Page 50 of At Your Service
With the glass in one hand, his eight cookies folded into a napkin in the other, and her laptop tucked under her arm, she walked out onto the porch just as her dad was trying to settle himself into a chair. She hurried over to him, placing the glass, cookies and laptop on the small wooden table between the rocking chairs that looked as if they were on their last legs.
“Here, let me help you,” she said and eased the crutches from one arm and then the next.
Standing in front of him, she put both her arms under his and then bent her knees as he reclined into the chair.
Jacoby huffed when he was finally seated. “Your sisters should have stayed here to help,” he grumbled.
She ignored him because she was glad Angie and Daisy had left. They’d been a nagging, arguing pain in her ass from the time she’d arrived yesterday, until the moment she’d told them to go late last night. They weren’t being helpful, just judgmental and annoying, traits they’d spent most of their lives perfecting.
“It’s okay, Dad. We’re fine,” she told him, sitting in the chair next to him before grabbing her laptop from the table.
“Not okay,” he said when he reached for his cookies.
She could hear him crunching on the first one as she booted up her laptop and waited to log in to her inbox.
“You should be in New York working,” Jacoby said after a few moments.
“You weren’t happy that I’d stayed in New York, remember?”
“No, I wasn’t happy if you were in New York pimping yourself out to some rich dude,” he snapped. “But you said that’s not what you were doing.”
“It’s not,” she replied, clicking on an email from RJ Gold, wondering if this was his message telling her she’d breached her contract with them by leaving town.
“And that guy you were in New York with? He was helping you with your business?”
She was only half listening to her father now, but she replied, “Yeah, his family’s company was taking a chance on my app.”
If you’re reading this right now, I’m on my way to you and it’s too late for you to stop me.
That’s what the first line of the email read and her heartbeat had immediately picked up its pace.
I hope you’ll hear me out this time and once you do, whatever you want, whatever you tell me to do, I will.
RJ hadn’t written this email. Her eyes shot up to the subject line of the message again as she read the oldest Gold brother’s name and email address.
“He sounds like a good guy. You should hear him out.”
Her head snapped up at her father’s words and she looked over at him and then past him.
Major walked around from the side of the house and her laptop almost slipped off her lap. He wore dark blue jeans and a crisp, white polo shirt. His hair looked freshly cut and his shape-up was sharp, his thin mustache trimmed. Her pulse rate quickened as her mind whirled with questions.
“Hello, Mr. Fuller. It’s nice to meet you in person, sir.”
She watched as Major walked up onto the porch and immediately went to her father, extending a hand for Jacoby to shake. Her father, the surly old grouch that he’d become, accepted that hand and looked up at Major.
“You mess this up again and I’ll beat you with my crutches.”
Major nodded. “I understand, sir.”
“What’s going on? You two know each other?” She put her laptop on the table because she couldn’t afford to pay for another one and if one more surprise popped off, she was sure to drop this one.
Her father answered. “Got a call from this gentleman early this morning while you were sitting out here rocking in my chair like you thought you could find the answers to your problems.”
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“Not with my chair squeaking the way it does when it’s being rocked too fast. And then that cell phone you and your sisters insist I keep close to me started ringing.”
She looked to Major then. “You called my father?”
