Chapter 34 #2
Cash snorted and grinned to match Adam’s smile. “Yeah, that Harry runs a really tight ship.”
“I get kind of a kick out of watching him boss his daddy around.” Adam laughed.
“Oh, I’d like to see that too,” Cash said.
“Speaking of fathers,” Joey said, under her breath. “Yours is incoming.”
Cash met her eyes and stuffed his mouth full of pizza just as his father arrived.
“Hey, you guys. What’s going on over here?”
“Absolutely nothing, Uncle Blaze,” Joey said, grinning at him.
Daddy surveyed all of them, and Cash stretched up to give him a hug, though he still had pizza in his mouth.
“Yeah, something tells me there’s trouble brewing.”
“No trouble,” Adam said. “We’re just talking about Country Quad is all.”
“They’re trouble,” Daddy said. “Is Lark feeling any better?”
Cash swallowed and looked around for the beverage station, which he’d missed. Joey seemed to be able to read his mind, and she said, “I’ll go get you something to drink. They’ve got tons of canned sodas and bottles of lemonade, or Grandma’s almond punch.”
Cash made a face because he’d never much liked his grandmother’s almond punch, though he would never say so out loud. “If they have that pomegranate lemonade, that’s what I want.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve got it,” Adam said, and he lifted his own bottle of the raspberry variety to his lips.
Joey got up and left, and Cash looked at his father.
“I haven’t spoken to Lark since this morning,” he said. “When we left the house. I’m assuming she’s still alive and hopefully feeling better, but I don’t know.”
He didn’t live down the hall from her anymore, and he’d spent the afternoon in his apartment familiarizing himself with where his uncles had unpacked everything and moving things around to his liking.
“Well, I hope she’s feeling better,” Daddy said. “Faith said she’d take her some soup tomorrow.”
“That’s real nice,” Cash said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Are you still going to go to that church up in Dog Valley?” Daddy asked.
“Boston and Cora do,” he said. “So yeah, I figure I’ll keep going there.”
Daddy nodded. “All right. Well, I see Harmony with yet another cookie, and that makes three for her already, which means we’re all going to be up tonight sick.” He walked away as Cash laughed, and he scooped the little girl into his arms and deftly took the cookie away from her.
“Here’s where the real party is,” Harry said, and he sat down next to Cash. “How you doing, brother? You get moved okay?”
“Went great,” Cash said.
“Boston said you’ve got a pretty sweet setup at the lodge.”
“Yeah, it’s nice,” Cash said. “I mean, twice as much as renting an apartment, but it’s nice.” He didn’t want to complain about it, and God had given him the means to pay for it.
“Your Mountain Dew,” Belle said, and she handed it to Harry before sitting down beside them.
Cash ate another piece of his pizza, and by the time he’d finished it, Bryce and Codi had joined them, as had Boston and Cora, Cole and Rachel, and Rosie, Corinne, and Liesl way down on the end.
Cash wanted to talk to Rosie and see how her plans for entering the rodeo next season were going.
But he knew Rosie didn’t like talking about it in a big group, and he could text her anytime he wanted.
He stayed right where he was in the middle of the action, listening to the conversations around him from his older cousins.
Corinne had been dating a boy in high school for the past year or so, but he heard her mention something about ending the relationship and just going back to being friends.
She would graduate this year, and she’d just been awarded a scholarship at Wyoming State University and would be leaving Coral Canyon in the fall.
The party went on, and Cash sat at the table, talking to those who came over to him and noting that all the older cousins sort of stayed in the same area with him.
Somehow, he had an empty space next to him when Bailey McAllister arrived, and she smiled down at him and said, “Hi, Cash, can I sit by you?”
“Absolutely, you can,” he said, and he jumped to his feet to pull the chair out for her. “I actually wanted to talk to you.”
“Yeah, I got a message from my daddy about your girlfriend,” she said. “I would love to interview her.”
“She worked as a secretary in the Agricultural Sciences Department at Idaho State University,” Cash said.
“She didn’t graduate?” Bailey lifted her pizza to her mouth.
“Nope.” Cash shook his head. “She’s only got one semester left, though, but she decided not to go back.” He suddenly felt all eyes on him, and he wasn’t sure why.
Bailey chewed and swallowed. “Interesting,” she said. “Why didn’t she want to finish?”
Cash suddenly had no idea how to answer her. “Her, uh, grandma’s here all alone,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” Harry said with a laugh.
“Yeah, you’re not fooling anyone with that,” Bryce said, grinning from ear to ear. “She came back because she and Cash are getting real serious real fast.”
“No,” Cash said quickly. “It’s not like that.”
“Mm, it is too,” Harry said. “It’s totally like that.”
“When did you meet her?” Bailey asked, smiling.
“Yeah, Cash,” Boston said. “When did you meet her?”
“I thought this was the safe zone in the party,” Cash said.
“It is,” Harry said. “Just tell the truth.”
Cash glared at his cousin. “Well, if you must know, I met her in September.”
“Oh, he’s such a liar.”
“You guys be nice to Cash,” Joey said. “I think it’s sweet that he and Lark like each other so much.” She smiled over to Bailey. “They started dating over Thanksgiving.”
“Oh.” The surprise in Bailey’s voice wasn’t lost on Cash. “And she quit college for you right away, huh?”
“She did not quit college for me,” Cash said, very defensive about this.
“You’re right,” Bryce said. “We shouldn’t tease you about this, Cash.”
“She didn’t think being in Idaho right now was the right thing,” Cash said. “She’s only twenty-two, and there’s plenty of time for her to finish school.”
“Yeah, there sure is,” Bailey said. “But she’ll know a lot if she only had one semester left. That’s what, four classes?”
“Yeah,” Cash said, though he actually had no idea how many classes Lark had left.
“She’ll have tons of foundational knowledge,” Bailey said. “I’ve got two vet techs on board, but I could always use an assistant, and if she was doing animal science, she’s probably pretty comfortable with animals.”
“Yeah,” Cash said. “She is, and she’s looking for a job, because she just came home.”
“I can’t wait to text her,” Bailey said. “I’ve got her number. Thanks for sending it. I was just busy this afternoon.”
“What were you doing today, Bailey?” Bryce asked, and thankfully, the conversation move away from Cash.
“Well, I own five acres of land now,” she said.
“And I know that’s not a lot for most of you, but it’s a heck of a lot more than my point-two-five acres in Butte.
So I walked the property and made a list of everything that’s there: buildings, what’s in the buildings, what I think needs to be repaired, all of that. ”
“Are you going to cultivate the land?” Harry asked. “Raise animals?”
“Heavens, no,” Bailey said with a laugh. “But I would like to be able to bring animals home from the clinic if I need to. So I need barns and enclosures, pastures and places to store feed that’s dry and protected from the elements.”
“You know who would be really good to help her with that?” Joey said, putting one hand on Adam’s arm.
“Who?” he asked. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. I have someone mow our lawn.”
Cash chuckled along with a few others, and Joey shook her head.
“Not you, silly. Simon.”
“Oh, sure,” Adam said, and he looked over to Bailey. “He’s a young guy who lives up by us, who’s starting a jack-of-all-trades business. He’s good at construction, farming, handyman tasks, anything you need.”
“Great,” Bailey said. “I’m just getting everyone’s number today.” She grinned at Cash and then passed her phone to Adam for him to put Simon’s number in.
“All right,” Uncle Otis said over a microphone. “It’s time to sing Happy Birthday to OJ. And he has requested one thing for his party this year, and that is….” He trailed off and beamed at his almost-fourteen-year-old son.
OJ grabbed the mike and yelled into it. “A dance party!”
“Yep, here we go,” Bryce said, and he got up to go be one of the first to join OJ’s dance party.