Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25316 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25316 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 127(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Jack pushes him. “Don’t you fucking talk to her like that.” I haven’t seen such anger in Jack before.
“I’ll talk to her however I want. She’s a fucking home-wrecker! A gold digger! She’s dressed like garbage!”
I stare back at him, his raggedy flannel and holey jeans. He got a whole lot of nerve to talk.”
“You better step off, or I’m going to get the sheriff in here to haul you off to the drunk tank, Max.”
“That bitch? Like I should have to take orders from her, she can’t make me do shit. Who the fuck made a woman sheriff?”
Did you really have to make your misogyny even more blatant? I shake my head as I massage my temples.
“Don’t matter what you think of her. She’ll have you in jail for trespassing. All I need to do is make a call.”
Max grumbles, “This ain’t gonna be over. You can’t spit on my family’s name like this. You can’t spit on my name like this!”
“So the truth comes out,” Jack says, crossing his arms.
“Fuck you, Jack. Fuck your bitch too.” He waddles away toward his truck. With being as drunk as he obviously is, he shouldn’t be driving, but I think Jack just wants him gone, and I’m in total agreement with him.
Watching his truck putter away, I walk up to my boss. “So, what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
“Everyone knows your marriage with Sarah is a sham, Jack.”
“That whole stunt he just pulled just emboldened me to be honest. I’m for sure going to marry his daughter now.”
I look at him with disbelief, seeing the slight grin on his face. “Couldn’t he just, not give his daughter the farm? Seems like an honor-system thing.”
“Nope. Both Sarah’s and my lawyers have been over this. It’s baked into the clause of Max’s own inheritance thirty years ago. He has to surrender it once his eldest son is married.”
“But Sarah is...”
“His daughter, yes, but times have changed. Sex-specific clauses like that won’t stand up in court anymore, doubly so since Max has no sons.”
There's a part of me that wanted the whole thing to fall apart. So my own fantasies of marrying Jack and living happily ever after could come true. Like, there’s part of me that logically knows legal marriage is just that, legal. That Jack and I could be together in every sense of the term except legally. But I still wanted the complete package. The one that told the world that I was Jack’s and Jack was mine.
Jack holds me close and massages my shoulder. “I’m going to go give Sheriff Rogers a call and fill him in about the trouble Max might cause. While I’m doing that, why don’t you head up to our bluff?”
I giggle. “It’s our bluff now?”
“May as well be. It’s where we both bore our hearts to one another. And where we both bore our bodies. I feel like we should spend some time up there, just the two of us.”
His devious grin told me just what that time would entail. “You sure? The sky’s pretty gray. Seems like rain.”
“I’ve lived here all my life, and I can tell when it’s actually going to rain. It’s not going to rain tonight.”
“Didn’t know you were a weatherman.”
“I’m not. I just think I got a ninety percent chance of guessing right.”
“And that ten percent chance is us getting soaked in a torrential downpour?”
He shrugs. “In that case, we run home, soaked. We can go into my room. Strip down to nothing.”
I blush at his suggestion.
“Then when we’re done doing things, wearing nothing, we throw on some blankets and warm up by the fire.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
He leans down and kisses me on the forehead before heading into the ranch house. I head to the stable and pull out Misty, giving her a few sugar cubes before heading out.
I don’t think I trust Jack’s weather prediction completely. It smells like rain to me, and I think I hear thunder in the distance. But he has lived here three and a half decades compared to my two weeks, so I’ll follow his word.
Misty takes me to the bluff, and I leave her under a nearby tree and set her up with a feed bag.
I head to the cliff, and take in the sights. It’s not a sunset, no. But the silvers, purples, and grays are beautiful in their own way. The thunder rumbles in the distance, and I’m doubting Jack’s weather predictions even more now, and that doubt is doubled when I see lightning far off.
Still, it’s a cool night, and I enjoy the breeze after a day of hard work. Even if I thought we were just going to get rained on, it’d be with him, which makes everything all the more worth it.