How on earth was she supposed to know what would make her happy? Her whole world had turned upside down in the last month and a half. She’d lost her job, given up her apartment, was living as a guest at her friend’s house and entertaining thoughts of marriage to a man she didn’t even know, just because her friend’s father had decreed it. Her brother’s wife had run away, and Ward seemed to view her as a stand-in for Mindy. She wasn’t ready for any of it.
“I have no problem with living in a trailer that’s made to look like a cabin,” she said carefully, “but I do have a problem, a big problem, with being pushed into a situation for which I’m not ready. Do you understand that?”
Emerson set the last dish on the drying rack and dried his hands. “Yeah, I got it,” he said and walked out of the room.
“I make a pretty mean cup of coffee, you know,” Cass said early the following morning.
Emerson lifted the tray he had just assembled and turned to face her. “I’m sure you do, but the General is very particular. I’ve been making his morning coffee for years.”
“It just seems silly to make coffee twice in one morning,” she pointed out. She leaned against the counter in a warm, quilted robe, fuzzy slippers on her feet, one arm cradling her belly. They often met up like this since Cass liked to get a big breakfast on the table for her family. The General had always been an early riser and didn’t seem likely to give up his military ways anytime soon.
“I’ve been careful to clean the coffee maker after I use it,” Emerson said. “Am I getting in your way?”
Cass opened her mouth, seem to reconsider her words, and said, “I appreciate that you clean the coffee maker after you use it. All I’m saying is, maybe if the General tried my coffee, he’d get used to it, and then we’d only have to make it once.”
“Or I could just make enough for everybody,” Emerson pointed out.
“Or I could.” Cass lifted up her hands in exasperation. “I’m just as good at keeping house as you are.”
Emerson winced. He was hardly keeping house. He was the General’s aide; this was his job. Working to hold his temper in check, he tried to see things from Cass’s point of view. He supposed he was stepping on her toes, but he prided himself on keeping an exact schedule. If the General could depend on the small details of his day unfolding like clockwork, he could save his brainpower for the important ones—like directing troops during wartime, or…
But the General wasn’t serving at USSOCOM anymore. Neither of them were. He supposed his attention to the General’s coffee and schedule seemed ridiculous here on the ranch, but a man like the General hated to be sidelined, and Emerson felt sticking to a military schedule kept his spirits up, as did his forays to Billings to work with the reservists.
“I’m not trying to step on your toes. I’m trying to show the General I appreciate everything he’s done for me. He didn’t have to bring me here—or get me work at the reserve base. The least I can do is make his coffee the way he likes it.” He lifted the tray an inch. “I guess from your perspective it would have been better if he’d left me back at USSOCOM.”
“Would they have let you stay on?” Cass asked curiously.
“I’m not sure. The Army tries to find work for wounded soldiers if it can, but…” He shrugged. He didn’t know if he’d have passed muster.
Cass softened a little. “I don’t mind you being here, but you have to understand this is my kitchen, that’s my coffee maker and that’s my father you’ve got holed up in his office. I’d like to make his life easier, too. That’s how I show people I care, Emerson—by cooking for them. And by making them coffee.”
“The General loves your cooking,” Emerson assured her. “But I get what you’re saying. If I stay, I promise I won’t live under your roof forever. I’ll move down to the Park as soon as possible, fix up the trailers and manage them. That income will go straight into the communal kitty. I want to pay my way around here.”
Cass sighed. “I know. I’ll try to be patient about the coffee.” She frowned, holding a hand to her abdomen.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. This little bugger keeps kicking me. Speaking of which, time to check on Elise. She’s bound to wake up any minute. I think Wyoming is still sleeping, and she needs it. She hasn’t had a full night’s rest in a week.”
Emerson just managed to stop himself before volunteering to get the baby himself. He figured Cass wouldn’t like that.
She laughed. “You were about to offer to get Elise, weren’t you?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “You caught me,” he admitted. “I was one of eleven kids in the house growing up, and we all did our share. Picking up a baby, washing dishes, harvesting the hay—it was all in a day’s work, and woe to anyone who didn’t prove their worth.”
He hadn’t meant to sound so bitter, and he wondered where that anger had come from. He was lucky enough his aunt and uncle had taken him in even though they had so many mouths of their own to feed. So what if they’d cast him off when he’d grown up?
“I don’t think kids should have to prove their worth, do you?” Cass asked sharply. She circled her belly protectively with her arms again.
“No. Definitely not.” He pulled himself together. Cass didn’t need his life story—not this early in the morning. “I’m going to take this tray into the General before his coffee gets cold. Is there anything I can do to make your life easier today?”
“You’re incorrigible.” She smiled at him, though, and he thought that was an improvement.
“I know.” He smiled back.
“You probably have your hands full with the General, but if you want to come out later and hold Elise while I vacuum, I won’t turn you away.”
“Sounds good.”
Emerson headed to the General’s room and found him sitting at his desk as usual. He looked up with a scowl that softened when he took in the coffee on the tray Emerson was carrying. “Good man,” he said. “I’m not myself before my first cup of coffee, as I’m sure you know.”
“None of us is.”
“These days I’m not myself,” the General complained. He thumped the desk with his hands. “Look at me, sitting all the time. It was bad enough at USSOCOM, but it’s even worse here. There’s a whole ranch out there, and I can’t do anything with it.”
“Then let’s get started with those physio exercises your doctor ordered. If you want to be out working the ranch, you need to do them. I’ve already done mine today.”
The General waved him off the way he’d waved him off every day they’d been here. Emerson bit back a sigh of frustration. He wanted to be out on the ranch, too, working on his trailer, coming up with ideas for what else he could do to help around the place. Instead, he’d end up spending his morning here, helping with the paperwork and pleading with the General to do the exercises that were his only chance at getting back the range of motion it would take to have an active lifestyle again. He needed to help Cass with Elise so she could do her vacuuming, too.