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wouldn’t be a national spectacle like Chef Showdown . It would be something far, far worse. She would have become her mother.
     
     
    The peal of the phone sent Kellan shooting straight out of bed from a dead sleep. He’d been dreaming of Amy Sorentino, probably because his pillow smelled like her shampoo. The clock read one-thirty in the morning. His heart thumping like crazy, he stared out the window at a layer of ice blanketing the barn’s rooftop before lifting the phone out of the receiver on the fourth ring, not bothering to check the caller ID. He was pretty sure who it’d be.
    “Yeah?”
    “Good morning, Kellan.”
    At the sound of the voice on the line, scratchy with the irreparable damage of a two-pack-a-day habit, his stomach dropped. He’d been right. “Morton. What are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night? We’ve talked about that.”
    “Our company’s encountered a bit of a delicate situation ’round about your parts. Thought I’d give you a heads-up on it.”
    “It’s not our company. I want nothing to do with it.”
    Morton chuckled. Asshole. “Be that as it may, one of my associates is waiting on your porch to deliver a file to you.”
    Kellan squeezed his eyes closed. “At my house, right now? You son of a bitch.”
    “Now, that’s no way to talk to family.”
    “You’re about as far from being my family as a man can get, Morton. You made that choice years ago.”
    “There you go whining about the past again. And here I thought we’d made amends.”
    Kellan opened his nightstand drawer and withdrew his Colt .45. Typical Morton, calling in the middle of the night and giving one of his so-called couriers leave to trespass on Kellan’s property instead of mailing him the information. That was how his uncle operated, manipulating situations and people as a means to control. He seemed to regard Kellan as a rival, probably because Kellan had pegged his game early on and refused to be bullied, and the two had been locked in a clash of wills going on fourteen years now.
    Holding the phone with his shoulder, he loaded rounds into the gun’s magazine. “Why involve me in one of your delicate situations? You know I won’t play along.”
    “Your name came up at a meeting. The board of directors hopes you’ll be willing to convince a Quay County family to sell us their failing farm without involving the courts. I told them you wouldn’t be up for the job, even though it would be a win for both parties.”
    Bullshit. If Amarex was involved, then Kellan had no doubt the family in question would get a raw deal. “And if this family refuses to sell?”
    “Our lawyers are ready to sue for breach of contract, should we be forced to act on such an unsavory choice.”
    Kellan shook his head. “I’m hanging up, Morton. Gotta shoo a pest off my property.” Holding the Colt near the phone, he snapped the magazine in place so Morton got an earful of the metallic clank. “Don’t call me again.”
    “Can’t guarantee that. And son, play nice with my boy downstairs. We wouldn’t want the heir of an oil empire acting like a short-fused, simple-minded cowboy around the help, would we?”
    Morton sure did know which buttons to push. Being a rancher was the only career Kellan wanted in his life. When he’d hitchhiked to his uncle’s Texas ranch after high school graduation, he’d certainly never expected Amarex Petroleum, Bruce Morton’s manipulations, or the slew of battles he’d had to fight over the years.
    Without turning on a light or bothering to slip pants over his boxers, he plodded downstairs and flipped on the porch light. Through the peephole, he saw a scrawny kid probably no older than Kellan had been when he ran shady, middle-of-the-night errands for Morton.
    He didn’t see a weapon on the kid, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t somewhere on his person. Kellan held his gun aloft and swung the door wide. The kid started and jumped back, clutching a manila envelope to