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She looked over and her eyes softened. “I know what it’s like to need someone to just throw you a rope once in a while.” Then she huffed out, her mouth hardening into a line. “And how much it bites when there’s no one there with any ropes in sight.”
I nodded. Yeah. Yeah, that, I knew exactly what she meant.
“So we pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps?”
She huffed out again. “More like crawl out of one hole of doom and hope for a less doomy hole tomorrow.”
I laughed out loud at that. “Yup.”
Which was also when I saw Reece look my way, as if startled and then pleased to hear me laugh.
Which made me… feel things.
Good Lord, being an unleashed human in the real world was intense and overwhelming, and I’d only been at it for a few days. I felt like unfamiliar emotions kept assaulting me left and right. I barely knew what to do with one before another one hit. Part of me wanted to go back to bed, curl into a ball, and pull the covers over my head for a long, long time.
I decided instead I should just focus on cooking bacon, and then eggs, something I actually knew how to do. One foot in front of the other. I’d figure this all out as I went…right?
Meanwhile Ruth turned her attention on Jeremiah, getting into an argument with him about the best way to go about hiring ranch hands.
She thought they should get some hands as soon as possible, as many projects as needed tackling. Jeremiah said he’d rather have the right man than the first man to walk through the door.
Ruth countered back, asking why the hell he assumed it needed to be a man at all.
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “I meant man in the universal mankind way.”
Ruth just lifted an eyebrow. “Gendered language matters.”
I smiled, enjoy them ribbing each other. That was the theme of the entire breakfast. It was nice not being the only odd man out there. None of us besides the twin brothers knew each other. And Ruth was not shy about grilling the brothers on their qualifications to do the job.
Jeremiah especially, grilled her back about the state of the facilities and ranch.
Ruth bristled any time he insinuated her family ranch wasn’t up to snuff. But even she admitted that a lot of the equipment had been sold off to pay her father’s debts. “We sent accurate pictures and representations of the property to the buyer.”
Jeremiah scoffed at that. “Please. Those pictures had to be at least ten years old. The stable is all but falling apart and the bunkhouse only has one working toilet.”
Ruth shrugged. “Your boss bought the ranch in AS IS condition, all cash. It’s why he got the place for such a steal.”
“You call five point eight million dollars a steal?”
Ruth just shrugged. “America lives on beef. We’re a vital part of the economy. It’s an exciting venture capital opportunity that a whole new generation is invigorated to be a part of. Reconnecting with the land, discovering a whole different pace of life.”
Reece laughed at that. “Great sales pitch, but we’re already sold. We love the life. So does our boss. He knows this place is a money sink, but he’s a rich bastard and believes enough good people falling in love and reconnecting to the land is the only hope this planet has.”
I could only stare at him, a little appalled by the naïve conviction of anyone who stated anything with such easy hope. At the same time it was such a beautiful sentiment. Who the hell were these people?
Jeremiah did not seem moved by his brother’s argument either. “Yes, but what you and our idealistic employer fail to realize is that there’s still a very important bottom line we have to think about for any of this to be a successful endeavor. There’s no point in wasting a ton of exhaustive labor for shockingly thin profit margins. It’s time we take this ranch into the twenty-first century or there’s no point to any of it.”
“And how exactly do you propose we do that?” Ruth asked, shoving the last bite of pancake into her mouth.
I had to give it to her, her grandma’s pancake recipe was to die for. They almost tasted like cake. A thin drizzle of syrup and a thick pat of butter and I was in freaking heaven.
Pancakes were absolutely on the No list from Jeff. He had a hate-hate relationship with any wife of his consuming carbohydrates.
I was busy enjoying the absolute divinity of the pancakes while Ruth and Jeremiah continued arguing the best ways to take the ranch forward.
Finally Jeremiah threw down. “Obviously, your ideas for the ranch didn’t work. Your family drove the place into such overwhelming debt it was about to go into foreclosure if you didn’t accept a short sale on the place. I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you.”
I looked up from my plate, my mouth stuffed full of pancake, eyes wide as Ruth’s face turned beet red. She threw down her napkin and stood up so abruptly her chair scraped the linoleum as it went backwards.
