Kristina O'Grady - I Choose You - A sizzling Hollywood Western romance

“Everything has its place, boy, don’t you worry. Here, grab a seat.” His dad pushed a chair towards him.

Ben carefully set his coffee cup onto a stack of unopened envelopes on the desk, moved the old newspapers off the chair and sat down.

“Dad.” Ben leaned forward and looked his dad in the eye as his old man sat down in the swivel office chair. “Tell me the truth, are we going to be able to save the ranch?” His breath stilled in his chest as he waited for his dad’s answer, a knot tight in his gut.

His dad shuffled some papers and a small cloud of dust rose above the desk.

“With your help, I think we have a shot. I would never have asked you to quit your job and come back here if I thought otherwise. But this place is for you and Beth. I won’t see it go under when there is still a possibility we can turn it around. As you know, your sister has moved into the Old House and she is just about ready to start up her bed and breakfast. She already has a booking for next month.” Lance took a slow sip of coffee. Ben had an idea that his father wasn’t telling him everything yet.

“And…?”

A grin spread across his dad’s face. “We are in a good position at the moment, but I need you help and co-operation.’

“You know you have it.” Ben wished he’d just get to the point.

“I’ve had a phone call last week, and well, we’ve been offered an opportunity we can’t afford to let it pass us by.” His dad took a long drink of his coffee and then stuffed a whole lemon square into his mouth.

Ben could barely contain his frustration.

“Dad! Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Lance smiled through the icing sugar sticking to the stubble covering his face.

“A movie producer called. They want to shoot a film here, on the ranch.”

“Say what?” Surely he hadn’t heard right.

“Brian Hargrave called last week.”

“What? Wait a minute, the Brian Hargrave?”

“The very one! He found the ranch through your sister’s website. You know the one about her bed and breakfast? Well, he found it and he said it was exactly what they’re looking for and he also wants to hire our stock and horses. The amount they have offered us for the duration of the filming is phenomenal. It will be the end of all our troubles. We just have to stay afloat until their first payment.”

“When is that? And more importantly, how much?”

Ben had a tendency to fidget when he was agitated and nervous. Right now he was both. He stood to pace the room but the office was so full of papers there wasn’t much room to move. The ranch must be in a bad way for his dad to hire it out. Ben didn’t want to be beholden to anyone, let alone a big movie corporation.

His dad fished around his desk for a scrap piece of paper and for a pen that worked. After trying several he finally wrote a figure onto the paper and slid it across to Ben.

It was so much money Ben’s teeth hurt. He groped for his chair and sank back into it. That couldn’t possibly be right. But when he looked at his dad’s face the smile he saw there was proof enough that he hadn’t read it incorrectly. It was insane.

“Are you sure that’s right, Dad? It seems like an awful lot of money just to have a film crew here for a few weeks.”

“A few weeks? No son, they’ll be here for almost a year. There’ll be a lot of extra work going into having them here, no doubt about it, but with a figure like that and with how the ranch is financially, we can’t afford for them to go somewhere else. We need this. Here, look at these books. Without Mr. Hargrave and his crew we won’t last the year. It’s either this, Ben, or sell. And I don’t want to sell. This place has been in our family too long to see it go to that greedy son of a bitch down the road.”

Ben stilled and looked at his dad in confusion.

“What son of a bitch?” he asked slowly.

“Franklin.”

“Franklin? Jenna’s dad? What does he want with our ranch?”

“Oh boy, you don’t know, do you?” His dad sighed and ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. “Donald Franklin has been after this piece of dirt since he moved here. He thought he had his hands on it too when you and Jenna were engaged. Lucky for all of us she pulled out of that one.”

“Lucky?” Ben leapt from his seat. “You call it lucky she left me the week my sister died? What kind of luck is that?” Ben picked up the rock masquerading as a paperweight on his dad’s desk, weighed it in his hand and considered throwing it through the window, but by the look of the accounts they won’t be able to afford to replace it.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t call that any kind of luck, son, but consider it a blessing she left you then and not after you got married and she’d taken half the ranch. That was all I meant.” Lance ran his hand over his head again and settled back into his chair. With his elbows resting on his desk he leaned towards his son and said, “I don’t believe she was ever after this place though. But I do wonder if Donald put her up to marrying you.”

“What, you think it was his idea we get married? It was me who asked her.”

This conversation was going nowhere. Jenna and him were old news. Last he’d heard she’d married some grain farmer from the next town. Her rejection still stung like an open wound. He didn’t allow himself to think about her, much less talk about his almost wedding. Looking back now he knew he was naive to think she would have been happy married to some poor cowboy like him. Beth told him her new husband was a rich farmer set to inherit his family’s farm. Funny, not once while they were together did he ever think of Jenna as a gold digger.

He sighed and pushed thoughts of Jenna into the far reaches of his mind.

“Dad, why is the ranch in such a mess? What happened? I thought this place more than paid for itself before. What’s going on?”

“As I said, having your sister in and out of hospital for so long piled up the bills. The cost of having to stay in a hotel to be near her was enough of a strain, let alone the food, extra hands on the ranch and travel back and forth. At least the treatment was covered. But we survived all that. I made some bad business decisions these last few years and I guess you could say I’ve never had a good head for business. Not like you. I need your brains, Ben, and your muscle. This place is falling apart and I’m afraid without your help we won’t make it. That’s why I asked you to come back home. Besides,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “this is where you belong. Not in some city working behind a desk.”

“I was working at a farm supply store, Dad, not at a desk,” Ben muttered.

“Did you like it?” his dad asked, leaning closer to Ben.

“No, not really,” Ben admitted.

“You would have been wasted there. You were born a rancher, you need to be a rancher. What do you say? Will you stay and help us get ready for this film crew?”

Ben sighed and sat back down in his chair.

“What do you need me to do?”

Chapter 5

Helga threw her keys in the bowl on the side table by her door. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure why she’d bought this apartment; she was never here. She pushed the button on the wall and the blinds wound open. The late afternoon sun streamed into the windows. She walked over to the glass and looked over the New York landscape. Ah yes, this was why she’d bought this place .

Below she could see the park and the tiny figures scurrying from place to place. She loved New York. The atmosphere was electric. The art was fantastic and the theatre, oh the theatre was the best in the world. When she wasn’t working she’d spend her time soaking in the performances on Broadway.