Page 16 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

“Dad.” Sierra cut him off, and that felt good too. And it was so unusual that he stopped and gaped at her. “This is my notice. Effective immediately, I’m leaving.”

He only stared at her, until she started to wonder if she’d only imagined that she’d said anything. “What on earth are you talking about?”

At least she wasn’t hallucinating conversations. That felt like a win.

“I told you at dinner,” she said, as calmly as possible. “I’ve moved to Cowboy Point. I’m going to be working with Boone this summer. I want to give that venture my all and I won’t be able to work here while doing it. I assumed that you wouldn’t be interested in giving me a leave of absence, so I’m quitting.”

Her father kept staring at her as if she wasn’t making sense. As if the actual words she was speaking weren’t making at sense. “You can’t justquit.”

“I can,” she contradicted him, but gently. Very gently. “If you mean contractually, you might recall that I never signed a contract. You said I was your daughter and the contract was implied.”

“I mean because of all the open cases that you’re handling,” he began, in that ponderous tone that he liked to use when he thought he was proving that she wasn’t as bright as she ought to have been. A common point of contention at home.

It occurred to her to wonder why she’d always told stories about that as if it was funny. When it didn’t really feel all that funny today.

“I left extensive notes on all of my cases,” she told him, careful to keep her voice as even as possible. “It should be no trouble at all for someone else to step in and take over. And of course, you can always call me if there are any questions. I haven’t died. I’m simply shaking up my life a little bit.”

Kenneth stared at her as if she was sprouting new heads with every word. “Is this the influence of that Boone character?” he asked, in repressive tones. “How many times must I point out that he’s a glorified farmer, Sierra. If that. What on earth do you think he has to offer you?”

If Sierra was a different person, she thought she would be deeply offended that he could only imagine her leaving if there was some man making her. Orofferingsomething.

Even though there was.

“For one thing, Dad, he’s nice to me,” Sierra retorted, before she could think it through.

She regretted it instantly. Her father recoiled as if she had shouted obscenities at him, and possibly tossed one of his ostentatious paperweights at his head.

“I think what you need to do is have a conversation with your poor husband,” Kenneth said, sounding weary and disappointed, while also managing to convey his sympathy for Matty. It reminded her that for all his faults, he’d always been a good lawyer. He knew how to work a courtroom. “He can’t possibly be in support of all of this… nonsense.”

“I’ll be sure to ask him the next time I see him,” Sierra replied, maybe not as calmly as she might have hoped. When her father only stared back at her, as if he expected her to call Matty on the spot, she sighed. “In any case, you should probably start looking for a new paralegal, Dad. If I decide to start paralegalling again, it won’t be until the end of the summer. You’ll need someone to support you until then.”

Kenneth let out a puff of sound, maybe some kind of laugh. “You can’t possibly think that you can flit out of this job that I was kind enough to give you when you were a wet-behind-the-ears college graduate and imagine that it will be held open for you. That you can just walk back in whenever you feel like it, can you?”

Sierra shrugged. “If it’s not available to me when I want to come back, then I won’t come back. Problem solved.”

She got up then, though that was risk. It was possible that her father would be able to see how shaky she was and she really didn’t want that.

Nonetheless, she managed to smile at him as serenely as possible—made a lot easier because he appeared to be turning red—and then turned and walked out before he could startblustering.

“I’m taking a little break from the office,” she told Mrs. Lloyd. “Boone needs some help with his dairy.”

The older woman laughed. “If that man needs your help, Sierra, I can’t think of a single reason you wouldn’t provide it.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Sierra agreed, and even though she could hear the ominous sound of her father’s chair creaking—a lot like he was getting up and heading this way—she also saw the quizzical expression on Mrs. Lloyd’s face.

Not regarding her father. Mrs. Lloyd could handle Kenneth.

It had something to do with what Sierra had said aboutfriends, and it started anothershimmyingsensation, a lot like last night. Like she wasthis closeto understanding something that everyone else already knew—

God, I hate this feeling, she thought grumpily, but there was no time to ask the other woman about it. She didn’t want to go another round with her father, so all she did was smile, then leave the office.

She went back outside before her father let his temper take control, which would probably involve a lot of shouting. She climbed into her car and sat there, not sure what she wanted to do next.

Once again, she waited for a big tidal wave of fear and uncertainty and second guessing to wash over her, but it never came.

So she put the Jeep into gear, and drove herself over to get herself the coffee drink she felt she deserved, and who cared that it had more fat and calories than a human being was supposed to consume in a week.

That, she decided, could be future Sierra’s problem.

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