Page 6 of Christmas with the Cowboy
Audrey’s eyes went wide. “I want you,” she said simply.
“I spoke out of turn,” Daniel said, pressing his lips together as if trying to leave it at that. Of course, he couldn’t. “If I have anything to say to your father, I’ll say it to his face.”
For all the good it would do. The Hunts and the Kellers, despite sharing boundary fences on both the eastern and southern property lines, were not friendly neighbors.
“Well, then,” Audrey said in an overly bright voice before turning to Trenna. “Why don’t we go to my office, and I’ll outline what I want to do, and you can show me the best way to go about it. Lex, are you okay manning the oven for a bit?”
“I think it would be best if I did.” The timer went off with a merry ding, Lex turned to the oven, and Daniel said to Reed, “I need some help in the shop.”
Which fooled no one, of course, but it allowed everyone to go their separate ways. Reed followed his father to the door as Lex set the cookie sheet on the top of the stove and started shoveling hot cookies onto a wire rack.
Daniel glanced toward the window of his wife’s office as he and Reed crossed the graveled driveway to the new shop, which had been sided with reclaimed wood to help it blend with the aging outbuildings nearby. “Of all the days for Trenna Hunt to stop by,” he muttered, more to himself than Reed, and wisely, Reed let the remark pass.
Once they were inside the shop, Daniel picked up a hammer, tapped it against his palm, then set it down again as if not trusting himself with the tool.
“I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me, too. What happened with Hunt?”
“You mean today? He fenced off a long stretch along the river on the north eighty acres, running from the river road to boulder field. I’m assuming, since the man is an asshole, that he’s using the adverse possession argument to say that it’s his. Hunt cattle trespassed for years after the river changed course.” Daniel spread his hands. “The grazing is shit there, and it wasn’t that big of a piece of property, so I never did anything.”
“Damn, Dad.”
Meaning that the guy might get away with it. Carter Hunt had a lot more money and available resources to bring forth lawsuits than the Kellers had to fight them.
“Bad move on my part.”
“Is he living at the lodge full time?”
“Unfortunately.”
After losing both his wife and his father in the mid-1990s, Carter moved back to the family ranch and began renovating the abandoned 1930’s era hunting lodge there into an oversized family home for three—himself, his mother, and Trenna. He also continued working as a partner in a San Francisco investment firm, leaving Trenna in the care of first her grandmother and then a housekeeper when his mother went into assisted care. He’d be gone for weeks at a time, but rather than being resentful of her father’s absences, Trenna had accepted them as a fact of life.
Reed, whose parents were a steady influence in his life, even when he would have preferred them to turn a blind eye to some of his activities, had not understood why Trenna worshipped a man who spent so little time with her. But on the plus side, if Carter hadn’t been an absentee father, then Trenna would not have been free to fall in love with the unacceptable ranch kid next door.
“Carter retired.” Daniel picked up the hammer again. “Moved back to cause trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” And why hadn’t he heard about it?
“How do you feel about having a lodge above the ranch?” Daniel pointed to the mountainside visible through the rear window of the shop.
“Really?”
The boulder-strewn slope eventually flattened into a meadow, too small for much except a short period of seasonal grazing, and surely too small for a resort, but he could see how, with a talented architect and proper planning, buildings could be incorporated into the mountainside. The meadow could be used for parking. And he couldn’t say he liked the idea.
Reed turned back to his father. “I thought that was Davis Hunt’s land.”
Rumor had it that Carter and his older brother hadn’t spoken after some major argument that occurred when Trenna was a kid. Common sense decreed that it was about their inheritance, since it occurred around the time their father had passed away, but even Trenna didn’t know for certain. And as far as Reed knew, Davis had never so much as visited his inherited property.
“Davis passed away this summer. Carter inherited the land, and he wants to use it.”
“For a resort,” Reed said flatly.
“The terrainisa little steep for agriculture.”
“How’s he going to access the place?” The Keller Ranch formed a rectangle consisting of several adjoining sections, while the Hunt Ranch wasL-shaped, butted against the south and east boundaries of the Keller property. At the inner corner of theL, Robber’s Gorge, a rugged slash in the granite mountainside, made access from Carter’s land to Davis’s smaller leg of theLall but impossible.
“He asked to travel across our land. I told him no, which pissed him off, and then, two weeks ago, he put forth an offer to buy the field he needs to cross and then, days later, the entire ranch.”
