“I’ll be fine, and it will all work out. Jake’s a good man, and when he and Frank sort it out, we’ll figure out what to do. Brady has already insisted they’ll look at giving me cash out of the ranch revenue if push comes to shove, which is ridiculous.”
“Well, good, but—”
Her mother cut her off again, shaking her finger in her daughter’s direction. “But nothing, Elizabeth Jaqueline Baker. Honestly, Brett West didn’t owe me a red cent. I wasn’t expecting anything out of the deal.”
“The deal? What are you talking about? You married him. You were in love. It wasn’t a business transaction.”
Her mother straightened, a sad look flitting across her face, and she reached for the pile of cutlery to add to the load.
Brett had been a hard man to love, even if he was certainly a charmer of the ladies, and from all the stories Liz had heard, he had been quite popular with the women of Brightside in his day. But Liz knew the truth of it, the two sides of him. Once you got to know Brett, it became very apparent he never truly let anyone into his heart. He was hard, and thought only with his head, for the good of the ranch. The rumors swirled about a woman he’d loved once—which she realized now was maybe Jake’s mother—who’d hightailed it away from the ranch because he’d cheated on her. From what Liz was told, he married the “other woman” quickly, and that woman was Veronica.
Veronica had been the outgoing, social partner he’d needed when he was expanding the ranch, and had given him two sons to carry on the name before she’d died.
But Liz’s mother? It had surprised everyone when Brett and Peony announced their engagement not long after Veronica passed away. Peony had been their housekeeper, lived in the small bunkhouse that Liz now occupied by herself, and no one had even known they were an item.
Her mother had been labeled a gold digger. People wondered if it was just about the sex, or if Brett had cheated on Veronica with her, continuing the wicked pattern. Liz had taken a lot of snide remarks at school about it—finding out more about her stepfather than she cared to know in the process—before the wedding.
In the end, as much as people gossiped and judged in small-town circles, they also eventually accepted. Her mother became the second official Mrs. West, and people moved on.
“Oh, honey, it wasn’t that kind of marriage. It was strictly an arrangement between us, a companionship, if you want to call it something more palatable. I was lonely, and it was what we both wanted at the time. I thought you knew that.”
Liz stared open-mouthed as her mother placed the last fork onto the dish rack, closed the door, and pushed the button.What? How was she supposed to answer that?
“But . . . you—” Liz said, trying to come up with something to say.
The dishwasherwhooshed to life, and her mother pasted her stern smile back into place.
“But nothing. I don’t regret marrying Brett, not for one second. He took care of us when we needed it most, and I was there for him when he needed me. We were good for one another while it lasted. So, whatever happens now, we deal with it, okay?”
With that, her mother squeezed Liz’s arm and walked back into the dining room. Liz listened to the swish of the water for a few moments more.
Now it was her turn to be speechless. It had been a day of stunning announcements.
Chapter Seven
The sun streamed in through the window of the guest bedroom and Jake, still not used to the schedule on the ranch, groaned and rolled over, burying his face into his pillow to block the light.
It didn’t help, so he blearily poked at his phone. Nine o’clock. He blinked and sat up, willing his eyes to open and his body to work.
The ranch started to get moving around six. Which meant he needed to completely rework his internal clock from years of sleeping the morning away, having been up the night before in the restaurant. The last time he’d woken up before dawn was when he’d opened a small seafood spot and had to be all the way up to Fulton Fish Market early to get the freshest catch. Even then, that had sucked.
Jake had never been a morning person, which was in stark contrast to everyone else who existed out here.The hurt caused by changing around his habits this time was going to be lovely and require vats of coffee.
He mentally counted. It was day three of his enforced stay, and boredom was threatening. He needed to figure out something to do other than make-busy work in the kitchen, even though that was helping to fill the time.
Frank hadn’t gotten back to them about much yet. He said it would be a couple of weeks before he could put together a concrete plan and to sit tight.Sit tight and do what, exactly?
The first step, proving he was indeed Jake West, had arrived yesterday morning via courier. Peony had provided a small sample of Brett’s gray hair from a hairbrush, tucking it into the sample bag with tweezers, her entire body quiet and withdrawn. He’d wondered if she’d cleared out any of his things yet, and took a breath to ask, but she’d walked away into the house somewhere, and he left her alone. It had obviously been hard for her to do that.
Tanner and he had done the spit/swab routine over the sink during lunch, and Brady did a swab for fun as well, even though it wasn’t really necessary. Tanner had barked that he would take the samples back into town when he went into the bank, before storming out. Tanner didn’t waste time, and Jake rarely saw him in the house during the day. Mind you, he hadn’t sought him out either. Peace was important as he got his footing at the ranch.
Jake had stayed away from the barns as promised. Instead, he’d gone for a walk through the gardens with Peony to get a sense of what herbs and vegetables she was growing, and in the past two days, had cooked up a storm, laying in some freezer slow-cooker meals that Peony had requested for both her and Liz. Spending time in the kitchen chopping and prepping with her had been enjoyable. It reminded him of his mother’s more sober moments, when they would cook together in the restaurants she worked in, stirring the soup, laughing, and carrying on.
He’d cherished those times with his mother, because they never lasted.
After a quick shower, he pulled on his last clean T-shirt and jeans, and padded down the hall to the kitchen, relishing the feel of the soft carpet on his bare feet. Peony was there, humming a tune, while their cook looked through some books and wrote on a small pad of paper.
He’d met Rosy yesterday, and played as nicely as possible. It was her kitchen, and once they had established that, she was politely friendly. He had acted as sous-chef for dinner as she cooked, trying very hard to defer to her since she was their employed cook.
