“Sit.” Cat waited until he moved away from her to set the meat on a platter. “Everything’s ready,” she said, adding potatoes and carrots and then ladling thickened beef broth over everything.
“Looks perfect.”
“I hope you’re not disappointed.” Carrying the platter to the table set in a nook surrounded by big windows with a view of the pastures, she put it down between the two place settings. “I’m not much of a cook.”
“I think you’re anything you set your mind to be.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“A young lass running a grand business this size is pretty impressive.”
Charmed by the very Irishness of his wording in addition to the lilt, Cat sat opposite him and indicated he should help himself. “I didn’t start the business, but I’ve worked with the horses since I was a teenager.”
“Then it was a family operation?”
“Right. Both Mom and Dad ran it ever since I can remember. I always wanted to help them, but they made me wait until I was thirteen. They even paid me a salary. Which of course they made me save to pay for college rather than spend.”
After heaping his plate with food, Aidan passed the platter to her. “No sisters or brothers?”
“One brother. Jens liked riding horses well enough, but he hated the work involved in taking care of them. Particularly having to help with the breeding—rather the cleanup after—even more. He would disappear whenever possible. He graduated from the Kellogg MBA program and then took a job as far away from here as he could get. New York City.”
“’Tis a shame. That he hated the work, I mean. I understand the other part. Sometimes you do need to get away from family.”
Why had Aidan needed to get away from his brother? Cat wondered as she filled her plate.
Remembering the argument she’d witnessed, she thought it was likely that they didn’t agree on how to run their business. Good, then, that he was a trainer and she was a breeder. Hopefully there’d be no reason for either of them to step on the other’s toes. A perfect partnership. The phone call she’d gotten at the time, about George being missing and about Jack moving up the court date, had put her in a foul mood, an impression she was eager to correct.
Cat wanted to believe they had a fresh start and that she’d been worried for nothing.
Aidan dug into the food. “Your parents can’t be very old, Cat. Why did they leave the farm?”
She sighed. “As much as I love the business, I wish they were still here. Everything seemed perfect, like good fortune would go on forever, until the economy tanked. The stress got to Dad in a big way and he had a heart attack, thankfully not fatal. It was enough for Mom, though. She made him retire early.”
Mom had feared Dad would just drop dead someday. The idea had scared Cat, too.
“So they sold you the farm?”
“The land itself is in a family trust, but they gave me the business and I give them a percentage of the profit to make their retirement easier.” Another reason she wanted to restore her financial footing. “Like I said, Jens didn’t want anything to do with it, so he was glad that I took it over. It would have devastated Dad if the business didn’t stay in the family. That was nearly three years ago.”
Just before she’d gotten involved with Jack.
Cat took a big bite of pot roast and remembered how lonely and trusting she’d been. Unfortunately, she’d trusted the wrong man. A rookie horse trainer, Jack had put on a good show as to how he was all about her work and how he was willing to help her run the farm, but it had all been lies. The pretense hadn’t lasted long once they were married. Within six months, she’d started to suspect that he was more interested in the money the business could make for him than he was in her. She’d done everything to make it not so, but as Dad used to say, you couldn’t change a leopard’s spots. Still, it wasn’t until she’d learned about Simone that Cat had kicked him out.
Swallowing the food that had suddenly gone tasteless, she said, “Anyway, my parents moved to Arkansas because Mom feared that if they stayed in the area, retirement would only be a word.”
“Arkansas is one of your states, is it not?”
“Right. It might as well be another country for as often as I get to see them.” Realizing Aidan had no idea of the huge distances one could travel in this country compared to his own, she explained, “It would be like you going from Dublin to Paris to see your family.”
“That would be quite a distance, indeed. You must miss them, then.”
“All the time. They come for a couple of weeks in the summer and at Christmas. I try to get to Arkansas for a visit in between, but I can’t leave the place for too long. And days or even weeks just isn’t enough when you’re used to seeing someone every day of your life. I take it you don’t feel the same way about Cashel.”
Aidan laughed. “No, I am not missing him, not yet. I think we needed what you call a time out. ’Tis my younger brother Tiernan I miss. He lives here in America, and I have not seen him for nearly two years.”
“He’s training horses?”
Aidan’s smile softened the hard planes of his face. “Aye, but not Thoroughbreds. Your Western horses. He has a small horse ranch in a place called South Dakota. Would that be as far as Arkansas?”
“Oh, much farther. Nearly twice as far.”
The smile faded a bit. “Nevertheless, I’m hoping I’ll see him and meet his wife, Ella, sometime this summer.” He forked the last bite of meat from his plate and said, “By the way, the pot roast is excellent.”
“Thanks.” She indicated the platter that still held half the pot roast. “Help yourself.”
“I don’t mind if I do.” Aidan took seconds.
Cat said, “Eat all you want, no rush. When I’m done, I need to get over to the barn to check on the mare I bred this morning.”
“If you would not mind waiting a few minutes, I would go with you to check on Mac Finnian.”
“Yes, of course.”
He ate in silence for a moment, his expression pensive. Then he said, “When I was in the barn earlier, I saw no other workers. Surely Raul is not your only employee.”
A statement that reminded Cat of one of the reasons she was so desperate to take a chance on Mac. “Bernie Hansen is full-time now,” she said, feeling her stomach tighten. “Bernie was off picking up supplies when you came in. And then there’s Vincent and Laura. They come after school every day they can.”
“So you only have two full-time employees and two children.”
On the defensive now, she argued, “Those ‘children’ are teenagers, and they work hard mucking out stalls, hauling bales of hay, grooming horses.”
“But surely that is not enough to run a breeding farm this size when the operation is in full swing.”
“Then I’ll hire another couple men when business picks up.”
“What about a barn manager?”
“I’m doing double duty for the time being. I had a barn manager until recently.”
“You said something about that in Galway. That was weeks ago. Surely you have thought of replacing him.”