by Ana Lewin
She desperately didn’t want it to wait. She wanted to know if Levi had been coming down here to tell her that they were done or to tell her that he was in love with her. But she couldn’t think of a good excuse to give her father except for the truth. That they were lovers on the rocks and they needed to have a conversation to either fix it or end it. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was going to be having guests either. This is my father, George Marsh.”
Levi stepped over to the man and held out a hand, but her father didn’t take it. She wanted to hiss at him, tell him to be fucking polite for once in his life, but her father wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t polite to the peasants, only people who could do something for him. Dropping his hand, Levi’s expression darkened. “I’m Levi Wilson, the riding instructor for Honeydew Ranch. If you’re staying long, I’d be happy to give you a lesson.”
Her father barked out a laugh, checking his phone. “I have no need to know how to ride a horse,” the way he said it made her blood boil. This was Levi’s livelihood that he was dismissing so easily.
“Dad-”
Cutting her off, Levi spoke. “If you change your mind let Maeve know. It was pleasant meeting you, Mr. Marsh.”
Levi was gone before she had the chance to say anything, her lips parted in surprise. He’d kept his cool despite all the discreet insults hurled his way. She’d been about willing to rip her father a new one. Still might, if he said one more negative thing about the ranch. And to think, when Olivia had first come here she herself had dissed it up down and sideways, although not with the same vigor that her father had. “Are all the men who work here so crude?” her father commented, thumbs tapping out a message. “I’m surprised that Olivia fell in love with one of these brutes.”
Setting her jaw, she walked over to the table and stood right in front of her father. “Dad, you can’t just come here and say that everything here is bad or crude or whatever other bullshit you’re spouting. People like it here. Olivia likes it here and she loves Grant. If you’re going to continue to insult everyone, I’m going to need you to go home.”
He looked taken aback, but then his features set in annoyance. That was fine, she could deal with a bit of annoyance from him. He’d been annoyed with her for the past seven years. After a certain point, she’d stopped doing whatever he wanted and he’d been annoyed with her ever since. “Maeve Marsh, you’re being ungrateful. I shouldn’t have allowed you to come here instead of getting a job, but at the time I didn’t know that you were sabotaging your job opportunities. Now that I’m aware we’re going to have to fix that.”
Where her blood had been boiling before, now it ran cold. “What are you talking about?”
Not answering, he tapped a few times on his phone screen. A tinny recording of her voice blasted through the huge room, bouncing off the walls and echoing. “Prostitute Central, how can I direct your call today?”
A man’s voice, sounding confused. “Sorry, I must have the wrong number. I’m calling for Maeve Marsh.”
“Oh no, sir, you’re in the right place. You see, Maeve isn’t interested in jobs where the recruiters are pigs. Now fuck off.”
If she was being honest, she barely remembered that particular call. There had been so many of them. Every job interview she’d gone to some man had commented on how good she looked or asked whether she was planning on having kids. It had to be bad luck that she’d interviewed at every sexist accounting firm in New York — or maybe every accounting firm in New York was sexist? She didn’t know for sure, but she gave that number out to every one of the recruiters that she’d spoken to. When they called, she took great pleasure in making them uncomfortable and telling them to fuck right off.
A little bit of payback for how uncomfortable they’d made her and how uncomfortable they must be making every woman in the building. What she hadn’t counted on was her father finding out. She’d been careful about not interviewing at any companies he was affiliated with, which had the double purpose of keeping her out from underneath his thumb as much as possible. “This is a disgusting way to talk to a recruiter, Maeve. I’m not sure what ideas you’ve got in that air-filled head of yours, but I’m not allowing it any longer. It’s making the whole family look bad. I’ve arranged a follow-up interview with this company for next week, which you will go to and behave like a decent human being at. And when they offer you the job, you will take it. Graciously. Or I’m cutting you off.”
“You can’t take my trust fund,” her head was spinning, the world seeming to tumble around her. She should have known that something bad would happen. It was a stupid, juvenile idea, but she’d been mad. When she’d gone to that first interview and had the man blatantly looking up her skirt… well, at that point she’d had plenty of men pull shit like that, but she’d had enough. But she hadn’t handled it like an adult.
Her father scoffed. “No, I can’t touch a cent of that ridiculous trust fund that your grandmother set up for you. Though if she could see how you were behaving I’m sure she’d take it away in a second.”
The comment made her fists clench because she knew her grandma wouldn’t do that at all. She’d been involved with all sorts of charities that tried to make women equal partners in the workplace. It was one of her most important causes because she’d seen it first hand. “But remember, Maeve, that you can’t access that trust fund until you’re twenty-four. Do you want to spend three years poor?”
She didn’t care. Spending three years poor was better than bowing to the patriarchy, as crazy feminist as that sounded. And she wouldn’t be poor. She’d graduated top of her class with a degree in accounting. If she left New York, where she’d already pissed off all the accounting firms, she could find a job with no problems at all. Her father was under the impression that the money mattered to her just as much as it mattered to him, but it didn’t.
Instead of answering, Maeve spun on her heel and walked out of the dining room, out of the house, and all the way to that rental car that she was barely driving. Slamming it into gear she peeled out of the parking lot and headed towards town, to the only place she knew she could get advice that counted.
***
The breakfast rush was winding down when she stepped into the diner, those mustard yellow seats reminding her annoyingly of Levi. Right now he was the least of her problems, surprisingly enough. If Olivia hadn’t been grinning at her from behind the counter, she never would have set foot into the place where they first met at all. Not until she got all her emotions in check.
Sitting down at the bar, she put her head in her hands and watched as Olivia’s grin slipped into a look of concern. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked, placing a menu down in front of her. “Are you alright?”
“That’s debatable,” she admitted. “I want a chocolate milkshake and I want to talk to you as soon as your break starts.”
“Sure thing boss,” Olivia gave her a mock salute in a sad attempt to cheer her up, but it did make her smile a little bit.
More people went than came as she glanced around the diner, wishing she had the same vantage point she’d had the last time. Someone had been sitting there when she’d come in, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea to sit there anyway. Too many memories of the way Levi had made her feel when they first met, the witter banter that they’d tossed back and forth. She’d barely made it through a few sips of her milkshake before Olivia popped out from behind the bar, took off her apron, and sat down on the barstool beside her. “So, tell me everything.”
“There’s a lot of everything.”
“I’ve got half an hour. Start with whatever’s the most important.”
Words started tumbling out of her mouth and it took her ten minutes to go through everything that had happened. She started with the fact that she was completely in love with Levi and ended with the conversation with her father in their dining room. Olivia’s hand was rubbing her back gently, a reminder of the fact that she had the best friend in the world. “You got sexual comments at every in
terview you went to?” she asked. “I was wondering why you wanted to come visit for three whole weeks. It didn’t seem much like you to abandon the job search for that long.”
Nodding, Maeve shrugged. “I needed a break. From the job search. From New York. From my father. You know I love both my parents but… everyone knows they don’t love each other anymore. And my father is the reason why.”
“You’re worried Levi will end up like your father.”
“No!” she said it too loud, glancing around the quiet diner before lowering her voice to continue. “Levi’s nothing like my father. I don’t think he could ever be like that. I guess I’m just… Liv, you know I’ve never had feelings for anyone before. This is downright ridiculous. Levi and I can never work out and yet when he brushed me off this morning I felt like my heart was breaking.”
“Why can you and Levi never work out?”
“Because he lives here and I live in New York? Because he’ll always be worried that I’ll leave him because of his previous relationship? Because he wants a quiet life and I want…” she trailed off, biting her lip.
“Yeah? What do you want, Maeve?” Liv had a smirk on her face. “You always got on my case for not standing up to my parents, but it’s not like you’ve been doing much better.”
There was a flash of pain in her eyes. Her parents didn’t talk to her anymore, hadn’t since she got together with Grant and moved to Tennessee. “I told my father off before I left the house. I stand up to them all the time.”
“Sure, sure. You stand up to them. But what do you do after?” she didn’t let her try to answer. “You do exactly what they want.”
“Give me one example of when that happened,” Maeve challenged.
“Seriously? Maeve, you wanted to go to school for robotics and engineering. You ended up going for accounting. You don’t see this pattern?”
The way that the world had been spinning earlier, she was pretty sure it was doing it again. How could Olivia be right? She’d always been the one that had stood up to her asshole father. Telling him what she wanted to do and then doing it while her mother stood on the sidelines, ever the doormat without an opinion either way. But the more she thought about it the more she saw what was behind her defiance. She’d gone to school for accounting instead of engineering because he wanted her to. She’d gone to galas that she didn’t want to go to under the guise of picking up men, but really because he wanted her to.
All these years she’d been pretending that she was her own person with her own goals and her own life. But she wasn’t, never had been. She’d been the equivalent of a rebellious teenager, doing things that her father wouldn’t like while also obeying his every whim. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she groaned, dropping her head into her hands.
“If you’re going to take the Lord’s name in vain, I’d do it a little quieter. Some people around here don’t take kindly to that.”
It wasn’t Olivia’s voice, but Hanks. She turned around. The man was standing there with a cocked eyebrow, arm draped around the shoulders of a woman around their age who must be his daughter. At first glance, the arm was a fatherly gesture but upon closer inspection it was the only thing stopping her from darting right back out the exit. “Sorry, Hank,” Olivia grinned sheepishly. “Maeve hasn’t exactly had the best day.”
“Trouble in paradise with Levi?”
Maeve choked on her sip of milkshake. “There is no me and Levi.”
Even Hank’s daughter knew that was false. “Maeve’s whole life is a little bit of trouble right now, but her biggest trouble is with her Dad,” Olivia didn’t seem to care that she was glaring in her direction. “He’s not a nice man.”
“He used to be a nice man,” she mumbled, giving up on not spilling her secrets to the town gossip. “You didn’t know him then, but I’ve told you about him. Before my grandma died he didn’t care about the money or the status.”
“Deaths change people,” Hank said, leaning against the bar beside them. He finally let his daughter nod a quick goodbye and find a booth to sit in. She noticed that the woman chose the one farthest away from any other people. “But it doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole to your child.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Let him figure out which side he’s on, on his own,” Hank shrugged. “And if he’s not on your side when it’s all said and done, cut him off until he is.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little… extreme?”
Liv cocked an eyebrow at her. “It’s what I did. You know I haven’t talked to my parents in months and it was because they didn’t have my best interests at heart. Granted, they haven’t exactly tried to talk to me either, but I wouldn’t have answered them if they did.”
Sighing, she hung her head in her hands again. “He threatened to cut me off, you know. I don’t know if I mentioned it.”
“Cut you off from what?” Hank asked.
“The family fortune,” she laughed dryly. “He thinks I care enough to have that actually be an influencing factor. I don’t, especially not because I have my trust fund from my grandma that I have access to in a few years.”
The two of them were quiet for a couple of seconds and Maeve had a feeling that they were sharing a look. “Maeve, you should stay in Pelmsemet. Even if you don’t work things out with Levi you’ll have a place at the ranch for as long as you need.”
“And if you’re not rich anymore, I’m sure I can find someone around town who needs some kind of help. You might have to get a bit dirty, but there’s always something.”
Her eyes teared up and she rubbed at them, glad she hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup that morning. It was a stark reminder of how different New York was. She’d never once spoken to the owner of the grocery store down the street — she was certain that the owner didn’t even work at the store. He was some faceless millionaire who kept to the company of the upper crust. None of the people she knew in New York, even the ones she considered friends, would offer to let her stay in their house for an indeterminate amount of time.
New York was cold and grey where Pelmsemet was warm and friendly. The choice should be easy, except for one thing. Levi. If things didn’t work out with him, if this morning’s distance was a sign of him drawing away from her… she didn’t know if she could stomach being in the same city as him. Not while he fucked his way through the visitors and any remaining townies he hadn’t yet slept with.
“I’ll remember that thank you,” she whispered.
Hank clapped her on the shoulder and headed over to the table where his daughter was sitting, flipping nervously through the menu. Olivia placed a hand on her arm and she looked up. “I know it’s a big choice to make either way, but I’ll be here for you. Anything you decide to do.”
Her smile might have been crooked and there was a tear running down her cheek. “I know. That’s the only reason I haven’t completely broken down yet,” she managed a faint laugh, her thoughts still weighing ever-heavy on her shoulders.
Chapter 10
Levi
Maeve’s father was an asshole.
She’d mentioned it once or twice, that her father was obsessed with status and money and power. It was a whole different thing seeing the man right in front of him. Entitled. Snobby. Disgusted with their humble way of life. And when Maeve had fled the scene, the man hadn’t left like any decent human being would have. No, he’d stayed seated in one of the custom carved chairs in their dining room. Grant had been trying to call Maeve for an hour, wondering if he would be stepping on her toes if he kicked the man right out on his pompous ass. She hadn’t bothered to pick up. So here he was, trying to eat a decent meal while George Marsh commented on all the ways this house could look better if things were changed. If they had more high-end furnishings.
“I can’t believe you still have an old table like this,” he scoffed at the dining table in front of him, looking like he was almost afraid to touch it. “It looks a little scuffed up, don’t you think?�
��
“We do have a lot of people coming and going in this house, Mr. Marsh,” Grant said calmly. Even though the four of them were all down there to watch the shit show, he seemed to be the only one able to talk to George without tossing curses. “Things are bound to get scuffed up.”
“That’s when you should replace it. Really now, replacing things when they’re past their peak is important.”
To his eye, the table they were sitting at barely looked like it had seen a meal. A few places, where they usually sat, were more well-worn. The table as a whole, though, would still sell for a pretty penny. Even with the ranch doing well they couldn’t afford to be going around replacing furniture like that. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind in the future, Mr. Marsh.”
Grant’s smile was straining to stay on his face and he gestured discreetly to Oscar. Abandoning the marketing materials on his tablet, Oscar tried Maeve again. From the way he grimaced, she still wasn’t picking up. “So are any of you men planning on getting real jobs at any point?”
They all grit their teeth. Before anyone else could speak, Finn was addressing George. “Actually, Mr. Marsh, I’m a fully qualified veterinarian. This is my real job.”
The big belly laugh he let out made Levi want to toss him right out a third-story window. “You could be making much better money in New York, boy! Ever considered a move?”
“I’m from Austin, Texas. I know the kind of money I could be making. For some people, it’s not about money.”
George set his jaw, gaze flashing with annoyance. “You people must have been a downright horrible influence on my daughter. Hopefully, she still knows that money is an important part of life.”
