Liz glared at her mom. Pink in Peony’s cheeks and a sparkle in her eye that hadn’t been there in a long time appeared, even though her mother’s frown was an indication she was talking about serious things. Liz looked back down at her sandwich, the lone bite now a lump in her stomach. Her mother might be a little bit right, but Liz wasn’t ready to admit that to her, or to herself, for that matter.
“Why would I complicate things now? We’ve set the ground rules. We were both pretty clear on those,” Liz grumped. She sounded petulant, and frustrated.
Her mothertsked and waved a hand. “Fiddlesticks. There are no rules when it comes to love.”
“Why are you meddling?” Liz asked. It was one thing to ask Liz what she was doing, but another to mess with her head when she’d already explained it wasn’t going anywhere and usingthatword.
“I’m not meddling, dear,” her mom said as she got up and moved to sit beside her, patting her on the arm. “I want you to be happy, and to be honest, if you give that man out there a reason to stay, then that will be icing on the damned cake. I like him. I think he fits and he’s good for you. If you let him lo—”
“He’s got a life all the way across the fucking country, and . . . and . . .” Liz interrupted, not wanting her mother to utter that damnedLword again. That word meant something she didn’t even want to contemplate.
Liz jumped to her feet. She didn’t want to talk about this right now, and she definitely could not talk about it with her mother. Her hackles were up, and she didn’t want to yell at Peony or get mad, because she knew her mother was just being her mother but—
“I have to get back to work. Thanks for the chat,” she snapped icily, and left the room before she said anything else she might regret.
She banged out the back door, took an angry bite from her sandwich, and chewed, stewing. Her temper was razor-thin, and the confusion that had shoved in with what her mother said had cracked that firmly held control she had exerted over her arrangement with Jake.
Damn it, why did her mother have to say it like that? That stupidLword flashed in her brain, and she growled. She rubbed at her eyes, more tired now than angry, and realized that she was indeed on her way to being burned, if what her mother said was getting to her as much as it did, so quickly. Could she be going down that path again?
No. She couldn’t even contemplate it. It was not a good idea, and her stomach flipped and her chest tightened at the thought.
“Fuck—” she muttered and walked back to the stable. “Goddamn it, Mother, fu—”
She stopped in the path, the swearing not even helping her loosen the ball of unease, and leaned over, willing her stomach to settle. She had to figure this shit out. The mere mention of something more serious was tying her in knots. Obviously that meant she wasn’t ready by a country mile.
But last night there had been something else, and maybe that was why she was so wound up about it. If they were just casually banging, she wouldn’t have reacted the way she did. Right?
Fuck. Black and white was quickly blurring into a whole lot of gray.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The still-warped filing cabinet drawer closed with a screech, and Jake dusted his hands, heaving a sigh of relief. He adjusted the ancient feed-store magnet straight, and quirked a smile at the ridiculousness of keeping a calendar from the 1970s. Even if it was useless, he couldn’t throw it away.
A magnet was one thing, the filing cabinet was another. Once this mess was settled, he was going to buy a new one for his brothers as a parting gift. The rust, barely openable drawers, and flaking paint had to go.
He’d make sure the magnet transferred over, though.
It had taken him most of the afternoon, but all the files were sorted and entered, and he officially had a working set of books. The older stuff he’d just refiled. When—or if—he had time, he’d enter more.
He’d looked up Canada Revenue Agency rules, unfamiliar with how to submit taxes in this country when he realized he didn’t even have a clue about how to set them up either. The rules he’d skimmed said seven years of records were required if a business was audited. That was a lot of shuffling through papers and tearing his hair out, so he banked on three to save him some time down the road if it ever happened.
His laptop was humming away, the accounting software importing all of the spreadsheets he’d hammered out, and the ranch was about twenty minutes away from a set of financial statements ready for the accountant.
“Box for you,” Tanner said as he strode into the office, interrupting Jake’s thoughts as he stared at the progress bar on his laptop. “Came this morning in the mail delivery.”
Jake caught the thin parcel box that Tanner tossed to him, and peered at the label.
“It’s the paternity test thing,” Tanner added as he sat down in his chair at his desk.
Cheek swab results were back. The tests were a formality, and he wasn’t keen on opening it up, especially with all they had to deal with today, but he figured he might as well; no sense in delaying it.
Jake wondered why Frank had mailed them instead of calling him.Huh.
He’d talked to Frank this morning, catching him up on where they were, poking him for progress on their much-needed loophole to get out from under Brett’s will.
Frank was still elbow-deep in inheritance law and was no further ahead. However, Jake wasn’t suffering due to the delay, his thoughts turning to Liz as he drummed his fingers on the box. He wasn’t where he should be, even if right now he was where he wanted to be. New York was home. Restaurants and new ventures were where his head should be.
Instead, he was thinking about whether Liz would want to go into town for dinner tonight, if the reports that were generating on his laptop would be enough to give him a picture of the ranch financials and maybe help prove the viability of Brady’s peanut idea.
