Wrangled (20 page)

“Cody, I hear you have an interesting
business proposition for me,” he said, smilin’. I figured he musta been tryin’
to put me at ease, but this meant so much to me, I couldn’t be easy until I
knew whether it would all work.

“Yessir,” I said nervously.

“Now listen here, Cody. You’re a grown man,
and if I like what I hear, you’ll be my business partner. It’s time to call me
Russ. Fair enough?”

My head was spinnin’. Business partner! I
couldn’t hardly believe it. All I’d hoped for was another raise; this sounded
promisin’.

“Fair enough, sir. I mean R-Russ,” I
stammered, blushin’.

After I stuttered on his name, Russ smiled
at me even bigger and said, “Well, let’s hear it! I can’t wait.”

I took a deep breath to settle my nerves,
then started in tellin’ him what had happened in Livermore, and the idea I’d
had that if we could sell the paints trained, we could make more money on ‘em.
By the time I was done, I’d relaxed enough to say, “I was hopin’ if it worked
out, you’d see your way clear to maybe split the profit with me.”

“I see. And what would you think was a fair
split?” I didn’t know whether he was just gatherin’ facts, or whether he was
already considerin’ this a good idea. I almost hated to ask for it, but I owed
it to my future to say what I wanted.

“I was thinkin’ fifty-fifty, Boss.”

“Cody, if we’re going to be partners, would
you be willing to let me teach you some things about business?” he said. Now I
was nervous. Had I blown my chance by askin’ too much?

“Sure, Bo—I mean Russ.” His answering smile
calmed me down a little.

“Okay. Is there anything pressing in the
barn right now, or can you stay here with me to kick this around for a while?”

“I reckon what I need to do can wait until
after lunch,” I said, with a little more confidence now.

“Good. Hank, I think Cody and I can handle
it from here. Thanks for bringing his idea to my attention.”

Hank, who hadn’t said a word the entire
time, got up, shook the boss’s hand, clapped me on the back and left, still
without a word.

I waited for the boss to speak first.

“Cody, that’s a good idea you had there.
But if you’re going to make a business of it, you need to learn a few things.
I’ll stake you, and as long as you’re willing to follow my lead on your
education, I’ll give you seventy-five percent of the profits until what I’ve
had to lay out to get you started is paid back. After that, ninety percent.
Your first lesson is this: don’t undervalue your contribution.”

I’m pretty sure my mouth was hangin’ open
at that. If I’d known what he meant by education, I might not have got it
closed for the rest of the day. We started in on makin’ a business plan right
that minute, after I’d jumped up and wrung his hand in a grateful shake.

Russ’s idea was that we wouldn’t train just
his paints; we’d advertise to train other people’s horses, too. I’d need some
employees, and I’d have to train
them
first. I’d need a separate
operation from the Rockin’ W, too. Russ said he’d call Annalee and have her
start lookin’ for a property for him to buy, with a barn and a house at least.
He’d rent me the property after I started makin’ 90% of the profit, and sell it
to me for what he got it for eventually. But he let me know that not every
investor would do all this. I was one of his ‘boys’, and got family treatment.
It reminded me of how much I owed him, and I said so, but Russ didn’t want me
to dwell on it.

“When you’re a successful businessman,” he
said, “remember what you needed when you were sixteen, and pay it forward.
That’s all I ask.” I vowed right then that I’d do like he did, and make sure my
ranch always had room for kids that needed a break. Meanwhile, I needed to
start in makin’ sure Annalee didn’t marry anyone but me. I told Russ I planned
to break her up with that fellow she was plannin’ on marryin’, and he said, “Go
for it.” I hoped he’d keep it to hisself, though. I didn’t need no hassle with
Hank.

~~~

Between my regular work and the studies
Russ had me doin
’ every night, there wasn’t much time
to go into town and see Annalee. It fretted me some, ‘cause I didn’t know how
close Annalee was gettin’ to Jason Clark. Russ had finally told me his name,
after I threatened to go into town and look for her in every real estate
office. But he made me promise not to start nothin’. Said a businessman
couldn’t afford no personal fights, and there was better ways. I meant to study
hard and find out those ways, sooner or later.

Saturday, I hurried through my chores,
‘cause Russ told me to take a break from the studyin’ and I wanted to borrow
the rig and go into town. I’d try to talk to Annalee, and I’d try to make nice
with Celeste and Ciara, too. If it all went good, maybe we could take the kids
to the park and let ‘em play on the slides and stuff.

It was about mid-afternoon, time I got
there. The day was warm but not too hot, one of those few perfect fall days
that was the only good weather we ever got. I knocked on the door at Annalee’s
house, and Ciara come to answer it.

“Why, Cody Wayne! What are you doin’ here?”
she said, but it wasn’t unfriendly.

“I come to say howdy and see if Annalee’d
talk to me a bit, maybe take the kids out for a treat,” I said.

“You know she’s engaged to Jason Clark,
don’t you Cody?”

“I do, but does that mean she cain’t talk
to no other man? An old friend?” I tried to smile, make it look like I wasn’t
desperate, but maybe Ciara seen right through me.

“I’m not sure she’d want to talk to you,
Cody, but the fact is, she isn’t home. Neither are the kids.” Ciara’s eyes
looked kind, like she mighta known that would disappoint me.

“Any notion when she’ll be back?” I asked.

“No, can’t say when she’ll be back. She and
Jason took the kids over to Cheyenne to a carnival. They probably won’t be back
before dark.”

That just about done me in, the thought
that
he’d
be the one to show them kids a good time, instead of me. I
never had no chance to take ‘em to the carnival, nor to take Annalee out for
that matter. “Oh,” I said. Weren’t much more to say. I didn’t want to make a
pest of myself and ask to stay ‘til she got home. Didn’t think Celeste would go
for it anyhow. “Thanks, Ciara.”

“You’re welcome Cody. I’m sorry,” she
added.

“You are?” Somehow, it would make me feel
better to know that Ciara was on my side.

“I am. I wonder if she’s doing the right
thing, marrying Jason for the sake of the kids.” Ciara looked like she might
say more if I give her half a chance.

“What do you mean…she don’t love him?”

“No, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t. Sometimes
I think she doesn’t even like him. But she has this idea that if she can’t pay
Al’s hospital bill, the authorities might come and take her kids.”

“What? No way!” I said.

“It’s what she thinks,” Ciara insisted.

“Ciara, would you do me a favor? Would you
tell her I come by, and that Russ and I have got a business we’re gonna run as
partners. I can support her now.”

“Is that so? Well, she may be glad to hear
it, but she’s about to marry Jason in just three weeks.”

“Just tell her, please? And tell her I love
her.”

“Doesn’t she know that already?”

“I ain’t never told her so in so many
words,” I said, hangin’ my head. “I’d like to tell her in person, but I cain’t
stay out that late with Russ’s rig. Tell her I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Okay, Cody, but don’t expect much. She’s
wearin’ a diamond ring that Jason put on her finger. I don’t know if telling
her you love her will top that.”

“Just tell her, please?”

“I said I would. See you tomorrow.”

Seemed like that was the best I was gonna
be able to do tonight, so I went on home, dreamin’ about kissin’ Annalee and
smashin’ that guy in the face with my fist.

The next day, I put on my best clothes and
asked Russ to borrow the rig again. The minute he said yes, I tore outta there
like a bat outta hell. I was knockin’ on Annalee’s door less than half an hour
later, ranch road or no ranch road. This time it was Annalee answered it.

“Hi, Cody.”

“Hi, Annalee. Did Ciara…” She didn’t give
me time to finish.

“Yes, she gave me your message. Cody, why
didn’t you ever say that before? I loved you. I would have been glad to hear
you loved me.”

“Aw, sweetheart, it ain’t an easy thing to
say, ‘specially if you got no way to take care of a wife and a coupla
youngun’s. But now I do, I mean I will. Russ is gonna stake me in a business.
Didn’t he call you yet?”

“You mean about a small ranch? Yes, he did.
But he didn’t say it had anything to do with you.”

“It’s for me, Annalee. Me and you, I mean.
I’m gonna run a business trainin’ ropin’ horses, since that’s the only thing
I’m good at.” It all come out in a rush, ‘cause to tell the truth, the
strawberry smell of her hair was makin’ me a little crazy. I didn’t want to
talk, I wanted to kiss her.

“But Cody, I’m getting married in a few
weeks.”

“You can tell him you changed your mind,
that you don’t love him. That you love me instead. You do love me, don’t you,
Annalee? Tell me I wasn’t dreamin’ all those nights.” I never meant to beg, but
there I was doin’ it, and I mighta dropped down to my knees if she hadn’t put
her little hand on my chest to stop me talkin’.

“You weren’t dreaming, Cody, but I’ve made
a promise. I can’t take it back now. I’m sorry, it’s too late.” Tears was
brimmin’ up in her eyes. Like to have broke my heart.

“You don’t love him, sweetheart. You cain’t
marry him. You don’t owe him nothin’.”

“There’s where you’re wrong Cody Wayne. I
owe him a lot. More than I can ever repay. Please go, I can’t do this.”

“Annalee, I ain’t gonna give up. And I
ain’t gonna let you marry him. No matter what it takes.”

“Please go.”

There weren’t nothin’ left to do but go.
But I wasn’t makin’ idle threats. I wouldn’t let her marry him, if I had to
kill him to stop it.

After Cody left, I looked around fearfully
for Jason
’s car. In the week since I’d said yes to his
proposal and then upset him by demanding he use a condom, he’d acted so
different from his normal behavior. He wouldn’t leave me alone with a male
customer, telling me that many a female real estate agent had been raped and
murdered by male clients they met at empty listings. Whenever we went anywhere,
he kept his big hand on the back of my neck, steering me here and there,
staring at any man who gave me a second glance until he looked away. I never
did get my hair cut. Jason said he wouldn’t hear of it.

None of this was fun anymore. The burning
desire I’d felt for him that first time was washed away in the knowledge that I
might as well have stayed in Bethel City. Sure, there were no sister wives
here, but that didn’t mean he’d be faithful to me. I was willing to give him my
body and soul for the sake of my kids, but he seemed to have no interest in
anything about me but sex. I even tried to ask about his family, whether he
missed his parents, but he didn’t want to talk about them. Like he had once
before, he said, “Water under the bridge.”

This time, I asked him what he meant.
“Nothing. Just that old people die and young ones take their place. I just got
my business a little earlier than I would have otherwise.”

“Weren’t you sad they died, Jason?”

“Not particularly. Didn’t make any
difference to me.” I knew something was terribly wrong with Jason inside, but I
didn’t have the experience or knowledge to know what it was.

In the office, he was the same as he’d been
before we started seeing each other. I began to think part of my life was a
dream while the other was reality, and I wasn’t sure which was which. At nine
a.m., I’d arrive for the day, and he’d come in with coffee and muffins at ten.
After lunch, I could go on listing calls, but only if he knew where I’d be at
all times. He said it was for my safety. Or, he’d have me go on listing calls
with him, to train me he said, though I thought it was to keep an eye on me. Then
he’d take me home, and I’d feed the kids and get them ready for bed before he
was back to take me out.

He usually took me to dinner first, but we
always ended up back at his house, in his bedroom, with me stripped and
vulnerable, and him free to do anything he pleased. Usually, he’d start by
making me strip so he could look at me. He’d take my hair out of its confining
pins and clips and spread it around me like that picture of Venus on a shell
that I saw in one of the books we studied at the ranch.

Then he might take out his penis and have
me suck it, kneeling in front of him naked while he stood with his legs spread
and all his clothes still on, his cock sticking out of his pants like a flag.
Other times, he wanted me to stand completely still, while he ran his hands
over me, pinching my nipples and poking his fingers inside me. Sometimes he
even made me wear some handcuffs he had, with fur all around them. He’d make me
put my hands behind my back for that.

The one thing he never did was make love to
me. I didn’t dare ask why, knowing that this was all about the condom incident.
I was afraid that if I asked, he’d take it as an invitation, and what if he
still didn’t have any condoms? I hated every minute he spent poking and
prodding me, though my body betrayed me by responding to the stimulus, and he
crowed about it.

“Look here, Anna, you’re all wet for me,”
he’d say, after sucking at my nipples and playing my clit. But, when he pinched
and twisted or bit my nipples, it was all I could do to keep from screaming in
pain. Instead I bit the insides of my lips until they bled. He laughed when he
thrust his tongue into my mouth and tasted the coppery tang.

I began to fear for my life and the lives
of my kids when he took us to the carnival and put Tali in the Ferris wheel
seat with Al even though she was too little. When I told him that, he said,
“She’s fine.”

But Tali started crying and throwing a fit,
so we got her off, and then Al decided he didn’t want to go by himself. I asked
Jason to take us home after that. He seemed annoyed, so I told him I’d leave
the kids with my sisters and go with him somewhere else if he wanted.

“Why do you call them your sisters?” he
snapped. “They aren’t your sisters, stop calling them that.”

“Jason, please. I don’t know what else to
call them. They’re closer than friends. They
are
my sisters.” I could
tell he was displeased, though, because he clamped his lips together, and when
he left us at the house, he said goodbye as if it were final.

After Cody’s visit, I started thinking about
all that. What I needed was to have a talk with Russ. Maybe he’d know what to
think of Jason’s strange lack of feeling was all about. Meanwhile, wedding
plans went on all around me as if I weren’t involved in them. It was surreal.

~~~

“I just have the feeling that something’s
terribly wrong with him,” I said, after explaining to Russ and Charity that I
was having misgivings about marrying Jason. I had met them at a small,
twenty-acre property with an older but nicely-kept house and a barn on it. From
what the sellers had told me, it would be ideal for what Russ was looking for,
for a new business according to what Cody had told me. I still didn’t quite
understand what the details of the business were, but it didn’t matter, as long
as the zoning matched up.

“Are you sure you aren’t just getting
pre-wedding jitters?” Russ asked. How could I tell him about what Jason did
with me in the bedroom? It was too embarrassing.

“Russ, would you mind if I talked to
Charity alone, just woman to woman?” I said.

“Of course not. I’ll go take a look at the
barn.”

“Thank you.”

When Russ had left, I turned to Charity,
and to my horror, burst into tears.

Alarmed, she grabbed me and wrapped her
arms around me. “Honey, what is it? You can tell me.”

“Charity, he…he…Oh, my God, he’s worse than
Jed!”

Charity’s face grew hard, and she snapped,
“What’s he doing to you? I’m going to kill the bastard!”

“It’s not what he’s doing,” I said, “it’s
how he’s doing it.” Slowly, I began with Jason’s weird behavior about my hair.
Charity’s face cleared, but darkened again when I told her about our first time
and how he’d reacted when I told him to use a condom. By the time I got to
kneeling blowjobs, handcuffs and sexual humiliation, she looked ready to kill
after all.

“No wonder you’re having misgivings!” she
exclaimed. “He sounds like a monster. That’s it, Annalee, you can’t marry him.”

“But, Charity, how can I not? He’s given me
a career, he’s willing to take on my debts, I owe him something!” I wailed.

Charity took me by the shoulders with both
hands and gave me a little shake, looking intently into my eyes. “You don’t owe
him that. We’ll have to figure out what to do about Al’s hospital bill, but I’m
going to tell Russ what an asshole Jason turned out to be. You can bet he’ll
have something to say about it.”

“Oh, please don’t tell him about the sex!
Charity, I’ll die of embarrassment.”

“No you won’t. I’ll try not to tell him the
details, but you know Russ. When he gets mad, no one messes with him.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, laughing in spite
of myself. It was Russ getting mad that had brought me to the ranch with my
sisters. That reminded me of what Jason had said, so I told Charity that, too.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure Russ will get to the
bottom of it,” she told me.

Russ came back then, and we all went
through the house. Like most of the houses around Rawlins, it was a boxy brick
ranch style house built in the 1960s. A living room, kitchen, three bedrooms
and one bath were on the main floor. This one had its basement finished, with a
family room, laundry area, and another bedroom with an attached bath. The
current owners had also renovated the kitchen, a big plus in my opinion.
Instead of dark, tiny cabinets and drawers stacks, there were ash fittings from
IKEA, with big drawers for the pans and soft-closing doors on the shelving.
Granite countertops and glass tile backsplashes looked easy to keep clean, and
the floors were fourteen-inch tiles with warming lines underneath.

“I could love a kitchen like this,” I said
to Charity.

“Who wouldn’t?” she replied.

“How was the barn?” I asked Russ.

“Adequate. We’ll need to build a bigger and
better one, but this one will do for a start. I think this will do, Annalee,
but I want Cody to see it first,” he said.

“Do you mind telling me what this is all
about?” I asked.

“Not at all. Cody came to me with a
business idea. I did a little investigation, and I think it will be profitable.
You know that’s what I do, right?” he asked.

“No, I mean, what is it you do exactly?” I
asked, confused by the change of subject.

“I fund businesses that look profitable,
and I get a piece of the business in return,” he explained, in what I was
certain was an oversimplification.

“Oh, okay. So you are part-owner of several
businesses?”

“You could say that.” His droll delivery sent
Charity into gales of laughter. She’d been holding back for several minutes.

“Ask him how many,” she prodded, still
giggling.

“Uh, how many?” I asked.

“Um, when this one gets going, it’ll be
number thirty.”

I must have looked stunned, because Charity
stopped giggling and said as solemnly as she could, “He’s an angel investor.
That doesn’t mean he’s an angel,” she continued, winking at him, “but the
people he loans money to think he is.”

“Uh huh,” was all I could manage.

“Sometimes he’s a devil,” she stage-whispered,
causing Russ to clear his throat and mock frown at her.

“Okay, you two. You’d better go home. I
don’t know what the sellers would think if I allowed that kind of behavior in
their house.”

“No bed, anyway,” Charity laughed. “Next
time show us an occupied house.”

We went our separate ways, but as soon as
they left, I resumed my worrying and wondering what I should do about my life.
It seemed I’d made a mess of it. What would I do if Russ turned up something
really bad in Jason’s past? I shivered as I thought about the two times he’d
chilled me with his careless attitude toward his parents’ deaths. There was
something wrong there, but I couldn’t imagine what.

They hadn’t been killed by guns or poison
or anything like that. It was an accident, a logging truck came out of nowhere
and broadsided their car, killing them instantly. Jason had heard the news only
an hour later, while he was out with friends he’d been with all day. The
investigation turned up faulty brakes in the truck, and no one had been
charged, though the logging company had been fined. Deciding I was
overreacting, I put those thoughts aside, but I knew I wouldn’t risk my
children to his sole care. Even if he had no evil intent toward them, he wasn’t
attuned to their safety. Look what he’d almost done with Tali, and I’d almost
let him. Well, that wouldn’t happen again.

I’d leave it in Russ’s capable hands, and
decide what to do if and when he had more information for me. But if nothing
turned up, I didn’t have much choice but to marry Jason. That hospital bill
alone was the deciding factor, though the Cons list had grown to the same
length as the Pros. Eighty-four thousand dollars and some change was worth a
little worry and humiliation, wasn’t it?