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“So why was I walking on her property today?” Chase demanded, his jaw tight.
“Because it won’t be hers for long.”
Chase circled the scarred oak desk and leaned one hip against the windowsill. Rubbing his chin, he surveyed his partner and the place Caleb Johnson called home with new eyes. Braided rugs covered hardwood floors, pine walls were little more than a display case for weapons and tools of the Old West, a stone fireplace filled one wall and the furniture within the room was heavy, masculine and slightly worn. “She gave me a message for you. Words to the effect that you’d better leave her alone or she’d call a lawyer.”
“She can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Hasn’t got the money.” Caleb downed his drink casually and lifted his feet to place them on the magazine strewn coffee table.
Chase’s gut twisted and he experienced the same feeling he had felt on the day when he’d reluctantly accepted two-hundred-thousand dollars from Johnson; the feeling that he was just a marionette and that Johnson was pulling the strings. “How do you know how much money she’s got?”
“Common knowledge.” Caleb smiled smugly and balanced his drink between his hands. “Her husband left her and her kid about six or seven years ago. The guy just vanished. Word has it that he took off with a hotel clerk from Missoula, but that’s just gossip. Anyway, all Dani Summers had left is a nine-year-old kid and a dust bowl of a piece of property that she tries to scratch a living from.”
“So why doesn’t she irrigate and make the land more productive?”
“Irrigation costs money.”
“Which she doesn’t have.”
“Right.”
“But surely a bank would loan her the money, unless she’s mortgaged to the hilt.”
“Who knows?” Caleb took a swallow and lifted his shoulders. “Maybe she’s a bad credit risk.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be on the board of the local bank?” Chase asked, suddenly sick with premonition.
Caleb’s smile widened.
“You are a miserable son of a bitch!”
“Just a practical businessman.”
“And you want her land,” Chase said with a renewed feeling of disgust. “Dani Summers is the same neighbor that wouldn’t sell to you two years ago, isn’t she?”
Caleb grinned and a satisfied gleam lighted his eyes. “Her two hundred and forty acres sit right smack in the middle of my property. I can’t very well develop the entire piece into a resort without it.”
“If the land is so useless, why doesn’t she sell?”
Frowning into his drink, Caleb shrugged. “Who knows? Just some damned fool notion. You know women.”
Not women like Dani Summers, Chase thought with a sarcastic frown. She was the kind of woman who spelled trouble and Chase prided himself in avoiding any woman with problems. The way he figured it, he had enough of his own. Now it looked like he was right in the middle of the proverbial hornet’s nest.
“Can’t you build Summer Ridge without her property?”
Caleb’s scowl deepened. “No.”
“Why not?”
Caleb hesitated and studied Chase’s intense features. The kid had so much to learn about business. It was about time he started. Caleb gambled with the truth. “Her place, the Hawthorne place, goes up to the foothills. And the hot springs are right there, at the base of the mountains.”
Chase eyed his partner with new respect. “The Hawthorne place?”
Caleb swatted in the air as if at a bothersome insect. “Yeah, the Hawthorne homestead. She was a Hawthorne before she married Summers.”
“So Dani Hawthorne Summers’s land isn’t as worthless as you’d like her to believe.”
