Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Really, the veggie burgers, made with the same condiments we used for the beef burgers and steaks, were a bigger hit than I thought they would be. What started out as a “maybe” changed into a great addition, another dimension to the restaurant, and a lot of people beelined for the vegetarian window three of my girls had painted with a whole earth-goddess vibe that looked like an entrance to a secret garden. The veggie servers even had different shirts and aprons—green instead of the red of the non-vegetarian side.
On Friday and Saturday nights, it could be a two-hour wait, so it worked out well, since we didn’t take reservations. I’d made that decision before I even opened. That way lay madness.
In the winter we tented the parking lot and got space heaters and blowers. In the summer we had misters and fans. What was nice was that Stefan Joss, Rand’s partner, negotiated everything for me when I first moved in. He was scary, and that had surprised me. He looked sweet, but then all of a sudden you found yourself faced with a predator, all teeth and claws.
Stefan included the one thing I had no idea I would need—a flat utility rate. For seven years. I had almost passed out.
“How?” I’d asked him.
“Gifted.” He’d smiled at me, his pretty emerald-green eyes glinting.
I’d been so thankful at that moment, I’d sold my soul to the devil and told Stef that whatever he needed, I was his guy. I owed him, and no task was too much, no favor too great. And now, after two years, Rand was collecting on what I owed his partner.
This was the crux of my horror.
It was why I went away for a few days of solitude. I needed to be in a calm place before I had to submit to taking orders from Rand and listen to his foreman, Mac Gentry, tell me how stupid I was. I needed to be cool and grounded before I left with them for a long weekend of driving a small herd of cattle—only two hundred head plus calves—from grazing land up in the Panhandle down to the feeding ground on the Red Diamond for the fall.
At least, that’s where I thought we were going. I wasn’t positive. They weren’t Rand’s cattle, meaning they weren’t born and raised on the Red; instead, he’d purchased them at auction from a ranch that was seized by the federal government in a USDA raid. Apparently, tainted beef was tracked to the Bannon Cattle Company in Montana, and when undercover FDA agents went in to investigate, they found gross violations everywhere from the stockyards to the slaughterhouse. The cattle were being treated inhumanely, and more importantly, killed painfully and sloppily. At auction, no one wanted to put the time and money into grazing the cattle or seeing if the two hundred head left could be salvaged. Except Rand.
Rand bought them all, plus twenty horses headed to a slaughterhouse, had them trucked from Montana to Texas, and they’d been grazing for the past six months separately from his own herd. It was easy to pick out Rand’s cattle from any others. He didn’t castrate, dehorn, tail dock, or perform tongue resection on calves. At the Red Diamond Ranch and Cattle Company—he’d added the latter to the ranch name when he started shipping beef internationally—he had also done away with branding the year before. No one stole cattle from Rand Holloway. He had too many men—normally, just not this weekend—and he had become his own law. All Red Diamond cows were healthy, strong, and treated like a gift. No one mistreated anything on Rand’s ranch, and though there were people who found killing animals to eat them an abomination, even they could tour the Red and find no instance where any livestock suffered. He had also started up a horse sanctuary, and he sent men to auctions and had them check the pens where animals were going to be slaughtered and buy them all if possible.
Always, Rand’s men returned with horses, goat families, and even a llama once. I knew this because now, at the front of the Red, there was a petting zoo. People could bring their kids to the ranch and pet the goats and the llama and the miniature donkeys. He also had pigs and Bantam chickens and ducks and rabbits. It had become a place that everyone with children visited, both locals and people driving between Lubbock and Midland in Northwest Texas.
All animals were treated well on the Red. No one suffered. People were taken care of as well. Except me. I, for one, would be suffering this weekend.
Between weddings, childbirth, and vacations, Rand was short-handed, so he called in my marker with Stef. I had to go sit in a saddle from sunup to sundown for three days, beginning early Wednesday morning and concluding late Saturday night, with all of us home, in theory, by midday on Sunday. And not only did I have to work and be social, but Stef had insisted I not look, as he stated, “constipated the whole time.” I was to pretend to be happy. These were his stipulations.