Christine Rimmer - The Man Who Had Everything

She considered his words, her elbow braced on her knee and her chin cradled on her hand. Then she nodded. “Okay.”

It was a damn sight removed from what he’d expected her to say. “Okay?” he demanded. “That’s all. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, with another strong nod. “Okay. I don’t want you to be anybody you don’t want to be. And don’t assume you know what I want. I might end up surprising you.”

He had a very scary feeling she just might. And he wanted to kiss her. Damned if he didn’t always want to kiss her lately. Kiss her, and a whole lot more.

“So we understand each other, then?” he asked, thinking that he didn’t understand a thing.

“You bet.”

“And I’ve got to go.” Because if I don’t, I’m going to lay you down right here on the front porch, take off that sweater and that tiny little top and those sunflower pj’s and finish what I started this afternoon …

“See you tomorrow, then,” she said, with just a hint of a smile in the corners of that mouth he was aching to kiss.

He stood and started walking, putting her behind him where she couldn’t see the bulge at the zipper of his jeans. He got in the Range Rover and started it up, leaning out the window before he drove away.

By then, she stood on the top step, arms wrapped around herself, looking so sweet and pretty, it took all the will he possessed not to jump down from the car again and grab her tight in his arms.

“I changed my mind,” he said over the low rumble of the engine.

She grinned wide. “What? You mean you’re going to come back here and kiss me, after all?”

Her words sent another bolt of heat straight to his groin. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Oh, get over yourself.”

He told her then, flat out. “I turned down that offer. I’m not selling Clifton’s Pride.”

She gasped then. And she looked at him with such hope. With such gratitude and joy. Like he was Santa come with Christmas on the Fourth of July. “You’re serious.”

“As a bad case of hoof and mouth.”

“Oh, Grant. Are you sure?”

“I am.”

She shut her eyes, sucked in a long breath, and then asked, as if it pained her to do it, “It’s not… because of how mean I was to you, not because of the hard things I said about turning Clifton’s Pride into a dude ranch?”

He answered truthfully. “That was part of it, yeah. But not all. I don’t know exactly why I changed my mind. I just know that, when it came time to sign on the dotted line, I couldn’t do it.”

She hugged herself tighter, rubbing her arms against the nighttime chill. “I’m glad. It’s selfish and I know it. But, Grant, I’m so glad.”

He found himself wishing he could be the man for her. That man would be one lucky sonofagun. And he was going to hate that man when he started coming around. He’d be hard-pressed not to beat the poor guy to a bloody pulp just for living, just for being what Grant could never be.

He brought it back around to business. “You said you could make this place turn a profit. Rufus seems to think you can, too.”

“It’ll take time. But, yeah. I’m gonna do it. You just watch me.”

“Oh, I will.” He put the Range Rover in gear and drove away, sticking a hand out the window to give her a last wave, watching her in his rearview mirror as he rolled around the circle and headed for the highway.

During the drive back to the resort, he almost let himself wonder, what their lives might have been…

If things had gone on the way they’d started out. If the Julens still owned the Triple J and Grant still worked Clifton’s Pride at his father’s side. If Marie and Grant’s mom still sat at the kitchen table together in the long summer afternoons.

If Andre Julen and John Clifton hadn’t been murdered in cold blood out by the Callister Breaks nine years ago.

Chapter Seven

The dream was always the same—and much too real. It was like living that dark day all over again.

It started with Grant and Steph on horseback, just the way it had been that Saturday in September almost nine years ago. It was well past noon, the sun arcing toward the western mountains. Well past noon and cool out, rain on the way, clouds boiling up ahead of them to the northeast, rolling on down from Canada.

Steph, on Malomar, her hat down her back and her pigtails tied with green ribbons, was babbling away about how much she hated school. Grant rode along in silence, almost wishing he was twelve again like the mouthy kid beside him. Twelve. Oh, yeah, with years of the school she so despised ahead of him.

He’d graduated from UM the year before. He was a rancher full-time now. And he had an ache inside him, an ache that got worse every day. He missed the excitement and challenge of being out among other people more, of rubbing elbows with the rest of the world.

Steph stopped babbling long enough that he turned to look at her.

“You didn’t hear a word I said,” she accused.

“Sure I did.”

“Repeat it to me.”

“Don’t be a snot. I got your meaning. It’s not like I haven’t heard it a hundred times before. You hate school, but your dad and mom want you to go, to be with other kids, get yourself a little social interaction, learn to get along with different folks. But you’d rather be driving the yearlings to market. You’d eat dust, working the drag gladly, if only your folks would give you a break and your mom would homeschool you, so you could spend more time on a horse.”

“I’m not a snot.” She laid on the preteen nobility good and heavy. “And I am so sorry to bore you.”

“Steph. Don’t sulk, okay?”

“Oh, fine.” She was a good-natured kid at heart and couldn’t ever hold on to a pout all that long. She flipped a braid back over her shoulder and sent him a grin. “And okay. I guess you were listening. Pretty much.” She pointed at the rising black clouds. “Storm coming.”

“Oh, yeah.” The wind held that metallic smell of bad weather on the way.

Ahead, erupting from the rolling prairie, a series of sharp outcroppings appeared: the Callister Breaks, a kind of minibadlands, an ancient fault area of sharp-faced low cliffs, dry ravines and gullies. The Breaks lay half on Clifton’s Pride and half on the Triple J.

“Wonder what they’re up to?” Steph asked no one in particular. “They should have been home hours ago…”

Their dads had headed out together at daybreak from the Clifton place to check on the mineral barrels in the most distant pastures. They took one of the Clifton pickups, the bed packed with halved fifty-gallon drums filled with a molasses-sweetened mineral supplement that the cattle lapped up.

The two men had said they’d be back at the Clifton house by noon. It was almost three now…

Grant and Steph rode on as the sky grew darker.

“We don’t come up on them soon,” Grant said as they crested a rise, “we’ll have to head back or take cover.”

And that was when Steph pointed. “Look…”

Down there in the next ravine was the pickup, half the full barrels traded out for empty ones, both cab doors hanging open.

Grant’s heart lurched up and lodged in his throat. “Stay here,” he told her.

But she didn’t. She urged Malomar to a gallop and down they went. They raced to the abandoned pickup, and past it, up the next rise, as lightning split the sky and thunder rolled across the land.

Below, they saw two familiar figures, tied together, heads drooping, not moving…

And the tire tracks of pickups and trailers and even an abandoned panel from a portable chute.

“Rustlers!” Steph cried.

The sky opened up and the rain poured down.