Chapter Fifteen
Liz was filling out her training journal for the day when Tanner strode into her office, madder than a wet hen. He stood at the arena window, paced to the door, then back to the window, frowning, his jaw muscles working too hard, like he was chewing rocks.
“What’s wrong now?” she asked bluntly. He looked over, grimaced at her, and flailed his hands.
“Did you know Rosy quit today?”
Liz dropped her pen to the desk tiredly. She’d never been close to Rosy, but she had been part of their lives for so long. Liz had expected this would happen eventually.
“Damn. I figured she might when Brett died but—”
“It’s because of that citified shithead! He’s flouncing around in the kitchen with all his spices and cookbooks and coffee machine that looks like a goddamned robot. Forced her out, damn it.”
“Flouncing?” Liz remarked, stifling a laugh at Tanner’s rant. “I don’t think Jake can ‘flounce.’ He’s the same size as you, you big brute.”
“This isn’t funny, Lizzie,” Tanner snapped. “He’s disrupted our whole lives.”
Liz eased herself from behind her desk and walked over to Tanner, putting a hand on his arm.
He was worked up, likely because Rosy leaving meant yet more of his father’s old West Line Ranch was changing.
Change that was eating at him, especially after the way the rug had been pulled out from under them.
“Did she say that was why she was leaving?” she asked.
He shook his head and sank onto the beat-up leather couch along one wall.
Normally it was covered with magazines and odd bits of tack, but in a fit of boredom this morning she had cleaned her office.
Trevor had taken one look at her and told her in no way was he letting her near a horse.
Grudgingly, she had agreed. She felt like shit, was sore everywhere.
A day to sit might be a good thing, even if she was bored to tears.
There was all the never-ending paperwork to catch up on, after all.
“Who is going to take over cooking for the hands?” he asked. “City boy? I doubt he understands how to cook for a crew of men who actually work for a living.”
“Do you not think, Tanner, that a man who can run a restaurant in New York City can handle preparing lunch for a crew of ten on a daily basis? Come on.”
Tanner grumbled under his breath and thunked his head on the wall behind him, rattling all the framed pictures of horses and ribbons. “I just hate that this is all fucked up because of him.”
“It isn’t fucked up because of him. It’s fucked up because of your dad,” Liz stated, frustration growing.
Tanner growled under his breath, irritated that someone was calling him on his tantrum.
He was truly pissed off, and in this state, normally it was like reasoning with a bull during breeding season.
She was trying her best to understand his hurt, but sometimes he drove her nuts with the walls he put up.
Liz decided to try kicking his ass instead of playing to his grumpiness.
She’d had enough. He was being petulant, inventing reasons to be mad at this newfound brother, instead of the situation their father had created.
He was shooting the messenger, in a way, instead of being mad at the person responsible, which was Brett.
“Let him earn his keep. He’s as stuck here as we are with this situation. He’s a really, really good chef. But then, you wouldn’t know that, since you haven’t eaten dinner with us since he got here,” she said.
“You defending him?”
“Damn right I am. Take the frigging pickle out of your ass, you big shithead. He’s a good man. He’s tryin’, for god’s sake,” she admonished, half shouting.
Tanner looked at her, the turmoil plain on his face. He didn’t respond, but closed his eyes and let out a sigh that spoke more clearly than anything.
“You have a brother. He may not be a ranch-hardened cowboy, but he is a West, and he is trying to make sure that you and Brady can keep this damned place. Which is pretty frigging gracious considering how you’ve treated him,” she added softly.
That earned her a petulant grunt. She refrained from calling him a Neanderthal. At least Tanner wasn’t storming out, and the tic in his jaw had lessened. Maybe she was getting through to him.
“How do you think he feels, being stuck out here, surrounded by memories of a man he never knew, and from the sounds of it, was told didn’t want him?
He had a life he’s had to suddenly leave behind, and he has no anchor.
You get to stay put, keep your job, and in the bargain, gain a new sibling who wants to help around here as best he can. ”
Tanner waved his hands in resignation. “I get it, message received. But he’s pushing his nose into things he doesn’t need to. I don’t have time for assholes.”
“Pot, meet kettle,” she snapped back, which made him avert his eyes.
“What do you want me to do? Bring him some flowers and sing ‘Kum ba yah’?”
“For starters, come to dinner tonight, stop avoiding it,” she snapped, and sat back down behind her desk, signaling she was finished with her lecture.
She picked up her pen, and they glared at one another.
He stood with a jerk and took off his cap, running his hands through his hair and looking around her office, as if hesitant to leave.
Liz twisted her lips, watching him. He had the same hair as Jake.
Wavy, thick, and dark. His was lighter from being in the sun, and there was perhaps a hint of Veronica in there.
An image of Jake laughing at something she’d said while he cooked last night made her blink, and she sucked in a breath to make the image leave.
Damn it, that was not what she needed to be thinking about right now.
“All right. I’m sorry to unload on you,” he replied after a moment. “I’m fucking exhausted with all this.”
“I know. You don’t have to do everything, Tan. This will work out.”
He fiddled with the brim of the hat in his hands, looking down at it.
His shoulders were high and tight, his jaw clenched again, and Liz, even though she’d just given him a tongue-lashing, wished she could help him process this better.
The only person who could set him straight when he was this twisted up was Brett, and he was gone. She leaned on her arms.
“Tan? Maybe you should go talk to Brett,” she suggested.
“Talk. To Dad,” he said slowly. “Did that horse knock more than just your nose sideways? He’s dead, Lizzie.”
“Go talk to him anyway. It might help,” she replied, hoping he would figure it out.
He gave her a strange look, threw his hands in the air, and stalked out of the office, muttering about crazy people.
Liz waited a moment, then picked up her phone and texted Brady about Rosy, and added that Tanner was brooding again.
Brady texted back a bunch of silly-faced emojis, which made her smile as much as her tight, sore face would let her, and then she left it.
She had shit to do, and the tension Tanner had brought into the office had made her jumpy.
She found her thoughts circling back to Jake as she tried to refocus on her paperwork.
How nice it was to just have time with him last night, talking, eating some of the best chicken fajitas she’d ever had.
She’d stolen the rest of the tortillas, and they were in her fridge.
She’d wolfed one down with a hastily microwaved egg and a slice of processed cheese this morning for breakfast, and it had been the most delicious thing ever.
It was more than good company and food, though.
All evening, once they had mended the awkwardness of the day, he’d been relaxed, laughing, his deep masculine voice soothing and exciting all in the same breath.
She’d been keyed up when she went back to her house, and had sat up for an hour, watching random TV, her body thrumming with the arousal she’d had to tamp down.
“Hey.”
Speak of the sexy-as-hell devil. She looked up at Jake in the doorway, wearing jeans that rode low on his hips, a T-shirt that was molded to his chest and biceps, and a dark-blue baseball cap from which his hair curled out, just slightly. He smiled and stepped into her office as she stared at him.
“So this is where you hide all day,” he said, looking around.
“Not normally. Trevor is refusing to let me work the horses,” she replied, gesturing at her face and pushing back from her work. Swiveling in her chair, she threw her feet up on the desk, putting an invisible barrier between her and the entirely too sexy man invading her space.
Jake moved to the window looking into the indoor arena, and his reflection in the glass showed that he was thinking much too hard.
His jaw was flexing and he pulled his hat off, tossing it on the desk with a sharp huff of breath.
As he shoved his hands into his pockets, his shoulders rose, tense and tight.
A copy of his brother who had left not long before.
The windows in the arena were unboarded for summer, and the side door hadn’t been closed, allowing beautiful midday sunlight to beam into the office.
She liked how it added warmth to the room, and it had been nice watching the horses work in the relative shade the arena provided when it was so hot out.
Right now, the sunbeams were still slightly off center, casting Jake half in shadow.
It made him look mysterious, which was even sexier.
“You need something?” she asked, hoping to draw out whatever it was he was stewing on. “Normally when a West man comes into my office, it’s to complain or to ask a favor. Already had one come in. He was complainin’. You?”