Terri Reed - The Cowboy Target

Which was fine with him. He had enough of his own secret torments. He didn’t want to take on anyone else’s.

Yet he couldn’t stop the welling compassion making him want to take her in his arms and soothe away whatever haunted her.

He jammed his hands into his pockets.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them.

“We should get back to the house for lunch,” he finally said when he couldn’t take the tension any longer. “Gabby’ll be wondering about us.”

“I’m sure she’s having fun with Spencer,” Jackie said, her expression clearing, her smile tender. “He’s getting spoiled with so much attention. I’m afraid when we go back home he’ll be one sad puppy.”

Wyatt had a feeling there would be several sad people, too.

* * *

When they arrived back at the ranch, Wyatt put the book he’d taken from George’s house on the bookshelf in the living room. He supposed he should have okayed it with the sheriff, but because the book belonged to the Monroe family, Wyatt didn’t see the need to ask permission. He’d apologize later if need be.

Gabby skidded to a stop in the doorway. “Daddy!” she squealed and ran toward him.

He scooped her up into his arms. White powder dusted her nose, and a smear of chocolate ran the length of her chin. “What have you been up to?”

“I made chocolate-chip cookies,” she said with pride.

He lifted his nose to smell the air. “Hmm. I can smell them baking. What a big girl you are to be making cookies.”

She grinned. “I am a big girl.”

There was a knock at the front door. Wyatt set Gabby down. “Go on back to the kitchen,” he directed her and headed toward the living room as Penny came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron.

“I’ll get it,” Wyatt said. He reached for the doorknob and opened the door.

The man standing on the porch wore a thick wool coat over a navy blue suit, white dress shirt, red power tie and black, shiny wing tips. His salted hair was barely visible beneath the wool watch cap pulled low over his ears.

“Good afternoon, Wyatt,” Richard Pendleton said.

Irritation sluiced through Wyatt’s blood. This was the fourth time in the past month the man had shown up uninvited on his porch.

The first time, Wyatt heard him out. The man represented a mining corporation. The Degas Group wanted to buy the mineral rights to his property and the transportation rights to use it during the mining of his neighbors’ land.

Wyatt had no intention of agreeing to either request. “What are you doing here? My answer has not changed.”

“May I come in?” he asked, undaunted. His expression was polite, his gaze friendly.

“I’d rather you didn’t. We have nothing to talk about.”

“You may want this to go away, but it’s not going to. Your neighbors won’t let it. We’ll double our offer,” he said.

They’d already offered him a half a million dollars. Now they wanted to give him a million? For rights that may or may not pan out.

Neither he nor his father before him had ever allowed any type of surveying on the Monroe ranch. Wyatt had too much respect for the land to even contemplate robbing the soil of the minerals God had enriched it with, whatever they may be. Nor was he going to allow outsiders to use the road his father had built and grant his neighbors access to it out of a sense of community.

“No.”

The congenial facade dropped. Pendleton narrowed his brown eyes. His voice dipped to a menacing growl. “You won’t be able to keep the land tied up forever, Mr. Monroe.”

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