The Princess of Coldwater Flats (2 page)

“I hate to put you out, Mr. Ryan,” Matt said.

“No problem.”

“Sammy Jo.” Matt turned back to the cool, blonde beauty in the chair. “Don’t make things worse on yourself.”

She laughed. Actually threw back her head and laughed until the musical sound rose to the rafters. “You’re threatening foreclosure! How can I make things worse?”

“Sammy Jo…”

“Give me some time, Matt. Three months. I’ll fix things.”

“You can’t.” Matt was exasperated. Didn’t she know how bad Gil had left Ridge Range Ranch?

“Three months.”

“No.”

“Come on, Matt. What’s it going to hurt Valley Federal? Give me ‘til the fall. I’ve got livestock I can sell. And I’ve got my rodeo horses. I teach an awful lot of kids to ride.”

“You’d be better off to sell those nag—horses,” Matt corrected himself. “The Triple R’s a fine piece of property. Maybe the finest around. A lot of people are interested in it already. Your uncle, for one, but then you—”

“Don’t talk to me about Uncle Peter,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Sammy Jo, you can’t hang on to that ranch.”

“Three months,” she pressed.

Matt Durning desperately wanted to say yes. Just to get her off his back, if nothing else. But he knew he couldn’t.

“Give her the three months,” the mysterious Mr. Ryan advised.

Sammy Jo narrowed her gold-tipped lashes at him, really noticing him for the first time. She didn’t need any help. Especially from a man. It annoyed her to see that at
his
request, Matt was wavering.

“Two months,” Matt said through his teeth.

“Three or I stay and listen to the rest of your meeting with him,” Sammy Jo said, hooking her thumb toward the stranger. The man wore jeans and a work shirt, but something about him looked too citified for her taste. His black hair brushed his shirt collar smoothly. Maybe it just fell that way, or maybe he worked at it real hard. She didn’t trust men with perfect hair. Uncle Peter had perfect hair.

“Three! Fine. Now talk to Glenda and make another appointment,” Matt barked.

Satisfied, Sammy Jo jumped to her feet. She shot one more suspicious glance at Mr. Ryan, then shook her head and strode out of Matt’s office, stalking across the plank wood floors of Valley Federal’s main lobby in search of Glenda.

“She’s outside,” one of the tellers said, apparently sensing whom she was looking for, so Sammy Jo stiff-armed her way through the bank’s double doors nearly bumping into Glenda in the process.

“Hey, Sammy Jo,” Glenda greeted her. As thin as Donna was fat, Glenda held a smoldering cigarette tightly between two fingers.

“Those things’ll kill you,” Sammy Jo told her.

“Don’t I know it.” She dragged deeply on the cigarette until the end glowed a virulent red. “But I am so stressed, I’ve picked up all my vices again.”

“What’s the matter?”

“You name it. Carl’s out of a job and drinking to boot. The boys want new shoes, those fancy kind that cost a fortune, and Lord, if I don’t think I’m pregnant again.”

Sammy Jo blinked in amazement. Glenda had to be forty-five. “Then what in the world are you doing smoking? It’s bad for the baby.”

“Don’t I know it,” she repeated as she held the cigarette out in front of her and gazed at it longingly. “This could be my last one. If I get the positive report today, I quit right now. I quit when I was having the boys, I can quit with this one, too. But I’m not quitting ‘til they tell me.” With that, she stuck the cigarette back between her lips and took another drag.

“I need an appointment with Matt,” Sammy Jo said.

“I’ll look at his schedule, but I’m pretty sure Friday’s open. Will that work?”

Sammy Jo shrugged. “Every day’s the same to me.”

“Fine, I’ll put you in.” With a sigh she stubbed out her cigarette in the sand-filled trashcan near the front doors.

“If Carl’s looking for work, I could use some help around the Triple R. I couldn’t pay much right now, but I’m good for it, you know that.”

“I know that, Sammy Jo. And thanks.” Glenda smiled. “I’ll kick his butt out of that easy chair in front of the TV and send him over to you.”

Feeling someone’s gaze on her, Sammy Jo glanced through the glass doors and encountered the intense gaze of Mr. Ryan. For no good reason other than she felt full of vinegar and frustration, she shot him a dirty look, then felt like an idiot as she stepped off the porch into the baking heat of the afternoon. She damn near burned her hand on her old pickup’s door handle it was so blasted hot. Swearing beneath her breath, she yanked several times to open the stubborn thing, then jumped up to the ripped seat to settle herself behind the wheel.

“Probably miserably rich,” she muttered, remembering the way Matt had fawned over him.

“Sammy Jo!”

Glancing up, Sammy Jo saw Tess Miller, her one true girlfriend from childhood, come hurrying out of the bank toward her in a pair of three-inch, red heels. Marveling how Tess mastered a half run without teetering, Sammy Jo rolled down her window and gingerly rested her arm on the hot metal door.

“Hey, Tess,” she said apologetically. “I got to get going. I’ve gotta ton of work waiting for me.”

As curvy as Sammy Jo was lean, Tess waved her friend’s excuses away. “I’ve been on a break that’s been a little longer than it should,” she revealed, shooting a guilty look toward the bank. Tess had worked at Valley Federal since she graduated from high school. She’d married a trucker named Larry who’d made her life miserable for six long years before she’d kicked him out. Now Tess supported herself and her daughter, Alex, on her salary at Valley Federal, and occasionally dragged Larry’s sorry behind into court for another round of trying to get back child support out of him.

But nothing fazed Tess for long. She was as happy and carefree as Sammy Jo was worried and frustrated. “Did Bev call you?”

“Bev Hawkins?” Sammy Jo asked in surprise. Bev didn’t run in Sammy Jo’s circle. Bev was a few more important rungs up the Coldwater Flats society ladder—or at least that’s how she came off.

“She wants to get Karen and Emmy riding lessons. I told her to call you.”

“What kind of riding lessons?”

“Trick-riding.”

“Oh, Tess. I can’t teach kids tricks.”

“Sure you can. You’re the Princess.”

Tess grinned, and Sammy Jo managed to hold back the few choice words she desperately wanted to spit out. Her reputation as a rodeo trick-rider was more bother than help.

“It’ll bring in a little income,” Tess added.

Sammy Jo grimaced. “I gotta go.”

“I’ll call you. Hey, there’s something else. Did you see that Mr. Cooper? Was he still here?”

Sammy Jo shook her head. “There was a Mr. Ryan at Matt’s desk.”

“Oh, that’s right. It’s
Cooper
Ryan! Man, is he something, huh?”

“Tess,” Sammy Jo murmured impatiently.

“He’s got lots of money and wants to spend it here.” Tess raised her eyebrows and looked at her friend as if Sammy Jo ought to start thinking how to avail herself of some of Mr. Cooper Ryan’s cold hard cash.

Sammy Jo’s answer was a sharp grinding of gears as she wheeled from the lot. Through the back window, she saw Tess race back on her red heels to the interior of the bank.

Sammy Jo smiled to herself. Tess had always meddled in Sammy Jo’s life. When they were kids, Tess had envied Sammy Jo’s slim shape and easy rapport with the boys their age. Rounder and shorter, the then Tess Dunsworth had been unfortunately tagged Big Tess by those same boys she’d so desperately wanted to impress. But as they grew up, Sammy Jo’s mercurial temper and tough ways had put off interested members of the opposite sex, and it was Tess who’d been chased and lusted after. Tess whose breasts had developed at an alarming rate until Sammy Jo had wanted to scream at the way the guys all howled and drooled over her. Tess who’d learned about sex and told Sammy Jo all the particulars.

Sammy Jo grimaced. Thinking of those particulars was the reason she’d been hesitant with men. That, and the fact she believed men couldn’t be trusted to treat a woman fairly. Witness how her own father treated her.

Shoving that thought aside, Sammy Jo skipped ahead to the next, most immediate crisis of the day, which in her case gave her a choice of three: the broken fence at the north end of the property; her favorite mare who was nine months pregnant and off her feed; or her new neighbor who didn’t seem to care a whit if his cattle roamed with hers because the damn things leaped fences as if they were half-deer.

“Thanks, Dad, for making this all possible,” she muttered dryly, slamming her foot down on the accelerator.

Cooper Ryan watched Sammy Jo Whalen’s blue pickup tear out of the parking lot and screech onto the street. An ironic smile touched his lips. Talk about stubborn, that woman gave new meaning to the phrase “hard to get along with.”

Unfortunately, “that woman” was his neighbor. A neighbor he had a desperate need to stay on good terms with. Good terms because he intended to buy her out.

Too bad his Limousin cattle had already created a problem. He was in the process of selling the whole damn lot: the previous owner of his property, who had revoltingly named the spread Serenity Ranch, had purchased the lean, nervous breed for reasons which escaped Cooper. He’d spent the last few months trying to keep them penned in, but they invariably jumped the fence that separated Serenity from the Triple R, and Cooper’s ranch foreman, Jack Babbitt, had received more than one blistering phone call from Sammy Jo Whalen.

Profuse apologies weren’t enough, apparently. Jack had asked Cooper to leave it up to him, but Sammy Jo wasn’t easily appeased. Cooper had been meaning to meet with the woman personally but hadn’t yet had the chance; he was still in the process of moving from southern California. Now, however, he’d gotten his first glimpse of her, and he was seriously rethinking his approach. She clearly didn’t want to sell. And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to recognize she was stubborn as a bad cold and maybe just as nasty.

But Cooper was going to own that ranch. He had a plan, one he’d formed months—years—ago, really. Even before he and Pamela split up, he’d decided he wanted to own land, lots of land, the biggest spread around. And when he happened upon Coldwater Flats and knew he could buy up both Serenity and the Triple R, he’d started making his dream happen.

Except Sammy Jo Whalen had proved to be a more prickly thorn than he’d anticipated.

No problem, he thought with his usual arrogance. It was just a matter of time. Three months, to be exact.

“If there’s anything else Valley Federal can do for you, Mr. Ryan?” Matt Durning had followed him out of his office and into the main lobby. Cooper examined the bank manager’s obsequious smile. Durning clearly liked the sum of Cooper’s collective bank balances.

“I think we’re all set.”

“Are you planning to relocate to Coldwater Flats completely?” Durning could hardly contain his excitement. He was as transparent as glass. Cooper could practically see dollar signs flash in his eyes.

“Thinking about it,” Cooper answered in a blatant understatement. Like Sammy Jo Whalen, he was dressed for ranching. As soon as he’d bought Serenity Ranch, he’d tossed off his city clothes with unrestrained release. Growing up in a small Idaho town hadn’t prepared him for his years as a southern California corporate rancher. Oh, he’d been successful. More than successful, really. But talking about profit and loss with ten other men and women in sterile, air-conditioned offices on the thirtieth floor of some skyscraper, enduring meeting upon meeting with a host of bank managers and vice presidents and assistant vice presidents and assistant-assistant vice presidents, then going home to an equally sterile apartment with piped–in Muzak…‌well, his patience for the rat race hadn’t been much to begin with. Now it was nil. Zippo. Nada. It had died an unlamented death when he’d turned thirty-five, looked at himself in the mirror and asked, “When the hell is the life I want going to start?”

The answer came on a weekend trip across Oregon on his way back to Idaho. On a lark, he’d taken a side road and unexpectedly bumped into the hamlet of Coldwater Flats. Clean, open, uninhabited spaces and a horizon that stretched endlessly east one way, and to the Cascade Mountains, west and south.

Love at first sight.

He purchased the ranch next to Gil Whalen’s that very week though he’d thought that the place was poorly named. Serenity Ranch? Good grief, it sounded like a substance-abuse center. Cooper determined he would change the name as soon as possible, but then a myriad of responsibilities had gotten in his way. He couldn’t move as fast as he wanted. Too many loose ends to tie up. Hell, he’d had a corporation to sell. Consequently, it had taken the better part of a year to divest himself of his old life and in the interim he’d let Jack Babbitt and his wife, Lettie, take care of Serenity until he got here. They’d done a decent job and had been the ones who’d unwittingly let Cooper know about the neighboring Triple R’s rocky finances.

“The old man’s gone stark out of his skull,” Jack had reported with a bewildered shake of his graying head. “Ain’t buyin’ any new livestock. Sellin’ off that prize bull. His daughter’s scramblin’ around, trying to put things right, but every time she plugs a hole, Gil punches two more open.”