Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (9 page)

Coming up with sixty five thousand dollars is much easier said than said than done. Charlie spent two weeks doing the best he could to turn what he considered expendable assets into cash. That raised ten grand. He had no option but to start selling some of the horses – but which ones? And to who?

Uncertain of his own ability to price his horses fairly, he called Wyatt Roderigurez and asked for a favor. “I need you to come out here and help me figure out who gets sold and for how much,” Charlie said. “You know and I know that pricing horses is a tricky game, and no one around here is going to take my word on what they’re worth. But if you’ll put your numbers on them, people will respect that.”

Wyatt laughed. “Or at least they won’t try to beat you up so bad.” He grew serious. “You’re in a tough situation, son. I wouldn’t want to be in your boots. But you’re a good kid, and you’ve treated me right. I’ll come out and give you a hand. This one time, for no charge, all right?”

“Thank you!” Charlie said. “Thank you so much.”

Wyatt arrived the next day, with a calculator in one hand and his cell phone in the other. “I’m old fashioned,” he grinned. “Give me one device just for figuring, and one for making deals.”

“No multi-tasking for you?”

The older man snorted. “I do things the way I know how to do them. Why make things complicated?”

Charlie laughed. “You want to go up and look at the young ones first, or how do we want to do this?”

“Before we go up there, I want to ask you a question,” Wyatt said. “Are you sure selling stock is how you want to handle this? Maybe you could borrow the money from your folks? Go to the bank?”

“I tried the bank,” Charlie said. “And since I need the money for tax debt, they can’t help me. And since the tax debt is there, they can’t lend me money for anything else. So that’s a dead end,” Charlie said. “And if I absolutely max out my credit cards, we’re only looking at a few thousand dollars.”

Wyatt raised an eyebrow.

“That’s how I’ve been covering grain and paying the vet,” Charlie explained.

“It’s hard to get a ranch going,” Wyatt agreed. “Aren’t you maybe better off selling the whole spread and washing your hands of it?”

“I thought about that,” Charlie lied. “But it’s the only family place our family’s got. My brother’s fixing on coming out here when he’s done with the army. And…”

“And what?” Wyatt prompted, after several seconds went by.

“And for the first time in my life when I came out here, I felt like I was coming home,” Charlie said. “We never spent any time here when we were kids – Army brats, you know? – but being here?” He shook his head. “If I belong anywhere, really, this is probably the place.”

Much to Charlie’s surprise, Wyatt nodded. “I can respect that.” He walked along the fence line, stopping in front of the corral Bad Ass shared with his favorite companion, a fat little pony named Horace. “When a man finds where he is supposed to be, he is willing to go to great lengths to stay there.”

Charlie nodded. “I know I can make this place work.” He sighed. “If I can manage to hold onto it, that is.”

“Well, let’s talk numbers,” Wyatt said. “I’m here to tell you some bad news. Most of your herd – well, it’s nice, but it’s not proven. If somebody bought those horses from you, they’d be buying based on potential. And the price on potential – well, let’s just say it goes down when people know you’re in a hurry.”

Charlie nodded slowly. “I can see that.”

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. You stay in ranching long enough, and you’re going to have opportunities to pick up stock for pennies on the dollar when folks hit hard times. That’s how things go.” Wyatt kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. “You can choose to take advantage of those opportunities, but doing so? Well, it says something about who you are.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“You’ve got one horse with real value, and that’s this one.” Wyatt said, nodding toward Bad Ass. “He’s got enough of a reputation that people are willing to pay your stud fees –which we set at the fairly high end of things.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to book enough dates for him in the next two weeks to raise sixty grand,” Charlie said.

“Too bad for Bad Ass,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “That’d be the best two weeks of his life, right there.”

Charlie laughed. “It would probably kill him.”

“It would definitely kill me,” Wyatt agreed. “But what a way to go!” He paused for a long moment, and then said, “I can offer you fifty grand for him. And I know you’re thinking it’s a bad idea to sell off the only horse I just told you has any value.”

“That had occurred to me, yes,” Charlie said, nodding.

“But it makes good business sense, and let me explain to you why.” Wyatt pointed out to the far corral, where the majority of Charlie’s herd was grazing. “How many of them are pregnant out there? Nine? Ten?”

“Eight,” Charlie said, “and I think MissyLou is getting ready to try.”

“So if you get rid of those eight – let’s say nine – horses, that’s eighteen you’re going to need to replace,” Wyatt said. “And it’s always more expensive to replace a horse than it is just to add another one to the herd.”

Wyatt looked directly at Charlie. “If you sell me Bad Ass, that’s one horse you’ve got to replace. One, instead of eighteen. You’re already seventeen horses ahead. And half of them are Bad Ass’s babies, which means they’re very likely to be good performers in the ring. That means steady cash for you, plus prize money, plus who knows? In five, six years, they might be standing stud just like their Daddy.”

Charlie thought about it. “Can you give me sixty grand for him?”

Wyatt shook his head. “I wish I could. But it’s a fair price. You can ask anyone, and if someone’s willing to give you more, I say take it. But I’m here now, and I know you, and I know the horse, and I’ve got the cash.”

“Do I have ten grand in horses out there?” Charlie asked, nodding toward the field.

“Yeah,” Wyatt sighed. “Not to me, but you do. It would mean gutting your herd, for way less than it’s worth, and I don’t know if you could come back and rebuild with the handful of horses you’d have left. But you could do it.”

“You’re willing to wait to take delivery until Bad Ass has a chance to visit with MissyLou?”

Wyatt smiled. “I could do that.”

“I’ll just have to find that other ten grand somewhere else,” Charlie said. He stuck out his hand. “Nice doing business with you, Wyatt.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

“He screwed you!” Matthew shouted. “I know he did. I can tell, just from the things you’re saying to me that he said to you.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “Matthew, that’s not true.” He’d gone online and researched rough stock prices pretty intently after making the deal with Wyatt; fifty grand for a horse of Bad Ass’ age, condition and character was a reasonable offer.

“I think he did.” Matthew sighed. “I was hoping you’d get all the money you needed from selling that one horse.”

“That would have been nice,” Charlie said. “But that’s not what happened.”

“I don’t know about all this bullshit about the rest of the horses not being worth anything,” Matthew continued. “There’s what? 35 horses there? At $500 bucks apiece, you’d have more than enough money.”

“And then I’d have no herd,” Charlie said. “No stock is, for all intent and  purposes, is the same as having no ranch. If we’re going to go that route, I might as well just sell the ranch.”

“Maybe we should,” Matthew suggested. “That was the original plan. Ranching’s a tough way to make money, as far as I can tell. Rough stock doesn’t seem like it’s particularly profitable. If you have a superstar horse, then yeah, you can have a good thing going. But what if you don’t?”

Charlie closed his eyes and counted to ten before responding to his brother. “There are plenty of ranches in this part that make a good solid living raising rough stock without ever once producing a superstar horse.”

“Who’s interested in a good solid living?” Matthew shot back. “The only reason to put up with all the hassle and headache of ranching is if it’s going to make you rich.”

“Money’s not really the issue here,” Charlie said.

“What do you mean, money’s not the issue?” his older brother exploded. “Money is absolutely, positively, completely the issue.”

“I’m not going into ranching to get rich,” Charlie said. “You need to understand that. I’m doing this because I need to do it.” He took a deep breath. “If you’re making all your decisions based on the almighty dollar, I feel sorry for you, Matt. I don’t do things that way.”

There was a long and weighty silence. “Well, maybe you should start,” Matthew eventually replied. “You think life is so easy and you can go along without really worrying about anything. But one of these days, you’ll get tangled up with someone and realize things aren’t so simple after all.”

“Ma--”

“Then you’ll see how important money is,” Matthew cut him off. “Then you’ll wish you’d planned a little bit for your future. Created a little security for yourself.”

“It doesn’t sound like all your security is making you particularly happy,” Charlie said.

This time the silence was longer. Charlie pressed the phone up against his ear and listened intently. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it sounded like his older brother was crying.

“Matt? Are you all right?”

The pause continued a few seconds later, and then Matthew was back. “Nothing. It’s all good.”

“It sounds good,” Charlie said. “Be real with me here. What the fuck is going on?”

“It’s Amy. She says I’m not ambitious enough. She says she wants more.”

“Are you kidding me?” Charlie was astonished by what he was hearing. Nobody worked harder than his big brother. That man was constantly in the office. “What kind of more?”

“Start a business kind of more. Give up her job and become an entrepreneur kind of more. I’m supposed to support her through this evolution kind of more.” Matthew’s voice grew louder with every word. “And when does she pick to do this?”

“Now?” Charlie guessed.

“Now. Now when corporate’s making all kinds of noises about assessing branch performance. People are saying it’s an across the board downsizing, Charlie, but you know that never happens. It’s so much less traumatic for the organization as a whole to cut one entire branch than to get rid of one person from this one and one person from that one.”

“Motivates the others, too,” Charlie agreed. “The branches that are left get worried they may be next.”

“I’m pretty sure we are next.” Matthew took a deep, shuddering breath. “I never said that out loud until now, but I am pretty sure we are next. I am going to lose my job, Charlie, and then what are we going to do?”

“Have you told this to Amy?” Charlie asked. “Does she know?”

“Of course she knows,” Matthew snapped. “I couldn’t keep something like this from her. It would drive me nuts.”

“And this doesn’t make her change her plans any?” Charlie asked. “Knowing that you’re in danger of losing your job is a pretty big deal.”

“She thinks we’ll be fine because we’ve got the savings,” Matthew replied.

“Matthew – if this is about the two grand, don’t worry about it,” Charlie said. “I will make it work.”

Matthew started laughing. “The two grand is nothing. The two grand is a drop in the bucket…no, no, let me say that again. That two grand is a drop in the ocean. A miniscule amount of what the problem is going to be.”

“What is the problem going to be?”

“Between our investment accounts and our savings? Amy thinks we have almost a quarter million dollars.”

Charlie whistled out, slowly. “Well, that explains why she feels comfortable leaving her job to start a new business.”

“It’s all her,” Matthew said. “She works all the time, and she’s really excellent when it comes to picking investments. She’s always putting money into that account.”

“And you?”

“Have you ever heard of MMA?” Matthew asked.

Charlie’s mind spun, but he couldn’t place the initials. “Tell me that’s not some kind of new drug or something,” he said.

Matthew laughed. “No. It stands for Mixed Martial Arts. It’s like kickboxing meets wrestling meets…”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it on TV,” Charlie said. “Those guys are nuts.”

“What’s nuts is how much money they’re making. You’re in that ring for two seconds, you can make a million dollars.” Matthew laughed again; an edgy, hysterical sort of laugh. “That’s a better payout that rodeo!”

“So you’re…training to become a MMA fighter?” Charlie asked.

“Hello!” Matthew said. “Have you met me? Gold medalist couch potato? No. I am not training to become a MMA fighter.”

“Then what’s the connection?” Charlie asked. He was worried about his brother, but he was getting increasingly irritated with every passing second. “Between the MMA and your savings account?”

“Gambling, Charlie,” Matthew said. “Amy’s great at picking stocks. I am not nearly so great at picking fighters.”

“You are going to have to tell her,” Charlie said, “before she finds that out on her own.” A thought struck him. “I’m really surprised she doesn’t know already.”