Free A Cowgirl's Christmas by C. J. Carmichael Page B

week ago, we’d never even met each other. Now you’re offering me a lifelong partnership venture.”
    “You have a lot of knowledge and history with this place. I could use that. Plus, I recognize how unfair Hawksley’s will must seem to you.”
    “Do you, really? Then why don’t you give me one-hundred percent of the ranch? I’d be happy to give up my share of Hawksley’s money in exchange.”
    “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    “Of course I would! I don’t care about the damn investments.” The money was meaningless to her if it meant she couldn’t own the Circle C.
    “Have you given any thought to why Hawksley left me the ranch in the first place?”
    “Because you’re related by blood. And you’re a man.” Just saying the words left a bad taste in her mouth.
    “There’s more to it than that. Your grandfather Carrigan had a sister—who was my grandmother. She was shut out of the will when our great-grandfather died. She married Arthur McAllister and they had one child—my father, Aaron. If my grandmother had been given her fifty percent of the family ranch, it would have been handed down to my dad andyour father recognized how unfair that was. A long time ago, he offered to right the wrong, but my father was already settled in St. Paul and my mother didn’t want to move. That’s when they came up with the plan to give me the ranch after Hawksley died.”
    Callan stared at him.  She knew just how his grandmother must have felt back then. “But why give you the entire ranch, rather than just the fifty percent share your father would have inherited?”
    “I admit that’s where some of Hawksley’s biases play in. He felt it would be better to have the ranch in just one person’s hands—and preferably a man’s.”
    Callan swore.
    “I agree. It’s not fair. That’s why I’m offering you fifty percent now. Because it’s the way things would have worked out, if the ranch had been divided equally and fairly from the beginning.”
    ––––––––

    ––––––––
    C ourt watched as Callan thought over his offer. No doubt what she really wanted was for him to walk out of her life and stay out. Court could sympathize. But he’d grown up on Hawksley’s promises that one day he would own the Circle C. He’d studied and trained to be an accountant like his father, all the while knowing it wasn’t his true destiny.
    Evenings and weekends, he rode the horse that Hawksley had bought him for his tenth birthday. When he was eighteen, Hawksley had bought him a second horse, and this one Court had used to learn basic roping and cutting skills. He’d been good enough to enter competitions, had even won a few events.
    His successes had pleased Hawksley—a few times Hawksley had even come out with his father to cheer him on.
    But Court was all too aware that he lacked real-life experience. The foreman at the Circle C could help him with that. But he also needed Callan.
    Her father had been so sure that she would agree to stay on at the Circle C once she got over the shock of the will. But Court was afraid he’d under estimated his daughter. She looked so delicate and pretty. But scratch beneath the veneer and she was pure grit. He admired her tremendously. Not that he could let her know that, or she’d walk all over him.
    “What if I stick out the year and we find we don’t work well together?” Callan asked him. “What happens then?”
    “I’ll still deed over the fifty percent. But one of us will have to buy the other out.”
    She scrunched up her face as she mulled that over. “Who buys out who?”
    “We could flip a coin.” He thought a moment. “Or shoot a game of pool.”
    She tried to fight it, but he saw her smile. And it made him feel good, knowing he’d been able to coax a little humor out of her.
    “What was it like when Hawksley came to visit your family at Christmas? What did you do?”
    Her questions caught him unaware, as did her pensive tone. “We