The Cowboy's Marriage Bargain
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Deborah Clack
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Chapter One
Chase Cross knew better than to tell a woman she looked like a wet dog. Especially the annoyingly precise and beautiful accountant for Four Cross Ranch, the sprawling acreage he owned with his siblings outside of Elk Run, Wyoming.
He leaned his shoulder on the doorjamb to the lodge as Lexi Gardner hurried through the spring rain. She pounded up the stairs to the spacious wraparound covered porch, hugging a three-ring binder to her chest.
The black binder never meant good news. Instead, Chase knew as certainly as he knew the cows would calve soon that she was going to start today’s meeting with, “We have a problem.”
She skidded to a stop in front of him, cold air puffing out of her mouth. Her enticing floral perfume wafted into his space. “Are you going to stand in my way, or may I please come inside before I catch pneumonia?”
Her attitude set his teeth on edge, but not as much as her words.
She’d stood in his way for the last two years, shutting down his dreams for the family property. From the first time they clashed over budget issues, he had wondered if instead of trying to create a nonprofit on the ranch, he should just reenlist in the army. The United States military had less red tape than the infuriating Miss Lexi Gardner.
“Good morning to you, too,” he murmured as he tipped his cowboy hat and shifted for her to enter.
It was unfortunate that his golden retriever liked her. Duke welcomed her with a wagging tail and wide smile, then escorted her inside.
Walking down the hall, pride washed over Chase as he took in what his family had built. Rustic rugs covered the wide-planked wood floors. Paintings of the Old West adorned the walls. Cozy bedrooms awaited guests.
Now if they could get Four Cross Hope, the nonprofit for veterans, up and running, he could feel like he was making a difference in the world again.
Though Wyoming was the least populated state in America, it ranked the ninth largest in square miles. The vast land was the perfect place for veterans to find peace, quiet and open space. Skirting the edge of a national forest with Elk Mountain in the backdrop, the property included acres of rolling prairie that beckoned to those in need of healing.
Today was the day Lexi would tell him that he and his siblings could finally move forward with the nonprofit’s long-term plan. The anticipation tasted sweet.
Though Lexi walked next to him, she stared at the ground, her face drawn as if she carried a heavy burden.
His chest tightened.
It always bothered him when he cared about her well-being. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Being concerned for her was as automatic to him as being annoyed with her.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
Her head shot up, locks of damp sandy blond hair sticking to her round cheeks. Confusion filled her deep brown eyes, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there. She nodded once. “Yes. Fine.”
He stopped at the entrance to the back half of the lodge, a vast space that included a great room with oversized leather chairs and a chambray-covered couch facing a stone fireplace. Nearby sat a long, sturdy dining table next to an open kitchen where guests could mix and mingle while meals were prepared. He loved this room and couldn’t wait for it to be filled with people. But first he had to get through this meeting.
“That’s about the fifteenth ‘fine’ I’ve heard from you this month,” he said.
“Then I must be fine.” She wiped the wet strands of hair off her cheeks and stepped past him.
This was one of the reasons he wouldn’t marry again. Ask a woman a question, and you never got a straight answer. Clearly, she wasn’t fine. And hadn’t been fine in several months. But every time he tried to ask her about it, she shut him down.
As he crossed the room, his eyes skittered across the black-and-white photographs framed on the wall. His gaze stopped on the same picture it always did.
A woman on skis, face determined, flying midair over a mogul.
Laura. His wife. His gorgeous, unassuming, adventurous and deceased wife.
No. He would never marry again. He wouldn’t survive if he lost someone else.
Chase wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, hung his head and took a deep breath to shake off the heavy feeling. Still imagining his wife’s smile, he walked to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of coffee into a black mug with the Four Cross Ranch logo.
A familiar slap on his back jerked him out of the moment, causing the hot drink to slosh onto his shirt.
He righted himself, then glared at his twin, the man who was his opposite in every way except the image that stared back at him in the mirror. “Watch it, Hunter.”
Never one to use a lot of words, Hunter lifted his chin in greeting.
Chase grabbed a napkin and wiped the coffee off his plaid flannel shirt. It was what his wife used to refer to as his rancher uniform. Jeans, thermal undershirt, flannel long-sleeved shirt and boots. Always boots. Just like the army, only now with a cowboy flair.
Lexi placed stapled packets of papers in front of five of the dark leather chairs that stood sentry around the massive oak table. Bold capital letters at the top of the cover page announced the current financial report.
Running cattle on the ranch side of the property was good, honest work, it just didn’t fulfill his desire to help others since he left the military. But his retirement checks couldn’t pay for his dreams on their own. He needed the green light from Lexi to use ranch funds toward the nonprofit.
Lexi straightened papers at exact right angles to each corresponding chair, then looked up. “Has anyone heard from Ryder?”
Hunter shook his head once. No surprise that Hunter hadn’t talked to their little brother.
“My guess is he’s still on the bull riding circuit, but will be home when the calves come,” said Chase.
She scrunched her nose, something he only admitted to himself he thought was cute. “Maybe I need to schedule a meeting when he’s in town to give him an update.”
“He handed his proxy to me when he left.” Along with a whole host of problems. Chase poured a cup of coffee for Lexi, this mug a pale pink with the ranch logo. “He doesn’t get to have feelings about how it’s going here if he doesn’t care enough to stay.”
“Still, he’s your brother,” she said in a quiet voice.
Steam from the coffee rose out of the cup and disappeared into the air. Just like Ryder seemed to do after each short visit. Chase grabbed three sugar packets. “He is our little brother.” He ripped the packages open and poured the sugar, watching the granules dissolve like late winter snow. “I love him. But he’s still not here.”
She cleared her throat. “Will Cora be attending?”
The thought of his brave little sister made him shake his head. They all had a hand in raising Cora after their parents died. Raised by wolves, she claimed. Then a wolf almost claimed her. “I don’t think she’s going to set foot on the ranch unless someone is birthing a baby.”
“Well, she is the most highly sought-after midwife in town,” Lexi said.
Smiling proudly at the thought, he poured creamer into the cup. “She’s fearless.”
Chase pulled a peppermint out of his pocket, unwrapped it and dropped it into the coffee. He walked the pink mug across the room and handed it to Lexi.
A flash of surprise crossed her face.
Why she was surprised, he’d never know. He always made her a coffee the way she liked it if he was around. Even started carrying peppermints in his pockets. This time, however, her face seemed conflicted.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
He narrowed his eyes at her, and her gaze darted away. The last time he’d handed her a cup, she asked him if he’d laced it with poison. Today she merely thanked him? Something was definitely wrong.
“Not sharing your coffee with me?” his twin asked.
“We shared a womb. Does that mean I’m required to bring you coffee the rest of our lives?”
A smile tipped at the corner of his mouth. “As I recall, I kicked you out of that womb,” Hunter muttered as he fixed his own cup of joe.
“Didn’t you already have a cup down at the chow hall?” The ranch employed a cook who fed the ranch hands three squares a day in a building on-site. She’d declared Mondays Breakfast Burrito Day, and he knew his brother wouldn’t miss it.
“I’m not the one who can’t hold my coffee,” Hunter murmured.
Chase would have defended himself, but then he looked at Lexi. She’d put her coffee down and was wringing her hands, a show of nerves from the normally confident woman. He might not agree with many of the things she said, and she might raise the hackles on his neck during most of their interactions, but he didn’t like to see her in distress. He cared for her.
Kind of. Mostly. In an employer-and-employee way. Or possibly as a friend, on the rare occasion they got along.
She sat down, opened her copy of the financial report and tucked the first page behind the staple. But seconds later, she returned the cover sheet to the top.
The more stressed-out she seemed, the more something in his gut burned.
He caught Hunter’s attention and sent a silent message to his twin. Hunter studied Lexi, then flicked his eyes back to him. He agreed. Something was off.
Both men dropped into their chairs and faced Lexi. She glanced at Hunter, then at him, her eyes holding a touch of fear.
Chase leaned forward. “You going to tell us what’s going on, Lexi, or do we need to guess?”
Lexi Gardner pushed a piece of damp hair behind her ear, wishing she had something she could use to tie her hair back. She probably looked like a wet dog after running through the rain. Fortunately, her trusty old Civic had gotten her safely from her small rental house off Main Street all the way out to the country. Soon, she’d have to bargain with the town mechanic for a set of new brakes. A task for another day.
She clasped her hands around her warm mug and inhaled the peppermint aroma, hoping it would calm her nerves. Maybe if she spilled her coffee on the financial report, it would erase the dismal results.
Finally, she said, “We have a problem.”
Hunter grunted.
Chase glared.
The twins resembled two cars of the same model, only wired differently under the hood. Both ruggedly handsome, they had brute mountain man appeal, six foot two inches of height and a daring look behind their hazel eyes, the weight of the family ranch on their shoulders. But Hunter believed everything would work out fine, whereas Chase wanted all the details nailed down and pursued accordingly.
Still, the two were close. And as hard as it was to wrangle the four Cross siblings together to talk about the financials of the ranch, she found herself envious of their family. In spite of their parents’ deaths, they still had each other.
All Lexi had was two ex-fiancés, an estranged mother and a high stakes last will and testament left by her grandmother.
At least Duke liked her, which probably infuriated Chase. She ran a hand over the dog’s golden coat for courage.
Refocusing on the twins, she went on. “When you all decided to use the lodge to start a nonprofit, you laid out specific financial goals.”
“Yes.” Chase nodded, his tone already impatient. “We didn’t want to take on a huge loan. Profits from the newly added ranch revenue streams would fund the adjustments we needed to convert the lodge for guests, as well as fund the following year’s goals. We’ve been over this and we’re on target for the year. Which is why we made modifications to the lodge and have our first veteran and his wife arriving next week.”
Internally, she cringed. With dozens of freelance accounting jobs in three of the surrounding counties, giving tough news to a client wasn’t new to her. But she had a soft spot for Four Cross Ranch, even if Chase Cross came with the territory.
“We were on target. The money the ranch invested in the development of the lodge worked in the beginning.”
“But...” His word weighed heavy.
She looked him in the eye. No matter how much he grated on her last nerve, she owed it to him to give the information straight. That was her job. “We didn’t hit our goals the last quarter. Any of them.”
Chase rested his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his short brown hair but said nothing.
“We had no way of predicting the early freeze last fall.” The freeze killed the natural vegetation, which meant they used their hay inventory earlier than planned. When the price of feed skyrocketed, every rancher in the area was busting their budget to get their cattle fed.
“I’m so tired of the success or failure of our ranch being dependent on the weather,” Chase muttered.
She softened her tone. “The biggest period of risk, we all agreed, was this first year leading to the lodge opening. There was no way to predict the rise of construction costs, old pipes rotting and that we’d lose a crop of hay. The loss of revenue from the significant head of sick cattle was the final straw.”
“It’s like the ten plagues of Egypt,” Chase said. “Only instead of frogs and locusts, it’s the ten plagues, rancher’s edition.”
She hated it when he did that.
He tended to joke through tough situations. It put everyone around him at ease. But watching him closely over the last two years, pain sometimes laced those jokes, and she could see it etched now in the creases that lined his eyes.
The temptation to say something comforting rose in her throat but stopped abruptly. The truth clogged any words that wanted to come out.
After laying out the financials for the men, she sat back. “I’m sorry. But we have to cancel the nonprofit’s next growth phase. Instead of housing veterans and building more cabins, we need to concentrate on paying the bills for the ranch. We are one mistake or bad weather incident away from the entire operation going under. We have to stabilize things first if we’re going to move forward in any way.”
Hunter nodded, shifting his gaze out the window.
Chase speared her with a death glare. “You want us to completely let go of the nonprofit?”
“We can’t do it, Chase. I know you’re slated for the builder to start early next year to expand Four Cross Hope, but Four Cross Ranch can’t afford it. You could barely pay the ranch hands as it was. And my professional suggestion is to use the converted lodge for paying guests instead. For profit.” Cold seeped into her bones despite her jeans, thermal shirt and secondhand puffer vest. Maybe buying used clothes didn’t always translate to warmth. Handing out bad news to clients didn’t, either.
Chase made a fist, set it on the table and leaned toward her. “That’s unacceptable, Lexi. It’s not just about the couple arriving next week. I already have soldiers planning to come here to recover when they return from deployment. Additional military families, desperate for support, are waiting in the wings.”
Heat hit her face. She hated being the numbers person when he talked about his passion to help veterans. It was one thing to offer a local artist free accounting services in exchange for her work on the beautiful antler chandelier in the room. This was something completely different. “We don’t have the financial capacity to take it on.”
“What about the tax benefits that come with having the nonprofit on the property? All of that was laid out in the plan.” A hint of uncertainty underlined his tone. “Or the other arms of the ranch that were supposed to support the cause.”
“Yes.” She took a sip from her mug, but the conversation embittered the taste of the coffee. “In theory, the farming and ranching was going to support the dining options. Activities like horseback riding and the Little Wranglers program would fund the staffing for guided tours and massage appointments. The list of how we use our existing resources is quite impressive. And yes—in theory, the nonprofit status would have benefited us financially.”
His eyes seared into hers, and she almost couldn’t continue.
“But if we can’t make a significant profit from the ranch,” she whispered, “we can’t fund the nonprofit side.”
“Well... I’ve already started,” Hunter declared.
Dread crawled up her spine. Slowly, she turned to him. In a controlled voice, she asked, “What does that mean?”
Lexi only advised the family on how best to use their money. She had no control over what the members spent daily.
“I bought two pups,” he said unrepentantly.
Chase had the audacity to shake his head and chuckle.
“How much did you—”
Hunter held up a hand, the calluses of hard work in her view. “I purchased them with my own dime. I’m going to train them as therapy dogs whether we use them for the veterans and the nonprofit business or not.” He pushed to stand. “And all due respect, I need to get back to work now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with regret.
“No reason to be. You’re just doing your job.” He nodded, gave a chin lift to his twin and left the room.
Rain pelted against the windows, and for a few seconds, Chase stared at her in silence.
He leaned back in his chair and cocked his head. “What aren’t you saying?”
Sitting ramrod straight, she shifted her focus to the stapled sheets. “I think it would be best if we went over the information in the report.”
“I don’t want to look at the report. I want you to say the words.”
A defensive streak ran up her spine. “I don’t know why I prepare for meetings with you guys. Half of you don’t show, and the other half, I suspect, use my reports as animal feed.”
“If we did, it would certainly save us some money.”
She must have looked shocked because Chase’s expression filled with remorse, and he shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Lexi. That was uncalled for.” He scrubbed a hand down his face and stood. “I’m just frustrated.”
His vulnerability stopped her hurt feelings in their tracks. Instead, all she could feel was sympathy.
She was squelching his dream.
Even if they didn’t see eye to eye on most things, his passion for military veterans was noble. Honorable.
Which is why for months, she’d been considering the unfathomable.
After pacing the room twice, he approached her and crossed his arms over his chest. “Give me some good news. How do we get back on track?”
She wished he understood how desperately she wanted to fix this problem and how far she was willing to go to help him. But she worried that he might think she was ridiculous if she made the suggestion that’d been rattling around in her head the last few months. Even if the solution she offered would solve significant problems for both of them, he might throw her out on her head anyway.
She tapped two fingers rapidly on the table. “There’s one bank who might consider giving us a loan.”
He covered her hand with his, stopping the noise and movement, then pulled back. “You know we don’t want to go in that direction. Plus, my guess is you’re going to tell me we probably won’t qualify.”
She offered him a wry smile. “You always were the smart one.”
“I’m not the smart one. Cora’s the smart one,” he said about the sister he adored. “I’m the nice one.”
“Cora’s the astute one.” She pointed to him. “You’re the mean one.”
“Only to you.” She scoffed at him, but he continued. “To others, I’m not mean. I’m clever.”
“Oh, please. Now you’re the delusional one. Ryder is clever,” she said. “You’re the responsible sibling.”
“I am.” He splayed his hands on his lean hips and blew out a heavy sigh. “I’m the responsible sibling. So how do we get out of this?”
Her stomach clenched in a way she knew she couldn’t ignore. She chose her words carefully. “For the next year, finances will be tight. No matter how badly you want to, or how much it could help others, you can’t give out free rooms to the nonprofit. If we leave the lodge open, we have to let go of the nonprofit and instead fill every inch with paying customers.”
He growled. “That’s not a solution, Lexi. That’s leaving war-torn veterans and their families in the lurch.”
Acid rose from her stomach up her throat. She didn’t know if she would be able to say the words.
“Well...” The word croaked out, and she paused to swallow. “There is one thing.”
He opened his arms wide. “Anything. I’ll do anything to get the nonprofit fully functional.”
Sweat broke out across her forehead. “This might—” her heart pounded “—sound unexpected. A little...um, illogical. All things considered.”
“What is it, Lexi?” he asked with impatience.
She looked straight into his hazel eyes and said, “You could marry me.”
