Rocky Mountain Cowboy (36 page)

Jenny admired her friend’s style as she watched Brad signal the waiter, then ask for a cup of coffee. “Having a late lunch or going home for the day?” she inquired
simply to be polite.

“I have an office upstairs,” he informed her, nodding to the second floor. “I saw you down here looking too beautiful to pass by.” His eyes settled exclusively on Jenny. “You really shouldn’t be such a stranger.”

“We’ve been busy at the ranch.”

He smiled and nodded, then turned to Becky. “Would you mind if I had a word alone with Jenny. I promise I won’t keep her long or take too much time.”

His request was delivered with utmost courtesy, but Becky raised her eyebrow in reproach, then looked to her friend. “Would you mind if he had a word alone with you?”

Jenny sighed. “No, not if you don’t mind, Becky. We will only be a few minutes,” she added pointedly, casting Brad a look that told him she’d only tolerate his interruption for a little bit.

“Okay, I’ll go across the street to the florist. I want to pick up some flowers.”

After she left, Brad scooted closer to her. “I’m sorry if that was rude of me, but I’ve been desperate to get a few minutes of your time, alone.” When the waiter brought his coffee, he stirred sugar and cream into it.

Jenny resigned herself to hearing what he had to say. “What is it you wanted to talk to me about Brad?” she prompted him. “Please feel free to get right to the point.”

He watched her closely as he drank his coffee. “Okay,” he stated with a quick grin. “To the point. You
r dad’s ranch is drowning financially. I’m sure the fire was the last straw. Are you aware that Hawk has left the loan payments to the last minute. The loan people at the bank aren’t feeling too inclined to grant any more money for a new barn or any other unanticipated operating expenses. In fact, they’re more likely to start foreclosure on the ranch and repossess that new hay baler. They’ve tried to give him a break because of your father’s sudden death and all the expense that must have entailed, but I think their patience with him has evaporated.”

Jenny wanted so badly to ask who
they
were.
They
was undoubtedly
him
.

Her silence encouraged him to continue. “There’s a couple of ways you could get out of this. You can get Hawk to sell some of his land, enough to pay off his debts and rebuild his barn.”

“Grazing pastures in themselves aren’t worth that much,” Jenny inserted, knowing where this was going. “Not unless they have some development value.”

“No, of course, not,” he agreed eagerly. “But if you get him to sell me that bit of land up by the hot springs, he’d have more than enough to pay off his debt, rebuild his barn, and probably buy out the interest in the place Tom left you.” He studied her for a long moment. “It’s a reasonable solution, a sensible one, Jenny.”

“Hawk won’t sell that section of pasture. He needs the grazing land and the water rights.”

“Not really, not as long as his federal lease land is used. That northwest section of pasture is just back up for him. He hasn’t put a cow on it yet.”

“Well, I don’t know about what he’s done, just what he wants to do in the future.”

“Oh come on, Jenny, he doesn’t want to sell that land because I’m the one who wants to buy it. He’d probably be willing to sell it to anyone else.”

“I don’t think so.”

Brad lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. “Well, then the man is a fool. He
needs to cover his debts. And selling land is one way to do that. He doesn’t have any other options. He hasn’t made any arrangements to compensate you for your half interest in the ranch, has he?”

“No, but he’s been....”

“Unable to manage the place since your dad died,” he interrupted. “Tom kept that place solvent and profitable, not Hawk. Haven’t you been able to see how much trouble he has handling it alone?” He didn’t wait for her to give him an answer. “Tom should never have taken him on as a partner. Hawk didn’t buy into the ranch. He’s put some money into it, but not the equivalent of fifty percent of the value. He got a sweet deal out of your father. Hell, I’ve always thought Larson took advantage of Tom.”

If a person didn’t know Hawk, they might think Brad was correct. Jenny might have thought he made sense had he told her this before she got to know her father’s ex-partner, but after seeing how much labor and devotion Hawk put into the ranch, she knew he hadn’t taken advantage of Tom. Besides, she knew how much her dad had loved and trusted Hawk.”

“Brad, I....” she started to argue.

He forestalled
her with a raised hand. “Don’t dismiss this, Jenny.” She had the feeling he was getting increasingly desperate to get her cooperation. His eyes were narrowed with intensity. “I’m a lawyer, and I think you need to seriously consider suing Hawk for misconduct. Looking at this legally, you have a good case against him. He hasn’t kept the fences in good repair. He’s left valuable equipment in the fields, unprotected. He’s let nearly fifty head of cattle wander off, and now it appears he might have set fire to his barn to collect the insurance money. That’s actually a lot more than poor management. It could be fraud. I’ll bet he hasn’t paid you a dime and never will, either. Peter was correct. If you don’t get an attorney to represent you, you’ll lose everything.”

Jenny had a moment of inspiration and smiled at the man next to her. “You may
be right, Brad. I think I will get an attorney to help me with this.” Still smiling, she touched his hand. “I hope you don’t mind if it’s not you. You do have a conflict of interest on this.”

He looked surprised and completely caught off-guard by her
sudden agreement. In fact, he was speechless, at least until his sister entered the dining room. She waved to him, and he rolled his eyes, obviously unhappy to see her.

“Well, hello, Miss Fletcher— brother dear,” Cindy said sarcastically as she stopped at their table. “Are we plotting Hawk’s demise and downfall again?” The woman raised a delicate eyebrow as she turned her full attention on Jenny. “Actually, I’m a bit surprised, Miss Fletcher. I thought you and Hawk were getting downright cozy living together in that big old house. Guess not, if you’re here plotting with my charming brother.”

Jenny gave the woman a hostile look.

“What do you want, Cindy?” Brad asked his sister curtly.

“A ride home, darling,” she told him, resting a well-manicured hand on his shoulder. “My original ride seems to have disappeared.”

“Wait for me at the bar, then.”

“Don’t be too long,” she warned him with a false smile. Becky walked up to the table, carrying a large bouquet of flowers. Cindy turned to greet her. “Well, if it isn’t the blushing bride. How’s married life, Mrs. Richards?”

“Great! You ought to try it before time passes you by.” Becky made the cut with such a sweet smile on her face, it hardly seemed like the insult it was. “Are you ready, Jenny? We really need to run.”

“Definitely.” She reached for her packages, then turned to Brad. “Good-bye, Brad… Cindy.”

She and Becky walked away from the table biting their lower lips to keep from giggling. Not looking where she was going, Jenny ran straight into Steve Walker. He looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him. It had been four days since Hawk had fired him. This was the first she had seen him since the incident with her horse. She said hello.

“How’s your shoulder?” he asked her.

“A little black and blue. No broken bones, thankfully.”

“I’m sorry....”

Jenny held up a hand. “Forget it. I don’t blame you. My horse was pretty strung out after that long ride from L.A.” She wasn’t going to apologize for his unemployment, though. That was between him and Hawk. She didn’t know him that well, not as well as the men he had worked with at the ranch. Both Eli and Hank had been glad to see him leave, so she figured they must have had some legitimate concerns about him because they were both fair men, not prone to narrow-minded judgments.

“How’s your horse? Dark Shadow, isn’t it?”

“Yes.
Now that he’s settled down, he seems to like it here. He’s mountain trail trained, so I know he’s going to love it more once we go for a long trail ride.”

“Steve!” Cindy called out to him and waved. “Come have a drink
with me before I leave.”

Steve glanced at the blonde woman, then back to Jenny. “Take care of yourself. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again, soon, huh?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Jenny lifted her hand in a tiny wave as he headed to the bar where Cindy and her brother were now sitting.

“Looks like another notch in Cindy’s belt,” Becky remarked, turning toward the door with Jenny. “That woman just irritates the crap out of me.”

“She dated Scott at one time, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Becky snapped. “When he had no taste at all, of course.”

Jenny laughed. “I have a feeling Steve Walker is more than just Cindy’s latest conquest, though.”

She looked back thoughtfully at the restaurant they’d just left. It occurred to her that it might be worth Hawk’s time to ask the sheriff to run a check on Steve’s background. If the wrangler had been working for Caldwell all along, causing the damage they’d experienced, he might have a prior criminal record. If they found fingerprints off the gasoline can and could match them with Steve’s, they might be able to prove a direct connection to Brad.

Jenny kept thinking about what Brad had said.
If you don’t get an attorney to represent you, you’ll lose everything.
She did feel that she and Hawk were on the verge of losing everything, and that she needed Jack Higgins’ help to make sure they didn’t. Jack was their financial advisor as well as their attorney. The partnership papers hadn’t been signed yet, and if she went to the bank to conduct ranch business, they might tell her she didn’t have the authorization. She had been worried about that. But Jack had the authorization, as their attorney, to transact business with the bank in the name of the Bar F/Bar L. Couldn’t she just give him the money to do what she felt needed to be done?

She agonized over the decision to do what Hawk didn’t want her to do for the rest of the day. She tried to understand his position. The problems at the ranch had begun before she’d arrived, and he didn’t want her burdened with them. And she knew he felt responsible for their very existence because Brad was
his
adversary;
his
enemy. She also understood that he was worried about her safety if she got caught up in his problems with Brad. She didn’t think she was or would be in any danger, but Hawk certainly knew Brad better than she did.

She admired Hawk for trying to meet his obligations to her and to the ranch. His
strong sense of responsibility made him the man he was, the man she had come to love, but it was also making him inflexible and damn unreasonable. His determination to correct the problems by himself was jeopardizing her home and his.

Later that evening, after eating dinner with Hank and Eli in the bunkhouse, she called Jack Higgins at home and told him what she wanted to do. She made an appointment to meet him at his office the next day to work out all the details. She
informed him that she wanted all the transactions completed before Hawk returned from his latest hunting excursion.

In the her father’s office, she retrieved the loan payment coupon books from the desk drawer, double checking to make sure Hawk hadn’t made a recent payment she was unaware of. All night she was plagued by feelings of guilt. She was breaking her word to Hawk. He was going to be furious with her. But she had given him time, and that’s really all she had promised. How much longer could they wait?
According to Brad, the bank was close to starting foreclosure and repossession proceedings. Time had nearly run out. She’d just have to make Hawk understand that is was time he let her help him out of this mess.

∞∞∞

“I’m really glad you and Hawk decided to get those loans caught up and paid off,” Jack Higgins told Jenny as they returned from the bank on Thursday morning. “I was getting plenty worried about how much more patient those folks would be. I talked them into giving Hawk more time after Tom’s death, but with Caldwell at the helm, I knew there would be a limit to their kindheartedness.”

“Thank you for all you’ve done.”

Jack didn’t know Hawk wasn’t in favor of what
Jenny had just done. Her deception didn’t sit well with her, but she was happy about getting one loan caught up, paying off the other, and putting money into the account to rebuild the barn. Brad had just been defanged, even though he probably wouldn’t know it for a day or two. His threat to their home had been removed and that helped alleviate her guilt somewhat.

“Will you come up for a cup of coffee?” the attorney asked when they got to his
office building. Since it happened to be in the same location where Brad Caldwell also had an office, she declined. She didn’t think it was wise to tempt fate too much by risking the possibility of running into the man.

“I think I’ll pass, Jack. Hawk is due home this afternoon.”

“Well, good. He’s been gone so much. You two are still coming in to sign those papers tomorrow, aren’t you?”