by Merry Farmer
Mr. Templesmith fixed him with a look that said “Who do you think?” before saying, “Richard Bonneville has a thirty-nine percent stake in the bank and is on the board. He swayed two of the other members to his side. Together, they pushed for a lawsuit laying claim to the fossil discovered on your land.”
Laura wanted to shout, “They can’t do that,” more than anything, but the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach grew with the worry that maybe they could.
“Bonneville.” Ted huffed an ironic laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Why is it that whenever anyone in this town experiences a lick of good fortune, the Bonnevilles circle in like vultures to grab at it?”
“Because they’re Bonnevilles,” Sandy said, crossing her arms. “They’ve had a chip on their shoulders where this town is concerned since they first moved out here and staked a claim next to the Haskells.” Even with a frown, she cut an elegant figure in her power suit and heels.
Laura hunched deeper in her seat. “That must be what Ronny wanted to talk to me about the other day,” she said, feeling like she’d caused the problem, even though she hadn’t told Ronny anything.
The other three stared at her. “Ronny said more to you than just—” Ted pressed his mouth shut, glancing so briefly at Sandy that the others probably didn’t catch it. Laura did, though, and it only confirmed her depressing suspicions about Ted and Sandy.
“He wanted information,” Laura explained, feeling worse by the second. “Granted, I didn’t give him any, but he found out how valuable the fossil is.”
“That’s my fault.” Ted sighed and rubbed his face. “Me and my big mouth.”
“It’s okay,” Sandy reassured him. The look that passed between the two of them brought to mind other things Ted’s big mouth had probably done in the past. To Sandy. Down there.
Laura squirmed in her chair, unable to get comfortable.
“Ronny probably realized he couldn’t get Laura to talk and found out what he needed to know from someone else,” Ted went on.
“I’m sorry,” Laura apologized anyhow. “I can’t help but feel like I screwed up somehow.”
“None of this is on you.” Ted reached for Laura’s hand on the arm of her chair as he did. His warm, firm touch surprised her. Hope sprouted in her chest. It withered a bit when he turned his attention back to Sandy, though. “I’m not letting the Bonnevilles take away everything that we’ve worked so hard for. Laura has poured way too much effort into excavating the fossil,” Ted went on. “She’s the one who’s done all the work, called in the experts, and made the connections we needed. Without her, we’d probably still be letting the cattle roam over the site with no idea what was out there.” He turned to her with a look of stalwart determination. “I’m not letting the Bonnevilles take that away from you.”
A weak smile flittered across Laura’s lips, but it didn’t stay for long.
“I’m not either,” Sandy said.
Ted glanced to her. Sandy smiled when their eyes met. Laura had to remind herself to breathe.
Sandy took a step to the side, fetching a sheaf of papers from a low cabinet behind her father’s desk. “Dad gave me a heads-up about the letter this morning. I started formulating a legal response right away. This is definitely a case we can argue.”
“Isn’t there a conflict of interest in you being our lawyer for a case against your own father?” Ted asked. His hand slipped away from Laura’s. She pulled hers all the way to her lap, clenching her hands together.
“Not if we make a strong argument for the bank not to proceed with a lawsuit before the case can come to trial,” Sandy went on.
“But that letter,” Laura said, her voice way softer than it usually was. “You…I mean, they sounded so certain of their rights. And it could be argued that the fossil was discovered while the ranch was mortgaged.”
“And that’s what Bonneville will argue,” Sandy agreed with a nod. “But he’d be wrong. Ted—” She turned to him, smooth familiarity in her expression and posture. “I need you to look back through any sort of family records you have—photographs, diaries, legal papers—for any mention of fossils or bones or anything unusual as part of the landscape. The fossil has obviously been there for far longer than the mortgage, and if there is any record of it prior to the bank’s involvement, they don’t have a leg to stand on, much less to build a case on.”
“I’m not sure we’re going to find anything like that,” Ted replied with a wince. “I remember the first time we noticed that bone sticking up out of the ground. It was about a year after Dad took out the mortgage.” He shifted to tell Mr. Templesmith, “I was seventeen, and me and Brian Pickering and Linus Pettigrew were out there, well, anticipating our twenty-first birthdays.”
“When you were seventeen?” Laura asked, brow furrowed in confusion. Ted sent her a guilty look, and the dots connected in her brain. “Oh.” She blushed and looked away, biting her lip.
“Yeah, well, we all did a little anticipating our senior year,” Sandy added with a sheepish grin and a sideways glance to her father. She and Ted shared a look with decades of history behind it.
Laura wanted to sink into the ground. Not only had she not tasted so much as a sip of alcohol before she was legally allowed to, she didn’t have the history with Ted that Sandy had. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder everyone wanted them together.
“Just because you first noticed it while the property was mortgaged doesn’t mean someone in your family history hadn’t noticed it before that,” Mr. Templesmith cut into the nostalgic mood. “That’s the sort of documentation we need you to find.”
“Wait, are you saying that you want the bank to lose this case?” Ted asked.
“Absolutely.” Mr. Templesmith nodded. “We don’t stand to incur any financial loss by not winning. We would only lose something that isn’t ours to begin with.”
“But the cost of arbitration,” Laura suggested.
Mr. Templesmith shook his head. “It’s a small price to pay if Richard Bonneville ends up with egg on his face.”
Laura’s lips twitched to something resembling a smile. It made sense that Mr. Templesmith would want a hostile member of his board of trustees to have some smack put down on him. Especially someone as troublesome as a Bonneville. She’d only lived in Haskell for a year, and already she’d developed a deep suspicion of anyone with that last name. Unfortunately, she was quickly developing a suspicion of anyone named Templesmith too.
“I’ve only just begun to work on this,” Sandy said, crossing to hand the papers she’d picked up earlier to Ted. Their hands brushed as Ted took them from her. “There’s a lot more work to be done. I can come out to the ranch later to explain it all to Roscoe, or he’s welcome to come into my office, if you’d rather.”
“Thanks, Sandy.” Ted sent her a grateful smile. Laura could easily imagine him smiling at her in a lot friendlier ways. “I’ll ask what he wants to do.”
“I’m pretty sure we can beat this,” Sandy went on. “So don’t worry too much.”
Ted broke into a full smile at last. “With you as our lawyer, I’m not worried at all.”
Laura, on the other hand, was so worried that she could hardly stand up as Ted rose to shake Mr. Templesmith’s hand and leave.
“Hey, are you okay?” Ted asked her as they walked out of the bank and into the hot Haskell morning.
“Yeah,” Laura lied. She bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder into the bank. She could just see Sandy talking to her father in the lobby through the glass front door. “I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me. Nope.”
She turned back, only to find Ted staring at her with a puzzled expression. “Sandy’s a great lawyer. She’ll get us through this.”
Laura swallowed. “Yeah.” She might be able to get them through their fossil troubles, but it was the rest of her troubles she was worried about.
“Laura.” Ted took her hand, forcing her all the way out of her inner turmoil. “We’ll get through this. I’m sure there is something in
our attic that indicates people knew the fossil was there ages ago. The fossil will be okay.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. If she was being honest with herself, she was exhausted from running on the hamster wheel of anxiety. But that didn’t make anxiety go away. She wasn’t sure what would do that.
“You wanna get some ice cream?” Ted asked.
Okay, that comes close, her inner voice drawled.
“Sure,” she said aloud on a long exhale. “Ice cream sounds good.”
“I thought so.” Ted started down Main Street, holding her hand. “I love a girl who loves ice cream.”
She sent him as enthusiastic of a smile as she could…which wasn’t much. She knew she should have taken things between them more slowly, like Dr. Ashford had advised her. She wasn’t ready to face the possibility that something might come between her and Ted to end things, whether that was a lawsuit or an ex. She wasn’t ready for any of it, but it was too late.
Chapter Fifteen
Ted stood on the edge of the giant hole in the ground that was the excavation of Laura’s dinosaurs, hands on his hips, no idea what to do. The professional excavation crew had returned to California to get some other work done and to get some ducks in a row, as Dr. Ashford had explained to him on the phone. They’d packed away most of their equipment in the stable for safe-keeping, but a bit of scaffolding, several tarps, and a few structures that had been built to support parts of one of the skeletons were still in place.
It had all started with a little bone poking out of the ground, and now he had an eight-foot deep, thirty-foot long hole in his ranch, neighbors crawling all over themselves to figure out what was going on or to get a look, and a potential lawsuit that just might set the ranch back again, right when he thought they were in the clear. Maybe he shouldn’t have splurged on those sapphire earrings after all.
And that wasn’t even the worst of his problems. The worst was of a decidedly Laura-esque nature.
He sighed and rubbed his forehead under the brim of his cowboy hat. Life in Haskell and a degree in Agricultural Sciences hadn’t prepared him for this.
“Are you waiting for it to move?”
Laura startled him as she walked up behind him, her excavation kit slung over her shoulder. She was the only woman he’d ever known who could make him weep with relief to see her and tense up over what crazy thing she might say against herself next. Still, he stepped away from the edge of the hole and met her with a hug.
Only, she was far stiffer than usual, and she barely hugged him back.
Instead of soothing the rumbling frustration in his gut, her response, or lack thereof, doubled it.
“I’m just wondering what the hell we’re going to do,” he confessed. On several levels.
Laura peeled away from him, walking by his side to the edge of the hole. She shrugged. “You’ve got Sandy working with you to beat the Bonnevilles. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath, returning to his earlier, pensive posture.
Laura didn’t sound so sure about things. She was probably just as worried about the fate of the fossil as he was. But that didn’t explain why she took a step away from him, edging around the hole until she reached the earthen ramp leading down into it.
“What are you doing?” he asked, hoping she would give him something else to think about, a clue to solving the mystery she presented.
Without looking at him, she said, “I thought I’d dig around and see if I can find more of those fossil ferns the team found last week.”
“Oh. Okay.” He shifted his weight to his other leg, staring down at her as she found a spot she liked and slid her excavation kit off her shoulder. “Need any help?”
She took too long to answer. For several seconds, she frowned at what looked like the blank, dirt wall of the hole. “If you want to,” she said at last, still without looking at him.
Impatience bristled through Ted. Why did they always come back to this awkwardness? He’d been trying not to think about the fact that he and Laura hadn’t spent the night together since finding out about the bank’s lawsuit. Four whole nights. That was four more than they’d spent apart before everything had started to crumble. And he didn’t have a clue why things had suddenly gone so cold. Women were supposed to talk about their feelings, right? Laura was as closed up as a clam.
There was no way he was going to get her to about-face and spill everything upsetting her by watching her from the edge of the hole, so he blew out a sigh and headed around to the ramp. The farther he descended into the hole, the cooler the air was. He struggled to figure out if that was a good omen or a bad one.
“Any clue where you might find what you’re looking for?” he asked when he was standing by Laura’s side.
“Discoloration,” she said, scientific and unemotional. “Differences in the rock’s texture. Things like that.”
“What about here?” Ted pointed to a section of the wall that looked a little darker.
Laura ran her fingertips over the section, then let out a doubtful hum. “That’s probably just a deposit of sediment. It might be worth investigating, though.”
She bent down to take a small pick out of her kit, then went to work freeing a section of stone. All without looking at him.
The only thing Ted could do was stand there, nerves bristling, and watch her. It was bad enough that he had a lawsuit that he didn’t know what to do with on his hands, but now Laura was acting every bit as squirrely as she had the first time he’d ever talked to her. For no damn reason, as far as he could see. He wanted to confront her, demand she tell him what her problem was. He wanted to jump on a horse and gallop across the ranch until his muscles were sore and his lungs burned from exertion. He wanted to do something, about everything, but the sheer immensity of it all had him frozen to the spot.
He knew it was a terrible idea, but the words, “Why don’t you trust me?” spilled out of his mouth anyhow.
“What?” Laura’s brow crinkled and her cheeks flushed pink. She did look at him, but only for a split-second before returning to her work. “Of course I trust you,” she mumbled to the rock.
“They why won’t you tell me what’s got you so bent out of shape?”
Her cheeks flushed darker. “I’m not bent out of shape.” She glanced to him again, and he treated her to a doubtful expression. “I’m not,” she insisted. “I’m just ticked off about this whole lawsuit and everything.” Her voice dropped at the end of her sentence, and she went back to work.
Her body language and tone of voice screamed avoidance. Ted crossed his arms and leaned against the dusty wall of the hole where she couldn’t avoid getting at least a glimpse of him as she chipped away at the rock. “We haven’t spent the night together in days.”
“So?” She rolled her shoulders with a jerky movement. “It’s not that unusual.”
“It has been for us so far,” he argued.
“I have my period,” she mumbled.
“No, you don’t. You had it two weeks ago.”
“Maybe I have it again.” Her voice lowered even more.
“It didn’t bother you to snuggle up with me two weeks ago. Why would it bother you now?”
Her face twitched. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it either,” he said. “But I need to know why you’ve turned so shifty on me all of a sudden, just when I need you.”
“I’m not shifty,” she argued with sudden force. She hit the rock wall one more time with her pick, flecks of stone flying, then spun to face him. “And you don’t really need me.”
The simple comment hurt more than he would have thought. “How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” She continued to face him, but Ted could feel how badly she wanted to look away. Or leave all together.
He stepped toward her, closing his hands around her upper arms, and trying not to let his frustration seep into his desire to hold her close. Rig
ht then, it felt more like he needed to hold her in place, keep her from running away.
“I don’t know what I’m facing with this whole lawsuit,” he told her, baring more of his soul than he was comfortable baring. “I’m in over my head. I need you by my side to give me strength right now.”
“You’ve got Sandy for that.” Her gaze dropped to her feet.
Twin blasts of annoyance and desperation flared in his chest, burning his throat with bile. “Sandy is my lawyer, but you’re the woman I need.” His grip on her arms grew tighter before he could control his frustration. “You’re the one I care about, the one I want standing by me through this whole thing.”
“Are you sure?” she murmured.
“Yes,” he all but shouted. He had to let go of her before the tumult inside of him caused him to lash out at her. “Look, I know you have some self-esteem issues,” he began, rubbing his face.
“No, I don’t.”
He let out a breath and met her protest with a flat stare.
“Okay, maybe I do.” She lowered her head again. Ted was beginning to hate the gesture. “Maybe I rushed into something that I wasn’t ready for.”
Suspicion coiled tight in Ted’s gut. “Have you been talking to Dr. Ashford again?”
She snapped a frown up to him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Dr. Ashford.”
“But you did talk to her about us when she first came out here,” he said. “And reading between the lines of other things you’ve said, she cautioned you against dating me.”
“That’s not what she said.” Laura sighed, lowering her gaze. “She…she just knows me, is all. She knows that…that I get hurt easily.” She looked up and met his eyes. “You shouldn’t have to put up with someone who has their own issues, not when you’re dealing with everything else.”
“But I do want to put up with you. Can’t you see that?” He pushed a hand through his hair. “I can’t control what you think about yourself, but for the love of God, Laura, if you think that I’m the kind of guy who would commit to dating someone only to ditch her when things get tough, then you don’t know who I am at all.”
