Megan straightened in her chair. “Why do you care?” she finally voiced the nagging question that had been gnawing at her throughout the conversation. “Travis, you know as well as I do that we aren’t friends. We’ve never been friends. It seems to me you probably expected me to fail. You never had a very good opinion of me, either, as I recall.”
He rubbed his jaw. “I guess you’re right. As far back as I can remember you’ve treated me like some piece of trash that was cluttering up your immediate area. I should be gloating about now that the high-and-mighty princess is taking a nosedive.”
“Exactly.”
They looked at each other for a long time without speaking. After several minutes of silence, Travis sighed. “I guess I deserved your haughty treatment, though, didn’t I? I used to treat you pretty badly—pulling your hair, grabbing your books, making fun of your friends…”
“You made it clear what you thought of me, that’s for sure.”
“Would it help to remind you that I’ve grown up a little since then?”
He gave her that heart-melting smile of his that had gotten him out of all kinds of trouble as a kid.
“No,” she said baldly.
“Oh.” He looked around the kitchen before meeting her steady gaze. “The thing is, I was really shaken when Maribeth told me what was happening with y’all. I’d lost touch with you since high school. I mean, all that stuff I did to you was years ago. I’ve been on the road for the past eight years.”
She knew that. He’d been two years ahead of her in school. She’d been sixteen the year he graduated. He’d been president of the student body, captain of the football team, homecoming king. By the time he’d graduated, he’d been driving to school for two years. So they were talking about behavior of more than ten years ago…almost half a lifetime.
“Will you let me help you, Megan? Please? Then I’ll know you’ve forgiven me for all that childish stuff I used to pull. I can’t stand by and watch you lose this place, not when I could help you. Surely you can understand that.”
She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Especially with Travis Kane, of all people. Of course she wasn’t going to accept his offer, but the very fact that he’d made it blew her away.
Her silence seemed to spur him on. “You’ve done a hell of a job, Megan…keeping everything going. You were just a kid when you took over here. The girls were still in grade school back then, weren’t they?”
“Yes.” She looked away, absently drawing designs in the moisture collecting on her glass.
“When is the mortgage due?”
She glanced back at him, grateful that he had changed the subject. “The first.”
“It’s paid annually?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s no time to try to sell stock.”
“Not at the current prices. Who knows if they’re ever coming up. Nobody seems to be eating beef these days, according to present market indicators. I’ve been hanging on, hoping the drop is only temporary. If I sold at today’s prices I’d lose everything I’ve invested in this herd.”
“So will you let me loan you the money?”
“I appreciate the offer, Travis. I mean that. It was kind of you to hang around today when I was being so—rude. But, in the long run, borrowing the money from you isn’t going to help. I would just owe another debt I couldn’t pay.” She rubbed her forehead where a headache was forming. “I’ve thought and thought about it. There’s just no way out of it, no reason to prolong any of this.” She forced herself to smile. “You know, it’s kinda funny when you think about it. Paddy O’Brien won this place in a card game more than a hundred years ago, closer to a hundred thirty-five.” She wondered if he knew that. “My illustrious ancestor was a riverboat gambler at the time. Didn’t know a thing about ranching.”
He didn’t seem particularly surprised, but then few families in the county had histories that weren’t known by all their neighbors.
“You’ve always been a gambler, too, Megan,” Travis said in a tone more gentle than she’d ever heard from him. “Don’t forget that. You’re a fighter. A survivor. You never give up.”
An unexpected lump formed in her throat. “Is that how you see me?”
“Of course. Why are you so surprised?”
“I always thought—” She decided not to tell him what she’d thought his opinion of her was. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
He hitched his chair closer to the table and leaned toward her. “Look, if you don’t want to owe me money, then I have a suggestion on how you could buy yourself some time—so that you could pay this year’s mortgage payment, wait on the market to sell your cattle, maybe investigate other stock you might choose to bring in. It would give you some breathing room.”
She eyed him warily. “What do you suggest I do, win the lottery?”
“Nope. Marry me.”
Megan realized that her jaw must have dropped because she suddenly became aware of the fact that her mouth was dry. She groped for the glass in front of her, draining it while her thoughts raced around in her head like a rioting crowd of protesters.
Travis Kane was suggesting that she marry him? Travis Kane? How could he be sitting there watching her so calmly?
“Marry you?” she finally repeated weakly.
“I know you think I’m crazy,” he replied hurriedly, as though afraid she was going to demand that he leave, “but listen to me for a minute. Just hear me out. It won’t be considered a loan that way. I’ll be making an investment that may or may not work out, but whatever happens, you’ll have the money you need, plus some left over. You’ll have enough to repair that blasted windmill and whatever else’s broken down. You’ll have the money to hire extra help, which I’m sure you could use. We’ll treat it like a business arrangement, like a partnership contract, or something. We’ll set a time limit—say one year. Twelve months. At the end of that time we’ll review the situation, decide if we want to continue the partnership. If we don’t, well—who knows what will have happened by then?” He flashed that smile of his and she could feel herself succumbing. “I mean, the drought can’t last forever. Things are bound to pick up and you won’t have to be worried all the time about—”
“What’s in all of this for you?”
He’d been talking rapidly but he stopped at her question as though a hand had been clamped over his mouth. He swallowed, eyeing her cautiously. “For me?” he repeated, as though puzzled by the question.
“Uh-huh. Why are you willing to be so generous? If you want the ranch, why don’t you just make me an offer on the place and we can talk about it?”
“Megan, there’s no way you’d ever sell this place and we both know it. This is your home. I don’t want it. Ranching doesn’t fit in with my life-style. You know that. Besides, if you sold the place, where would you and the girls live?”
She couldn’t believe she was sitting there at the kitchen table having this conversation, and with Travis Kane, of all people. “If we were to sell the ranch, we would have the money to move anywhere. If the bank forecloses, I’m not sure where we’ll go,” she admitted. “But we’d find a place somewhere. We certainly wouldn’t starve.”
“This way you could stay here