Free A Father's Stake by Mary Anne Wilson Page B

feather, him lifting her, had startled him. He wasn’t sure why, and with a sharp shake of his head, he didn’t try to understand his reaction. He pulled himself up, and the minute he straightened, Grace strode off across the dry pasture.
    She was going back to L.A. tomorrow, so he would have no further chance to build his case for her sale of the land to him. They were halfway back to the house when he finally broke the silence. “Life out here can be tough,” he said. “My grandpa was just tougher.”
    “I guess so. You said that ranch was your parents’ land. Where’s yours?” she asked, not breaking stride.
    “I help them out sometimes, but I wouldn’t qualify as a rancher right now.”
    That caught her attention, and she cast him a long sideways glance. “Right now? That means you will be or want to be in the future?”
    Here it was. His chance to tell her he wanted this place, to bring it back to life, and him along with it. But the words stuck in his throat. “The possibility is always there for me,” he generalized.
    She kept walking, and by the time they broke out of the trees near the house, he felt the nerves at the back of his neck tightening. She stopped and turned to him. “Thank you so much for the tour and the information,” she said. “I appreciate it all.”
    He knew that his last chance to broach the question of selling was right then. Taking a breath, he asked, “If you were to sell this place, how much would you take for it?”
    She didn’t move and he knew he’d done it all wrong, but he couldn’t take the question back. In a court room, he could get any information out of a witness. But this woman totally baffled him. “I don’t understand something,” she said, narrowing her lavender eyes.
    He didn’t understand anything right then himself, except the fact that he was bumbling around like some first year law student, instead of focusing and getting to the point. “What’s that?”
    “I hadn’t even made it out here before Willie G. offered to buy this place. Now you’re asking about buying it. I understand that it used to be in your family, but am I missing something else?” She smiled faintly. “Is there gold here, or oil, or some hidden treasures?”
    “Just my life,”
he thought, but shook his head. “I’d like to keep it in our family.” That was true enough, but barely the full truth.
    She nodded. “I understand that.”
    “There are strong emotional connections for people. With Willie G. it’s the land connection, land he’s been on all his life. With me, it’s the family connection, the history of the Wolf people.” She nodded again. Then he realized something. “You must have some emotional connection because your father gave it to you, no matter how he got it.”
    Jack saw her eyes narrow even more before Grace turned from him. “He never came here, did he?” she asked as she started toward the house.
    He fell in step with her. “I think he only had it for a few weeks, maybe a month, before he moved it on to you. No one ever saw him around here.”
    “He should have seen the place,” he thought he heard her mutter, but couldn’t be sure.
    They walked around to the front of the house and Grace went up the porch step, turned and looked down at him. “Thanks again.”
    The morning sun was haloing her face, turning her hair the color of pale spun gold. “You never answered me about considering selling.”
    She cocked her head slightly to the right, and studied him openly for a long, almost uncomfortable moment. “No, I didn’t, did I?”
    He waited, not saying anything else, just waiting for the tiny woman on the step above him to give him some sort of answer.
    “I’m not sure,” she finally said. “There are things I need to do first, people to talk to. This isn’t just about me.”
    “You’re coming back?” he asked.
    “Yes, I’ll be back, but I’m not sure when.”
    Jack felt a slight easing in him. She hadn’t made a final