“I put my foot in it, like I usually do,” she replied, and walked out of the garage, stopping and lifting her face to the waning sun, willing her frustration to go away.
Brady stood beside her and looked over at her, his eyebrow quirked.
“What?” Liz said. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“You like him.” His eyebrow quirked farther.
“Brady—”
“So now everything he says has to be analyzed,” Brady interrupted. “Whenever you like a guy, you get suspicious of him, like you can’t trust him, even though you—”
“I what?” she shot back, irritated.
“Want to.”
He ducked as she punched him on the arm, his laughter bouncing off the wall of the garage. She threw her arms up in the air and let him have the last word. Brady could always read her like a book.
He was the sweetest of the three of them growing up, the one who was the conciliator. If someone was fighting, he wanted to make it better, had empathy in spades. Tanner just called a spade a spade, and didn’t care who got hurt by it.
“No,” she countered, and Brady waggled his finger at her.
“Don’t ‘no’ me, Liz. They aren’t all like your ex, Darren,” he said, then crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and pretended to shove his finger up his nose. “They aren’t all selfish pricks.”
“Seriously! Brady!” she implored, finally giving in and laughing at his impression. “Stop it.”
He made another funny face at her and then laughed again, turning to close the garage door with a thump. Dust swirled out behind it, and Liz wondered when they were going to get a good rain. They needed it. Hay was in but the second cut wasn’t ready yet; it was the perfect time to have a good downpour.
She needed to get back to work. This diversion was making her slack off.
“I just accused him of wanting the ranch for the payday. All because he told me that he doesn’t have much to go back to in New York,” she blurted, pinching her lips together. Telling Brady would make her feel better, maybe.
Brady halted, all amusement gone. He put an arm around her and squeezed. “Precisely, dear sister. He might, just might, find something here worth staying for, and jeepers, that is scary stuff.”
He was right. “Shit, Brady. You’re the baby. Why you gotta be the smart one?”
“They say brains skip a generation,” he jested, as he hopped around back and closed the trailer doors. “If that’s true, I’m a freakin’ genius next to my brother!”
“Which one?” Liz teased, and Brady stuck his tongue out again.
“I don’t know anymore,” he said and shrugged. “I like the new one. Can’t say if he’s ranch material yet, but us West boys can be pretty stubborn when we’re given something new to chew on. Now, take me back to the barns, Jeeves, I have real work to do.”
They got in, and she headed back out the laneway, the truck rocking back and forth, the squeak of the trailer loud now that it was completely empty. She leaned her arm out the window, casting her eyes over the field of corn bordering the front of the driveway, hot summer air and sunshine licking at her skin.
“Liz, don’t overthink this, you’ve got nothing to worry about with Jake. I get a sense he’s genuine,” Brady said, and she looked over at him. He was doing the same as her, leaning out the window, as always, eyes on a swivel, keeping tabs on everything.
She countered his thought in her head. This place was worth being defensive about. It was home. She hoped it kept being home. Both Tanner and Brady had reassured her that she and her mother weren’t going anywhere, but the unrest of Brett’s boneheaded move wasn’t easy to shake. Maybe that was it. She was so worried that any sort of chink in the perceived plan set her off.
“I’m not overthinking it,” she lied.
“You are. Apologize to him. This has us all thinking things that we likely wouldn’t normally. He’s been here less than a week, for Christ’s sake. There are bound to be hiccups as we all get to know one another.”
Liz let that sink in.Yeah. She would have to grovel. She sighed and turned the corner toward the barns. Less than a week. It had felt like longer, for some reason.
“At least Tanner hasn’t killed him yet?” she offered, and Brady smirked.
Chapter Eleven
Tanner might just kill him, the way he was flipping through the agreements with a tense ferocity that made Jake think of an angry dog chewing on a bone.
