“I just can’t picture you as an emporium owner,” she teased. “You’ll scare everyone out of your shop!”
He snorted. She grinned. But his reasons for wanting to do this were commendable. For his mother. To make her happy. To bring fine clothes and furnishings to the people in this wild, remote territory. If she didn’t dislike him so much, she might like him—wait, that made no sense.
“What will you do with your mine when you go home?”
“I’ve considered turning it into a big production when I’m ready to leave, hiring a manager. But I’ve also considered blowing it up when I go.”
She gasped. “And just bury all that wealth? You could sell it instead.”
“That’s the thing—I might’ve, if Sullivan hadn’t pissed me off, but now I won’t.”
He didn’t actually growl those words, which was promising; unexpectedly, this gave her a perfect opening to discuss business with him, so she said, “There’s one other option. My brothers and I can continue to mine here if you form a new partnership with us.”
“You’re going to swing a pick?”
She would probably be as pathetic at it as Charles had been, but she stubbornly lifted her chin. “I will if I have to. I should already be your partner. The laws of inheritance should have applied, making me a mine owner. And need I point out that the terms of your agreement with Papa haven’t been fulfilled yet? Didn’t you say you formed the partnership to help my father and his family out of their financial bind? So we need to renegotiate to see this through.”
“Is that so?”
He lay back down and covered his face with his hat. She reprimanded herself for approaching this the wrong way. Demands weren’t going to work with this man, hadn’t she already learned that?
“Let me start over—”
“Maybe—after you catch another fish.”
Her brows snapped together in a frown. Stipulations? Or had she caught him off guard, and he needed a few minutes to do his own fishing—for an excuse to tell her no? But, according to him, he didn’t need an excuse, didn’t need to deal with her about anything since, as he’d pointed out, he no longer had a partner in her family. And he could easily invalidate her father’s claim the next time he was in town. So maybe he was only making sure that she caught enough fish for their dinner before he told her no, guessing she’d stomp off angry when he did. Infuriating man!
She stared at the water again, in time to see two fish swimming past, completely ignoring the lures. She stepped back to pull her line into that pathway, and a few minutes later got the second tug.
It was an even bigger fish, and she resisted the impulse to drop it in the center of Morgan’s chest again. She just held it next to him and said, “The hook, please?”
He sat up and smiled. “Now, that’s a big one. One more should do it.”
She cast the line again and, keeping her eyes on the water, took a deep breath and blurted out, “I need a loan for three thousand dollars. The next payment on the loan Papa took out against our family home is due soon, and it won’t even make a dent in the balance still owed, even if my brothers had the money to make the payment, which they don’t. There is not enough time to get my brothers here to start mining, when the trip to Butte took me nearly a week. But if you could send them the money now to pay off the loan in full, they could come here immediately to mine and pay you back.”
“So you want a loan from me to pay off a loan?”
“Yes—please,” she said sweetly. “You did agree to help with this very thing.”
“When did I do that?”
“When you partnered with my father. He was desperate to get rid of this loan and make a fortune so he could give us back the life we were accustomed to, you said it yourself, and that’s why you helped him. The reason still exists. The loan is still looming. The goal that started this hasn’t been met yet.”
“There’s no tearing hurry, Violet.”
She swung around to stare at him. “How can you say that? My brothers are almost out of time!”
“No, they aren’t. I sent off a second load of silver from Charley’s mine the day before his accident. After I took your father to the doctor, I sent a telegram to my buyers, the silversmith brothers, and told them to deposit Charley’s money with mine until he recovered. The next two times I checked on him that month, he was still unconscious. And then Tex went to town to play poker and brought me the bad news that he’d died. That was about a month after the accident. Charley never did find out that he’d netted another eighteen hundred.”
“You have that money?”
“Not anymore. The last time I went to Butte, I arranged to have that eighteen hundred sent to your brothers. That was the same day I heard about you. In any case, they should have gotten that money this week.”
That was such a relief! Daniel or maybe both of her brothers might already be on their way here because of it. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“I did, the night you convinced me you are Violet Mitchell, in the mine. I told you your brothers would hear from me soon.”
“No, you didn’t.”
