Page 15 of Sweet Deal
“Okay.” He nodded. “Fair enough.” Now all he had to do was figure out a way to convince the entire Sweet family to let him help.
Chapter Seven
Maybe it was time for a new bed. That had to be the reason Rachel spent most of the night tossing, turning, and punching her pillow. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Jim—Jimmy—Henderson, his dreamy blue eyes, or the swoon-worthy smile that came with his reminder of their once-upon-a-time marriage deal.
The drive home from the diner had been long and quiet. The fun evening had taken a slightly somber turn when she explained all the challenges they were facing. She could see the muscle in Jim’s jaw tightening when she explained all that Ray the crooked foreman had done to them. From leaving the family virtually penniless to her mother being forced to do the work of several men until being thrown by a horse and snarled in barbed wire. Scariest damn day of her life. More so since they’d found their father lifeless, slumped over the kitchen table not much more than a year before her mother’s run-in with that fence.
Thank heaven for Brady, he’d been the family hero. She was pretty sure that dog was still getting steak for dinner.
“Yo, you planning on daydreaming or handing me the drill?” Holding the board against the side of the barn, Preston stared at his sister.
“Sorry. Just thinking.” She handed him the drill and reached over for another plank. The storm that blew through in the middle of the night had spooked one of their horses so badly he’d kicked the boards right off the barn. Of course, if they’d been able to use the money their father had borrowed to build the new structure they needed, this would never have happened. As of right now, a good deal of this barn was being held together with little more than elbow grease and prayer.
“If it’s about how to improve cash flow, I’m listening.” Of course he wasn’t, the whirring noise of the power drill shoving screws into the aging planks would have drowned her out.
Holding a plank ready to be screwed in, board on board for more strength, her mind wandered back to Jim again. He’d offered to help with the next payment. That would buy them more time, but for what? To find some stranger to bail her out—for a price?
The drill had stopped. Preston pulled the board out of her hand. “Feel free to clue me in on what’s got you so spaced out, and if it has anything to do with Jimmy Henderson becoming my new, if temporary, brother-in-law, I’m all ears.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “That’s not what I was thinking about.” Not exactly. She heaved a deep sigh as she reached for another board. “He offered to lend us the money for the next payment. Buy us some time.”
Drill primed to drive another screw into the wall, he stopped and turned to face her. “So, you told him about the problems?”
She nodded.
“Does he know about the trust?”
Again, she bobbed her head.
“But he doesn’t want to step in?” Preston bit back a coy grin. “Or does he want benefits like the others?”
Impulse had her smacking her brother on the arm. Hard. “It’s not like that.”
“Could have fooled me.” Preston returned his attention to the work in front of him. “The two of you were mighty close back in the day.”
“We were friends.”
“That’s what you said then.” The whir of the drill picked up again.
Friends enough to have made a silly pact about if they reached the whopping old age of thirty, too old to find a soul mate, they’d marry as friends. She didn’t know what was more stupid, the idea of marrying because they were friends, or that thirty would be ancient. Of course, she and Jillian had already crossed that threshold without blinking an eye. After all, if sixty is the new forty then she and her sister were still kids.
So why couldn’t she get the man, the smile, or the deal, out of her head?
“What brings you to town so early on a Friday morning?” Alice’s sister Vicki looked up from a barrel of glitzy corn hole bags.
Setting her purse down on the counter, Alice turned toward her sister. “Ranch needs some more feed. Garret had to go to school, Jillian to the shop, Preston and Rachel are fixing a hole one of the mares kicked in the barn, and Carson is tearing through the tack room looking for Charlie’s prize saddle.”
“Uh-oh.” Liz, her other sister, straightened from where she’d been unpacking a box nearby.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Alice tried not to think the worst. That saddle was worth a bloody fortune and after all that she’d learned about Ray, she wouldn’t put it past him. “But that room is big and messy and I’m hoping it’s there somewhere.”
Her sister’s arm gently rested on hers. “If it’s not there, they’ll find it somewhere else. There are lots of nooks and crannies on that old place where Charlie might have kept his saddle out of sight from everyone else.”
That was exactly what she’d told herself over and over the last few days. Thankful that Carson felt he finally had time to dig a little further.
Straightening her shoulders, she forced a smile. “So, I’m here to get the feed and thought I’d stop and say hi to my two favorite sisters.”
“Considering we’re your only two sisters, that isn’t saying much.” Liz loved to tease whenever Alice said something like that and right about now, she appreciated smiling.
