Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I narrowed my eyes. “Stop stalking me on Life360.”
“Did you get me that Snickers bar?”
I pulled it out of my coat pocket and tossed it at her.
She’d texted me when I was checking out, and I’d quickly added it on to my tab.
She caught it with a smile and ran to her room to keep it hidden from her sisters.
“You ate a sandwich instead of what I cooked?” Enid asked.
I wasn’t sure that I liked Enid.
It was none of her damn business what I did and where I ate. But she felt like it was.
She was a great cook, but not good enough that she needed to know why I did what I did. I could happily fire her tomorrow and be perfectly okay with it.
That was partially why she was still part-time and not all day, every day. Claudine was still contemplating staying in Kentucky, so I may have to settle for Enid.
That was her end goal—to be the ranch cook. To make sure that all the ranch hands were fed, as well as making sure my kids were fed and watered.
Since she was still on a trial basis, she didn’t get full-time work until she proved herself.
So far, she showed up on time and got everyone fed, but she also hadn’t quite learned the art of cooking for that many people.
Which, for now, was okay. But once I got my roster of ranch hands filled again, that would be a problem.
Even tonight, with me not eating here, it looked like there was barely anything left.
Maybe enough for DeeDee to eat in the morning if she was hungry, but that was about it.
“Will you lock the door on the way out?” I asked as I headed for my room.
Except, as I was passing the family room where the girls usually hung out, I was stopped.
“Dad,” Joe called out. “You got a hit on the apartment. She seems really interested. Here’s her name and number if you want to call her.”
I looked at the time and saw that it was well past ten. “Just shoot her an email back with our house number.”
Joe gave me a thumbs-up.
I eyed the other person in the room and leveled him with a look. “What are you still doing in here?”
Jetty was Josephine’s boyfriend.
Jetty was also the boy that’d knocked my little girl up, and now lived in my bunk house because his parents had kicked him out upon learning about his extracurricular activities.
They were both in high school, Jetty one year above Joe.
Jetty was a good kid. Smart, good at football, and hard working.
He wasn’t a burden to have working on the farm.
I just wished he hadn’t knocked my daughter up at sixteen.
When I’d first found out about Jetty and Joe, Joe had shared that she wasn’t sure that their encounter had been consensual. At first I’d been enraged.
Then I’d found out that neither one of them had been capable of making decisions, because they’d both been drunk off their ass at a field party and had slept with each other in the back of Jetty’s truck with all their faculties impaired. Joe had been wanting to wait until marriage. Jetty had agreed to wait until she was ready.
Jetty had been intending to keep that promise, too.
But neither one had made good decisions that night.
And with a bunch of “he said, she said” they’d finally came to the same conclusion.
They needed to make better choices, and one of those was not to both be drunk off your ass when you make important life decisions. Not to mention, there were a lot of hurt feelings because their friends had all had different stories as to what had happened that night, pitting them against each other when they should’ve just talked it out with each other instead.
Once they started to communicate, they’d realized that they’d made mistakes. That neither one of them had reacted well.
Which led us to now.
They were stupidly in love again with a baby on the way and the world at their fingertips. Their lovey-dovey bullshit was making my eyes bleed. Especially since Jetty now practically lived here.
But, and this was a huge but, I couldn’t fault them for being happy and in love.
I’d done much the same as them when I was young.
Hell, I’d married Juliana because she’d gotten knocked up.
Luckily for us, we’d both already graduated from high school when that had happened.
Not so much in love like Joe and Jetty were, but happy enough with each other that we decided to make a go of it.
I’d learned to love her over the years, as I’d thought she’d done the same for me.
But I’d been wrong about her just like I’d been wrong about a lot of things in my life.
“Uh, was going to talk to you, sir.”
I sighed.
This was the last thing that I wanted.