Chapter Twenty #2
After only an hour of sifting, he recognized his dad’s handwriting from the scrawled signatures on every invoice, but as for understanding anything more, he was lost. As he had attempted to create categories to sort, he quickly realized that he, Mr. City Slicker, had absolutely no idea what it took to run a ranch, despite his earlier thought of it being just like any other business.
There were invoices for the oddest things—when he’d opened a folder called Vet, the first invoice he looked at had fees for castration services.
He’d closed that one quickly and set it aside. All thoughts of the softness of Liz’s inner thigh were gone in an instant the minute he thought about what that bill meant.
“I was hoping to get it all into my laptop. At least put a few years of the financials in so you guys could see the business better. I have accounting software licenses from the restaurant, which I never canceled, so—”
“That’s really great of you,” Brady replied. “We could use some of that know-how around here until we get settled. Dad shoveled it onto the accountant and just seemed to have an instinct when it came to what was needed.”
Jake nodded at him, and their eyes met. “Thanks. Bigger job than I thought, but a couple of days of this will keep me busy, right?”
“Well, you got in late last night from taking your car back. I’d say something, or perhaps someone, kept you busy?” Brady said, a lighter tone to his voice.
“Um, yeah. Something like that. Late . . . yeah,” Jake replied. He didn’t want to spill about Liz yet, although coming into the house at 3 a.m. carrying his shoes and his door hinges creaking likely woke Brady up. His guest room was just down the hall from Brady’s.
“No judgment from here, New York. I already said my piece,” Brady replied, and winked at him.
A bit of the worry about how his brothers—and Peony, for that matter—would react when they figured out he and Liz were sleeping together left.
He cracked his neck and let Brady’s comment lie, and changed the conversation over to safer topics, which turned into Jake asking questions and Brady plopping himself into a chair and very patiently humoring him, like he had before on the porch.
Jake’s natural curiosity took over, wanting to understand the real parts of all the invoices and receipts he was piling up.
He quizzed Brady on the crops they grew and the cows, trying to get a sense for the revenue streams the ranch relied on each year, piecing together bits of information he’d pulled from the paperwork he had already sifted through.
Brady answered him candidly and seemed happy he wanted to know, and Jake appreciated that more than he’d ever let on.
Jake hated being treated like an idiot, and it irritated him at the best of times.
In the past, he’d been the expert, and he briefly wondered if he’d always treated his new hires with the respect Brady was showing.
It was humbling, feeling what so many young cooks might’ve felt like as they got their footing.
As Brady moved a stack of folders to his desk to sort, he began talking about some of his ideas for the ranch, and Jake started enjoying himself.
Brady was a great storyteller, and learning more about him away from the dinner table meant he got to see another side to his brother.
The rancher, the working man; not just the funny, kind guy who tried to please everybody.
“I’ve got this crazy idea to grow peanuts. The ranch has this area we call Sandstone Ridge, we bought it a while ago, and it has a south facing slope, plus the perfect conditions,” Brady said.
“Peanuts?” Jake asked, intrigued. “Would they grow here?”
“The soil composition along the slope down from the ridge is really sandy. Not ideal, but we can amend it with nutrients that would suit a strain that’s hardy in our zone. No idea on yield first year, but it’d definitely be fun to try.”
“What else could you grow there?” Jake asked. If peanuts didn’t work, there had to be something profitable.
“Potatoes or carrots, maybe. Not sure the ridge has enough acreage for sugar beets. The amount we’d have to grow to meet minimum supply quota for the sugar plant in Taber is a lot.”
“What does Tanner say about all this?” Jake asked carefully, wondering if Brady had any sway with his older brother. “Or have you told him any of this?”
Brady shook his head. “Haven’t. I talked to Dad about it a few weeks before he died.
He was adamantly against any of it. Said peanuts weren’t worth .
. . um . . . peanuts when it came to cash crops.
He said stick to soybeans and corn and leave the ridge to pasture.
I’ve always wanted to try new things, given the sheltered nature of the ridge, but Dad never did anything with it except put cattle on it.
He said, ‘Corn sells. Experiments don’t,’ and that was that. ”
“Well, why not do it next year, then? The place is yours now,” Jake offered.
“That would pop the top of Tanner’s head clean off!
” Brady laughed. “Now is not the time to experiment, with all of this up in the air. We’d have to start planning crops real soon, secure seed, that sort of thing.
I’d need to buy a new type of planter and harvester.
That all takes money he won’t want to part with until West Line is back in our hands. ”
Jake sighed, and figured Brady knew what he was talking about, understanding his brother—and the nature of ranching business—better than Jake could. The entrepreneur in him wanted to dive into it, because it seemed like an interesting experiment. Peanuts. Huh.
“Well, maybe soon, then,” he offered, wanting to give Brady a boost.
“Yeah. Listen. Let’s finish this up. I originally came in here to offer you a chance to ride today, show you some of the land this afternoon. Weather’s good, breeze knocks the bugs back, and it isn’t fry-your-balls hot.”
“I’d like that,” Jake replied, meaning it.
“Okay, well, then. Start shoveling this sh—er, paper—and we’ll get our asses out of the office,” Brady drawled, and they both laughed.
Brady was fixing the warped side of the drawer of the cabinet by hitting it repeatedly with the bootjack from the corner when Tanner appeared in the doorway.
Between each loud metallic whack Brady was full-on belly laughing at a story Jake was regaling him with about receiving a full truckload of tomatoes instead of potatoes at a restaurant when an assistant had filled out the order sheet wrong and they’d had to think fast to use them all up.
Everyone had been stained red up to their shoulders from processing it all so it wouldn’t go bad.
The smell they’d contended with meant Jake still, to this day, couldn’t make Bolognese sauce from scratch without feeling queasy.
“Brady,” Tanner deadpanned, flicking a glance at Jake but not acknowledging him.
“Hey, Tan. What’s up?” Brady answered, setting the bootjack down and examining his handiwork, then sliding the drawer very slowly in along the tracks, the metal-on-metal screech making Jake wince and Tanner swear under his breath.
Jake looked back at Brady when he did. Brady was smirking from ear to ear.
Tanner’s black eye was slowly fading, his jaw still slightly swollen along the left side. He hadn’t shaved, and the haggard expression was deeper than normal, which meant he hadn’t been sleeping.
“You got a minute? I need some advice on the big rotary combine. Bobby says the drum is off-balance and we can’t get the screen bolted back on. He’s trying to get it ready for the soybean test field.”
“Yeah, sure. Listen, I’m taking Jake out for a ride this afternoon. You haven’t swung a leg over all week. Come with us? That drum’s always been off-kilter, and I think the axle on the cylinder is bent. We don’t need it yet. Test field’s a month out from being ready. The combine can wait.”
Tanner stood still, eyes on the floor, his lips pinched together. Jake was expecting a flat-out refusal, asshole remark, or him simply storming out, but then his brother let out a heavy breath and nodded.
“Sure. Okay. Put City Boy on somethin’ safe. Hell, put him on Dolly for all I care.”
“Dolly?” Brady asked. “Come on, Tan, she’s not sound enough to—”
“Then Sandy, or Casper. One of the cow ponies. Until he proves he recognizes the front end of a horse from the arse, I am not willing to take chances with him gettin’ himself hurt,” Tanner blurted, glaring at Jake, before, as expected, storming out.
Brady whistled and set the screwdriver down. “I expected him to—”
“Say no?” Jake finished for him. “Same. Who’s Dolly?”
“Our forty-something-year-old blind cow pony,” Brady said, a hint of humor in his voice. “I think he expects to lead you around on a rope, New York.”
Jake blinked at that and then laughed. He’d give Tanner credit for that one. Inside joke, but one that was thinly veiled as an insult.
But he hadn’t refused, and he’d said he didn’t want Jake to get hurt. He hoped that could be a start to them figuring each other out, because they were both acting like horse’s asses.
That he could recognize, no help from anyone needed.