Rustic Hearts (Poplar Falls Book 1)

by Amber Kelly

  “I’m glad you have something of his. Something to make you feel close to him.”

  He shakes his head, uncomfortable with the sympathy from me. Then, he grabs a bucket and disappears into one of the stalls, ending the conversation.

  I grab my own bucket and brush, and then I walk in to start brushing Huck down as I wonder to myself if Elle has anything special to remind her of her mom and dad.

  Then, I decide that I will make her something.

  Sophie

  I walk into the kitchen after brushing down Huck to find Aunt Doreen and Aunt Ria rummaging through a huge stack of papers and receipts on the table.

  “Here, you sort these into alphabetical order, and then we’ll start by date, I guess,” Aunt Doreen says as she pushes a pile in Aunt Ria’s direction.

  “Alphabetical order, you say?” Aunt Ria mumbles as she assesses the mess.

  “What are you guys doing?” I ask as I pour myself a glass of lemonade and sit down.

  “The books,” Aunt Doreen answers.

  I take in the table and the green ledger portfolio sitting in front of her. “You’re joking, right?”

  “I wish I were. Gram always handled all of this, and … well, the end of the year will be here soon, and we have to get our ducks in a row for the accountant.”

  “You mean to tell me, Gram was still keeping the ranch’s records on a paper ledger?” I squeak in disbelief.

  “Yes. She would keep it all recorded. She kept all the receipts and paperwork so nice and neat, and she wrote all the checks and kept the accounts balanced. Paid payroll to the employees and—oh my, we don’t know what we’re doing.” Aunt Doreen places her head in her hands.

  “Don’t you guys have a computer?” I ask.

  “Yes. There’s one in Madeline’s office. She uses it to run the stable’s website for her camps for the children with disabilities.”

  “You guys need to get a QuickBooks account for the ranch and start moving all this over.”

  “What’s a QuickBooks?”

  “It’s an online accounting and record-keeping program that you can use for the business. It will keep track of your accounts payable and accounts receivable and even do payroll for you. It’s pretty user-friendly. A lot better than keeping all this straight.”

  “I don’t really know my way around a computer.” Aunt Doreen sighs.

  “Surely, someone here does. Madeline? Elle?”

  “Yes, Elle does, but she’s not very interested in the ranch. She has big plans for being a news reporter or something.”

  “This week anyway,” Ria adds.

  “Think you could teach us?” Aunt Doreen turns her hopeful eyes to me.

  “I guess it couldn’t hurt to try. I’ll grab my laptop.”

  “Oh, thank you, sweetheart.” She exhales in relief.

  We spend the rest of the evening with me giving a crash course tutorial for a basic QuickBooks home office program. None of which seems to sink in too well.

  At some point, the men show up, looking for dinner, and Aunt Ria throws together some sloppy joes and serves it with potato salad she made earlier in the afternoon. We all eat and then get back to it.

  “What’s all this?” Daddy asks as he surveys us crowded around my laptop with both of his sisters frantically taking notes.

  “Sophie is trying to teach us how to use the computer to keep better records of the ranch’s business affairs,” Aunt Doreen answers him as she narrows her eyes at the screen, trying to read the numbers in the columns. “I don’t know how you can see that screen, Sophie. All I see is glare at this point. It’s giving me the worst headache.” She removes her reading glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose.

  “Is that thing safe?” He looks at the computer like it might bite him.

  “It has a firewall.”

  “A fire what?”

  “A firewall. It’s a security program that keeps your computer safe from malware and viruses.”

  “How does a machine catch a virus?”

  All their eyes focus on me.

  “Not an actual virus. You know what? That’s enough for tonight. I don’t want to overload you. We’ll do some more tomorrow.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” Aunt Ria stands from the table and walks over to the freezer. “Anyone else need a drink?” She raises the mason jar in the air.

  “I’ll have a nip,” Aunt Doreen accepts.

  I stand and start to close my laptop.

  “I appreciate your efforts, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to operate that thing,” Daddy says as he sits opposite me.

  “Somebody has to learn. You can’t keep doing business this way. I can’t believe Gram was still doing everything by hand. That’s insane.”

  “Accountant’s been complaining for years, but she’d put him in his place, and as long as all the numbers added up, I reckon he let her slide.”

  I shake my head. “How do you all measure profit and loss or forecast for the next season?”

  “If there’s money left in the accounts after we take the cattle to auction at the end of the year, it’s profit. If there’s not, it’s loss.”

  “What?”

  “Where’d I lose you?”

  “You can’t measure profit that way. You have to keep a record of material costs, man-hours, service fees like vet bills and heating and air contractors. How do you pay the ranch hands?”

  “With cash.”

  “Cash? Are you serious? Are they considered self-employed contract employees, or do you pay their social security and income taxes?”

  “They are just guys who work, and I pay them with cash.”

  “You can’t do that. What if one of them is hurt out there? Does workers’ comp cover them? If you don’t have a contract and they are working under the table, they could sue Rustic Peak.”

  “Those boys have been working for me for years. They aren’t going to sue me.”

  “Really? You don’t know that. If one of them ended up under the tractor and lost their leg and couldn’t work again, what choice would they have? Or better yet, what if it killed them? Do you know every one of their next of kin well enough to know they wouldn’t sue the ranch?”

  “No,” he reluctantly admits.

  “Honestly, if the IRS found out the way you had been running this place, you would be in a heap of trouble. One thing you never want to do is piss off the IRS.”

  “Sophie, we’re a small family business, and we’ve done just fine.”

  “You’re an eight-thousand-acre cattle ranch. That’s not small, and you, as a businessman, should want to protect that.”

  “I’m not a businessman. I’m a rancher.”

  “You need to be both.”

  He raises his weary eyes to mine. He’s only fifty-five years old, but the lines around his eyes and the gray in his mustache make him seem older.

  “We weren’t prepared to lose Gram. She was healthy as a horse one minute, and the next, she was sick. It all happened so quickly. Too quick for her to teach us the ins and outs. But we’ll figure it out. We have to. Too many people’s families depend on us.”

  I sigh and calm down. “I’ll help while I’m here. Maybe if I can get everything set up and all this”—I gesture to the mess covering the table—“sorted, then it will be easier to start from there and move forward. Although I’m not sure Aunt Doreen and Ria are the best choices to be taking over the operation. Madeline, Elle, or even Braxton would be easier to train.”

  “Braxton would love that.” He snorts.

  “I bet.”

  “Let me talk to Madeline tonight. I’m sure she’d be willing to learn, and I can try my hand at it, I guess.”

  “This is going to be a good thing. Once you get everything set up and see how much more efficient and how much more legal it is, you’ll be glad you did.”

  “I trust you.” He stands. “Thank you, Sophie.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  He smiles at me, and then he w
alks out the back door.

  I take in the table. Crap. It’s going to take more than a few weeks to straighten this out.

  Sophie

  We spend the next two days sorting receipts, scheduling a bank visit, and sitting down with the accountant, who is thrilled that we’re moving to a system that will work with his program so that information can be easily imported to his office. Apparently, the ranch was paying for one of his employees to work overtime every quarter and manually enter everything that Gram had brought into his office. Who knows how much that cost the ranch over the years?

  Dallas and I make a quick trip to Denver so that I can purchase a new desktop and printer and scanner. Daddy and Emmett clean out the storage room off of the kitchen, so we can convert it into an office. We’re adding an old desk that Dallas’s mom had stored at the bakery and the filing cabinet from Gram and Pop’s room.

  I print contract employee forms and have everyone working under the table fill out the proper paperwork. Then, Madeline and I start the slow process of inputting all the information into the computer. We split up the tasks; she enters all the utilities and office supply expenses as I sort all the labor and material goods expenses.

  At one point, I have to call a very put-out Braxton in to explain some of the invoices to me.

  “So, what’s this one?”

  He takes the paper from my hand and looks at the chicken scratch written across the carbon copy invoice from the local hardware store. “Parts for the bush hog,” he states as he throws the paper back down on the desk.

  “What’s a bush hog?”

  “It’s a type of mower.”

  “Why didn’t you just say mower?”

  “It’s a big mower, and it has an attachment that’s on hinges, so it can mow a field and go over rocks and stumps and things like that.”

  “Okay, so this files under equipment maintenance. What about this one?” I slide another paper in front of him.

  “It’s a receipt for fuel.”

  “I can see that, but fuel for what?”

  “Tractors, mowers, generators, haulers—everything that runs on fuel.”

  I look up at him. He’s sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, and he is annoyed.

  I drop the pen in my hand and scoot back from the desk. “Look, I’m trying to help here. The least you could do is be nice.”

  “I don’t have time to sit here all day and spoon-feed you this shit. I have a vet tech coming in a few hours to vaccinate, so we can start castrating calves. I need to get them corralled, and we have a fence down in the back pasture that we need to patch before nightfall.”

  “Fine. Go. I’ll try to figure it out myself.”

  “You do that.” He stands and heads for the door.

  “You don’t have to be such a jackass.”

  He stops, puts his hands in the doorframe, and looks back at me. “You can take your ass back to the city anytime you want. We’ve survived just fine around here without your help, and we’ll be just fine once you’re gone.”

  With that parting shot, he disappears out the door.

  “Asshole,” I murmur under my breath just as Aunt Doreen walks in.

  “Where did Braxton run off to in such a huff?”

  “Off to do something way more important than what I’m doing.”

  “Is he grumpy today? You have to overlook him when he gets like that.”

  “You mean, when he gets rude and condescending?”

  She purses her lips. “I mean, when he gets distracted and overwhelmed. Running a ranch this size is not easy. It’s pretty demanding, both mentally and physically. That boy takes a lot on his shoulders, and he takes considerable pride in the work and the quality of the cattle we produce. The Rustic Peak brand name means something to all of us, but it means a whole heck of a lot to Braxton.”

  “I get it, but he needs to understand that this—the balancing accounts and filing insurance and keeping good records—is a part of that brand too. If you can’t pay the bills, that will do more to harm the ranch’s good name than anything else will.”

  “Yes. Well, he is more of a hands-on type of man. We’ll figure this office stuff out.”

  “You might need to hire someone once I leave. A part-time clerk or something.”

  She considers it for a second. “I can ask around the church and see if anyone is interested. For now, we will count our blessings that you are here. Now, are you at a stopping point?”

  “I guess so. Until Emmett or Daddy can come in and help me sort some of these out anyway.”

  “Good. These boys are going to be starving after a day of castrating. Let’s prepare a good meal for them to come home to.”

  “All right. I’m going to check my e-mails quickly, and I’ll be in to help in a few minutes.”

  “By the way, a package arrived for you this morning. Ria brought it in from the front porch when we got home from the market. I think she took it up to your room.”

  “Thank you.”

  After answering a few e-mails from Charlotte and scanning the designs I sketched for the women’s watch for Maple and Park, I check the sales in our online store and schedule a conference call with Charlotte and Gail for tomorrow morning.

  I place a quick call to Stanhope. I give him an update on our first-quarter sales and the new contract with the boutiques, and I forward it to him, so he can look over the fine print before I sign anything.

  “We miss you, Sophia.”

  “I miss you guys too. I’ll be home soon though.”

  “Not soon enough. Your mother is beside herself. She doesn’t know what to do without her best girl.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you finding resolution there?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I think I’m more confused now than I was when I arrived. I was so full of anger, and now, I don’t know how I feel.”

  “Just know that your mother and I love you very much, and no matter what, we have your back.”

  “Thank you, Stanhope. I love you both very much as well.”

  I end the call and head up to open the package Charlotte sent at my request.

  I shut myself in my room and open the box.

  Surrounded by bubble wrap is a small jewelry box from our shop. I open it, and nestled inside is the necklace I designed and sent to Justin with exact instructions.

  I gently remove the delicate white-gold chain holding an elegant water lily pendant with a mother of pearl center. I wanted something to represent a mother’s love, and when Braxton told me his mother’s name was Lily, I knew exactly what I wanted to make.

  The actual necklace turned out more beautiful than the sketch. I carefully place it back into the box.

  I want to find the right time to give it to Elle without making too big a deal of it.

  I hide it in the drawer of the nightstand, and I join my aunts to help them finish dinner.

  Braxton

  We load the calf into the restraint stall, and Walker and I apply the elastrator band.

  “Release,” Jefferson shouts the command.

  Emmett opens the door, and the calf staggers out of the stall.

  “That’s the last one for today, fellas. Anyone ready for lunch?” Emmett asks.

  “Can’t. Got to get out to the back pasture and get the breach in the fence patched before dark,” I tell him as I snap off my gloves.

  He removes his hat and scratches his head before looking up into the sky. “Looks like a storm might be blowing in. Think we have time to get it up before it hits?”

  The wind started to kick up about half an hour ago. I glance off into the horizon and see the telltale signs of dark clouds over the mountains.

  This is what I was afraid of—a storm catching us before we could finish. I shouldn’t have been such an ass to Sophie this morning, but I didn’t have the time to dick around, answering her questions, with the forecast calling for thunderstorms this evening.

  “Hopefully. It looks like it’s moving fa
st. I dropped a trailer with the lumber off at the site this morning,” I reply.

  “We’d best get going then. I’ll let Doreen know we’re headed straight out and get her to pack some sandwiches and water. I’ll meet you guys there,” Emmett says as he walks off in the direction of the house.

  Jefferson, Walker, and I quickly put away all the banding supplies and load the back of the truck with a post-hole digger, a couple of bags of cement, and a mixer.

  “You guys go on, and I’ll fill the water tank and wait for Emmett. We’ll be right behind you.”

  “You okay to load that tank, old man?” I rib Jefferson as I hop into the driver’s seat.

  “I can still work circles around you, son,” he shouts back.

  It’s true. He might be getting up there in age, but the man is still solid and powerful.

  Thirty minutes later, we are scarfing down ham and cheese sandwiches with one hand and unloading the trucks with the other. It’s already been a long day, and we have hours of work ahead of us.

  “Guess who’s back in town?” Walker asks as he hands the digger off to me.

  I raise an eyebrow in question.

  “Morgan. I ran into her at the grocery store last night.”

  “I know. She’s texted and called me a few times.”

  “Seems she’s back for good. She said her dad’s health is getting worse, and she moved back to be close to her mom and help out.”

  “I don’t know about that. I heard from Jerry that the company she works for filed for bankruptcy last month. The deal they had to buy the old Stockman ranch fell through because of it. Apparently, the CEO was caught embezzling or some shit. My bet is, that has way more to do with her moving back to Poplar Falls than her dad’s health does.”

  “I thought it sounded sketchy. Her dad has been on that oxygen tank for years. I saw him tying one on at Butch’s last week, and he seemed just fine.” He grabs a split rail log off the end of the tractor and wrenches it in the hole I just finished digging. “If she stays, you plan on starting that back up?”