Page 29 of Forget That Guy
“Nah,” she said. “DeeDee told me about the shower, too. So you don’t have to worry that I’ll throw a fit about it. I shower a lot at work, anyway.”
I imagined that she did. Her job was a dirty one, just like mine.
I used the barn shower more than I used my own. I didn’t want to trail dirt and mud into the house if I didn’t have to.
That was also why I had a washer and dryer in the barn, in case I had clothes that were too dirty to get washed with the kids’ good clothes—though, that’d been a fight with Juliana that’d caused the washer and dryer to be outside in the first place. She’d thrown a wall-eyed fit when she’d noticed me shove a pair of shit-encrusted clothes in the washer with her favorite sweater.
She’d gotten her point across, and that was one of those things that I had agreed with Juliana on. It was slightly gross.
“Then come into the house so we can find your dog,” I suggested. “I can’t keep it. I already have too much on my plate.”
She walked beside me, not saying much.
She didn’t seem hostile, but she definitely wasn’t warm and fuzzy, either.
Her eyes kept drifting to the side where her house used to be once upon a time.
I’d torn the damn thing down with the bulldozer the moment she’d gotten all her stuff out of it.
Then I’d set the pile of wood and rubble on fire before burying the remains in a hole.
The only thing left was the charred area where the house had once remained.
I knew she wanted to ask.
But I knew she wouldn’t.
“A few days after you left,” I found myself saying. “That blizzard that came through this past winter? The weight of the snow on the back half of the house caused the burned structure to collapse.”
She blinked, turning to me. “What?”
“One of the cows was in the house for shelter later that week and I realized that if I wasn’t careful, I was going to find some cows in there when it fully collapsed,” I admitted.
She ran her fingers through her hair, causing the ponytail to slip further off her head. She’d been tugging at her hair for a solid twenty minutes as she talked to me.
At this point, she should just take it down.
My presence was making her very nervous.
And seeing as I wasn’t a very comforting kind of guy, I didn’t try to make it more comfortable for her.
“Do you want the rental agreement now, Dad?” Catalina asked as we walked through the door.
“I’ll take it,” Holly said quietly.
Catalina turned with a smile on her face and grabbed the rental agreement that hadn’t been printed out by me. In fact, I still had the damn thing in my email from my lawyer.
I swear, every time I turned around, these girls would grow up a little more on me.
I tugged Cat’s hair as she passed me, and she hissed, “Not the hair, Daddy!”
I grinned.
Out of all three of my children, Catalina was the most girly.
She could handle branding and castrating a cow with the best cowboys in the world, but she’d do it with a full face of makeup and perfectly styled hair.
Joe and DeeDee were girly as well—it was kind of hard not to be when you had Juliana as a mother—but they weren’t in the same league as Cat.
