Page 53 of Keeping His Brat

Want? No, she definitely didn’t want to tell him anything. Need was more like it. For once she skipped her typical evasion tactics. “I guess you saw I’d made a few changes in the barn?”

“Yes.” Short and to the point and then he folded his arms across his chest and waited.

“I hope you’re not too mad… honestly it started out because I was having trouble getting the guys to listen to me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a woman, or because half of them watched me grow up, but it was making me mad. I just wanted to show them that I knew what I was doing.”

She sighed and slumped back in her seat. The two women that worked on the ranch had given her just as much trouble. But it was different, more like they wanted to challenge her to see what she would do.

She could handle that. With the men it had been more patronizing which always rubbed her wrong. She wasn’t a little girl tagging along with her father anymore.

“Did it work?” he asked.

“Yes, actually. Once they saw that my suggestions were making things more efficient. They stopped telling me ‘We don’t do it like that,’ and started listening.”

“And is that why you started shifting around jobs? I hear you overruled Ben and reassigned people.” His voice was neutral, and she couldn’t tell from it or from his expression how he felt.

“No, I did that because Ben is terrible at bossing people around. He assigns people that he knows will give him a hard time easy jobs, so they won’t dig their heels in. He doesn’t go by their skills. And workers like Jeff get away with murder. He worked as a carpenter for years before he switched to ranching and shouldn’t be shoveling manure when there are better things for him to do.”

By the time she got to the end she realized it had turned into a rant. She flushed and pushed her hair back out of her face. “Sorry.”

Sam tilted his head. “For what?” He sounded honestly curious.

Charlie really only meant she was sorry for going off about Ben, but it occurred to her Sam might think she owed an apology for taking charge while he was gone. But he’d said he wanted her their to keep an eye on things.

She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip, thinking. She’d gone way too far, and Sam didn’t even know how far yet. “I don’t know. I guess I’m sorry if you’re mad because I don’t want to get in trouble.” That was an honest answer at least.

He was silent for a minute and then he shifted his chair back with a scraping sound. He leaned in, elbows on the table to cradle his chin as he looked at her. “Here’s the thing, Charlie, all the changes you make seem to be better. Ben thinks so anyway, and I could see the logic in all of it so I’m willing to give it a try.”

She straightened, starting to smile but he interrupted it with a quick headshake. “Don’t get too happy there, girl. You’re still in trouble and I think you know that.”

“But I—” She cut herself off and looked down.

“Yeah. So, whatever reason you had for starting it, and I can see why you were tempted, you visited every night while I was gone, and you never said a word to me. Did you?”

She was silent, continuing to look down.

“I expect an answer, Charlie.”

She sighed. “No, Daddy. I thought you might get upset.”

“Because we’ve had a talk about you trying to do things on the ranch without asking first. Haven’t we?”

“Yes Daddy.”

“Who’s in charge of this ranch?”

“You are. But you did tell me you wanted me here to run things!” She couldn’t stop herself from blurting out that excuse.

‘That’s true. But I think we both know you went further than that.”

Yeah, she knew. Especially with her last decision. “Sorry Daddy. I should have told you what I was doing.”

“I said when you went back to school and had some more experience to back things up, I would listen to you. You should have trusted me enough to talk it over with me.”

She should have. But by the time she’d thought of it she’d already ordered a number of modifications, so it was a bit too late to get permission first. “It wasn’t about trust, Daddy. I do trust you. It was just that once I was in charge, I started to see more of what wasted time, and what could be improved. And with the guys second guessing everything I said—well, it was natural to just go ahead and switch things up.”

“Okay.”

She waited, but he didn’t say anything else. After a few more seconds she slowly lifted her head to look at him. He didn’t seem angry. “Just … okay?” she asked, hesitation clear in her voice.

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