“You know the beautiful thing about Crooked Creek?” Abigail added. “The isolation. Four hours drive to the nearest hotel if there’s nowhere to stay here. Which there isn’t, for you.”
“I am in the middle of my dissertation! If I leave now, I’ll have lost a year of work! I’m not going to let that happen,” Franklin’s gaze swiveled frantically from one glaring face to another. “I am not going to let you goddamned backwoods rednecks ruin this for me.”
“By the way, is that an original 1964 Porsche 911?” Edna suddenly asked, all sweetness and light.
“Yes,” Franklin said coldly. “It belonged to my grandfather. One of the first ones ever built. I’m impressed that an inbred hick like you can pronounce the word Porsche. Next thing you know, you’ll learn how to use indoor plumbing.”
“What a shame about all the tires and seats being slashed. And that paint job…it’ll never be the same.”
“They haven’t been slashed!”
“Not yet,” Edna said, and suddenly she whipped a pen-knife from her purse, along with a small chunk of wood. “Well, I’m off to do some whittling. Promised my grandson I’d make him a whistle.” And she walked away, humming a happy tune.
Franklin swung back to look at all of them. “I’ll go to the press! I’ll tell everyone about this! What the hell is so funny?”
They were suddenly laughing so hard that tears streamed down their cheeks. “Oh, please don’t go to the press. And please don’t tell them Betsy Finkelstein was involved. That’s Finkelstein. Want me to spell that for you?” Betsy was doubled over with laughter. “My great great grandfather founded the newspaper. My father owns it now. My aunt is the president of the Colorado Newspaper Association.”
Franklin’s mouth opened and closed, and his face turned white and then red, and finally he turned and climbed into his tiny green Porsche, and roared away in a cloud of dust.
“I better call my husband,” Carlotta said quickly, fishing in her purse for her cell phone. “That bastard’s going at least ten miles over the speed limit, easy.”
Chapter Sixteen
The white orb of the sun shone brightly overhead, but far off to the east, a line of black storm clouds clung to the horizon.
Abigail glanced at them uneasily as she parked in front of the house. She’d spent the last few days riding around the ranch, taking photographs for her nature column, but she didn’t want to risk being caught out in the storm.
She was surprised to find Ludmilla standing on the front porch waiting for her.
Winston had told them his final decision, that the ranch clearly belonged to Ty now, and Clayton had blown up, yelling threats about lawyers and revenge, but it was clear he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
So he and Ludmilla had packed, and were planning to leave the next afternoon.
But Abigail didn’t like the smile on Ludmilla’s face.
“There is something I have discovered,” Ludmilla told her. “Something that I must share with you.” She held up a tiny silver tape recorder.
“What is that?”
“Your husband has tricked you. He has been working with Graniti industries all along. He doesn’t want to save the ranch; he just wants all of their business for himself.”
“Ludmilla, please. The last thing my husband needs is more money.”
“Do you really know that? Have you looked over his bank accounts? This is a man who didn’t tell you he had a girlfriend the week before he married you.”
The society page picture of Ty and Jeannette flashed in front of Abigail’s eyes, and ugly insecurities suddenly flared up inside her. Of course she hadn’t looked at his bank accounts. She could trust her husband…couldn’t she?
“If you doubt me, just listen. I tape recorded this conversation between your husband and Mr. Graniti.”
“Ludmilla, forget it. I don’t-“
But Ludmilla had already clicked on the tape recorder’s play button.
“I talked to the building inspector, and everything’s a go,” she heard Ty say.
“That’s great! I can’t wait to announce this. It’s going to be a beautiful partnership.” That was unmistakably the voice of Mr. Graniti.
And Ludmilla clicked off the tape recorder.
Ty had talked to the building inspector? Ty was working on a project with Sergio Graniti? And he hadn’t told Abigail?
“You can get your revenge on him for lying,” Ludmilla told Abigail. “All that you have to do is tell Winston the truth, that your marriage is a fake, done only so Ty could get the ranch. You have to do it, Abigail; Ty has made a fool of you.”
Unbidden, Cheyenne’s heartbroken face floated in front of Abigail’s eyes. Was she really as naive as Cheyenne had been? Had Ty tricked her into marriage, when he planned on destroying the ranch all along?
What other possible explanation could there be?
Head whirling, she ran for the pickup truck.
Behind her, she heard Ludmilla yelling “Abigail! Tell Winston! You must tell Winston!”
Ignoring her, Abigail yanked open the door, and climbed in. And drove. Just drove. She didn’t know where she was going, or why, but she rumbled over the hay fields until she was far, far from the house, and buried her head in her arms, and cried, with loud, gulping sobs.
She’d been an utter fool.
The storm clouds were moving closer now, blacking out a third of the sky, and lightning crackled, and she didn’t care.
She hadn’t just been made a total fool by the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with; she’d helped to destroy the town she loved as well.
He’d slice down thousands of ancient trees with abandon and dynamite hills and pave over the valleys where all the wildlife in the area took shelter. Habitats would be destroyed, and the black footed plains ferret would never come back. He’d destroy Crooked Creek; he’d turn it into a McTown full of chain stores, render it unrecognizable to everyone who knew and loved it. Cell phone towers would thrust up into the blue, clear air, and wires would be strung across the open fields.
Finally, all cried out, with her nose so stuffy she could barely breathe, and the sleeves of her arms soaked with her tears, she turned her truck towards town.
Her mother hadn’t sold the house yet; she and her mother could move back in there, she thought, dully. She could let Ty and Clayton fight it out over who got to develop the ranch.
But as she drove away, she couldn’t escape the feeling she was making a terrible mistake. The further she drove, the stronger she felt it, a tug like an invisible rope pulling her back to her house and her husband.
There were a thousand reasons why it didn’t make sense that Ty would trick her into a fake marriage if he planned to develop the ranch.
For one thing, he knew she’d never put up with it. She’d fight tooth and nail to save the land. He could easily have worked out a business arrangement with plenty of other women if all that he wanted was control of the ranch, but he’d picked her.
And yes, he’d teased her back in high school, but to deceive her to this level…that seemed completely out of character for him. Even when he was dating the string of skinny bimbos back in high school, he’d always made it crystal clear to them that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend.
Deceit wasn’t in his nature. If anything, Ty was too blunt, too plain spoken.
For him to deceive her on that level, to say he loved her again and again, to tell her he wanted to start a family with her, to ask her mother to move on the ranch if he didn’t really mean it…
That wasn’t Ty. That wasn’t her husband. That was more like something Clayton would do.
There had to be a reason for the conversation that Ludmilla had taped.
And for that matter, why had Ludmilla abruptly turned the tape recorder off? Why had she played only half a minute of conversation? What else had Ty said, that Ludmilla was hiding?
She grabbed her cell phone to call Carlotta for advice, but by the time Carlotta answered,
she already knew what she was going to do.
“Hey, Abigail, what’s up? Has Cheyenne been staying with you at the ranch?” Carlotta sounded worried when she answered.
“What? No. What do you mean?”
“She disappeared. She hasn’t reported to work at the Dry Gulch Saloon in three days. She hasn’t been at her house at the Bickerson’s. Nobody knows where she is.”
“Jesus. You should have called me earlier.” Abigail let out a deep breath. “I know where she is.”
“Where?”
“The Timber Cove. The place in the woods she ran away to when her mother abandoned her. She always goes there and sulks when she’s pissed off about something. It’s like her place of refuge. It’s not too far from here; I’m going to go get her right now.”
“Abigail, I’m pretty sure there’s a big storm coming.”
“And that’s why I’m going to go get her right now. I’ll call you as soon as I pick her up.”
She eased the pickup truck over the field and onto the main road by the ranch, racing against the weather, gripping the steering wheel tightly. The thought of Chelsea caught alone out in the cove, in the middle of a raging storm, made her heart pound
As she drove, the sky darkened with frightening speed. The pitter patter of raindrops began pounding on the roof, and then the sky opened, and suddenly the world outside the pickup truck disappeared into a rushing river. If it was this bad inside the truck, what was happening to Cheyenne?
She had no choice but to stop the truck. There was a gully that ran by the road that was famous for overflowing during summer storms; if she kept driving, blinded as she was, she was likely to end up in it.
Then she felt the truck’s wheels lift from the ground, and the truck was moving, floating, and her heart leaped to her throat.
She had miscalculated, badly.
Suddenly there was a rush of water, and the truck was rolling, and her head banged against the side of the truck so hard that she saw stars.
The world went dark, and then light again. How much time had gone by?
The truck was lying on the driver’s side, and she was cold and wet. Dimly, she realized that the cab of the truck was filling up with murky water. She reached up for the door in a daze, and fumbled for the lock, and then she heard glass shattering, and looked up, thinking it was Ty, but she saw Clayton’s face instead, looming over her, distorted, angry and leering.
And she knew she’d never live to see Ty again, to tell him the truth about how much she really loved him, and how she was late with her cycle, which never happened, so she was almost certainly carrying his child.
Chapter Seventeen
“She’s coming to!”
Abigail struggled to sit up, but she was strapped down, and there was something on her face. She clawed at it, and hands grabbed at her and pulled her hands away, and then the fog cleared and she realized she was strapped to a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, with an oxygen mask on her face.
Her head pounded with a steady throb and nausea roiled in her stomach.
Ty leaned over her, stroking her hair.
“What happened?” she mumbled, through the mask. “How did Clayton find me?”
“When the storm hit, Ludmilla told Clayton about some tape recording she made, said you’d rushed off, and then she felt bad because you were out there in the bad weather. Then Carlotta called and said you were headed out to the Timber Cove to find Chelsea. We all went out to look for you. Clayton found you and pulled you out of the truck.”
“Chelsea! We have to get her! She’s out there in the storm”
“Chelsea’s been at Dylan’s house banging him for three days straight,” Ty said, holding her hand. “She’s fine. Don’t ever do a damn fool thing like that again, you hear me?” His voice was raw and shaking. “If I’d lost you, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
Sudden fear flooded Abigail. “The baby. What about the baby? Is the baby all right?”
“What baby? Oh my God – You mean…”
It was an agonizing half hour more before they got the news at the emergency room. Yes, she was indeed pregnant. Yes, the baby was fine. Abigail had a concussion and would be able to go home the next day.
* * *
The sun poured through the window in the study, broken up into square frames on the wide-planked wooden floor.
An oil painting of Boone Jackson glared down from the wall. He wore a black snap front shirt with a ropes and roses motif, a black cowboy hat, and a scowl. Ty couldn’t ever remember seeing him smile.
Clayton stood staring at the picture, with his back turned to the door. He didn’t bother to turn around when Ty walked in the room.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Ty said.
“Came to gloat?”
“No. I wanted to thank you for saving my wife and child. And I wanted to say that I’m sorry things went the way they did. We may not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but you’re still my brother.”
Clayton shrugged, and didn’t answer. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the painting on the wall, as if mesmerized by Boone’s cold, angry gaze. Even dead, Boone still had power over his unhappy son.
“That needs to come down,” Ty said.
Clayton turned to face him, shrugging sullenly. “Don’t do anything on my account.”
“Clayton, we used to be close when we were growing up. It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”
A long silence fell, stretching uncomfortably, before Clayton finally spoke. “Why did my dad let your mother take you and move into another house? Why did he stop beating your ass every day?”
Ty let out a long breath. “Videotape. I didn’t find out until I was in my teens, but apparently, when I was seven, she’d had enough of him beating on her, so she came up with a plan. She secretly videotaped him beating her up. And having sex with a 15 year old maid on their marital bed.”
“Jesus Christ!” Clayton’s breath hissed out in an explosion of anger.
“She used the tapes to blackmail him. She didn’t want to divorce him, she wanted to play the rich rancher’s wife, so she took me and moved into another house on the property and kept up the pretense.”
“She could have taken me too,” Clayton said, and the tones of hurt and anger in his voice wrenched at Ty’s heart. “I know I wasn’t her son, but…”
“I begged her to, and we fought about it for years. Remember how he stopped beating on you and just turned to ignoring you when you turned sixteen?”
“Yeah, because I finally hit him back.”
“That was only part of it. I overheard my mother talking about the tapes with her lawyer, and I begged her to turn them over to the police, but she refused. She wanted that leverage over dad. But I went to our father, told him about the tapes, pretended I had a copy, and told him if he ever laid a hand on you again, I’d turn the tapes over to the police and the newspapers. And he never hit you again, did he?”
Dawning comprehension spread across Clayton’s face. “No. No, he didn’t. That’s when he started travelling all the time. It was like he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me, couldn’t even stand to be on the ranch any more.”
“Same thing with my mother. I was furious at her when I found out about the tapes, about how she hadn’t used them to protect you too, when she could have saved you from years of his abuse. Our relationship never recovered from that. That’s the year she started spending all her time overseas with her Eurotrash boyfriends. After she and I had our final blowout fight, she pretty much gave up on that whole wife and mother thing, and just enjoyed her money and her pretty boys.”
Clayton took a deep, shuddering breath, and glanced back up at the painting. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You won in the end. You got all the glory.”
“Glory? You think that’s what this is about?” Ty snapped.
Suddenly Clayton was blinking hard, blinking away hot, angry tears. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d lost, Ty knew; it was
being in this room, with the weight of their bitter past crushing him.
Ty was going to toss that picture of Boone onto a bonfire, first chance he got.
“You’re so damned smart, aren’t you?” Clayton choked out. “You know what’s best for the town. You get to ride in and be the hero, saving the town from the evil Clayton, who was going to ruin everything. Well, if I’d gotten the ranch, things would have turned out differently. There would have been jobs for the people who are barely holding on here. Tourists coming all year long, not just in the summer. Construction jobs. Hotel jobs. Maintenance jobs and management jobs for the condominium tower. I’d have saved the town from economic ruin.”
He blinked again, furious. “I’ve done it before for other towns. Turned everything around for them. Built up downtowns that were dying, saved businesses, saved livelihoods, breathed new life into the economy of towns that were on their last legs. I could have done it here. Then you’d see; I’m not some lowlife loser, Ty; I actually know what I’m doing. You’d have seen what I can do; everybody would have seen.”
Ty felt as if someone were squeezing the breath out of him. Clayton’s plans may have been misguided, but he could understand where Clayton was coming from. He wanted to come home and make good, to rebuild his tarnished legacy.
“Listen. It doesn’t have to be over. I’m willing to talk about development, just not on the scale that you were planning. We could build a hotel and a spa by the hot springs, just not on top of them. I’ve had countless inquiries about those hot springs; you’re right, they would bring in people all year long. A lot of people. Enough to keep the merchants going all throughout the winter.”
Clayton turned to look at him, his face stony. “Go on.”
Curvy Girls: Claimed By The Cowboy (The BBW and the Billionaire Rancher) Page 10
