by Laney Powell
I made dinner that night and had two huge helpings of pie. Mom turned her nose up at it, which made me laugh, and then I went to bed. Auntie Fran was picking me up at ten. She did the grocery shopping for her Monday client as well, apparently, and needed help at the store.
When Auntie Fran pulled up in her truck, I waved and bounded down off the porch. I’d gotten up feeling good, feeling refreshed. As I got in, she reached across and hugged me. “Taylor, you are a sight to see, darlin’!”
“It’s good to see you, too.”
“And thank you for helping me out. My hips are acting up this week, and I don’t want to skip out on Freeze.”
“Freeze? The older guy who owns a ranch?”
Fran nodded. “I do his cleaning, and his shopping. His grandson got married, and Pris is a doll, but they have more than enough work out there. I offered to quit once Axel, that’s his grandson, and Pris got married, but Freeze told me he was happy with the way things were. So I’ve stayed. He called to let me know I had to get the shopping done. Apparently they’re running low.”
I thought about Raif, the guy staying with Freeze. He probably left after the weekend. I pushed the thoughts of Raif out of my mind and focused on the shopping list. It was huge and took us over an hour and two carts. When I’d loaded everything into the van, Fran drove out of town. The drive to the ranch was beautiful, the way I remembered things when I thought of Montana. Wide open range, and a big, blue sky.
Fran slowed and turned onto a dirt road, passing underneath a metal arch that proclaimed this as Broken Falls Ranch. I liked the name. We drove for another ten minutes, and then suddenly, large white cliffs appeared in the background. The river ran right by the cliffs, and I could see a house and other buildings in front of that.
“Wow,” I said.
“You’ve never been out here?” Fran looked at me as I shook my head. “That makes sense. Axel is older than you, so you all probably didn’t hang out in school. I think this is one of the nicest spreads around here.”
“It’s gorgeous,” I said.
“I agree. Well, come on in. And thank you again, darlin’. I am feeling every bit of my years.”
A head appeared over the railing on the second-story porch of the house. “Hey, Mrs. Martinsen, we’ll be down to get the groceries in,” a man’s voice called out. The head disappeared, and the man came thundering down the stairs followed by two more men, one of whom was Raif.
“Shit,” I muttered as Auntie Fran got out of the car. Thankfully, she didn’t hear me. She was too busy laughing at the man who’d called down to us. I walked to the back of the van.
“Axel, this is my niece, Taylor Claiborne. She’s back home after being gone for a number of years.”
Axel stuck out my hand and shook it. “Beezie’s sister, right?”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“I thought about asking her out once in high school and then Link glared at me, and that was that,” Axel said. “What I didn’t realize then was that Beezie would have had me for breakfast.”
I laughed at the description of my sister. “She and Link are perfect together.”
“That they are,” Axel said. “This is Jensen,” he indicated the man next to him in a cowboy hat, “And this is our newest hand, Raif.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue. “We’ve met,” I said.
“Oh?” Axel’s eyebrows rose into the brim of his hat. “Well, good. Let’s get the groceries in, and we’ll get out of your way. We’re just finishing up lunch,” he added.
Auntie Fran and I followed the three men up the stairs. “He’s a looker,” Fran said, indicating Raif. “Where’d you meet him?”
“He came into the bakery, and Freeze introduced him to me when he was interrogating me,” I whispered. “Be quiet.”
Fran laughed softly, but didn’t say anything more. We walked into the house which was a large log home with a big open kitchen and main room.
Freeze Buckley stood at the sink. “Thank God!” he called out. “You’re saving me, Frannie.”
My eyes nearly bugged out. No one called Auntie Fran ‘Frannie’. She must really like Freeze.
“That’s what I do. Now get out of the kitchen,” Fran said, walking to the sink. “We’ll get these put away. Where’s Pris?”
“She and Carissa are in town,” Axel said.
One more trip down for the guys and all the groceries were in. “You got it from here?” Axel asked Auntie Fran.
She nodded. “Of course I do. This isn’t my first time out here, Axel Buckley. Now shoo! I want to get this done before Pris gets back.”
He left, and I asked, “Why before Pris gets back?”
“She keeps this going all week. Freeze had a scare with cancer last year—that’s what brought Pris out here, she was his nurse first—and she helps with the herd, and she keeps everything organized. Carissa, she’s Jensen’s fiancée, she does the books, but she and Jensen don’t live here. They live in town. I like to leave the house nice and I do a meal prep for Pris. We’ve never talked about it,” Fran said. “I just know she has a busy life. I like to do it. And she took good care of Freeze from the get go.”
Clearly, there was a megaton of gossip to be had here, but we had work to do. We put away the groceries and then got started on the bedrooms.
“Darn it!” Auntie Fran’s voice rang out. “Taylor?”
I put down my dust rag. “What’s up?”
“Can you go and get my bottle of Murphy’s? I thought it was here, and it’s not.” Fran glared at the wooden dresser in front of her like it had hurt her feelings. “It must have fallen out of my bucket.”
“All right,” I said. “In the van?”
“Please,” Fran nodded.
I went back down to the van. It wasn’t in the back cargo area, so I went to the side, sliding open the door and leaning in. It had fallen beside the seats in the middle, and I stretched to reach for the bottle of Murphy’s Wood Oil soap. When I turned around, I screamed and dropped the bottle.
Chapter Seven
Raif
All three of us looked up as we heard the scream. “Raif, can you see what happened?” Axel was holding onto Kingston’s hoof, cleaning it out. Jensen had his arm around the stallion’s neck, keeping him calm. I was handing over tools, and ready to jump in if Kingston got fed up with it all. Apparently he had a reputation for not liking the work on his feet.
I jogged to the door and started to laugh. “I got this,” I said. “It’s not an emergency.” But I did hurry to get to Taylor as she stood at her van, trapped by a couple of puffed up turkeys.
“What the hell?” Taylor said. “Go! Shoo!” She waved at the birds, who were clucking at her. They didn’t care for her tone or her hand movements, given the way they were puffed up and dancing around her.
I came closer and waved my hands. Cecil and Caleb both jumped a little as I got near them. “Hey, you two! Knock it off!” I feinted a rush as the brown one who I thought was Caleb, made an annoyed gobble-like sound at me. The white one was Cecil. “Caleb, no. Get lost, bird,” I said, waving my hands again. I was wearing gloves, so I wasn’t worried about one of them getting me with their beaks. Not on my hands, anyway.
Both turkeys retreated a safe distance away and continued to strut and gobble and attempt to look intimidating. “It’s all right, guys,” I said, grinning. I knew what they were doing. I turned back to Taylor. “Are you all right?”
She glared at me, then the turkeys, then back at me. “What the hell? Guard turkeys?”
“I had the same thought, but they get used to you. So I’m told, anyway. Pris says they have a fear of missing out, so they are always looking to check out anything or anyone new.”
Her glare lessened as she looked at them. The corners of her mouth tilted a little. “They have a fear of missing out? That’s pretty funny.”
I nodded. “They’re rescues. But what about you? Are you all right?”
“They scared me more than anythi
ng,” Taylor said. “Thanks for the save.”
Her words reverberated through me like an echo. It was small, but it was a save. Then I scoffed at myself. Saving someone from a pair of pain in the ass birds wasn’t the same thing. “My pleasure,” I said, and my voice lowered as I thought about all the things about Taylor that could be pleasurable. My cock went hard at the thought.
Her cheeks pinked. Was it possible that she—that maybe she— “Hey,” I said, giving into the impulse before I chickened out. It was hard to think when my heart was beating, my cock was at attention, and I was trying to play it casual. “Would you like to get a drink with me?”
Her face clouded.
“Or just a coffee?” I asked, before she could come out with a no. “It doesn’t have to be a drink.” Maybe she thought I was implying something. Shit. I had no idea how to do this anymore. The last date I’d gone on was a friend of a friend and it had been easy to ask her out. This… this was something different. “I’m not trying to be a dick, or anything. I just… when we met, I thought… well, you seem like a nice girl—I mean, woman, and there was something that made me want to—God,” I stopped, taking off my ball cap and running my hand across my hair. “I’m sorry. I’m screwing it all up. Forget it.” I turned away, wanting to find a rock and hide under it.
“Coffee would be nice,” Taylor said behind me, her voice soft and hesitant.
I stopped and looked back at her. “Really? After that fucking—I mean, after that mess?”
She smiled, and it was genuine. There was still a hesitance, a wariness that I’d noted about her before, but her smile was real. “Sure. Coffee. Maybe…” she bit her bottom lip with her teeth, and I thought my cock was going to burst out of my pants. I wanted to drag her off into a cave somewhere. It was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen. I had to calm the fuck down. I never got like this over a woman. Never.
What was going on?
“Maybe tomorrow? I’m not working, either of my jobs,” she waved a hand toward the house. “I’m just helping out Auntie Fran today, this isn’t something permanent. Not that the bakery is permanent, either, but—” she pushed a lock of her hair that had fallen out of her bun away from her face. “How about tomorrow?” Taylor seemed irritated all of a sudden, but I didn’t think it was at me.
Interesting.
“Tomorrow would be great. Um, you want to text me your number? And we can find a time that works?”
Her cheeks got even pinker, but she said, “Okay. What’s your number?” She put it in her phone, then looked up at me. “So… I’ll text you later?” She sounded shy.
“That would be great. I’ll ask Freeze if I can go into town for a bit.”
“Your car is fixed?” Taylor asked.
“What? Oh, yeah, I got the part in on Saturday. Jensen and Axel came out and helped me.” That seemed like years ago, but it was only two days.
“Well, okay, I have to get back in,” Taylor held up the bottle of whatever it was she was holding. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then,” I said, and I shamelessly watched her walk back up the stairs. Then I turned and went back to the barn.
“About time. What the hell was that?” Axel asked in a grunt as he struggled with Kingston’s hoof.
“Cecil and Caleb were all ready to go,” I laughed. I couldn’t be mad at the turkeys. Because of them, I had a date. “They needed to be chased away from the cleaner’s car.”
“They’re a menace,” Axel said.
“Oh, I don’t know. I like them,” Jensen said.
“That’s because they don’t live at your place,” Axel shot back.
I smiled as I listened to them going back and forth. They were obviously friends, and I liked being around them. They weren’t PJs, as I was, but they were special forces, and they understood me, understood my background. Not everyone did. It was nice to be around people who did, to whom sometimes, no explanation was necessary.
Had it really only been five days since I’d met Freeze? It felt like a lifetime already.
And I had a date. I had a shit-eating grin on my face the rest of the night. Surprisingly, no one said a word, for which I was glad. I didn’t want to have to explain. It was too new, and I wanted to keep this private for the time being. That night, Taylor texted me, asking what time I wanted to meet. I told her I’d let her know as soon as I talked to Freeze the next morning. She didn’t text back anything other than ‘Okay’ and I left it at that. There was something about her that made her hold back, that made her nervous. I didn’t want to spook her before I even got the chance to spend time with her. This was definitely a matter of taking things slowly.
The next morning, I asked Freeze if I could go into town to get some things I needed.
“You’re not tied to the place. Of course you can.” He sounded grumpy this morning.
“Well, are you or are you not my employer?”
“Yes.”
“And do we or do we not do most of our jobs here on the ranch during the day?”
Freeze huffed. “What are you getting at, boy?”
“Just exercising common sense and courtesy to the guy signing the checks,” I said.
He grunted. “Here I thought you were different, and you’re just like the rest of the mouthy pipsqueaks I got working here.”
“Are you besmirching my good name?” Axel came out into the kitchen.
“What, the mouthy pipsqueak part gave it away?” Freeze grumbled.
“What side of the bed did you get up on?” Pris asked, following Axel out. “Jeez, old man. You’re in a mood.”
“None of your concern, missy,” he shot back.
“Oh, yes it is. If you’re not feeling well, you’ll be telling me about it right now.” The iron gaze of a nurse came over Pris and I saw shades of Mona Thackery.
Freeze leaned over. “Get out while you can, Raif. We live with Nurse Ratched,” he said, referring to the nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “She just keeps it well hidden most of the time.”
Pris burst out laughing and poured a cup of coffee. “You haven’t had coffee yet, have you? Please, drink some immediately, before I have to kill you.” She set the mug in front of Freeze.
He took it and drank, not saying anything. Breakfast was a low-key affair, with Freeze letting everyone know I had to go into town after we got the morning chores done.
“Can you stop by the feed store for me?” Pris asked. “I need some chicken feed. The girls are going through it like crazy.”
“They’re laying like crazy,” Axel said. “Which is good for us.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Tell ’em to put it on the ranch account,” Freeze said. “I’ll call and let them know you’re okay to do that. Don’t be buying out the place, though.”
“You are one suspicious man,” I said to Freeze as I finished breakfast.
“Yes, I am. Served me well, too.” But he said it with a smile.
We got our chores done, and after checking with Axel and Freeze, I raced back to the house to change my shirt and look presentable. I texted Taylor, asking her if an hour from now at the Beanery, the local coffee shop, was good. She said yes, and I decided that a shower was necessary. Everyone else was out of the house, so no one would know I was showering before I went to town to run errands. I didn’t want to field questions.
It was all I could do not to speed into town. I forced myself not to speed, and to enjoy the ride. It was different from where my brother had his ranch in Idaho. He hadn’t been upset when I asked him if he really needed me. “You bailing on me before you ever get here?”
“I was on my way out and ran into a friend who’s shorthanded,” I said, not wanting to get into details.
“No problem. But if you help them out of their jam, I’d love to have you,” Geoff said. “You’re doing all right? Feeling okay?”
“Other than my ass being sore from being on a horse,” I’d admitted.
He boomed with la
ughter. “And here I thought you were a tough guy. A day on a horse can bring anyone down.” After a bit more ribbing, and making me promise that I’d come out when I needed to, if I needed to, Geoff hung up.
He hadn’t been upset, which was good. He’d wished me well. Maybe I wasn’t giving my brother enough credit. It was something to think about once I decided what to do. As to that… I pushed the thoughts away as I drove into Paulson toward the Beanery coffee shop. Right now, it was time to focus on Taylor, and enjoying this afternoon with her.
She was already there when I walked in. She stood up, coffee cup in hand. “Hey,” she said, sounding breathless. “I didn’t know what you wanted or I would have ordered for you.”
“No problem,” I said. I went to the counter and ordered tea. The Beanery had a good selection of teas, including a Moroccan mint, which was one of my favorites. Add some honey in, and it was the best thing ever.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a tea drinker,” Taylor said when I came back to the table.
“It’s not as good as when you’re in Morocco, but it’s not bad,” I shrugged.
“What were you doing there?” she asked.
“We were on a training mission,” I was able to tell her. A lot of what I did wasn’t anything I could talk about, but this was one I could. I told her about the bazaar, and the food, and how much I’d enjoyed it. She told me about working for her last job, in Cheyenne. It was a Greek restaurant, and she’d been there for years.
“I miss the coffee,” Taylor said. “There is nothing like Greek coffee the way Davina made it, in an old pot on the gas stove.”
“With enough sugar to give you fourteen cavities?” I teased.
“Absolutely,” she replied instantly. “Davina’s mom, who everyone called Yaya, always would crook her finger and demand to see your dregs.”
“Why?”
“So she could tell your fortune,” Taylor said.
“Really? What did yours say?”
She waved a hand away, although I could tell that whatever she’d heard in the past wasn’t something she enjoyed remembering. “All sorts of things.”