Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140604 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 703(@200wpm)___ 562(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
She went quiet for a moment and then let her head fall back on a groan. “I lost my temper. He was an asshole.”
“He is always an asshole.” He’d only met Gladen a few times, but he knew the type. And now that he knew how incredibly glorious Olivia Barnes-Fleetwood was, he worried why she lost her temper. “Did he try something with you?”
“He always tries something. This time he was more aggressive.” Her head came back up, and there was a weariness there that made him want to pull her into his arms. “I was angry and that was when I found the proof that he was forging his records and not using the organic methods we require. I only recently found out he’s been bribing USDA inspectors.”
“Why didn’t you tell your fathers?”
“Would you run to mommy or deal with the situation yourself?”
“If my mother were alive and had any power at all, I would totally run to her. And ask her to bake me cookies. That’s what I miss. I mean obviously her love, but the lack of baked goods was depressing. No one thinks to bake for the foster kids.”
“I would tell you that making me feel sorry for you doesn’t work.” She frowned. “But it kind of does. I wasn’t laughing at how you grew up. I was laughing at the irony. The full circle-ness of it all. I’m here today alive and screwing shit up because two kids met in foster care and became halves of a whole and then found my mom.”
“A gorgeous redhead.” He now could see the resemblance between her and Abby Barnes-Fleetwood. Lexi was a lovely woman, but she must have taken after her father. Olivia was all her momma.
Her smile turned real. “She likes to think so.”
“Olivia, I was frustrated. I was nervous about meeting you. I was upset that Red left. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
“Do you honestly believe I’ve never heard those words before? I’m a woman who works in a clearly male-dominated field. I’ve heard it all. The reason I don’t run to Daddy when I have problems is because the minute I do I look weak, and weakness isn’t allowed for a woman. Believe me, sometimes I wish I had Lexi’s talent. Almost everyone in her world is a woman. Oh, she’ll tell you there are some men in publishing, but for the most part it sounds like heaven.”
“If I had thought about it for two seconds, I would have known why you have to be so aggressive.”
“Would you call it aggression if I was a man? Or would you use the word assertive?”
He kept stepping into it. “Assertive. I’m sorry.”
“Most men would. Hell, most women would, too.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No, it doesn’t. The good news is most of the ranches we work with are great. Obviously, we don’t have any trouble with O’Malley Ranch or the G in Colorado. Except the McNamara boys hit on me. They hit on anything with breasts, so I don’t take it personally. But some of the new ranches are problems. Sadly, it’s mostly ranches I brought in. I think they thought I would be easy to manipulate. I prove them wrong.”
He bet she did. “This is why I want to look at our contracts. There might be ways to set on paper how we expect our partners to act.”
She waved him off. “Some of these ranches are run by old-school men. I don’t think it will work, but I’m willing to discuss it. I can handle most of them. And I am sorry about the Gladen account. I didn’t deal with it the way I should have. I think my brothers getting married and settling down has made me think too much.”
“About getting older? Yeah, I think about that a lot, too. I think about what kind of future I can have when I come with a best friend.”
There was the faint smile she seemed to get when she found something amusing. “You need to find the right woman. Stick around this company and you probably will. Or I can take you to Bliss and introduce you around. It’s a whole town of threesomes. Happy threesomes. I thought I found my threesome there when I was eight.”
“You did? You found a couple of brothers?”
“Twins. You met one of them last night.”
“Bobby.” It hit him. Bobby had been clear about his sexuality. Not in an overwhelming way. Just statements that were truth. “Uhm, he doesn’t seem to…”
“Like girls. Women.” She chuckled. “No, he doesn’t. But his parents are very religious and protective, in a weird way, so he’s trying to ease them in. The whole leaving his small town for college nearly wrecked them.”
“Is his brother gay, too?”
“Will? No. Will is getting married in a couple of months. Nice woman. The truth is Will and I got along fine, but I loved…love Bobby. It morphed from an eight-year-old’s crush to this friendship that’s formed one of the pillars of my life. I’m happy for him, but watching all my friends fall in love and start their lives has been hard when it’s not there for me.”