Page 11 of The Talk of Coyote Canyon

Stuart went over and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Nothing happened.”

Lynn looked up. “What are you talking about?”

“He finally went to confront Ellen about stealing our business.” Hendrix didn’t mind telling her that. After all, she’d been complaining about it, too, and asking Stuart to do something. “I’m just wondering how it went.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

Hendrix exchanged a glance with Lynn. “You’re not even going to tell us what she had to say?”

He put down his coffee cup. “She said you tried to recruit her driller by offering him more pay. Is that true?”

What had felt like a brilliant idea last night suddenly seemed too provocative. He’d had a few beers when he’d made that decision, or he probably wouldn’t have done it. He could only imagine how Ellen felt about him now. “Ben already told her about that?”

“Must’ve. Essentially, you kicked the wasp’s nest before sending me over to check on the wasps. So...how’d you expect it to go?”

“She started it,” he grumbled, but still felt like an ass. She’d had to pull herself up by her bootstraps, with so much less to work with thanhe’dbeen given. It felt like he was playing dirty, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to fight her by going after her jobs, and yet they couldn’t simply let her destroy their business. He just wanted her to move away, go somewhere else and leave them alone.

“I don’t care,” Stuart said. “Don’teverdo anything that might harm her or her business again. Is that understood?”

Stuart didn’t get on him very often. He was generally a pretty mellow dude. But Hendrix could tell this was one of those times when he meant every word. “Yeah, it was a dumb move,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

His aunt said nothing. Hendrix knew she understood that Ellen hadn’t had an easy life. He’d long heard her and Stuart muttering about his ex and how difficult she was—and he knew Stuart felt terrible that he hadn’t stepped in to do more for Ellen when she was a child. That was why he’d never tried to stop her from damaging their business before now, and this probably wasn’t the turning point Hendrix had hoped it was.

Hendrix was just pulling into his driveway at six fifteen when he received a call from Ben. He saw the name on his screen and couldn’t make up his mind whether to answer. What if Ben had decided to come work for him? What would he say?

He couldn’t hire Ellen’s driller, not without feeling even worse about what he’d done. He doubted Stuart would go along with it, anyway. He shouldn’t have made such an offer in the first place. But what was he supposed to do about Ellen? Continue to let her undercut them?

He wouldn’t have any compunction about fighting back if he was dealing with another man—some guy who’d moved to town and was trying to put them out of business. But Ellen was different. Everything to do with her was complicated.

“Shit,” he muttered as he sat in his truck and stared down at his phone. He was tired of work, tired of the constant problems they encountered. Drilling wasn’t an easy business. There was always a new challenge to overcome. And he’d probably just made things a lot harder for her.

Even if he had, she deserved it, didn’t she? Why couldn’t she just go live somewhere else? She obviously had no love for her father. And he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t know everything that’d gone on when she was a kid, but he did know that Stuart hadn’t been part of her life after he left her mother for Lynn. Hendrix had the impression he’d been so relieved to be out of his first marriage, that he’d simply moved on and tried to forget the mistake he’d made by getting involved with Jan in the first place.

Sadly, that meant leaving Ellen behind, too. Maybe things would’ve been different if Lynn had been more supportive toward Ellen. But she’d never done anything to change the situation where Stuart’s child was concerned. It was easier to pretend he’d never been married before. She had her own son to raise, a boy with Down Syndrome. And then she’d taken responsibility for Hendrix after his mother’s death. Maybe she’d felt her son and her nephew wouldn’t be able to compete for Stuart’s affections if Ellen was around. Hendrix couldn’t say for sure.

His phone buzzed again, and because hehadmade Ben the offer, he answered. He had to be accountable at some point, couldn’t put off dealing with this forever. With any luck, Ben was calling to turn him down. That would take care of everything. “’Lo?”

“Hendrix?”

“Yes?”

“This is Ben Anderson.”

“What’s up?”

“I just wanted to tell you that I won’t be able to come work for you after all. But I really appreciate the offer.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Hendrix said, “No problem. You’re staying with Ellen, then? You like her that much?”

“She’s a decent boss. That’s not why I’m staying, though. Like you told me at Hank’s, this is business. My girlfriend and I might want to get married down the road, and it’d be smart to start making more and saving more. Thanks to you, she gave me a fat raise today.”

Hendrix bit back a groan. “How fat?”

“Thirty percent.”

Dropping his head in his hand, he rubbed his forehead. “That’s a lot.”

“I demanded it. When I told her that was how much you were going to pay me, she couldn’t believe it. Tried saying she wasn’t sure she could continue to run the business if she had to give me that much. But I know she needs me. We’ve got a lot of wells lined up in the coming weeks. So I wouldn’t relent, and she ultimately agreed.”

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