Her Tycoon to Tame
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“Children you don’t have.”
“Well, no, not yet, but one day—” She paused as an idea pierced her like a nail. “This is because I didn’t marry Robert, isn’t it?”
Disapproval clamped her father’s mouth into a tight line. “He was perfect for you, and yet you refused to settle down.”
“No, Dad, he was perfect for you. Robert was the son you always wished you’d had. Instead, you got me.”
“Robert knew how to run a stable.”
“So do I.”
“Hannah, you don’t ride. You don’t compete. Your heart is not in this business, and you don’t have the drive to keep Sutherland Farm at the top of the Grand Prix community. Instead you waste your time and money on animals that ought to be euthanized.”
No matter how many times she heard it, the old attacks still chafed. She stuffed down her emotional response and focused on the facts. “Mom believed in rescuing horses, too, and my horse rehabilitation program is a success. If you’d take the time to look at the statistics and read the success stories—”
“Your operation runs in the red every quarter. You’re careless with money because you’ve never had to fight and scratch for a living.”
“I work.”
He grunted in disgust. “A few hours a day.”
“My job isn’t the eight-hour-a-day variety.”
“When your mother and I assumed responsibility for my parents’ old tobacco farm, this place was losing money hand over fist. We built Sutherland Farm into the showplace it is today by fighting and clawing our way up the ranks. Your mother had ambition. You do not. Robert might have managed to talk some sense into you and divert your attention to more suitable hobbies. But that didn’t work. Did it?”
She’d ended her engagement the day she’d realized Robert had loved the horses and farm more than he had her. He’d been willing to trample people in pursuit of the almighty dollar. But her father would never listen to that. The men were like peas in a pod—identical in their drive for success despite the costs.
Robert had been her father’s ideal of the perfect son-in-law—aggressive in business and a star in the show ring—but ultimately, he wasn’t her ideal husband or life partner. She would have come lagging in a distant third in his heart at best. But she could hardly tell her father the only time Robert was passionate was in the riding ring.
“Robert wasn’t right for me.”
“You’re twenty-nine, Hannah, and no man has ever held your attention for more than a few months. You’re too picky.”
“Daddy, I’m sorry I didn’t inherit mother’s grace and ability on horseback or your competitive streak. But this farm was her dream. And now it’s mine. I can run it. I may not know how to ride a champion, but I know how to breed one. I have what it takes.”
“No, Hannah, you don’t. You’ve had a few successes with your stock, but you lack fire and ambition and you have absolutely no head for business. You’re never going to be ready to take the reins of Sutherland Farm.”
She flinched. His cruel words only confirmed what she knew he’d been thinking for years, but they still stung like the whip of a crop. “That’s not true.”
“I’m doing you no favors by continuing to coddle you.” He paused and glanced at his friend. “I won’t always be here to support you, Hannah. It’s time you learned to take care of yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m cutting you off.”
Shock followed by a chaser of panic sent her staggering backward. “What do you mean?” she repeated.
“I will no longer support you or your lost causes.”
“Why? What did I do? How will I survive?”
“You’ll have to learn to live on your salary.”
Hurt, fear and betrayal ignited like a barn fire beneath her breastbone. “Couldn’t we have talked about this before you made such a drastic decision?”
Her father shrugged and realigned the pen beside a thick pile of papers on his desk. “What good would that have done?”
“I would have talked you out of it. Somebody should have talked you out of it.” She shot an injured and confused glance at the attorney who shrugged apologetically. “This farm, this property has been in our family for generations. There are a lot of people depending on you and me and—”
“It’s too late, Hannah.” Her father sighed and suddenly the starch left his spine, making him look old and tired. He refilled his drink, then sank into the leather chair.
She turned to Brinkley. “Can he do this? What about my mother’s share of the business?”
“Your grandparents put the farm in your father’s name before he married your mother. Her name was never added to the deed. You received the only inheritance you’ll get from her estate when you turned twenty-one.”
And most of that was gone. She’d spent the money on her horses, confident in the belief that her father would continue to fund her efforts.
Then realization clicked, jolting Hannah out of her stupefaction. Wyatt Jacobs must be the one who’d bought the farm right out from under her. The sneaky, conniving, inheritance-swindling bastard.
Cold eyes, cold heart, Nellie had always said.
Hannah’s pulse galloped in her eardrums like stampeding hooves. If she couldn’t make her father or Brinkley see sense, she’d have to talk to the jerk who had usurped her and convince him to renege on the deal. Then she’d figure out a way to change her father’s mind before he found another buyer.
She stalked through the patio door and spotted the interloper at a table, calmly eating from a plate of Nellie’s cookies and drinking a glass of milk as if he hadn’t just blasted the foundation right out from under her life. She marched toward him and pulled up at his elbow.
“This is my home. You can’t waltz in here and steal the property. My father is having a momentary bout of senility and—”
Jacobs rose to tower above her, his face like granite. “I didn’t steal Sutherland Farm, doc. I paid more than fair market value.”