Chapter 1 #2
I'd been fourteen, old enough to notice things. The way Mom had jumped at sounds. How she’d kept looking out the windows like trouble was coming and only she could see it. The way she’d looked at Dad, like she despised him.
Then she’d vanished. Dad said she'd packed her bag and left us. No matter how many times we’d asked what had happened, he'd just repeated the same line. “Don't know, but she ain't comin' back so get used to it.”
Shoving those shitty memories from my brain, I grabbed my ledgers and headed to my office. A warm, buttery scent drifted down the hallway, and my stomach grumbled.
Bella was baking cupcakes again.
Hopefully, they were those lemon ones she'd made the other day with that creamy icing. Then again, everything she made was amazing.
Just like Bella.
She'd only been at Koolaroo about two weeks, but there was a mysteriousness about her that had gotten under my skin. She smiled with her whole face when she was in the kitchen. But sometimes, her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. There was a shadow there, deep and wary.
Resisting the temptation to check out what she was cooking, and check her out, I strode to my office, plonked the ledgers onto the desk, dropped into the chair, and cracked open the top book.
Same story as yesterday. Same story as last month.
Koolaroo was in financial trouble.
Feed costs were climbing. Cattle prices were dropping.
To top it all off, some loan shark greasy enough to slide under a closed door had been hounding me for overdue payments on a loan Frank had taken out three years ago.
The first time I’d heard about it was when the bastard had marched through our open front door like he owned the place.
I had no clue what Dad used the hundred grand for, but he'd needed it fast, and now we were being strangled by interest rates and payment plans that should be illegal.
I ran the numbers again, hoping I'd missed something.
Nope. I hadn't.
Even if we sold half the Brahman herd, we'd barely cover this quarter's payments. Maybe not even that. Frank had known we were in financial trouble. I'd told him dozens of times, but he’d always brushed me off, making one bullshit statement after the other.
Maybe that's why he’d pissed off and left, before the shit really hit the fan. He had told me never to discuss the finances with my brothers and sister, had said they didn't know numbers like I did. He’d acted like I was some kind of magician who could make money just appear on the books.
Mitch and Cassidy had asked me to ride out with them yesterday. Said we needed to look for our old man together. Cass said it would be good to hang out under the stars, like we'd done together before Mitch had nicked off to the army a decade ago.
I told them I had bookwork that needed to be done, which was true. Someone had to keep this financial house of cards from collapsing. But the real reason, which made no damn sense, was that I'd imagined I could keep Bella company.
It was a pathetic pipedream. She was well out of my league.
Clenching my jaw, I shrugged off the bullshit and opened another spreadsheet on my computer, forcing my mind back to the numbers. I'd completed the profit and loss statement for last month this morning. Thank Christ Dad wasn't here to see it.
Then again, Dad could be dead.
And that brought a whole set of problems I didn't want to think about.
Another whiff of vanilla curled into my office, and I salivated. Shoving away from the desk, I decided to see if I could steal a cupcake. The last two times I'd done that, Bella had pretended to scold me, but then she’d smiled, and I knew she liked it.
Tires crunched on the driveway outside. Frowning, I turned toward the window. We weren't expecting anyone, and people rarely arrived at Koolaroo unannounced.
Maybe it was Bob Ackerman, the police chief from Winton Police Station. Mitch and the others could've called him if there was something to report. I checked my phone, wondering if I'd missed a call.
Nope.
Then again, the area they’d ridden to had no signal.
I moved to the window to see if I recognized the car.
I didn't.
The black Dodge Charger wasn't the kind of car normally driven to our ranch. The car was completely out of place among the trucks and work vehicles that populated our yard. It was a wonder that thing had made it over the hundreds of miles of corrugated dirt road to get here.
The dusty Charger stopped out front, and the windshield reflected the afternoon sun, making it impossible to see whoever was inside. They took a few moments to open their doors, and for some reason, that rattled me.
Finally, two men climbed out, wearing dark suits and white button-down shirts that immediately set my teeth on edge. Their fancy shoes had no business on sunburned land like ours. Even their hair was slicked back like they'd stepped out of a different decade entirely.
Wrong. All wrong.
The kind of wrong that made the hair lift on the back of my neck, and my pulse kick into a higher gear.
I'd had my share of bank managers and loan sharks arriving unannounced over the years. I could recognize their kind. They smiled at you while they cut your knees out from under you.
Usually, this was where I'd call on Dad or Kayden to sort them out. Frank had a knack for making unwanted guests piss off, and not always without spilling blood.