Page 34 of Snowed In With the Mountain Man
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Dahlia pinched the bridge of her nose as she squinted and stared at the spreadsheet on her screen.
Nope. No good. The numbers still blurred together.
With a sigh, she sank back in her chair and shut her gritty eyes. Her head had been pounding for the past hour, her eyes feeling the strain of so much tedious data entry and analysis.
She peeked over at the clock and groaned.
No wonder her eyes and fingers were giving out on her. She hadn’t come up for air since she got out of bed. The workday was coming to an end, and the only interruption had been JJ’s unexpected visit early this morning.
Her stomach growled, and her head throbbed.
She should probably grab a late lunch. That would help.
But she’d heard Emma’s and Lizzy’s voices coming from the kitchen, and she couldn’t bring herself to go in there and face them. She wasn’t up for awkward tension or another argument, and somehow that was all she seemed capable of with those two.
Not that she had such a great relationship with Rose or Daisy either. But at least with them there was history and the comfort that came with familiarity.
She let her head fall back against the desk chair with a thud as she gave her eyes and her brain a much-needed rest. The second she stopped focusing on work, though, her mind went rogue.
Next thing she knew she was mentally replaying every moment from her walk back to the main house with JJ the night before, and then the way he’d smiled at her when he’d brought her a coffee.
Her eyes snapped open, and she frowned up at the ceiling.
He’d brought her coffee.
Why had he done that?
She sat up and gave her head a shake. Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything, just like their time together last night hadn’t meant anything.
It couldn’t mean anything because her time here was limited.
One week and then she’d be gone. Back to her real life. And these moments with JJ would just be a memory.
She straightened in her chair, finally feeling like she was getting her head on straight. What mattered now was that she put her time here to good use.
Lizzy’s laughter floated back to the office Dahlia had imprisoned herself in, and far softer was Rose’s giggle.
So Rose was with them too.
Her throat grew too tight, and that was followed swiftly by a rush of annoyance. The sooner she cut ties with this place the better.
But with Emma and Lizzy so insistent on this rule that they wouldn’t make a decision on selling until every sister saw the place, Dahlia’s hands were tied.
She tapped a finger against her lips as she mulled it over. Take the emotions out of it—that was a lesson she’d learned as a kid. Whenever a problem came along, it was so much easier to deal with when you took the emotions away and thought logically.
She’d become an expert at it.
“Not everyone’s like you. We can’t just forget he ever existed.”
Rose’s words echoed and stung. Maybe she’d gotten too good at it. But then again, it wasn’t Rose who’d had to step up and take over as mom when their own mother lost all interest in the job.
No, that wasn’t fair. She knew enough about mental health issues now to realize it wasn’t her mother’s fault. In hindsight, Dahlia could see clearly that her mother had always suffered. She suspected their mom was bipolar, from what Dahlia read on the topic. And then after Rose had been born, she’d clearly suffered from postpartum depression.
It was all so obvious in hindsight. But at the time…
Well, she’d been a kid. A kid with two sisters who needed to be taken care of. So she’d stepped up. And she’d been stepping up ever since.
