Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
KADE
“Are you sure you don’t want any help?” Reenie asks.
I shake my head, standing in the doorway to my office. My still very messy office.
“I wouldn’t know what to keep or not unless I look at it. If you don’t see me in a few hours, send help.”
She smiles at me. “I’ll bring you lunch then and make sure the filing cabinet didn’t topple over on you.”
“Appreciate it.”
She closes the door behind her and I let out a breath. Fuck. I have no idea where I’m even going to start.
The filing cabinet in the corner is likely my best bet. With papers sticking out in every direction, I start with one drawer at a time.
Pulling it open, I gather everything inside and start flipping through it.
Invoices from at least ten years ago. Old guest reservations. A few menus with the pages curling up from age. Hell, there’s even old plans to renovate his house. I tuck those away. Maybe it’s something I can look into later.
Ranch first. It’s been my motto since I got here. Even if it’s slipping because of Presley and Poppy.
I can’t think about them right now. Right now, I need to tackle this space so I can get some actual work done. Grabbing the garbage bin, I start throwing things in. No time to be sentimental. If I have any hope of finding things in here that are useful, I need to be savage and trash everything.
But a few things here and there I keep. Like what appears to be one of the first room keys to room one.
“You sentimental old bastard.” I smile at the heavy key in my hand.
I tuck it into my front pocket so it doesn’t get lost in the mess.
The morning goes by in a blur of stacks of shit to throw out and more paper cuts than I care to admit to.
By the time my stomach starts to growl, I’ve finally found something useful. Some recent profit and loss statements that can help me see what Verne was doing.
A knock sounds from the door and I drop the papers in my hands.
Thank God. I’m starving.
“Got a minute?”
My gaze snaps to the door. Not Reenie bringing me my lunch, but…
“Presley. Hi.” I wave her in. “Find a seat if you can.”
She lifts a stack of papers off the rickety folding chair. “Doing some spring cleaning?”
I laugh. “More like a complete gut job. I don’t know the last time Verne went through everything in here.”
“Looks like you have your work cut out for you.”
I smile at her. It feels easy to do now that there’s this mutual understanding between the two of us.
“Did you need something?”
She wipes her hands on her jeans. Her coat is zipped up, but I can see the hint of her pink collared shirt underneath. Her long blonde hair is still tied up in her bandanna.
“I wanted to talk to you about Poppy.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. But I was wondering if you’d want to start taking her after school a few days a week.”
“Really?”
She nods. “Yes. You want to get to know her, and with my babysitter’s schedule changing, it’d help me too.”
“You trust me with her?”
“You’re her father.”
It isn’t a rave review of trust, but at least it’s something.
“I can make things work.”
“Are you sure?” she questions. “I don’t want you to get busy and then leave her with someone else here. It would kind of defeat the purpose of you getting to know her.”
“I’ll make time for her, Presley.”
If I have to move meetings around in the afternoon, so be it. I might not always have the most flexible of schedules if I have a difficult client, but I’ll make it happen. Because like Presley said, I want a relationship with my daughter. I’m not passing her off to anyone here to help.
“She likes you, so I don’t think it’ll be too hard for you.”
I smile at the woman across from me. It seems the icy walls around her heart are slowly melting.
“And if I start to lose her, there’s always Lollipop.”
“See? You’ll do fine.” She waves a hand around in the air. “And if you leave—”
“Right now, I’m staying.”
“You are?”
I nod. “At least for a while.”
I lean back in my chair, studying the woman in front of me. I have no doubt that it took a lot for her to come here and have this conversation with me. And while I still have no idea what my future holds in Pinecrest, I’ll be there for my daughter.
“Will starting tomorrow work? Her babysitter can drop her off after school.”
“Sounds great.”
“Do you need any help in here?” she asks, standing and looking around the office as if seeing it for the first time.
“Why would you want to help me out in here?”
Presley smirks. “You were never one to keep things organized, Kade.”
“Hey.” I point a finger at her. “This is all Verne’s doing.”
“Sure. Blame the man that can’t stand up for himself.”
I walk over to the filing cabinet. “I mean, look at this. Who keeps a menu from twenty years ago?”
“Verne was sentimental.”
Presley takes it from my hands and looks it over. “You know, it could be a cool thing to bring back to the ranch.”
“What, food?” I snort laugh.
“No.” She smacks my chest. The lightest brush of her hand against mine makes my heart clatter in my chest. “Do an old-school night. Bring back some traditions from the ranch of the early days.”
I roll the idea around in my head. “Huh. That’s not terrible.”
“Gee, thanks, Kade.”
She shuffles through some more papers in the bottom drawer, dropping to the floor and crossing her legs under her.
“We’d have to get some more paying guests to do that first.”
“They’ll come.”
“You sound pretty confident there.”
She’s not looking at me, but going through what’s now in her lap.
“Look at these,” Presley says.
“What are they?”
Dropping to my knees, I peek over her shoulder, doing my best not to get too close. To not breathe her in or feel her warmth.
“Old pictures of the ranch.”
Plucking one out of her fingers that she passes over, I’m struck with warmth and sadness all at once.
Because, in a grainy old photo, Verne and Arlene are standing under the ranch gateway with their arms wrapped around one another.
Arlene is looking at the camera, hand covering her eyes from the sun while Verne stares down at her with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“I can’t imagine how old this is.”
“Seventy-nine, it looks like.” Presley pokes her finger at the back of the photo. “Wasn’t that around when the ranch opened?”
“A few years after,” I say.
“You should frame these. There’s dozens of them, and people would love to see the ranch in the early days,” Presley says, pulling the picture back into her hand.
Her fingertips brush mine, and I don’t miss the tiny gasp it elicits from her.
Fuck.
I also don’t miss the way it makes me feel. The rush of heat that floods my body. The memory of how her touch made me feel. The way I only thought about this woman for years.
“I should probably go.”
It’s barely more than a whisper. All I want to do is lean in and kiss her again. I want to feel her against me.
But that’s not why she came.
“Right.” I clear my throat, standing to put some air between us. “I need to grab some lunch before I get back to it.”
Presley hands over the stack of photos, and I reach out a hand to help her up. She hesitates before taking it. That same buzzy feeling floats through me.
“I’ll have Becca drop Poppy off tomorrow and then I can come grab her after my shift.”
“I need to head into town, so I’ll drop her off at the diner.”
“I appreciate it, Kade.”
“Hey.” I grab her elbow, not letting her leave quite yet. “Thank you. I know this whole situation is weird, but…thank you for letting me have this time getting to know Poppy.”
It looks like she wants to say something, her mouth opening and closing, but then she shuts it and leaves.
Damn. I don’t know what she wanted to say, but I wish I could have made her stay. It’s the first time I’ve wanted that since being back home.
As much as I want to focus on Presley, between my job in Seattle, the ranch, and now Poppy, I don’t know where I’d find the time.
But I’m in Pinecrest. I’m here. Sure, the ranch brought me back to town, but Poppy and Presley? The only way I can work things out with them is by staying here.
It pulls a smile to my face. I guess it’s something I don’t mind as much as I thought I did. Getting to see Presley more?
I’ll take whatever I can get.