Chapter 2 – Tag #2
“No,” she shook her head, her delicate features moving from stunned to confused and back again. “That’s not possible. Harmony married a McGraw and together they saved the Feud Day Festival, which saved the ranch, which saved the town. Right? Everybody is saved.”
I shook my head and picked up one of the two forks laid out as a place setting. Who needed two forks to eat a steak ?
“That was the first part of Old Man McGraw’s will. He believed if we were going to save the Gulch, the McGraws and the Calloways had to bury the hatchet once and for all.”
“Question,” she lifted one manicured fingernail. “Because it’s been some time since I’ve been back to Wyoming, do the years go by there like they do in other places, or is it stuck in some sort of time warp? I mean, are you even in the same century as New York?”
“Last Hope Gulch is like any other town in America, baby girl.” Her eyes flared at that nickname. “Leroy McGraw was the antique holding us all back. And now that your sister is practically running things, the town is changing.”
Sunshine scoffed, and sat back for a waiter to place a martini she must have already ordered at the bar, in front of her. There was an elegant lemon twist sitting on the edge of the frosted glass. I wasn’t a martini guy, but watching her take a sip from it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
I ordered a beer. The waiter started to list them, and was on number ten, when I stopped him and just asked him to pick his favorite.
“You know, they’re happy,” I said, when we were alone again. “Ethan and Harmony. Really happy. Can’t keep their hands off each other happy.”
“So she’s said.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear the words over the disdain dripping from your voice.”
Her eyes flashed at me. Like firecrackers in July.
That’s right, Sunshine. I don’t care how smart you are, I’m always going to call you on your shit.
“Fine. They’re happy,” she admitted. “I can hear it in Harmony’s voice every time we talk. Love. Ugh.”
“Not a fan? ”
She sighed. “From everything I’ve seen, it comes with a lot of headaches.”
“Comes with a lot of orgasms, too.”
It was like I detonated a bomb under her chair. She gaped at me, pink on her cheeks. As if the word itself was scandalous. It made me wonder about her. What her love life had been like since leaving the Gulch.
If the word made her blush…
Getting under her skin was proving to be fun.
My beer arrived, tall and frosty. I took a sip and fought the urge to sigh with delight. Their cold glass game was on point.
“Tell me about the Swinging D trouble,” she said.
“I don’t have all the information.”
“Tell me what you do know,” she said. The candlelight turned her eyes from merely brown to the color of bourbon. Warm and toasty. “Tag?”
I cleared my throat and got a grip. “Old Man McGraw overextended the operation by buying up more land. Combine that with a few bad winters, a changing beef market, some questionable decisions…”
She shook her head. “It must be worse than some questionable decisions. The Swinging D I knew was close to a hundred thousand acres of land and twenty thousand head of cattle-”
“Ten,” I cut her off.
“What?”
“We’re down to ten thousand head of cattle and the yield from that isn’t enough to cover the loan McGraw took out to expand his property line.”
“So, sell off some of the land,” she said, as if it was that easy.
“That’s not an option. ”
“Why?” She asked.
“The only people who are buying land in Wyoming are outsiders.”
She thew up her hands in disgust. “Oh, not this again.”
“This. Again,” I said, flatly.
Our waiter stopped by to take our food order, but Sunshine and I were too busy staring at each other across the table.
“I’ll give you a few more minutes,” he said, and left as quietly as he’d come.
Sunshine leaned in to make her point. “Someday, the good people of Wyoming are going to have to understand that it is not a crime for people outside of the state to buy property inside of the state.”
I leaned closer too, both of our faces in the candlelight.
I could smell her expensive perfume, the lemon twist in her drink.
“And some day, the rest of the country, not Wyoming, is going to have to think really hard about where the steak I’m about to order is coming from.
The outsiders who come fence the shit out of everything.
They build fucking resorts so people can ski without thinking about the impact to the land.
Yes, McGraw overextended himself. But he did it to save a way of life. That’s worth something to me.”
“Of course it is. You’re a cowboy. But, overextending yourself, if you can’t sustain it, isn’t good business.”
“That’s where you come in,” I said, and then leaned back when the waiter returned to take our order. I nodded in her direction first.
“I’ll have five grilled shrimp and the artichoke,” she ordered.
“What’s that?” I asked. “An appetizer?”
“No,” she said. “It’s five grilled shrimp and an artichoke.”
“And it’s something you eat?”
“It’s something I eat.”
The waiter turned to me. “The artichoke is very popular.”
“Well, I’ll have prime rib. Biggest one you got. Rare. Baked potato. All the fixin’s.” I handed him my menu.
“Fixin’s?” the waiter asked, somewhat confused. “Just so I’m clear, that would be…”
How was it possible people didn’t know how to eat a damn baked potato? “Butter. Sour cream. Bacon. Cheese,” I rattled off on my fingers. “You have any of those truffle things back there? Throw those on, too.”
“Truffles?” the waiter asked.
“I like ‘em on fries, probably great on a baked potato.”
The waiter looked to Sunshine as if he needed help interpreting my version of American English, but she just shrugged.
“A few slices if you have them,” she said to the waiter.
He left, and it was just the two of us again.
“Okay, so where do I come in?” she asked me.
“You were mentioned in the will,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “The second will.”
“Second will?”
“At the first will reading, McGraw set the conditions for the wedding and saving the Feud Day Festival. We did that. Once it was done, the lawyer said there was a second part of the will and so we all gathered together again. Leroy McGraw said we had to bring you home.”
“Me?” she asked, looking stunned. “Like me, personally?”
I nodded. “ Sunshine Calloway has to come back. She’ll know what to do. ”
“I don’t know what to do!” she cried. “I haven’t even been home since Dad died.”
“Then I figure you better come home, or we’re cooked.”
It was as if someone had cracked open her head and showed me her big brain at work. Wheels turning, steam coming out of her ears, arguments forming.
Harmony said to pull on her family strings, but this was a woman who had only been home once in over ten years, when her dad died. Not even for the holidays.
Sunshine’s reaction to the first will had been to get her family out of the Gulch, and bring them all to New York. That was never going to happen, but it’s where her head went. Which meant the emotional strings tying her to her hometown were at the very least frayed, if not completely snapped.
Time for a risky cow turn. Which, as an experienced cowboy, I could handle.
“Anyway,” I continued. “I volunteered to come out here and give you the message, but the truth is…I don’t think it will matter.”
It was a long shot, but I was an excellent marksman too.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you can do it,” I said, and prayed I could sell this line of bullshit. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve done really well for yourself here…”
“Well for myself?” she said, her beautiful features scrunching up in disbelief. “Look around. Do you know how hard it is to get a table at this restaurant? Look over there. Do you see who that is? That’s Pedro Pescal!”
“Pedro who?”
“Fuck me,” she snapped, and I had to work to hide my smile. I loved that dude in the Star Wars show. “Look at me, I just turned thirty and I’m on the verge of making partner in one of the largest brokerage firms in the city.”
“You always were ahead of the curve,” I said, with unforced admiration. She was amazing. Always had been.
“I’ll be the first woman and the youngest person at the firm to ever do that. That doesn’t just happen.”
“That’s all well and good, Sunshine-”
“My name is Kaitlyn,” she said.
The waiter came out with a tray on his shoulder. He placed grilled shrimp and what looked like a spiky potato in front of Sunshine. My steak and potato were set down in front of me, as well as minuscule bowls of butter, sour cream, shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and shaved truffles.
“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.
“I’m sorry?” the waiter asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Sunshine jumped in. “Thank you.”
The server nodded his head and left.
“This isn’t the Pizza Barn,” she muttered, naming an excellent restaurant in Big Horn known for their baked potato bar with unlimited toppings. “That’s a reasonable amount of toppings for one person. And those shaved truffles…I can’t even imagine how much…it doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. Look, Sunshine-”
“Kaitlyn.”
“It doesn’t matter what you call yourself,” I said.
I put my napkin in my shirt and tucked into my steak.
“This job is out of reach. Even for you. Old Man McGraw was looking for some creative ideas. If he wanted to sell off the land, he could have done that himself. No, he wanted someone who could save the operation without doing the obvious. He thought it might be you, but I can see now he was wrong. ”
I dumped all the little bowls on my potato and mixed it up.
Her eyes narrowed. Those high cheekbones crowding her eyes into slits.
“Are you using reverse psychology on me?”
“Babe, you’re looking at a man who herds steers for a living. Do you think I’m capable of reverse psychology ?”
I was hoping to God I was capable of reverse psychology, because that was the only way this was going to work.