The Lone Rancher - By Carol Finch Page 0,4
Leanna and Chance should be here to help me,” Quin muttered resentfully.
Sid arched thick black brows and frowned curiously. “Pardon?”
“Nothing.” Quin set the empty glass on the bar, then spun on his boot heels. “I need to pick up supplies. Thanks for the drink, Sid.”
Quin mounted the bloodred bay gelding, with its sleek black mane and tail. He’d named him Cactus because of his prickly disposition. Quin had overheard some of his hired hands mutter that Quin and Cactus were a helluva lot alike. Though Cactus was a bit hard to handle at times, the horse had amazing stamina and endurance that was invaluable on trail drives. Plus, Cactus had never abandoned Quin the way his two brothers and sister had when the going got tough.
Tugging the packhorse behind him, Quin passed the train depot and Château Royale Hotel—the fancy new establishment constructed to accommodate passengers from the railroad and stage depot. He smiled as he dismounted at the general store on Town Square. How he wished he had been there to see the look on McKnight’s face when he arrived at the run-down ranch house. No doubt, the man would be begging Quin to take the mismanaged property off his hands. Very soon, Quin would add another tract of land to the sprawling 4C Ranch.
Adrianna McKnight gaped at the clapboard ranch house that cried out for a fresh coat of paint and the bare windows that needed bright curtains. There were no gardens to give the place a speck of color. Nothing to welcome her home.
“Good heavens! I traded cooking in a posh Boston mansion for this?” Ezmerelda Quickel, the short, round-faced, red-haired cook, chirped as she stared goggle-eyed at her new home.
Adrianna pasted on an optimistic smile as she swiveled around to glance directly at Ezmerelda, who had half collapsed in disappointment on the backseat of the buggy. “I’m sure we’ll be in a more positive frame of mind after we recuperate from our exhausting journey. Hopefully, the interior of the house is in better condition than the exterior.”
“Let’s hope so, Addie dear,” Beatrice Fremont, the longtime housekeeper, harrumphed distastefully. “But I have the uneasy feeling I’ll face a pile of dust and I’ll be sneezing my head off while I try to set this residence to rights.”
Hiram Butler, her man of affairs who was like an honorary uncle, glanced this way and that, then said, “I knew Texas claimed to be wide-open range country and wooded hills, but goodness! Our nearest neighbor must be miles away!”
Honestly, she was surprised anyone had volunteered to make this long journey after she had purchased the shares in this Texas ranch. Save those shares belonging to her first and only cousin, Rosalie Greer Burnett. Rosalie had cautioned Adrianna in her last letter that the property had been neglected because the previous manager had embezzled money meant for the upkeep of the home. But this?
Adrianna had planned to construct a new addition to enlarge the existing house but she hadn’t anticipated remodeling the entire residence! Still, she needed this change of address, this new challenge to prove to herself that she was capable and that she counted for something besides tramping around ballrooms in Boston, fending off adventurers who sought to attach themselves to her vast fortune.
By heavens, Adrianna Kathleen McKnight was going to put this ranch on the map—or die trying! She wasn’t the witless debutante her so-called friends in Boston pigeonholed her as. She had disappointed her departed father because she had only made a halfhearted attempt to become the dignified lady he had expected her to become when he introduced her into society. Adrianna had tried for her father’s sake. Unfortunately, she had been unhappy and she had been untrue to her nature, while trying to live up to his expectations.
Now, after Reuben McKnight’s lengthy illness, Adrianna had taken Cousin Rosa’s suggestion to move west and begin a new life for herself. She would make her father proud that she had inherited his knack for business. She was not an empty-headed china doll destined to become the trophy wife for some snobbish social climber.
Mustering her resolve, determined to meet the difficult challenge, Adrianna grabbed hold of her full skirts so she wouldn’t swan dive from the carriage, subsequently embarrassing herself in front of all the local workers she’d hired to transport and unload her cargo.
“Please cart the luggage upstairs,” she instructed in an authoritative tone that would have done her father proud—or at least she told herself that he