Fall to Pieces (26 page)

His hand stilled on her back. "I started
keeping a journal during my first tour in Iraq."

"You're really talented."

His muscles jumped against her as he made a
scoffing sound.

"I mean it," she said, propping herself on
her elbows. "That story... I was blown away."

He shrugged. "It's a way to keep everything
straight in my head."

"It's more than that. If that story is any
indication, you really have a gift. I mean, if for some reason
things don't work out the way you want them to, you could be a
writer."

His body tensed against her. "Yeah right,
like anyone would want to read my f'd up ramblings. Doesn't matter
anyway, because everything will go the way I want it to."

"Dylan—"

He cut her off. "In any case, like I said,
what's in my journals is for me, and me only. No way I'm letting
anyone that far into my head."

Or your heart.

Too bad he'd already crawled inside hers. So
deeply she was afraid she'd never get him out.

Chapter 15

The next morning Sadie and Dylan forced
themselves from bed at their usual early hour. Though the workload
had eased considerably now that they'd finished the haying, there
was still plenty to do.

Horses needed to be tended to, arrangements
needed to be made to deliver the hay to their customers in Texas,
and Sadie needed to catch up on the projects she'd neglected over
the last week.

Not to mention, now that the most stressful
period had passed, it was time for Sadie to tell her father the
whole truth about the ranch's finances.

The thought of telling her father that one of
the people he'd trusted for decades had been stealing from him made
her coffee curdle in her stomach. Good thing his most recent check
up with his cardiologist indicated his heart was healthy enough to
take the news.

"Do you want me there when you tell him?"
Dylan asked, regarding her over the rim of his own mug.

She shook her head. "It's best if I just tell
him." Not only because her dad would be humiliated that anyone else
knew he'd been taken advantage of. But also because she knew that
she'd come to depend entirely too much on Dylan these past few
weeks. And with Dylan's medical evaluation coming up in just a few
days, she knew she had to wean herself off of that, one small step
at a time.

After a breakfast where Sadie shifted
uncomfortably under the pointed looks her father shot at her and
Dylan, she asked her father if she could speak privately with
him.

She followed him up the stairs to his office,
tension tightening her shoulders as she considered the best way to
break the news.

As soon as he closed the door behind them, he
turned on her. "You better not be about to tell me Dylan knocked
you up. Not unless he plans to marry you."

"No!" Sadie said with a startled laugh.
Although, to be fair, she wouldn't be a hundred percent sure of
that for another week, but she wasn't about to share that
information with her father.

"I know you two are 'involved,'" he said, his
face set in stern lines. He took seat behind a wide wooden desk
piled high with haphazard stacks of papers and notes.

She resisted the urge to start straightening.
Honestly with a desk like this it was no wonder he lost track of
his money.

"We're not involved," she sighed as she took
a seat across from him.

"Yeah? What do you call what happened in the
barn yesterday? And you heading over to his cabin last night and
not coming out till just before breakfast?"

Her cheeks flamed, her stomach clenching like
she was a teenager getting scolded. Except for back then, she'd
been scolded for staying up too late reading or losing track of
time studying at Molly's and missing curfew.

Her father had never had to worry about any
shenanigans with boys.

"We're adults who enjoy spending time
together," she said.

"I don't want anyone taking advantage of
you."

"Nobody is taking advantage of anyone. That's
not what I wanted to talk about." Then, as calmly and quickly as
she could, she repeated what Molly had discovered when she'd gone
through their financial records.

Her father's reaction was identical to hers.
His jaw dropped to his chest and he shook his head. "No. There's
absolutely no chance either one of them would steal from this
place. For Christ's sake I've known Pete since we were practically
in diapers! And June? She can barely work the telephone, much less
pull off all this computerized shit!"

"I'm sorry, Dad, but there's no mistake." She
pulled out the file of information Molly had put together, and went
over everything in painstaking detail.

When she was finished, her father sat back in
his chair, shoulders slumped. His face had gone ashen, and panic
rose in her chest as she wondered whether she should have kept the
secret longer, if maybe his doctor had been wrong about the state
of his health.

"Dad, do you feel all right? Do you need me
to call your doctor?"

"No, Goddamnit, I don't need a doctor." He
slammed his palm down on the desk. The shocked pallor disappeared
as his cheeks flushed in anger. "How long have you known about
this?"

"A couple of weeks."

"You mean to tell me I have continued to
employ and pay salary to someone who's been robbing me blind? Why
the hell didn't you tell me as soon as you found out?"

Sadie's hand flew to her chest, as if that
could stop the burst of pain at the anger directed at her. "I
didn't want to cause you any more stress! There was so much to do,
and I wasn't sure about your heart-"

"I never asked for you to coddle me like a
Goddamn child!"

She fought the urge to flee from his ire,
told herself it was stupid to feel hurt. What had she expected?
That he'd follow up his scant words of praise from yesterday with
an outflow of gratitude? "That's right, you didn't ask. That
doesn't mean you didn't need me to."

He stayed silent, his stony glare never
wavering.

Forcing herself to keep her shoulders
straight under a look that would have had her cowering in the past,
she said, "Now you need to decide how you want to handle the
situation. We can hire an investigator to find out who set up the
money market account—"

"Screw an investigator. I'm going to find out
right now who's been taking it."

Before she could stop him he picked up the
walkie talkie he used in favor of a cell phone for communicating
around the ranch and summoned Pete back to the house.

Then he stalked to the door, flung it open,
and bellowed for June.

Sadie could hear June's footsteps, bustling
up the stairs, and within minutes Pete had arrived.

"This better be important," Pete groused.
"I've got about a thousand feet of fence to fix before we can move
the mares into the south pasture."

"You bet your ass it's important," her dad
said as he rose from his chair. "I want to know which one of you
low down snakes stole from me!"

So much for Sadie's admonishments to take a
calm approach.

"Stealing?" June gasped, her blue eyes going
wide behind her glasses. "Why would you think either of us would do
such a thing?"

"I didn't think it would be such a big deal,"
Pete said. Sadie's stomach sank at the sheepish look on his face,
the way his fingers clenched and unclenched around his hat
brim.

"Of course it's a big deal!" Jim exclaimed,
looking like he'd been punched in the chest at his friend of
decade's admission of guilt.

"I figured, I took a little bit here and
there, never thought you'd notice." He fished in his back pocket
and slammed the can down on the desk. "You buy cases at a time. I
never figured you'd be okay with me helping myself."

"You've been stealing my chew?" Jim reached
for the can.

Pete nodded. "I can pay you back, if it's
such a big deal. Though I don't know why you had to bring June in.
I don't imagine she's in the market for Copenhagen."

"We're not talking about chew," Sadie sighed.
"We're talking about over a hundred thousand dollars that's gone
missing."

"You think I stole
money
from you?"
Pete sputtered.

"It was probably Andy," June interjected. "I
would always find him sneaking around the house at odd hours."

"Only you and Pete can access any of the
accounts," Sadie said, her stomach sinking at the way the color
leached out of June's cheeks.

"You say that," June retorted, "but I see you
and Dylan have gotten mighty close. Now, I've always thought he was
a nice boy, but can you really ever trust a man?" Her high-pitched
laugh was forced.

"Dylan wasn't here two years ago, and someone
has been taking money for at least that long."

June's mouth pulled into a tight line, her
shoulders hunching. "It's his fault!" she said, her finger pointing
accusingly at her father.

"How the hell could it be my fault?"

"I gave up my entire life for you!" June
cried. "Fifteen years I've been here, doing everything for you.
Cooking, cleaning, putting up with your ornery moods. And what
thanks do I get? You got divorced and brought that little witch to
come in and boss me around, treat me like a second class citizen,
after all I've done."

Her father scrubbed his hand across his
forehead, and gave Sadie a helpless look.

"I loved you!" June wailed. "After Denise
left, I was ready to forgive you, but even then you didn't give me
the time of day." She sank down into a chair, shoulders heaving.
"Then my mom had her stroke."

"I told you I'd give you a loan to tide you
over," Jim said.

"A loan! You gave your little tramp a half a
million free and clear, and all I get is a loan after everything
I've done."

Whatever Sadie was expecting, it wasn't to
find out that June, simple June, had been nursing a secret crush on
her father all of these years.

Or that she would sink so low as to steal
from her father when he continued to ignore her.

Pete shook his head helplessly, looking as
dumbfounded as Sadie felt.

"Why don't you get back to work," Sadie
said.

"And, June, you can go on home," Jim said,
sounding wrung out. "Sadie or I will give you a call when we figure
out how we want to handle this."

###

"Jesus, I never would have pegged June for an
embezzler," Dylan said that night after dinner.

"And I never would have guessed she's been
carrying a torch for my father all these years," Sadie said. She
accepted the vodka tonic he'd mixed for her and took a grateful
sip.

After June had fessed up to the crime, she
and her father had gone back and forth on how to handle it. On the
one hand, her father was beyond furious that he'd been betrayed by
someone he'd trusted implicitly.

On the other hand, neither of them had a
burning desire to see June hauled off in handcuffs.

"So you're just letting her get away with
it?"

Sadie shrugged. "There's still a some money
left in her account. Dad says if she gives it back, he's content to
just put it all behind him." She wandered over to the couch and
sank down, the emotional exhaustion of today's events as intense as
any physical strain she'd been under.

"We talking about the same guy? That sounds
awfully soft hearted for your father."

"Not so much a soft heart as a guilty
conscience," she said with a wry smile. "After June left and we
were talking it up, Dad fessed up to a drunken—at least on his
part—indiscretion with June not too long after my mom left. Claims
she ambushed him one night in his office after he'd been drowning
his sorrows in Glenlivet."

Dylan's eyebrows shot to his hairline. Sadie
knew what he was thinking. June might have been over a decade years
younger at the time, but even back then she'd been a plump,
grandmotherly figure. About as far as you could get from a femme
fatale.

"All I know is after a day of having to do
our own cooking, Dad will be motivated to find someone to replace
her."

Two days later, her father requested that she
join him in his office after lunch. She didn't think anything could
surprise her more than finding out June was a felon with designs on
her father. Until her father dropped a wholly unexpected
bombshell.

"I'm selling Pete a seventy percent stake in
the ranch."

"What?" Sadie asked, feeling like the earth
had suddenly flipped on its axis. "Why would you do that? You love
this place - it's your life. Pete has been after you for years to
partner up, and you've always said no."

"That's true," her father conceded, his jaw
set. "But let's face it, I'm not getting any younger, and even if
the doctors say I'm mostly recovered, my health will never be what
it was. And now that PJ and his wife are splitting up, he's going
to move back up here and help run things." Pete's son PJ, or Pete
Junior, was five years older than Sadie and had moved to his wife's
family's spread in central Wyoming when they'd married ten years
ago. "And, then there's the money situation."

"But it's fine now. I can keep making
payments on the loan until the payment for the hay comes
through—"

"This way I can pay off the loan, and pay you
back for what you've already put in."

"I didn't ask to be paid back," Sadie said
softly.

"I know you didn't," her father said gruffly.
"And I appreciate that."

"I just can't believe you'd make this
decision without even talking to me."

"But it works out so much better for you this
way," he said, seeming genuinely confused that she was upset. "This
saves you the trouble of selling it when I finally kick the bucket.
You get the money now instead of later."

"I don't care about the money," Sadie
snapped. "And the only one who ever decided I was incapable of
running this place is you."