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Now, that was guilt talking.

“Yes,” she said. “I thought you did grass fed.”

“I do. For the cattle. But there are vitamins and nutrients to go into that, and then also, there’s the non-fancy cows, of which I have a few, and there’s the horses.”

“You sell regular beef, too?”

He nodded. “Yes. I keep the animals separate, and it is not the biggest part of my operation, but when I was trying to recover from the soybeans, I had to start somewhere, and I started with regular cows and built from there. I’m working on phasing them out, but it’ll be a couple of years yet. I have some local accounts that use the meat, and I don’t want to lose them.”

“Oh.”

“Additionally, sometimes families buy cows direct from me before the slaughter. And that way we can bypass some different laws that make it more expensive. There are heavy markups when you sell and store, but a lot of that has to do with the cost of getting the animals to the USDA station, and going through that approval process. So once we circumvent...”

“Right. I know all about it,” she said. “We read about it in school.”

“Right. Of course you read about it.”

He could feel her get instantly testy in response to his terse statement. “I did more than read about it. I grew up at Four Corners. The Kings and the Garretts deal with this sort of thing all the time. I’ve witnessed it. Discussed it as part of business meetings.”

He said nothing to that. He didn’t owe her a response. He hadn’t asked her to be here, after all. It wasn’t his job to make her feel better when she said something he didn’t like.

“It was smart,” she said. “Approaching it that way. You made some good decisions.”

He looked at her. “Well, thank you kindly. I don’t know that I could have ever anticipated such a compliment.”

“Are you trying to be mean?”

“If you have to ask, I’m not doing a very good job.”

“I’m sorry. I really am not talking down to you. I promise. I didn’t mean to make it seem like I thought I was smarter than you. I just think that I might have a different portfolio of knowledge.”

“I know that you think that. But I have a hard time believing that anything you learn in the classroom is going to replace what you actually do out here.”

They got into the truck and began to drive toward the main road.

This was the road that she wanted the easement for. And when they drove by the big oak tree with the grave markers for his parents beneath it, he didn’t say anything, but he might’ve slowed down just a little bit.

If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.

“Well, I have a hard time believing that you can have a full understanding of the business aspects of running a ranch on a wing and a prayer. I grew up on a ranch. I can’t stress that enough. I still learned a hell of a lot going to school.”

“And why did you go to school exactly?” he asked.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve already talked about how much work it’s been for us to keep Sullivan’s Point going, to keep us being big contributors to Four Corners. Our parents are gone. They didn’t die. They just decided to walk away. My dad abandoned us, and then my mom couldn’t stand being there anymore. When he left, she fell apart. It was like there was nothing left of her. And she didn’t know anything about running a ranch. So that left us. Her daughters. And I looked at that and I decided then and there I was never letting a man determine how successful I was going to be. My father walked away with all that knowledge. So I went and got my own. I’m never going to let a man affect my life that way. I’m never going to let one change me like that.”

After the verbal skinning he’d given her earlier, he hadn’t expected her to share like that. But maybe it came from anger for her, too.

Maybe she was tired of him making assumptions, like he was with her.

Why did it matter, though? When he’d gone off on her, part of it had been because...

He’d wanted her to know.

Why?

And why would she want him to know?

He couldn’t sort it out, so instead, he was terse. “Admirable,” he said. “But you know, just because you got a degree doesn’t mean you don’t have something to learn from a man who’s been running a ranch all these years.”