Chapter 7 A Man's World
Frank Quinn had always seemed indestructible, a man carved from the same rock as the surrounding sandstone mesas. Seeing him slumped in the chair was a physical shock. He was so much thinner, his powerful frame diminished. His skin had a grayish pallor, and the deep lines on his face seemed etched by pain rather than sun and laughter. But the stubborn, flinty look in his eyes was still there. He watched her approach, his expression unreadable.
She came to a halt in front of his chair, her anger for Ryder momentarily eclipsed by a wave of grief and guilt. But the anger was her armor. She couldn’t afford to feel the rest.
“I am not working with him,” she announced, her voice echoing through the quiet room.
Frank didn’t move. He just stared at her for a long moment before a dry, rasping sound escaped his lips. It was a weak imitation of his old, booming laugh. “Well, hello, Dad, how you feelin’, Dad?” he responded, his voice thick with sarcasm. “The big city take away all of your common courtesy, Si?”
The rebuke stung. She opened her mouth to apologize, to explain, but the screen door creaked again. Ryder filled the doorway, his large frame blocking the afternoon light, making him a formidable silhouette. He leaned against the doorframe as if he owned it, thumbs hooked in his belt loops.
“Guess those fancy designer clothes make a person too uppity to say hello to her own dad,” Ryder remarked in a low tone, but the words carried across the room with pinpoint accuracy.
Sierra whirled on him, her control finally snapping. “You stay out of this! This is a family matter. You’re just the hired help. Were the hired help. You’re fired!”
“I ain’t takin’ my orders from you,” Ryder shot back, stepping fully into the room. The space suddenly felt much smaller. “I’m takin’ them from the man who owns this place. The man who’s been fightin’ to keep this place alive while you were off playing make-believe in some glass tower.”
“Make-believe?” she scoffed, her voice rising. “I built a career! I run the most prestigious marketing firm in Manhattan, I’ll have you know! I didn’t just stay here and get stuck in the same dirt my grandfather was stuck in. It’s called ambition, Ryder. You should try it sometime. Oh, wait, you did, you inherited the Marsh Ranch, the most successful spread in the county. How strenuous for you.”
“ENOUGH!”
The voice was a raw, ragged command that scraped the air and silenced them both instantly. It came from the armchair, and it cost Frank Quinn what little energy he had. He was seized by a fit of coughing, a deep, rattling sound that shook his frail body. Sierra and Ryder stood frozen, their bitter argument forgotten in the face of his struggle.
When the coughing subsided, Frank leaned his head back against the worn leather, his eyes closed for a moment. He drew in a shaky breath. When he opened his eyes, he looked directly at Sierra, and the stubborn Quinn fire in their depths burned with a low, weary intensity.
“He’s staying,” Frank rasped, each word an effort. “He’s been doing the work of three men for the price of one, and he’ll continue to do so.” He paused, gathering his strength, his gaze unwavering. “Because you aren’t fit to do the dirty jobs, Sierra. You wouldn’t know where to start.” He held up a hand to stop her protest. “I am doing you a favor. He knows this land and you need him.”
The words were a brutal, final verdict. The last statement stung the most. The two men in the room, her father and her childhood tormentor, were a united front, and she was on the other side of an impassable divide.
The fight drained from her, replaced by a cold, hollow ache. There were no more arguments to make, no points to score. She had been dismissed.
Without another word, Sierra turned and walked out of the house, the screen door slamming softly behind her. She moved through the blinding sunlight back to her rental car. Though she considered getting into it and driving away, she wasn't the type to give up so easily. She opened the trunk and pulled out her two sleek, hard-shell suitcases and leather laptop bag. The weight felt foreign, absurd on the ranch.
Her father and Ryder hadn't moved from their positions when she walked back to the porch. She could feel their eyes on her through the large picture window, but she refused to look at them. Head high, back ramrod straight, she ignored their silent judgment. She stepped past the sagging porch swing and through the doorway, her luggage bumping against the frame. With deliberate, measured steps, she crossed the tile floor to the bottom of the familiar wooden staircase that led to her old bedroom. She ascended the stairs, the only sound in the suffocating silence was her Christian Louboutin boots clicking on each step.
Upstairs, in the room that had been both her sanctuary and her prison, nothing had changed. The same faded quilt with its sunburst pattern was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The same collection of horse figurines, relics of a childhood she’d systematically tried to forget, stood sentinel on the dusty dresser. A faded poster of the New York City skyline, torn from a magazine fifteen years before, was still tacked to the wall, a ghostly premonition of the life she had built.
It was this room, this house, that had driven her away. And it was this house, and the man downstairs, that had pulled her back.
The weight of her luggage was symbolic of the baggage she’d carried back with her. Sierra sank onto the edge of the mattress, the springs groaning in protest. She had walked out of that living room with her pride intact, a queen retreating from a skirmish with commoners. But as the adrenaline faded, something else seeped into its place: a cold, creeping shame. The image of her father, gasping for breath in that armchair, his body wracked by coughs, replayed in her mind. She hadn't been fighting for him; she had been fighting for herself, for her own bruised ego. He was sick, truly sick, and she had stood there screaming at the man in which he had put his trust to help him make it through some dark times.
Her perfectly constructed corporate armor felt brittle and thin. In a Manhattan boardroom, she was a titan. Here, she was just Frank Quinn’s little girl, and she had just acted like a spoiled child. The guilt was a physical thing, a knot tightening in her stomach. She had come here to take control, fix things, not to throw a tantrum.