I Choose You. Kristina O'Grady

have a film crew here for a few weeks.”

      “A few weeks? No son, they’ll be here for almost a year. There’ll be a lot of extra work going into having them here, no doubt about it, but with a figure like that and with how the ranch is financially, we can’t afford for them to go somewhere else. We need this. Here, look at these books. Without Mr. Hargrave and his crew we won’t last the year. It’s either this, Ben, or sell. And I don’t want to sell. This place has been in our family too long to see it go to that greedy son of a bitch down the road.”

      Ben stilled and looked at his dad in confusion.

      “What son of a bitch?” he asked slowly.

      “Franklin.”

      “Franklin? Jenna’s dad? What does he want with our ranch?”

      “Oh boy, you don’t know, do you?” His dad sighed and ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. “Donald Franklin has been after this piece of dirt since he moved here. He thought he had his hands on it too when you and Jenna were engaged. Lucky for all of us she pulled out of that one.”

      “Lucky?” Ben leapt from his seat. “You call it lucky she left me the week my sister died? What kind of luck is that?” Ben picked up the rock masquerading as a paperweight on his dad’s desk, weighed it in his hand and considered throwing it through the window, but by the look of the accounts they won’t be able to afford to replace it.

      “No, I suppose you wouldn’t call that any kind of luck, son, but consider it a blessing she left you then and not after you got married and she’d taken half the ranch. That was all I meant.” Lance ran his hand over his head again and settled back into his chair. With his elbows resting on his desk he leaned towards his son and said, “I don’t believe she was ever after this place though. But I do wonder if Donald put her up to marrying you.”

      “What, you think it was his idea we get married? It was me who asked her.”

      This conversation was going nowhere. Jenna and him were old news. Last he’d heard she’d married some grain farmer from the next town. Her rejection still stung like an open wound. He didn’t allow himself to think about her, much less talk about his almost wedding. Looking back now he knew he was naive to think she would have been happy married to some poor cowboy like him. Beth told him her new husband was a rich farmer set to inherit his family’s farm. Funny, not once while they were together did he ever think of Jenna as a gold digger.

      He sighed and pushed thoughts of Jenna into the far reaches of his mind.

      “Dad, why is the ranch in such a mess? What happened? I thought this place more than paid for itself before. What’s going on?”

      “As I said, having your sister in and out of hospital for so long piled up the bills. The cost of having to stay in a hotel to be near her was enough of a strain, let alone the food, extra hands on the ranch and travel back and forth. At least the treatment was covered. But we survived all that. I made some bad business decisions these last few years and I guess you could say I’ve never had a good head for business. Not like you. I need your brains, Ben, and your muscle. This place is falling apart and I’m afraid without your help we won’t make it. That’s why I asked you to come back home. Besides,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “this is where you belong. Not in some city working behind a desk.”

      “I was working at a farm supply store, Dad, not at a desk,” Ben muttered.

      “Did you like it?” his dad asked, leaning closer to Ben.

      “No, not really,” Ben admitted.

      “You would have been wasted there. You were born a rancher, you need to be a rancher. What do you say? Will you stay and help us get ready for this film crew?”

      Ben sighed and sat back down in his chair.

      “What do you need me to do?”