Rocky Mountain Cowboy (7 page)

They had a quick lunch at a fast food place, then drove to a small neatly landscaped house on the far side of town, where they dropped off Eli to visit a friend. From the cab of Hawk’s truck, Jenny watched an older woman open the door and invite Eli inside.

“Who is this he’s visiting?” she asked Hawk.

“Someone he’s been seeing for the last year.”

“Really!” Jenny laughed. “I guess you’re never too old for a little romance.”

“Or a little something.”

Jenny looked at him, then at the house, then back at him. “No way!”

“More than likely, from what Hank says.”

She had to laugh again.

Downtown, they went to a Western wear store. Jenny shopped, while Hawk
watched and advised. She picked out several things, tried them on, then modeled for him, at his request. She’d never shopped for clothes with a man before. It was a totally unique and fascinating experience. She actually enjoyed listening to him give his opinion. He surprised her with his good taste, his eye for quality. She supposed he enjoyed watching her turn and strut for him. Definitely an interesting interlude.

The whole adventure turned into the little bit of fun she suspected they both
needed.

At Hawk’s suggestion, she picked out several long sleeved chambray shirts, with pearl snaps no less, several pair of boot
-leg jeans that did actually bend, a denim jacket, a short red down-filled parka, boots, and a hat.

The latter was the most fun to select. She finally settled on a chocolate brown felt cowboy hat with a cattleman’s crease and a wide brim.
It was adorned with a dark red band of braided leather, a small matching bow, and a little white feather wedged between the band and bow. She adored it, and apparently so did Hawk the way he stared at her when she modeled it for him after getting the rim steamed and shaped just the way she wanted it.

The boots were a tougher decision. She tried on a dozen pair of real cowboy boots; none of the
high-fashion imitations, before she settled on a tooled dark red pair. Of course, she wasn’t looking forward to breaking them in, but Hawk promised to show her a few tricks to soften them up.

The hat and boots definitely made her feel as if she had come home.

Just when she thought she’d gotten everything, Hawk had the clerk show her several pairs of cowhide working gloves. From a wide selection of colors, she chose a dark red pair to match her boots and the braid on her new hat, marveling at how soft and supple they felt. The last thing Hawk insisted she get was a long rain slicker. Split high up the back for riding, it was surprisingly comfortable, and guaranteed water repellant. When she tried it on and looked at herself in the full length mirror, she laughed.

“I look like Sharon Stone in
The Quick and the Dead
,” she told Hawk, adopting a wide legged stance before the mirror and shoving her long coat back like she was going to draw the imaginary gun at her hip. “Give me a six shooter and I’m ready.”

Hawk raised a
quizzical eyebrow. “Ready for what?”

“F
or the
bad guys
, of course,” she laughed. “It’s one of my favorite western movies. Haven’t you ever seen it? It’s about a woman gunslinger that goes after the man who hung her father.”

Hawk shook his head no, and she promised to rent the video for him while she was home.

When they took all her selections to the cashier, Jenny pulled out her credit card, but Hawk had her put it away. “We’ll put it all on the ranch’s account,” he told the clerk. “This is all business related,” he told Jenny.

It reminded her that when the attorney for the ranch came over tonight, they were finally going to have to discuss business. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

The next stop was the grocery store. Jenny pushed the basket up and down the aisles, while Hawk filled his grocery list, asking her along the way if there was anything she needed or wanted. She added a few personal items while she marveled at his efficiency. Of course he’d been a bachelor for a long time, so she guessed if he wanted to eat, he needed to shop and cook. He told her that he and Tom had shared the chore with Eli.

Apparently, he also had a budget, and when they went to check out, she noted that he had stayed within it. So, he was a good planner, too. It was another interesting discovery— the man had good domestic talents that he didn’t feel were beneath him to perform.

In the parking lot, they were loading the boxes of groceries into the bed of his pick-up when a man and a woman came up to them. Jenny recognized them from the funeral and remembered they were both good friends of Hawk. They had told her how sorry they were about her dad, and she’d had the feeling they’d both known him well. But she’d forgotten their names, so Hawk reintroduced them to her—Scott Richards and Becky Parsons. Jenny learned they were engaged, soon to be married, and Hawk was going to be their best man.

Scott was as tall as Hawk, with light brown hair that was currently covered with a black Stetson. He told her that he had a small cattle ranch in the valley, not too far the Bar F
/Bar L. Being close neighbors, he went on to explain, meant he and Hawk and Tom had always helped each other out when any of them needed an extra hand.

The two men moved into a conversation about the up-coming fall round up.

“I can give you a week,” he told Hawk. “Gotta be done for the wedding, though— both of us, or Becky will string us up for sure.”

“You got that right,” she concurred, jabbing her fiancé in the ribs with a laugh. “If either one of you is late or missing, I’ll come find you with a shotgun.” Becky was Jenny’s age, petite, slender, and very pretty. She looked like a very thrilled bride-to-be. There was a glow about her that Jenny envied. “You’re invited, of course,” she said to her warmly. “In fact, some friends are giving me a wedding shower next month, and I’d love for you to come.”

“If I’m still here, I’d love to,” Jenny found herself saying with genuine pleasure.

“I’ll have my maid of honor send you an invitation. Maybe we could even have lunch together before that. I understand you were born here. We might have some mutual friends.”

Feeling an immediate connection with the little brunette, Jenny copied her phone number to her cell and promised to call her with a date for lunch before she left. After the couple left, Hawk had Jenny help him cover the groceries with a tarp, then strap them down for the drive home.

“Scott and I have been friends since junior high school,” Hawk said after they climbed into the cab of his truck. “We were partners in petty crime,” he added with a reminiscent laugh. “Until your dad straightened us both out and got us involved in other things. Scott didn’t have a dad growing up, so Tom ended up being a substitute dad for him, too. When we got out of high school, Scott and I traveled the rodeo circuit together. We started out bull riding, and ended up team calf roping. By the time we quit, Scott had enough for a down payment on his ranch. He does pretty well, considering the times. Tom helped him out with some stock.”

“I think my dad must have helped a lot of people in some way. He had so many friends at the funeral.”

“Your dad was an exceptional man. He sure as hell saved my sorry ass. I figure I would have ended up in juvenile hall for sure without him. “

“Yeah, Daddy was one of a kind.” The pain hit hard and fast. But, for a while, it had abated, and once again the cowboy beside her was the reason.

By the time they reached the little house where they had left Eli, he was sitting on the front porch with his female friend, waiting for them. After he got into the truck, Hawk told them he had one more stop to make before heading home— a quick trip to the bank to make a deposit and drop off a mortgage payment.

Jenny and Eli stayed in the truck while he went inside. Fifteen minutes later, he was leaving just as Brad Caldwell was walking into the building. Jenny watched as the two men stopped to speak to one another. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but within a few minutes they were exchanging heated words, their voices raised just enough for her to tell that they were arguing.

“What’s that all about?” she asked Eli, who was also watching the exchange, scowling.

“Don’t rightly know this time, but there’s been trouble between them two for a long, long time. They never have gotten along. It’s gotten worse the past six months.”

“What kind of trouble?” She’d felt trouble at the funeral. Right now that trouble looked serious. Hawk was barely containing his fury, and Mr. Caldwell seemed to be enjoying the reaction.

“It started when Hawk went to live with the Caldwells. After Hawk lost his mom, he went from one foster home to another. He ran away a lot, skipped school, got into some minor trouble with the law, and ended up in Judge George Caldwell’s juvenile court. Brad’s dad gave him two choices. He could go to the boy’s ranch north of here or go live with him. Obviously, Hawk didn’t want to go to the juvenile detention facility. Old man Caldwell had other boys he had taken in at his ranch. I suspect it was more a matter of free labor rather than compassion that motivated the judge.

“All those foster kids never set too well with his own kids, I hear. Brad didn’t like Hawk, in particular. They used to get into it a lot— lots of fisticuffs, knives once in the while. I remember Hawk coming over pretty bruised and cut up a few times. He became a pretty tough kid while he was there. After your mom took you away, Tom asked George to let him take Hawk in. Personally, I think your dad put a little pressure on his high and mighty neighbor.”

“In what way?” Jenny knew very little of what Eli was telling her. Years ago, her dad had simply told her Hawk had needed a mentor and a safe harbor.

“Judge Caldwell was using his juvenile court to staff his ranch, and some of the kids were getting a little too beaten up working
for him.”

“He was abusing them?”

“That was never said, but Tom believed he was staging fights between the boys to toughen ‘em up, or some such load of bull. Judge Caldwell was an asshole.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Yeah— your dad didn’t like it, either. He helped Hawk get out of there, then threatened to go to the authorities if George didn’t stop using the boys that came through his juvenile court that way.”

“So what’s the problem now?”

Eli stared out the front window of the truck at Hawk and Brad. “Been some problems at the ranch lately, and Hawk thinks Brad has something to do with them.”

“Problems? What kind of problems?” Tom hadn’t ever mentioned problems.

“The kind that cost money and time,” Eli gave her a grimace. “Hell, honey, you need to talk to Hawk ‘bout this. I’m not the one to tell ya.”

∞∞∞

J
ack Higgins had been her father’s attorney and friend for as long as Jenny could remember. He’d been at the funeral, and Jenny had talked to him briefly then. In the her father’s study, the lawyer sat behind Tom Fletcher’s big oak desk, while Jenny sat in one of the leather arm chairs in front of the desk. The one beside her was empty for the moment as Hawk paced restlessly behind it.

It quickly became
apparent that their attorney was familiar with the will. Jenny watched both Mr. Higgins and Hawk. While listening to the legal introduction, she again wondered if Tom had known of his heart condition when he had the will drawn up. Why else would he have it created so close to his death? It grieved her enormously to think he had borne the knowledge, the fear, and probably the pain alone, instead of letting her share it with him.

Sadly, t
here was no way to really know under what circumstances it had been written. Nor did it really matter now. What was done was done. There was no reversing time, and at this point, speculation was useless.

But he had made his final wishes known. Tom had left half of the ranch to her and half to Hawk, but he wanted them to establish a new partnership, patterned off of the one Tom and Hawk had shared.

In accordance with that, Jack Higgins went over the terms of Tom’s partnership agreement with Hawk. The attorney explained there had been an equal division of all the Bar F/Bar L’s land, livestock, outbuildings, machinery, crop production, and breeding program. Everything that had to do with the ranch’s operation and function had been equally shared. All expenses and profits were equally shared. All management and most of the labor had been equally shared, although as Tom got older, Hawk had taken over nearly all of the hard physical labor.

The exemptions to that agreement, made six years ago between the two men, had been the main house, which had been paid off by then and had remained solely in Tom’s name, personal vehicles, which included Hawk’s truck, horse trailer, and airplane, and any personal property, such as Hawk’s horse. The partnership had been straight forward and fairly simple; essentially a fifty-fifty split of most everything.

But all of that had been dissolved by Tom’s death. The attorney went on to explain that the law gave Jenny, as Tom’s heir, and Hawk, as the surviving partner, ninety days to make arrangements with one another before it came in and formally dissolved the partnership.

Tom left his daughter his interest in the partnership, the house, and any of his personal belongings she wanted. The attorney further explained that her interest in the partnership amounted to the monetary value of Tom’s half of the business as determined by what he would have received for it had he liquidated prior to his death, or fifty percent of a sale of the entire business. Because Tom had owned the house outright, it would be hers, but if she chose not to keep it, Tom had asked her to give Hawk the first right of purchase. He had also asked her to give Hawk the right to buy out her interest in the ranch, if she chose not to form a partnership with him. If Hawk could not come up with the money to do that all at once, Tom had asked her to grant him a deferred payment arrangement.