Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
She’d gotten her point across, and that was one of those things that I had agreed with Juliana on. It was slightly gross.
“Then come into the house so we can find your dog,” I suggested. “I can’t keep it. I already have too much on my plate.”
She walked beside me, not saying much.
She didn’t seem hostile, but she definitely wasn’t warm and fuzzy, either.
Her eyes kept drifting to the side where her house used to be once upon a time.
I’d torn the damn thing down with the bulldozer the moment she’d gotten all her stuff out of it.
Then I’d set the pile of wood and rubble on fire before burying the remains in a hole.
The only thing left was the charred area where the house had once remained.
I knew she wanted to ask.
But I knew she wouldn’t.
“A few days after you left,” I found myself saying. “That blizzard that came through this past winter? The weight of the snow on the back half of the house caused the burned structure to collapse.”
She blinked, turning to me. “What?”
“One of the cows was in the house for shelter later that week and I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to find some cows in there when it fully collapsed,” I admitted.
She ran her fingers through her hair, causing the ponytail to slip further off her head. She’d been tugging at her hair for a solid twenty minutes as she talked to me.
At this point, she should just take it down.
My presence was making her very nervous.
And seeing as I wasn’t a very comforting kind of guy, I didn’t try to make it more comfortable for her.
“Do you want the rental agreement now, Dad?” Catalina asked as we walked through the door.
“I’ll take it,” Holly said quietly.
Catalina turned with a smile on her face and grabbed the rental agreement that hadn’t been printed out by me. In fact, I still had the damn thing in my email from my lawyer.
I swear, every time I turned around, these girls would grow up a little more on me.
I tugged Cat’s hair as she passed me, and she hissed, “Not the hair, Daddy!”
I grinned.
Out of all three of my children, Catalina was the most girly.
She could handle branding and castrating a cow with the best cowboys in the world, but she’d do it with a full face of makeup and perfectly styled hair.
Joe and DeeDee were girly as well—it was kind of hard not to be when you had Juliana as a mother—but they weren’t in the same league as Cat.
Not that Cat was over the top or anything.
But she liked getting her nails done. She loved going to all the makeup stores and stocking up on essentials.
What she did not like was her dad’s dirty hands touching her hair.
“Sorry,” I teased.
She rolled her eyes as she continued past me to the woman standing awkwardly in the living room of our home. “I don’t think that apology was very sincere.”
I shrugged and headed farther into the house, spotting Enid in the kitchen tidying up.
The girls had probably eaten hours ago, as had most of the ranch hands. So the real question was…why was she still here?
“Ahh, Denver.” Enid smiled. “I see you made it in time to eat dinner before I put it all away.”
I shrugged and walked to the fridge for a beer and called out to Holly. “Yo, Holl. Want a beer?”
Holly appeared at the kitchen island that separated the living room from the kitchen.
She looked in at Enid and me, her eyes going back and forth as she took it all in.
“This is Enid,” I introduced Enid. “She’s the cook. She cooks Tuesday through Thursday.”
“Claudine doesn’t cook anymore?”
Claudine had been the main cook at the farm since my dad was still here.
“Claudine’s first grandchild was born within minutes of her second, and she decided that she’d move closer to them,” I explained. “She sent her best friend’s daughter here, Enid, to cook for us.” I gestured at Enid who was hanging onto every word. “But my sister’s been covering along with Enid.” I moved around the counter to hand Holly the beer and lowered my voice so only she could hear. “Truthfully, I’d love for Sorcha to do it full time. She’s amazing. But her priorities are grandbaby-focused, too. So we’re just in limbo as we try to find a new normal.” I looked toward Enid. “Enid is…difficult.”
“Oh.” She frowned, keeping her voice low. “I really loved her cooking. But Sorcha is amazing, too. Didn’t she learn from Claudine?”
Fuckin’ same.
It was a pain in the ass to have to find someone who A, knew what they were doing, and B, didn’t bother the shit out of me.
Sorcha might bother the shit out of me, being as she was my sister and all, but she knew how to cook for a crowd. Not to mention she cooked like a damn dream. And she didn’t come onto me every time I walked into the room like Enid did.