Delaney didn’t respond. She’d always taken Rebecca at her word when it came to Josh Hill. But she was beginning to wonder: Was Rebecca telling the truth when she said she felt nothing for him? Or did she like him just a little too much?
CHAPTER TEN
“YOU OUT OF SORTS?” Roy asked, lingering after supper instead of going directly to his house in back as he usually did.
“Why do you ask?” Conner replied, slouching lower on the brown leather sofa in the ranch’s main living room and taking a long swallow of his beer.
Roy stepped over the two dogs lounging at Conner’s feet and carried his beer to the chair closest to the fire that raged, hot and crackling, in the huge stone fireplace. “Been brooding most of the day.”
He had good reason to brood, but he’d be damned if he was going to tell anybody about it. His family had sent him to save the ranch, and he’d knocked up the town librarian instead. The second they found out he was involved in yet another scandal, his grandfather would probably follow through with his promise to cut him off.
“Maybe I’m beginning to take after you.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Conner prodded Sundance to move over and stretched his legs, hoping the fire’s heat would ease the stiffness in his muscles and help his anger to dissipate. He hadn’t slept a wink last night, and he and Roy had hauled water and feed to cattle all day. He was exhausted. But not exhausted enough to forget what Delaney had said to him last night, what she’d done to him.
“So?” Roy said, interrupting the incessant question—what the hell am I going to do now?—that had been consuming Conner’s thoughts for nearly twenty-four hours.
“So, what?” he replied, taking another sip of his beer.
“You gonna tell me what’s the matter?”
He swallowed and drank some more. Maybe he’d get drunk and forget the whole thing. Maybe he’d call up a few old friends and run off for Europe, let his grandfather and uncles have the damn ranch and everything else.
That’s it. Give it up before everyone finds out it was starting to mean something to you, the voice in his head quickly agreed.
“It doesn’t mean anything to me. None of it means anything to me.”
“Pardon?” Roy said.
Conner grimaced. “Nothing.”
Roy snorted and tilted his bottle, but made no move to stand or go. Conner stared into the flames, seeing Delaney’s face and hating himself for falling into her carefully laid trap. That skimpy black dress…
“Maybe we could raise horses,” Roy said, out of the blue.
Conner shifted his gaze to the older man’s weathered face. “What?”
“You asked if there was any way to turn this place around.”
Two months ago! Conner arched his brows. “I thought I was in this on my own.”
“Well, maybe I like your new haircut. Or maybe I’m starting to enjoy your cheerful personality.”
Conner didn’t answer. He’d gone to the barbershop instead of the salon to avoid seeing Rebecca again, and hated his new haircut. But a bad haircut was the least of his troubles. His uncles were going to have a heyday when they heard about the baby.
“I’ve been thinking that the Hill brothers seem to be doing mighty well for themselves,” Roy went on. “They raise horses, you know. Thoroughbreds.”
Did Conner care about this anymore? No. He didn’t want to hear it. Roy’s suggestion had come too late to make any difference.
Roy shifted forward in his seat and leaned his elbows on his knees, as though he believed that might help him gain Conner’s attention. “You remember, you met Josh at the feed store when we were there last.”
Conner did remember a man a couple of inches taller, wearing a demin shirt and a tan cowboy hat, but he could barely manage a grunt.
“They own almost a hundred brood mares and a million-dollar racehorse,” Roy said with a whistle that made the dogs’ ears perk up. “You should see the stud fees they’re charging.”
“I’ll have to look into it,” he said, so that Roy would shut up and go away. Conner had already thought of raising horses, but they didn’t have the capital it would take to get started, and Josh and Mike Hill had a pretty firm hold on that sector of the market, anyway. Why did Roy have to open up to him tonight of all nights?
“There’s one other thing that might help some,” Roy volunteered.
Conner didn’t answer. He was too busy going over the conversation between him and Delaney in Boise. “Do you have protection?”…“You don’t have to worry about that.”
Why the hell hadn’t he insisted they buy some condoms?
Because she’d told him she was a virgin and that she’d taken care of birth control.
She had been a virgin. She hadn’t lied about that.
“Conner? Are you listening?”
He wondered how long it would be before she hit him up for money. “Hmm?” he said.
“I was saying that a lot of people come to hunt and fish once summer gets here. They camp along the creek below the south pass. We’ve never charged anyone to use our land—people have helped themselves for years—but they gather our wood for fires and often leave their garbage behind. We could establish some campsites and charge sixteen, eighteen dollars a night.”
“We’d have to police it, collect payment and run off anyone who won’t pony up,” Conner said automatically, not particularly excited by the idea. Finding a solution for the ranch didn’t matter anymore, unless he could do it overnight.
“True, but we could make two, three hundred bucks a night,” Roy said.
Conner glanced at him. “How? The Bureau of Land Management controls a chunk of the south pass, and the government doesn’t charge for camping, does it?”
Roy fingered his mustache, then smiled. “Learned something since you’ve been here, have ya?”
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know we’re not going to make any money selling something people can get for free.”
“I would’ve thought so, too, until water started going for two and three dollars a gallon.”
“That doesn’t happen around here.”
“We still trust our water. That’s why people want to come here. But if we start charging campers, maybe the BLM will follow suit. Even if they don’t, it’d be worth it—if only to get visitors to stick with the free BLM sites so we won’t have to clean up after them.”