Knight in a White Stetson (8 page)

Dupree put up a warning hand.

“Don’t take this lightly, Calla. Dude ranches are extremely profitable. They plan to use the hot sprigs to develop some bass ponds for fishing and a spa, use the sinks for bird hunting, tear down the old buildings to make way for shops and restaurants. Very all-inclusive,” Dupree said smugly.

Calla groaned inwardly. He’d probably just learned the phrase and was trying it out on her. “Posh” was another new one. Calla knew for a fact the word
posh
had never before been uttered in Paradise. And maybe in all southern Idaho.

“Who are they?”

“I can’t say.”

Calla blinked. “You can’t say? These people are coming to my bank and talking to my banker about my place, and you can’t say?” Her voice was growing louder. She caught a glimpse of movement outside the glass door as Ruby shifted position for a better view. Ruby’s customer leaned eagerly over the teller counter, straining to see inside the office. Great, Calla thought when she saw who it was. Ida Bootsma. It’d be all over Paradise in an hour that Calla Bishop had had a fight with Dick Dupree down at the bank. Calla closed her eyes briefly and willed her hands to stop shaking.

“Listen,
Dick,
you tell these guys they can take their offer and drop it off the Paradise Bridge. I’m not turning my great-grandfather’s homestead into a dude ranch.” She rose to leave.

“Wait, Calla.” Dupree jumped to his feet, his eyes narrowed in that ancient way of moneylenders readying for battle. “You better sit down, young lady, and listen to what’s good for you. You all have been hanging by a string for years now. These guys are offering you a way out.”

“A way out?” She wanted to laugh. “Of what? My home? My legacy? My children’s future?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he chastised. “You could go back to college, finish your degree.”

“Get bent, Dupree.” She stepped back to open the office door. Ida and Ruby peered intently at Ida’s bank statement.

“Charming.” He moved to block her exit. “You always did have a smart mouth. Sit down.” He practically pushed her into her chair.

There were distinct disadvantages to doing business in a small town with old friends and relatives, Calla thought sulkily. If any big-city banker had put his hands on her, she’d have decked him. Then called a big-city lawyer.

“They’re offering a million-five.”

“It’s worth more.”

“Not in this market.”

“What about my grazing rights?”

“They don’t want ‘em. They’re not interested in running a herd. They plan to keep a few cows on hand so the tourists can run them from field to field when they get the notion.”

Calla groaned and rested her forehead on Dupree’s desk. “Poor cows.”

Dupree waited a long minute, waiting for her to squirm. She didn’t, to his exasperation. “I think you should take the money and run, Calla. You could buy a big house here in town for your daddy and Helen. You’d be free to go where you pleased.” He warmed to his subject. “Do what you please. Marry your college boy, move back East, whatever.”

“What about Lester?” Calla asked distractedly, buying time to collect her thoughts.

“Lester? Hell, Calla, I don’t know. I suppose he could get a job with the dude ranch people.”

“He’s too ugly.” Her head was spinning again. “They’re going to want pretty cowboys. I know one they’d love.”

A million and a half dollars. That was what her legacy was worth to these people. A million and a half dollars. Not a bad price, if you didn’t factor in a century’s worth of work.

“Listen, Dupree, I know you’re a little slow, so take this down.” She rose from her chair and planted her hands on the desk in front of her. “The next time your developers come into town sniffing around my ranch, tell them for me that they will get my ranch over my dead body.”

Dupree was satisfactorily nonplussed. Calla went to the office door. A thought struck her, and she turned slowly to the slack-jawed banker.

“I wonder how they found me. I’ve never seen anybody looking at my place.”

She didn’t really expect an answer. Thank God, Dupree thought as he watched her walk out the door. He looked down at his hands. He had cracked his little yellow pencil in two.

Chapter 9

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C
alla sat in the rounded, bloodred, faux leather banquette in the back of Roseanna’s Oasis and nursed her second margarita. She’d never been much for hard liquor, but the tequila, helped along with a little lime juice and Triple Sec, was going down just exactly right.

She’d been in the booth since five-thirty. It was now nearly seven. Clark would arrive any minute and she was well on her way to being drunk. Good. She hadn’t been drunk since high school graduation. She had a few things to say to Clark tonight, and she wanted to be good and juiced up before she did.

She took another swallow of her drink.

Developers. Despite the tequila, she still couldn’t get a handle on it. Developers wanted Hot Sulphur Lake Ranch. And they were willing to pay more than a million dollars for it. And Dupree wanted her to hand it over to them on a silver platter. Calla closed her hand around the frosty glass.

Well, they could just forget it.

She knew how foolish her decision was, on a financial level at least. One point five million dollars was a whole of a lot of money. It could buy freedom for, and from, Jackson and Helen and Lester. Especially Lester. She grinned briefly.

But she’d pay too great a price for that freedom, she knew. She was part of the desert homestead; more than that, it was part of her. And she’d be in her grave before she let anyone take it from her. No matter what she had to do.

“Hello, Calla. Have you been waiting long?”

She looked up at Clark’s aristocratic, office-gray face. Speaking of no matter what she had to do, here he was. “Oh, hello, Clark. Nope. Not long,” she lied. “You want a drink?”

“Sure.” He waved the waitress over. “I’ll have a Bombay Gin martini, two
green
olives, please. You gave me black olives last time. And if you still haven’t got any Bombay Gin, I’ll have Tanqueray.”

The waitress snapped her gum wearily. “Calla?” she said.

“I’ll have another margarita.” Calla suppressed a tipsy giggle. “Any kind of tequila. No olives.”

The waitress winked at her and walked back to the bar, her circa 1970s cocktail dress flouncing on her wide rear end.

“How many have you had already?” Clark eyed her suspiciously.

“Eleven. I lied before. I’ve been here since noon.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’m just kidding. Sometimes, Clark, I swear, you have no sense of humor.”

“That is not true,” he said defensively. “You know perfectly well I was a member of the Dartmouth Comedy Players.”

“I know everything about your days at Dartmouth, Clark old sod. You are an endless font of information about your days at Dartmouth.”

“Calla, you are positively hostile today. I think you should stop guzzling that drink and have a cup of coffee before you say something you’ll regret.”

“I’m about to say something I think you’ll regret.”

“What?”

Calla took a deep breath. The unfamiliar alcohol was coursing through her, making her brave. No matter what she had to do. No matter what she had to do. In the past few hours it had become a mantra. “I want to get married.”

Clark stared at her for a minute.

“Fine.”

“I mean it.”

“Fine.”

“I’m serious.” She pointed an unsteady finger at him.

“I understand that you are. I said fine.”

“Fine, what?” Calla was suddenly sure they weren’t talking about the same thing.

“Fine, I’ll marry you. I’ll have my attorney draw up the papers this week. And I’ll have to call Dad. He should be able to get an acceptable place on short notice.”

“Place for what?” Calla was dazed. They
couldn’t
be talking about the same thing. This was too easy. She was ready to
suffer
for her heritage, darn it. Maybe the suffering would come after the wedding. Probably, it would.

“A place for the ceremony. Roomy enough for my fraternity brothers, but not too ostentatious. In Westport, of course. Westport is where the Franklins got married. Remember that? Oh, no, you didn’t go.”

“I wasn’t invited to the Franklins’ wedding.”

“That’s right. Well, you would have hated it. Very elegant.”

Calla was quickly sobering under his officious manner. “Thanks.”

“And we’ll have to get a stationer. Back East, of course. I’ll have my secretary look into that.”

“A stationer? For what?”

“For invitations,” he said with exaggerated slowness. “And we’ll need note cards and place cards. Try to keep up.”

Calla took a swallow of her melting margarita. “Sorry,” she mumbled. No matter what she had to do. No matter what she had to do.

Clark kept ticking off his fingers items from his invisible list. “A caterer. Let’s see. Who catered the banquet we had for Sherm Spence when he got his seat on the town council? Oh—” Clark snapped his fingers. Calla jumped. “Renaissance. That’s right. Oh, they were great. Very understated. And we’ll need a wine captain.”

“I thought we’d get married at home.” Calla said into her glass.

“Home?” Clark looked at her blankly.

“Home. The ranch.”

He burst out laughing. “Calla, please. Be serious. I couldn’t possibly invite my friends to the ranch. At least not until it’s fixed up. Half of them don’t even know where Idaho is, for God’s sake. Now—” he dismissed her “—what about music? I think a nice string quartet for the ceremony and then maybe a jazz ensemble for the reception. I realize we’ll have to look around. I’m sure your father doesn’t want to pay through the nose just for music.”

Calla blinked several times in pure astonishment. “You want … my father to pay for all this?”

He tweaked her on the cheek. “Of course, Calla. It’s traditional that the bride’s father pay for the wedding.” He looked at her. “Surely you don’t expect my father to pay for it?”

“I didn’t … I don’t expect to have a big wedding. I hate big weddings.”

“Figures.” He gaze became distant. Calla had the distinct, inebriated impression he could see all the way to Connecticut from the booth at the Oasis. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to do this right, Calla. It’s expected. I’ve already made enough of a spectacle of myself flying out here every other day for the past thirteen months.”

“Three months,” Calla corrected glumly. “You started coining out three months ago. You said we weren’t serious enough for you to come out thirteen months ago.”

“And I was right. It would have been foolish. Now, normally, we’d need a year to plan the wedding, but I think we can forgo…”

“A year?” Calla nearly choked on the last of her third margarita. Her balloon payment was due in a few months. Oh. Lord, what was she getting herself into? She looked up gratefully as Virginia, the waitress with the flounce, hurried over with another drink.

“Sorry, Bart, no Bombay, no Tanqueray. You want something else?” She set Calla’s perfectly made margarita on the table and swept away the empty glass.

“It’s Clark. And no, thank you.” He eyed the margarita glass critically. “I’m not sure the glasses in here are altogether clean, anyway.”

Virginia shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She flounced back to the bar and leaned over the laminate top to whisper something into the barman’s ear. The barman laughed uproariously, Virginia giggled behind her hand.

“I hate this town,” Clark said wearily. He eyed Calla’s lime-colored drink.

“What kind of papers?”

“What?”

“What kind of papers does your lawyer have to draw up?”

“Prenup. Standard stuff.”

”
Prenup
?”

“A prenuptial agreement.”

Calla felt sure she was drunk now. A prenuptial agreement. It sounded like something from the movies. She tried to clear the tequila cobwebs from her brain.

“I don’t understand,” she said thickly.

“Calla, look, don’t worry. It’s very standard stuff. Every married couple I know has a prenuptial agreement. You really can’t get married in the nineties without one.”

“I don’t know any married couples with a prenuptial agreement.”

“Well,” he snorted, “you don’t know many people at all, do you?”

Calla took another sip of her drink. “You’ve got a little bit of snot hanging right there,” Calla said, touching her right nostril.

Clark took out a monogrammed handkerchief and rubbed vigorously at his nose. “Thank you. Look, don’t worry about the prenup. It’ll be fine. You have assets to protect and so do I. It’s really the only sensible thing to do. And you’ve always been a very sensible girl, Calla.”

Calla watched him stuff the handkerchief back in his pocket. She’d always thought it was charming and old-fashioned that Clark carried a handkerchief. In her present state, though, things looked somehow different. Not that it mattered.

She’d save the ranch, for Benny and her mother and all the people stretching back a hundred years and forward a hundred more. No matter what she had to do.

* * *

Henry watched the man climb slowly from the rented Jeep Grand Cherokee. He looked a long time at Henry, then held both his hands up, palms forward, and took careful, slow steps toward the tent. Henry relaxed his grip on the rifle and watched him in amusement.

“Dammit, Pete. What are you doing? You look like a hostage.”

“I don’t know how mad you still are, Mitch,” the man said. “I just don’t want to take any chances.” He started to lower his hands to his side.

“Good thinking. I’m still mad. Keep ‘em where I can see ‘em.”

Henry regarded the smaller man. The obviously new designer blue jeans and denim shirt were pressed to within an inch of their lives. His pointy-toed boots were ostrich skin, and he reeked of a scent Henry recognized as the latest in Western-wanna-be cologne.

“You look ridiculous,” Henry said, shaking his head. He settled the rifle against the outer wall of the tent, resigned to unwanted company.

“I thought I looked great. I blend.”

“Blend, hell. You walk into Paradise looking like that and they’ll think you’ve come to town to open a gay bar.”

The man looked down at himself in some consternation. “I was told this was the latest look.” He fingered the little coyote-shaped clip on his shiny bolo tie.

“Maybe in Santa Fe or Malibu. We’re a little behind the fashion times out here, Pete.”

Pete gave Henry a once-over, taking in the taller man’s dusty Wranglers, yoked work shirt and scuffed boots. “I can see that.”

“What are you doing here, Pete? How did you find me?”

“Mitch, come on. Offer me a beer or something. I’ve been driving all over hell and back on this godforsaken mountain for six hours.” He looked over his shoulder at the dusty Jeep. “I can’t believe these roads. How do people survive out here?”

Henry shrugged. “The roads weren’t meant for vehicles. They’re mostly sheep and cattle trails. I expect people travel by horseback out this far most of the time.”

“Well, they do have tax levies in this state, don’t they? Why don’t they fix the damn roads so normal people could drive on them?”

Henry walked into the tent and reappeared with two beers from his cooler. “Now, why in the world would they want normal people up here, Pete? Normal people have ruined the world.”

“Oh, no. Not this again.” Pete took the cold beer and popped the top. He took a long, grateful swallow. Henry watched him carefully.

“Why are you here?” Henry repeated.

“You gotta come back, Mitch.”

“The hell I do.” Henry sat heavily in the little canvas camp chair he’d set in front of the tent. He motioned to a rock. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks. Lovely accommodations you got here, Mitch.”

“Not plush, I’ll admit.” Henry swept an assessing gaze at the two tents and the small post-and-pole corral that served as the Two Creek Camp. They were snuggled low under a clump of scrub trees—the only trees around for miles—that were watered from a little spring that seeped up from the ground and lightly dampened the earth for a hundred feet around. The tents overlooked a valley where two tiny creeks met and formed a bubbling stream that eventually ran into a larger stream down the mountain. Henry could see the peaks of the Owyhees of northern Nevada from his chair. “But it has a nice view.”

“True. Very fine.” The two men gazed across the wide valleys stretching hazily beyond them for a moment. “I’m here to warn you, Mitch. Campbell picked up some noise about you.”

“What kind of noise?”

“Our Haitian pals want to know if you’ve stopped working on the formula.”

“I didn’t know they were paying such close attention.” Henry swigged his beer casually.

“Don’t be an idiot, Mitch. You haven’t been out of the field that long. Surely the past two months away from the lab haven’t rotted your brain completely?”

“What did Frank have to say about it?”

“He wants you to come back inside. We can’t protect you out here.”