Accounting for Love - A Long Valley Romance: Country Western Romance Novel Read online

  Jennifer felt her face color a bit at the idea that she was a lady. She did not think of herself as a bad girl, but the thought that she might qualify as being a lady by down-home country standards was just…weird. And kinda cool.

  “It really isn’t that unexpected—” She faltered, realizing that she didn’t know what to call the housekeeper. Manners would dictate that she not be called by her first name, but that was all Jennifer knew.

  “Call me Carmelita, dear,” the older woman said, picking up the cue flawlessly, looking up from her mixing bowl to smile at Jennifer. “The boys have called me Karma for a long time, but I think they mean it as a joke.”

  “Thank you, Carmelita,” Jennifer said, smiling back, grateful for her understanding. “It really isn’t that unexpected. There are a lot of complex emotions that come with having money troubles, and I’m the outsider - from the bank, no less! People take their frustrations out on me. I’m used to it.”

  Jennifer watched Carmelita instinctively add ingredients to the mixing bowl, a maestro at work. Carbs were bad, right? Carbs made you fat? She breathed in deep. God, that smelled good. It was a good thing Stetson had ruled out Jennifer eating anything but a crust of bread and a glass of water, or she could easily envision waddling out of here.

  “Just because a lot of people do something does not make it right,” Carmelita said, dragging Jennifer back into the moment. “I will have a talk with Stetson about that later. He will not act like that when I am around.”

  “Oh, please don’t make it an issue.” She didn’t want Stetson to think that she’d gone to the housekeeper and complained about him behind his back. He’d really be pissed then.

  “I am sorry, but I have to make an issue out of it, as you say. Out here, it is very easy for a young man to forget that he must be a gentleman no matter what. The cows can bring out the dirty words very quickly. A broken tractor or torn-up fence will make a person lose their temper just as fast. If there is not someone here to remind him to be nice, a man can become mean to the center too quickly.”

  “That’s an interesting theory,” Jennifer murmured, before burying her face in her mug. She wasn’t entirely sure what to say, so she decided to become preoccupied with sipping her coffee. A safe enough preoccupation, right?

  “Well, it has worked so far. The other thing that Stetson needs to remember is that just because he got himself into trouble, does not give him permission to pass off his responsibilities, no matter how hard life gets.”

  “What do you mean?” She knew she was shamelessly fishing for information at that point, but couldn’t bring herself to care. Or stop.

  “Sí. It is never easy being the youngest brother and then his mother died, God rest her soul,” Carmelita said and crossed herself.

  Oh. Poor guy. No wonder this woman acts more like a mother than a housekeeper.

  “How old was he when his mother passed away?”

  “He was 12. His brothers are much older than he is, so by then, it was only his father and him. He had to grow up very quickly,” Carmelita answered, the pride apparent in her voice. “By that time, his brothers had farms and lives of their own, so Stetson started doing more chores. He learned to work very hard.”

  So he basically got a job before he was even a teenager. Yikes!

  “Then his father got sick,” the older woman continued. “At the beginning, it looked like it might be okay. Some trips to the doctor and some medicine and then it would go away. But the sickness was not nice, and the body was only so strong.”

  Jennifer watched a single tear trace its way down Carmelita’s face. She didn’t know if she should comfort her. Would Carmelita want a hug? They’d just met. Maybe Carmelita isn’t a huggy sort of a person? She decided to ask a question instead.

  “When did his father die?”

  “Mr. Miller, God rest his soul,” again she made the sign of the cross, “left us about one year ago.”

  No wonder Stetson’s so upset. That’s a shit sandwich with a side of crap chips.

  Okaaaayyyyy, so Carmelita definitely shouldn’t be calling me a lady.

  She worked hard to stifle the smile bubbling up; considering the topic, that didn’t really seem appropriate.

  “Stetson has been trying so hard to keep the farm working,” Carmelita continued. “He only took one day off for his father’s funeral and then he was back at work. He works even harder now. He will say that he works so hard because his father is not here to help, but I think it keeps him from missing his father. Fathers are very important to young men.”

  I have to save this farm.

  I have to.

  “That’s…very sad,” Jennifer finally said, the statement weak and hollow in her ears.

  “Sí. It is very sad,” Carmelita agreed. “There are other things you need to know.”

  Other things? Dear God, the man was an orphan and forced to be a workaholic to keep his farm. What else could there be?!

  Out loud, she said, “What’s that?”

  “There are other worries that Stetson has,” Carmelita said, wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing and turning her full attention to Jennifer. “There are many people in this town who have had to give their farms to the bank, and that upsets people around here. They work hard for their whole lives. They take many chances, but then there is no rain or the prices are not so good and the bank shows up and makes people leave their farms. People here do not like that. You are here because of the bank. It will be very hard for people here to like you.”

  “I know,” Jennifer said, dropping her head to stare at her empty coffee mug. “I wish people understood what I really do for the bank.”

  “What do you do for the bank if you are not here to take away the farm?” Carmelita asked, sounding genuinely confused.

  “I’m the person the bank sends to find out if there is a way not to take the farm. My job is to look through everything and see if there’s something that can be sold to pay the loan or an underdeveloped part of the business that I can help beef up. If I can’t find something like that, I look for a way to only take part of the farm. This usually means selling some of the land or part of the livestock. The point is, I’m the last chance before the bank takes everything.”

  “You think there is a way to save the farm?” Carmelita’s voice held just hint of hope.

  “I don’t know yet. I need to get back to work to find out. Thank you for the coffee,” Jennifer said as she stood up and headed back to the office.

  Now she just had to succeed at her job.

  No pressure or anything.

  Chapter 3

  By the end of the day, the shoebox-of-an-office looked a million times better.

  Jennifer leaned back in the battered office chair, her left leg straight out in front of her to help her keep her balance. She still didn’t trust the chair would hold her. Picking at the duct tape repairs on the armrests, she admired her progress as she sipped some delicious coffee. Carmelita had kept a constant flow of the beverage coming into the office all day.

  Normally, Jennifer liked a gallon of flavored creamer and a pound of sugar in her coffee, but whatever Carmelita did when she brewed a pot worked wonders, and now the cup was truly black. The thought of adding a single grain of sugar to this ambrosia would certainly be a blatant affront to the coffee gods. She buried her nose in the mug again, accepting another dosing of this miracle beverage.

  As she had worked her way through the mountains of unorganized paper, Jennifer found there was a structure in place for the paperwork that just wasn’t being used very efficiently.

  There was a file cabinet that held contracts, income records, and other important documents to the side of the desk. On top of the desk was a small set of drawers that looked like they’d once been a card catalog from a library. The drawers were labeled so that receipts could be sorted according to which part of the farm the expense corresponded to.

  During her excavation of the office, she’d found that the system tha
t had been in place was abandoned about a year ago. Starting about that time, the tidy sequence of dated papers in perfect order disintegrated into a jumbled mess.

  This must have been when Stetson’s father died, and Stetson had taken over every part of the business.

  Everything in his life fell apart then, including this office.

  Jennifer sipped the coffee again and let her mind mull over Stetson’s situation. It was the end of the day so she could allow herself a few moments to relax, right?

  The quiet was broken, first by a buzzing sound, then by the opening notes of Bachman Tuner Overdrive’s “Working Overtime,” a ringer she’d downloaded specifically for her boss’ cell phone number. At first, the ring tone was a joke, but now it was a harbinger of doom. Dinner dates, weekend trips, even movies with friends, all died a swift but painful death when that ring tone played. She had to battle the urge to break her phone every time she heard that song, even when it was on the radio.

  She dug the phone out of her laptop bag and tapped the green dot.

  “Hello?” she said, trying to think of a reason Greg might be calling her. Her boss knew that it was the first day of the audit, and that meant a lot of time sorting and organizing just to get to a place where the actual audit could begin.

  “How shhhhsirifks ldislkds,” her boss’ voice chirped in her ear.

  “Hold on, Greg, let me get somewhere with better reception.” Jennifer hurried through the farmhouse and out onto the covered porch that stretched the length of the house.

  “Can you hear me now?” Jennifer asked.

  “There you are. What took you so long?” Greg sounded annoyed, but then again, everything annoyed Greg.

  “Sorry, I’m way out in the sticks. The signal isn’t very good inside. I had to go outside.”

  “Whatever, just don’t leave me waiting like that again,” Greg huffed on the other end of the call. “Are you making progress?”

  “Yes. I have all of their financials sorted and organized.”

  “Do they have the money?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just got all of the paperwork in order so I can start looking.”

  “I really don’t want to hear your problems. I want to hear your solutions.”

  “I will start the audit tomorrow.”

  “When can I expect a report?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Greg began his usual litany of problems, and Jennifer started to tune out. It was always the same pattern with Greg: He would say his favorite line about wanting to hear solutions, not problems and then he would launch into a long recitation of his problems. It never occurred to Greg that maybe other people did not want to hear his problems.

  Stetson’s truck pulled up in front of the house as she was pretending to listen to Greg. Jennifer watched as he stepped out of the pickup. He looked up at the house and fixed his gaze, for just a moment, on her. He didn’t seem as angry as he had been earlier. There was something about the look on his tanned, angular face that made her stomach flutter.

  Did he just look at me like I’m a human? Maybe he could think of me as something other than the enemy.

  The possibility pleased her in a way she knew it shouldn’t, given the reason they’d met, but still, a girl could hope. Just a little. Besides, it was after five, so she could allow herself a little bit of unprofessionalism.

  She became even more distracted when Stetson leaned back into the truck. He was bent over at the waist, trying to retrieve something from under the driver’s seat, his nice ass sticking out as he searched. She felt her breathing shorten as she admired the way the faded blue jeans molded to him.

  There is apparently something that country girls know that us city girls don’t.

  A small and devilish smile appeared, but it didn’t grow to its full potential because Greg’s voice finally cut through her reverie.

  “Are you even listening to me? Jennifer!” Her boss sounded really annoyed at this point. “I said, I want the report as soon as possible, and sooner than that if you really like your job.”

  And there it was. The closing line.

  Every single time, without fail, Greg would threaten to demote her or fire her. Anymore, she wished the pompous little worm would just skip straight to the firing and get it over with. But in the end, she needed the job. As much as she hated to admit that fact, it was unfortunately true.

  “Yes, I’m here. I know you want the report yesterday,” she said and then kicked herself for letting her annoyance show. “I’ll have your report as soon as I possibly can.”

  “Good,” Greg said and the line went dead.

  She was just tucking the phone back in her pocket when Stetson reached the front steps.

  He wasn’t smiling exactly. Instead, he had a…pleasant look on his face. It was the first time he’d looked anything but pissed around her, and she found that she liked that expression a lot more than she really should. It was okay to secretly admire, right? It is after five.

  Stetson lifted one eyebrow as he walked past. He never said a word, but the look conveyed it perfectly, “What was that all about?”

  He walked right past her and into the house. Jennifer let out a long breath once she heard the door latch behind her. She was trying to calm her racing heart when he scared her by walking back out of the house only a moment later, a jacket in hand.

  “Eeeeeeack!” she squealed as she jumped.

  Stetson did smile this time. A brief but honest show of amusement before he continued down the front steps and out to his waiting truck.

  Her face was slightly pink from the fright and the embarrassment. Now her heart was beating faster for another reason.

  Watching his ass in the faded denim walk away, she noticed the yellow stitching on the pockets of his jeans. The thread formed a W on each pocket. She let herself be hypnotized by the way those Ws bounced up and down.

  Dear God, I am never going to survive this audit.

  Chapter 4

  After laying down the law with that no-good female banker, Stetson stormed out to the barn, where he promptly spent the rest of the day hiding. Damn that bank anyway. At least if they’d sent a man, he could have told the man what he really thought about him, the bank, and how bullshit this whole situation was, preferably punctuated with his fists.

  To add insult to injury, he also knew that he was going to hear about his rudeness from Carmelita sometime in the very near future, and the prospect of a butt-chewing didn’t make him any happier.

  His hired hands were working hard on vaccinating the new calves, and he really should go help them, but…it wasn’t fair to them if he made them pay for the bank’s bullshit, so he probably should stay away from them. All people, actually.

  And beasts, for that matter. Cows were trying enough on the best of days.

  So, the barn it was. At least there, he had a reasonable chance of being left alone.

  The large structure was more of a storage building and a workshop combined together than a typical barn. In the winter, he would park the tractors and other equipment to keep the expensive machinery out of the weather. Along the long wall, there were workbenches, toolboxes, and all of the miscellaneous tools and junk that accumulated over the years. The piles of stuff were ostensibly kept under the pretense that they could someday be used to make repairs, but Stetson knew better.

  He was a farmer;

  Farmers never threw away anything; and

  Carmelita was never allowed into the barn.

  There were laws of nature that just shouldn’t be broken.

  Hidden in the very back corner of the barn was a small tarp-covered tractor. Unlike the modern equipment that was used for the day-to-day operations of the farm, this tractor was nearly 60 years old.

  It had belonged to the Miller family from the day it rolled off the assembly line. It was the first piece of motorized equipment Stetson’s grandfather had purchased. Since then, a long line of equipment had passed through their ownership. Bigger, more effici
ent equipment cycled through as technology advanced, but the family had held onto this particular tractor as a reminder of all the things it symbolized.

  Over the years, the tractor had sat in a field through rain, snow, and shine. Eventually, time took its toll on the machine to the point where it would no longer run. Then one day, Stetson’s father wrapped a chain around the front axle, lifted a much younger Stetson into the seat, showed him how to release the clutch and how to steer, and together, they pulled the rotting tractor to the barn. It was the first thing Stetson had ever driven.

  “What’re we gonna do to Grandpa’s tractor?” Stetson had asked.

  “We’re going to fix it,” his father replied, amused at the obviousness of the answer.

  “But this one’s old and we have better ones over there.”

  “I guess that depends on how you judge better,” his father had said, kneeling to look his young son in the eye. “If it wasn’t for this tractor, your grandfather wouldn’t have been a successful farmer, and that means that we wouldn’t have had the money or reason to buy those other tractors that you say are better.”

  “But why are you going to fix it? The other tractors are stronger and faster.”

  “First, I’m not the only one who’s going to fix this tractor, son. You’re going to help me fix it. Second, we’re going to fix this tractor because it’s a reminder of where our family has come from. It’s a symbol of all the hard work that’s gone into giving us the things we have now. It may never plow another field, but this is the tractor that plowed the fields and planted the seeds that are your future and I want you to learn to respect that.”

  Stetson’s vision was blurry. The tractor was fuzzy around the edges and his face was hot, but in his mind, he could clearly see the deep, sun-etched wrinkles at the corners of his father’s eyes.