Herb muscled past him and levered up a small handle Jake hadn’t seen in the middle. With a squeal the hinges on both sides popped and the doors swung wide. Herb dusted his hands and put them on his hips, looking over at Jake.
“All good. I’ve got to go get the next load. Furniture too. Think you can manage this part?” Herb said, a hint of humor in his voice.
Jake grinned sheepishly and sighed. “Thank you. Yes.”
It took several trolley loads and a few trips in and out carrying his oak table, chairs, recliner, bed, side tables, and some light fixtures, but the lot of it was loaded. Herb was surprisingly strong for his thin stature.
Jake flipped though the itemized receipt. Gordon had sent everything he’d brought to the apartment and what furniture he’d kept from his storage locker. He’d taken Jake literally when Jake had said “everything.” What was Gordon thinking? That Jake would be here for longer? His entire life was now loaded into the back of a horse trailer. He looked in and it felt wrong, boxes stacked around the padded bars at the front, bits of hay scuffed up by their feet stuck to the side of the mattress bag crammed in on one side.
“How on earth did he ship all of this?” Jake asked, as Herb wedged the last dining chair in.
“We’re the main parcel depot. FedEx comes into us as well since we have the space out back. We get lots of stuff for folks who move here and don’t come in with their own moving truck.”
“Ah,” was all Jake could say.
Jake wanted to laugh at the situation. He’d have to ship it right back to New York when he was all done out here. This time, he’d get one of those pod shipping services, make it easy. It would show up to his new apartment and he could bribe friends with beer and pizza to move it all back in.
Jake turned and shook Herb’s hand, thanking him for his help, and Herb showed him how to close the trailer doors. They stood for a moment in amiable silence, watching the traffic go past. Jake sensed Herb didn’t want to go back inside.
“Sorry about your pa. He was a good man,” Herb offered suddenly, and nodded. “A smart cattleman too.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said, strangely peevish at the statement. Yet another person who knew his father. “I never met him.”
Herb looked surprised, and Jake nodded a curt goodbye and stepped off the curb, heading toward the bank. Let Herb tell post office lady that and grease the rumor mill more than it already was. It irked Jake that he was the subject of gossip. He didn’t like being singled out, even though he did enjoy publicity when it came to his restaurants. This was different. Invading his private life, putting his struggles on display.
Jake lingered for a moment in front of the bank and sent money to Gordon to cover the total from the receipt, then typed a hasty message to call him when Gordon had time.
A noisy truck towing a flatbed trailer stacked high with round bales of hay rattled past, startling him, and he watched it slow down and turn the corner through town, the brake lights of the trailer covered in dust. He tucked his phone back into his pocket with a heavy sigh, turned his head to the sun, and closed his eyes, letting it warm him for a moment before he entered the bank.
New York had never felt farther away.
* * *
“So this document is for the line of credit. Sign here, and here.”
Jake signed his name on the bottom where the yellow and red Sign Here stickers were, realizing he was again dealing with paperwork. First his restaurant and his divorce, three days ago all the inheritance stuff, now all this. Control over his life was tied to ink and paper for the foreseeable future.
He’d signed onto three different checking accounts, a line of credit, a credit card with secondaries for each division on the ranch, several long-term investment funds, and a very small mortgage taken out last year. All now his. He hadn’t looked at them, just signed them. He could get into the books and see the amounts later.
“Okay, so how do I get signing authority for Tanner and Brady back onto the bank accounts?” he asked as the account manager he was dealing with gathered all the papers, tapping them into a pile and placing them in the fat folder he had beside him.
“Oh. Right. Tanner asked about that already. Well, they can come in with a written letter from you. Then we’ll add them both as a signatory on the accounts you indicate. Shouldn’t take long,” he said. “They’ll need employment paperwork, too, social insurance numbers, that sort of thing.”
Jake grimaced at that. Employment papers. He was going to be the boss, officially. What a mess. Standing up, he gathered the thick binder of account information, temporary cards with his name on them, and statements jammed in.
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch if I have any questions.”
The bank manager nodded and gestured outward. “Of course. Thank you, Mr. West.”
Jake spotted Liz sitting in the lobby of the bank, tapping her hat against her leg, her face giving away that she was bored and perhaps slightly annoyed to be waiting. He stopped for a moment, pretending to adjust the papers in the folder, to watch her while she couldn’t see him.
Jake wondered if she ever truly relaxed. Not in a friendly way, like she did at dinner, but as a woman, putting aside the rough exterior. She was incredibly good-looking, but she hid it behind boots, jeans and denim shirts, trucker caps and cowboy hats. She was, on the surface, rough and tumble, even if the jeans hugged her curves and the buttons on her denim shirts strained across her breasts perfectly.
The idea of seeing her in a sundress and out of what appeared to be her natural element was intriguing, and he had a strange idea to ask her out to a nice dinner. If there was a nice place to go to dinner here, that was.
He chastised himself for trying to fit her into a box that likely she wouldn’t even come close to fitting into. She was who she was, and he liked her the way she was, so far. He never liked it when people pigeonholed him, and here he was, trying to do the same to her.
She sighed and looked around as he stepped out from behind the wall.
