Page 53 of Carry Me Home
“Jack,” she said plaintively. I thought she was going to push me away, but instead her forehead met my chest with a soft thump. “I’m just so fuckingtired. Thank you.”
I traced soft circles on her lower back. “I know you are, honey. Go sit down and I’ll get us both a cup of coffee, okay?”
It felt so good to take some of the weight she caried like she had done for me in our poker game. So right. Like we were in this together. I hadn’t felt this kind of comradeship since I’d left the military. And somehow I’d found it here, in the unlikeliest of places, with a precocious kid who had wiggled her way into my heart and her mother I couldn’t make myself stop touching.
“How’s the mannying going?”Brax asked as we moseyed down a trail where Adam was unlikely to follow. “You surviving okay?”
“More than surviving. I’m having a blast.”
Brax turned in his saddle just enough to give me a look of pure disbelief over his shoulder. “With a seven year old.”
“Yeah. Maya’s great.”
Brax faced forward again, shaking his head. “I have to say, I thought you would be bored to tears, but as long as you’re having fun, it’s not a bad summer gig until you find something permanent. You deserve that. Have you started thinking about what you’re going to do when summer is over?”
“Maybe,” I hedged.
Truthfully, I’d been avoiding thinking about that at all. Not because I didn’t have options. Mercy River Ranch was a possibility. I hadn’t given Jeremiah an answer yet because I was still waffling on it.
Mercy River was a different kind of ranch than Lodestar. Both raised cattle and horses, but Mercy River was a nonprofit with a mission to give former military men and women a healing place to ease back into civilian life. Most of them had physical trauma or PTSD to work through.
Horses, mountains, and a cause I cared about. It should have been a no-brainer. So why was I still hesitating?
“I have to ask you something,” Brax said.
“Go for it.” We came out of the copse of trees and the view opened up. There was no better place to admire it than betweena horse’s ears, in my opinion. Shit, I’d missed this. I nudged my gelding into a quick trot to pull even with Brax. “What’s your question?”
“Is something going on with you and Janie?”
I stared him down. “Why do you have to ask me that?”
“Essie said I have to.”
“Well, it’s none of your damn business.”
“So, that’s a yes?”
“It’s none of her damn business, either.”
Brax sighed. “Yeah, that’s definitely a yes.”
Shit. “Don’t tell Essie that.” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “Nothing is going on. There was a time when it felt like we were heading in that direction, but she put a stop to that when she hired me.”
Brax nodded. “Makes sense. Can’t go around fucking your kid’s nanny. That’s the rule.” His gaze tracked over my frown. “Maybe it’s really more of a guideline than an actual rule.”
I grunted. Some people chafed at rules. Felt caged in by them. That wasn’t me. My whole life, I’d been a rule-follower. Rules weren’t a cage, to my way of thinking; they were freedom. People concentrated so hard on the one thing they couldn’t do that they never opened their eyes to all the other possibilities. Rules established the fence line. But I was damn good at finding a gate.
I hadn’t found a gate through Janie’s rule yet, that was all.
But right now, I wanted to have a different conversation with my friend.
“You know she doesn’t get home until two-thirty or three in the morning after her shifts on Friday and Saturday?” I asked.
Brax shrugged. “I never thought about it, but it makes sense. The bar closes at one, and she still has to clean up before she can leave. That’s why she needs a live-in nanny, right?”
“She’s fucking exhausted. It doesn’t matter what time she gets to bed, she still has to get up at seven to take care of Maya. Closing two nights in a row is too much. She looked like a zombie this morning.”
Brax tugged the reins, signaling his mare to stop. He turned to me, eyes narrowed. “What’s with the tone? She asked for those shifts, and I gave them to her because I like her. She works six days a week because that’s what she wanted, but most of the money she makes comes from closing the bar Friday and Saturday. That’s when she gets the good tips.”
