by Norah Wilson
“You’re a mind reader now, are you?” His father’s eyes flashed with anger and something Cal didn’t recognize. “You know what’s going on in my head?”
“No, I sure as hell don’t. Although that’s a skill that mighta come in handy once upon a time,” he said tightly, suddenly dizzy with the ball of anger he’d thought locked safely down in the back of his mind. He drew a deep breath, forced his hands to relax. “Look, Dad, the guest ranch is closing. Our last guests checked out today. But you’re welcome to join us for breakfast.”
“Hell, you’re closing your doors over this little setback?”
Little setback? Cal prayed for control.
“Not much choice. All but two guests left yesterday, and we’ve had cancellations all morning.” Cal was relieved to hear his voice emerge so matter-of-factly, without a trace of self-pity. Zane Taggart would abhor such weakness. “I expect all my bookings will go south after that article.”
“Well.” His father’s face was blank as Cal knew his own was. “Guess you’re gonna need this, then.” He drew an envelope out of his breast pocket and dropped it on the table.
Cal eyed the envelope, which bore the imprint of a local bank, and felt his pulse stumble. “What’s that?”
“Certified check.”
Cal picked it up. Beside him, Lauren leapt to her feet. “This sounds like family business. I’m just going to…”
He put a restraining hand on her arm. “Stay.”
She looked as if she wanted to make a break for it. Cal reinforced the command with a silent request, his eyes pleading. He needed her to stay. If his father thought he could rub his nose in his failure by tossing him this bone, Cal wanted someone around to witness it when he threw it back at him. He’d rather drown slowly in red ink than accept help from Zane Taggart.
“Well, if your father doesn’t mind…”
“Just as Callum prefers,” said Zane Taggart.
She subsided again as Cal picked up the envelope, tore off one end, and shook a certified check out onto the table.
Jesus, thirty thousand dollars. It took all the discipline learned at the poker table for Cal to keep his face blank. He picked the check up with fingers gone numb and held it out to his father. “I appreciate the thought, but I can’t take it.”
Zane’s jaw went slack. “What do you mean, you can’t take it? You’re in trouble, son.”
Cal lifted an eyebrow. “Says who?”
“Says me and everyone around here.”
Cal felt his face flush. “I suppose it’s obvious enough. Why would I be running a dude ranch for nancy boys unless I was strapped for cash, right?”
Zane snorted. “Who said anything like that? Hell, there’s nothing wrong with showing city folk a taste of ranch life.”
“Yeah, sure.” Cal laughed, a harsh sound. “It’s such a hot idea, you’re gonna run right home and open your own guest ranch on the Taggart homestead.”
Zane’s back stiffened again. “No, you’re right there. I won’t be doing that.”
“See? If you can’t do it and hold your head up, why am I supposed to be so damned thrilled about doing it?”
“Ain’t got nothin’ to do with pride. It’s just too late.”
Too late? Cal found himself on his feet, a surge of adrenaline zinging through him. “What do you mean, too late?”
Before Cal’s eyes, Zane Taggart seemed to shrink. “Maybe if I’d had the smarts to do it, I might have saved it, but I’m not like you. Seems like I only know one way to do things.” The grim slash of his mouth twisted wryly. “’Course, I expect you’d be the first to agree about that.”
Cal squeezed his hands into fists again to keep them from shaking. “Might have saved what?”
“The ranch,” Zane said without a trace of emotion. “I lost it almost two months ago. It’s gone.”
“Gone?” Cal was starting to feel like a parrot. “But how can that be?” He looked down at the check. “You’ve got money. You’re on vacation.”
“Yeah, a permanent one.”
“What happened?” Cal asked, his need to shove the check back into his father’s face momentarily forgotten.
“Same thing that’s happening all over the country. Rising production costs, falling prices.” His father shrugged. “It’s been a long time coming. I just buried my head in the sand. You’re in a much better position with the guest ranch.”
Better position? Hadn’t the old coot heard a word he’d said? “I’m closing the guest ranch, remember?”
“In the short term, maybe, until this blows over. That’s what the money’s for,” he said as though explaining to a child of limited intelligence. “To tide you over.”
Cal was hardly listening. Shit, his father had lost the ranch, a property homesteaded by Taggarts for generations. Which meant that even if the bank foreclosed tomorrow, Cal had won! He’d outlasted Zane Taggart at his own game. No matter what happened now, his father’s failure would always be first.
So where was the sweet release of victory?
Zane’s voice cut through Cal’s daze.
“…turned out I wasn’t the steward I thought I was. If Charlie hadn’t offered for it…”
“Wait a minute, Charlie Horton?” Ouch. For as long as Cal could remember, Zane had prided himself on being a better cattleman than his neighbor, whom he considered too laid-back for his own good. Why didn’t that poetic piece of justice gladden his heart?
“Yeah, Charlie Horton. Gave me a decent price too, all things considered.”
Unexpected guilt pricked Cal. Zane Taggart might not have been father-of-the-year material, but Cal had left him high and dry. If he’d stayed, maybe the ranch wouldn’t have failed…Cal gave himself a mental shake. Stupid to let these thoughts interfere with his triumph.
“Of course, there wasn’t much left after everybody got paid,” Zane continued, “but it’s yours.”
Cal’s heart jumped. He narrowed his eyes. “No it isn’t.”
“’Course it is. I just gave it to you, didn’t I?”
Cal looked down at the check in his hands. Thirty thousand dollars. A queer feeling gripped his gut. The same figure that struck him as so large a moment ago suddenly seemed a pitifully small amount for the lifetime of sweat his father had put into it. “This is it, isn’t it? The entire equity in the place?”
“Nah.” Zane rubbed the back of his neck. “I kept enough to see me through for a while. Not that I have a lot of needs. I expect I’ll find myself a job easy enough. After forty years, I can turn my hand to most anything that needs doing on a ranch.”
The proud Zane Taggart toiling for someone else? Wrangler’s wages. The words echoed in Cal’s head. That’s what his father had said. Mark my words, you’ll wind up broken in that rodeo you love so much or busting your hump for wrangler’s wages.
Now the father had come to the very fate he’d predicted for his son. Instead of the swell of victory he expected, a terrible emptiness opened under him. Panicked, his heart slamming against his ribs, Cal thrust the check at his father. “I can’t take it.”
Zane’s eyes turned flinty. “It’s your birthright, dammit. If I’d been able to hang onto the ranch, it’d been yours.”
“No need to get melodramatic, Dad. I never planned to come back.” Considering he had to force the words past a logjam in his throat, Cal was grateful for how impassive they sounded.
“You think I don’t know that?” His father’s already florid face darkened. He averted his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. When he spoke next, his voice was again controlled. “That doesn’t change the fact it would have been yours. If I hadn’t gotten so far in hock, you could have sold it, gotten away with an easy half million, maybe more. Maybe a lot more.”
Cal felt a tic leap to life in his left eye. He resisted the urge to thumb his eyebrow to soothe it and frowned fiercely instead. Inside, conflicting feelings tangled up on themselves. Dammit, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
This was s
upposed to be his moment of triumph.
Inside, the tumult of emotion coalesced into fury.
“Don’t you get it?” he grated. “I don’t want your money.”
His father’s color turned an alarming shade of purple. Lauren’s chair scraped back, but Cal didn’t take his eyes off his father’s flushed face.
“Cal, no. That’s enough,” Lauren said urgently.
Cal felt Lauren’s hands catch at one of his, but he shook her off. Nothing and no one could stop this vomiting of vitriol now. “I don’t need anything from you, you understand? Nothing.”
“Well, that’s too damned bad, cuz I’m not taking it back,” his father roared. “I promised your mother I’d take care of you. Maybe I didn’t do a very good job of it when you were young, but by God, I can and will do this much—”
Zane’s angry words were clipped off as suddenly as if he’d been struck dumb. One of his big hands lurched to his chest.
Lauren was there with a shoulder under his arm before Cal could react. “Mr. Taggart, are you all right?”
“My chest…”
Cal felt a new, singular emotion pierce his angry confusion, one he had no difficulty identifying. Terror. “Your heart?”
Zane looked down at his chest and back up, surprise mingling with pain in his eyes. “Don’t know. Never had it before.”
“Help me lay him down,” Lauren said.
Cal jumped to do her bidding. With hands gone clumsy, he helped her lower Zane to the floor. Lauren loosened his collar, which he customarily wore buttoned up like a general’s. Zane, his face now ashen, his breathing labored, made no protest. His compliance only sharpened Cal’s anxiety.
Christ, he’d given his father a heart attack.
Dazed, he watched Lauren take his pulse with two fingers pressed to his neck. His father was flat on the floor, having a heart attack, being tended by a vet. A vet.
Then he remembered she knew first aid, had been a volunteer ambulance attendant. Relief washed over him.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Get me a tablecloth from one of those empty tables and roll it up like a tube so I can slide it under his neck.”
Cal did as she asked. She looked so calm as she slid the makeshift support under Zane’s head, her hands so competent. Zane would be all right. Lauren knew what to do.
“Now what?”
“Now we call 911,” she said.
The smell of the waiting room reminded Lauren of her clinic. It shared that same antiseptic odor and the more subtle smell of fear and misery. All it was missing was the meowing and barking.
Shifting her legs to ease a slight cramp in her calf, she cast a glance toward Cal. He slumped in the chair beside her, staring unblinkingly at his boots.
Zane had arrived via the ambulance bay, while Lauren and Cal, who’d followed in Cal’s truck, had come in through the public entrance. Cal had been upset, not knowing whether or not his father was being seen to. With the triage nurse’s help, Lauren persuaded him Zane’s chest pain would get top priority. He’d subsided into fretful silence then. She’d made a couple of attempts at conversation, but he was too worried to talk.
He blamed himself, of course, and wasn’t ready to hear that he couldn’t have known his father had a heart condition. That is, if it was in fact a heart condition. Zane had maintained loudly that his heart had never troubled him before.
Lauren let her gaze rest on Cal. He sat hunched in the chair in the classic waiting-room pose, hands clasped between his legs, elbows resting on his thighs.
Such a broad, strong back. And no wonder, the way he insisted on shouldering the weight of the world. She pressed her own hands together to keep from running them over the tightly stretched fabric of his blue chambray shirt. As much as it would comfort her to touch him, she feared he was too tightly wound to accept it.
After what seemed like forever, a nurse approached, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking rhythmically. “Callum Taggart?” she said, mispronouncing it “Cawl-lum.”
Cal shot to his feet. “Here.”
Lauren watched the nurse’s gaze slide over Cal. She touched her hair in a gesture Lauren was sure was completely unconscious.
“Your father is doing just fine, Mr. Taggart.”
“Thank God.”
“The doctor would like to talk to you, though.”
“Can Lauren come too?”
The nurse glanced at Lauren. “You’re family?”
Lauren thought she detected more than professional interest on the other woman’s part in hearing her answer. “No.”
“Dr. Townsend is a medical professional,” Cal said without missing a beat. “I’d like her to be there.”
“Of course.” Lauren blushed when the nurse looked at her with new deference. “This way, Mr. Taggart, Dr. Townsend.”
They followed her to a small examination room at the end of a long hallway, where they found Zane reclined on a bed. He looked much better despite the alarming number of electrodes and wires snaking out from under his hospital gown. Electrodes that a short, white-coated doctor was in the process of removing.
Zane’s color was much improved, she noted, but his gray eyes flashed his displeasure at finding himself in such a vulnerable position. A smile curved her lips. Like father, like son.
It struck her again how much he looked like Cal. For an instant she saw him not as Cal’s father but as a man, splendidly virile despite the silver in his hair and the softening jaw.
What would happen if Cal ever saw his father as another man? Maybe their relationship was in a state of arrested development, Zane the disapproving parent and Cal the rebellious child. Of course, it wasn’t that simple, she realized. Zane had destroyed the thing that Cal loved beyond all else.
Cal cleared his throat. “How’s the ticker?”
“Embarrassingly sound,” Zane growled, tugging the johnny shirt more modestly around him.
The doctor looked up. “You must be the son. Cal, is it?”
“Yup.”
“Dan Matchett.” He pushed the portable monitor clear. “And this is your…?”
“Friend,” Cal supplied. “What’s he mean, sound? His heart’s okay?”
“Whoa, I’m still here.” The elder Taggart’s voice was testy. “My heart’s fine, thank you, and so are my wits.”
Cal studied his father with narrowed eyes, then turned back to the doctor. “That true?”
Zane made a strangled noise.
“Insofar as we can tell, yes, his heart’s fine. Certainly he hasn’t had an infarction and no irregular rhythms.”
“He means I ain’t had no heart attack, and it’s ticking over like a Timex.”
“But?” Cal didn’t take his eyes off the doctor. “There must be something. I saw him, Doc. He was in serious pain.”
“That’s what we need to find out. It could be as simple as a hiatal hernia giving him some gastric reflux.”
“Indigestion.” Zane grunted in disgust. “You hear that? You stuffed me into an ambulance for heartburn.”
Again Cal ignored his father. “Or as serious as…?”
“Could be an ulcer.”
“Is that a big deal?”
“It can be. Which is why I’d like to do some tests. I could set something up early next week.”
“What’s wrong with now?” Cal asked.
“We’re a small facility, Mr. Taggart. Our capacity for testing on the weekends is limited, so we reserve it for inpatients. As you can see, we don’t really have any reason to admit your father.”
“See?” Zane sat up, suddenly cheerful. “By the way, Doc, I’m afraid I’ll be long gone by next week, but I’ll get that looked into.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Set the tests up,” Cal said. “He’ll be here.”
Zane spluttered. “I’m still here and I can speak for myself. And I say I’ll be gone next week.”
“Gone where?” Cal asked.
Zane bristled. “Wherever I
please. I don’t expect I’ll have any trouble landing a job.”
“I’m sure you won’t. But you’re not going anywhere until they check out your innards.” Cal fixed his father with a glower. “I know how it is hiring yourself out. I did my share of that before the rodeo paid off. You wind up going from pillar to post, taking jobs when and where you can find them. You’d never stay put long enough to get tests done.”
“So I’m supposed to hang around here and do exactly what?”
“You can work for me.”
Lauren’s eyes widened in surprise. Judging by Cal’s expression, she’d bet he’d surprised himself too.
Zane scowled. “I didn’t come here looking for charity.”
“Good, cuz you’d be sucking on the wrong teat for that.” Cal beetled his brows fiercely, and Lauren had to cough to cover a laugh. They were so alike. “You’ll stay until you have a clean bill of health,” he said. “That’s the only condition on which I’ll accept your fat little atonement check. You can work if you want to or kick back and rest. Makes no difference.”
Zane drew breath in through clenched teeth. “You’re a mean-spirited man. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“Yeah, well, I learned from a master.”
“Hell.” The older man lifted his left hand and dragged the back of his thumb across his eyebrow. Lauren goggled at the familiar gesture. “Okay, you got a deal. I’m your flunky until Doc here can get the tests done.”
“Good,” said Cal.
“Good,” said Zane.
Really good, thought Lauren.
“This one needs to see the farrier, I think.”
Cal lowered the bay’s hind foot he’d just finished dressing. Giving the filly a scratch on the rump, he stepped around her to peer into the next stall where Lauren crouched next to a wiry little mustang. “That left front hoof again?”
“Vertical shear about an inch to the outside of the toe.”
“Yeah, it’s been a devil to fix. Said he’d try a composite repair next time, maybe cover it with Kevlar.”
