Page 8 of Wanting Wentworth

“Well...” Focused on popping the yolk on her own eggs, she flicks one of those nervous smiles in my father’s direction. “Your father had a meeting with Mr. Morris yesterday afternoon.”

The cyclone in my belly picks up speed, the twisting swirl of it so fast I’m suddenly dizzy enough to see spots. “And?”

“And it seems Brock and his father are ready to agree to your father’s terms.” Seeing the look on my face, her mouth tightens at its corners again. “He’ll be here on Friday to take you to dinner and a movie so the two of you can get reacquainted—” Setting her fork down, she gives me a sympathetic look that my father misses completely. “isn’t that nice?”

Nice?

No, it’s not nice.

It’s so not nice that I feel my hands grip around the edge of the table and my arms tense with the urge to flip it over while I scream it out loud.

“You’re gonna wear a dress,” my father informs me before lifting the last bite of his breakfast to his open mouth. Chewing and swallowing, he drops his gaze to my white-knuckled fingers, still gripped around the table for a moment before he lifts it back up to meet mine. “You’ll let Abbey fix your hair and put on some of that make-up of hers she thinks I don’t know about.” Staring at me with flat blue eyes, he waits for me to do the unthinkable. To tell him no. When I don’t, he gives me a stiff nod. “Your mother and I have some business to attend to in Helena,” he tells me before he stands. “We’ll be home tomorrow evening.” Moving to stand behind my mother’s chair, he pulls it away from the table. When my mother starts to protest that she still has the breakfast dishes to contend with before she can get ready to leave, my father shoots me a look over her head. “It’s okay, Hilly,” he tells her while he gently pulls her from her seat. "Kaitlyn will take care of it before she heads to Northpoint for the day, won’t you?”

Numb from the series of knockout punches I’ve been delivered, all I can do is nod and mumble, “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” A terse word and another one of those angry mouth twitches are all I get before he leads my mother out of the kitchen, leaving me to clean up the mess.

FIVE

Kaitlyn

I clean the kitchen before heading to the barn. After mucking out stalls and delivering breakfast to the horses housed within it, I take myself outside to watch the sunrise. Slumping into a hard wooden stool parked right outside the door, I stare into the dark and wait for the sun to appear while Two-tone finishes eating so I can saddle him up for the ride to Northpoint.

After the accident, my father refused to replace the ranch’s work truck. He said it was an unnecessary expense but I think it was just another way to punish me. I wish I could tell him that his efforts are useless. There’s nothing he can do to me that will hurt as much as what’s already been done. I’m punished and I’ll stay that way for the rest of my life.

There’s about fifty-yards between the house and the barn. Sitting in the shrinking dark, listening to the quiet munch of horses and hay, I hear the front door close and watch as my father leads my mother out of the house. Holding hands, they make the short trip across the grass, my father moving past my mom to open the passenger side door on his truck before helping her into it. Slamming the door closed, I keep watching while he rounds the front of the truck, stopping to aim a look at the barn before he opens his own door and climbs into the driver’s seat. Seconds later, the truck’s engine rumbles to life. I don’t bother to wave as they drive away because I know my father.

He's not looking at me.

Never does unless he absolutely has to.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I look away from the taillights disappearing in the distance. Letting my eyes close, I feel that lump start to grow until it’s doubled in size and on the verge of choking me dead. Tilting my head back, chin tipped toward the sky while I press the crown of it into the rough siding of the barn, I fight the urge to break down and cry.

After nearly three years of dancing around each other, Mitch Morris and my father have finally settled on an agreement that will see Brock and I married. Seems old fashioned and borderline barbaric but it’s the way things are still done sometimes, especially when there’s tens of thousands of acres and five times as many cattle involved.

Barr TT is the largest ranch in Barrett Valley—just over twenty thousand acres. The Double M is half as big but we share a fence line that makes us neighbors. If family history is to be believed, the land the Double M sits on used to be Barrett, lost to a long dead Morris in a fit of hubris during a drunken game of poker. It’s been the Barrett’s mission to get it back ever since and it’s been the Morris mission to hold us at bay. When I was fifteen, Brock Morris asked me to his senior prom. My father started pushing for a match between us long before that and Mitch, Brock’s father, has been playing hard to get for just as long. Why he’s finally agreed to it is anyone’s guess.

You gotta get out of there, Kaity. You can’t just stand there like a dummy while Dad tries to auction you off like a prize heifer.

“Easy for you to say.” Eyes still closed, I sigh. “You got out, remember?”

You can’t give up. Not when you’re so close.

“Who said I was giving up? I’m not—”

“Talking to Luke again?”

Like earlier this morning, my eyes pop open and I lower my chin to see Damien Bravebird standing in front of me, an amused smile on his face.

Forgetting I’m mad at him for bringing his friend from California to Barr TT and messing everything up, I smile because it’s hard not to smile at Damien. “Maybe.” With anyone else, I might be embarrassed to be caught talking to my dead brother but not with him. In the past couple of years, Damien’s become just about the only friend I have left.

Still grinning, he nods like talking to my dead brother is perfectly normal behavior. “Your dad tell you about Northpoint?” Even though he can’t possibly understand how badly this whole thing has screwed me over, he sounds almost apologetic about it. Probably because he knows that it’ll be my responsibility to clean up after our mystery guest.

“That he rented it out for the entire month to a friend of yours?” I try not to sound bitter about it but the look on his face tells me I failed miserably. “Yeah. He told me. I’m waiting for Two-tone to finish his breakfast so I can head up there to give it a good cleaning.”

“I’m sorry, Kait.” He shakes his head on a sigh that confirms my suspicions. “I’d never have asked if it wasn’t completely necessary.” Damien winces when I give him an unladylike snort in response. “I’m actually headed to Helena to pick him up from the airport,” he says, gesturing toward his truck. “You want a ride to Northpoint on my way out? I’ll be back by noon or so. I can give you a ride back then.”

Throwing a look down the drive I think about it for a moment. It's creeping up on five AM. Noon would give me roughly seven hours. Plenty of time to get it tidied and do what I need to before Damien gets back from the airport with his friend.

---