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Authors: Claire McEwen

Tags: #romance, #Contemporary, #Western, #Fiction

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BOOK: Convincing the Rancher
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“So it’s not your land.”

The look he shot her was full of angst. “It’s land we’ve held the rights to. It’s land we’ve been promised we can count on for our business.”

“Well, windmills and cattle can coexist.” Tess tried to sound encouraging. “It doesn’t mean your business is ruined.”

“What do you know about that, Tess?” He turned to her then and his expression was hard, his eyes piercing. “You come out here from the city with your files and your computer and you want to tell me what my business needs? Well, I’ll tell you what it needs. Consistent access to good pasture.”

“Which I’m sure you can work out.”

“Really? And are you speaking from your vast knowledge of raising cattle? And constructing windmills?”

“There’s no need to be rude.” Her knuckles were white on the file. What she’d give to just shove him and his misdirected anger right out the door of her Jeep.

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Your project is a threat to my livelihood. A threat to my family’s business—our heritage. A heritage we created with hard work, good ranching practices and sticking up for ourselves when someone tries to push us around.”

She’d make one more attempt at rationalization, and then she really would kick him out of this car. “I think you’re seeing things in black-and-white, Slaid. It can work. It works all over Texas. It works at Altamont Pass just a few hours west of here. There are hundreds of cows grazing perfectly happily under those windmills.”

“You make it seem so simple, but you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She bristled all over but remained calm. “You are making this too personal, Slaid. The world is changing and we all have to adjust or get left behind. It’s basic economics. It’s Business 101.”

“Okay, so here are some economics for you.
If
they let me keep my lease, they’ll still kick my cattle off while they’re building the windmills. Which means I have to bring them all back to my ranch, and buy extra feed because I won’t have enough pasture. And since we’re in a massive drought and I’m already buying extra hay and water, the expense could quite possibly destroy my ranch.
That’s
Business 101, Tess. Now, I’ve got to get going. I have a lawyer to call.”

He opened the door and got out, letting the fierce wind slam it behind him. He was reflected in her rearview mirror as he stalked back to his truck, jerked open the door and got in. His engine revved and he pulled the big vehicle into a quick U-turn. It got smaller and smaller as she watched him drive away, heading back to Benson to fight the windmills.

His anger seemed to linger in the cab. Maybe the wind would blow it all away, because she didn’t want it and certainly didn’t deserve it. She rolled down the window for a quick blast of fresh air. Ugh. She’d known this gig would be a hard sell, but she hadn’t expected to end up in a personal battle with the mayor.

The anger and worry she’d seen in his face were understandable, but it didn’t give him the right to be such a condescending jerk and lash out at her. And now
she
was angry. Angry enough to work harder on this project than she’d ever worked on anything before.

The setting sun colored the jagged rocks on the hillsides a pinkish hue and cast deep shadows behind them. It was dramatic in a moonscape kind of way. She could see how windmills would change that forever. Doubt pricked at her, and she shoved it down. It wasn’t her job to care, she reminded herself. She had no opinion in this fight. She was hired to outline the various benefits to the project. And there
were
real benefits. Big ones like reliable jobs and clean energy. She’d keep her focus on those positive outcomes and work hard. If she did, Slaid would see all of his outdated arguments blown away by her own. Obliterated in a blast of high desert wind.

She rolled up the window and drove back to Benson, making a mental list of talking points that would support the wind project. It would be a big challenge, but she’d been through tough work situations before and come out on top. She’d get through this one, too.

After parking in front of the cottage, she grabbed a notebook and listed all of her ideas. Staring at the bullet points, it occurred to her that the skills she used in this job—the thick skin, the tenacity, the ability to work alone in a hostile environment—were all skills she’d honed during her disastrous childhood. They were coping skills she wished she’d never had to develop, but they certainly served her well on days like this.

Suddenly she felt tired. It had been a rough first week in Benson. Watching the last rays of sun turn the town pink and gold, she wondered what it would be like to have a different job, one that was less combative, that didn’t require her to be so tough all the time. Because on days like this, she grew weary of fighting so many battles.

Tess hit the steering wheel with her palm, jolting herself out of her self-pity. She jumped out of the car and stormed into the cottage, angrier with herself than Slaid now. Life threw all kinds of crap at people every day—she was living proof. And sitting around moaning about it didn’t help. She was lucky to have a job she was so good at. Pity parties could lead to horrible choices. Choices like the ones her parents had made when they’d decided drugs were more important than keeping custody of her. Choices like she’d made when she was sixteen and discovered drugs herself, emerging from her self-inflicted haze pregnant and more alone than ever.

She would not fall into self-pity just because the mayor of Benson was rude. Slaid Jacobs and his soon-to-be-homeless cows weren’t worth it. Tess shed clothes as she walked through the house, and by the time she was in the bedroom, all she had to do was throw on her running gear and grab her iPod. Then she was back out the front door.

She welcomed the freezing wind now. It was invigorating and cleansing, and it scoured any remaining wisps of self-pity from the hidden corners of her soul. Her mind cleared, her confidence flooded back and soon she was charging forward in the growing darkness, trusting herself to navigate the bumpy back roads of Benson. She was moving fast and on her own—just the way she liked it.

CHAPTER SIX

S
LAID STARED AT
the letter through a fog of sleep-deprived disgust. It was from the Bureau of Land Management—official notice that his grazing lease would be temporarily suspended due to the impending construction of windmills on the property. Perfect timing. He’d tossed and turned all night, emotions jumping from anger about the windmills to guilt at the way he’d laid into Tess yesterday. And now this. He slammed the mailbox and threw the letter into the cab of his truck.

Adding insult to injury, his lawyer was out of town for a few days. He knew that shouldn’t upset him; Matt was down in Los Angeles at a funeral and it just wasn’t right to be angry with someone for honoring their deceased aunt.

With the morning to himself and fury to spare, Slaid got behind the wheel and pulled his truck up to a pile of fence posts he’d purchased a few months ago. It was a good day for a sledgehammer, a posthole digger and a bunch of barbed wire. Loading the heavy wooden posts into the truck felt good. Pounding them into the ground would feel even better.

A noise had him glancing at the road that led from his ranch over a slight rise and back down to Benson. Jack Baron’s old truck appeared, rattling down the hill. Why such a rich guy drove such a beat-up old farm truck, vintage 1950s, was a mystery to Slaid, but Jack was a little quirky in his taste.

“Thanks for coming out here,” Slaid said as Jack descended from the creaky vehicle. He’d called his friend late last night, cross-eyed from staring at websites, trying to figure out how to stop the windmills. A few years ago, Jack had led a successful fight to stop a real estate development company from turning one of the most beautiful mountains outside of Benson into an enormous resort. Slaid wanted his opinion on fighting the wind farm. He just hoped that Jack’s marriage to Tess’s friend, Samantha, wouldn’t complicate things.

“Sounds as if we’ve got a problem on our hands.” Jack glanced toward the truck Slaid had been loading. “And a project. You want some help?”

“If you’ve got the time to spare, sure.” Slaid went around to the driver’s side and Jack swung up into the passenger seat.

“These windmills are going to be worse than I thought,” Jack said as they started up the gravel road that led out to Slaid’s farthest pasture. “I knew Tess was here to represent Renewable Reliance, but I had no idea their site was so close to town, or on your land.”

“Yeah, apparently she forgot to mention that.”

“She didn’t know either, Slaid. Look, I know you’re pissed. I am, too. But you’ve gotta be pissed at the right people. Tess doesn’t own that company and she doesn’t even want this job. Samantha told me her boss had to twist her arm to get her out here.”

His gut-churning guilt grew tenfold. Jack didn’t even know the worst of it—that Slaid had pressured Tess to stay in Benson when she’d wanted to go. He let out a long breath. “Yeah, I got that feeling. And I’ll bet Tess said something to Samantha about our argument yesterday. You must think I was pretty hard on her.”

“Well, she and Samantha talked on the phone a little last night. Tess mentioned that you were pretty angry, but if she was truly upset by what you said, she’d never admit it. Tess doesn’t let on much about her troubles to anyone.”

Shame combined with the guilt. “Maybe I did take things out on her.” They’d reached the old fence, its posts leaning and rotting, the wire rusted and sagging. Slaid parked the truck and cut the engine. They got out, and he tossed Jack a pair of heavy leather gloves, then pulled on a pair of his own. Once Jack unlatched the tailgate, they started pulling the posts from the back.

The talk turned to the fence for a few minutes. They pulled the most rotten section out entirely, loading the rusty wire into the truck and carrying the new posts over. Then they set to work digging out a few old posts that were still firmly cemented in the ground.

“This is crap work, you know.” Jack grinned at him over the shovel. “Don’t you usually pay someone to do this?”

Slaid slammed his shovel into the hard earth. “Just felt like a little manual labor. When I’ve got a problem to solve, a little sweat and dirt sometimes helps.”

Jack’s laugh echoed over the quiet hillside. “I know the feeling. I don’t think my ranch was ever in better shape than when Samantha showed up next door. I must have replaced half my fence line that fall. Then I got myself sucked into helping Todd with his crazy wild mustangs, and I even painted Jed and Betty’s barn for them.”

It was Slaid’s turn to laugh. “Man, you had it bad.”

They were silent for a moment, chipping away at the unyielding ground. Then Jack spoke. “So if you really want to fight this thing, we could use some outside help. Environmental groups for one. They want green energy but without migrating birds getting injured. They definitely don’t want the Sierras and the wild lands nearby covered in wind turbines.”

“Okay.” Slaid grunted as he dislodged a chunk of the old concrete with his pickax, the accomplishment giving him a flicker of satisfaction.

“And we should get the historical society on board. They can make the connection to what’s happened around here in the past.”

“You mean the water?”

“Yeah. It makes sense if we spin it right.” Jack jabbed his shovel into the loose dirt left by Slaid’s efforts. “First Southern California steals the water out of the Owens River and just about destroys the Eastern Sierra towns and ranches. Now they’re back, threatening to destroy our last untainted resource—the natural beauty that supports our tourist industry. Just so they can have more power down south.”

“How do we prove the power is going to Southern California?” Slaid asked, wiping sweat off his forehead with his sleeve.

“Because I bet when we get a good look at what this project entails, there’s gonna be a lot more power generated than they can sell around here. Trust me, most of it will be going down to LA.”

“But Renewable Reliance will just say that’s all speculation.”

Jack’s brows drew together as he considered Slaid’s point. “Well. They’ll have to answer our questions, at any rate. We’ll just hope they’ll answer them somewhat honestly.”

“Seem as if you’re saying our success might be rooted in how well we tell the story. We’ve got to get the media interested.” Slaid slammed his pickax back into the dirt. “But what if it backfires? I mean, this country needs clean energy. So how do we avoid looking like a bunch of ignorant, backward-looking people who don’t want to do our part?”

“I’m not sure.” Jack tried to wedge his shovel under the old post. “The thing is, I want wind power—in theory. I want my energy coming from a cleaner source. But do I want those windmills here in Benson? Nope.”

“I feel the same.”

“Samantha and I had an idea the other night. I don’t know if it would work for everyone, but we’re thinking of installing solar panels on our roof. Maybe this is a crazy idea, but what if everyone in town did it? We could prove that we’re not just saying no to wind power because we’re selfish. We’d be saying no because we already have our own source of clean energy.”

“Not a bad idea. It would add to that story you’re talking about spinning. A solar-powered town, threatened by windmills.” Slaid felt more hopeful than he had since Tess had shown up in his office. “What if we worked with the state for some rebates, or even a solar company for a bulk price on panels and installation?”

“It’s worth looking into,” Jack agreed.

“I really think it could be a good strategy.” Already Slaid’s thoughts were sifting through memories of everyone he’d met over the years, trying to remember if he knew anyone involved in the solar industry.

“And it might get us a win.” Jack grinned at him. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want. I can’t let this wind project happen on my watch.” Slaid set his ax down and reached into the truck bed for a shovel, using his boot to push it deep into the soil. “I think we should bring it up tonight at the city council meeting. You going?”

BOOK: Convincing the Rancher
8.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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