AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eva was going to take care of making sure they got paid as well. It felt like a win-win. They were working together, but they each had their own area, and wouldn’t step on each other’s toes.
Eva had been decent to work with, and they had enjoyed their strawberry cheesecake. It had been the best strawberry cheesecake Jubilee had ever eaten, and she had made sure to tell Griff that. Every time she’d seen him, he was quiet, although not sullen or withdrawn. But today he seemed sad. She wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he smiled at her compliment, and it made her feel good that she’d brightened his day a little.
She couldn’t help everyone with all the problems in the world, but it always felt like when she met someone who seemed to be carrying a burden, she wanted to try to ease it for them if she could. The compliment didn’t solve anything, but they made a person smile, and that made her heart happy.
Her girls had had an amazing time with Lana, and they chattered about the ice cream that Matt had made, along with the fire and how they were allowed to roast their own marshmallows, and how Miss Lana didn’t even care that they were close to the fire. The weather hadn’t been conducive to horseback riding, with the possibility of thunderstorms looming on the horizon, but the girls hardly even noticed.
Jubilee thought that maybe she had been slightly overprotective, when her girls thought getting close to fire was something that might get them in trouble.
She thanked Lana before they had left, with the girls wanting to walk down to the lake for a little bit before bedtime.
Jubilee had suggested that, since she thought maybe Lana wanted some time alone with her granddaughter. She hoped that her girls weren’t infringing on that time.
Matt had left earlier, after the ice cream had been eaten. The girls and Lana had been there, and Jubilee had been successful in keeping them between her and him.
She didn’t want him cornering her and asking her why she had declined to go horseback riding with him, after she said she would. She didn’t want to have to explain that she shouldn’t have accepted in the first place. Part of her wanted to give him a hard time for allowing Eva to push her way into something that they’d planned. After all, he’d asked her, she said yes, and he hadn’t said anything about taking anyone else.
His daughter, she could understand, but his ex? She was pretty sure she wasn’t wrong in thinking that was something anyone would have been upset about.
Regardless, it helped her get her thinking straight and realize that she shouldn’t have accepted to begin with, since she wasn’t planning on anything happening between them. Therefore, it was rude of her to allow him to think any differently.
Still, that was a conversation she didn’t want to have, and she was happy that she managed to avoid it for at least another day. The girls skipped and chattered ahead, while she walked along behind.
She smiled at how happy they were and how much fun they had, and she thanked the Lord for the welcome that they’d had here in Strawberry Sands.
She was going to have to work hard. Lana had shown her the schedule, and she knew that there were going to be guests every day the next week, sometimes four or five a night. That meant a lot of cooking, a lot of cleaning, a lot of laundry, added to keeping the garden, and in between the cracks, she needed to schedule everything that she just agreed to handle for the Strawberry Festival which wasn’t that far away.
She’d already told the girls not to go into the water without her, and she had in her head that she wasn’t going to let them get wet at all. It was cool now that the sun had gone down. They’d be shivering and cold by the time they got back to the bed-and-breakfast and sandy and dirty as well.
She was thinking about how she hoped that she wouldn’t have to give them a bath before bed when she realized that the figure on horseback that she’d been idly watching was Matt.
She wished she could grab the girls and turn around and go power walking back to the bed-and-breakfast, just so he wouldn’t see them. But there was no way she could do that as far beyond her as what the girls were. They’d never hear her over the crashing waves.
The sun hadn’t quite made its descent into the horizon yet, and the world was still washed with the rain that they’d had that afternoon, and the man on horseback, no matter how she felt about the man himself, blended into the scene, making it absolutely perfect.
If she pretended it wasn’t Matt, she could admire the beauty of the horse, the ease of the rider, and how he seemed to be at one with his animal, the flowing mane and tail, the proud tossing head, and the waves crashing in the background.
But no one had given the memo to her children that she didn’t want to have Matt stop and talk to anyone, and as soon as they recognized him, they went running over.
She figured they were probably begging for him to take them for a ride at some point. Maybe she could circumvent Matt and go directly to Davis and Kim and take them up on their offer of allowing them to use their horses if they weren’t rented out. She hated to not give them anything for their use, though, and the problem was, she wasn’t getting paid until the next Friday, and at that point, she was going to have to figure out how to square up with Lana for all the things that Lana had been doing for her, and then she was going to have to try to keep back as much as she could so that she could not only rent the place over winter but have enough funds to see her through if she ended up losing her job.
If she kept thinking like that, worry would overtake her, so she tried to shove those thoughts aside. There would be plenty of time to worry while she worked in the coming week. Today was about enjoying the beach and the water and the waves and the sunset.
Except, all of the enjoyment was gone because Matt stopped, dismounting, nodding his head, and laughing with her girls.
Before she knew it, the girls had turned around and raced back up the beach while Matt stood holding the reins of his horse. He didn’t walk toward her but just watched as her girls ran with a smile on his face.
“Mr. Matt said that he’d take us for a ride. Just lead us on his horse. That way, we don’t have to worry about his horse running away with us. He said that we could both ride at the same time, but he said we couldn’t do it unless you said it was okay.” Penelope had beaten her older sister to her, and she had all of that out before Scarlett stopped running.
“Please, Mom, can we let Mr. Matt take us for a horse ride? I promise that we’ll be good, and we aren’t imposing, ’cause he asked. We didn’t ask him. We just said we wanted to go. He said how about now? But then he wouldn’t take us unless we came to you and asked.”
Scarlett was usually the less pushy of the two girls, but both of them had begging looks on their faces, and Jubilee didn’t think she had it in her heart to say no.
She wanted to give her girls every good thing, loved that Lana had taken them and given them such a great day. She hated to say no, just for spite, just because she didn’t want to have to deal with Matt. Not because there was any reason that her girls couldn’t do it.
So she nodded and said they could have a five-minute ride, then they were going back up to the bed-and-breakfast. If she was careful, she could avoid talking to Matt at all.
