Page 17 of Keeping His Brat

So, Jimmy had offered him a job instead. The money was enough to live on, and it came with the same cabin he’d grown up in rent free. He should have known that her father intended to train him up to be his next foreman when he threw the cabin in, but at the time it hadn’t occurred to him.

Jimmy handled things without hiring someone new to manage the place until he was confident that Sam could handle it. Out of high school, working full-time on the ranch, it hadn’t taken Sam long to get the hang of things. Once he had a couple years’ experience under his belt, Jimmy promoted him.

He expected some of the older men to be angry about it, and a few were, but less than he’d expected. Maybe it was because Sam had been doing chores there on weekends and during school breaks since he was a little kid, so it seemed like he had a lot more experience than he did. Or maybe they had just started to think of him as Jimmy’s son.

Jimmy had certainly treated him like one. While Sam’s feelings for Charlie wouldneverbe brotherly, he had really respected her father and did think of him as family. But the one thing he’d always regretted was not getting to go to college.

He wasn’t brilliant like Charlie, but he liked to learn, and he’d wanted to see what was out there. He didn’t, couldn’t, regret how things turned out. If things had been different maybe he would never have ended up with Charlie and nothing was worth that, but still…

She was right. He had the money to take any classes he wanted. And now there was technology so he could do it from home, the same way she was. The only problem was time. While Charlie wasn’t really needed much on the ranch, he definitely was and that did seem to bring everything back around to the idea of hiring someone to help him manage things.

Funny how it kept popping into his head lately, almost like the universe was giving him a hint.

“Hey Charlie? How’s the timeline on when the big house is going to be finished?”

She tilted her head and stared into the distance as she tried to recall. “Um, just a few more weeks and then we have to approve the work and discuss any changes, I think. Why?”

Getting the work started had been a big problem for them last year. Unexpected issues, namely her mother, had cropped up and that meant the contractors had been delayed. Once they’d started moving, they’d made up for lost time but not fast enough to make much of a start before winter had swept in early.

Since then, it had been on and off as they tried to catch the good days. It wasn’t the work that was the problem, since most of it was inside. It was the long trek out to the house on icy roads. Still, they’d done fairly well with the time they’d had. Last time he’d gone over to look he’d been shocked at the difference.

“Just thinking about future plans,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Well, partly what we’re going to do with this house when we move up to the big one.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe we should keep it so that when we fight one of us has some place to storm off to.”

He gave her a faux glare, narrowing his eyes and frowning. “You better not be storming off anywhere unless you want me to follow with a switch, girl.” It was all teasing, now, but if she ever did storm off, he’d follow through and she knew it.

Her eyes rolled. “I keep telling you you’ve gone mean, Sam. First thing you think about anymore is punishment.”

He was pretty sure she was kidding. He sent one eyebrow rising as he gave her a firm look. “And I keep telling you that you like me that way. Or are you going to lie and say this isn’t what you wanted? Let me think … who was it that wanted punishment?”

As usual thattook the wind out of her sails, and she made a huffing sound as she pointedly turned back to work with a pout on her lips.

He laughed and shook his head. “Brat.” He started to tell her about what he’d been thinking but then shook his head. Later they could discuss it, not when he had to go back to work.

“Listen, I’ve got to head back out. You keep going the way you have been, and I’ll see you around the usual time. I expect the house will be done.” He ruffled her hair and ignored her protest that he was messing it up, since he could clearly see she hadn’t gotten around to brushing it anyway.

But all that afternoon he kept thinking about their future. He was helping out, doing mindless work of sanding and staining wood, and it gave him a lot of time to think about things.

School was the first on the list to pop up. The idea was appealing, but it would just be about taking a few classes for his own satisfaction. Charlie had a goal to spur on her education, he didn’t.

If she finished her doctorate, she became a full owner in the ranch, which she wanted more than anything. And now that her father wasn’t there to guide her away from the field she wanted to study, her education could be an even bigger benefit to the spread. But they didn’t both need degrees for that.

He wasn’t going anywhere. He had no interest in a degree that he could use; he just liked the idea of learning. But there was more to life than school. He’d never seen much of the world. A few vacations when he was a kid, was about it.

And he liked the idea of seeing some of it with Charlie at his side. Rome, Paris, Egypt, he remembered dreaming about visiting those places when he was a kid. He’d given up those dreams the day his father had died, but now? He wasn’t just a lowly hand on a ranch anymore, or even a foreman.

Sam was half owner now, and while very few ranches were raking in the big bucks, he’d already discovered that his share was a lot more than what he’d been making as foreman. Some of the changes he’d made had paid off and he had other ideas he planned on trying eventually.

A lot of his plans were of the someday variety. All of them would require time he never seemed to have.

Charlie had ideas too and while she didn’t have his experience, she would eventually have the education to balance that. Then they’d have to see what they could do with the old place. But the facts were, they were doing fine for money between them.

Well,hewas doing fine. Charlie had inherited a windfall. He didn’t know, and didn’t intend to ask how much, but Jimmy had left her a hefty sum. All the expensive renovations she was putting into the big house wouldn’t cost her a fraction of what she’d received when her father died.

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