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One
Hendrix Durrant eyed his longtime neighbor, speaking with a hard-edged frustration he didn’t bother to conceal. “You’re hiring Ellen? Really, Jay? You’ve been talking to me about getting this well dug for the past eight months. You’ve had me meet you out here two or three times for details on where to drill, how deep to go, what size pump you’ll need to get enough water, what we’ll do if we encounter sand, and on and on. And now you’re going with my competitor?”
Jay Haslem, a forty-something mechanic who was finally getting the chance to build a nicer home outside the small town of Coyote Canyon, Montana, where Hendrix had lived since he was eleven and Jay had lived his whole life, shoved his hands in the pockets of his grease-stained overalls and stared down at the dirt. “Well, she’s notreallyyour competitor, is she?”
Hendrix rested his hands on his hips. “She does the same thing I do, but her business is completely separate from mine. Wouldn’t you call that competition?”
“Yeah, but...she’s Stuart’s daughter. And he’s married to your aunt Lynn. I know you’re not related, but you’re sort of...connected, right?” He offered Hendrix a weak grin, which Hendrix immediately wiped from his face with a heated retort.
“Not only are we not related, I barely know her and hate that she moved to town two and a half years ago, because ever since then, she’s made a concerted effort to become a major pain in my ass.”
“It’s just that...her dad’s married to your aunt,” Jay said again.
Lynn had raised Hendrix from the first year she married Stuart, after his mother died of breast cancer. Everyone knew he’d been taken in out of the goodness of her heart, that he would’ve gone into the foster care system otherwise. It wasn’t as if he had a father, like most other kids. His mother, Angie, who’d lived and worked as a venture capital analyst in San Francisco, where attitudes were more liberal in general, had been so determined to have a child on her own terms she’d used a sperm bank, never imagining what might happen to him if she wasn’t around. That meant, once she was gone, he’d been lucky to have extended family who would give him a home. “I don’t care. That doesn’t change anything.”
Jay winced as he pulled on his beard. “My wife likes her, Hendrix. Thea’s the one who promised her the job. Not me. Ellen’s a tough little thing, a go-getter. We... I don’t know, we admire that kind of gumption, I guess. After all, there aren’t many women in your field.”
Jay’s, either. Not too many female mechanics around... But Hendrix was too focused on other things to point that out. “You admire her gumption,” he echoed, chuckling humorlessly. “You’re giving her the job because she’s—” he used air quotes “—a tough little thing.”
Once again, Jay shifted uncomfortably. “That and...she’s saving us a few bucks, of course.”
“Of course,” Hendrix echoed flatly. Ellen had been undercutting him and Stuart since she moved to town. “How much is a few bucks?”
“She said—” He stopped and cleared his throat before finishing in a mumble, “She said she’d do it for a thousand less than whatever you bid.”
“Excuse me?” Hendrix had heard him fine, but he wanted to make his neighbor state, clearly, the reason he’d chosen Ellen. This wasn’t about supporting a female-owned company in a largely male-dominated field, as Jay had tried to claim a few minutes ago. This was nothing more than pure self-interest. Ellen had been working day and night since she moved to Coyote Canyon, just to best him and Stuart, her father. Hendrix knew that was true because, in some cases, she was—hadto be—drilling wells and replacing and repairing pumps for next to no profit, other than the pleasure of taking jobs that would otherwise have gone to them.
“She said she didn’t have the time to come out and bid, but she’d do it for a thousand less than what you said you’d do it for,” Jay repeated. “All we had to do was give her the paperwork you left with us.”
“You handed over my bid? Now she can order the supplies and get you on her schedule without spending any of the time I’ve invested in assessing your needs.”
Jay hung his head. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t have a lot of money. Thea and I have held on to this property for several years, hoping to save enough to start improving it, or...or I would’ve gone with you no matter what.”
Drawing a deep breath, which he immediately blew out, Hendrix stared over Jay’s shoulder at the rugged Montana terrain that constituted his neighbor’s five-acre dream parcel. Ever since Ellen Truesdale came to town, he’d made a point of avoiding her. If he ran into her by accident—in a population of only three thousand it was impossible not to encounter each other every once in a while—he nodded politely, so she wouldn’t know how much it bothered him to have her around. But she never responded. She just gave him that unflinching, steely-eyed gaze of hers that let him know she was gunning for him.
Despite that, he’d remained determined not to let her get to him. But as time wore on, and she stole more business from him and Stuart, she was harder and harder to ignore.
Why couldn’t she have sold the place her grandparents had given her here in town and remained in Anaconda, where she’d been born and raised? Anaconda was twice the size of Coyote Canyon; there had to be more people in that part of the state who were looking to drill a water well. Actually, he knew that to be true because he and Stuart occasionally drilled a well or helped with a pump out that way—Fetterman Well Services ranged over the whole state and even went into Utah and Nevada. And if Ellen had stayed in Anaconda, which was almost two hours from Coyote Canyon, their paths would most likely never have crossed.
But Hendrix knew her decision had very little to do with where she could make the most money—or even where she might be happiest. She had a vendetta against her father, who’d left her mother when Ellen was only ten to marry Hendrix’s aunt, and she was determined to make him pay for walking out on them. Hendrix and his cousin, Leo, whom he considered as close as a brother, were just the visible representation of all she resented.
“No problem,” he told his neighbor as he started back to his truck. “Here’s hoping she does a decent job for you.”
“Are you saying she might not?” Jay called after him, sounding alarmed.
Hendrix didn’t acknowledge the question, let alone answer it. Undermining Jay’s trust in Ellen was a cheap shot—beneath him, really. Ellen knew what she was doing. In many ways, she ran her business better than Stuart ran the one Hendrix had helped him build since he was brought from San Francisco. She didn’t have the resources or the experience they did, but she was a quick study. From what he’d heard, she was also detail-oriented—stayed right on top of everything—and since Fetterman had two crews consisting of three employees each, and covered a much bigger area, he had no doubt she was operating with far less overhead, so she could be nimble.
Although Stuart insisted they didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to Ellen—that she’d give up trying to get back at him and eventually move on—Hendrix was beginning to realize that wasn’t true. Stuart was just avoiding the problem because he felt guilty about the past. And the more he avoided it, the worse it got.
When Ellen Truesdale heard a vehicle pull up, she assumed it was Ben Anderson, her only employee. She’d finally sent him out to grab some lunch. Since breakfast early this morning, they’d been too busy to eat, and she was starving. He had to be, too; it was almost three. At twenty-one, he seemed to consume twice his body weight in food each day. But when she finished welding the steel casing they were putting down the well and flipped up her helmet, she saw that it wasn’t Ben. Hendrix Durrant had just parked next to her older and much less expensive pickup.
Since Hendrix hadn’t actually spoken to her since she came to town, she was more than a little surprised he’d driven out to her jobsite. That meant he was here with a very specific intention.
Setting her torch aside, she removed her helmet entirely and shoved up the long sleeves of her shirt. She had no idea what he wanted, but whatever it was...she couldn’t imagine she was going to like it.
Instead of approaching her right away, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his well-worn jeans and studied her GEFCO rotary drilling rig. Maybe he’d assumed she couldn’t afford a top-head drive, which enabled her to advance the casing that blocked off the sand and gravel as she drilled, and was shocked to see it. She could understand why that might be true. A rig like hers cost almost a million dollars, andshe’dnever had the luxury of being able to ride on her father’s coattails. If she hadn’t been able to take out a loan against the house and property her paternal grandparents had passed on to her, she wouldn’t have had the down payment necessary to purchase it. And if she’d had to settle for an older rig, it would’ve made her job much more difficult.
As it was, her payments were almost ten thousand a month, and that didn’t include the water truck she’d also had to buy. Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as expensive as the rig. She’d managed to find a used one in Moab, Utah, for only fifty thousand. But it all added up. She had a lot on the line, which was why she worked so damn hard.
