Page 37 of Taming His Brat

She replayed the conversation. Was Sam right? Had Vicky been the one looking for interested buyers? She couldn’t fathom the motivation. It wasn’t like her mother had legal rights to the ranch, so she couldn’t have made any decisions no matter who was interested.

Plus, with the will in place the ranch couldn’t really be sold at all unless they got permission from the lawyer who controlled the estate. Charlie couldn’t have sold it even if she wanted to, so what would have been the point. Only…

It did occur to her that Vicky hadn’t known that at the time. She clearly remembered the conversation about Sam being half owner had come upafterthose calls. Her fingers tapped restlessly on the table as she carefully pulled it all apart.

Sam could be right. It actually made sense in a way. Vicky hated the ranch and had done her best to wean Charlie off the work. There’d been talk about traveling together. Vicky had outright suggested that if Charlie sold it off, she’d be free to do more with her life.

Charlie had edged out of the conversation and it hadn’t come up again, but she knew how her mother felt. Selling it off would please Vicky, but even before she’d found out that Sam owned half, she must have known she didn’t have any authority to make those decisions.

Unless … Charlie thought about her father’s furniture and the way Vicky had arranged its sale without even asking. Had she thought she could do that with the property? Unlikely, even the most naïve person had to know you couldn’t sell someone else’s property, but maybe she’d been trying tohelpagain.

She’d wanted to save Charlie the trouble of dealing with her dad’s furniture. Maybe she’d wanted to set things up for the property so that she could present Charlie with a finished deal. Charlie drew in a shuddering breath and let it out in a sharp laugh.

Helping.Vicky’s idea of help was turning out to be the opposite, but she could kind of see the reasoning. It was wrong, obviously, but if she’d convinced herself she washelpingit did make sense.

It also explained why Sam had been so angry at Vicky, so convinced she was a terrible person. Her poor Daddy was trying to protect her. He just didn’t understand Vicky’s motives. And no matter what she said he wasn’t going to understand because his defensive mode had been activated.

She loved that protective Daddy side of him. She was his girl and he wanted to keep her safe from the world, but this time that wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t the world causing problems; it was her mother, which planted her directly in the middle.

They’d have a giant fight, and it would be painful for both of them. In the meantime, Vicky wasn’t going to be there that much longer, and she didn’t want the last of their time to be ruined with spillover stress. Especially since her mother had already promised not to do anything else like that.

Really the situation had already been dealt with so there was no reason to let it explode again, but she knew Sam wasn’t going to accept that. Packing her things and leaving a note for him was the only thing she could think of that would keep things from spiraling. She’d just spend Vicky’s last two weeks with her up at the big house. After she was gone Charlie would come home, and everything would be perfect again.

It should have worked like that. She wanted it to. But she should have known better.

Sam gave her three days before he came up to the big house and she knew he had every intention of dragging her home. She could see it in the flinty stare and the tense lines of his body. And she wanted to go with him so bad it hurt.

Three days of non-stop Vicky was wearing her down. Vicky continued to maintain that she’d be leaving in a couple of weeks, but she had plans for them to visit each other. She talked about the trips they’d take together. She wanted Charlie to spend the summer with her.

It all sounded very nice, but not really possible. She had the ranch and plans for school that weren’t going to make it easy to do all the things Vicky wanted. Not to mention Sam would definitely have an issue with it. But when she tried, gently, to explain this to Vicky, she just didn’t seem to … take it in.

She started to worry that Vicky wasn’t going to accept things not going her way, and when she realized that all her plans weren’t going to happen … Charlie didn’t know how that was going to go. She’d already been worried that once Vicky left that would be the end of their contact. After all, that’s what had happened when she was a kid.

But if Vicky was upset that Charlie didn’t give her everything she wanted, it made it even more likely that she’d vanish. It became even more important that she spend every minute she could with her mother before she left, just in case.

“I can’t, Sam.”

“Why? Charlie, damn it, I don’t like this. We were supposed to be beyond this back-and-forth crap. You promised no more running away. That’s why you moved in, remember?”

“I know. It’s just …”

“If you heard me talking then you know what I suspect. You can’t tell me you didn’t consider the possibility that it was true when you heard me say it.”

“I did, and maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t matter. It was –she was probably just trying to help, and she won’t do it again. I talked to her after the furniture so it’s not really an issue.”

“Not. An. Issue?” He stared at her with incredulity written all over his face. “Are you kidding me? Of course it’s an issue!”

She sighed. “I admit if she was the one who did that it’s … bad. But it’s like with the furniture, she wanted to make things easier for me. It was wrong but it’s over and I just want to let it go.”

“You …” He swept his hand down over his face like he was trying to wipe the stress away. “I want you home. Now.”

She shifted from one foot to the other, feeling trapped and unsure what to do. Fighting with him was hard enough, but she was also fighting with herself. Whatever she might have decided was moot because the next thing she knew Vicky had stormed out of the house looking like she was ready for battle.

Sam and her mother squared off for an epic fight and Charlie just wanted to vanish. The two of them hurled barbed insults and accusations back and forth. Neither noticed that she’d slipped into the house and gone to hide in her childhood bedroom, where she’d been staying for the past few days.

She needed something to keep her hands busy and she still hadn’t unpacked her clothes, so she upended her bag on the bed and began to tuck them away into the dresser drawers. It didn’t matter if she was staying or going, she just needed something to do to keep her mind off the fighting.

At the bottom of the bag, she found a surprise. She’d been in a hurry to pack and get out of the house before Sam could come home and talk her out of things, so she hadn’t noticed when she’d scooped up her dad’s letter with her clothes. Still unopened. Still a mystery.

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