Free SEAL's Bride: A Secret Baby Romance by Vivian Wood Page B

didn’t want Sawyer to see her looking downtrodden. Perhaps it was vain, a sin in its own right, but she only wanted her ex-boyfriend to see her at her best. And next to her gorgeous younger sister Shelby, it would be plenty easy for Remy to look dumpy and sleep deprived.
    “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about? Other than my choice of outfit, I mean.”
    “Yes, yes,” her father said, waving a hand. “Really quick, while your mother is loading all those pies into the truck. I was wondering if you got a chance to look at the budget, see if we can afford to replace the backhoe. It’s not working right, and it’s giving Micah a lot of trouble.”
    Remy sighed.
    “Daddy, we don’t have the money for that.” She paused. “We don’t have the money for anything .”
    “I just thought…” He started, then trailed off. He glanced up at Remy, his eyes shining with earnest sincerity. “We just need one good year, you know that?”
    “I know,” she said. She hated to be the bearer of bad news, but her father had put her in charge of trying to wrangle the poorly-kept financial records. As the oldest daughter, she wanted more than anything to be able to turn the whole situation around.
    She wanted to be able to tell her father they could buy a new backhoe, or do any of the other hundred small things that needed to be done around the farm. Patch the roof of their house, for one thing. No more rain dripping into buckets every afternoon during hurricane season.
    But that wasn’t reality. And if there was one thing that Remy was well-versed in, it was in dealing with the reality laid before her. After all, it wasn’t as if her life had run exactly according to plan so far.
    Shifting Shiloh onto her other hip, Remy blew out a breath.
    “I know that you keep waiting for the perfect year,” she told her father.
    “Well, we have to get lucky eventually, right?” Braxton asked, his smile humorless. “We just need good rain, and good sun, and a good controlled burn this year. This could be our year, Remy.”
    “It could also be our last year,” Remy said, making an apologetic face. “If we don’t straighten out the books, the farm can’t stay open for another year. We just can’t survive without turning a profit for so long.”
    Her father glanced away while he worked to hide his disappointment.
    “I understand,” he said. “Thank you for giving it a try.”
    “Hey,” Remy said, putting her hand on her father’s arm. “Don’t give up yet. We just have to get inventive, come up with a solution. I’m pretty sure someone in the family is always saying that Rivers don’t give up, right?”
    Her father gave her another humorless smile. “Right.”
    “Remy! Brax!” Her mother called from the front door. “Y’all don’t want to find out what happens if you make me late to the social!”
    Remy gave her father a knowing look and moved toward her mother’s voice, knowing that her mother’s tone might have been joking… but no one made Eulah River wait. It simply wasn’t done.
    “Remy,” her father called. She turned back toward him.
    “You know you can’t tell anyone else in the family about this, right? It would just kill your mother,” he asked.
    Remy stared at him for second and then nodded. “I know.”
    As she turned to leave again, her father gave a loud whistle, the same one he’d used to round up Remy and her siblings when they were kids. She turned back to him with a frown.
    “Are you planning on taking Shiloh to the church social today?” he asked.
    Her father settled into his favorite recliner, remote in his hand. Braxton River had never been much of a churchgoer, despite all of his wife’s pestering. It worked out for Remy now, seeing as how she didn’t like to take Shiloh to church.
    Or anywhere, actually. Not that she was ashamed of her son; it was more that she didn’t want him exposed to any  potential unpleasantness.
    Basically, she didn’t want Arlo Roman coming