The Rancher's Answered Prayer

“Now,” Billings said, “how can I help you?”

“There seems to be some confusion about my uncle’s will,” Wyatt explained, passing the papers to Billings.

Rex swallowed some coffee and glanced over the papers across the rim of his cup before stacking them on the table at his elbow. “No confusion. Dodd was very certain about what he wanted and how he wanted to do it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Rex shrugged and reached for a cookie. “Your uncle wanted Ms. Kemp to have the house and the mineral rights. You and your brothers get everything else.”

“I told you,” Tina crowed triumphantly. She reached a hand across the table toward Rex. “I’m Tina Walker Kemp, by the way.”

“Not Mrs. Smith, then.”

Both Wyatt and Tina reacted at the same time. “No!”

Billings shot a glance at Wyatt before shaking Tina’s hand. Then he released her and placed some cookies onto plates for her and Wyatt. “Eat up.”

Tina nibbled, but after one bite of cookie, the world as a whole seemed a lot more palatable to Wyatt.

“Mmm. You should market these,” Wyatt told Callie Billings, shaking a cookie at her.

“Don’t even joke about it,” Rex protested. “She has enough to do with me, these kids, my dad and helping her own father run his businesses.”

“If you’re looking to sell Loco Man,” Callie said to Wyatt, “Rex and my dad might be interested in buying. You may know my father. Stuart Westhaven.”

“The banker?”

“Among other things.”

“Beware an ambitious businesswoman,” Rex put in, shaking his head. “Always looking to expand.” He reached out and pulled Callie close to him, kissing her soundly.

Envy knocked around inside Wyatt’s chest again. Unbidden, his gaze stole to Tina Walker Kemp, who stared morosely at her empty plate as if wishing for the return of her cookie or perhaps another. Frowning at himself, Wyatt focused his mind on the subject at hand.

“We’re not interested in selling,” he stated firmly, though once his brothers heard that Tina’s claim was real, they might have other ideas. Blanking his face, he asked, “You wouldn’t know where we might rent a place to stay, would you? There’s four of us, including my nephew, Frankie.”

Rex shook his head. “Not offhand.”

Wyatt grimaced before he could stop himself. “Something affordable to buy, then. Preferably on the east side of town.”

“Lyons might have something for sale.”

“Dix told me they sold that house they remodeled,” Callie put in. “Saw him and Fawn at the grocery store.”

“Well, there’s a realtor in town. He’ll know,” Rex said casually. “I think your uncle was expecting y’all to share, though.”

“Share!” Tina yelped, glaring at Wyatt as if he’d suggested the idea.

“Everyone knows the old house needs some work,” Callie pointed out. She looked to Wyatt then, adding, “Even if you and your brothers aren’t up to that, you could pay rent so Ms. Kemp could afford to hire Lyons and Son.” She smiled at Tina. “They do excellent work, by the way.”

Rent. Wyatt ground his teeth. His business plan didn’t allow for rent, let alone buying a house for himself and his family. He especially did not like the idea of paying rent to live in what was rightly Smith property, but what was the option? Staying in the bunkhouse?

“What about the outbuildings?”

“They’re yours,” Rex told him. “Dodd was very intentional about it. The house and the mineral rights go to Ms. Kemp. Everything else goes to you and your brothers. Technically, you own the ground that the house sits on.”

Well, that tipped the equation in his favor. Wyatt smiled cunningly at Tina Walker Kemp. “Maybe we can work something out.”

She folded her arms mulishly, but Wyatt saw the worry in her big bronze eyes. Suddenly, he wanted to reassure her, promise not to pull the ground out from under her and her son. Literally. But the interested gazes of Rex and Callie Billings squelched the impulse.

Besides, whatever Uncle Dodd’s foolish intentions had been, Wyatt meant to make a home on Loco Man Ranch for himself, his brothers and his nephew—Tina Kemp or no Tina Kemp.

Something told him that she would take nothing less than her due.

So be it.

* * *

Well, wasn’t that just like a man?

Tina had never met a man who could keep his word. In the end, even Daddy Dodd had disappointed her. What did he think he was doing, leaving every square inch of the land to the Smith brothers and only the house that sat upon it to her? All right, the house and the mineral rights, for whatever that was worth.

At this point, she was afraid to hope. Where had hope ever gotten her? As the thought slid through her mind, she quickly followed it with a prayer.

Sorry, Lord. I’m just confused. And frightened. Lord, please, there must be some way to make this work, some way I can keep Tyler with me.

She’d snorted with derision when her ex-husband, Layne, had informed her that he intended to sue for custody of their son. Then his attorney had contacted her, and suddenly the threat had become all too real. Dodd had died only days before. In her grief and panic, she’d gone searching for the copy of the will he’d sent her. At the time, it had seemed as if Dodd had reached down from Heaven and handed her the answer to her problems. She could leave a job that demanded too much of her time and go home to Oklahoma with her son.

She hadn’t given a thought to the land, only to the house. In the back of her mind, she’d sort of assumed that the ranch would go on as it always had, with Dodd’s longtime foreman, Delgado, at the helm and reporting to the nephews. She’d never expected them to leave the big city of Houston, Texas, for the tiny town of War Bonnet, Oklahoma. She certainly hadn’t expected them to take over her house.

She’d decided that she would open a bed-and-breakfast. With the nearest motel room at least 40 miles away, Dodd had often put up folks visiting War Bonnet. That neighborliness was one of the things that her mother, Gina, had disliked so much about small-town life.

Tina smiled wanly at Callie, wishing they had more in common. Perhaps they soon would. Callie obviously placed making a home for her family at the top of her list, but she was also a businesswoman. The fact that Callie and her husband so clearly adored each other was the big difference between her and Tina. Well, that and the fact that Callie’s house wasn’t falling down around her.

Tina wondered if cashing in her small 401(k) to finance this had been wise, but what choice had she had?

Wyatt pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, stretching his hand across the table to Rex. The two men shook as if they were longtime friends.

“We would be most grateful,” Wyatt was saying. “It’s been a long time since I was on a horse, and I’ve never bought a cow in my life.”

“We’re just about through tagging and cutting the calves,” Billings said, hooking his thumbs in the front pockets of his dusty jeans. “Give me another a few days, and we’ll get at solving your livestock problem.”

Callie chuckled. “Be warned. Rex especially loves to shop for horses.”

“No one’s more surprised by that than I am,” Rex told her, hooking an arm about her waist and pulling her close again.

She laughed and said to Wyatt, “My husband has more in common with you than you know, Mr. Smith. He left Tulsa and a stellar law practice to come back here and help out when his father was ill. Then he found that the city no longer had any appeal.”

It was obvious to anyone with eyes what had kept Rex in War Bonnet. Tina wanted to be happy for the couple, but to her shame she found that she could only be envious.