Today is gonna suck.

Beau

Wednesday morning I flew Charlotte home to Redwater Montana and watched her climb into her truck and drive away. There was no way in hell I could have torn myself away from her any sooner. Even twenty-four hours of intimacy did not come close to satisfying my craving for her.

But now, in the harsh reality of the day, I have to switch my focus to other things. Like telling my father I have hired a nurse. Charlotte has a single friend who works in a nursing home twenty-five miles from her home. Lucky for me her friend only lives ten minutes from my ranch and is thrilled to take a private job with a fifty percent raise and living quarters in our main house.

We still need to have a face to face, but the details were hashed out over the phone this morning while Charlotte showered. Constance is going to play the part of a live in housekeeper so that mom can have more time to work in her gardens this summer. That way she won’t realize that she has a nurse watching after her.

She will probably balk at having someone clean her house at first, but I know how much she loves her gardens and I think she would give her right arm to spend entire days digging in the earth.

When I’m done informing him of our new housemate I’ll have to bring him up to speed on the land situation in Othello prairie.

So, in other words the rest of this day is going to suck.

I’ve enlisted my friend from high school, Griffin Mason, to help me with the fake land deal. He lives and works in Manhattan as a lawyer but we have always stayed in touch. And since he agrees that our family feud is stupid and that it’s noble to help the Deardons with my gift, he worked up the documents I need to convince my dad that that land isn’t ours. And when dad asks why I was looking into it at all, I’ll tell him the insurance people found out the land didn’t belong to us and they didn’t want to pay for the damage to the roof caused by the tornado.

And technically it isn’t going to be, because I am giving it to them. But as far as dad will know it was theirs to begin with, therefore he will have no other recourse but to allow them to live in the house I built there.

Like I said, this day is going to suck. At the end of it all I will be meeting up with Charlotte and her family to tell them the good news that Charlotte already knows. That part of the day might not suck, but you never know with Jack Deardon. He could be an ass and flat out refuse the land just to be stubborn and give me a hard time, but if he’s smart he will take it and be content.

When all of that is finished and I have handed over the house keys to Jack and Sarah, I plan on kidnapping Charlotte and ravishing her at my house for the rest of the night.

I wanted to show it to her anyway since she will be living there when she comes back from school in two months. Killing two birds with one stone has never sounded so good.

I climb into my truck and turn down the road that leads to the main house ready for battle. Dad isn’t happy about me taking yesterday off work. He called to tell me four times yesterday when I put my phone on do not disturb to make love to Charlotte. Each message he left he sounded increasingly more irritated until on the fourth one he threatened to disown me and leave the ranch to my cousin Lester in St. Louis. Cue an eye roll and a snort. Lester is an investment banker who knows nothing about ranching. Nice try dad.

I called last night and told him I had to meet with an insurance guy about the damage at the ranch after the tornado. He partially believed me, but he didn’t like that I wasn’t coming home to be with mom. Her memory is worse in the evenings and he doesn’t like to see her that way. I thought well, tough shit, neither do I.

On the way to the house I see Dale and Mick on horseback herding several stray cows through a gate. I imagine they’re getting worried about the black clouds forming out West, trying to make sure all the animals are accounted for in case there is another storm.

I feel guilty that I’m making them one man short again today but what I’m doing is important, not only for my mother’s health and safety but also Charlotte’s parents wellbeing.

It’s crazy to think that I am going to give the people I’ve been taught to despise my whole life one hundred acres of land. What’s even crazier is I’m happy to do it simply because they are Charlotte’s parents and I have feelings for her.

Feelings. What the hell? The only kind of feelings I’ve ever had for women have been physical. As in, how many ways can I twist them, tie them up, spank and fuck them.

Charlotte has me wanting to make sure her needs are met before mine. She has me considering a future with only one woman, she has me cuddling for fucks sake.

At home I climb the steps to the front porch expecting to find my dad inside pacing the living room. Instead he is waiting for me in one of six red Adirondack chairs lined up along the porch for our ranch hands to sit in when they eat lunch.

No one is eating lunch, because it’s only nine o’clock in the morning, so he is alone.

“You’re lookin’ well rested son, how’d that meetin’ go?”

“Fine, everything is covered, we should have a check coming in a month or so.”

He narrows his eyes at me; I already know he is suspicious. I called our insurance agent and made sure all of this was indeed handled in case dad decided to check into it. I don’t like being caught in a lie.

“Good, good. Sit down, let’s talk.”

Shit, that was supposed to be my line. Dad always did know how to set a person on the defensive, even when there was no reason for it.

“Great, I’m glad you’re here I have a couple of things I wanted to discuss with you anyway.”

I take the chair on his right closest to the front door. “How’s mom?”

“She’s fine, same, got a little feisty last night though when you didn’t come home.”

“Dad, she gets feisty every night, you just don’t know it because you refuse to come home in time to deal with it.”

“I got work to do, and that’s why you moved back home isn’t it? To help with your mom.”

“Help, not be completely responsible. That’s what I wanted to talk about anyway. I’ve hired a full time live in nurse for mom. She can’t be alone all day anymore, she dropped a coffee mug the other night and it broke all over the floor. She didn’t even know who I was or where she was. She could have hurt herself.”

I take a deep breath and wait for his rebuttal but there is none.

“You hired a nurse?”

“Yes, she’s going to start tomorrow morning. She can live in my old bedroom since it’s close to yours.”

He looks away from me and slouches back into his chair staring out at the incoming storm.

“Are you moving out?”

His question takes me off guard, he isn’t yelling and protesting my decision like I expected him to.

“No, I’ll stay. I want to keep helping her. I’m not trying to get out of anything here. I just want her safe when we aren’t around.”

“Okay.”

With a frown I lean forward with my arms on my knees and look over at him. Is it possible that he realizes how bad this has become and accepted it?

“Okay?”

“Yeah, I know you’re right. As much as I hate to admit it she’s getting worse every day. She almost set the house on fire this morning when she tossed a dishtowel on top of the toaster after she put in a piece of toast. That’s why I’m home. I couldn’t leave her.”

“I was afraid of something like that. That’s why I hired the nurse.”

“Your ma isn’t gonna like having a nurse takin care of her ya know?”

“I do, that’s why the nurse has agreed to pretend she is a housekeeper. I’m going to tell mom we did it so she could garden more and not have to worry about cleaning the house.”

“Nice, good idea son. She might just go along with that, the woman loves digging in her dirt.”

“Thanks.”

“You got the nurse, nothin’ to thank me for.”

“I mean thanks for not fighting me on this. I know it’s hard admitting she’s getting worse. It’s hard for me too, it breaks my heart when she goes to that faraway place where she doesn’t recognize me.”

He takes a deep breath in and blows it out, “Yeah, me too.”

We sit in silence for a while, the wind picks up and I see a few sprinkles on the windshield of my truck in the driveway.

“Dad, there’s something else I have to talk to you about.”

“Yeah? What’s that?” He turns his attention back to me and I swear he looks ten years older. Losing his wife slowly piece by piece is painful and I imagine he has been reliving the guilt of cheating on her as things worsen.

“You know the land out in Othello prairie?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

Time to lie. “A while back I went out to check on Carmen’s old house.”

He sits up straight in his chair and suddenly looks very interested and I want to punch him. When he realizes his mistake he tries to wipe the anticipation off of his face but it’s too late, I’ve already seen it.

I used to sleep with a ranch hand named Carmen Ortega. She was one sexy ass, long legged, wild, kinky chick that traveled with a rodeo and worked wherever she was staying. We hire temporary help all the time and when we started fucking she made sure to come to Whiskey Hill Ranch whenever she was nearby.

Carmen was my perfect woman. All sex and no feelings, here and then gone with the promise of more kinky nights the next time she came to town. Her visits got to be so frequent that I felt bad making her sleep in the barn with all the other extra ranch hands. Not bad enough to let her sleep in mine, mind you, so I built her a house of her own.

I didn’t do it because I loved her or wanted to make things permanent. I did it because she was my friend and I liked fucking her and I didn’t want her to stop coming around because the accommodations sucked.

Apparently my father liked fucking her too. Now I didn’t mind Carmen fucking other guys. In fact, I assumed she did since she was only around a few months out of the year and I certainly wasn’t a one-woman man. But I draw the line at sharing pussy with my father. I told her to leave and never come back.

I was not happy when I found them together in the house that I built for Carmen, not happy at all. Dad always thought it was because I had feelings for her but that wasn’t it. I was furious that he was messing around on my mom and come to find out, that wasn’t the first time, far from it.

And that brings me to why my dad has a shitty reputation with some of the staff at the Belfair. He used to take mom there all the time for mini vacations until he decided to use it as a love nest for his girlfriends. When mom asked why they didn’t go there anymore he said it had changed owners and the place went downhill. Mom accepted that because why wouldn’t she? Her husband of thirty years told her it was true so it was.

“She isn’t back dad, don’t get so excited.”

“I wasn’t, I mean, I didn’t think she was, oh hell just say what you gotta say.”

“All right then I will. When I spoke to the people at the insurance company I had to report some of the damage on the house’s roof from the tornado. It was minor but that’s why we have insurance. Someone looked into it and found out that the land surrounding the house, the land that we have been fighting with the Deardon’s over forever, is actually the Deardon’s land along with everything on it, including Carmen’s house.”

My dad jumps up and looks down at me, his face is as red as a second degree burn and for a second I worry his blood pressure might cause a vein in the side of his head to explode. My dad is a handsome man, more so than most his age, but he is downright ugly when he’s pissed, and he’s pissed as hell.

“What the fuck are you talkin’ about boy? That land is Hill land, always has been. Those fucking Deardon’s have been trying to convince everybody it’s theirs for one hundred years but my great, great, great…”

“Great Grandpa scraped together every nickel and dime he had for thirty years to buy that land and it’s ours. Yeah, Dad, I’ve heard the story all my life but somewhere along the way you were misinformed. It belongs to them, I told them to send my lawyer a copy of the warranty deed. I asked how this could have happened and they said it was never presented to the recorder’s office for public notice. Simply put, it was a clerical error one hundred years ago.”

“No, no fucking way.”

“Do you have proof? Do you have the deed to that particular area of land? No, you don’t and you don’t because it’s not yours.” Tired of having him look down on me as if he were superior I stand up. He’s so close that we are toe to toe and I can feel puffs of his hot angry breath on my face.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks through clenched teeth.

“I’m not doing anything, Dad. Your insurance company won’t cover the house’s damage. They investigated and found it’s not yours. I had nothing to do with it. I do have something else to tell you though and if you’re mad now you’re gonna be really pissed when you hear it.”

He growls and turns away to pace down the long porch and back.

“You’re gonna tell ‘em they can live in that house aren’t you? That’s why you’re doin’ all this, you wanna let those traitors contaminate our land. What is wrong with you? Don’t you see they’re broke so they’re manipulating the system? They probably used whatever money they had left to pay somebody off at the register’s office. They’re crooked liars and if you think they’re going to set foot on this side of the main road, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Dad, this stupid family feud has gone on long enough. I don’t understand why you give two shits about what some relative did a century ago and that land is a miniscule plot on a ridiculously huge ranch.”

“My ridiculously enormous ranch, Beau, mine. What’s got you so fired up to be charitable and hospitable to those people anyway? What’s your motivation?”

“I don’t need a particular motivation to be a decent human being and, as I said before, it’s not my doing, the insurance company informed me about it.”

“Then you keep your mouth shut and they’ll never know. You can fix that roof yourself we don’t need the damn insurance money.”

While he raged he inched closer and instead of being toe to toe, we are now nose to nose. With his nostrils are flaring and his eyes bugging out of his head I decide it’s time to lay this next part on him.

“I will not.”

“You fucking will too.”

“Do you want mom to know the real reason you don’t take her to the Belfair anymore? How about the way you fucked your son’s friend in the house he built for her? You know she thought I loved Carmen don’t you? She thought Carmen was her only chance at having grandbabies someday. All that’s bullshit but she doesn’t know it and all I have to do is call Carmen and she will come and back me up. Do you want to hurt her like that when she’s going through all of this? Do you want her last memories to be of her cheating bastard of an ex-husband?”

He was ready to tell me go to hell and tell her whatever I wanted because she’s not going to remember any of it soon anyway, until I threw in those last two key points. Number one being that I can still contact Carmen. We don’t speak but I have her number and I’ve called blocking my number to see if it’s still hers every year since I told her to fuck off.

Number two is the reference to him being mom’s ex-husband. Eighty percent of this ranch is built on my grandfather’s land, my maternal grandfather. When mom and dad got married, dad expanded, but the deed to the majority of it is in my mother’s maiden name. And, as stated in their prenuptial agreement that her father insisted she have, it always will be, until she dies and then it’s left to her one and only son, me.

“You wouldn’t hurt your mother like that, you love her too much,” he seethed.

“Unlike you.”

“Tell me son, what is your motivation? Why the sudden interest in housing the poor homeless Deardons?”

He makes me sick, he didn’t even deny not loving my mother. I used to love this man. I worshiped his every move and I thought he was such a noble, honest, dedicated, husband and father. Proof positive that love is blind.

I have nothing to hide. He knows I have a reason, a big one, to stick my neck out like this when it’s going to cause so much grief between us. So I give him what he wants, my motivation, Charlotte.

“Charlotte Deardon.”

He jerks his head back scrunching up his face in surprise.

“That sadiddy cheerleader goody goody from high school? Didn’t that whore go to college somewhere to be a vet?”

When the word whore passes his lips my fist connects with his jaw and I watch my six foot two father real backward and almost fall over the railing on the porch.

“Don’t you fucking talk about her like that. She’s no whore.”

He blinks and holds his jaw working it back and forth like he’s checking to see if it’s broken.

“Have you lost your motherfuckin’ mind boy?”

“Nope.”

“Well I’m thinkin’ you have and I’m callin’ your bluff. I don’t think you’ve got the balls to tell your mama I’ve been unfaithful and frankly I’m surprised it’s a woman who’s got you all tied up in knots like this. It’s not like you to give a flying fuck about any female.”

“I’m telling the Deardons about the land, period. You make it hard on them living there and I’ll have Carmen here to fill mom in on your infidelities faster than you can blink. In fact, if I remember right, she’s over in Clearwater this week for a rodeo. She could be here before sundown. Oh, and one more thing, Charlotte did go to college to become a vet and since we need a vet I hired her full time. I also told her she can live in my house… indefinitely.”

He closes his eyes white knuckling the porch railing. Every muscle in his body is coiled tight ready to attack. I wait for him to do something, anything, punch me, scream, tell me again to fuck off but he doesn’t.

He opens his eyes keeping them trained on the wooden planks of the porch as he descends the steps and stomps toward the closest barn.

I won. That’s twice in two days, first Charlotte and now land and a place for her parents to live. I’m not sure if he’s done with me or not and I don’t care. I did what I set out to do and that was to inform him that the Deardon’s would soon be living in Carmen’s old house in the West Othello prairie.

Today didn’t suck so bad after all.