by Erin Wright
Jennifer nodded slowly, trying to wrap her mind around the idea of a skinny, pre-teen fumbling around, a little lost in the world and not sure where to turn to. His anger began to make sense, even if Jennifer didn’t appreciate it being directed at her.
“So, do you have any family of your own?” Jennifer asked, wanting to change the subject. Contemplating a prepubescent boy without a mother made Mr. Miller too likable. Too human. It was easier to keep him at a distance instead.
Carmelita laughed and shook her head. “I have a few sisters but they are married with children of their own. I had a man propose once, but I did not want to leave the Miller Farm, and he would not move here. So, it was not meant to be.” She shrugged practically as she cleaned up from breakfast. “I am not so sad about this. The Millers are my family in my heart. I just wish that…”
“Wish what?” Mr. Miller asked in his deep voice, and Jennifer froze. She hadn’t heard him coming in. How had she missed his cowboy boots on the hardwood floors? She whipped around in her chair and stared up at him, her fork still on its way to her mouth. Realizing how ridiculous she looked, she quickly put it down, wanting to follow it and hide underneath the table.
Maybe Carmelita was okay with breaking his rules, but Jennifer wasn’t so sure she was.
“That all of my boys could get along,” Carmelita said, staring him in the eye as she did so.
Jennifer had to give her kudos – she had one hell of a backbone. A muscle twitched in Mr. Miller’s jaw but Carmelita didn’t seem to notice, or more to the point, didn’t seem to care. She simply stared back evenly, the ticking of the clock on the wall the only sound.
Now she really wanted to hide under the table. Family drama…this was not what Jennifer had signed up for. Balance bank statements. Track funding. Figure out if there was anything that could be sold to pay the debt to the bank. That was her job.
This…this was way outside of her comfort zone.
“I will get along with Wyatt,” Mr. Miller growled, “as soon as he quits blaming the world for his wife and child’s death. Until then, I can’t help him.”
He turned on his heel and headed out the front door, the windows rattling as he slammed it shut behind him. Carmelita turned back towards Jennifer, tutting as she did. “Sometimes, it is possible to be right and wrong at the same time. My Stetson is very good at that. Here, let me clean up your plate, and then I must go to the store. I do not like to drive in the rain, but I am almost out of chiles and you cannot make salsa without chiles.”
Apparently unfazed by Mr. Miller’s anger, the housekeeper took Jennifer’s plate – which Jennifer realized with a start was pretty much cleaned off; she must’ve been hungrier than she realized – and turned to the sink to wash up.
Jennifer grabbed her mug of coffee and headed back down to the office to get back to work. Maybe the housekeeper wasn’t intimidated by an overgrown, angry-at-everyone-and-everything Mr. Miller, but Jenn was. He could be angry at the world without her having to be a part of it.
The sooner she could finish this audit and get out of here, the better.
Chapter 12
Stetson
Stetson stormed back to the barn, cursing with every step. First, he’d realized that he’d forgotten to bring rags out to the barn that morning to refill his stockpile, and then when he went inside to grab some, he’d caught Carmelita telling that banker all about the Miller family history, and then he’d stormed back outside…without any rags.
He was back where he started, having accomplished nothing but getting pissy at the world. Which he wouldn’t exactly consider to be progress.
He grabbed a 3/4-inch wrench and set about removing the tractor weights off his grandfather’s tractor so he could get to the engine. He would restore the antique and then he would tell Jennifer the Thief to leave his farm and then he would wake up and realize that this was all a bad dream.
That totally seemed like a valid plan. He especially liked the part where he woke up to find it was a bad dream. He’d been trying to implement that part of the plan for months now, but it never did seem to actually happen.
Which really was too damn bad.
“I…will not…let some female…steal my…farm!” he shouted between grunts as he pushed on the wrench. “She can just…go back…to Boise! I–argh!” His hand slipped off the wrench and smashed against the grille of the tractor, slicing his knuckles open. “Shit!” he bellowed, dropping the wrench and clasping his bloody hand against his chest. He grabbed the last mostly clean rag off the bench and wrapped it around his hand, watching as it turned a brilliant red within moments. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!” he hollered.
Just what he needed – an ER bill on top of everything else.
He slogged back through the mud and rain towards the house as quickly as he could. If he could get Carmelita to clean the wound and bandage it up tight, he could avoid a huge medical bill. Maybe.
He could always hope, although he’d be the first one to admit that luck hadn’t exactly been on his side lately.
Chapter 13
Jennifer
With a sigh, Jennifer pulled another drawer open. It seemed like they were endless, even though she knew intellectually that she’d made it through half of them. It just didn’t feel like it. Because of how many different projects were being tackled here on the farm, this had to be the most complex audit Jennifer had ever been assigned, which Greg was not going to be happy about. He wanted answers…
Oh shit! Jennifer jumped up, rummaging through her laptop bag quickly, trying to find her phone. Dammit, dammit. She was supposed to call him at noon today to give an update, and it was now…she looked up at the bugling elk up on the wall…after two. As if he needed an excuse to be pissed off.
She finally latched onto her phone – buried in the bottom, like always – and hurried out into the hallway. She had to go outside and stand on the front porch to get enough reception to talk to Greg, but at least it was an enclosed porch so she wouldn’t have to get soaked while doing it. She wasn’t sure if she could endure that insult to injury. She’d barely dried all the way through from her dousing that morning.
Just as she got to the end of the hallway, the front door opened and Mr. Miller came through, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Carmelita! Where’s the damn first aid kit?”
He was clutching his right hand, a dark and bloodied rag wrapped around it. “She’s gone to the store,” Jennifer gasped, even as she was hurrying to his side, dropping her phone on the entryway table as she went. “What happened?” She took his hand into hers, peeling the rag away and watching the knuckles refill with blood.
“Tractor. It got me.”
She tugged him towards the kitchen. “C’mon, let’s get you over the sink before you drip blood everywhere. Something tells me that Carmelita wouldn’t appreciate coming home to that.”
He chuckled and followed her obediently. “You know her already,” he said dryly as he held his hand over the sink.
She looked up at him and grinned. “She’s not that hard to figure out. I’m not sure if she cleans the house so much as just terrifies the dust to the point that it wouldn’t dare to stray in here.” He let out a loud laugh at that, his straight white teeth flashing against his chiseled jaw. She swallowed hard. Focus, Jennifer. “Now, where would the bandages be? The bathroom? The pantry?”
“The pantry? I think?”
He’s such a guy sometimes. She rolled her eyes to herself. If Carmelita wasn’t here to keep him in line, the whole house would be as disastrous as his office. And that was not a pretty thing to contemplate.
She was heading for the walk-in pantry at the end of the kitchen counter to start the search there when he hollered, “Hold on! Why are you helping me?” It was as if the situation had just registered in his mind.
She ignored the question until she found the white box, a giant red cross on the front, and emerged from the oversized closet triumphantly. “I used to be a nurse,” she said with a shrug
. “It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure I remember how to bandage a hand.”
“Nurse to banker, huh?”
She turned on the cold water and ran it over his hand, trying to irrigate the wound. His slight intake of breath was the only indication that it hurt. Well, at least he isn’t a whiner.
“Accountant,” she corrected him. “I ended up at the Intermountain Bank because they were the only ones hiring when I graduated, and I have a lot of student loans to pay off. College is expensive enough, without going through it twice.”
She shut up. He didn’t want to hear her whine and complain about money. If she couldn’t find a way to help him, he’d lose the family farm.
Which suddenly seemed like a much bigger deal than a few student loans, even if her debt was in the high five figures. There was a difference; even she could see that.
“What made you switch careers?” he asked as she rummaged through the kit, looking for gauze and an ace wrap.
She paused for just a moment in her hunt, trying to decide what to tell him, and then said lightly, “A guy. We…had a difference of opinion. He thought it was okay to cheat on me; I didn’t happen to agree.” She shot him an overly bright smile and began gently placing the gauze over the wound and then wrapping it up. “He was a doctor. I’d worked as a low-level nurse for years to put him through medical school, and when he graduated, he was supposed to work as a doctor to bring in income while I became an RN. I fulfilled my part of the bargain. I can’t say he did the same in return.”
She looked up at Stetso–Mr. Miller with a fake smile. “It’s in the past. I don’t think about it much anymore.” Except when he starts texting me out of the blue and telling me that he’s willing to forgive me.
She kept that part to herself.
She looked down at the bandaged hand with a critical eye. Hmmmm…Not bad after taking a couple of years off.
She looked up and realized that he too had been studying his hand and now their faces were close together and her heart was knocking against her ribcage and his eyes were flicking down towards her lips and she stopped breathing and…
Gravel crunched outside, then the garage door opened with a creak and a groan. They sprung apart from each other, and Jennifer looked around the kitchen frantically. “I need to call my boss,” she announced, searching for her phone. Where had she put it down?
Oh. Right. Out in the hallway. Where I saw Stetso–Mr. Miller come in from outside.
“I better go find my phone, Mr. Miller. My boss was expecting a phone call a couple of hours ago.”
“Stetson. Mr. Miller is my father.”
She bit her lip, staring up at him – wayyyyy up at him since she hadn’t put her heels back on – and nodded. Once. “Stetson,” she said softly, and then ran out of the kitchen.
She needed to call her boss, and she needed to stop drooling over handsome cowboys.
She wasn’t sure which task was going to be harder.
Chapter 14
Stetson
After he helped Carmelita bring the groceries in from the car and let her cluck and worry over his hand, Stetson headed out the back door and down the best sledding slope in the county during the winter. Since it was most assuredly not winter, the hill currently was slippery and muddy and nasty, but he headed down it anyway. He’d hidden away in the barn for long enough. It was time to go check fences and make sure that his cows were where they were supposed to be. He could only ignore that for so long, no matter how miserable it was to be out in a rainstorm.
He got to the storage shed at the base of the hill and backed his four-wheeler out. As much as his friend Adam would hate to admit it, a four-wheeler was a farmer’s best friend, not a horse. A four-wheeler didn’t need to be fed or vaccinated or taken out for rides. It didn’t get lonely or break a leg in a hole, and it sure as shit didn’t get sick from being fed something less than premium hay.
He started down his fence lines, getting off occasionally to open and close gates along the way, checking to make sure that the cows were where they were supposed to be, and the fences were where they were supposed to be, and the torrential rains hadn’t rearranged something important.
The cows were huddled together in groups, miserable and wet in the pouring rain, but at least they weren’t busy trying to push fences over. That was always a plus.
As Stetson continued into another pasture, the cold rain dripping down off his hat and down the collar of his jacket while the movement of the four-wheeler jostled his wounded hand, he forced himself to focus on that pain. If he focused on it, then maybe he wouldn’t think about the bright green eyes of an accountant, peering up at him over his bandaged hand.
Anything to keep from thinking about that.
Chapter 15
Jennifer
After quizzing the housekeeper on the best place to find food in town after two o’clock, Jennifer headed back to town with a happy sigh. All in all, not a bad day. She’d made it through the filing cabinets, matching expenses with the withdrawals from the checking account.
Soon, she’d be tackling the truly important part: Finding assets to sell. If she could find something – preferably multiple somethings – to sell, then Stetson could make his yearly payment to the bank, and at least muddle his way through another year. Maybe with another year to right his ship, he could be back to making the yearly payments that the Miller family had never missed up to this point.
Jennifer pulled up in front of the Shop ‘N Go grocery store and saw that it was open until nine at night. Why hadn’t Margaret directed her towards this place last night instead of an animal supply store?
With a roll of her eyes at the complete lack of help from the older lady, Jennifer hit the aisles of the store, wandering up and down them with a tiny shopping cart. Even the owners of Shop ‘N Go didn’t expect her to buy much from their store and one look at the prices told her why. There were artisan specialty stores in Boise with more reasonable prices than the Shop ‘N Go had.
But at least she wasn’t going to have to eat tortacos tonight, and for that, she was grateful.
She picked out the makings of a salad – greens, shredded cooked chicken, nuts, and dressing – that would be easy to assemble in her motel room, and then made her way over to the wine aisle. Hmmm…not the largest selection in the world, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. She finally picked out a white wine in a beautiful blue bottle that made her wish that decorating with empty wine bottles was a “thing,” paid the exorbitant bill at the front cash register, and tucked the receipt in her purse for safe keeping. She wasn’t sure which was more of a pain in the ass – going through someone else’s receipts in an audit, or keeping track of her own receipts to turn in for reimbursement at the end of an audit.
After a mostly satisfying meal and a filling up of a plastic cup from the bathroom sink with wine – she’d forgotten to buy a wine glass while at the Shop ‘N Go, if they even carried such a thing – she settled down on the queen bed with a sigh. Finally, she could relax. She picked up her cell phone and hit Favorite 1 to call Bonnie.
“There you are!” her friend answered with a laugh. “I was starting to think that the good people of Sawyer had kidnapped you and taken your phone away from you.”
“Eh, it’s just been a busy few days.” Filled with mud, and handsome, surly cowboys, and sweet housekeepers. Jennifer was suddenly unsure how much she wanted to tell her best friend.
Which was just weird, because she told Bonnie everything. You don’t go through all that she and Bonnie had, and keep secrets from each other afterward.
“Sooooo…” Bonnie said, a teasing tone in her voice, “how handsome is the farmer?”
Jennifer had known the question was coming. It was always Bonnie’s first question when Jennifer was doing an audit. It had become a long-standing joke between them, because the answer was always easy to give: He’s 82 years old with more wrinkles than a linen shirt; or he’s 57 with a pot gut; or he and his wife have been married fo
r longer than I’ve been alive.
But even though she’d known the question was coming, she still didn’t have an answer at the ready. She sat there hesitantly for a minute, until Bonnie bust up laughing. “Oh! My! God!” she gasped. “You’re kidding me. This guy is actually cute? And single?”
“Well, I haven’t asked him if he’s dating anyone,” Jennifer answered weakly.
“Oh Jennifer!” Bonnie shouted, dissolving into laughter again. “You have to tell me all about him. How handsome is he?”
Sexy as sin popped into Jennifer’s mind, but she pushed it away. “You know I can’t date a client, especially not one that I’m auditing,” she protested. “He’s just a little more handsome than normal, is all.”
“Height,” Bonnie said, ignoring her protestations.
“Six-foot-two, maybe? Six-foot-three? I don’t know. Even in my heels, he towers over me.”
“Hair color.” It was an order, not a question. Jennifer thought about protesting again, but gave in, instead. It wasn’t because she wanted to talk about Stetson Miller, of course. It was just because she knew how stubborn Bonnie was, and knew that Bonnie would continue to push her if she refused to answer her questions. So it was just easier to give in.
Nothing more than that.
“Dark brown, but sun-bleached up on top. You can tell that he spends a lot of time outside. I bet he has one hell of a farmer’s tan.”
“And yet, you were trying to give off the impression that you’ve hardly thought about him at all,” Bonnie said dryly.
Jennifer had no ready response for that, so she just took another drink of her wine instead.
