Page 23 of Rival

I choose not to respond to that. “I’m gonna get my shit done. Have mom text me if she needs anythin’. What are you doin’ today?”

“Got some stuff to fix around the house, so I’ll knock that out. Let me know what Thorton says. I’m not payin’ for this shit when his daddy couldn’t get the job done.”

Nodding, I pull the reins on Austin and lead him from the house. I don’t glance toward the barn as I click my tongue and drive my heels into his flanks to get him moving.

I don’t have time to be worried about what kind of shit that girl is going to bring to my door. I’m not into drama and I’ll have her gone faster than she can blink if it happens again.

Chapter Eleven

Jaxon

My eyes immediately lift when I sense a shift in the air, and find Edith the moment she walks into the barn ready for her afternoon shift. Lifting my hand in a wave, I let it fall when an angry man follows right behind her, eyes calculating and roaming over the site before focusing on me.

Without a word to her, he storms in my direction as she hurries over to the station she was set up at yesterday. I don’t recognize him at first, but the closer he gets, coupled with the pissed off look on his face, it dawns on me that this is Mason Cooper, a guy that went to school with me, although a few years younger than my graduating class.

“How can I—”

He cuts me off, waving a piece of paper in my face. “Need a word with you, Thorton.”

My eyes fly over to Edith, who’s doing her best to not watch us. Her head is hung low as she dives into picking up scraps lying around the floor, cleaning up the space. Alternating between her and this pissed off dude, I ask, “You here to help out?” Then, tilting my head in Edith’s direction, I ask, “You bring her here?”

“Doesn’t matter if I did or didn’t. I got a real problem with this fuckin’ letter you sent us.”

I hear a few gasps from others around us and get irritated. “Watch your language. This is a church project. Why don’t we step outside to talk?”

Without waiting for him, I set my work down and head over to my truck to grab a new bottle of water. Chugging it down, it’s not long before Mason is standing in front of me, feet wide and ready for an argument.

“What’s the problem?” I ask, not sure what his issue is.

“This is my fuckin’ problem. You sent my dad a bill for materials from a contract your daddy never finished. We aren’t payin’ this bullshit.”

Instead of answering him, I hold my hand out for the letter, which he shoves into my hand. Reading it over, I raise a brow. “This is from almost three years ago.”

“I know,” he hisses. “Why the hell are we gettin’ this now?”

My eyes flick up to him before I continue reading. “Would you calm the hell down? No need to get your panties in a twist. Let me read the damn thing.”

“The hell kind of business you runnin’ if you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about?”

This time, I roll my eyes and drop the letter to my side, standing at my full height and glare at him. “I’m runnin’ a business where unpaid invoices get mailed out to people who owe on them. I just fully took over this last year, so if you’ll cool yourself, I can call the office and figure this out.” I raise a brow in question and bite my cheek at the way he works his jaw, wanting to argue.

Eventually, he sucks his teeth and waves me off. “Wrote my number at the bottom. Call me when you realize this bill is a joke. Maybe let your daddy know if he wants to get paid, he ought to do the work he signed up for.”

With that, Mason storms off and jumps in his truck before peeling out, no mind to the way he kicks gravel up with his tires. “Fucking asshole,” I murmur to myself.

It’s not long before I have Jennice on the phone. “Hey, it’s Jaxon. Would you do me a favor and pull up the file for Cooper?” Glancing at the paper Mason left me with, I note it has his father’s name. “It’s under William Cooper. We just mailed him an invoice.”

“Got it. Hold on a minute.” I hear her typing and hum as she reads over the screen. “We sent a bill out last week to them.”

I try my best to stay patient with her since I literally just told her we sent them a bill. “But I want to know what the job was and why he got an invoice.”

More clicking. “Just readin’, Jax. Here it is. Looks like ya’ll had a contract to replace the roof and some other minor repairs on one of their barns, but the job ain’t listed as bein’ closed out.”

“Does it say what happened? Anything in the notes?”

“Your dad made a note that there were conflicts with gettin’ out there. Says he went out with a crew a few different times, but Cooper didn’t have the barn available to him. Didn’t move the cattle out ‘cuz he had no place to put ‘em.”

I ponder that. It happens sometimes. These farmers want us to come do work for them, but when we show up, they don’t have the space cleared and we have to reschedule. A real pain in the ass if I’m being honest because it throws off the whole week’s plan when we have to shift around crews and get them on jobs we weren’t planning on doing for the day.