The Banker, page 1
Table of Contents
The Banker
The Banker
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Postscript
Further Reading: The Show Goes On
Also By Lois Breedlove
About the Author
The Banker
By Lois Breedlove
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. While place descriptions and news events may coincide with the real world, all characters and the plot are fictional.
Contact Information
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The Banker
Second Chance Romances
This is book 3 in the series, the follow-up book to Rancher Woman in Marilee’s trilogy.
Marilee Dupont is a professor of agriculture and owner of one of the largest family ranches in the region. For a brief time, she thought she’d met a man she could love. But, he wasn’t willing to stay, and she couldn’t leave.
And then things got difficult.
Prologue
Mid-August
Marilee Dupont was coming out of the barn when she saw Bethany Williams’ Subaru come down the drive. She paused in the doorway and took a deep breath. After last night’s dinner where she’d broken off her engagement to her father, Trent Williams? She hadn’t been sure she would ever see either of them again.
Bethany got out of the Subaru and saw her. She was wearing work clothes — a long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and boots. At 16, she was 5-foot-9 and had the female version of her father’s face. She would be beautiful when she grew into those features, although she didn’t believe that now.
Marilee just watched her walk toward her. Bethany was more than employee. For a brief while, Marilee hoped she would be a daughter.
Well, that plan had flown. “Wasn’t sure you’d be back out,” she said.
Bethany looked tense. “I want to continue working for you,” she said steadily. “I told Dad that what was between you two wasn’t my business and shouldn’t impact my employment out here. I used the example if I were working in town for a café and the bank had issues with the owner, he wouldn’t expect me to quit.”
“Well he probably would,” Marilee said with a half-laugh.
Bethany grinned. “That’s what he said, too,” she admitted.
“I’d love to have you continue,” Marilee said. “But I don’t want to come between you and your father.”
“It won’t,” Bethany assured her. “But I would like to renegotiate my schedule. Can I work two days, staying out the night between, then go back to town, then back out for two nights, then being home for the weekend?”
Marilee tried to visualize that. “I think so. Let’s go look at a calendar,” she said. “Angie’s here, by the way. She’s probably got breakfast ready, if you’re hungry.” She reverted back to scheduling. “So you’d be out here Monday and Thursday nights?”
Bethany nodded and they started toward the house. “Breakfast would be good,” she admitted. “I was all butterflies about coming out here and couldn’t eat.”
Marilee stopped at the back door and looked at the teenager. “Bethany, you need to know you will always be welcome here. Always. OK?”
Bethany nodded. She swallowed hard, and then stuck to the subject of scheduling. “Probably reduces my hours some too,” she said. “Back to an hourly rate instead of a weekly?”
“We can work that out,” Marilee agreed. She smiled. “Glad you’re coming back.”
Bethany smiled. “I am, too.”
Later that afternoon, Marilee and her best friend, Angie Gregory, drove into Moscow to met up with women friends, a group locals referred to as Marilee’s Squad, for happy hour drinks at Pete’s.
Well, they were right, she’d always had a group of women friends dating back to the year in high school her volleyball team went to state. The group changed as time went on — that was 17 years ago, half a lifetime — right there were four of them, and they all were professors at the university. She was in agriculture. Gail Tremont in theater, Rebecca Jones in political science, and Angie Gregory in English. And Friday night was girls’ night out.
It was almost sacred, even when one of them was in a relationship. Because you needed your girlfriends to survive a relationship.
Like she needed them now. They had dropped everything last night to drive to the ranch — an hour each way — simply because she needed them. And they’d held her while she cried. Angie had stayed the night. She was a sturdy anchor for Marilee, and Marilee would always be grateful.
They staked out a booth in the back of the bar — a honky-tonk dive with pool tables and a small dance floor where local bands played country western music. It was named Pete’s for the original owner, but it was Hank Owens who owned and ran it now.
The one concession Hank had made was in the beers he served. There was probably a half-dozen microbreweries in town — and he served them all, 60 or more brews. All designed to attract the college students. During the summer? Locals sampled them or stuck to the tried and true. Marilee had seen more than one drunken night here where some college student out to celebrate something or other started with A and saw how far they could get down the list.
She grinned. Tonight she was drinking tonic water. “Dehydrated a bit,” she said when her friends asked. Angie didn’t ask. Angie knew why.
Gail went to the bar to get another beer, and some guy, who was pretty hot, Marilee thought, was talking to her. Rather he was listening to her talk. Marilee bet he was hearing some of Gail’s stories. She looked around the bar. She knew a lot of the stories of the people here, too, but Gail? Gail knew how to tell a story. It was summer and there were few students. Locals and university people, and they had stories. She smiled.
Trent Williams was at his usual table too. She blinked. No, he was really there, looking no different than when she’d first seen him. Dressed in his suit that he’d worn to work, he looked like the bank president he was. It was a very nice suit, Marilee conceded, and he was a very good-looking man. You’d think he would look out of place in dive like this with a suit like that. And she guessed he did. He didn’t seem to care. He wanted a good beer after work on Fridays, and he came here like everyone else did.
He rarely socialized. He sat and drank his beer, watched people and listened to the bands.
Rarely socialized except for the two months they’d been together. He socialized then. With her, and with her friends.
Now he was back to solitary. It didn’t seem to bother him.
Resolutely she turned to her friends.
“You OK?” Angie asked.
“I am,” she said, then amended. “I will be. I need to shoot some pool.”
She got up, and watched the two young men who were playing. “I’ll take on the winner,” she announced.
One of the men looked at her and grinned. “Really? And what stakes are we playing for?”
She grinned back. “I’m sure we can figure out something.”
He laughed, and racked the balls.
Trent Williams wasn’t sure what made him go to Pete’s after work. It had been a long day starting with the conversation at breakfast with Bethany. He’d lost that argument; Bethany was going to continue working at Dupont Ranch, in spite of the fact that he would no longer be out there for weekends. In spite of the fact that she was working for the woman who was breaking his heart.
But then, here he sat, knowing Marilee would be here, so that he could have a beer and watch her. Watch her laugh and tease some guy and then beat him at pool. He snorted. She’d beat him at pool too.
He had told her and her friends he’d never been beaten by a woman before, and they had laughed at him. “Ooh, let me show you how that goes,” Marilee said, dragging him back to the pool table. And she’d shot a game that showed her breasts off to him, that required her to walk past him as he watched, brushing past him, and then, at the end? She muffed t
Then she grinned. “Was it like that?” she asked, and the other women had shouted their laughter. He laughed too. Yes, it was exactly like that.
“Do you mean women throw the game so that men will like them?” he had asked. “In this day and age?”
Gail had nodded solemnly. “My mother told me, men don’t like women who beat them,” she said, her amusement showing only in her eyes. “You don’t want to beat them, Gail, they can’t handle it. Let them win, it means a lot to them. And then they will like you.”
Even quiet Rebecca giggled as they all nodded.
He smiled at the memory, and it even made him smile when Marilee beat the young man at pool and made him like it.
Of course, who wouldn’t be willing to pay a forfeit kiss like that to Marilee?
He finished his beer. And walked out.
Breaking up with him sure didn’t seem to bother her, he thought bitterly. Get over it.
“Is he gone?” Marilee asked. Angie nodded. “Thank God,” she muttered. “OK, girlfriends, I’m out of here. I need some sleep. Tell Gail good luck with that young man. I’ll see everyone at breakfast.”
“Breakfast club at the Breakfast Club,” Angie said, with cheerfulness she was faking for Marilee’s sake. Marilee rated the performance as so-so. “9 a.m. — unless you’ve got a good excuse.”
Angie looked over at Gail who was now dancing with the sexy young man with dark circle beard and shoulders to die for. “And that’s a damn fine excuse.”
They all laughed, and Marilee waved at Gail as she left.
She got to her jeep, and she sat in it for a moment. You will not cry, she said fiercely. You won’t. When she was sure that was true, she put the jeep in gear and drove home.
Chapter 1
Late Summer
Marilee Dupont was using the jeep today to check water levels at the lower circle of stock tanks, and it made her grumpy. Her doctor had cautioned her against riding a horse alone now that she was pregnant. It wasn’t the ride that was the problem, it was falling. And yes, she rarely fell of a horse. But she could. And if she were alone? What then?
She wasn’t sure the jolting ride of the jeep over the rutted road that led from one stock tank to the next was any easier on her body, but she was trying to be good at following the doctor’s instructions.
At least now that the first trimester was over, she wasn’t nauseated every morning — that helped. So she only rode when Bethany was out here to work. But school was starting next week, and Bethany had gone with her father to see his family in Boise over the Labor Day weekend.
She found it was easier to think of Trent that way — as Bethany’s father.
The father of her child too, but he didn’t know that. So far, only her closest friends knew she was pregnant. She could tell her body had changed, but she swapped out her jeans for flowing dresses when she went to town — the heat, she explained vaguely to those who noticed. And she was wearing looser smock-like tops on the ranch too. The heat, she told Bethany when she’d been curious.
And it was hot. Hot and dry, which was why Marilee was out here checking water tanks for the livestock. They were fed from natural springs: about a dozen of them in the lower hills and another dozen rimmed the property in the higher hills.
It had become an obsession, checking the tanks to make sure there was water still there. If one was getting over-used by the cattle, she could shift them out further, or toward another tank. And that did require a horse. And probably another rider, she acknowledged.
There were 5000 head of cattle on the 6000 acres of Dupont Ranch. Usually she turned them out after calving season was over, and except for periodic checks, let them graze. But this year was different.
Hottest year ever, people told each other. A drought. Fire season started early and hit hard. So far, nothing close to the ranch. So far.
Marilee knew better than most what it meant. She was a tenured full professor at the University of Idaho in Moscow. She studied and taught agriculture, sustainability, and lately, climate change. She’d planned that to be her life’s work.
Her younger brother Max was running the family ranch with her frequent trips out to help with the horses. Horses weren’t his thing, and she loved them. She got tenure, and published a series of research articles on the impact of temperature change on forage for livestock. And she’d re-written them for farmer magazines. She got promoted early to full professor. Her future seemed bright.
Four years ago, Max had been killed by a drunken driver, and her parents decided to sell the ranch. Max had been buying them out – it was their retirement income after all — and now that he was gone? They would have to sell the ranch that had been in the family for generations.
Marilee had come up here and ridden the perimeter of the ranch, and then she’d gone into campus and asked her department chair if he’d be willing to negotiate her teaching to accommodate the ranch’s needs. He said yes.
And so she told her parents she’d take on the ranch.
They’d refused, until Max’s will was read. He’d left his small percentage of the ranch to her. They couldn’t sell it to anyone but her, not without her consent. So she made the same payments he had, and she didn’t begrudge them the money at all. Ranchers didn’t have a 401k, they had the equity in the land.
She did begrudge them the fact that they weren’t speaking to her. That they hadn’t been back, not for Thanksgiving or Christmas — long a tradition for the Duponts — since Max’s death. She wondered if being late on a payment would get their attention.
Probably. Through an attorney.
At some point, she’d have to let them know she was going to make them grandparents. She wondered if they would be delighted to have grandchildren, or appalled that their single daughter was going to be a mother. She’d take bets either way: another generation of Duponts to live on the ranch vs. the whole single mother bit.
She shrugged. Well that was down the road. At some point before then, she was going to have to tell Trent Williams he was going to be a father.
He wasn’t speaking to her either.
Bethany didn’t say much. He’d asked her not to, was all she’d told her. And Marilee didn’t ask questions of her. She was 16, and she was handling it best she could. Marilee tried not to add stress for her. She hadn’t thought Bethany would continue to work out here, truth be told.
And she probably wouldn’t be once school started.
She was going to have to hire someone, though. Maybe the oldest Blessing boy? They lived closer. He knew the ranch; his father handled the irrigation for the hay and wheat fields. She would have to talk to Mark and his father, Jacob, about it. She thought Mark was going to be a senior like Bethany? Or had he graduated? Well, if not Mark, maybe the next boy in line.
The German Baptists ran to big families, and the Blessings were no exception. She wondered if Jacob would have a problem with his son working for a woman who obviously hadn’t been a chaste woman. She snorted. She suspected Jacob had known that about her long before she got pregnant.
Well, she’d ask and see.
She’d already contacted Dave Perez to schedule round up for early November. He would need to plan extra riders, she had told him. She wouldn’t be riding out as much this year. He hadn’t questioned her about it, just made the note.
She looked at her hay supply on the way back. It was stored in huge stacks around the lower fields and pasture. Cattle would be able to access it throughout the winter. Not enough hay, she worried. One more cutting, maybe? She looked at the hay fields, and shook her head. Might be better to just let some cattle graze it for a bit — organic mowing machines. She snorted.
Maybe she could leave them out on the range another two weeks? She should talk to Perez about that. See what others were doing.
She smiled. Dave Perez worked for most of the ranches out here. And he collected information and passed it on. Gossip, she supposed, but she could either call all her neighbors and ask what they were going to do, or she could just ask Dave.
Or she could listen to all the chatter at the monthly volunteer firefighters’ meeting. August had been full of worried men and the few women like her. Drought. Heat. Fires like no one had ever seen before.
