Page 42 of Disarming The Rancher

“At least we’ll be able to talk to Wade in person. Before he gets here, though, I want to get a sense of what the others are thinking. Especially now that we know he didn’t handle payroll.” She’d believed her grandmother’s property had been the main ball dropped. “I’m concerned about the money. We should be making more, not less. Do you think there’s a chance we’re in financial trouble?”

He shrugged. “I sure hope not.”

She walked back to the house with Randy, thinking she needed to do more than open the financial document. She needed to call the bank.

“Let me make a few phone calls before we meet with the others. Do you mind telling them we should get together in an hour?” she asked, her hand on the knob of the backdoor.

“I’ll handle it,” Randy said. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Be careful with Kenny.”

“He’s a grown man. He can handle rej—”

“No, I mean be careful around him,” he said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something has changed in him lately. He doesn’t seem the same to me and he’s riding Jake a little too hard. The kid is gonna blow one of these days and I’d hate to see the two of them get into it.”

“Kenny has definitely had a hard time hearing the word, no. I can personally vouch for him crossing the line one too many times.” She took note of the assessment. Randy was right. Something was off about Kenny this time. She figured the divorce was weighing heavy on him. In the time they’d been together forever ago, he always talked about marriage as being sacred. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“We take care of each other, right?” he asked.

“That’s what family does,” she agreed.

And part of that meant she made sure the business ran smoothly. She opened the door and walked into the kitchen.

Brax sat at the Marshall’s desk. He needed a scratch sheet so he could run some numbers and was better with a pen and pad than an electronic device any day of the week. There were a couple of folders on top of the oversized, hand-carved oak desk. Nothing that seemed too important.

He pulled out a drawer and a file folder with his name on it caught his eye.

Only him? Why wasn’t there a file on any of his brothers or cousins for that matter?

This was the Marshall’s personal space so it felt wrong to invade it but the question started eating away at Brax…why did he have a folder in his grandfather’s desk?

Curiosity had him drawn toward the file. He drummed his fingers on the desk, debating whether or not he’d be breaking any confidence by taking a peek. The contents of the file were clearly about him. Didn’t he have a right to know?

Normally, he wouldn’t go rooting around in someone else’s belongings, alive or dead. There was no honor there. But then wouldn’t the file be under lock and key if it held information the Marshall didn’t want people to find?

Anyone could stumble across it here.

Now that the Marshall was gone, it seemed like Brax had a right to the contents. What if there was a medical condition he needed to know about? The Marshall would never leave a piece of the ranch to him and not divide it up among his brothers and cousins, so no threat of a surprise component in his will.

Was there a loophole he needed to know about?

And then he thought about how antsy his mother had been lately. Did her actions have anything to do with the file?

“Hey.” Raleigh’s voice cut into his mental debate. She stood at the doorway.

“Before you come inside, let me ask a question.” He put a hand up, palm out.

“Okay.” She cocked her head to one side.

“If you saw a file with your name on it in someone else’s desk, would you take it out and look at it?” he asked.

“Absolutely. I’d want to know if I was in some kind of trouble or had something wrong with me that no one was telling me about. There are half a dozen reasons to look and the biggest one is that it has my name on it. Even in grade school they taught us to label everything that belongs to us.” She bit down on her lip and shifted her weight to one side. “Of course, you could just go to the person directly and ask.”

“No, I can’t.” He dropped his gaze to the opened drawer.

She must’ve gotten the hint because she mouthed, ‘Oh.’ “Well, then, since you’re asking me, I think you have a right to know what’s in there,” she said.

“Rifling through the Marshall’s personal files goes against my beliefs,” he stated.

“It doesn’t go against mine.” She walked over and crouched down next to the drawer. She pinched it between her finger and thumb as she skimmed the others. “You do realize there’s no oth—”