frankly, I’d play hell giving that money back,” he said, turning to face her again. The mobile corner of his mouth had inched upward a little farther, almost a smile. His eyes, however, were still carefully neutral. Still opaque.
“Well, I think that’s probably going to have to be between you and them, Mr. Sellers. It seems to fall in the category of not my problem. I want you off my place in…two minutes?” she asked, looking toward the battered truck.
“I could do that, ma’am, providing my truck will start, of course. And sometimes that’s doubtful. But I don’t think they’d be any too pleased if I did. Beneficial Life, I mean.”
“You know, I don’t really give a damn whether they are pleased or not,” Val said. “I want you out.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the last word was sharp. And final.
“I wish I could oblige you, Ms. Beaufort. I really do. But I have a professional obligation, ma’am. I’m sure you, being the C-E-O of a big company and all, can understand that.” He had said the initials slowly, emphasizing each, drawling them out mockingly. “I took their money, and now I’m obligated to do the job. Whether you or I like it very much,” he added.
“You’re planning on protecting me,” she said, her anger building, “whether I want you to or not. Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Mr. Sellers?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, ma’am,” he agreed solemnly.
“Don’t you imagine that’s going to be hard to do without my cooperation?” she asked, her voice falsely sweet.
“Well, it would certainly be easier with your cooperation, but I think I can probably manage the other,” he said.
She drew a deep breath, feeling Harvard stir beneath her. He was probably responding to her tension. She was furious, but she wasn’t sure at whom she was angrier. Beneficial Life? Av-Tech’s attorneys for not telling her about this policy, if it even existed? Or with this smug son of a bitch sitting on her porch? She edged Harvard closer to the railing and reached out to retrieve the tri-folded packet of documents he’d laid there. When she had it in her hand, she backed the gelding.
“Get out,” she said softly.
“They’ll just send somebody else,” Sellers said, his tone devoid now of the amusement that had lurked in it before. “They aren’t going to leave you alone out here without some kind of security system in place. And I assume you don’t have one.”
She’d be a fool to tell him she didn’t, of course, but she had never seen the need for security. When you lived at the back of beyond—in the devil’s armpit, as her dad used to say—you didn’t worry about the occasional burglary. Especially when there was nothing out here worth stealing in the first place.
“What would make you assume that?” she asked, controlling the gelding’s impatience with the ease of long practice.
Grey Sellers held her eyes a moment before he unfolded his length out of the rocker and walked over to her front door. He opened it, and then he waited. Nothing happened, of course. There were no alarms. No automatic notification of the sheriff’s office. Considering the roads that led to the ranch and the distance from the nearest town, by the time anyone from the Bradford County Sheriff’s Department could get out here, anything that was happening would be long over with anyway.
Then Sellers walked over and pushed up the window behind the rocker he’d been sitting in. It wasn’t locked. Val didn’t worry too much about locking windows either, of course.
He turned to look at her, his hat shadowing his face. “Your alarm system doesn’t seem to be working, Ms. Beaufort.”
“That’s because there isn’t one. As you are well aware.”
“So are they,” he said. “The insurance company, I mean. Something happens to you, they pay Av-Tech through the nose. And they don’t like paying. Can’t say I blame them.”
“What do you think is going to happen to me out here?”
“Nothing,” he said. And then he added, his tone again amused, “At least, not as long as I’m around.”
He came back to the railing, looking up at her from under the brim of that dusty black hat. Appropriate, she thought. This one certainly wasn’t a member of the white hat brigade. Those shadowed eyes had seen too much.
And how the hell do I think I can tell that by looking into his eyes? she wondered in disgust. She seemed to have developed an eye fetish in the past few minutes.
Harvard snorted, tossing his head and working at the bit. Sellers put his hand on the horse’s nose, running the heel down the length of it from between the gelding’s eyes to the nostrils. He leaned forward and blew on them, an old horseman’s trick.
“Easy, buster,” he said. “Mind your manners.” The words were low and caressing. The tone of someone who liked horses.
They’ll just send somebody else, he had said. They aren’t going to leave you alone out here without some kind of security system in place. And he was probably right.
She wasn’t Val Beaufort, penny-ante horse breeder and trainer, anymore. She was the CEO of Av-Tech Aeronautics, and like it or not, there were certain restrictions that went with the position. Restrictions she couldn’t do much about right now.
She would, she vowed. She wasn’t going to live her life chained to that damn company as her father had. Chained to the headaches that went with it. They’ll just send somebody else. They would. And she’d deal with that one when he arrived.
“Tell them I’ll get someone out here to set up a security system at the earliest possible opportunity,” she said.
“If you don’t, they will.”
“On my property? I think that’s called trespassing.”
“And I think the policy Av-Tech agreed to gives them the right to take adequate measures to safeguard their investment. Beneficial Life wouldn’t have written it unless it did.”
“I’ll straighten this out as soon as possible, Mr. Sellers,” she said, feeling that he was probably right and she was wrong. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling. “Thank you for making me aware of the policy. And now, if you would be so kind…”
She turned and looked pointedly at the truck again.
“They’ll just send someone else,” he warned the second time. “It’ll take a few days to get a system in place. They won’t leave you unprotected while that’s going on.”
“Then I guess I’ll have another visitor tomorrow. In the meantime, it’s a long way back to civilization. And it’s almost dark, just in case you haven’t noticed. The roads out here can be a little harrowing at night.”
His eyes held on hers a long moment. Finally he touched his hat again and walked across the porch and down the shallow steps, boot heels loud on the wooden planks. He climbed into the pickup and closed the door. Val didn’t move, almost anticipating what would happen next.
She wasn’t disappointed. The motor ground a few times, but it never turned over. He had telegraphed that move with his comment about
