The Barons of Texas: Tess

by Fayrene Preston

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m going to try to see if there’s a way I can stop drilling for the period of time you want, but at this moment I can’t give you any promises.”

  Frustration etched lines into his face. “But whether to drill or not is up to you, right?”

  “Ultimately, yes. Whether I proceed or not will be my decision. But…I need additional information, and there’s only one person who can give it to me. Then and only then will I be able to give you an answer that might be different than the one I’ve already given you.”

  He shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”

  “How could you?” She smiled slightly. “Whichever way my decision goes, I’ll call you when I get back tomorrow.”

  He caught her arm before she could walk away. “What do you mean, when you get back? Where are you going?”

  “I told you. There’s someone I need to talk to, and to do that, the best way is to go to him.”

  “Then I’ll go, too.”

  “No way, no how. I have to go alone.”

  He stared at her, no doubt trying to read her, but in this part of the game of life, she’d been schooled by the best.

  “Why?” he finally asked.

  She smiled, in complete sympathy with his inability to understand. “Just because you successfully kidnapped me for almost twenty-four hours doesn’t mean you now have the right to butt into my life and know all my comings and goings.”

  Slowly he released her arm. “No, I guess I don’t. You said you’d call me, right?”

  She nodded. “As soon as I get back into town.”

  He exhaled a long breath. “And would it be too much to ask when you think that will be?”

  “Sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll be waiting.”

  Seven

  The sun was rising, streaking the sky with corals and pinks. Wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cup of coffee, Tess rocked in one of the many rocking chairs that had lined Uncle William’s front porch since her earliest remembrance. The house where she and her sisters had been raised sat less than a mile from Uncle William’s, but Kit was the only one who lived there now.

  When her father and his brother, William, had first come to this land west of Dallas and Fort Worth that would become the Double B Ranch, they’d each built a home. Uncle William’s was a large, rambling two-story house with a long, wide front porch and rooms that no one had ever used.

  Her father had built an equally large two-story house, but there was nothing rambling about it. Its lines were clean and precise, with no wasted space and a definite purpose for each room. Besides his bedroom, he’d built exactly three extra bedrooms, rooms he’d expected her mother to fill with his sons. Instead she’d presented him with three daughters in as many years, and then had had the bad luck to die in a car accident on the way back from a shopping trip to Dallas.

  Tess took another sip of coffee and pondered the ways of her family. If she’d chosen, she could have spent the night in the house and in the bedroom she’d grown up in. She might even have had a chance to visit with Kit. But the bedroom held no fond memories for her, and to visit with Kit, she would have to catch her first. Kit was perpetual motion.

  In the end, she’d had the ranch hand who had picked her up last night from the landing strip bring her here to Uncle William’s. After all, he was the one she was here to see, and as soon as she did, she had to fly to Corpus. As for the pilot, he had been taken to the comfortable guest house, built to look like the equally comfortable bunkhouses where the ranch hands lived. His close proximity insured there would be no delay when she was ready to leave.

  Ellie stuck her lined face around the screen door. “There you are, child. I’d thought you might want to sleep in a bit, but I should’ve known better. None of you girls ever slept past sunup.”

  Tess smiled dryly. “That’s because our father wouldn’t let us.”

  “Well, his lesson took real good.” Ellie closed the screen door behind her, ambled to the rocking chair beside hers and settled her large, big-boned frame into it. “Many’s the dawn I look out my bedroom window and see that sister of yours streaking past the house on that big devil of a stallion she rides, that red hair of hers streaming out behind her like a flag.”

  Tess nodded. “No one else can ride him but Kit.”

  “You mean no one wants to ride him but her. Oowee, that devil scares me.”

  Tess grinned with affection. “Well, if that’s the case, he’s the only thing I’ve ever known you to be afraid of.”

  Back in the forties, Ellie had come to the Double B as a young girl, ready and willing to tackle anything, including the duties of a ranch hand. But Uncle William, a bachelor then, hadn’t thought riding fences and herding cattle was fit work for a young girl, so much to Ellie’s disappointment, he’d made her his housekeeper. But not even he had able to keep Ellie inside all the time.

  Uncle William had always said he’d never known a woman who could come up with as many excuses for being outside as she could. And so slowly the sun and the years had changed her appearance. Her skin was wrinkled and leathery, her hair gray, her shoulders stooped, but her strength, will and commonsense approach to life remained the same.

  Ellie had outlived Tess’s father and mother, along with Uncle William’s wife. Now it looked as if Ellie would outlive Uncle William, too.

  “You sure know how to make good coffee, Miss Tess, but you’re ‘bout the only one of your family who does. Miss Kit can’t be bothered, and Miss Jill prefers tea. Now where do you suppose she got that from?”

  Tess laughed. “I don’t have a clue.” When she and her sisters were born, Ellie had affixed the Miss to their name, and, despite their protests as they’d grown older, she’d made it clear that she considered Miss to be a part of their names. “We didn’t have too much time to talk last night. How is Uncle William doing?”

  “‘Bout the same. Like all of us, he has his good days and his bad. I’ll tell you one thing, he sure was sorry to miss your party.”

  “If he wasn’t feeling well, he did the right thing by staying home.”

  Ellie shook her head. “He don’t like to hear this, but just between me, you and the fence post, I think his travelin’ days are over.”

  “I don’t like to hear that, either. In fact, I don’t even want to think about what that means.” Uncle William was the glue that held her family, such as it was, together. As independent as she and her sisters were, they each, in their own way, relied on him. She glanced at her watch. “When does he usually get up?”

  “It all depends on the kind of night he has, but soon now he’ll be wakin’ up, and Wilbur will be wanderin’ over. Directly, I’ll be goin’ in and startin’ breakfast. Wilbur’ll get your uncle up, washed and dressed. Then he’ll be ready to see you.”

  “Good.” Wilbur was about a decade younger than her uncle, but he’d worked on the Double B from the beginning and was one of the two men in the world her uncle would allow to help him. Des was the other.

  “Why don’t you come on in with me and you can catch me up on your news, especially that party of yours. I saw Miss Kit on her way to the airstrip wearing nothin’ but jeans and a T-shirt. I told her she needed to wear somethin’ a bit nicer, but she just laughed and went on her way with Rodney, that new hand of ours.”

  Tess nodded. “Kit doesn’t worry about the rules, written or otherwise—we all know that.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “Lord, yes, we do know that.”

  “But Kit looked fine, and I think she and Rodney had a good time.”

  The older woman snorted with disdain. “That Rodney is another one of those boys caught up in what he thinks is the glamour of being a cowboy. Me ‘n’ Wilbur got a bet going. He thinks the boy’ll last another month, mainly ‘cause he fancies Miss Kit so much. Me, I don’t think he’ll make it another week.” Ellie grinned. “You come on in now, you hear?”

&nbs
p; “In a few minutes, when I finish my coffee.”

  As soon as she was alone again, Tess returned her gaze to the horizon. The sun had risen above it, a brilliant, golden ball full of promise for a new day. And staring at the sun, she knew without a doubt that Nick was also awake.

  “Morning, Tess,” Wilbur said, wheeling her uncle into the big front room where the morning sun flooded.

  Several years ago, when Uncle William had realized he was losing his mobility, he’d moved back to the ranch from Dallas and ordered his large desk to be relocated to this room. He’d also had large picture windows installed along each wall to bring as much of the ranch as was possible indoors. Here he could continue overseeing his businesses and, at the same time, have the best possible views of his beloved ranch.

  “Good morning, Wilbur. Good morning, Uncle William.”

  Wilbur wheeled her uncle to his desk. Then, with a nod and a smile to Tess, he left.

  “I’m so happy to see you, Tess. When I couldn’t make your party, I was afraid it would be a while before I’d be able to see you again.”

  Tess circled the desk to kiss her uncle. “I missed you, but I completely understood why you couldn’t come.”

  “Well, then, you’re one up on me,” he grumbled, “because I didn’t understand it at all. It was that damn doctor of mine. If I didn’t have such a good time arguing with him, I’d get another doctor.” He paused while Ellie came in with a saucer full of prescription medicine and vitamins, along with a large glass of orange juice. When she left, he drank a little of the orange juice and pointedly ignored the contents of the saucer. “I don’t suppose that son of mine showed up, either, did he?” Des had been a young boy when his mother had married Uncle William, and from the beginning, Uncle William had never called him anything but son.

  “No, no, he didn’t.” Tess pulled a chair to the side of the desk. “How are you?” she asked, searching his face for signs of decline that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen him. Happily, she found none.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine, and don’t you believe otherwise. I’m going to outlive that doctor of mine just so I can prove his prognostications of doom and gloom wrong.”

  She laughed with delight. In that moment, she truly believed her uncle would live forever. In that moment, he seemed the same as he’d always been, a big man with a booming voice, enormous strength and a brilliant mind. Her father had been born with the very same characteristics. Together, the two of them had carved a great ranch out of a hostile land and built a multimillion-dollar corporation that today was respected all over the world. Unfortunately, though, unlike her uncle, there had been no place in her father for affection, laughter and humor. “You just don’t know how happy that makes me.”

  He reached over and took her hand. His skin felt dry, but the strength she’d always known remained. “You, your sisters and Des are what keep me going. You still need me, and as long as that continues, I’ll be here for you.”

  Tess blinked back tears. “Thank you, but you should know, there’ll never come a day when we won’t need you.”

  He laughed. “That’s music to an old man’s ears, even if I know it’s not the truth. But at any rate, let’s get down to the reason you’re here. Is it something to do with your well? Or is it something to do with the man Des told me had kidnapped you off to Uvalde?”

  She grimaced. She wished Des hadn’t put it quite that way, no matter how accurate he’d been. “It’s about both, actually. And also about my father’s will.”

  He released her hand and sat back in his wheelchair. “Tell me about it.”

  She did. She told him about the well, how she felt it had the potential to be the greatest moneymaker of all her sites yet that there was no way she could know that for certain until the drill actually hit oil and they began pumping. Then she told him about Nick, his family and its history, and about the hope of his grandfather to use the treasure for vindication.

  She saved the conflict between Nick and herself for last. She reported the precarious position of the ship and how one slight miscalculation on her rig could send the ship and its treasure over the scarp where it would lie buried for years, maybe for all time. Last, she explained about Ben’s health and Nick’s plea that she halt the drilling for at least three months.

  When she fell silent, her uncle let out a long breath. “Well, I can certainly see your problem. I also see something else. You’re in love with this Nick Trejo.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him he was wrong, then closed it. Unbidden, images and emotions flashed through her head and heart, one after the other—the way he could make her go weak at the knees with just a smile, the way he’d made her want him last night in the living room of the farmhouse, the way she’d turned down Des’s help, when just twenty-four hours earlier, she would have gone to any lengths to gain his attention.

  God, why hadn’t she seen it before? The knowledge had been right there in front of her the whole time, but she’d kept pushing it to the back of her mind. Now, though, she had no choice but to face it. She did love Nick.

  Slowly she nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid I do. But unless I can figure out a way to give him what he wants, he’ll never love me in return.”

  Uncle William’s gray eyebrows shot straight up. “If his love is dependent on your granting him what he wants, then his love isn’t worth having.”

  She knew he was right. She also regretted stating it the way she had. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that no matter which way things go, I doubt if he’ll ever love me.”

  “Okay, then, in that case it sounds as if he’s going after you for two reasons. Because you’re a smart, beautiful woman and he just plain wants you, and because—”

  “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to. He wants you physically, and he wants you to cease drilling for a spell. But then you already know those two things. What do you want from me?” Her uncle was nothing if not earthy and direct.

  “I want to talk to you about my father’s will and the clause that states that unless I’ve earned his idea of a fortune within ten years of his death, I’ll lose my portion of the company.” She folded her arms across her waist, comforting herself, in a way. “And you know as well as I do that for most people the figure our father gave me and my sisters would be impossible to attain.”

  “But from what you’ve said, this well is going to put you over the top, though with very little time to spare.”

  She nodded. “Uncle William, I’m betting everything I’ve got on just that. Still, it’ll take months before I know for sure.”

  Uncle William regarded her gravely. “And you only have a little under ten months left to do it.”

  “Right, but it’s doable.” She sat forward, the excitement she felt for the new well seeping into her voice and expression. “If I’m lucky, we’ll hit oil in two more months, give or take a couple of weeks. Then I’ll have eight months to pump enough oil to give me the figures I need. But that’s if I have no major holdups or breakdowns and, at the same time, drill twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The problem is, I understand and sympathize with what Nick is trying to do. I’d love to be able to shut down and give him whatever time he needs.”

  She rose and began to pace. “So what I’m hoping for from you is a way to interpret my father’s will in a different manner, but that would still keep it within its legal boundaries. For instance, if I strike oil but the well hasn’t yet produced enough, could I slip under my father’s guidelines on the grounds that there is the potential for the amount named?”

  He sighed. “I wish I could tell you yes, honey, but your father’s will couldn’t have been more clear. He saw to that. We made up our wills together, you know, and when he told me about that clause, I counseled him against it. I just didn’t feel he was being fair to you girls, but your father was insistent. He saw it as a way to make the three of you prove you were worthy of inheriting your shares of the company.”

&n
bsp; Tess dropped her head, trying to hide the tears she couldn’t seem to keep back. “To prove we were worthy. For any other man, love of his children would be enough.” She walked to one of the windows and blindly gazed out. “He controlled us in life, and now he’s controlling us in death. Most children look forward to their birthdays, but all they meant to us was more responsibilities, more challenges, more goals to be met. He kept raising the proverbial bar.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Regret laced her uncle’s voice. “I’ve never known a man who wanted sons as badly as he did. But when you girls came along instead, he decided it was his job to make you tough.”

  “And don’t forget the competitive part. Today, Kit, Jill and I will go to practically any lengths to one up each other.”

  “I know, honey.”

  “And while he was alive, we’d work until we were exhausted, trying to please him, yet when we accomplished what he asked of us, he barely acknowledged our achievement. It was almost like he wanted us to fail.” She looked at her uncle. “Did he?”

  Reluctance shaded his tone. “Maybe in some twisted way he wanted to prove that he was right in thinking sons would have been superior to daughters.”

  “I don’t know about Kit and Jill, but I’ve worked my entire life to prove him wrong.”

  He sighed heavily. “I can’t count the number of times he and I fought over the way he treated the three of you. I called him every name in the book, but when it came to you girls, he ignored me.”

  She walked slowly to the desk. “More than once I’ve actually wondered if Mother’s death was an accident.”

  His head shot up, and his eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

  “Knowing Father, I can only imagine the hell he made her life because he’d expected her to produce sons and instead she’d given him daughters. Maybe she decided… Who knows.”

  He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t have to. She walked around his desk and sat down. “Tell me something, Uncle William. You knew him better than anyone else in the world. Do you honestly think he ever loved us?”