The Maverick Meets His Match (Hearts of Wyoming Book 2)(90)
A rare smile curled Harold’s mouth. “I don’t care about being around just anyone, that’s true. But this here stock company is my family—literally and figuratively. They understand me, let me be. But most of all they care about me. And I care about them. Every one of them.”
“I care. And getting the best deal is how I showed it. Stan will be taking on every wrangler that chooses to move to Colorado.”
Harold nodded. “Working for Stan will never be the same as working for JM, or anyone associated with Prescott.”
“Stan pays same wages we do.” Ty had checked into that.
“Ranch hands don’t do it for the pay. They do it for the way of life and to feel valued. By those you do it for. See Kyle over there?”
Harold motioned toward the shorter young cowboy who had avoided Ty. “He’s grown up around rodeo. His father was a bull rider. His mother a barrel racer. Getting a college degree in equine studies with the help of a scholarship from us. The same scholarship that helped you. Works here so he can learn about breeding broncs and bulls. I can ask him to do anything. Muck out stalls, wash down the horses. He loves what he does. He knows I not only appreciate it, I value when he takes extra care with my brood mares, when he checks the fencing to make sure the bull I’m breeding is secure. He’s a quiet sort, but he’s humming just about all the time. I doubt he’ll be humming around Stan if he decides to go.”
“I’m sure Stan will value him too, Harold. Or he’ll find another outfit that will.” Ty refused to feel bad for making the Prescott family a bunch of money.
“Maybe. But Davis over there has been working here since high school. First summers and then full time after he graduated. JM knew his father, his mother, knew his sisters, attended his father’s wedding. It’s a family here. An extended family. You were once part of it. Even after you got your fancy education. JM made you part of Prescott.”
“He also gave me the duty of securing the family’s future.”
“And the only way you’ve seen fit to do that is to break up the community JM built by selling the damn thing, is that right? And breaking that girl’s heart in the process.”
“She’ll start another stock company. She’ll have the money to do it.” And she’d do it without him.
“It’s not losing the company that will break Mandy’s heart, Ty. Because you’re right. She probably will start another company. But it won’t give her what JM wanted for her, for the family. I knew my uncle just about as well as anybody could know another. He wanted to secure his family’s future, all right, but it wasn’t by selling the company. And the fact you haven’t figured that out yet, well, I guess I underestimated you.”
Ty met Harold’s gaze. And realized what a fool he’d been.
*
Mandy was bone weary as she hung her hat on the peg inside the ranch house’s side door. It was past midnight. The last rodeo of the regular season was over. The last rodeo maybe forever. The thought made her insides ache.
It had been all over the fairgrounds. Every committee person had come up to ask why she was selling the company. And she didn’t have an answer. She’d have told them to see Ty, but he hadn’t come. And she was glad he hadn’t.
Tears clouded her sight. She wondered if she was so emotional because of the baby. The thought made her smile, bittersweet as it was. Of course she was thrilled, beyond rational measure, at the thought of being pregnant. She hadn’t told anyone yet, not even her mother. Not until it was confirmed. She carried her secret close to her heart, though right now it was so hard to focus on what should be the happiest moment of her life.
She was losing Prescott. And it was more than a business. She was losing the place where she belonged and the families who had touched her life since she was a little girl. Fathers, sons, mothers, sisters. She knew them all, and they knew her.
As she walked into the white and granite kitchen, lighted only by the nightlight Mrs. Jenkins had undoubtedly left on for her, she felt empty, abandoned, betrayed. Ty should be sharing this moment with her. They should be planning for the NRF. For next season. Instead, her horses and bulls would be going to the NRF under the name of another contractor. And she would not.
How could she go as a mere spectator when she’d always been an integral part of the fabric of the ten-day event? She had never missed an NRF. Not even after her father had passed away and it was especially difficult. The Prescott community, the rodeo community, had gotten her through it. People had come together and held a special dinner in her father’s honor. The stories they had told… She couldn’t help but smile at the memory of it.
She spied the blinking light on the answering machine and, hoping it wasn’t another call from Ty she’d have to delete, hit the button. She was surprised when she heard Trace’s deep voice asking her to call him tomorrow because he wanted to talk to her about a housekeeper for Delanie. Last Ty had said, Delanie was settling into preschool and, aside from asking after her mother, seemed to be accepting Trace as her father. The psychologist thought that Delanie had trust issues but nothing more, and that had been a small blessing. Of course Mandy would call tomorrow. Even though Ty was a double-dealing hypocrite, she would do everything she could for his niece.
She walked down the hall and past her bedroom, right to the baby’s room. She flicked on the overhead fixture, and the crib and dresser Ty had bought were bathed in light. The toy airplane still sat on the dresser. Nothing had been disturbed since he’d put it together, and yet everything in her life had been disturbed. She leaned against the wall.