Page 95 of Embracing the Change

“Hmm,” I hummed, and put my cheek back to his shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

Drat.

Would that I’d been smart enough to keep some of me back so he couldn’t read me so completely.

This was never a pleasant subject for Jamie, and with my concerns about his plans of annihilation, it wasn’t for me either.

His arm around me gave me a slight shake when I didn’t answer.

“Nora, what?”

I put my chin to his shoulder to look at him again, only to see he’d angled his head to do the same to me.

“Chloe refuses to call him JT, which Judge prefers, because he likes that it honors both you and Tom.”

“She told you that?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I asked.”

“She doesn’t like the name JT?”

“She doesn’t like the name AJ, and as such, refuses to shorten her son’s name to initials in the same manner.”

He righted his head and said to the ceiling, “That’s very Chloe.”

It was.

And this brought us to something we hadn’t discussed in some time, but, as much as I didn’t like it, we were there, and it needed discussing.

“Maybe you should share,” I suggested quietly.

“I’ll share when it’s all done,” Jamie replied.

“I think they should know. It’s not like they’re going to phone AJ or some gossip magazine,” I pointed out.

“I know, sweetheart. But when I share that my father isn’t actually my biological father to anybody, I have to be ready.”

This was true.

I pushed up so I could look down at him. “Do you think he knows?”

“AJ?”

“We know he doesn’t. Your actual father.”

He shook his head as an answer to me that he didn’t think his biological father knew.

“Are you going to tell him?” I asked.

“When I officially take it from Pop, I’m going to give my birth father the ranch.”

I gasped at this astonishing news. “You are?”

“He’s been a ranch foreman for over forty years, working a ranch all his life. He’s got his own now, and two sons who work it with him. His father was a ranching cowboy. It’s in his blood. He’ll run Oakbilly Gulch, definitely better than Jeff, even better than Pop, and his sons will run it better than both of them after he’s gone.”

Jeff was Jamie’s older brother. Jeff was also a wastrel, a sneak, and a pissant, and I felt qualified to make those judgments, even if I’d never met him, from all Jamie had told me about the degenerate man.

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