Page 14 of The Billionaire Land Baron

Chapter 5

“He’s not going to want jalapeños in his eggs, Daddy. And I doubt he knows what chorizo even is.”

“Well, he should learn to eat a Texas breakfast. He’s in Texas.”

Shelby rolled her eyes and watched the two pans of eggs carefully, stirring at just the right time to get the perfect consistency. One pan was red and bubbly from the spicy chorizo sausage, punctuated with bright green slices of jalapeño. The other pan was the standard yellow of scrambled eggs with a bit of sharp cheddar thrown in. Boring, but what Shelby guessed Jake would like. And she really wanted him to like breakfast, for reasons she didn’t want to even explain to herself.

“Well, what about boudin?”

“Daddy, please. He probably doesn’t know what that is either. And that’s not a Texas breakfast. We aren’t in Louisiana.”

“Well. It’s better than just plain eggs. Who eats that? You’ll send him running for the hills. Where’d you say he’s from?”

“Chicago,” she said.

He huffed. “Huh. Crime rate there is terrible. Strict gun control and bad crime. Explain that to me.”

“Daddy. Please, let’s not start talking gun control before coffee. Or at all. And please don’t make him feel stupid about swimming with T-Ball.”

Shelby spoke sweetly, only because she knew it was the only way to get him to do anything at all she wanted. He was so stubborn. Not just about eggs. But everything. Not for the first time, Shelby fought off guilt as she thought about what life would be like living on her own instead of taking care of him, every day for the foreseeable future. Her life was stuck on an endless loop.

Life would also be easier if he would take disability. But he refused. “Don’t need no assistance from the fed-E-ral government. And I’m not disabled. I get on just fine,” he had said, more than once.

He didn’t seem to know or see how much she struggled to hold onto their land. Not that it was much: just a few acres, the tiny house, and the pond. But it was everything. It was theirs.

Correction—it was the bank’s. And she’d had more than enough notice that the bank would soon be reclaiming it without an impossible sum of money.

It would kill him to know how much trouble they were in. And how hard she was working, all because he couldn’t work and wouldn’t take the checks. Shelby couldn’t stand to see the look in his eyes if he realized that he had failed her. She’d kept a lot from him after this last tour. Partly because of the brain injury, partly because of Mama. They kept up this charade that the house wasn’t falling into disrepair, they had enough money for the mortgage, and that his pills were really multivitamins. Not pretty, but how they existed.

Unless the bank didn’t extend their grace period this afternoon when she went in. The thought made her stomach roll sharply.

Trouble was—there wasn’t a lot of work in town. Lucky just wasn’t that big. Most people barely scraped by and worked outside of town at refineries down closer to Orange or over the border near Lake Charles. Shelby had a few dozen side hustles that all added up to not enough. Baking cakes, collecting junk and reselling on eBay, even dressing up as a clown for kids’ birthday parties. She picked up extra shifts at the diner in town as well.

It just wasn’t enough. Not for their mortgage and food and his meds. Shelby wished he didn’t need the meds, but after the brain injury, he did. At least he wasn’t crazy—not like her mama.

Shelby sighed, stirring the eggs and turning off the burner. That wasn’t the correct term for her mother. But when she thought of the actual words: bipolar schizophrenic, it hurt her heart too much. And terrified her to think that same blood ran in her veins. Crazy was a trigger word and more than once she’d thrown a punch when someone used that word for her. They didn’t mean that Shelby was like her mother. She knew that. But she didn’t care. Because that word was the key unlocking the door to all of her deepest fear: that one day she would crack just like Mama did.

Sometimes she looked in the mirror at herself, trying to judge if she was okay. Was it hiding in there? Down deep in her eyes? Come unglued like Mama and end up in a facility? Only to somehow make her way out and run?

She understood her mama running, though. If Shelby ever cracked, it wouldn’t be here in front of people who loved her. She wouldn’t be a burden and wouldn’t let them see her go down in flames. She’d run too. Though she was still furious with her mama, Shelby understood her too.

The door to the bathroom creaked open and Shelby tried to prepare herself for Jake as he walked down the hall. She would not ogle. She would not stare at his broad shoulders or try to find excuses to stand close to him. Then he stepped into the room, his head almost brushing the low doorway. He held a leather shaving kit in his hand and had a towel draped over his arm. The smell of his cologne was sharp and sweet and so masculine it made her ache.

Get. It. Together.

Her heart sped up as she glanced at him. His hair was still damp and he wore a short-sleeved button-down shirt untucked over camo shorts. Even in a small town like Lucky, there were attractive guys. Matt was handsome. Rhett, unfortunately, looked like a male model. But there was something about Jake with his almost-red hair, propensity for blushing, and his chiseled features that got Shelby all wound up. Now that she’d seen the incredible body he hid under his clothes, it didn’t help. She turned back to the eggs, feeling a blush of her own rising.

“Boy, you look like half a banker, half a hick,” Daddy said. Shelby stifled a giggle.

“I—thanks?” Jake said.

“Sit down,” Shelby said. “Coffee?”

“Please,” Jake said. He sat across from Daddy, who grinned like a fool at him.

Shelby silently counted to see how long it would take Daddy to bring up Chicago’s gun control laws or T-Ball. Her guess was under a minute. And between the two subjects, she was hoping he chose the gator.

“Cream? Sugar?” she asked.

---