The Tycoon and the Texan

by Phyliss Miranda

  “All of them?” He deliberately twisted his lips into a pout.

  “Well, maybe you can do one every now and again.”

  “Two?”

  “Don’t push your luck.” She chided then smiled. “Okay, two.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “And, we are both through with jumping to conclusions. So, who do we tell first?”

  “Granny,” they said in unison.

  As though on cue, Granny’s voice bore through the evening like a sudden thunderclap. “McCall Elise Johnson! I want you in here right now!”

  “And you too, Nicodemus Beauregard Dartmouth!” Each word was punctuated with Madeline’s best boarding-school English.

  “Mother!” Nick exclaimed. “What is she doing here?”

  “Beauregard?” McCall shrugged her shoulders as if she didn’t know, then marched toward the house. “You must be kidding. Beauregard?” She laughed out loud.

  “It’s better than her first choice. Archibald!” Nick stalked behind.

  McCall slowed down and Nick caught up. When he got close enough, he grabbed her by the waist and spun her to him. She slipped her arms over his shoulders and kissed him, whispering, “I think we’re about to face our first challenge as a couple. Stick together?”

  He quirked an eyebrow.

  She raised her arm and met his palm with a high five.

  The two entered the kitchen as though being called before a disciplinary board. Nick skidded to a stop.

  Madeline Elliott-Dartmouth and Granny Johnson sat at the kitchen table looking as though they had just returned from a weeklong cattle drive.

  He wasn’t sure but thought he smelled something resembling what he’d raked off his boots. “Mother, what are you doing here?”

  Madeline propped her elbows on the table, something he’d never seen her do before. She exchanged looks with her son.

  “Nicky, darling, I understand we have a problem.” She popped a stuffed jalapeno into her mouth. “You should try these. And those.” She motioned to a plate of calf fries. “Since you’ve given everyone else permission to call you Nicky, I presume I can also.”

  “You never answered me, Mother. What are you doing here? You look like—”

  “What? Like I just came off the range?” Not waiting for a reply, she continued. “McCall’s grandmother showed me all around their lovely ranch.”

  “Tell me why you’re here. And why you’re dressed like Annie Oakley.” He shrugged at McCall and turned back to two pair of eyes scrutinizing his every move. “What in the hell is going on?”

  McCall leaned against the cabinet and studied Nick’s reaction before speaking. “Can’t you see? Your mother isn’t Annie Oakley, she’s Superman and has come to save the day.” McCall folded her arms across her chest and a bemused smile took over.

  Nick shook his head and faced his mother. “This is none of your business, Mother. Stay out of it. McCall and I can work out our problems without your interference. You don’t have to control everything and everybody.”

  It was Granny’s turn to speak. She pulled all four feet ten inches from her chair and caught Nick’s stunned look with eyes that blazed in anger. He half expected her to lay her sidearm on the table.

  “Watch your mouth, young man. That’s your mother you’re talking to. We are having a family intervention. That’s what,” she said in a steely Texas twang.

  “We’re not all one family, Granny,” McCall said.

  “Not yet we aren’t, but if we have anything to do with it, we will be,” Granny barked.

  “Oh, Jeez!” Nick ran his hands through his hair.

  Madeline followed Granny’s example by standing and slapping her hands on her hips. “Nico . . . Nicky, I think we need some privacy to talk.”

  “No!” Nick snapped without thinking. “I want McCall to hear whatever you have to say. There will be no more secrets between us.” He raised an eyebrow at McCall, who winked back. He continued. “Because I’ve asked her to—”

  “Marry you,” Madeline finished.

  Granny nodded in agreement.

  “Guess you both have taken up spying,” interjected McCall with a smile kissing the corner of her mouth.

  “Just looking out of the curtains was all,” Granny stated. “Can’t help what we see.”

  “Okay, Nick, if you want McCall to know everything.” Maddi wiped her hands on a napkin. “First, neither one of you knew about the other’s part in the Triple J transaction. It wasn’t until your lawyer called that I knew anything about it. If you’d taken my calls this could have been avoided.” She gave Nick the look she always gave him when she was truly irritated with him. “And before you ask. When McCall called to resign, I saw the caller ID was in Texas, since she didn’t use her cell phone. Once I got here, it was easy to find the ranch, since everybody in Kasota Springs knows where the ranch headquarters are. I presumed you were here.”

  Nick rolled his eyes at her.

  “By the way, you owe me for airfare from LAX to Amarillo, since you had the jet.” She rubbed her rump. “Anyway, when I got here, Mrs. Johnson and I were able to talk and the facts came out.”

  “You and Mrs. Johnson have been conniving behind our backs?” Nick asked, only to have Granny Johnson shoot him a reprimand similar to the one she had given Colton at breakfast only a few days before. “I thought Josie was your only partner in crime.”

  “We had to do something. You have loved McCall for a long time. You two belong together. Josie and I worked too hard to make sure it happened—”

  “So you rigged the auction.” Nick said with cool disapproval. “I should have known when you allowed McCall to wear Grandmother’s diamond necklace. But to rig—”

  “That’s a bit harsh, darling. There was no duplicity. We simply had to, let’s just say, encourage McCall to participate and make sure you won her and not that Anson fellow. You can’t trust an actor—”

  “I thought he was a model,” Nick interjected.

  Mrs. Dartmouth glared at her son. “A model. An actor. What’s the difference? I paid him the same.”

  “So you hired Anson?” McCall entered the fracas. “I can’t believe it. You staged everything, Madeline.”

  “I admit it, but he was a, you know . . .” Madeline turned to Nick. “By the way, don’t forget that you owe the foundation another twenty-one thousand dollars.” She shrugged her shoulders and waved her hand through the air. “Now, the two of us”—she motioned toward Granny—“don’t plan to let you throw away what we’ve all worked so hard to make happen because of a little spat.”

  “You manipulated this relationship just like you did mine and Lauren’s.” Happiness and frustration mingled in Nick’s heart.

  “Since you insist on bringing her up, it’s time you know the truth. You want McCall to know everything, then everything she will know.” Maddi rounded the kitchen table with Granny as her backup. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on a roll.

  Granny piped up, “I’ll leave you all alone.”

  “No. If we’re going to be family, we’ll keep no secrets,” Maddi said to Granny, then turned back to face Nick. “Lauren wasn’t what she seemed. She was truly after your money. I hired a private investigator—”

  “Private investigator? How cold and calculating.”

  “I did it for your own good. She was a fraud, and I caught her stealing jewelry from the house. She wasn’t from the New Orleans DeBose. Her name wasn’t even DeBose. Honey, if she’d been from Podunk, I would have accepted her if you truly loved the woman, but you didn’t and she was taking you for a ride.” Maddi stopped and looked directly at Nick. “I couldn’t stand to have you be mistreated like . . .”

  “Like you did to my father?” He jerked his head in his mother’s direction.

  “No.” She hesitated then drew in a deep breath. “Like me. I didn’t want you to suffer the disappointments and hurt that I felt with your father. I chose to let you believe that I kicked him out, toyed with him until I didn’t need
him any longer. But the truth was that he was an adulterous gigolo who was only after my money. When he learned that I wouldn’t inherit the Elliott trust until I turned thirty-five, his patience wore thin and he walked out, probably never giving any thought to what he was doing to his son. Three days later, he was found dead of an overdose in a hotel room with a prostitute, leaving me alone and with a precious little boy.” Tears bubbled in her eyes. “You’re the only good thing that came of our relationship, Nick. That’s why I was so protective of you. Too protective, I know.”

  A war of emotions raged within Nick, coiling in his body like a hissing, angry snake. He was numb with increasing fury and shock. He had always thought his father was the wealthy one, and his mother had inherited his riches.

  An air of calm suddenly engulfed him.

  He studied his mother.

  Realization shrouded Nick . . . the father he had waited on for so many years was never coming home. And it was okay.

  For the first time, he viewed his mother in a different light. Her only transgression . . . trying to keep the son she loved from following in her footsteps where love was concerned.

  Nick fought through the cobwebs that seemed to tangle up his thoughts to ask, “And Lauren?”

  “She gladly took a check to disappear, so I wouldn’t press charges for stealing. I’d hoped you’d never know, but I realize now, I should have told you the truth from the start and not tried to handle the problem for you. You’re a good, honest man and would have done the right thing. I just thought I had to take charge, but I’ve learned my lesson. And you are right. I can’t control everything and everybody.”

  “But you turned right around and got involved with the Triple J sale.” A muscle in Nick’s jaw quivered.

  “I backed off just like you asked until yesterday when Jock called. He was in LA and saw the legal notice in the paper. He phoned me and in turn I called and gave the information to your lawyer. I thought I was doing you a favor.” She shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “However, if you had taken my calls you would have known—”

  “If you’d let my business alone, McCall and I could have had a good laugh over the coincidence, instead . . .”

  McCall looked up at the mention of her name. She ached inside for Nick.

  His eyes caught and held hers. In their depths was a smoldering plea to help him understand, and a play of emotion on his face.

  She studied him thoughtfully. Too much was being slapped at him at once.

  They shared a moment.

  No words were needed.

  McCall slid next to him, touched his face with her fingers to let him know she understood. McCall turned back to the two ladies, both standing with hands on their hips as though waiting for a decision. “Ladies, I should be furious as hell with both of you, and believe me, neither of you are off the hook yet.” She stood tall and authoritative. “Madeline, I can’t be angry with you. Josie told me that someday, I’d thank you both. So”—McCall stepped toward the Dartmouth monarch and pondered her next move—“Thank you.” She felt a bottomless peace and satisfaction as the older woman issued a warm smile and opened her arms. A genuine bond formed between the unlikely pair.

  “Welcome to our family,” Madeline said as more tears found their way to her eyes. “I knew he couldn’t stay pigheaded all his life.”

  McCall gave her a second embrace, then quickly turned to her grandmother. “And, Granny, I could never be mad at you. But I want the truth. Nick’s mother told her side of the story, but why didn’t I know about Daddy’s involvement?”

  The crusty woman defiantly lifted her chin and glared at her granddaughter like she was about to peel the hide off a Gila monster. “Because you never asked,” she answered indignantly. “All you had to do was ask and I would have told you everything,” she snapped. “Your mother didn’t care for this life or the horses. Professed to be too frail to be subjected to the elements as she called them. Pooh! Smoking and being scared too much to enjoy life made her that way.”

  McCall shot her a look of disbelief that she’d be talking so poorly of the dead. But suddenly the missing pieces of her parents’ life had been added to the puzzle. She saw it clearly, and understood. She continued to stare at her grandmother.

  “Don’t look at me that way, missy,” Granny shot. “Your mother was a wonderful person, but tried to rule my son. She was too needy and insecure to tame his devil-may-care goings-on.”

  “What does that have to do with the ranch?”

  “When you were pretty young, your father took your mother to California to see if she wanted to live there. She hated it, so he came back. Along the way he met J.J. Macmurphy. I think Jock was off at college during those days. They formed a friendship and before long your dad was a partner in the ranch. He didn’t want your mama to know, so he kept it all from her and ultimately from you.”

  “That’s why I felt so comfortable at the Triple J.”

  “Yes. You loved the time you stayed out there. We had a stud, Triple D Figero. Your daddy and J.J. were convinced that if one of the Triple J mares, Double Deuce Down, and our stallion got together they’d produce a winner. Sure enough, Double Down Figero won them all.”

  “Now I understand why I was so connected with that particular horse,” McCall said. “Because one of the Jack Bluff stallions is in his lineage.”

  Nick spoke up. “Then McCall had no way of knowing she was part owner of the ranch. All she knew was that the Triple J roan was named Asteroid. There’d be no way for her to connect the horses without their AQHA registered name.”

  Granny sat down, but continued. “I think you two young’ns need time alone to work things out. Maddi and I haven’t finished our supper.” She dished up a bowl of red beans.

  McCall looked at Nick and watched a smile creep in the corner of his lips.

  Chin set, Nick turned back to McCall. “I understand why you wouldn’t have known I was the buyer, but why were you so unwilling to sell one minute and then suddenly changed your mind?” A smile ruffled his lips.

  “I told you.” McCall moved closer until she faced him shoulder to shoulder. Heart to heart. “I planned to surprise you. I didn’t even know where my ranch was located, certainly had no idea it was the Triple J.” She was disarmed by the smile she looked into, swallowed to settle her wild heartbeat, and continued. “I wanted it as my wedding gift to you.”

  Reluctantly, they parted a few inches. “Why were you so insistent on buying it?” she challenged.

  “For you . . . because you were so happy at the Triple J.”

  With one simple sentence, he unlocked her heart and soul and she made room for him once again.

  “One more question.” He looked squarely at Maddi, who seemed to be engrossed in replenishing her plate of mountain oysters. “Mother, is that manure on your shirt?”

  “No, Nicodemus, darling.” She picked up a jalapeno and used it to scoop beans on her fork. “I think the proper term is horseshit. It isn’t manure until it’s dried.”

  The stunned look on Nick’s face coupled with the shock of such an uncouth statement coming from the aristocratic mouth of Madeline Elliott-Dartmouth set the stage for gaiety.

  Nick tossed back his head and roared, deep and jovial.

  Unable to keep her amusement under control, McCall burst into a choking laugh.

  The room rocked like revelers as Madeline and Granny looked at one another in amazement, and then bent over in mirth, not stopping until tears rolled down their cheeks.

  Like a Dreamsicle forgotten in the heat, McCall’s willpower melted away and didn’t even ask her heart for permission. When the dust settled, she threw her arms around Nick’s neck and kissed him. Leaning back, looking deep into his eyes with a cocky smile, she asked, “Now, will the ranch be named Johnson and Dartmouth or Dartmouth and Johnson?”

  “Well, the Texas thing to do would be name it Dartmouth and Dartmouth and call it the Double D.”

  Author’s Note

  Fo
r those who wonder about Agnes, my story is true to the urban legend that on rainy nights she roams the hillside on Harris Grade between Lompoc and Santa Maria, California, trying to locate a child she lost when her carriage rolled off the side of the mountain. Whether it is a story made up by law enforcement to keep the kids off the treacherous road or not is uncertain, but try explaining that to those who have witnessed Agnes on the road.

  I took creative liberty in moving Lompoc’s stand of Italian stone pines that shade a path between H Street and Locust Street and placing them at the fictional Triple J Ranch.

  The Texas Moon Palace was a real Texas honky-tonk in Amarillo, Texas.

  And it does rain with the sun shining in Niagara Falls.

  Dear Readers,

  If you got a hankering for Miss Lola Ruth’s Texas Caviar, I thought you’d like to have it for yourself. I hope you enjoy the Texas favorite as much as McCall, Granny, and Maddi did.

  Texas Caviar

  1 pound black-eyed peas (dried)

  ½ cup finely chopped jalapenos

  2-ounce jar diced pimentos, drained

  1 cup finely chopped green onions

  2 cups diced green peppers

  1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic

  1½ cups diced sweet onion

  For the dressing:

  ½ cup vinegar

  ½ cup olive oil

  cup sugar

  ½ teaspoon garlic powder

  ½ cup cilantro, chopped

  ½ teaspoon celery seed

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Soak peas in enough water to cover for six hours or overnight. Drain well. Transfer peas to saucepan. Add enough water to cover. Place over high heat and bring to boil until tender (approximately one hour). Drain peas well. Transfer to large bowl.

  Blend all dressing ingredients, then mix into warm peas. Allow to cool before adding in all remaining ingredients and mix well. For best results, refrigerate overnight.