Chapter Two
“What is this?” Zoey Carroll stormed into her brother’s office, the deed to the family farm in hand. The Carroll Family Farm offices were set up in the basement of the family home, which was more like a mansion—the basement was large enough to house offices for a staff of fifteen.
Rick looked up from his computer, his light-brown eyes, practically identical to their older brother Brandon’s, focusing too slowly on what she held tightly in her hand, like he was coming out of a fog. He stared at the thick, crumpled, watermarked paper and stifled a yawn.
He’d spent the morning going over budget reports, necessary after his full day of meetings yesterday. She knew because she scheduled his meetings, and his weariness showed. That gave her a moment of pause. Rick worked hard, and he had a new baby and property of his own to keep up. She hated to dump anything else on him, but this involved her.
She, Rick, and Brandon had inherited the family farm and the accompanying business, which sold fresh produce to three states and was rapidly expanding. As CEO, Rick had taken production to a new level, barely keeping up with the demand Brandon created for their product with his marketing genius.
Zoey didn’t have a title—yet. She’d just graduated with a degree in business and was finding her place on the organizational chart. She did everything from scheduling Rick’s meetings to finding unusual solutions to problems such as hiring additional harvest help for the season. She liked to think of herself as a fixer—but that wasn’t an official title, so she was still working that all out.
She supposed that was normal for a girl whose two big brothers had been running their family’s business since she’d started high school. The age gap was never a problem, until it came to being seen as anything other than the little sister. Brandon and Rick were oblivious to the fact that she’d grown up—a situation she hoped to remedy somehow.
Not that it mattered what her job was, as long as she was seen as an equal. They all had equal shares in the company, and she’d thought they had equal shares in their parents’ will—until she saw what came in the mail.
“I missed you at breakfast,” he said, yawning again, not taking her obvious distress seriously.
“I took Cher Bear out for a ride,” she said, just to annoy him. Her brothers hated when she called her prize stud Cher Bear.
He frowned at her. “Cherokee.”
“Whatever!” She shook the paper in front of him.
Rick lifted his hand to take it from her—his light skin tone a stark contrast to the dark shade of her own. He furrowed his brow. “It’s the deed to the house.”
“I know it’s the deed,” she snapped, and she placed her hands on her hips. It’d landed in the business mail, and she’d opened it without really knowing what it was. Imagine her shock.
“I’m confused.” Rick ran a hand over the back of his head.
So was she. And mad. Really mad. “I thought you and Brandon had equal shares in the house?” She’d gotten the barn—which was just fine with her. Horses were her first love.
Rick nodded. “We did, but after he moved last year, he sold me his half.”
Zoey’s stomach went into a freefall as she sank into one of two gray linen chairs in front of Rick’s glass desk. It was the same feeling she got seconds before being thrown from a horse—knowing it was going to happen but not being able to do anything about it. “He sold you his half?”
“There was really no point in him keeping it after he decided to move. Plus, it wasn’t like he was going to move in with me, Maryanne, and the baby,” he said.
Zoey noted he didn’t include her in that list. She lived in the Carroll family home too. But she wasn’t the problem. Rick and Maryanne were.
Until recently, Zoey had been under the impression that Rick and Maryanne had gotten togetherafterMaryanne and Brandon had broken up, but it turned out Brandon had left on tour of duty—broken up but still very much in love with her—and came home six months later to find her married to his little brother. That was why, after years of watching the happy newlywed couple stare lovingly into one another’s eyes, Brandon had up and moved to Harvest Ranch when they’d announced Maryanne was pregnant. A guy could only take so much.
To make matters worse, Zoey had had to put most of this together herself, because her brothers weren’t talking. She’d gotten some of it from Maryanne and some of it from Brandon’s new wife, Allie.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
Rick shrugged. “Honestly, it just didn’t occur to me.”
She believed that. They never told her anything. Neverthoughtto tell her anything.
“We didn’t think you’d care.” At least now he had the good sense to sound sheepish.
She rubbed her forehead. “You know, this isn’t how I pictured our family. It’s not how Mom and Dad wanted it either.”
She leaned back in her chair. Her parents had always wanted a big family, but they’d started late in life and had only been able to have her brothers. When Brandon was twenty and Rick was eighteen, her parents had adopted her as a one year old from an orphanage in Africa. They’d prided themselves on having a tight-knit family, and they’d always wanted their kids to be close. And they had been, despite Brandon’s career in the military that kept him away often, until Brandon had decided to move and was kept away always. Or at least she’d thought they’d been happy. Maybe it’d started to fall apart before that … She just wasn’t sure.
Rick leaned forward, staring her down with those light-brown eyes that were prevalent in the Carroll family—with the menfolk, anyway. Her mom had had blue eyes. Whenever she looked in her brothers’ eyes, either of them, she thought of her dad and her chest ached.
“What do you mean?” Rick asked.
