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“I guess she’s stronger than she looks,” John remarked, but he didn’t like it.
Tarleton nodded absently. He was putting Gil Callister’s name in his ledger.
“I’ll be back,” John told him as he picked up the toolbox.
Tarleton nodded again.
John glanced at the girl, who was straining over a heavy bag, and walked out of the store with a scowl on his face.
He paused. He didn’t know why. He glanced back into the store and saw the manager standing on the loading platform, watching the girl lift the feed sacks. It wasn’t the look a manager should be giving an employee. John’s eyes narrowed. He was going to do something about that.
One of the older cowboys, Chad Dean by name, was waiting for him at the house when he brought in the toolbox.
“Say, that’s a nice one,” he told the other man. “Your boss must be stinking rich.”
“He is,” John mused. “Pays good, too.”
The cowboy chuckled. “That would be nice, getting a paycheck that I could feed my kids on. I couldn’t move my family to another town without giving up land that belonged to my grandfather, so I toughed it out. It’s been rough, what with food prices and gas going through the roof.”
“You’ll get your regular check plus travel expenses,” John told him. “We’ll pay for the gas if we have to send you anywhere to pick up things.”
“That’s damned considerate.”
“If you work hard, your wages will go up.”
“We’ll all work hard,” Dean promised solemnly. “We’re just happy to have jobs.”
John pursed his lips. “Do you know a girl named Sassy? Works for Tarleton in the feed store?”
“Yeah,” Dean replied tersely. “He’s married, and he makes passes at Sassy. She needs that job. Her mama’s dying. There’s a six-year-old kid lives with them, too, and Sassy has to take care of her. I don’t know how in hell she manages on what she gets paid. All that, and having to put up with Tarleton’s harassment, too. My wife told her she should call the law and report him. She won’t. She says she can’t afford to lose the position. Town’s so small, she’d never get hired again. Tarleton would make sure of it, just for spite, if she quit.”
John nodded. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I expect things will get easier for her,” he predicted.
“Do you? Wish I did. She’s a sweet kid. Always doing things for other people.” He smiled. “My son had his appendix out. It was Sassy who saw what it was, long before we did. He was in the feed store when he got sick. She called the doctor. He looked over my Mark and agreed it was appendicitis. Doc drove the boy over to Billings to the hospital. Sassy went to see him. God knows how she got there. Her old beat-up vehicle would never make it as far as Billings. Hitched a ride with Carl Parks, I expect. He’s in his seventies, but he watches out for Sassy and her mother. Good old fellow.”
John nodded. “Sounds like it.” He hesitated. “How old is the girl?”
“Eighteen or nineteen, I guess. Just out of high school.”
“I figured that.” John was disappointed. He didn’t understand why. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do about those fences temporarily…”
In the next two days, John did some amateur detective work. He phoned a private detective who worked for the Callisters on business deals and put him on the Tarleton man. It didn’t take him long to report back.
The feed store manager had been allowed to resign from a job in Billings for unknown reasons, but the detective found one other employee who said it was sexual harassment of an employee. He wasn’t charged with anything. He’d moved here, to Hollister, with his family when the owner of the feed store, a man named Jake McGuire, advertised in a trade paper for someone to manage it for him. Apparently Tarleton had been the only applicant and McGuire was desperate. Tarleton got the job.
“This McGuire,” John asked over his cell phone, “how old is he?”
“In his thirties,” came the reply. “Everyone I spoke to about him said that he’s a decent sort.”
“In other words, he doesn’t have a clue that Tarleton’s hassling the girl.”
“That would be my guess.”
John’s eyes twinkled. “Do you suppose McGuire would like to sell that business?”
There was a chuckle. “He’s losing money hand over fist on that place. Two of the people I spoke to said he’d almost give it away to get rid of it.”
“Thanks,” John said. “That answers my question. Can you get me McGuire’s telephone number?”
“Already did. Here it is.”
John wrote it down. The next morning, he put in a call to McGuire Enterprises in Billings.
“I’m looking to buy a business in a town called Hollister,” John said after he’d introduced himself. “Someone said you might know the owner of the local feed store.”
“The feed store?” McGuire replied. “You want to buy it?” He sounded astonished.
“I might,” John said. “If the price is right.”
There was a pause. “Okay, here’s the deal. That business was started by my father over forty years ago. I inherited it when he died. I don’t really want to sell it.”
“It’s going bankrupt,” John replied.
There was another pause. “Yeah, I know,” came the disgusted reply. “I had to put in a new manager there, and he didn’t come cheap. I had to move him and his wife from Billings down here.” He sighed. “I’m between a rock and a hard place. I own several businesses, and I don’t have the time to manage them myself. That particular one has sentimental value. The manager just went to work. There’s a chance he can pull it out of the red.”
“There’s a better chance that he’s going to get you involved in a major lawsuit.”
“What? What for?”
“For one thing, he was let go from his last job for sexual harassment, or that’s what we turned up on a background check. He’s up to his old tricks in Hollister, this time with a young girl just out of high school that he hired to work for him.”
“Good Lord! He came with excellent references!”
“He might have them,” John said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if that wasn’t the first time he lost a job for the same reason. He was giving the girl the eye when I was in there. There’s local gossip that the girl may sue if your manager doesn’t lay off her. There goes your bottom line,” he added dryly.
“Well, that’s what you get when you’re desperate for personnel,” McGuire said wearily. “I couldn’t find anybody else who’d take the job. I can’t fire him without proper cause, and I just paid to move him there! What a hell of a mess!”
“You don’t want to sell the business. Okay. How about leasing it to us? We’ll fire Tarleton on the grounds that we’re leasing the business, put in a manager of our own, and you’ll make money. We’ll have you in the black in two months.”
“And just who is ‘we’?” McGuire wanted to know.
“My brother and I. We’re ranchers.”
“But why would you want to lease a feed store in the middle of nowhere?”
“Because we just bought the Bradbury place. We’re going to rebuild the house, add a stable and a barn, and we’re going to raise purebred young bulls on the place. The feed store is going to do a lot of business when we start adding personnel to the outfit.”
“Old man Bradbury and my father were best friends,” McGuire reminisced. “He was a fine rancher, a nice gentleman. His health failed and the business failed with him. It’s nice to know it will be a working ranch again.”
“It’s good land. We’ll make it pay.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Callister,” John told him. “My brother and I have a sizable spread over in Medicine Ridge.”
“Those Callisters? My God, your holdings are worth millions!”
“At least.” John chuckled.
There was a soft whistle. “Well, if you’re going to keep me in orders, I suppose I’d be willing to lease the place to you.”
“And the manager?”
“I just moved him there,” McGuire groaned again.
“We’ll pay to move him back to Billings and give him two weeks severance pay,” John said. “I will not agree to let him stay on,” he added firmly.
“He may sue.”
“Let him,” John replied tersely. “If he tries it, I’ll make it my life’s work to see that any skeleton in his past is brought into the light of day. You can tell him that.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“If you’ll give me your attorney’s name and number, I’ll have our legal department contact him,” John said. “I think we’ll get along.”
There was a deep chuckle. “So do I.”
“There’s one other matter.”
“Yes?”
John hesitated. “I’m going to be working on the place myself, but I don’t want anyone local to know who I am. I’ll be known as the ranch foreman—Taggert by name. Got that?”
There was a chuckle. “Keeping it low-key, I see. Sure. I won’t blow your cover.”
“Especially to Tarleton and his employee,” John emphasized.
“No problem. I’ll tell him your boss phoned me.”
“I’m much obliged.”
“Before we settle this deal, do you have someone in mind who can take over the business in two weeks if I put Tarleton on notice?”
“Indeed I do,” John replied. “He’s a retired corporate executive who’s bored stiff with retirement. Mind like a steel trap. He could make money in the desert.”
“Sounds like just the man for the job.”
“I’ll have him up here in two weeks.”
“That’s a deal, then.”
“We’ll talk again when the paperwork goes through.”
“Yes.”
John hung up. He felt better about the girl. Not that he expected Tarleton to quit the job without a fight. He hoped the threat of uncovering any past sins would work the magic. The thought of Sassy being bothered by that would-be Casanova was disturbing.
He phoned the architect and asked him to come over to the ranch the following day to discuss drawing up plans for a stable and a barn. He hired an electrician to rewire the house and do the work in the new construction. He employed six new cowboys and an engineer. He set up payroll for everyone he’d hired through the corporation’s main offices in Medicine Ridge, and went about getting fences repaired and wells drilled. He also phoned Gil and had him send down a team of engineers to start construction on solar panels to help provide electricity for the operation.
Once those plans were underway, he made a trip into Hollister to see how things were going at the feed store. His detective had managed to dig up three other harassment charges against Tarleton from places he’d lived before he moved to Montana in the first place. There were no convictions, sadly. But the charges might be enough. Armed with that information, he wasn’t uncomfortable having words with the man, if it was necessary.
And it seemed that it would be. The minute he walked in the door, he knew there was going to be trouble. Tarleton was talking to a customer, but he gave John a glare that spoke volumes. He finished his business with the customer and waited until he left. Then he walked up to John belligerently.
“What the hell did your employer tell my boss?” he demanded furiously. “He said he was leasing the store, but only on the condition that I didn’t go with the deal!”
“Not my problem,” John said, and his pale eyes glittered. “It was my boss’s decision.”
“Well, he’s got no reason to fire me!” Tarleton said, his round face flushing. “I’ll sue the hell out of him, and your damned boss, too!”
John stepped closer to the man and leaned down, emphasizing his advantage in height. “You’re welcome. My boss will go to the local district attorney in Billings and turn over the court documents from your last sexual harassment charge.”
Tarleton’s face went from red to white in seconds. He froze in place. “He’ll…what?” he asked weakly.
John’s chiseled lips pulled up into a cold smile. “And I’ll encourage your hired girl over there—” he indicated her with a jerk of his head “—to come clean about the way you’ve treated her as well. I think she could be persuaded to bring charges.”
Tarleton’s arrogance vanished. He looked hunted.
“Take my advice,” John said quietly. “Get out while you still have time. My boss won’t hesitate a second. He has two daughters of his own.” His eyes narrowed menacingly. “One of our ranch hands back home tried to wrestle a temporary maid down in the hay out in our barn. He’s serving three to five for sexual assault.” John smiled. “We have a firm of attorneys on retainer.”
“We?” Tarleton stammered.
“I’m a managerial employee of the ranch. The ranch is a corporation,” John replied smoothly.
Tarleton’s teeth clenched. “So I guess I’m fired.”
“I guess you volunteered to resign,” John corrected. “That gets you moved back to Billings at the ranch’s expense, and gives you severance pay. It also spares you lawsuits and other…difficulties.”
The older man weighed his options. John could see his mind working. Tarleton gave John an arrogant look. “What the hell,” he said coldly. “I didn’t want to live in this damned fly trap anyway!”
He turned on his heel and walked away. The girl, Sassy, was watching the byplay with open curiosity. John raised an eyebrow. She flushed and went back to work at once.
CHAPTER TWO
CASSANDRA PEALE told herself that the intense conversation the new foreman of the Bradbury place was having with her boss didn’t concern her. The foreman had made that clear with a lifted eyebrow and a haughty look. But there had been an obvious argument and both men had glanced at her while they were having it. She was worried. She couldn’t afford to lose her job. Not when her mother, dying of lung cancer, and her mother’s ward, Selene, who was only six, depended on what she brought home so desperately.
She gnawed on a fingernail. They were mostly all chewed off. Her mother was sixty-three, Cassandra, who everyone called Sassy, having been born very late in life. They’d had a ranch until her father had become infatuated with a young waitress at the local cafeteria. He’d left his family and run away with the woman, taking most of their savings with him. Without money to pay bills, Sassy’s mother had been forced to sell the cattle and most of the land and let the cowboys go. One of them, little Selene’s father, had gotten drunk out of desperation and ran his truck off into the river. They’d found him the next morning, dead, leaving Selene completely alone in the world.
My life, Sassy thought, is a soap opera. It even has a villain. She glanced covertly at Mr. Tarleton. All he needed was a black mustache and a gun. He’d made her working life hell. He knew she couldn’t afford to quit. He was always bumping into her “accidentally,” trying to handle her. She was sickened by his advances. She’d never even had a boyfriend. The school she’d gone to, in this tiny town, had been a one-room schoolhouse with all ages included and one teacher. There had only been two boys her own age and three girls including Sassy. The other girls were pretty. So Sassy had never been asked out at all. Once, when she was in her senior year of high school, a teacher’s visiting nephew had been kind to her, but her mother had been violently opposed to letting her go on a date with a man she didn’t know well. It hadn’t mattered. Sassy had never felt those things her romance novels spoke of in such enticing and heart-pattering terms. She’d never even been kissed in a grown-up way. Her only sexual experience—if you could call it that—was being physically harassed by that repulsive would-be Romeo standing behind the counter.
