Rustic Hearts (Poplar Falls Book 1)

by Amber Kelly

  “Rescue him?” she asks through a mouth full of muffin.

  “Yeah, in case he wants to get rid of her and can’t find a good reason.”

  She laughs around the muffin in her mouth, and it causes her to choke. She takes a sip of juice and answers me, “Braxton doesn’t need us to rescue him. Trust me. If he wants her gone, he has zero problems telling her to get lost. He’d even pick her up, set her on her ass outside, and slam the door in her face.”

  “Oh.”

  She gives me a quizzical look. “You okay? You’re acting funny.”

  Am I?

  “Fine. Actually, I think I’m a little hungover, to tell you the truth.”

  “You know what helps with that? Junk food. Want to load up on snacks and veg out on the couch with me this afternoon?”

  I shrug. “Sure. I was going to work a while, but maybe a day of rest is what I need. I can tackle all the things tomorrow.”

  “Awesome.” She excitedly hops up. “I’ll raid the pantry and fridge, and you choose the DVDs.”

  I take one last look out the window and head to the living room. If Morgan is what he wants, why should I care?

  When Aunt Ria and Doreen return, they give us a passive-aggressive dressing-down for being out late and missing church.

  I decide to go with the I slept over at Dallas’s house story when Aunt Doreen asks where I was this morning.

  “You guys should have heard the sermon today. Reverend Burr was so insightful. He was preaching on the importance of grace and how we should forgive others just as we were forgiven,” Aunt Doreen shares.

  Then, she gives me a pointed look.

  “I’m forgiving when it’s deserved.”

  “That’s the point, sweetheart. Grace is forgiving someone even when they don’t ask for it or deserve it. It releases you from the burden of carrying a chain of anger around your neck because carrying that heavy load does more damage to you than it does the person your angry with. It affects you physically and emotionally. It lives in every relationship you have.”

  “I don’t think it’s as easy as the good reverend made it sound.”

  “He didn’t say it was easy; he said it was possible. And sometimes, to realize it’s possible is all you need. Then, the power to hold on or let go lies in your hands and not in theirs any longer.”

  “This is getting heavy. We need more cookies,” Elle says as she stands from the couch.

  “Let’s pop a fresh batch into the oven and Bridget Jones’s Diary into the DVD player,” she suggests as she starts toward the kitchen.

  “Sounds good to me,” Aunt Ria agrees, “I love that Colin Firth. His British accent gets me all kinds of tingly.”

  “Me too,” we all say in unison.

  Sophie

  “What is this receipt for?”

  I hold the sheet of paper up for Braxton to look at it. He carved out a small window for me this morning and is being way more amicable about the whole thing than he was last time.

  “Semen.”

  I turn it around and look at it again. “That’s what I thought it said. Why are we buying thirty thousand dollars’ worth of semen?”

  “To inseminate the cows and heifers. You know, so they will birth calves, and we have a herd to sell every year to keep the ranch running?”

  He looks at me like I’m the crazy one.

  “I thought bulls and cows did that … you know, the old-fashioned way.”

  “We have a few bulls to catch the ones that don’t take to the artificial insemination, but it’s more cost-effective to heat-synchronize the cows and inseminate them all at once. That way, we can concentrate the breeding and calving seasons and have a strong herd to take to auction.”

  “Can you not heat-sync the cows and still let the bulls do their thing and not pay all this money for semen?”

  “We could, but we would have to purchase several more bulls. Those with good quality from a certified breeding line can be upward of five grand each. Then, you have the cost of feeding them and vet bills and hoping they don’t catch any infections or die. With the frozen semen, we know the quality and the breeding stock. We inseminate all the cows at once and get about a sixty to seventy percent impregnation rate. The cleanup bulls take care of the other thirty percent, and we can keep our employment costs down by hiring extra hands only when the calves arrive in the spring.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He grins. “I know. That’s why we do it.”

  “I guess this goes under material goods?” I ask.

  “What qualifies as a material good?”

  “A tangible commodity. Something you can hold, touch, or taste.”

  “I would say semen is definitely something you could touch or taste.”

  His stare bores into me, and it feels like the temperature in the room shoots up about ten degrees.

  “Are you flirting with me, Brax?”

  “Depends. Does bull semen turn you on?”

  “Ew, no.”

  He laughs.

  “Material goods. Got it,” I mumble.

  He sits with me for another hour before his patience runs thin, so I let him off the hook, and we join everyone for lunch.

  “I appreciate the help today,” I tell him as I pass the pasta salad.

  “You’re welcome, Princess.”

  I smile at him and reach for the plate of burgers as Daddy hands it in my direction. I catch the look he’s giving the two of us—a look that is skeptical and curious. Not that I can blame him. I’m thrown by our behavior too.

  After we finish eating, Aunt Doreen drives me into town for the meeting with Mr. Stroupe, the branch manager at the local bank. She has to sign off for him to be able to share the ranch’s financial information with me. After which, she heads to Janelle’s salon for her appointment while we sit in the conference room and go over account statements and set up all the banking online.

  “And these debits, what are they for?”

  “About ten years ago, your Gram and Pop decided to give family members shares in the company instead of paying them as employees. Making everyone a shareholder or a part-owner of Rustic Peak. So, they are no longer paid a salary, and instead, they get a profit share percentage at the end of each season. If the ranch has a good year, the split is a sizable sum.” He gestures to the spreadsheet on his computer. “These are the debits for those payments from Rustic Peak’s main account, and these are the accounts they deposit into.”

  He loads the accounts on the screen. Pop and Gram have a joint account, as do Daddy and Madeline. Doreen, Ria, Braxton, and Elowyn have individual accounts, and then there is another account under Gram’s name.

  “Gram has two accounts?” I ask for clarification as I make notes.

  “No, she had her name put on that one as a joint account, so she could make the deposits and move the money around if she ever needed to.”

  “Who does the account belong to?” I ask as I begin to load the information into the system.

  He looks at me in confusion. “Why, you, Sophia.”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “You have been getting an equal share of the ranch’s profit since you turned eighteen. That’s the age that each grandchild was added. Being as you’ve never made a withdrawal, it’s a fairly sizable account at this point.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Didn’t you know that you were named a shareholder?”

  “No, I had no idea.”

  “This is your social security number, correct?”

  He pulls up the account on his screen, and I verify all the information as mine. Then, I get a good look at the balance. Holy shit. There is enough to pay Stanhope back every single penny he’s invested in Sophia Doreen Designs and then some.

  We finish up the meeting, and by the end, we have all the ranch’s banking set up online and linked to the QuickBooks program. We have the utilities set up to auto-pay and all the payroll on automatic draft.

  Aunt Doreen ar
rives to pick me up, and I thank Mr. Stroupe for all his help.

  “It was my pleasure. I tried for years to talk Gram into letting me get this all done for her to make her life easier, and she wouldn’t hear of it. She didn’t place much trust in technology.”

  On the ride back to Rustic Peak, I get lost in my thoughts.

  “You all right, Sophie?” Aunt Doreen asks as we turn onto the old country road leading to home.

  “Did you know that Gram has been putting money in an account in my name all these years?”

  “She has?”

  “Yes. A profit-sharing account.”

  “I didn’t, but that makes perfect sense. You are a Lancaster.”

  “But I’m not part of the ranch.”

  “You’re a part of the family, Sophia. Her granddaughter. Do you think she ever forgot that?”

  “I just … I didn’t expect it.”

  “No one here ever stopped loving you or stopped waiting for you to come home, Sophie. Least of all Gram.”

  Guilt and grief wash over me like a tidal wave. I could’ve come sooner. I could have picked up the phone and called or visited. I just assumed that everyone in Colorado had forgotten all about me and moved on to love the new family members, just like Daddy had. That wasn’t fair. So much wasted time all because I was scared to face him.

  “I always intended to come see you guys one day. I thought about it a lot, especially when I was younger. Then, time slipped by, and I was in college. Life got busy, and the longer I waited, the harder it was to imagine just showing up here. The scarier it seemed. I would push it to the back of my Someday list. I ran out of somedays while I wasn’t looking.”

  For the first time, I cry. Really cry. I let the sobs take over, and I cry for the girl who lost her grandmother—not just a few weeks ago, but a lifetime ago. I cry for wasted time.

  Time is the most valuable thing any of us owns. We can’t hoard it or save it, can’t borrow it from another person, can’t buy it or even pray for more of it. You are allotted only so many days on this Earth, so many birthdays and Christmases. Some get ninety, and some get far less. Gram got seventy-four birthdays. Braxton and Elle’s momma got only thirty. Some get less than that. Yet time is the one thing we waste more of than anything else, and we never even notice. We always think we have more until we don’t. We are even so careless as to wish it away. Wishing for the weekend to hurry up and come or the workday to be over with or the winter months to pass. Never appreciating the moment we have right now and never stopping to truly live it.

  Aunt Doreen takes a long, out-of-the-way route home, so I can get it all out.

  When we pull up in front of the house, I open the door, and she calls to me, “Sophie Doe.”

  “Yes?”

  “Now that the dam’s starting to break, don’t build it back up, sweetheart. Feel it. Let it flow, all of it, and let it go.”

  “I’m trying, Aunt Doe. I’m truly trying.”

  Braxton

  I throw the cooler into the back of the pickup and shut the tailgate. The next two days, Jefferson, Emmett, and I will be attending the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo in Denver. We attend every year as a part of our membership in the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. They sponsor the event, and it’s always top-notch. Each year, the trade show offers training and education in better breeding and feeding techniques to area stockmen, and the stock show features all the latest and greatest equipment to hit the agricultural market in the last year. Several of the local ranches send a couple of representatives. It’s important to stay on top of the market and to get continuing education in the ever-changing industry.

  Jefferson steps out of the house onto the porch, followed by Aunt Madeline. Dallas’s pickup pulls up just as he kisses her good-bye, and she and Sophie hop out.

  “See you gals in a few days,” he greets as he heads my way.

  “Where are you going?” Sophie asks as he passes.

  “Denver. We have the Stock Show and Rodeo to attend.”

  “A rodeo? Really?”

  He stops and takes in her expectant face. “I forgot how much you loved rodeos when you were little.”

  “I love them! I haven’t been to one since I was eleven years old, but I still watch them on television from time to time.”

  He ponders her statement for a moment. “You want to come with us?”

  “Can I?” Her face is alight.

  “I don’t see why not. We have two rooms booked, and Brax can bunk in with Emmett and me.”

  She brings her hopeful eyes to me. “I don’t want to put you out of your room,” she says, a little deflated.

  “Go, pack a bag quickly. We need to get on the road,” I say in response.

  She squeals in delight and runs into the house.

  I can’t believe the same girl who showed up here in designer duds gets that excited at the prospect of spending two nights in a crappy hotel and attending a rodeo. She is full of all kinds of surprises.

  “Man, I wish I could go. I’d love to watch some real cowboys competing,” Dallas says as she starts to follow.

  “Why don’t you?” Jefferson asks. “Sophie isn’t going to want to spend all day talking shop during the actual show. You girls can hang out in the city, and I’ll scrounge you up some badges for the rodeo competitions in the evening.”

  “I can’t. I’m on the schedule at the diner tomorrow, and I have Beau. Momma and Daddy watch him while I work all week. I don’t want to ask them to keep him at night too.”

  “He can stay here with us,” Ria offers as she rounds the house with a watering can in hand. “Doreen and I would love his company. It’s been a while since the pitter-patter of little feet graced this old house.”

  “He has school.”

  “I think we can manage to get him to and from the schoolhouse for a couple of days. It would be our pleasure.”

  Dallas looks like she is considering it.

  “Let me call Faye right quick and see if she can cover my shift.” She runs off into the house.

  “You sure you’re okay with giving up your room, son?” Jefferson asks me once they are inside.

  I shrug. “I don’t mind. As long as I don’t have to babysit her and Dallas.”

  “They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.”

  Dallas was unable to get coverage for work, so she is driving up tomorrow night. That means Sophie had to come up with us. Jefferson is driving, and Emmett is riding shotgun. We waited until the workday was done and headed out after dinner. That way, we can be up and at the expo early in the morning. Sophie and I are sitting in the backseat of the king cab while the two of them bicker over the radio in the front.

  I look over, and she is yawning.

  “Look who’s ready to crash at seven p.m.,” I tease her.

  “I can’t help it. You crazy people have me up at the crack of dawn every day. My internal clock is all off.” She grins.

  She puts some earbuds into her ears and turns her music on, and about ten minutes later, she is fast asleep. In her slumber, she lulls to the side, and her head rests at a strange angle. She looks uncomfortable, so I gently pull her forward and tuck her into my side, so her head is lying on me. She looks so beautiful and peaceful. I absentmindedly run my fingers through her long, silky hair.

  “Brax.” Jefferson gets my attention.

  I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Yeah?”

  “How’s my girl doing back there?”

  “Good. She’s sleeping.”

  He nods. “She comfortable?”

  I know he sees her curled up in my lap.

  “I got her.”

  “That’s good, son.”

  We pull up to the hotel a little over an hour later. It’s a budget establishment because us men couldn’t care less how fancy the place is as long as it’s clean and it has hot water. I look down at Sophie and feel a bit guilty that she’ll be sleeping in the old, smelly, run-down place.

  “
You think there are any other hotels with vacancies?” I ask as Jefferson parks the truck.

  “Why? We always stay here,” he asks.

  “Because the beds are lumpy, the rooms smell like stale cigarettes, and the coffee tastes like turpentine.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And that’s fine for us three, but I hate for Sophie to be stuck here because we don’t mind it.”

  He looks into the backseat at his sleeping daughter and sighs. “I doubt there’s anything available around here. Everything has probably been sold out for months because of the show. She’ll be fine.” He opens his door and steps out. “You guys wait here, and I’ll go check us in and see if they can put an extra cot in our room.”

  Emmett turns in his seat. “I have to take a leak.”

  Then, he gets out and darts after Jefferson toward the hotel’s office. At the sound of his door slamming shut, Sophie starts, and then she rolls over and snuggles in deeper.

  I like the feel of her, and I love the smell of her. My mind flashes back to her wrapped around me the other night. She stayed on her side of the bed until five minutes after she fell asleep. I lay there, watching television, and she rolled into me and wrapped herself around me. Her bare legs hooking my thigh and her arm going around my middle. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to move on top of her and continue that kiss from the bar, but I knew she’d had too much to drink. So, I just held her. All night long, I held her, and I haven’t been able to think about much else since.

  Morgan showed up the next morning and caught Sophie sneaking back to the farmhouse. I had just stepped into the shower when I heard the pounding on the door. I thought maybe Sophie had forgotten something or was spooked back to the door by her dad, so I jumped out, wrapped a towel around my hips, and opened it. I tried to block Morgan’s entrance, but she forced her way into my space. I spent the next two excruciating hours convincing her that there was nothing left between us to save and that what had or hadn’t happened between Sophie and me, or any girl for that matter, was none of her damn business. She told me how much she still loved me and made a lot of hollow apologies and hollow promises if I would reconsider.