Which pissed off Jackson, since he wasn’t quite sure why his dad had fallen apart so much, all things considered. But the blowback was hitting the vineyard, and it was hitting Honey, and Jackson didn’t want that to happen.
He had no idea how to fix it. Not when he had never really reconciled his own grief, or the accompanying anger at his dad.
His mother had been the single most important person in his life.
She had been a strong woman. And she’d sacrificed everything for Jackson. Everything. He hadn’t realized just how much until he’d gotten older. And he’d never had the chance to repay her. He’d been planning on it.
But there hadn’t been enough time.
Grief about all that was always close at hand. But here in the silence of the morning, he could remember his mother as she’d been.
And he felt a little closer to her, instead of impossibly far.
He waited until he had his first sip of coffee. A smile touched his lips and he looked out into the yard. Everything was quiet. There were still stars in the sky. Then, once the caffeine had begun to do its work, he decided it was time to make his move. He went down the hall, doing nothing to modify the sound of his steps, and threw open the door to Cricket’s bedroom.
“Get up, princess. There’s chorin’ to do.”
“Mfffmmmmmgh.”
“What’s that?”
The indignant figure in the bed moved, then sat up. It was dark, but he could see that her pajamas consisted of a white T-shirt. And he wondered if there was anything else. Or if she was bare underneath that thing. Then he quickly turned his focus away from that.
“Go away!”
“It’s time to start doing work.”
“It’s...” She whipped her head around to look out the window. “It’s midnight.”
“It is 4:30.”
“Basically midnight.”
“Not in my world. And not in your world either. Not if you want to be a rancher. I thought this was in your blood?”
He couldn’t see her face. Obscured as it was by the fact that the light was off. And she was lucky. Because if he’d been in a really mean mood, he might have turned it on. But while he enjoyed harassing Cricket, there was no real reason to poke at her quite that much.
“I think sleep might be in my blood at this hour of the day.”
“Too bad. If you have animals, you’re going to have to get up and take care of them.”
“I...”
“Sorry. That’s how it works. You gotta get up early to be ready to work.”
“That seems obscene.”
“I grant you, I like an earlier morning than most.”
“Go away. Morning people are suspicious.”
“I made coffee.”
She made a rumbling sound again.
“I’m going to go into the kitchen and pour you a cup. Don’t make me come back in here and wake you up.”
He turned around and walked down the hall. He did not need to see her get out of bed. He did not need to answer any of the questions he had about what she was or wasn’t wearing under that T-shirt.
He didn’t like the whole thing. This whole sudden, errant attraction to Cricket. It could definitely be argued that it would be a fine enough thing in theory. Because it wasn’t like they weren’t both adult people, even if he was a bit older. But he couldn’t give her anything. And that... That didn’t seem fair. She was young and scrappy and trying to make it on her own, and the last thing he wanted to do was...
Well, none of it bore thinking about because he was a grown man. And thinking a woman was pretty didn’t mean acting on anything.
He wouldn’t do it. Most especially because he was here to talk her out of her ranch. He had his limits.
He got a small, chipped mug out of the cupboard and poured some coffee in it. Just in time for Cricket to appear, in what he thought might be the same T-shirt, her blond hair resting on top of her head in a messy knot, jeans and a pair of boots.
“Good morning,” she groused.
“You said you wanted to be a cowgirl.”
He handed the coffee mug over to her.
“I was unaware that being my own boss would involve being woken up at a specific time. Hey. I’m your boss. You’re not my boss.”
“Yes. But the land waits for no one, Cricket. That’s your first lesson in being a real, bona fide rancher.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Doesn’t matter. Why do you love the idea of being a rancher?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You have to do better than that.”
“I feel... I don’t know. I feel weird and wrong most of the time. I feel like I don’t fit. But outdoors, I always felt like maybe I belonged. You know, I was better at riding horses, at dealing with bugs and dirt and all of that kind of stuff than my sisters. It was something I was just naturally more comfortable with. And maybe that’s not right or fair. Maybe that’s a little bit smug. To like something simply because I was better at it, when I couldn’t be better at school, or being pretty.”
“Better at being pretty?”
“Oh, come on. Wren and Emerson are naturally elegant and completely and totally perfect in every way.”
“They’re perfect when it comes to their particular kind of pretty, I’ll give them that. And I’m not going to say people don’t tend to have their favorite kind of flower. But all flowers are pretty.”
“Surely not all of them.”
“You’re messing with my metaphor.”
“It’s too early for metaphors.”
“It’s never too early. Drink your coffee.”
He didn’t know why he felt the need to be nice to her. It was just that she seemed...utterly lost. He related to the feeling. He supposed that in some ways, losing whatever connection with her father that she’d had—though she claimed that it wasn’t a very deep one—was a lot like a death.
And he knew what it was like to lose a parent. It was hard. It had left him feeling... Honestly, he hadn’t known what to do after his mother had died. He hadn’t been ready for it. No one was ever ready. But he had felt deeply and profoundly unprepared for the way the grief had rocked his life. For all the things he’d left unsolved and unsaid. For all the regret he felt on her behalf.
He knew she’d felt stuck in a loveless marriage. Even though she’d loved their family. Loved the kids.