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“Rose?” I moved past Gavin to hug my sister. I heard Sienna say something before leaving, but I was too caught up with my sister showing up here to pay much attention to anything else. I led her into the office. “Gavin, this is my little sister, Rose. Rose, this is Gavin Manning. He owns the club.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” Rose smiled as she shook his hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I needed to talk to my brother and couldn’t get a hold of him at his office.”
“Jules told you I was here,” I said.
“I’ll give the two of you some time,” Gavin said as he headed back to the door. “I have a few things I need to do out of the office, anyway.”
I waited until Gavin closed the door behind him before turning to my sister, my curiosity burning. “What are you doing in New York?” I asked, following up with an equally pressing question. “Is everyone alright back home?”
“Yeah, everyone’s fine,” Rose replied hastily. “At least, as far as I know. I’ve only spoken to Maggie.”
“Tell me,” I urged, sinking onto the plush leather couch and patting the spot next to me. “What’s going on? More shit hitting the fan at the ranch?”
Rose had bought a horse ranch in Colorado over a year ago, and initially, things seemed to go smoothly. But this past March, she’d called me in a panic, needing help. When I’d shown up at her place, she’d cryptically told me something felt off, but she didn’t have the skills to investigate properly. I did.
She’d handed over the books and asked me to take a look, not wanting to plant any preconceived notions. It hadn’t taken long for me to uncover the truth. One of her employees had been embezzling funds from the ranch. They’d done a piss-poor job of covering their tracks, which is how Rose had noticed the discrepancies. I’d offered to stick around and help her deal with the fallout, but she’d thanked me for my help and sent me packing back to Palo Alto.
“I fired that thieving son of a…,” Rose said, her gaze fixed on her hands, unable to meet my eyes. “But there have been some... unsavory rumors circulating about me and the real reason I fired him. Between what he stole and the gossip in town, I sold the ranch a couple of weeks ago.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. She’d sold her ranch? The place she’d dreamed of owning her entire life? The horses she adored?
“Shit. Why?”
She started twisting her fingers together nervously, a habit I recognized from childhood. Whenever she was trying to keep her emotions in check, she’d do that, even as a little girl.
“I knew someone interested in the property, and it just seemed like the best solution for everyone involved.”
I reached out and placed my hand over hers. “Why didn’t you come to me? Or Blaze, or anyone else in the family? Any of us would’ve been more than happy to float you the cash to cover whatever you needed.”
Honestly, I couldn’t fathom how, even with the embezzlement, she hadn’t been able to keep the ranch. All of us, regardless of how we fit into the bizarre McCrae-Carideo-Gracen family tree, were worth an obscene amount of money. And we’d all been taught how to handle our finances responsibly.
She shook her head. “It was more about the rumors than the money. And before you ask why I didn’t seek help with that, I wanted to handle things on my own. I needed to prove that I wasn’t just the baby of the family who needed everyone to coddle her.”
“No one thinks that about you,” I protested.
She finally met my gaze, her expression speaking volumes. “Everyone else has these big, important careers, and I just wanted to work with horses. No one has to say that out loud.”
“Rose,” I began.
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” she interrupted. “That’s why I came here instead of going back to California or heading to Baltimore to see Blaze. People would start asking questions, meaning well, but making me feel like a complete idiot.”
I wanted to argue and tell her that our family would never do that, but I knew, as well as anyone, that sometimes people tried to be helpful, yet it just made everything worse. I could easily imagine our older brother, Blaze, grilling her about why she hadn’t hired a competent bookkeeper who could have caught the embezzling sooner or why she hadn’t done more thorough background checks on her employees. He’d be trying to understand, but she’d feel like those were things she should have thought of from the start.
“I knew Maggie would get it,” Rose continued. “And the last time we talked, she mentioned wanting to hire some help with the twins. So, I called her. She and Drake said I could stay with them as long as I want.”
“You know you could stay with me too,” I offered. “The condo isn’t massive, but there’s a guest room.”
“I know,” Rose replied. “But Maggie understands what it’s like to not want to air your dirty laundry to the family. And since I’m not in any danger, she supports me by keeping things under wraps for now.”
“I won’t breathe a word,” I promised. “But I think it’s probably going to come out at some point.”
“Thank you,” Rose said, offering me a smile that almost reached her eyes. “And I know. I just need some time. I’ll probably tell Carson since he lives in the city too, but I wanted you to know before I even got settled at Maggie’s, since you were already in the loop about the ranch drama.”
“Well, if you need a break from screaming babies or from a sickeningly sweet couple, you know where to find me,” I said.
Her phone chimed with an incoming text. “That’s Maggie. I asked her to pick me up here instead of at the airport.”
I glanced at the time. “Let me walk you out, since the club’s just opening. It shouldn’t be too crazy yet, but I don’t want anyone mistaking you for an employee or a member.”
