The Bride Wore Denim (4 page)

“I’m okay, Leif, but how about you?”

“It’s hard. Didn’t think I’d outlive two Crockett bosses. But we’ll go on.”

Her mother appeared quietly beside them and rested her hand on Leif’s arm. “Yes, we will. Hello, sweetheart,” she said, turning to Harper.

“Oh, Mama.” Harper kissed her cheek. “Is this meeting something you have to do now? It’s not too hard on you?”

She smiled, a wounded half-lift at the corner of her mouth. “Sadie is adamant that we tell you girls how your dad left things, and the triplets have to leave tomorrow. No, I don’t want to do this, but we have to. It’s all right.”

“It doesn’t sound like you have good news.”

Her mother cupped her cheek. “Not the best. Come sit down and you’ll see.”

A boulder dropped into the pit of Harper’s stomach.

“Ah, there’s our boy.” Her mother turned Harper to face the door.

Cole stood just inside the room. The sound around her seemed to fuzz in her ears, and all Harper could discern was her own thumping heart. The sensation lasted only a few beats before she shook it off; still, he was a sight for sad eyes. The dress shirt and loose tie were gone. In their place was a softly worn gray sweater that hugged his frame the way Harper would have like to. It showed off his strong, muscled chest and shoulders and his tapered waist and hips. Below that, his long, denim-clad legs led her to the toes of his cowboy boots, which looked as worn and as comfortable as her suede Uggs.

He reached her with an unhidden smile and followed her to an armchair, indicating without words she should sit. He perched beside her, and without a single touch he eased the anxiety churning inside.

Grandma Sadie rapped on the desk with the handle of her cane and the talking ceased immediately. All eyes turned to their matriarch like subjects to a queen.

“I know you’re all displeased with me for pulling you away from guests and food and chickens and whatnot.” Sadie’s voice, naturally forceful, had mellowed with age. Harper took in her wizened grandmother’s snow white hair and naturally pleasant features, and she caught a knowing little smile at the word
chicken
. “I’m sorry for that, but even though this is one of the hardest days of my life, of all our lives, the rest of the world doesn’t stop. And business must be discussed.”

“You don’t need to do this.” Her mother’s soft voice juxtaposed with Grandma’s slight rasp. “I can handle—”

“Isabella, you sit now and let the children comfort you. I don’t have much left to do on this earth, but I can still act the part of the testy old matriarch. Your time will come quite soon enough.”

“Don’t say that, Grandma,” Kelly said. “Today we need to think you’re staying with us forever.”

“Hush, child. I appreciate the sentiment, but that’s far from the point. I have called you all here today because you’re entitled to know the state of the ranch your father left to you, and the struggle your mother has in front of her. Let me say right up front that Bella has my highest respect. If my Sam was the backbone and heart of Paradise Ranch, she’s been the blood. And Leif and Bjorn have been the muscle and bone.”

Sadie’s pale eyes slid around the room, missing nothing, hiding nothing.

“The rest of you,” she continued, “have fallen far short over the past decade. And we are about to pay the piper.”

A punch to Harper’s heart was echoed by the collective gasp around the room. A quick glance proved that everyone felt the sting of the blunt criticism.

“Oh, Sadie, come now—” Her mother stood.

“No, Bella.” Grandma Sadie put up a hand. “This is not the time for pussyfooting. Paradise is in trouble, and the girls need to know it.”

“Trouble?” Harper blurted out the word. “What possible kind of trouble? I don’t understand.”

“That is true. You could not understand.”

She took in her sisters’ faces; each one looked like someone had slapped her puppy. Harper couldn’t deny the sense of guilt building inside, but there was no point in acting wounded now. They’d all made choices.

“Then it is good you called us here. Sounds like we need . . . enlightenment.”

Cole rested a hand on her shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up.

“Thank you,” Sadie said. “Enlightenment is a good word. Something neither I nor your mother could ever get your father to embrace. He insisted the problems no longer concerned you girls. He was not going to use the threat of financial deterioration to guilt you into coming home. I, however, have no such compunction. I’m very old. Too old to mince words. Paradise Ranch is, for all intents and purposes, nearly out of money. And everybody in this room needs to think about what’s going to happen next.”

Another round of gasps and murmurs spilled through the office. Out of money? Harper’s jaw slackened. Only three faces besides Grandma Sadie’s registered no shock—her mother’s, Leif’s, and Bjorn’s. It wasn’t at all clear yet how long this had been brewing, but obviously the topic was not new to the family leaders.

“All right,” Harper said, since even super-practical Mia was still staring dumbly. “What exactly do we need to know?”

“To start with, you all need to understand that the cost of every single basic need on this ranch has skyrocketed in the past decade: fuel, feed, equipment repair, wages, transportation, veterinary care. Everything.”

“But hasn’t the price of beef gone up as well?” Cole asked. “The cattle industry is in a boom period—aren’t the rising costs covered?”

“Cattle ranchers across the country took a big hit several years ago when that wasn’t the case. Ranchers were forced to diversify to survive.”

A sudden spark of angry understanding ran through Harper’s body and she stood. “You mean they’re calling in the oil and gas companies.”

“That’s always been an important option. It’s long-term security if there’s oil on the land,” Amelia said.

“It’s no option.” Harper tried hard to tamp down the surge of annoyance that rose like one of the oil wells they obliquely discussed. “How could you forget what happened to Martin Buckner?”

“You’ve always blown that out of proportion, Harper,” Mia said.

“And you never saw it for yourself.” Harper held back her anger with effort.

None
of the others had seen the devastation that day. Harper had been eight, and she still didn’t know why she’d been with her father the day he’d gone to help Mr. Buckner, a neighboring rancher, with some equipment problems. She’d been in a barn with the Buckners’ kids when she’d heard the explosion. She rushed out with everyone else to see the oil geyser—something she’d been told over and over was so rare as to be nonexistent with modern wells. Not only had the chaos that had followed scared the devil out of her, but the revolting mess left by the oil, spread over acres, had also made her extract a promise from her father. He’d never let that happen to Paradise Ranch.

She’d made it clear from that young age on that if she ever ran a ranch, it would be different. To the endless teasing of family and friends, she’d thrown herself into learning about the environmentally green side of life. She’d forced her mother to recycle and her siblings to conserve water and her father to treat his cattle and all animals with the least amount of chemicals and pharmaceuticals he’d agree to. They indulged her to a point, but she’d been the tree-hugging, weirdo hippie Wyomingite ever since.

The epithets had long since ceased to bother her.

“If we’re in trouble, we need to consider everything,” Mia said.

“We?” Harper replied. “Who is ‘we’? Grandma’s right, none of us has been here recently. There’s no ‘we.’ ”

“Harper, your father took your oil concerns seriously,” her grandmother said. “He wasn’t one of the landowners who looked into drilling. But because of that, he made some other investments that didn’t work out as well.”

Surprise didn’t begin to describe Harper’s reaction to such news. When had her father ever listened to her?

“Fine,” Mia said. “But we have fifty-thousand acres. We’ve always been able to run enough cattle to do well.”

“It’s been a slow, steady decline,” their mother said. “In the past six years, your dad had to reduce herd sizes in order to let some workers go and pay off immediate debts. Leif is looking at only three extra hands this winter, including himself—and we’re running only thirty-five hundred head.”

“Really? That few men?” Cole asked. “Down from eight last winter. How are beef prices?”

“They’re good,” Bjorn replied. “But building back up is taking a very long time, and the costs per cow have skyrocketed. If we could get ourselves up to eight thousand head and hire back some hands, we’d have a chance. The problem is the debt load. Sam invested in a couple of businesses that didn’t pan out.”

With a gush like a broken dam, Harper and her sisters surged into speech at the same moment. Her head spun in the chaos, mostly because she couldn’t comprehend how a ranch with a helmsman as adept as she’d always heard Sam Crockett had been, could fall into such disastrous straits. She took out her frustration in the form of questions right along with the others, and it took Sadie with the help of Leif long moments to quiet them.

“We will have time for all these questions,” her grandmother said. “But the reasons for the problems on the ranch are not our first priority. The important issue is that your mother cannot run Paradise alone.”

“I don’t
want
to run it alone,” her mother said, clarifying the point. “Not without your father.”

“You’re smart enough to run anything, Mama,” Grace said.

“Thank you, sweetheart. But it has nothing to do with intelligence. Paradise Ranch is not my legacy.”

“And that’s why I insisted we call this meeting,” Sadie continued. “It is not my legacy either, although it certainly has fallen to the women to figure things out. It is
your
legacy, girls.” She sent her piercing gaze once again over her granddaughters. “Your father left the ranch entirely to you six, and your mother. There are not too many options inherent in that bequeathal. In fact, you really only have two choices: one of you, or more than one of you, take over for your father, or you sell Paradise.”

“What?”

“What?”

“No way!”

The triplets’ exclamations emerged simultaneously. Harper shook her head at them—they had their own idiosyncrasies, she thought. The three had thoroughly distinct personalities, but they were still connected by the mysterious, slightly eerie thread that often made them seem like one conglomerate person.

“We’re not here to make that decision at this moment.” Her mother spoke quietly. “That needs very careful thought and discussion.” She roamed the room with her eyes. “Or maybe not. You all have such full and busy lives built far from Wyoming.”

It was telling, Cole thought, that nobody contradicted her.

“We can get through the next month or two talking about the options,” she continued. “But it’s the end of August, and starting next month, the cattle must be brought from the high range to winter-over. Then starts the pregnancy testing, shipping, weaning, fence riding, equipment repair . . . ”

“C
OLE, YOU COULD
do it. You could take it over.” Grace spoke for the first time, her voice as quiet and calm as her name.

Harper looked at Cole. His eyes had gone wide and his mouth opened and closed without a sound. Finally he managed a choked, “Excuse me?”

“You could.” Grace smiled almost beatifically. She was the Crockett who most perfectly reflected her name—ever kind and gracious. “You know this place far better than we do anymore. We could hire you to be the . . . what?” She looked around as if for suggestions. “The manager, the CEO . . . ” She shrugged. “Heck, the King of Paradise.”

“That sounds vaguely blasphemous.” Raquel smiled, albeit a little wanly, and crossed her legs, showing off the rich, polished brown leather of cowboy boots beneath her long jewel-toned skirt. She was the rough-and-tumble compared to Grace’s feminine-and-refined. The three oldest girls had done plenty of exploring and tree-climbing and falling out of trees as kids, but Raquel had taken “tomboy” to a whole new level. She’d found the caves in the hills and collected the snakes and frogs. She’d never wanted to be the pirate princess. And she had a logic and thought process definitely inherited from their father. She was the closest Sam had come to having a son. If she’d had the will, Harper thought Raquel would have been the best choice of all to take over the ranch.

“No, ladies, it’s not me you want,” Cole said. “I’ve told your mama many times that running the Paradise isn’t in my blood. And I’m not here year ’round. I’m willing to help however I can, though. You know I have a vested interest in this place.”

“Are you still trying to buy your father’s section back?” Raquel asked.

“I am. No apologies.”

“You shouldn’t apologize. I admire you for working toward that.” She rubbed her forehead. “What about the rest of us? I feel awful now that Kelly and Grace and I have to bug out tomorrow. But our new location opens the day after that, and there’s nothing we can do at this late date. I guess that means, though, that we’re not the choices for new CEOs either.”

All three triplets wore expressions mixing regret with torn emotions. It was hard to begrudge them their conflicted feelings. They’d opened Triple Bean while they’d all still been in college. Between Kelly’s culinary arts degree, Raquel’s business degree, and Grace’s art and psychology double major, the little college endeavor had turned into a super-successful Denver business. They were opening a second branch of Triple Bean only a few years after graduation, and as far as Harper was concerned, the sky was going to be the limit for the three of them.

“Don’t you dare feel awful about anything,” Harper said. “You need to go back and make that new store a wonderful second success.” She took a deep breath and forged ahead. “I wasn’t going to say anything today, but I have to leave by the end of the week myself. I, ah, have a gallery showing of my paintings the following Friday. My first one. I promised to be around for the week in order to help with the preshow work. I’m sorry the timing is poor.”

With a squeal Kelly jumped from her chair and crossed the five feet to Harper’s chair. Ignoring Cole still on the arm, she grabbed Harper in a fierce hug. “Oh my gosh, that’s the most wonderful thing! I’m thrilled for you, Harpo.”