Page 35 of Snowed In With the Mountain Man
Lizzy’s comment about how she hadn’t been the one to take responsibility after their father died still rankled even now.
She ought to get over it. But Lizzy hadn’t just found a nerve, she’d touched it with a live wire.
Dahlia shot up out of her seat and paced the room. One time. The one time in her life that she didn’t leap to take charge of a family crisis, and this was how she was punished. Now she was at the whim of Saint Emma and her loyal guard dog Lizzy who wanted some dream life here at the ranch like they really were one big happy family.
“Impossible,” she mumbled.
But it was two against one, and they were stuck at a standstill until the other sisters showed.
Dahlia stopped short. This she could do. She wasn’t sure she’d have any more luck than Emma tracking down the mysterious Madison or the reclusive April, but she could darn well get her own full-blooded sister here.
Snatching her phone from the desk, she brought up Daisy’s contact info and hit Call before she could overthink it.
If she did, she’d psych herself right out of doing what had to be done.
Dahlia rubbed at her throbbing temple. It probably didn’t matter anyway. Daisy likely wouldn’t even pick up—
“Dahlia?” Daisy’s voice surprised her more than she cared to admit.
It wasn’t like she’d been hoping Daisy wouldn’t answer, but…
Yeah, okay, fine. She’d been hoping to get voice mail.
Dahlia cleared her throat. “Hey, Daisy.”
Silence.
Dahlia could just imagine Daisy’s pretty features screwed up in confusion at the unscheduled call. They had regular check-in calls every other weekend—a system Dahlia put in place to ensure that she and her flaky twin sister didn’t go months without speaking.
“Is Rose okay?” Daisy asked, concern twinging her voice, which sounded melodic and sweet even when she was just talking. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah. She’s fine. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk to you about this ranch business—”
Daisy cut her off with a sigh. “Not now, D, okay? I’m too busy with the band at the moment. I can’t even think about the inheritance right now.”
“No onewants to be dealing with this right now,” Dahlia snapped, her tone already getting too harsh, but there was little she could do to stop it.
No matter how much she wanted things to be different between them, the moment they interacted it was like they reverted back to being twelve years old. They were trapped in their roles—all the time, really, but whenever Dahlia talked to Daisy she felt it more than ever. Her role in the family that she couldn’t seem to escape.
“So stop trying to control everything, you big dragon!”
Lizzy had nailed it. Dahlia couldn’t even escape her family role with her newfound sisters.
She scrubbed a hand over her eyes. It was pointless to even try.
After all, someone had to take charge, right?
But why does it always have to be me?
She’d been so caught up in her own thoughts, she hadn’t even realized that Daisy had totally ignored her comment and was babbling on about the tour she’d just finished.
Dahlia pinched her lips together. Daisy was a master at avoiding topics she didn’t want to discuss. She was equally adept at ignoring problems she didn’t want to see, or handling responsibilities she didn’t want to face…
And why should she have to when Dahlia was always there to handle those responsibilities for her?
But not this time.
“Daisy… Daisy!” she interrupted. “This isn’t going to just go away. At some point we have to deal with the fact that there are sisters in the world we didn’t know about and our father left us an inheritance.”
