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“I have some thinking I need to do.” He lifted the shot glass and tossed down part of the whiskey.
“You can think out loud,” Tara urged and masked it with an idle shrug. “Maybe I can help. I do know something about business. I am my father’s daughter.”
“Beneath all the Dior and diamonds.” Ty mocked the elegant afternoon dress she was wearing and the diamond studs in her ears,
“There are brains, yes.” She smiled with slow provocation, using the combination of wiles and charm that served her so well.
“I don’t doubt that there are business areas where you are knowledgeable, but you don’t understand how this outfit is run.”
To be so lightly regarded goaded her. “I understand that it’s been run the wrong way, or it wouldn’t be in the trouble that you’ve found it,” she retorted. “It hasn’t been operated like a business. It’s been run like some benevolent society where everything but profit comes first.”
“This is a working ranch, and you can’t base its operations on short-term profits. You have to look at long-term gains.” His patience was on the thin side.
“How can you do that when the ranch is operating under methods that are twenty years old, if not older than that?” Tara argued, but she kept a reasoning tone. “Times change, and methods have to change with them. You don’t still see longhorn cattle grazing out there on that land, do you?” she said, gesturing toward the curved and twisted horns above the mantel. “You need to start throwing out these outmoded ideas and begin modernizing. It has to be run more efficiently.”
“You say that as if there’s nothing to it.” A muscle ridged along his jaw. “I’m faced with the problem of finding a way to cut costs or create a new source of income, preferably both. The kind of program you’re suggesting would be damned expensive to implement. And I can’t go out in the back forty and sink a well to pay for it like some of your Texas friends, because there isn’t any oil or gas there!”
“But there’s coal, Ty.” She said it quietly, eyeing him closely and containing
the eagerness that vibrated inside. “Tons of it. Enough to make you so rich it wouldn’t matter if this ranch earned a penny. You could become the coal and cattle king of the whole country.”
“No.” It was a hard sound, poised on the edge of anger. “You know damn well how my father feels about surface-mining.”
“It doesn’t matter how he feels. He has no say in it. You’re in charge,” Tara reminded him with that same intense quiet. “You have absolute control of everything.”
“For the time being.” He qualified it even though there had been no time restrictions set forth in the documents his father had signed. His power was limitless.
“Be realistic, Ty,” she insisted. “Your father is going to be hospitalized for at least a year. And after that, you know as well as I do that he’ll never be able to take this kind of stress and strain. There will be a limit to what he can do. So it’s your ranch from now on. And it’s up to you to decide how best to run it.”
“It’s going to be hard enough on him when he learns that I’m dropping the suit to regain title to that land.” Ty stared at the whiskey in the bottom of the glass, a coiled tautness about his expression. “I’ll have to, at least for the time being, in order to cut the high legal costs. But to tear up Calder land for coal—that’s something else.”
“Tear up the land! You make it sound like a sin,” Tara chided him. “It’s only dirt and grass, which can be put back. You studied all about land reclamation in college, Ty. Don’t be like your father and condemn the idea without looking into it. Talk to my father; let him show you his operation. I know he could help if you’d let him.”
“I’ll think about it.” It was a tersely low statement, designed to end the conversation and commit himself to nothing.
“My father is flying up here in a couple of weeks. I can call him and tell him that you want to speak with him. I know he’ll arrange to spend a couple extra days here,” she said confidently.
“Dammit, Tara! I said I’d think about it.” The heated words tumbled from his throat. “Don’t push it!” He swung away from the fireplace, shoving the whiskey glass onto the first table he passed.
“Where are you going?”
“Some place where I can think in peace.” He grabbed his hat and jammed it on his head, snugging the front down on his forehead.
She went icy with temper. “Where is that? Jessy’s, maybe?” It was a cloyingly sarcastic suggestion.
It stopped him, stiffening his frame and closing in his expression behind a ruggedly indifferent mask. “I hadn’t considered it until you mentioned it. It just might be the place I’ll go.”
The totally unexpected response flamed her. “Then go to her! And go to hell on the way!” It was wounded pride that insisted on rejecting him before he could walk out on her. When long strides carried him out of the room, she was spurred by her temper into following him. “You are a fool, Ty Calder!” she declared in an angry, wavering voice. “I can give you so much more than she can! She’ll never be able to help you the way I can!”
The door was slammed with violent force. Tara stopped, dragging in sobbing breaths of impotent fury and hurt. A small noise came from the dining room. Tara jerked around, stiffly trying to contain all her emotions. It was the young ranch wife who cooked and kept house for her, standing hesitantly in the archway to the dining room.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I was just coming to ask about dinner.”
Humiliation flooded through her as Tara realized the woman had overheard nearly everything. The thought of the story being spread around was unbearable. None of the women liked her anyway. They’d tell it just out of spite because she was somebody and they weren’t.
“Get out!” Her hands were clenched into rigid fists at her side. “Get out of my house!” She was near to crying. “I won’t be spied on! Now get out!”
She managed to hold herself rigid until the woman had disappeared from her sight. Then she began to crumple, the silence of her tears shaking her body.
