But there were other things to consider regarding these undelivered letters. “That sorry bitch!” he said, referring to his mother, and “Those bastards!” referring to whatever miscreant at the prison had been paid off by the oil scumbags to deny him mail.
“There’s more, baby,” she said. “I’ve given you the bad news. Well, good and bad. Now, here’s the really good news.” She laid a yellow manila envelope in his lap.
He arched his eyebrows at her in question.
“Go on. You’ll be happy.”
He doubted that. Still, he opened the envelope and out spilled a pigload of savings bonds.
“There’s fifty thousand dollars there.” Charmaine was practically jumping up and down with glee.
Hell, he felt like jumping up and down with glee. “What does it mean?”
“It means yesterday wasn’t such a bad day after all.”
He looked at her and said huskily, “I already knew that last night.”
“Oh, you!” she said, blushing prettily.
Charmaine blushing? Man, I’d like to see that more often.
She plopped herself back on his lap, and he swiveled them around a few times.
“This is just the jump start I need to get this ranch back on its feet,” he said.
“Uh, hold the train, cowboy,” Charmaine said, putting a foot down to the floor to stop the swiveling. “Half of that bounty is mine. So I have a say in how it would be used.”
He had to admit it, he’d forgotten. But that didn’t matter. “It’s to your advantage, too, to have the ranch prosper. Oh, I see. You want your half to get the Mafia off your back.”
“Not necessarily.” She drew each of the words out slowly, while she batted her eyelashes at him.
Raoul knew from past experience to be wary when Charmaine batted her eyelashes.
She jumped off his lap, pulled over a straight-backed, wooden chair, and sat down facing him, knee to knee. “I have some ideas about how we can turn the ranch around.”
Whoa! There are a whole lot of red flags in that one little sentence. Like “ideas “, like “we ” and like “turn the ranch around.” But he wasn’t all that concerned. This was Charmaine. She knew zippo about running a ranch. Hell, she barely knew a cow from a bull.
“Okay, I’m all ears, darlin’,” he said.
“You know that the price of cattle is volatile. There are very few ranchers anymore who make a profit from beef alone. So, I was thinking…” She paused in a ta-da fashion. “How about ostriches?”
“Huh?” He sat up straighter. She couldn’t possibly be suggesting… “What about ostriches?”
“Let’s buy a bunch and raise them here. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Rusty. I did some research yesterday on the Internet, and the city restaurants are buying up specialty meats like that for huge prices… maybe ten times the price per pound of beef.”
“Have you lost your friggin’ mind?” he practically shouted. “This is a cattle ranch. You don’t run cattle and ostriches together.”
“We could run a fence across the middle of your… uh, spread… is that what you call it?”
“A fence across the middle of my spread! I repeat, have you lost your friggin’ mind?”
“You won’t even think about it?”
He could see the hurt on her face, but dammit, why was she interfering in his business? Oh, he knew she owned half, but she should let him run the place. “No, I won’t even think about it.”
“Not even if it could save the ranch?”
“Charmaine,” he said with as much patience as he could garner, “if I were going to sell out what this ranch has always represented, I could just give it lock, stock, and barrel to the oil companies. Let them rip it all up, and I could retire in style. Is that what you want me to do?”
She lifted her chin haughtily, and, for sure, she was offended now. “You know how I feel about my father and what he did to the bayou by drilling on our lands. All my life I’ve fought the stigma of what he did. My brothers feel the same way. How could you even suggest that I would want such a thing?”