Page 37 of The Lover
I nodded. Then I reached out to take her hand. “Come on. Let me show you what else I’ve done.”
I took her out to the barn to show her the expansion I put on it. “If we ever have a storm like the one we had, I wanted to make sure we had the extra room.”
Then as we walked out to the pen I gave her the numbers breakdown on the herd and the count of calves.
“Jake, how did we do that? We’re almost back to full capacity.”
“And we’ve got a new bull,” I said, pointing to the pen where Rupert was currently having his way with a cow.
“This is impossible. I’ve been doing the books. I know every dollar that’s been spent. How did you afford all this?”’
I looked at her and that was all it took.
“Jake Talley! You used the money I gave you for your house and spent it on Long Valley instead!”
“Ellie, if you thought there was a chance in hell I was going to keep that money, then you don’t know me as well you think do.”
She frowned. “I thought you caved too easily.”
“There was no use arguing about it.”
“But your house! How is that ever going to get built?”
“You spend a lot of time worrying about my house.”
“Because Jake, if this thing we’re doing doesn’t work, if we break up, you need to have somewhere to go.”
“If webreak up,” I said (I have no idea why I made rabbit ears around that. I hate rabbit ears. Rabbit ears are stupid unless they are on real rabbits.) “I’ll cross that bridge then.”
She huffed, but didn’t say much after that. I walked her out to the bunk house and knocked on Rich’s door. He opened and I could smell the booze on him. It was his day off, but still. At some point I was going to have to address it with him. Especially now that Ellie was back and would be living out here sooner or later.
“Rich, I wanted to introduce you. This is Ellie Samson. Long Valley’s owner.”
Ellie stretched out her hand and Rich shook it.
“We’ve talked over the phone, but it’s nice to put a face to the person,” Ellie said.
“Miss Samson,” Rich said in acknowledgement. “Heard a lot of nice things about you.”
He didn’t slur or stumble. I had to give him that.
“Please. Call me Ellie.”
“We’re going to ride out,” I told Rich.
“I would head north. Ground’s still wet to the west.”
“Appreciated.”
Ellie and I left him to his day and headed back to the barn.
“How old is Rich? I thought he was in his early fifties.”
I nodded. I knew where she was going with her question. “That’s about right.”
“He looks older.”
“I get the impression it hasn’t been an easy life for Rich.”
