Chapter 4
FOUR
Most people have “ah-ha” moments. I have “oh, for fuck’s sake” moments.
—Denver to Boone
DENVER
I was angry as hell.
Not at anyone in particular.
Just at the situation.
Four calves that were a couple of months away from being weaned, as well as two of the mothers that’d been with them, had been attacked by wolves during the night.
All of them had gotten away from the original attack but one, and luckily the wolves had contented themselves on gorging themselves on the one calf rather than pursuing the others.
Our ranch foreman, Brice Bray, had been out checking fences when he’d spotted the hurt calves and cows.
Unluckily, none of them would survive the attack. Their injuries along their necks and heads weren’t going to heal well and they were in a lot of pain.
I’d dispatched them humanely, angry that I’d had to do it.
Hence why we were now loading five cows into a truck to take to the processor.
Luckily, I had a club brother that was willing to take last-minute appointments for his club president, because usually I would have to be on the waiting list for a couple of months before I’d get in.
Huxley was waiting for me when I pulled up in the flatbed farm truck.
He whistled softly. “Brutal.”
“And effective,” I agreed. “Already got on the horn with Creed and made sure I can take the wolves out if I see them again.”
Creed, another member of the Dixie Wardens, was a game warden for the state of Montana. He was a hard-ass when it came to wildlife, but he knew the score when it came to wolves attacking livelihoods.
“Good.” Hux jerked his head toward the forklift. “Give me a minute and we’ll get them out.”
We had them out and in the cleaning area in a couple of minutes.
“You need any help?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t.
I’d help if I was needed, but that was damn near the last thing I wanted to do right then.
Hux eyed me. “If I said I did?”
“I’d carve out some time between dinner and bed.”
Though, just saying, but that wasn’t a very wide window. I usually ate, showered, and went to bed all within two hours of each other.
Hux chuckled. “Got a couple of high school students that are in a butchering class that are more than willing to learn and help.” He shook his head. “I got this. Any cuts in particular?”
“Whatever you can salvage.” I shrugged. “I’m not picky at this point.”
Couldn’t be when some of the meat would be ravaged by the damage the wolves had caused.
Ranch life was rewarding at times, but at others? It made me want to fuckin’ scream.
“Will do.” He fist-bumped me. “Go get some shuteye. You look like you could use it.”
I was about sixty hours short on sleep.
It’d be better if I could find more help, but until that happened, I was doing the work myself.
Juliana leaving had caused several of my other ranch hands to cut out, too.
She’d spread her lies, and everyone that’d loved her had all but lambasted me for “treating her wrong.”
“You ain’t lyin’.” I laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, feeling the lethargy in my body even from that small act.
“Just finished up tagging and branding last week. Now I’m struggling my ass through repairing fences and whatever else needs done at the ranch.
Wishing Juliana hadn’t flipped me the bird and stolen half my employees when she cut out. ”
“You find anyone to help you in the mornings yet?” he asked.
All three girls would’ve normally had their mornings filled with feeding animals and cleaning out stalls.
However, all three had extracurricular activities that decided to move from afternoon to morning, meaning I was left without help to get all the animals fed.
Hence my putting out an ad in the paper offering room and board if they helped me.
I didn’t have time to add that on top of my already overflowing to-do list.
“Not yet,” I admitted. “It’s not a lot of room, and they don’t really want to go downstairs to shower in the barn.”
“Just get the shower up there fixed,” he pointed out.
“I’m working on it, but I don’t have enough hours in the day.”
Literally. I was already getting up at three. Working through lunch half the time. Then when I got home, it was time for bed.
“Get Koen to do it,” Hux suggested. “King Construction does fine work.”
He pointed at his state-of-the-art butchering facility behind him that he’d attached to his parents’ Mercantile and General Store.
Koen King, a member of the Dixie Wardens MC, had started his construction company, King Construction, a year or so ago when he’d moved here.
In the year that he’d been here, his construction company had gained a lot of traction thanks to all the projects that he’d taken on with the club.
Now, he was in high demand and had a waiting list a mile long.
“Koen has about as much time to do shit now as I do,” I pointed out. “And ripping old piping out of the barn is at the bottom of my to-do list. If they don’t want to take a shower in the shower downstairs, then there’s no reason they need to rent the apartment.”
“Guess you’ll be feeding the animals in the morning, huh?” Hux grinned.
“I’ll manage,” I grumbled darkly.
“If you say so, Denver.”
I flipped him off. “Let me know if you need anything.”
After dropping the cows off with Huxley, I headed to the feed store and got my pickup right before they closed.
After I was done with that, I stopped at The Mercantile again for a quick bite to eat out of their deli section before heading back home.
Dinner was just being cleaned up off the table, and I grimaced.
I’d forgotten that our new cook was here today.
The new cook, Enid, was a fill-in for our newest regular cook, Claudine. She was damn good at what she did. But she was only there three days a week, and I rarely remembered where my head was at, let alone the day of the week it was and when she was cooking.
“You missed dinner,” Enid said when she saw me.
I shrugged. “Work got in the way.”
“Pretty sure that I saw you grabbing a sandwich from The Mercantile a little bit ago,” Catalina whispered.
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.
But burying my head in the sand about my daughter and Jetty wasn’t going to fix the problem at hand.
She was still going to have a baby in six months.
There was no amount of ignoring the kid that was going to change that.
“Come out to the porch with me then,” I said.
Joe looked on with a worried expression, but I didn’t tell her it would be okay.
I wasn’t sure it would.
I mean, she was pregnant and hadn’t graduated high school yet. She had a whole future ahead of her before that’d happened, and now she was going to be stuck lugging a kid around wherever she happened to want to go.
That was going to be hard.
And Jetty needed to step up.
When we made it out to the porch, I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the railing.
Jetty cleared his throat a couple of times, shifting from foot to foot in nervousness, before he said, “I passed my GED test. I dropped out of high school.”
My brows rose. “What?”
“I was ahead anyway. Could’ve graduated this fall if I wanted. But there’s no point in wasting time.” He looked out over the land that I loved with all my heart. “If you’ll be okay with it, I’d like to start working full-time here.”
That was a surprise. “I thought you wanted to go to college.”
“I will,” he admitted. “Eventually. But for now, I need to get an income going so that I can pay for the baby. Plus, with my parents making as much money as they do, the Pell grants won’t apply to me.
Which, might I add, is really fuckin’ stupid.
My parents haven’t helped me a damn bit since I turned fourteen and got old enough to work without them being deemed bad parents.
Food, water, and necessities. I’ve been paying all of that since I was fourteen.
I don’t think it’s fair that they base my ability to get need-based grants off of parents that don’t want to have anything to do with you. ”
I didn’t argue with him, because he was right.
A parent’s income should only be taken into account if they had anything to do with the children.
That wasn’t always the case for some.
“You want to work here full-time?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Full-time will give you benefits. Room and board.” I thought about it for a moment. “If you can sign a contract for five years of work here, I’ll also pay for your college.”
Because there was no way that I was letting my grandchild’s father fail.
Because what would that accomplish?
I’d only hurt my family.
And family was everything to me.
My girls were my life.
My mom. Brother. Sister. Nephew. All of them were everything to me.
Even my found family. My club brothers meant the world to me. Every single one of them.
I’d give them the heart out of my chest if they had need of it.
So no, I wouldn’t hurt my grandchild by denying his father the leg up that he deserved.
Even if he’d make a stupid mistake like knocking my daughter up at sixteen.
“I’ll sign anything,” he replied. “I’m emancipated now.”
That was new, too.
After his parents had kicked him out upon finding out that he’d gotten Joe pregnant, he’d been forced to do a lot of hard things. One of those was going to talk to a judge about emancipating himself so that he could do adult things—like get his GED and drop out of high school.
“I’ll get it drawn up,” I said. “I think it’d be a good thing to have you close anyway. So you can help Joe.”
“I agree.” His shoulders slumped. “Thank you, sir.”
“Call me Denver, kid,” I said. “Guess we’re family now.”
Jetty closed his eyes.
The relief on his face and in his shoulders made me feel for him.
He’d lived a hard life.
When I’d first met him, he’d explained that his parents had opened a petting zoo just outside of Sawtooth. The vibe I’d gotten off of him was that Jetty was the hard laborer. He did the cleaning, the lifting, the moving. All while maintaining a 3.8 GPA and attending extracurricular activities.
With him gone, I wondered how they made it.
Surely, they’d had to hire hands.
Jetty was a hard worker. He’d helped me out plenty around the farm when he hadn’t had to.
I would be stupid not to hire him on.
“Thanks, Denver,” Jetty said. “You won’t be disappointed.”
“No, I don’t think I will.” I held out my hand.
After shaking it, he headed back to the family room.
I chose not to say anything as I went to my bathroom, showered, then hit the sack.
Tomorrow was bound to be a better day…right?