Gambling on a Secret (7 page)

“Oh...
Oh
!” She struggled to her feet and brushed at her jeans. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll be fired before you even get started. I want that snake and any of his ‘buddies’ removed from my lake.”

“I’m not killing the snake.” He put his hands on his narrow hips, drawing her gaze to the way his jeans fit powerfully built legs. “If it was a cottonmouth, I would, but the water snakes keep down the populations of more unsavory critters like mice and rats.”

“My, my, if this isn’t a scene right out of the Bible.” A smooth voice drawled from the opposite side of the flowerbed by the gate.

They turned to Leon Ferguson standing on the stone walk. She hadn’t heard him drive up the driveway, and considering the thin line Dylan’s mouth formed, he hadn’t heard him either.

Leon had his hands in the pants pockets of his dark gray designer suit. His white Stetson cast his brown eyes in shadow.

“Ferguson, what are you doing here?” Dylan barked.

Leon ambled toward them on the stone path. “I’m saving a young maiden from torment. What are you doing here, playing the part of the devil?”

“I’m Miss Monroe’s new manager.” The deadly edge of his voice matched the flintiness of his eyes. “If there’s anyone to save the young maiden from, it’s you.”

“Mr. Quinn, please.” She turned to Leon. “Leon, is there something I can do for you?”

He smiled, showing off perfect white teeth in a face handsome enough to belong to an actor. “I was just passing by on my way home and decided to stop. How are the boys working out?”

Dylan’s stance widened and his hands flexed at his slides. “What boys?”

“Charli and I have entered into a business arrangement.”

She lost the battle with the urge to wrap her arms around herself. As much as she appreciated Leon’s kindness, respected him, and was even a little attracted to him, something about him didn’t sit right with her. He represented her peers in the community. According to Mrs. Pratt, besides the Cartwrights, she and Leon were undoubtedly the wealthiest residents in the county. No one in Colton could learn about her past. It would ruin her, and Leon, no doubt, had the means to dig up the dirt.

“Really?” Dylan stepped closer to her in a protective manner. Whiskey tainted his breath as the warmth of the exhalations tickled her cheek. “What kind of business arrangement?”

She could protect herself. Dylan Quinn wasn’t any safer than Leon Ferguson. Stepping away from him, she forced her arms to her sides. “Mr. Quinn, I can handle this.”

She faced Leon. “I’m amazed by how much the men got done since starting on Monday. The foreman told me last evening they’d be reseeding another fifty acres for hay this morning. And they have the corrals fixed and started on the fencing in the north pasture.”

“Good, good.” He glanced at Dylan. “I’ll be going, unless you need a more reliable exterminator. I couldn’t help but overhear about your snake infestation. I can give you the name of the company that has gotten rid of the snakes in our lakes over on Oak Springs for years.”

Although he presented the perfect solution, she didn’t the like way Leon had looked at Dylan as he said the word
exterminator
. “No, Mr. Quinn is quite capable of getting rid of the snake.”

“Oh, I’m sure he is.” Leon tipped his hat. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you, Charli.” Dylan’s jaw tightened as his uncle glanced at him. “It’s good to see you up among the living again.”

Leon headed back to his Porsche. With no pretense of lowering his voice, Dylan said, “Now, there’s a snake no one wants in their garden.”

Upon hearing the jibe, Leon’s shoulders jerked in mid-stride.

Rattled by Leon’s attention and the snake fiasco, she turned on Dylan. “You aren’t off the hook. I want those snakes gone.”

“We’ll see.”

“I hate snakes.” She shuddered and put her hands on her hips. “Maybe I should have asked him who the exterminator is.”

* * * *

Charli’s glare had Dylan looking out over the lake. He followed the creek into the wild flower-filled pasture beyond the yard. Had he ever seen eyes as beautiful as hers before? “Leon Ferguson is the last person you should be doing business with. He wants this ranch. I’d wager that was the reason Jock Blackwell didn’t leave a will. He knew none of his sons wanted the land, and he was afraid the one to inherit it would promptly sell it to Ferguson.” He pointed toward the front of the ranch. “His first cousin Buck, who owns the ranch across the road, can’t afford the ten-thousand acres he already owns. He would’ve easily lost it to taxes. Same goes for Jock’s sister. Which means Leon would’ve gotten it for a song.”

Determined to figure out what unsettled him about Charli Monroe, he looked back into her two-toned eyes. Their secrets were as hard to see as the murky bottom of the lake. “But Jock outsmarted Leon. He didn’t leave it to any of his family. Because of his sons’ greed, probate court held up the sale while the whole Blackwell clan fought over who should get the right to sell it until the judge decided they had to split the profits of the sale. I’m sure Leon was fit to be tied when you beat him to the bid.”

She let out a long sigh. “I didn’t know anyone else was even interested in the place. I went to Dixon Real Estate looking for a small ranch where I could have a few horses, but had a big enough house for what I want to do with it someday. I wasn’t even considering raising cattle. By the end of the meeting, he’d shown me this place. He said it had just gone on the market that morning, but I had to make a bid soon.”

She ruefully smiled, and his gut tightened, sending him in a tailspin.

“I went home and called him within an hour after seeing the ranch. I knew I was being suckered, but I liked the place.” She glanced down at her arms where they crossed over her chest, and lowered them to her sides. After meeting his eyes, she lifted her chin a notch. “I had no way of knowing I’d stepped into the feud between Forest County’s own version of the Hatfields and McCoys.”

Damn, she was feisty. “Leon could have any land he wanted, but he wants this place.” When Charli pursed her pink lips, he answered her unspoken question. “I don’t know why he wants it other than because of his hatred for Jock, and he wants to add it to Oak Springs’ twenty-five-thousand acres.” He shifted his weight off his bad leg. “Why did you choose him to get your fields ready?”

“Mrs. Pratt was adamant he’d help, so I called him.” She pushed wayward locks of gold-red spirals out of her face. “He agreed to contract the men I needed to get my fields planted and the corrals fixed. By harvest, I’ll have my own hands and farming equipment. Once the work’s done, my arrangement with Leon will be over.”

Leon was far worse than even a cottonmouth in her garden. Dylan didn’t want her anywhere near his mother’s stepbrother. Leon might have swindled Oak Springs away from his stepsister, but Dylan wouldn’t let the bastard to take Blackwell Ranch from some innocent girl.

“Look. Just let me handle him from now on. Okay?”

Nodding, she huffed in a breath. The action pulled her tank top taut over her breasts.

“That’s what you’re going to be paying me to do,” he said, as he forced his gaze to hers and not on her breasts.

“I guess we’ll need to talk about your pay.”

“I figured we’d get around to it sometime today.” Her interest in Leon hadn’t eluded him, even though she wasn’t completely comfortable with the oilman. If her fidgeting with her arms was any sign, she wasn’t too comfortable with him either. He wanted to protect her from Leon, which meant making her self-sufficient. “I think on Monday we should take a trip into Fort Worth to do a little shopping.”

Instant suspicion narrowed her eyes, bringing a smile to his lips.

“What kind of shopping?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see.” Shrugging, he started counting off his fingers. “We’ll need a tractor–actually we’ll need at least two tractors–a few ATVs, a skid-loader with all the attachments, farming implements, hay mowers for all that hay you’re sowing. At least one, maybe two balers, depending on the size of the bales. Feeding equipment, a combine, tack for those horses you bought from Cartwright...” He looked around at the tall grass of the yard. “A lawn mower. Give or take a few small ticket items.”

By the time he finished with his list, she looked a little green under all her freckles. “Can’t forget those small ticket items.”

“You sure can’t. The sooner you cut your ties with Ferguson, the better.”

He looked toward the house. Several of the porch posts needed replacing and the broken and weathered shutters were unsalvageable. The roof looked relatively new, but he’d have to check it for bad shingles. The inside couldn’t be in much better shape. Besides the surface repairs like painting and replacing flooring, undoubtedly there was bad plumbing and wiring, too. He looked back at her. She watched him with intensity again, stirring his blood.

He glanced back at the house. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do some of the carpentry work on the house.”

Her eyes widened. “You would?”

Would he?

He took off his hat, only to reset it right back on again, then cleared his throat. “Yeah. I would. I’ll subcontract for anything out of my expertise, and I have a couple of guys in mind to help out with the repairs on the ranch buildings and fencing.”

“The work you did on Tracy’s salon is beautiful.”

He slid his gaze away and shrugged. “Like her place, this old house has good bones. Unfortunately, I’ll need tools to do the work. I have some, but not enough. I hope you have a business account with liquid cash or a bank willing to give you a loan.”

She simply nodded and sighed.

“Why on Earth did you buy this dump?”

“I wanted a place I could make my own.” She looked at the ramshackle mansion. “When the realtor showed me the ranch, I knew it could be beautiful.”

The sun played on loose coils framing her freckled, heart-shaped face and the deceptive youth of her make-up free profile. The rest of her long hair was pulled back into a snarled ponytail. With the overgrowth of spring green, bluebonnets and daffodils tangled around her feet, she reminded him of one of the fairy statues his mother collected.

Charli peered up at him with an ageless depth showing in her crystalline eyes. She had seen more than she should have for someone so young. He vaguely remembered the kids in the bar last Friday night and their conversation about her not having any friends. What had happened to her to make her so guarded?

He jutted his chin toward the house. “It was a beautiful place once. Built at the end of the eighteen hundreds, after fire destroyed the original place. The house was white and the shutters and trim were dark red–you know, like a brick color. And the gardens were spectacular until Jock’s mother died about fifteen years ago.”

“That’s how I imagine the house.”

The deep intensity of her eyes pulled him in as if he’d walked off the dock into the lake beyond the overgrown yard. He felt things he hadn’t felt for a long, very long, time. Charli Monroe’s appeal went deeper than attraction. What about her intrigued him so damned much?

When she spoke, her soft voice came to him like a whisper on the warm breeze. “I think of it like a caterpillar–a wrinkly, ugly worm with traces of dull colors on it. But when the worm metamorphoses, it becomes something truly beautiful.”

As if conjured by a fairy’s voice, a small blue butterfly fluttered by them. It lighted on a spire of bluebonnets. He stared at until it took off in flight to land on another flower. “Like a butterfly.”

For a moment, he let himself drift back to the day he’d carried Brenda over the threshold of the house he’d built for her, and the dreams that had died when he read her letter two days before the mission.

In a flash, the memory changed. He stood along the roadside aiming an M-16 at the man behind the wheel of a derelict car. After the man refused to get out, he had ordered his men to surround the vehicle, and the Arab driver sneered. Then it exploded.

Nothing in his life would ever be bright and beautiful again.

* * * *

Later that evening, Charli set two mugs of coffee on the table and took the chair across from Dylan at the kitchen table. He tapped a pen on the wood top as he mulled over something. On a sheet of paper before him were listed several things he’d need from the home center.

She sipped from her mug. “So, where do we start? The horses I bought will be delivered the Monday after Easter. Sheriff Cartwright bred one of the sorrels to one of his prized stallions.”

He stopped tapping and looked at her. “You’re not fooling around.”

She shrugged and looked into her cup. “Once I get the idea to do something, I jump right in and do it.”

“I can see that.” He leaned over his arms on the table. “The stables look pretty damned good, surprisingly. They’re not as old as the other buildings. Jock added them about twenty years ago when he decided to raise cutting horses to irk my granddad. The stalls need fixed and it needs cleaned out. I’ll take care of those first. I’d also like to call the men I told you about while we were on the grand tour.”

“The carpenters?”

“Yeah, Tom Miller and his uncle, Jesse Riley.” He picked up his mug. “Tom got out of the Navy not too long ago and worked for his father-in-law’s construction company, but he recently went out of business. Tom’s wife just had a baby, and I know he’d appreciate the job. He and Jesse have been doing handy work in the area, and both men have some ranching experience.”