Her father’s mouth turned down into a sad frown. “Zephyr, too, sweetie, I’m so sorry. Collateral on the loan for the stock market investment. I know how much you love her and I thought this was a sure thing. More than anything, I wanted you to come home and find the mortgage completely paid off. Instead, I—you’re comin’ home and finding out you’re…”
“Homeless?”
His shoulders slumped and he ran his fingers through his gray hair, which bristled outward in all directions like he’d been repeating the motion all morning. He let out a gusty sigh and nodded.
“How is this possible? The prize money. The investments.” Everything she’d been working toward for ten years. Funding the improvements on the ranch, adding new breeding stock to the herds. She’d invested all of it in the ranch and trusted her dad to manage it.
“The recession. Disease in the herds. Low prices at cattle auctions. Normally, these would be things we’d tough out, but with that balloon payment coming due on the mortgage…I took a chance and I fouled things up, permanently this time.”
“The stock market? How much experience do you have with the stock market?”
“None.” The apology in his shaky tone scared her more than anything. “I’ve never done a more stupid thing in my life. I trusted this tip. Figured I’d get in and get out, and have this place all sewn up for you. Ready for you to start your new venture.” Instead, the ranch that had been in her family since her great-great-grandparents moved out west was now bank property.
“What do we do now?”
She could hear people trudging up and down the stairs. He glared up at the ceiling and looked ready to curse. “The balloon payment is overdue. The bank wants their money so they’re taking most everything.”
A sense of violation curdled in her stomach, as she listened to strangers thumping around upstairs in the bedrooms. Her bedroom was right over the den. Right then she wanted to hit someone.
Her father beckoned to her and pointed to the chair across from him. In a low tone, he said, “Come sit.” She didn’t feel like sitting but she did as he asked. “I loaded up your old horse trailer and the old truck with everything from your room and the trophy cabinets, including your furniture. Nobody besides Roger knows that it’s out at his place but you and me.”
“My old truck?” The first truck she’d ever hit the road in when she’d begun competing on the circuit. It must’ve had half a million miles on it by the time she’d replaced it with a newer model but they’d kept it for a ranch truck.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his whiskered jaw and then looked up at her. “I had some cash set aside, for emergencies, just like how I taught you to do. It’s in a manila envelope in the old hidey-hole in the bench seat. Not even Roger knows it’s there.”
“But what will you do? You need to keep hold of that money.” If the bank was taking everything, then he’d need money to find a place to live and to take care of himself.
He waved his hand, cutting her off. “That money is for you. I’m staying out at Roger’s for the time being, so you don’t worry about me. Hopefully this is temporary, if…”
“Temporary? If what?”
He looked up at her, a deep furrow between his graying bushy eyebrows. “Roger is getting the funds together to buy the place when it comes up for auction. Zephyr too. He’s looking into it but it’ll take a little doing to get the money together. In the meantime…”
“What?” Hope and worry raced neck and neck, forcing her heart to pound. Roger Bedford and her father had been friends for only a couple of years so she didn’t know what to think of their arrangement. He was placing an awful lot of trust in the man. But he also knew him better than Gwen did.
“If you want to go back out on the circuit for…one more go-round. One more winning year. We could pay him back. He’s a good friend. He’d do it for us.”
Go out on the road for another year? “Wait. To get the kind of money we’d need, I’d have to win every event I entered.”
“You’re retiring at the top of your game, baby. It’s conceivable. Every win would help. He’d be willing to finance the rest.”
Gwen didn’t know how to feel about the deal her father had worked out. As far as she could tell, Roger Bedford was a decent man. Had been a good friend. But she knew he was also a shrewd businessman.
The thumping up and down the stairs continued until the boot steps rang in her head. “I need to get out of here.”
“Roger is already on his way over here. You can rest at his place and have time to figure out your next move.” Her dad gently squeezed her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I feel like every bit the failure your mother told me I was before she left. Every bit of it.” He appeared to have aged twenty years during their conversation.