Jared chuckled wryly, sympathetically. “Patience has never been your strong suit.”
“No. I’m sure she’s aware of that.”
“If she knows you well, she is.”
Something Kelly said had been haunting him. “She says I have an issue with anger.”
For the first time, Jared paused in his work to look at his son. “She thinks you have a problem with anger?”
“Yeah. She says I don’t know how to express it.”
“I see.” Jared stroked his chin. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you get really angry. Oh, you’ve gotten mad plenty of times—but never foaming-at-the-mouth furious.”
Shane shrugged. “So I don’t have much of a temper. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Depends on whether you don’t get furious, or whether you feel like you have to repress it, for some reason. I don’t get angry all that often, myself, but I don’t usually try to hide it when I do.”
Shane had seen his father in full temper on only a few memorable occasions. Jared wasn’t loud when he was mad—he got dangerously quiet, in fact—but he was damned intimidating. And he spared no words expressing his displeasure. Cassie, on the other hand, had a fiery temper that matched her red hair. She believed the level of noise she made should express the degree of her anger. Molly had inherited her mother’s temper.
Shane got mad sometimes. He simply saw no purpose in wasting time or energy displaying it. He’d been mad as hell at Kelly yesterday—her asinine suggestion that they “postpone” their relationship still made him seethe—but what would have been the point of yelling at her about it?
“I don’t know why she’s always trying to get me to be mad at someone. You...even herself. It doesn’t make sense.”
Jared reached for the box of roofing nails. “Are you mad at me?”
“No, of course not,” Shane answered impatiently. “I told you when we talked about it the other day that I don’t blame you for anything in my childhood. Any anger I felt toward you then was irrational, since you were doing the best you could.”
“And I told you I know I could have done more—and that I wouldn’t blame you for being mad about it.”
“What would be the point?”
“The point would be getting it off your chest. You let anger build up long enough and it’ll eat at you. If you’re having trouble letting it out, maybe you should figure out why that is.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like...” Shane stopped himself just in time.
Jared didn’t ask him to fill in the blank.
Shane slanted a look at his father, wondering if Jared knew more than he was letting on about the identity of the woman they’d been indirectly discussing. “So do you have any advice for me?”
“Every time I’ve tried to give advice about romance, it’s come back to bite me in the butt,” Jared drawled.
“You think I should go along with her? Be patient and hope she’ll eventually find the nerve to stop hiding her feelings?”
“What else can you do? Other than break it off, of course.”
“No.” Shane wasn’t ready to do that.
“Then you might try something else you’ve always been very good at.”
“What’s that?”
Jared smiled. “Charm and persistence. Cassie’s always said you’d have made a killing as a salesman if you hadn’t wanted to be a rancher.”
Shane lifted an eyebrow. “You’re suggesting I sell myself to her?”
His father shrugged. “Isn’t that what courtship is all about?”
Shane hadn’t thought of it quite that way before. “Yeah, I guess it is.”