"Seven days to bring in the wheat harvest. I've already arranged with Thomas Pritchard at the grain elevator. He'll buy the wheat at market price and pay me in cash. Seven days and I can pay you $400. That's half the debt."
"I'll sign a new note for the rest, payable after next year's harvest." "You expect me to wait another year?" "I expect you to show the same mercy the Lord showed you when you were building your empire," Kelly shot back. "Or have you forgotten those early years?"
"When you were running cattle on borrowed money, one bad winter away from losing everything? Who extended your credit then, Mr. Callahan? Who believed in you when you were just another cowboy with big dreams and empty pockets?" Bo's jaw worked. She'd done her research.
Yes, there had been lean years, desperate years when his entire future hung on the faith of a few businessmen who'd taken a chance on a young man with more ambition than sense. "That was different," he said, but his voice lacked conviction. "Was it?" Kelly's eyes bored into his. "You're a wealthy man now, Mr. Callahan."
"You have more land and cattle than you know what to do with. This 160 acres, it's everything to me. It's my children's future, their only inheritance from a father who died too young. To you, it's just another property line on a map." "It's prime grazing land."
"It's my home," Kelly said simply, and suddenly her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but she didn't let them fall. Instead, she lifted her chin higher. "Seven days is all I'm asking. Is your heart so hard that you can't give a widow one week to save her children from poverty?" Bo opened his mouth to refuse.
The word no formed on his lips. He'd built his entire post-Catherine life on refusing exactly these kinds of emotional appeals, on maintaining the cold distance that protected him from being hurt again. But then a voice spoke from the doorway. "Mama, is the bad man going to take our house?"
Bo turned to see a little girl, no more than six years old, peeking around the doorframe. She had her mother's hazel eyes and a mass of tangled dark curls. Her dress was too small, showing thin ankles and wrists that looked like they'd snap in a strong wind. She clutched a corn-husk doll missing one arm. Kelly's face transformed, the hard defiance melting into gentle tenderness.
"Go inside, Martha. Mama's talking to Mr. Callahan about grown-up things." "But Sarah said the bad man wants our house. She said we'll have to live in the wagon like the Johnsons did before they went away." The child's lower lip trembled.
"I don't want to live in a wagon, Mama. It's cold at night." "We're not going to live in a wagon, sweetie. Now go on. Watch baby James for me, will you? You're such a good helper."
The child retreated reluctantly, and Kelly turned back to Bo. But something had changed in her face. The defiance was gone, replaced by raw, naked pleading. "Seven days," she whispered. "Please."
"If you have any mercy in you at all, any memory of what it's like to hope for something better, give me seven days." Bo looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time. Past the worn dress and bare feet, past the too-thin frame and work-roughened hands.
He saw the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights, the calluses on her palms from work no woman should have to do alone. The way she held herself, straight-backed, despite the weight of the world on her shoulders. Kelly May Bishop was drowning, and she was asking him for a rope. Every instinct, every lesson learned from Catherine's betrayal, screamed at him to refuse, to walk away, to foreclose, to maintain the hard shell that had kept him safe for seven long years.