The Rancher's Surprise Son. Christine Wenger

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СКАЧАТЬ up J.W.’s fateful Texas Hold ’em game thirty-something years ago. It was like a recording that played ad nauseam.

      A bell on Penny’s cell phone rang, indicating a text message. Penny picked up the phone, punched some buttons and read the screen.

      Her mother had always been unhappy, and a lot of it had to do with the Masters family, but even more had to do with J.W. Laura always wondered why her mother didn’t just didn’t pack up and leave, but Laura knew that Penny just loved being the Lady Astor of Duke Springs.

      Penny pointed at the Double M, just beyond the tree line to the west of the ranch house. “That place is an eyesore.”

      “Mom, maybe she doesn’t have the money or the help to fix it up.”

      J.W. rolled his cigar tip on the lip of an ashtray. “Then she should sell it back to me. Matter of fact, I suggested that when she came to see me about getting Cody out.”

      Laura’s stomach lurched. She knew the power that J.W. wielded. “Dad, you didn’t get Cody out on the condition that Georgianna sell the Double M to you, did you?”

      Penny’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Did you do that, J.W.?”

      He took a long draw on his cigar. “I have some scruples, no matter what you both think.”

      Laura’s face flushed with guilt. Her parents didn’t have a clue that the Duke Foundation had provided Georgianna with money to do some repairs to her ranch house.

      And Laura was in charge of the Duke Foundation!

      There would be hell to pay if one of them ever found out, but Laura was satisfied that she’d covered her tracks. Also, Georgianna didn’t know that she was getting Duke money, or she’d definitely have refused it. Laura convinced Georgianna that she was receiving grant money earmarked for the preservation of historic ranches, and the Double M qualified.

      Stubbornness. Who needed it?

      Laura shifted in her chair. She didn’t like all the deception, but what else was she to do? She wanted to help Georgianna. Indirectly, she was helping Cody and Cindy.

      “Cody’s back, so he’ll help his mother get the ranch going.”

      “Oh no he won’t. I’ll keep him so busy, he won’t have time to work his ranch,” J.W. hissed.

      “Dad, how can you be so hateful?”

      “The boy will be so damn exhausted, he’ll realize that he can’t handle both.”

      Laura felt tears of frustration stinging her eyes. “He’ll quit here to work the Double M. I would.”

      “But he can’t.” J.W. grinned, balancing his cigar between his teeth. “It’s a condition of his parole that he works here. I own him for two years. If he screws up his job at my ranch, he goes back to prison.”

      Penny reached over the table and placed her hand on J.W.’s. Her bright red, glittery nail polish gleamed in the light. “Now, that’s the J.W. that I know! Cody certainly will fail. Georgianna will have no choice but to sell.”

      “That’s my plan,” J.W. said, reveling in Penny’s admiration. Laura knew that he didn’t get much of that from her, so he aspired to get attention and adoration from his peers and maybe from some of his ranch hands.

      Laura stood. “I can’t believe how cruel you both are. Cody will collapse with all the work he’ll try to do. And where will Georgianna and Cindy live if you take away their home? How can you both plan something like that? Forget the stupid poker game. Forget about the Double M. Put up a fifty-foot fence if it bothers you to look at it, for heaven’s sake.”

      Her headache was in full force and the lemonade sat sour in her stomach. How could her parents be so loving with Johnny and so hateful to the Masters family?

      * * *

      Laura walked toward the barn. Maybe she’d run into Cody, or at least catch a quick glimpse of him. They had so much to talk about, but first she had to warn him about her father’s plan to work him to death with the hope that Cody would fail.

      Although he had probably figured that out already.

      She thought about her mother. Why couldn’t Penny be more like Georgianna Masters Lindy? She was the grandmotherly type: loving, nurturing and so sweet to Johnny. Whenever she brought him over, Georgianna spoiled him too much—but in a good way. Laura had no doubt that Penny loved Johnny, but she didn’t really show him. Laura sniffed. That was how she had been raised—at arm’s length. Why should she expect anything more from her mother?

      Cody and Cindy both showed love and care to Georgianna. They were three of the best people she knew. Cody and Cindy would do anything for Georgianna, and she’d do anything for them.

      Laura had never been sure that her parents loved her. Her father had wanted a son to carry on the Duke Ranch legacy, so her gender was a strike against her. Instead of teaching her the ins and outs of running the ranch, her father had made sure that she did so-called “girl things” in school: ballet, baton, cheerleading. And he brought in people to give her facials, and then there were personal shoppers, and yoga instructors to teach her how to relax, but she was bored out of her mind.

      J.W. was convinced that his own mother, her grandma Sarah, died from overwork. He often told stories that when his parents, Sarah and Walter Anthony Duke, first came to Duke Springs and farmed and made a ranch out of the Arizona dust, the work just killed her.

      It didn’t matter that Sarah died at age sixty from cancer. J.W. was convinced that it was the hard work that killed her.

      J.W. took that original ranch and made it into the showplace that it was today through his own hard work and determination. He hadn’t wanted Penny to work the land, cattle and horses as he had. Instead, he insisted that she occupy her time opening dress shops and gift shops—ladies’ shops. Still, he didn’t want his “two ladies”—neither Penny nor Laura—to ever remember how the original Duke Ranch had begun.

      Laura had wanted to learn how the ranch operated, and wanted J.W. to teach her. They’d fought and fought over the years, with her father insisting that she do “woman things” instead. Fighting over this had stopped when she had Johnny. J.W. wanted a rough-and-ready boy that he could train to take over the Duke Ranch, and that was going to be her son.

      Laura knew that she had to keep Johnny—and herself—away from J.W. a bit so he would not completely take over their lives.

      And when she wanted to use her degree in finance to work on Wall Street, J.W. asked her if she’d run the Duke Foundation instead. He didn’t want her in New York City because he’d preferred his grandson right by his side so he could make Johnny into the next version of himself.

      Over her dead body.

      It wasn’t exactly brain surgery to give away money and let the world know that J. W. Duke was benevolent.

      Actually, he was! She’d insisted that she had to live away from the ranch house, so J.W. built a cottage on the property for her and Johnny. All right, she could save money that way.

      So, she’d stayed in Duke Springs, not because J.W. had asked her to, but because she’d thought that Johnny СКАЧАТЬ