that had to be sutured. He was now sporting a white patch of gauze over his right eye to match the white cast on his ankle.
She settled him on her right side and worked her way around him with the other crutch, tucking it under his left arm.
“There, now take it slow. I’ll get your snack and sit on the porch with you and go through my emails.”
Since she was certain her deal with RGF was over.
Jacoby huffed and mumbled some more as she stayed a few steps behind him to offer support should he need it. Her father was a proud man; a stubborn and opinionated man who loved his girls more than he loved life at this moment.
“I want the Oreo cookies, not those dry butter ones Daisy keeps buying,” he said when they finally made it into the kitchen.
The master bedroom of the ranch-style house was closer to the kitchen than the other two rooms, so their trek had been short. Nina immediately went to the cabinet to grab a glass and filled it with the crushed ice her father preferred from the ice machine on the refrigerator.
“The butter cookies have less sugar,” she told him even though she knew he couldn’t care less.
“Yeah, well all the baked goods and snacks could cause elevated cholesterol or diabetes. Everything does something bad and something good. So with the time I have left, I’m doing whatever makes me feel good. I want eight cookies. Count ’em and put them in a napkin for me.”
He was already heading for the back door, which Nina had left open when she’d gone out onto the porch to sit while he slept. After this morning, she now knew why her father liked to sit on that porch so much. It was quiet, peaceful, revealing. She’d come to terms with a few things about herself and her life while sitting in one of the twin rocking chairs just staring out toward the sky.
With the glass in one hand, his eight cookies folded into a napkin in the other, and her laptop tucked under her arm, she walked out onto the porch just as her dad was trying to settle himself into a chair. She hurried over to him, placing the glass, cookies and laptop on the small wooden table between the rocking chairs that looked as if they were on their last legs.
“Here, let me help you,” she said and eased the crutches from one arm and then the next.
Standing in front of him, she put both her arms under his and then bent her knees as he reclined into the chair.
Jacoby huffed when he was finally seated. “Your sisters should have stayed here to help,” he grumbled.
She ignored him because she was glad Angie and Daisy had left. They’d been a nagging, arguing pain in her ass from the time she’d arrived yesterday, until the moment she’d told them to go late last night. They weren’t being helpful, just judgmental and annoying, traits they’d spent most of their lives perfecting.
“It’s okay, Dad. We’re fine,” she told him, sitting in the chair next to him before grabbing her laptop from the table.
“Not okay,” he said when he reached for his cookies.
She could hear him crunching on the first one as she booted up her laptop and waited to log in to her inbox.
“You should be in New York working,” Jacoby said after a few moments.
“You weren’t happy that I’d stayed in New York, remember?”
“No, I wasn’t happy if you were in New York pimping yourself out to some rich dude,” he snapped. “But you said that’s not what you were doing.”
“It’s not,” she replied, clicking on an email from RJ Gold, wondering if this was his message telling her she’d breached her contract with them by leaving town.
“And that guy you were in New York with? He was helping you with your business?”
She was only half listening to her father now, but she replied, “Yeah, his family’s company was taking a chance on my app.”
If you’re reading this right now, I’m on my way to you and it’s too late for you to stop me.
That’s what the first line of the email read and her heartbeat had immediately picked up its pace.
I hope you’ll hear me out this time and once you do, whatever you want, whatever you tell me to do, I will.
RJ hadn’t written this email. Her eyes shot up to the subject line of the message again as she read the