Joey (The Whitfield Rancher #7) - Kathi S. Barton Page 0,2

bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and a single bathroom. What it did have going for it was the three hundred acres surrounding it, as well as the rigging that pumped out oil, the wide creek that supplied water to several towns below it, as well as a mine. The mine alone produced coal and gems, such as gold and diamonds, at a nice rate. No one, just her and Uncle Ross’s attorney, knew the amount of land she’d been left, nor the other operations supplying her with a good amount of income yearly.

Autumn sat down on the couch and thought about her day. She had had so much planned for the afternoon after her appointment, but all that had gone to shit. Knowing you didn’t have long to live sure put a damper on things, she thought.

The seven of them that April had been talking about were her sisters, all but one older than her—April was the closest to her in age—and all named for a month in the year. Autumn had always wondered if they’d planned to have twelve children.

The sisters were named January, February, and April. There was May, June, and July, September, and then her, Autumn. The reason she was the odd one out was because she’d been born in September too—the thirtieth, as a matter of fact. Her name would have been October had she been born just twelve hours later. That was only one of the reasons her parents had hated her.

Autumn was also the seventh child of a seventh son. It might not have made a lick of difference that she’d been born in September if she’d been a boy, what they’d been told they were to have. But being a daughter, the seventh one, it caused all kinds of shit to happen. Her father had a long line of sevenths born to his side of the family. It would only be skipped over when there was a different sex born to that line as the seventh child, such as her being a boy. Autumn was the seventh of a long line of seventh same sex children. Autumn was magical.

“But not magical enough to keep from getting cancer.” Trying not to think about what her parents had done to her so they could, she supposed, cut off her magic, she looked at the things from her mailbox.

Credit offers were nothing new to her, and she made sure they were shredded. With those applications in the wrong hands, her sisters would cause a disaster. She had a cell phone bill, as well as a bill for something called Dispatchers. Opening it up, she knew just who had put her name on the billing. It was really too bad on January’s part. Autumn had made it perfectly clear that any bills not okayed in writing by her would not be paid. She would have thought all her sisters would have figured this out by now.

Pulling out her phone and making the call come from a restricted number, she didn’t think January would answer. When she did, Autumn asked her about Dispatchers.

“Oh, they’re this amazing company that will pick up anything you order from anywhere in the state and bring it to you within twenty-four hours. That way, with me just having a baby, I don’t have to bundle her up and take her out. It’s so she won’t get sick.” Autumn pointed out that it was eighty-five degrees where she lived. “I know that, silly. But she could still get germs. Why do you ask?”

“I’m not paying this bill. Not one dime of it, January. I made that clear to you guys when Uncle Ross died.” January tried telling her about germs and the baby. “Since I didn’t knock you up, nor did I have her for you, she is not my responsibility. Not now, not ever.”

“You got the house, Autumn. The least you can do is pay for a few things extra for the rest of us. What’s it going to take for you to realize you’re not all that special?” Autumn thought about her sister’s house and tossed an expensive glass vase to the floor. “Did you do that? Damn it, Autumn, that was a wedding present from his parents. You’ll pay for that.”

“Yeah, good luck on trying to prove I did it from Ohio when you live in California. I’m not paying this bill. And I have no idea how many things you’ve had delivered, but for six grand, I would have thought