Chapter Twenty-seven
A magnet was one thing, the filing cabinet was another. Once this mess was settled, he was going to buy a new one for his brothers as a parting gift. The rust, barely openable drawers, and flaking paint had to go.
He’d make sure the magnet transferred over, though.
It had taken him most of the afternoon, but all the files were sorted and entered, and he officially had a working set of books. The older stuff he’d just refiled. When—or if—he had time, he’d enter more.
He’d looked up Canada Revenue Agency rules, unfamiliar with how to submit taxes in this country when he realized he didn’t even have a clue about how to set them up either.
The rules he’d skimmed said seven years of records were required if a business was audited.
That was a lot of shuffling through papers and tearing his hair out, so he banked on three to save him some time down the road if it ever happened.
His laptop was humming away, the accounting software importing all of the spreadsheets he’d hammered out, and the ranch was about twenty minutes away from a set of financial statements ready for the accountant.
“Box for you,” Tanner said as he strode into the office, interrupting Jake’s thoughts as he stared at the progress bar on his laptop. “Came this morning in the mail delivery.”
Jake caught the thin parcel box that Tanner tossed to him, and peered at the label.
“It’s the paternity test thing,” Tanner added as he sat down in his chair at his desk.
Cheek swab results were back. The tests were a formality, and he wasn’t keen on opening it up, especially with all they had to deal with today, but he figured he might as well; no sense in delaying it.
Jake wondered why Frank had mailed them instead of calling him. Huh.
He’d talked to Frank this morning, catching him up on where they were, poking him for progress on their much-needed loophole to get out from under Brett’s will.
Frank was still elbow-deep in inheritance law and was no further ahead.
However, Jake wasn’t suffering due to the delay, his thoughts turning to Liz as he drummed his fingers on the box.
He wasn’t where he should be, even if right now he was where he wanted to be.
New York was home. Restaurants and new ventures were where his head should be.
Instead, he was thinking about whether Liz would want to go into town for dinner tonight, if the reports that were generating on his laptop would be enough to give him a picture of the ranch financials and maybe help prove the viability of Brady’s peanut idea.
It felt strange not to be hustling like mad, always thinking and moving and working on the next big thing. The pace out here was changing the hurry inside him, the quiet at night urging him to let go of the ever-expanding to-do list in his head and just listen.
“Let’s have a look, shall we?” Jake pulled the tab to open the box, and a fat envelope fell onto the desk.
He lifted the flap and unfolded the papers.
Four pages, one with a summary of the tests done, and a bill that showed paid in full.
Odd. He’d assumed there would be more to it, like a manual on how to read the damned results or something.
Instead, there was just a page for each test subject, with a bunch of letters and numbers dotted in a column down each one. He shuffled them and squinted. He had no idea what he was looking at.
“Let me see. These can’t be much different than cattle genome indexing,” Tanner said gruffly, and Jake handed them over to him wordlessly. Tanner shuffled them as well, squinting much like Jake had, but then stopped when he got to the third page.
“What is it?” Jake asked. He knew Tanner well enough to know that the wrinkles on his forehead and his mouth forming that thin, angry frown said he was about to get mad.
Much like his own face, really.
“I think we need to find Brady. Now.”
“Okay,” Jake said, his brother’s tone indicating it was something serious. He looked at the paper that Tanner was holding as he texted Brady. Tanner pointed to the line at the bottom, which had two results. Only one mattered.
Probability of paternity: 0%.
A chill stole over Jake and he looked up at Tanner, who was trying his best, surprisingly, not to explode. He handed the papers to Jake and slouched in his seat.
Jake scanned the rest of the paper and then looked at the top of the sheet.
It was Brady’s name at the top.
“Fuck.” This was serious. He glanced at Tanner, who was now worriedly rubbing at his forehead, eyes closed.
“How do I tell him this? What do I say?” Tanner muttered.
Jake didn’t know what to say, either, right now or to Brady. Brady, who was as much a part of this place as Tanner, who had poured himself into it to please his father.
Who wasn’t actually his father.
Jake set the papers down on his father’s desk and blew out a big breath, closing his own eyes for a moment, counting to ten.
A wastepaper basket flew across the room, crashing into the wall opposite them.
Jake followed the trail of empty potato chip bags and crumpled paper across the floor then back to his brother, where Tanner had his face buried in his hands.
“This can’t get much worse.” His voice was muffled. “I—”
Jake needed to handle this situation for Tanner, who had just been dealt yet another blow in the never-ending drama that seemed to be unfolding around them. He sent a quick text to Liz to come over to the cattle barn as soon as possible.
If you were going to rip off an adhesive bandage, it was better to do it quickly.
Liz being here would help, because he had no idea how Brady was going to take the news, and she could run interference.
Brady was always the happy one, the one who made everyone calm down, made jokes, kept the peace. But this? This changed things.
Brady stuck his head around the corner a minute later, then picked up the very dented basket, looking at it curiously before setting it down under his own desk. He didn’t remark on it, which meant that it was likely not the first time Tanner had abused it.
“Liz is on her way. She was on a horse when you texted. What’s up?”
Tanner hadn’t moved since he had sent the basket into orbit, but he looked up now. Pain and anger radiated out of him, and Brady immediately went over to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder.
“What’s happened?” he asked gently, looking over at Jake. “What do you need?”
“I don’t know how else to do this, so here.”
Jake handed him the papers. Brady side-eyed him curiously, but took them and scanned them. He looked each one over, then stopped when he got to his.
“Well, shit,” he said, and sat on the edge of Tanner’s desk, his hand on his mouth, blinking rapidly.
“You’re still a West,” Tanner growled quietly, steel cutting through the emotion in his voice. “That doesn’t change.”
Brady nodded, eyes scanning the rows of numbers, and Jake put his hands in his pockets, waiting it out.
This was not something he could comment on, nor would he want to intrude until they’d said what they needed to say to one another, if that was going to happen now.
These two men had been brothers since birth, were still brothers by their mother, of course, but there was a deeper bond that no one could break that had formed during a lifetime together.
A bond Jake could never fully understand.
He watched Brady process, and then Brady sighed, put the papers down, and leveled Tanner with a look.
“Hoo, boy. More than ever, I wish Mom was here to explain this one,” he said.
“You think?” Tanner muttered, raising an eyebrow.
Silence followed. The two men looked at one another, not saying a thing, but you could tell there was a conversation happening. Jake cleared his throat, and Brady snapped out of whatever he was thinking and looked between Jake and Tanner, sighing heavily.
“I don’t know what to say to this, you know?”
“Nothing. There is nothing to say. You are still a West,” Tanner cut in, and stood. His temper had finally won, and he was mad. He flexed his hands, glared at the papers, then grabbed his hat and shoved it onto his head.
“Got shit to do,” he muttered, and strode out of the room.
Brady watched him go and let out another deep sigh. He slouched, leaning against the desk and leveled Jake a tired look.
“So I guess this explains why I’m not a tall, dark-haired tornado like you two,” he said, a smile flicking across his face before it fell, his eyes darting out the window.
Jake followed his gaze, watching Tanner angrily jump onto a tractor with a hay-bale spike on the front and ram it into gear, heading toward the hay shed, dirt from the big knobbly tires churning up behind him.
“You okay?” Jake asked.
“I will be, yeah. Truth? I always wondered,” Brady replied, and stepped around the corner to his brother’s recently evacuated chair, sinking into it.
Liz walked in just as he did and looked between them. She put her hands on her hips.
“Who pissed off Tanner this time? He’s currently spiking round bales and moving them from one side of the storage shed to the other for no apparent reason. He only does that when he’s really mad,” she said, humor in her voice. The smile on her face vanished the moment her eyes met Jake’s.
Jake shook his head at her and handed her the papers. “This.”
She raised her eyebrow at him, looked down at the page, and gasped, her eyes then flying to Brady.
“Brady. Is this—”
“Yep. Brett isn’t my dad. Got any theories on who it might be?” Brady interrupted, raising his eyebrows at her and sticking his tongue out over his bottom lip.
“You’re taking this awfully well,” Liz shot back, and tilted her head. “You knew, didn’t you.”
“No, not one hundred percent. But I’ve suspected for years. I mean, look at me!” he said, and gestured at himself. “I’m not a slightly less weathered copy of my dad, like these two meatheads. Me? I’m the weird one.”
“You aren’t weird,” Liz muttered, and set the papers down, coming over to Brady and leaning over him from behind, circling her arms around him. “You’re my adopted baby West brother, no matter what some stupid piece of paper says. You’re also still the smart one.”
At that, he chuckled and patted her joined hands. “Yup. I’ll agree to that.”
Jake, thankful for Liz right then, nodded at that statement and picked up the test results. He opened the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and dropped them into the file marked Inheritance Mess. He’d deal with what this meant later.
He was wondering how much more his brothers could take. This was yet another straw on the proverbial camel, which Brady considered the horse he’d ridden—Sandy—to be, and he shifted, stiffness invading his legs. Yesterday’s insanity seemed far away and inconsequential now.
How did you deal with finding out your dad isn’t your dad? Jake had always known who his father was, proven now by the testing. Brady had been lied to his whole life. Maybe Brett had been lied to as well? If Brady had always wondered, did others?
This family was one big mess. Him included.
“All right, then. Moving on. If I’m not a true West, then when paperwork gets signed back over, it will be under Tan only, right?” Brady said, and stood, snapping Jake back to the problem at hand.
“No. This place is as much yours, man. Listen, I’m going to call Frank and ask why he didn’t give us a heads-up about this.
I’m surprised, unless he never bothered to look, assuming the tests would be the results we expected.
But who knows. We’ll work it out.” Jake was grasping at things to say to make it sound like it was okay. It wasn’t, not by a long shot.
Brady nodded and put a hand on Jake’s shoulder as he passed him, heading toward the door. “You’re a good man, New York. Thanks,” he said quietly, and then left the office.
Jake pulled Liz into him and circled his arms around her. She put hers around his waist, chin on his chest, and looked up at him. He looked down, into her eyes. She looked worried.
“This is . . . I don’t even know what to think or say about this,” Liz said.
“I wasn’t expecting so much excitement when I first got here, you know,” Jake said, trying to keep his voice light. “It was so quiet I thought I’d go mad from boredom. You all had me fooled.”
Liz snorted a laugh and squeezed him. “You okay?” she asked.
“I will be after this,” he murmured, and kissed her gently. She lifted herself up to him, returning the kiss, then stepped away from him just as quickly, biting her lip.
“Work first, City Boy, then play,” she teased, waving her index finger at him, chastising him.
“All right, all right.” He laughed and turned back to his desk, waving her away. He jumped as a hand dug into his back jeans pocket and pinched his butt, and before he could turn around and grab her, she was already running out the door, laughing.
She was taking it quite well too. Likely catching up to Brady to make sure he really was okay. That had been nice. Natural. Normal. He had a brief thought that this could be every day, that small moment of comfort that would erase any amount of tension. To come home to her laugh and touch.
He stowed the thought and picked up his phone.
He needed to deal with the paternity results first. Then he could figure out just what Liz was starting to mean to him.
Which was something more than just a casual fling.
Last night had proven that, because the look in her eyes when he was deep inside her and the tenderness afterward was anything but casual.
As he was dialing Frank’s number, he spied the blue lettered dad sign Brady had made, and ran his fingers along the edge of the lettering, the paint smooth, the edge of the wood rough.
It had an entirely different meaning now, not just for Brady, but for all of them.
More secrets to unlock from a man who’d seemed straight and narrow.
More twists and turns in this entirely messed up situation.
Frank’s receptionist picked up, and Jake adjusted his eyes out to where Tanner was still angrily ramming round bales with a tractor, and sighed.
This news might affect Tanner more than Brady, and he wasn’t quite sure how much more his brother could take.