Poor kid. She’s got a real case on him, and she’s fairly plain except for those soulful brown eyes and a nice figure. She couldn’t compete with the Georgia Firefly.”
“So ask yourself what does a supermodel worth millions want with a little bitty Texas Ranger?” Cag grinned.
Tess gave him a speaking look. “As a happily married woman, I can tell you that if I wasn’t hung up on you, Judd Dunn would make my mouth water.”
Cag whistled.
Leo shrugged. “Whatever. But I think we should keep a close eye on our Salers bull, as well as Wright’s new cattle-truck driver. Handley says Clark likes to drink, so it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye out at Shea’s, as well.”
Cag frowned thoughtfully. “You might have a word with Janie...”
“Janie?”
“Janie Brewster,” his brother said impatiently. “Tell her what the man looks like and have her watch him if he ever shows up out there.”
Leo stared at his brother. “Will you make sense? Why would Janie be at Shea’s roadhouse in the first place?”
Realization dawned. Cag looked stunned, and then uncomfortable.
Tess grimaced. “He doesn’t know. I guess you’d better tell him.”
“Tell me what?” Leo grumbled.
“Well, it’s like this,” Cag said. “Janie’s been working at Shea’s for a couple of weeks...”
“She’s working in a bar?” Leo exploded violently.
