Chapter Twenty-Four
For the rest of the day, Ben kept busy processing, directing, and getting to know his new guys. Sarah stayed holed up in his office, drinking coffee and peeking out at the now-controlled crowd. Ben checked on her periodically.
“Everything okay in here?” he asked, looking in for the third time.
“Yes, however I’d like to ask permission to use your laptop.” She pointed at the computer on his desk. “I left my tablet at home and need to do a little online banking, and with your permission, check my email. I haven’t looked at it in days.”
“The laptop’s yours,” he said. “But don’t open any email from anyone you don’t recognize. If you get something else looking odd, leave it alone. Right now, Rio and I are gonna run some of the guys through the shoot house and assess their skills on the gun.”
“That sounds interesting,” she said, still fascinated at the prospect of men moving through the darkness and learning to react to threats appropriately. Maybe her banking and email could be done later. “Can I watch?”
“Watch?”
“If you won’t let me go inside, then I imagine you have cameras in there, right? So you can monitor a team’s movements via some sort of video screen or computer?”
Ben rubbed his chin. “Well, no. I usually rely on the instructor’s reports and thoroughly interview each team member after the evolution’s over.
But,” he said, giving her an assessing glance, “that’s a great idea.
With cameras up on the rafters, we could get a bird’s eye view, see what’s going on in real time. ”
She gave him a sassy grin. “Maybe you should put me on the payroll.”
He blinked. “How are we going to keep the cameras from getting shot up?”
“Bullet-proof housing,” she threw back, proud of herself for the off-the-cuff answer. She didn’t know if such a thing even existed. Still, it sounded good.
“Hmm,” he said, considering her idea. “I’ll run it by Rio.” With that, he was gone.
Sarah settled on the chair behind Ben’s desk and opened the laptop. Typing her password into her email account, she steeled herself for more of the strange, threatening letters she’d received from The Weirdo.
Holding her breath until the browser loaded, she let her gaze skim down the list of notes and found them all from friends, one from Milly, and a few subscribed advertisements.
The Weirdo had gone silent.
Phew.
Ben would be pleased to hear that.
Milly wrote: Hope you’re doing well down in Texas with that handsome hunk, Ben.
All’s quiet up here in Mountain Wood except for folks getting ready for the Rhubarb Festival.
You’ll be home for the celebration, won’t you?
There’ve been no further attacks or any other evidence of the stalker, so maybe he’s given up.
People ask about you now and then. Yesterday I told a nosy journalist looking for you that you’d become a tattoo artist in the south of France.
Not sure he believed me, but then I don’t give a rat’s ears.
Milly
“Rat’s ass,” Sarah corrected on a whisper, smiling. She missed Milly—her ready smile and kind manner. Milly always had time to listen to Sarah’s concerns, no matter how great or small.
She missed the rhythms of the ranch, missed her animals and Big Jim. She was enjoying her time with Ben, but this wasn’t home. While she was in Texas, her feed barn business was on hold, and she chafed at the delay. Quickly, she sent Milly back a cheery return email.
Logging into her bank savings account, she looked at the figure and her mood sank. After she paid for Daisy’s, Betsy and Virgil’s daughter, University of Montana tuition, her bank balance was going to come up short for her feed barn. She hadn’t realized the balance was that low.
Even with Donovan Sinclair’s low lease offer, she didn’t have enough.
Putting her fists to her cheeks, she groaned.
Why hadn’t she kept better track of the money?
With several townspeople asking for help, and such a soft touch she’d been unable to deny them, she hadn’t paid attention to the bottom line.
Of course, the funds were draining away and now fell short of realizing her own dream.
How stupid she’d been.
Her mind raced, sorting through possibilities. Maybe she could get a job in town, work for a year, carefully replenish her funds until she built her savings back up. Perhaps she could find a position in the clothing store. Or she could waitress at Milly’s diner.
On the heels of that thought, the memory of the paparazzi’s intrusive visit to her ranch and their subsequent tabloid story burst into her mind. If those kinds of people discovered she’d taken a job in town, they’d hound her—and whatever business hired her—to death.
For her feed barn, she certainly didn’t plan to be in the public’s eye on the retail floor.
Instead, she’d be running the concern from behind the scenes.
Anyway, now that would have to wait. The only work she could possibly do would have to be private.
Like working as an amateur accountant, perhaps keeping the books for a local business.
Again, she looked at her depleted account.
With her poor skills in the money department, accounting didn’t seem like a good idea.
No way would she rescind Daisy’s tuition money. She’d promised to pay and she would. The girl deserved her chance for higher education.
Sarah couldn’t ask Big Jim for the money.
Cattle ranching always ran on a razor’s edge, barely profitable, with so many variables threatening the bottom line: weather, rainfall, the health of the livestock, the viability of the farm equipment.
In recent years, many of the local ranches had opened their homes to city slickers, calling their property guest ranches.
In this way, they were able to hang onto their birthright land and had made much-needed income by unnecessarily moving cattle from pasture to pasture just so they could be called cattle drives.
Jim would never do that.
Over the years, she’d tried to give him money. He wouldn’t hear of it and promptly returned her checks. Jim was proud.
Leaning her chin on an elbow, Sarah skimmed the remaining emails and found one from her former manager, Patrick.
When she’d quit the modeling life, Patrick had been beyond upset.
He’d begged, cajoled, and screamed for her to keep working, but she had deaf ears.
“I’m done, Patrick,” she’d told him that last day in his New York studio.
“Sorry. You’ve got other models working for you. Concentrate on them.”
“Darling!” he’d exclaimed, flipping one of the jaunty scarves he always wore tied around his neck.
“Those other girls aren’t you! They aren’t the one, the only, the incomparable Super Sarah Lang.
You’re at the height of your popularity, the prime of your adult life.
To give it up now is nothing short of madness. ”
“Then I’m completely mad.” Slinging her designer handbag over her shoulder, she’d walked out, wooden and numb. The grief had been fresh then, new and devastating. All she wanted to do was go home.
Now, Sarah wondered what Patrick could want. With trepidation, she opened the email.
Dear One,
As you asked, I’ve left you alone these long months and haven’t contacted you or bothered you in any way.
But the time has come. Darling, since your abrupt departure from the catwalks and photo studios, your popularity has grown tenfold.
As they say, with absence, the heart grows fonder.
Everyone is asking, Where is Sarah Lang?
Even I do not know, although rumors have it around New York and Hollywood that you’ve squirreled yourself away in some log cabin in the hinterlands.
After knowing you so long and your love of all fine things, I find this difficult to understand. But `a chacun son! To each, his own.
You should know that Chanel has contacted me about designing a handbag just for you.
They want to produce it in leather, several colors, and call it The Sarah.
Darling, remember how it was always your dream to have a top designer make a handbag with your input and name?
Here it is, an opportunity for your dream to come true!
In the same twenty-four hours, both Versace and Ralph Lauren phoned me to beg for you to represent their next spring clothing presentations. There have been many other offers. Your cup runneth over.
Dear, I hope this note finds you happier than when I last saw you. Please, please come back to us. Remember, we are your family. Call me.
Patrick
Slowly, Sarah closed the laptop and drummed her fingers on the top.
She had always wanted a designer to name a bag after her.
It had been a goal for which she’d striven yet never attained.
Now, here it was being handed to her on a brocaded pillow.
Yet now it seemed like a shallow goal. A bag with her name. Who cared?
Suddenly, her cell phone chirruped. Pulling it from her bag, she looked at the screen and saw it was her agent, Patrick, who’d just emailed. She smiled to herself. Patrick was too affable, too filled with boundless enthusiasm for life to not like.
“Darling!” Patrick exclaimed when she answered. “I’ve just emailed you, but as soon as I clicked the Send button, I knew I had to speak with you.”
“Hi, Patrick. I just got your email.”
“Oh, perfect. Then you know how everyone is clamoring for your return.” He lowered his voice. “A Chanel bag called The Sarah. I want to swoon. Aren’t you thrilled?”
“I have mixed feelings,” she told him honestly. “I really don’t want to model any longer.”
“Why?” Patrick nearly screamed in her ear. “What’s not to love about fame, wealth, travel, adoration? I don’t understand you. Help me, Sarah. Help me to see inside your beautiful head.”
“I’ve come to like the quiet life, Pat. It’s peaceful.”
“Of course you’re still mourning our dear Mira,” he said. Patrick was one of the few who knew the truth about her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I am.”
“I need you back in New York,” Patrick said. “Your legion of fans needs you. The world needs you.”
Sarah smiled. How dramatic, how very Patrick of him. Yet she also thought again about the money she could earn, and the good she could do with it back in Mountain Wood. “I have to go now. I’ve missed you. Don’t worry, in the next few days or weeks I’ll be in touch.”
Reluctantly, he let her go, but not before she repeated her promise to call him soon.
The money she could earn if she went back to modeling would be staggering. In very little time she could earn more than enough to realize her new, more meaningful dream of opening her feed barn and still be able to help her fellow townspeople.
Patrick’s offers were tempting and the answer to her problems. Her heartrate sped up.
The ten pounds of extra weight she’d gained could be shed within weeks.
She’d simply go back to the gym workouts she hated and cut her meal portions to the old one third.
No big deal. She didn’t have to like it, but she could do it.
She could become a supermodel again.