“With a function of this scope and size, you can’t plan too far ahead.” He glared at her for a half-second then shook his head with a kind of disgust. “You don’t have the first clue about this type of event. You should be thanking Tara for her assistance instead of resenting it.”
“Maybe I would if I knew just why she was so eager to offer it.”
His head came up, his gaze fixing itself on her once again. “Good god, Jessy, you aren’t jealous, are you? In case you’ve forgotten, I’m not married to her anymore.”
“I know it, and you know it, but it seems to have totally slipped her mind.”
“The divorce was final nearly eight years ago. Isn’t it time we all put the past behind us?” he argued. “Or would you rather that we were bitter enemies?”
“I would feel safer if you were.” Jessy turned thoughtful. “I don’t know what her game is, but she won’t win.”
Out in the hallway, Tara straightened away from the hall door to the master bedroom, her lips curving in a knowing smile. “Oh, won’t I?” she murmured in response to Jessy’s last remark. “But it won’t be the way you think.”
Still, there were troubled waters that needed to be smoothed. It was something that needed to be handled sooner rather than later.
Her opportunity came yet that evening. As always, they gathered after dinner in the den, long the heart of the Triple C. The room was dominated by a cavernous stone fireplace, crowned with the wide-sweeping horns of a longhorn steer mounted above the mantelpiece.
Chase Calder occupied his customary place, the chair behind the big desk. On the wall, just beyond his shoulder, hung a framed map, yellowed with age, its lines hand-drawn, delineating the wide-reaching boundaries of the Triple C.
Ty was by the fireplace, a shoulder leaning against the wooden mantel, his stance loose and relaxed as he idly sipped at a glass of bourbon and water. Reclining on the age-softened leather couch, Tara held her wineglass by its stem and swirled the fine port it held. Dressed in a black cashmere sweater and matching slacks, she wore her hair down in a softly rumpled style. In addition to the black opal ring that never left her finger, her only other concession to jewelry was a strand of baroque pearls interspersed with long onyx beads. She fingered them absently as her gaze strayed to the map on the wall, only half interested in Noah’s discourse on the merits of some new coolant system.
“It costs more, but it should save you money in the long run. I have some brochures on it upstairs. I’ll go get them,” the architect said, rising from the wing-back chair in front of the desk. “That way you can look them over and let me know in a few days if you want to go that route.”
As he exited the den, Jessy walked in, a twin on each hip. “We just finished our baths. I thought we would come in and say good night before we headed off to bed.”
Young, dark-haired Trey spotted his father by the fireplace and immediately stretched out his arms, babbling excitedly, “Da da da da.”
Leaving his drink glass on the mantel, Ty walked over to take the wiggling toddler from Jessy’s arm. Rising, Tara slipped her wineglass onto the coffee table and glided across the room to claim the tow-haired girl.
“Aren’t you the precious one.” Tara lifted the child into her arms with an effortless ease. “Look at all those beautiful golden curls.”
But little Laura had eyes only for one thing—the pearls around Tara’s neck. Her fingers fastened around them with greedy quickness.
“Laura, no.” But Jessy’s protest came too late.
Tara laughed. “It’s all right,” she insisted and cooed to the child, “It’s a smart girl who knows her jewelry.”
“Maybe, but she’s teething.” Jessy stepped forward to rescue the necklace from her daughter, but not before Laura managed to get them in her mouth. “I better take her,” Jessy said after she managed to extricate the necklace from her daughter’s grasp. When Laura was safely in her arms again, she apologized, “I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”
“No harm done,” Tara assured her. “Besides, just think—when she grows up, she can brag that she cut her teeth on pearls.”
Unimpressed, Jessy smiled a nonanswer. “Come on, Trey.” She reached for her son. “Time for bed.”
“Wait.” Tara held up a detaining hand. “Before you go, I just want to thank you—all of you”—she included Chase in her sweeping glance—“for letting me help in the planning for all this.”
Jessy couldn’t recall being given a choice, but she refrained from saying so.
“It’s meant more to me than you can possibly know,” she went on. “After Daddy died, I was completely lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. My life seemed totally without purpose. If it wasn’t for that chance remark Ty made when he came for the funeral—” Pausing, Tara gave him a misty-eyed look that Jessy didn’t believe for one minute. “But he did, thankfully. Because I needed the work—the challenge of a project like this.” She paused again to shift her focus to Jessy. “Heaven knows, it’s been an awkward situation at times, considering I am the ex–Mrs. Calder, but I will always be grateful that you have been magnanimous enough to look past that. We do all want the same thing—for this auction to be a huge success.”
And Tara was going to be there, claiming her share of the glory for it—if not all of the glory—while Jessy stood on the sidelines, completely eclipsed by her husband’s first wife. Tara clearly had a need to show how inferior Jessy was. It was obviously an ego thing, childish and silly, something to be ignored. Except, it was also a matter of pride. Jessy had never bowed her head to any man; she wasn’t about to bow it to a woman—and never to Tara.
Chapter Seven
A
blustery wind came out of the north, a nip in its breath that signaled the approach of winter. In the open plains, there were no trees to break it, only the occasional cutbank or coulee. But there were none in sight at the spot of the Wolf Meadow gather.
The wind rolled, unchecked, across the herd of red-coated Herefords, held closely bunched by a circle of riders. Bawling their discontent, the cattle milled in confusion, the thick grass underfoot muffling the thuddings of their hooves. The sound underscored the rolling snorts of horses, the creaking saddle leather, the jangle of spurs, and the chomp of bridle bits.
From his vantage point on a crest of the plain, Ty looked on while a pair of riders walked their horses into the herd, quietly working in tandem to single out a cow that had been deemed too old to be productive.
Fall roundup was the time when the herd was culled of the old, the infirm, and the inferior stock, as well as the occasional steer that had escaped the spring gather. After the cull was finished, the herd was reevaluated to determine whether the numbers needed to be further reduced.
In a good year, the range could winter over only a certain number of cattle. During a bad year, that number was reduced, sometimes sharply. And the year’s scant rainfall qualified it as one that had been considerably less than good.
Ty’s thoughts weren’t on that, however. At the moment, his attention was focused on the long, slender rider working the cut, her honey-gold hair hanging down her back in a single braid. Jessy sat deep and easy in the saddle, balanced and ready for any dip or spin her cat-quick horse made as it worked to separate the cow from the herd and frustrate its every attempt to rejoin it.
Suddenly an animal on the outer circle made a break from the herd and bolted for the open grassland beyond it. Immediately a pair of flanking riders gave chase.
Ty felt the light pressure of a small, gloved hand on his arm. “Ty look,” Tara said, her voice low and musical. “It’s Noah.” She nodded to one of the riders giving chase, his arms flapping like a chicken as he raced his horse after it. “He’s having the time of his life.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t go airborne with all that wing flapping,” Ty remarked dryly.
Tara’s amused laugh had a low and throaty sound, innately sensual. “His horsemanship does leave something to be desired. But you have to admit, he has been positively enthralled by all this.”
“City boys usually are. Give him a few more hours, and he’ll discover that there is a lot more sweat and grime than glamour.”
“You used to be a city boy.”
His mouth quirked in that hard, familiar way Tara remembered. “Not anymore.”
“No, not anymore.” She ran her glance over the chiseled strength of his features. “This is your element. I realized that the first time I saw you here at the ranch. That was during roundup, too. Remember?”
“I remember.” He nodded. “But that time it was spring roundup.”
“With mud everywhere,” Tara recalled. “I couldn’t put a foot down without sinking up to my ankles in it. At least this time it’s dry.”
“Too dry.” His glance made an assessing sweep of the sky, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight.
Tara glanced up as well, but not for long. The sky was huge, blue, and empty, like all the rest of this land. Suffocatingly so, in her opinion, but she didn’t voice that.
“I know you need rain, but I confess, I greatly appreciate the sunshine this morning.”
“I imagine you do.” His mouth crooked in an absent smile.
The continued briefness of his answers was irritating, indicating, as they did, that she had only half of his attention. The rest was centered on those damned cattle.
Tara let the silence stretch between them for a while, and chose her next subject with care. “This area,” she began on a curious note, “isn’t this part of the land that you’re seeking to gain title to?”
His dark gaze pinned her, sharp and probing. “How did you know that?”
Tara smiled that enigmatic smile he knew so well. “Surely you haven’t forgotten, Ty, that I lived on this ranch for a while, too.”
He relented a little. “You never seemed that interested in the ranch.”
“I was always interested, Ty. Too often, though, that interest ran at cross-purposes with yours—or your father’s.”
There was too much truth in that for Ty to deny—not that he wanted to rehash it all again. Yet he hadn’t expected that kind of an admission from Tara.
He made a slow reassessment of her, but it was hard to see more than her dark, vibrant beauty with its porcelain skin and soft curves. Even in Western garb of black jeans, a cable knit sweater of winter white under a white woolly vest, and a flat-crowned cowboy hat, Tara managed to look the picture of stylish elegance, completely untouched by the dust and the noise and the confusion before her.
“This is the land, isn’t it,” she repeated, but this time it wasn’t so much a question as a statement.
“It is,” he confirmed.
“Have you made any progress in obtaining title?”
“We’re working on it.”
The curve of her lips lengthened. “When a Calder gives you an answer like that, it usually means you are no closer than you were before.” She slanted him a mocking look. “I speak from experience.”
“Truthfully, I couldn’t say one way or the other,” Ty replied smoothly. “Dad’s been handling that end of it. I’ve been too busy with roundup and the plans for the new facility to check on the status of things.”
“Actually I expected Chase to bring us out here this morning. He isn’t as active as he used to be.” Tara hesitated, a flicker of concern clouding her eyes. “Or am I wrong about that?”
“He’s been bothered a bit more by arthritis lately,” Ty admitted. “It goes back to the injuries he suffered in the plane crash. The doctors warned him that he would be troubled by it when he got older. Nowadays, he can’t spend much time in the saddle without a lot of pain.”
“He must hate that.”
“Almost as much as he hates doing paperwork.”
“Then he’s left most of the actual running of the ranch to you.”
“We’ve divvied up the responsibility. Or,” one corner of his mouth lifted in a dry smile, “to put it in your lingo, he’s the chairman of the board and I’m the president.”
“You make a fine president, but I always knew you would.” Tara saw the shutters close, turning his features expressionless. “Don’t go getting all aloof on me,” she chided with playful mockery. “What I said is absolutely true. Maybe we aren’t man and wife anymore, but we made a good team. We still do. This time it just happens to be a business relationship. It’s not without precedent for a Calder, you know.”
A brow arched in a puzzled question. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember that story Ruth Stanton used to tell about Lady Crawford, wife to the Earl of Dunshill, and the unique business relationship that existed between her and the first Chase Benteen Calder, your great-grandfather?”
He nodded. “I remember some of it.”
“I was always fascinated by the thought of a woman of that time period arranging government beef contracts. And lucrative ones at that, according to Ruth. Such things require skill and considerable influence.”
“I suppose.” But it wasn’t a subject that interested Ty.
Tara turned in the saddle, her expression brightening with the flash of another memory. “You know, I had almost forgotten about that old tintype I found when Cat and I were rummaging around in one of the old trunks in the attic. It was a photo of your great-great-grandmother. And I was struck by her resemblance to pictures I had seen of Lady Crawford. It made me wonder if they were the same woman.” The possibility appealed to her again. “You really should give some thought to checking it out.”
“Why?” It seemed a waste of time and energy to Ty.
Tara released another patented throaty laugh. “Darling, the press loves nothing better than delicious little skeletons in family closets. Everybody here knows that your great-great-grandmother ran off with another man when the first Chase Benteen Calder was a little boy. As scandals go, that is a tame one. But if she eventually married into the British aristocracy, that—my dear Ty—is the juicy tidbit people love to buzz about. Even if it isn’t true, you should hint at it. It will only add to the Calder legend and mystique. And that will bring people to your auction. The right people.”
“We’ll see,” was Ty’s only comment.
“You don’t like the idea. I can tell,” Tara murmured. “But I’m right.”
“You probably are.” He redirected his attention back to the gather, spotting Jessy as she returned from escorting the aged cow to the culled herd, held in a grass basin on the other side of the lower hill. A second later, his eye was caught by another rider on foot, leading a limping horse toward the picket line. Ty was quick to recognize the lanky rider as Dick Ballard. Jessy had spotted Ballard as well, and reined her horse toward him.
As Jessy pulled up beside him, Ballard pushed his hat to the back of his head and started jawing as usual. Jessy smiled at something Ballard said. Ty watched the easy interplay between the two, his own expression darkening.
“Who’s that with Jessy?” Tara asked.
“Dick Ballard. He’s worked on and off for the Triple C for years.”
Jessy took her foot out of the near stirrup, offering Ballard a lift to the picket line. He grabbed hold of the saddle horn and swung up behind her.
“Ballard,” Tara murmured thoughtfully. “I’ve heard that name before. Isn’t he the one who first suggested the idea for this auction?”
“Yes. When he isn’t working for us, he often rides cutting horses in competition for other owners or trainers. I understand that a time or two he helped out at some of these big auctions.”
“Has he seen the design for yours?”
“No.”
“Can he read blueprints?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I was thinking that if he could, it might be wise to let him take a look at them. It’s possible he might see something the rest of us have missed.” Even as she spoke, Tara was distracted by the obvious camaraderie that existed between Jessy and this man Ballard. “Jessy seems very friendly with him.”
“Like I said,” Ty replied, “he’s worked for the Triple C on and off for years.”
“Yes, you have always had a tight-knit group,” Tara recalled. It was all part of the Old West code of loyalty to the brand, something she had always found quite stifling. Yet for all the smoothness of Ty’s response, Tara detected something tight-lipped about it. It made her wonder. “Don’t you like Ballard?”
Ty shrugged his indifference toward the man. “He tends to talk a lot. Sometimes it can get on the nerves.”
A talker. Tara filed away that tidbit of information, aware that it might prove useful in the future.
Ballard rode easy behind the saddle, swaying with the horse’s slow, walking rhythm, one hand resting on a dusty thigh, the other holding the reins to his lame horse. Of necessity, their pace was slow.
“It’s good to see you back on a horse, working with the rest of us,” he remarked to Jessy.
“It feels good. I’ve missed it,” she admitted freely. “But the twins need me at home right now.”
“I’ve never met a woman yet who didn’t need a break from her kids now and then.”
“That’s what my mother said when she walked into The Homestead this morning.”
“Something tells me Grandma just wanted a chance to spoil them.”
“Probably,” Jessy agreed. “What happened to your horse?”
“I’m not sure. Either he put his foot down wrong or stepped in a hole and strained something. It doesn’t look too serious. Rest and some liniment, and he’ll be good as new in a few days.”
“I was wondering something,” Jessy began, not entirely sure what to ask or how to ask it. “How can I find out when and where there will be another big livestock auction like the kind we plan to have?”
“It shouldn’t be hard. I can make some calls and find out if you want.”
“I would appreciate it if you would.”
“Consider it done.” He paused then asked. “Why? What have you got in mind?”
“I was thinking it was time we went to one and saw for ourselves what they are all about.”
“Already worried about what you’re gonna wear, are you?” Ballard grinned, certain that Ty’s fashion plate of an ex-wife was the cause of that.
Startled, Jessy jerked her head around, slicing a look at the man behind her. “Clothes? Why on earth would I care about such a thing?”
The response was so typical of Jessy that Ballard laughed out loud. “You’re right. I should have known better. I can’t say I have seen you in a dress more than a handful of times, let alone in fancy duds.”
“My reason for wanting to attend one of these auctions is simply to see the way it’s set up, how it’s run, the way it’s organized. I want to get a head start on some of that so ours will run smoothly.” Jessy sounded half-angry, as if she resented his assumption that she would be concerned about something as frivolous as clothes.