Dr. K agreed, then let me drag her out to the parking lot to ooh and awww over my Bronco, whom I’d decided to name Betsy. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
“She’s perfect.”
Dr. Kleinfeld then turned and gave me a huge hug. “This, more than anything else, tells me how serious you are. I know you had a lot of fun withthe other thingyou were doing, but I’ve never seen you look this lit up talking about anything.”
I pulled away from the hug and wiped away a few stray tears. “Thanks for saying that. I’m looking forward to starting a new chapter.”
“Me too. I can’t wait to see where you go with it.”
9
KIT
“Kit!I can’t believe you bought all this gear!” Sadie chided. “You’ve already given me so much, with this job and a place to stay. It’s too much!”
Sadie’s fourteen-year-old son Jaxon was massive, nearly half a foot taller than me, and he’d been tapped to play on the local middle school football team. The high school football coach was a friend, and I knew he had plans for Jaxon next year which did not include the freshman—or junior varsity—teams.
I shook my head, deeply disagreeing with her. “No. It’s not too much. I know exactly how expensive gear is, and I know you’re still financially recovering from everything, and I don’t want our team’s best tight end running around with secondhand gear.”
Sadie came to us when she was in a tight spot. Despite all the things happening in her life, she’d quickly become one of my most valued and trusted employees, and I liked to take care of my people. She was gonna hafta get used to it.
She and Lane were a pretty serious item, and even though she hadn’t yet announced it, I was pretty sure her switch to decaf coffee heralded even more changes in her life.
“There is no shame in secondhand gear,” she insisted, her cheeks going a little red. “And it’s just middle school football.”
“I agree, there is no shame in that. There is, however, a higher incidence of failure in used equipment, and it very much would be a shame to cut short a potentially lucrative career due to faulty equipment.” I held up my hand before she could come back with anything else. “Besides, I’m being selfish. I don’t want one of my best hands getting hurt if it can be avoided.”
Jaxon was tireless on the ranch, sweet with our young guests, great with the horses, respectful of my son, and never once complained about shoveling horse shit after a long school day filled with academics and football practice. Honestly, some of the adults in my employ could take their cues from his work ethic.
It was his drive as much as his physicality that made me think he had a bright future ahead of him, regardless of what he ended up doing with football.
She narrowed her eyes at me and put both of her hands on her hips.
Uh oh.
“Fine. Buy his football gear if you insist. But only if you let me do my damned job.”
Now, Sadie didn’t curse all that much, but the combination of her hands on her hips and the cursing all pointed to the fact that she meant business. She also may have been referring to the slight issue I’d caused last week with her carefully curated accounting system.
“All I did was pay for the contractor’s dinner because he’d come out on a Sunday night.”
“And did you put it in the software the way you should’ve?”
“No.”
“Did you properly code it for tax purposes?”
“No.”
“Did you leave me a note asking me to go back and add the expense for you?”
“No.”
“So that meant I only saw it after reviewing the books, which meant I thought I’d made a mistake, and it took me over an hour to identifyyouas the problem. Whereas, had you simply let me do my job, it would’ve been accomplished in about two minutes.”
She raised her brow at me, and I felt duly chastised.
“Message received.”
