He chuckled at her negotiating skills. He’d raised one son who’d had the same knack for getting his way. He was head of an oil company now. He suspected Jenny could share a similar fate if she put that quick thinking of hers to good use.

“We can negotiate that,” he suggested. “We’ll work out an appropriate payment schedule. Of course, that might mean you won’t be paid off at the end of summer. You might have to keep coming out here.”

She weighed that for several minutes before nodding. “Okay.”

He held out his hand. “Shall we shake on it?”

The instant they had solemnly shaken hands on their new deal, Jenny stood and whooped with undisguised glee. “I know exactly how I’m going to spend my money, too,” she declared.

“How?” he said, anticipating a litany of CD titles and video games.

“I’m going to buy back Lone Wolf’s land and give it to Mom.”

He thought the plan might be a bit overly ambitious, given her debt and her likely wages, but who was he to discourage her. “And where is Lone Wolf’s land?”

She grinned at him. “You’re sitting on it.”

10

This had been her great-great-grandfather’s land? Harlan couldn’t have been more stunned if Jenny had announced she and her mother had robbed a bank. He gazed around at the lush, verdant banks of the creek and beyond to the rolling landscape he’d always considered his home.

“You sure about that?” he asked, trying to piece together all of the implications. Was that why Jenny had stolen his truck in the first place, just to wrangle a meeting with him? Or maybe in some twisted way to get even with him for the perceived theft of her ancestor’s land? It was certainly one explanation for the resentful expression he’d caught on Janet’s face the day they’d gone riding over the ranch’s acres.

It was several minutes before he realized Jenny hadn’t answered. When he looked at her, he saw that she was scuffing the toe of her sneaker in the grass and looking guilty as sin. Since things like theft and destruction didn’t stir that expression, he couldn’t help wondering what had.

“Jenny?” he prodded. “How do you know that this was your great-great-grandfather’s land?”

“Mom told me,” she admitted, reluctance written all over her face. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything, though. Please, don’t say I told. Please.”

There could only be one reason for keeping such a secret that he could think of. Janet had some cockamamie plan to right an old wrong and get this land back. He’d heard of court battles like that, efforts to reclaim Native American lands stolen by individuals or the government.