knew how much she loved her father and how hard that had to have been for her. And no matter how much he despised the man, Nick didn’t like to hear of anyone’s suffering.
She glanced down at her hands. “When I dropped out of school to come home to care for him—”
“You had to quit school?” She’d always wanted to become a teacher and he hated that she’d had to give that up.
“I only had a couple of semesters left, but Daddy needed me more than I needed to finish school.” She shrugged, but he could tell it still bothered her. “There wasn’t any money for my last year at the university anyway.”
Nick frowned. Bertram Holbrook had always been one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the county. Or at least, that’s what he’d always led everyone to believe.
“Surely—”
“No.” Obviously embarrassed, she suddenly rose to her feet and walked over to the window between the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “Do I have to spell it out for you? We’re broke. The only thing keeping us from being homeless is that contract.”
He didn’t know what to say. As far as the judge was concerned, Nick couldn’t have cared less. But Cheyenne didn’t deserve the burden of having to pay for the sins of her unscrupulous father or be forced to give up her dreams.
“What happened?” he asked, when he finally found his voice.
Her shoulders sagged as if the weight of the world rested on them a moment before she finally turned to face him. “Daddy had made some ill-advised investments and when the stock market took a nosedive, he was too incapacitated from the stroke to sell before he lost most of his portfolio.”
“He had a lot of Web site stocks?” Nick guessed, remembering the crash of the Internet stocks several years back.
“What was left wouldn’t even cover our utility bills for a month,” she said, nodding. “Then, when the doctors told us he couldn’t work any longer, things went from bad to worse.”
“What about insurance and a pension? He should have had the same paid benefits that other county and state officials have.”
Something didn’t ring true about the whole situation. Either the judge had been an extremely poor planner or his thirst for money and power had finally backfired on him. Nick suspected it was the latter that had finally brought the man down.
She walked back over and sank into the chair. “After Daddy had the stroke and couldn’t work, there wasn’t enough money to keep up the premiums on the insurance and he’d withdrawn everything in his pension fund to invest in the stocks.”
Nick would have thought the judge had more sense than to deplete every resource he had. But then, greed could do that. And if there was ever a more greedy, power-mad human being than Bertram Holbrook, Nick had never met him.
“You didn’t know any of this?”
“No.” She rubbed her forehead with a trembling hand. “Daddy never discussed finances with me. He always told me that I’d never have to worry about those things.”
Nick would bet every dime he had that finances weren’t the only things the man had kept her in the dark about. “I’m sure it all came as quite a shock when you found out.”
She nodded. “I had no idea what we were going to do. Fortunately Emerald, Inc. contacted me about buying the Flying H right after I came to the conclusion there was no alternative but for us to file for bankruptcy.” Her cheeks colored a deep rose. “Then, when it became clear there wasn’t enough money from the sale of the ranch to pay off Daddy’s medical and rehabilitation bills, Mr. Freemont told me the corporation would pay off the rest of our creditors, allow us to stay in our home and pay me a modest salary if I signed a ten-year contract to be the ranch foreman of the newly formed Sugar Creek Cattle Company. At the end of that time, our debts will be considered paid in full and I’ll be free to renegotiate my contract or move on.”
If Nick had thought things were strange before, they’d just taken a turn toward bizarre. But the more he thought about it, the more it sounded like Emerald had learned of the Holbrook’s money problems and, in the bargain, seized the opportunity to mete out a bit of revenge for the judge’s treatment of him and his mother all those years ago.
Unfortunately it wasn’t Bertram Holbrook who was having to pay the price for Emerald’s retaliatory actions. Cheyenne was the one who’d practically sold herself into servitude to bail the old man out of his financial woes. And it didn’t sit well with Nick one damned bit that his indominable grandmother had obviously been taking advantage of Cheyenne.
“Do you mind if I keep this for a couple of days to look over?” he asked, picking up the contract. If there was a way to get them both out of this mess, he intended to find it. “I need to figure out if you owe me or Emerald, Inc.”
She shrugged one slender shoulder as she rose to her feet. “You might as well, since it appears that I work for you now, instead of Emerald, Inc.”
“Where are you going?”
From the look on her face, she couldn’t wait to end their meeting. “Unless you have something more you want to discuss, I’ve got work to do.”
He did, but first he wanted to talk to Emerald. “I’ll go over this and see what the exact wording is, then we’ll discuss it tomorrow afternoon while we inspect the herds.”
“Can’t you do that on your own?” She sounded close to going into a panic at the thought of spending time with him.
Nick smiled. “I could, but it’s standard practice for the foreman to show the new owner around. Besides, I’m sure I’ll have a few questions about the way you’ve been running the operation.”
Clearly unhappy, she hesitated a moment before she nodded. “Fine.” Walking to the door, she turned back. “I’ll be here tomorrow after lunch. Be ready.”
“I’ll have the horses saddled.”
“The truck would be faster.”
“I’d rather ride.”
She glared at him for several long seconds before she finally nodded. “All right…boss.” Then, opening the door, she walked out into the hall and slammed it shut behind her.
Once he was alone, Nick inhaled deeply. He hadn’t drawn a decent breath since Cheyenne had walked into the room. He wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but she was even prettier today than she’d been yesterday. Her turquoise T-shirt had brought out the blue-green of her eyes and the sun shining through the window behind her when she’d turned to face him had accentuated the golden highlights in her long brown hair.
His temperature soared at the mental image and shaking his head at his own foolishness, he did his best to ignore the tightening in his groin. But then, it had always been that way with Cheyenne. From the first moment he saw her at the homecoming dance his senior year, he hadn’t been able to think of anything but making her his wife and living out the rest of his days trying to prove himself worthy of her.
Thinking back on that summer after his high school graduation, he still couldn’t get over how naive they’d been. He and Cheyenne had
