Page 51 of Disorderly

Once I returned from putting our empty and dirty dishes in the dishwasher, with another beer for him and a lemonade for me, I sat on the coffee table, facing him. The nerves in my stomach took flight, but I shoved them to the side. My discomfort at confronting him paled in comparison to my concern for him. Something wasn’t right and I didn’t like seeing him so torn up and off kilter.

I took his hands in mine and tried to smile at his questioning look. “I know that something’s wrong, please let me in. I hate seeing you so stressed.”

He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a rush. He pulled his hands from mine, but before I could get too upset, he reached for my waist, pulling me from the table and onto his lap. “Guess I’m not hiding things to well, huh?”

I stroked the side of his face with my fingers. He looked so forlorn, so sheepish in his confession and all I wanted to do was to hold him in my arms, cuddling and offering comfort. But I knew the best comfort and relief would come from sharing his burden. “No. The alternating Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde to your cleaning and organizing spurts gave it away.”

The colour of his cheeks took on a reddish hue as he grinned. “Yeah, I guess I wasn’t covering it up too much.”

I shrugged and then surprised him by kissing the tip of his nose like they tended to do to me, bringing a chuckle from him. “Want to talk about it?”

He slouched back, widening the gap between our chests, but his fingers squeezed my hips, tapping a rhythm as he weighed his out his thoughts. “It’s work,” he finally said. “The owner heard about my relationship with Peter and is telling me that it might impact my job. He doesn’t think that people in this town and area will be accepting even if they are.”

“But that’s not right. That’s against the law.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is. If they do fire me”—he grimaced—“or encourage me to resign, it won’t officially be for that reason.”

My heart sank. This wasn’t a problem I could help in solve. This one was way above my ability. And I hated that he faced this discrimination even thought I knew it happened to people who identified as 2SLGBTQ+ on a daily basis, I’d never seen it. I’d been too young to have seen any of it when Jason first came out. Although I did know that he faced some. Not only had he told me about it when he explained how one of the tattoos he sported was in remembrance of my dad after all the support and help he gave Jason during that time period.

But even if I couldn’t do anything to solve his problem, I could be by his side, offering support and a place for comfort and relaxation. Besides, I’d always heard that sex was a great stress reliever. While I wasn’t quite ready to go all the way—not that I believed either of them would let me do that until Peter was part of our relationship—there were many other things we could do, things they could teach me.

And I was more than eager to be their student.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Jarrod

“Jarrod,I’m glad you called last week.” I shook John Weston’s hand before moving on to shake Jason’s as I nodded. While it took me almost two days to work up the courage to call him after my talk with Katy last week, I was glad I’d called as well. Just asking for the meeting cemented the beginnings of a plan in my mind, allowing my anxiety to calm down enough that by the time Peter had walked through the door the next day, tired and wiped out from chaperoning the school’s educational field trip, the house had been cleaned from top to bottom and everything had been straightened to the point where I could breathe easy.

“First time to a ranch?’ Jason’s gaze ran over my dress pants and winter ankle boots. It might have been early April, but there was still snow on the ground even if the days were finally hovering around a few degrees above zero Celsius.

I glanced down and laughed when I compared what I wore to their well-worn jeans and boots. “You can tell, huh?”

They chuckled as Jason smacked John with the back of his hand. “We’ve got ourselves a real greenhorn here.” He winked at me. “But Sherry’s civilized me, so I won’t take you around the land wearing your good stuff.” He ran his gaze up and down my body, squinting as if he was figuring things out in his head. “You’re probably similar in size to the twins”—at my surprised look, he chuckled and clarified—“my older boys, not the babies. And they’ve left stuff behind in the barn that you can put on.”

“Thanks.” I sighed. It had been a rushed day even though the morning had started off with an almost empty calendar. We’d had two walk-ins, looking for personal tax help as they hadn’t completed their taxes yet and then the Winnipeg office called, wanting a whole parcel of stats in part of their updated scrutiny of our office and mygayleadership. If they’d stopped at that, it would have been fine, but they couldn’t. It seemed like every department in Winnipeg phoned, wanting stats or financials related to their areas including finances and publicity. By the time rolled around to leave for this meeting, I was so anxious to get out of the office that I completely forgot to run home and change first.

“Come on.” John patted my back. “We’ll get you set up, then we’ll give you a tour before talking business.”

I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face. Even if neither of them had any suggestions, just getting out of the office, out into the wild as it were, already worked on my spirit, making my problems seem less life threatening. And that, in itself, was a miracle.

Dressed in a pair of work-worn jeans that fit almost perfectly and a pair of working winter boots along with my winter coat, toque, and gloves and I was ready for my first tour of a working ranch. To my relief, instead of saddled horses, they led me over to a large pickup truck. While I’d ridden horseback a couple of times in my life, it had always been in the summer and on trails. I didn’t think the few skills I had would lend themselves to even a short ride in the cold and snow.

For the next hour, we crisscrossed their large ranch, stopping occasionally to explain how they bread different species of cattle and their horses along with some of the innovative suggestions that implemented from their old boys along with Josh and Jake. I saw fields where they raised some feed crops although they hired local farmers to manage that aspect of their operation.

“Wow,” I said as we pulled up to the front of their converted barn that they used as a large office area along with a couple of stalls when they were showing livestock to a potential buyer. “I’d gathered some of that from your books, but I never understood the full scope of your operation until now. And I’m just blown away. It gives me a new appreciation and understanding of the ranching business.”

“That’s great.” Jason slapped me across the upper back as they led me into the warm and comfortable building that exuded a homey yet elegant feel. It was a similar feeling that I’d tried to create with our office instead of something stuffy and corporate, yet I don’t think I pulled it off as well. “We can always use some outside input and new ways of looking at things so having an accountant like you, who’s willing to learn the nitty gritty about our business, is a blessing. We tried to get the old firm out to see how our we ran our business, but they wouldn’t come.”

“Yet another reason we wanted to move companies.” John motioned to their single serve coffee machine and the various flavours and strengths of coffee they had on a shelving unit.

“The mocha, please.” It wasn’t usually my go to, but the idea of a little chocolate seemed to fit.

“Good idea.” He grabbed three containers, placing one in the machine and a mug underneath the spout. “Want a little Bailey’s inside?”

“I shouldn’t but…” He grinned at me as he pulled the bottle out from behind a cabinet door. I released the breath I’d been holding with a little rush and grinned as my body started to relax despite the upcoming talk. “Since you’ve twisted my arm, yes.”

As he brought over my delicious smelling mug filled with the Bailey’s mocha with a little whipped cream on top, he explained how their J boys—referring to Josh and Jake—didn’t like the environmental impacts of the coffee machine, forcing them to start a new composting pile where they attempted to breakdown thecompostablepods and then were going to test the compost to see what all the elements were inside to see if it could be used in a healthy way in the garden or on the fields.

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