His lips quirk, amusement in his blue eyes. “The lights do go out.” As if he’s hit a button, they flicker and he arches a brow.
“How did you do that? It’s barely even raining.”
“It’s raining harder than you think.”
“The ranch is in pretty bad shape?”
“The orchard is hellish. I have the guy that put in the drain system to prevent flooding headed over. He did a shit job and it shows.”
“There’s an orchard here?”
“A small one that my parents tried to expand a year before they died.”
In that plane crash not long after he was injured, and an orchard from cattle ranching seems like a big leap. “Did you get out of the cattle business?”
His walkie-talkie goes off on his belt and I hear, “Judy needs you, man.”
Jason grabs the device from his belt, punches a button, and says, “Give me thirty and I’ll be right there,” before he returns the walkie-talkie to his belt. “Gotta run.” He sets his cup in the sink. “Down that brew. We need to move.” There’s an urgency to him that wasn’t there moments before and he’s already walking toward the door.
Who is Judy and why does he run for her, while all but kicking me? “What happened?” I ask instead. “What’s wrong? And who is Judy?”
“We’re moving a handful of the horses Roarke stables and trains to our place to keep them above water.”
“Oh. Oh no. The water got to their horses?” I set my cup down and round the island. “Do you need help?”
His brow lifts. “You’re offering to help?” he asks, his hands settling on his hips.
“Why wouldn’t I? The city girl doesn’t want to get dirty? Is that what you think?” I don’t give him time to reply. We both know it’s true. “Of course I’m offering to help. What can I do?”
“Have you ever been around horses, really been around them?”
“No,” I say, “but I can learn. I love animals.”
“This isn’t the way to learn.”
He hands me a raincoat that I’ve never seen in my life. “Wear this,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
I still want to know who Judy is. “I can drive myself to the main house. Go take care of the horses.”
“Cody didn’t park your car properly,” he says, settling his hat on his head. “You’re not going anywhere until I have some time to get you out.”
“I’m buried again?”
“That’s an understatement. Hurry up.” He turns and opens the door.
I slide into the raincoat that is ridiculously large. His raincoat, I think. It has to be his. This cottage might be my rental, but it’s also his office. A raincoat that he offered to me. Actually, that he ordered me to wear, but technicalities and all. Bottom line, for a man who can’t stand me, and has a Judy somewhere who is desperate for him, this is unexpected. Thunder rumbles above, and since I must judge this man by the bulk of my time with him, not the past few minutes, he’s no nonsense. He doesn’t play around. Therefore, I must take him at his word and assume that if I don’t move it, I’m about to be left alone. Somehow, I find my hands in all the raincoat material and stuff my phone in my jeans. I rush forward, open the door, and good Lord, it’s really coming down. Whatever problems Jason has in the orchard are getting worse. Whatever problem Roarke has with the horses, that’s getting worse, too.
I shut the door behind me, pull up the hood on the raincoat, and hurry down the stairs, stopping at the bottom step with the sight of the river running around the cottage. It flows downward, right where my car is sitting in the center of it all. My tires are half-covered and concern fills me. What does it take to float a car in this situation? Jason honks the horn of his truck and I jerk with the loud blast. Obviously, he wants me to swim in his direction and one thought of those horses, and I’m willing.
I step into the water and start splashing toward him. Once I’m there, I yank open the passenger door. “Go to the horses. I’m fine.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone,” he repeats.
“I’m fine. I told you—”
“Look at your car,” he says. “There’s a river that hasn’t overflowed yet, but it’s close. How soon do you think it will get inside the cottage?”
This news is not good news. Everything I still own is in that cottage…but the horses. All I can think of is the horses. I get into the truck. “Take me with you to help the horses. Don’t waste time dropping me off.”
He doesn’t reply. He just backs up and backs up some more, until he’s finally able to turn around and straighten. “Has that river ever overflowed?” I ask.
“No, but it’s never been this close to overflowing, either.” He glances over at me. “You wanted a cottage in the middle of the country. You got it and all the challenges that come with it.”
“Still trying to scare me away?”
“Can I?”
“You heard my phone call. Do you think you can scare me away?”
“Good point.” He eyes me. “That was your mother, I take it.”
“Oh yes,” I say, wishing we weren’t on this topic. “That was her.”
“She was ready to fight for you. That’s something.” He turns us down the ranch road and the rain seems to slow.
“Hmmm,” I say, because it’s really all I want to say, yet I find myself adding, “Yes, something.”
“She’s as feisty as my grandmother and someone else I recently rented a cottage to.”
“A feisty bitch and an asshole of a cowboy,” I say. “A match made in heaven or should I say hell?”
“Still think I’m an asshole, huh?”
“Still think I’m a problem city girl?”
“If the ugly brown boots fit.”
I laugh and he might, too. I’m not sure. He has a road to watch and abruptly cuts around a mud puddle. My gaze travels miles of land that I think belongs to him. “How big is the ranch?”
“Fifty thousand acres.”
“Oh wow. That was unexpected. Much larger than I thought.”
He parks in front of the ranch house. “But there’s plenty of rain to go around and flood every damn bit of it,” he mumbles, more to himself than me.
I turn to face him with a sincere offer. “Let me help. I need a purpose right now. I’m not a slacker. I know you have a crew, but they have to be overwhelmed with the rain. Can I do something at the orchard to help? Can I wait for the contractor while you help Roarke?”
His walkie-talkie goes off again: “Judy is about to be under water, man. We’re moving her now. We’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”
“Copy that,” he replies into his walkie-talkie, and now I realize that Judy is a horse.
“You want to help?” he asks, returning his attention to me, his jaw harder now, tension that wasn’t there moments before waving off of him.
“Yes. I do. Tell me what to do?”
“A month from now is the anniversary of my parents’ death,” he says, his voice low, taut. “It messes with Martha. Keep her busy. Go bake cookies.”
It messes with Martha. He means it messes with him and Martha. In this moment, I understand this man in ways I should have already. He’s allowed me to understand him and that’s trust, even if it’s a little trust. Trust I won’t betray. He’s in pain. He’s worried about his grandmother. He’s living outside his dream job and maybe that means his arm is blown. Maybe it’s more. I don’t know why that dream isn’t the answer to his problems. I know he’s smart. I know there’s a reason and that reason runs as deep and wild as the water on this ranch right now.
My throat tightens. “I will absolutely bake cookies and whatever else I need to do to keep her busy.” I reach for the door and open it, starting to get out of the truck.
“Jessica.”
I turn back to him. “Yes?”
“Don’t repeat the problems in the orchard to my grandmother.”
Understanding rolls over me, his reasons for everything he’s done, taking shape in my mind. There’s a problem here at the ranch. A big problem that isn’t just about the rain. I know this, because, well I do. I’ve seen a lot of things negotiating financial matters in divorces. “She can know about Roarke and the horses, right?”
“Yes. Just don’t—”
“I won’t,” I say. “You have my word.” My gut says that he just needs me to stop there. No questions. He needs me to just get out of the truck now. And so I do. I get out and start walking toward the house. I don’t look back, not at the cowboy in the truck behind me or the life I left behind. Right now, it feels like this is where I belong.
…
Jason…
She doesn’t turn around and look at me. I have no fucking idea why I want her to turn around and look at me. She’s not for me. She’s not for us and yet, here I am, watching her walk into the house, my house. My family house. A place where I said I would never, ever allow an outsider, certainly not a city girl. Been there, done that, there will never be a repeat. And yet the irony of that statement is that as I put the truck in reverse and back away from my house, Jessica is walking inside the front door.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jessica…
Martha greets me at the door with the kind of enthusiasm that no one has for me in my life. Okay, that’s not fair. Shelley and her kitty are always eager to see me. Okay, Shelley is eager to see me on some days.
“I’m thrilled you’re here,” Martha declares, throwing her arms around me before she looks over my shoulder. “Is Jason not coming in?” Her brow dips, worry etching in her delicate features.
And worry is what I’m supposed to be preventing.
“He’s helping Roarke with his horses,” I say, praying that’s all that I need to say to satisfy her. I don’t want to lie. I’ve had enough lies in my life. I’m not even inside the house yet and I’m dodging bullets, covering for a man I thought I didn’t like. Turns out, though, he’s not as bad as I thought and I certainly adore Martha.
“Of course,” she says, the words slightly stiff. “I knew that. They need to get those horses out of that one lower location on his property.” She waves a hand and, just that easily, she dismisses further worries, her gaze lowering to my feet where they light with approval. “Those boots are perfect. They’re a perfect choice.” She hugs me. “I’m glad you wore them.” She leans back to look at me. “I hear you and Jason had quite the spat in the travel shop over those ugly brown boots. I love it.” She releases me. “Come. Let’s bake and eat.” She heads toward the kitchen while I blink after her.
She loves that we fought? And how does she not only know we fought but that I called the boots ugly? Did Jason tell her? I’m determined to find out. “I don’t bake!” I call after her, hurrying after her like a good soldier. “You know that, right?”
“I’ll teach you,” she promises, walking to the island and waving her hand over a display of some sort of mini pies.
“I’m a lost baking cause,” I assure her, joining her at the opposite side of the counter to inspect the goodies. “Oh my, those look good. What are they?” They have white icing and I have a thing for icing. Like I could lick it off the cake and leave the cake—unless it’s really good cake.
“Apple cobbler pies,” she announces proudly. “Everyone here loves them. I only make them once a week.”
“Oh.” Not what I expected. “Well, they look lovely and smell wonderful. Did you make more cookies? Or are we making more cookies?”
She narrows her eyes on me. “You don’t like pies?”
“Apples,” I reluctantly admit. “I don’t hate them. I just don’t love them.”
Her eyes twinkle with mischief. The woman is all kinds of constant mischief. “You do know we have an orchard here, right?”
“Yes. Sorry. I admit, I wish it were peaches.”
“Apples are wonderful,” she insists. “You’ll like these. Try one.”
“Do you have any cookies?” I ask hopefully.
“Pie. Mini pies. For you. Please. Make a grandma happy. Try one.”
And make her happy. I want to make her happy. “I do love icing,” I concede and pick one up—biting into the treat, it’s an instant explosion of the same butterscotch from the cookies with that same yummy buttery taste. “Wow,” I say, savoring the flavors in my mouth. “So, basically, I’ve decided you can make anything wonderful.”
She beams and unfortunately my cell phone rings. I glance down and stare at the number, a call I should have expected, but didn’t, before hitting decline. “What else do you bake?”
“Bad call?”
“Oh ah—well—” My phone starts ringing again. I hit decline again. “It’s nothing important.”
“But it’s upsetting. I can see that.”
“My mother showed up at my ex’s house today, which was my house, or rather, my apartment. I hadn’t told her about the breakup and, well, the new woman was there.”
“Oh my.” She gives me a probing inspection. “Are you okay, honey?”
Honey.
It’s probably something she says to everyone, but it feels familiar and sweet and grandmotherly in a way I’ve never known. Somehow it warms cold empty places inside me, empty places I’ve known for a very long time. “Being here helps,” I say, and it’s true.
“I’m glad that it does. Honestly, your timing by renting the cottage has been wonderful for me. I needed some company.” In other words, she was—is—coping with the anniversary of her loss by trying to fill the cottage, and with it, some kind of void.
“Why hadn’t you told your mother about the cottage?” she asks.
“As is the way of a crisis, the idea came on quickly and she and I don’t talk often. She wasn’t even in the city when I decided to leave and she’s already leaving again herself.” My cell phone rings again. I sigh and turn it off. “Tell me what else you bake regularly.”
She studies me for a few long beats and then seems to understand that I need to escape my ex. She starts talking about her baking, which is a part of her, the reason she has always loved to wake up in the morning, it seems. Somewhere along the line, I have coffee in hand, sipping and enjoying. Soon, I’m hearing all about the ranch and how it runs. Apparently, Jason has a cook on hand that works from another building, but on the weekends, Martha does a huge dessert spread for them all.
“That must be expensive,” I comment.
“It keeps the crew well-fed and feeling like family matters,” she says. “To some of them, we’re the only family they have.”
That hits a bit of a nerve, but family is a sensitive topic to me—or rather my lack thereof—yet here, this place, creates that homey feeling I both love and hate when I watch a good Hallmark movie.
“Lily,” Martha says, “my other daughter—I told you about Jennie, but Lily was Jason’s mother—she and I baked for the weekend spread together for years.” And here we go down the painful rabbit hole with that anniversary of the plane crash front and center. “It’s lovely having company today,” she says, a hint of sadness to her voice that she seems to check as she adds a bit more cheerfully, “even if said company—that would be you—can’t bake.”
I laugh, relieved that we’re on more playful ground again. “I can eat and clean, though. Does that count?”
“It does,” she says, and while yes, I’m thankful that she hasn’t dwelled on the crash, she’s also avoiding talk of family and, much like Jason I suspect, suppressing pain. I decide to remind her that she has a grandson who is not only alive and well, but also quite good at taking care of her and agitating me. “How did you know that Jason and I argued at the travel shop?”
She sips her coffee. “It’s a small town, honey. The walls have ears.”
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“You know Debbie, then?” I ask, assuming Debbie to be the walls.
“I know everyone, but I don’t talk to her. Ruth Michaels was in the store. She heard it all.”
“And Ruth is who?”
“Roarke’s grandma and my close friend.”
She and Roarke’s grandma are friends. This makes sense, since Roarke and Jason seem to have grown up together. “I didn’t even see her.”
“She’s a stealthy grandma just like me. We do Pilates. You should join us.”
I blink in surprise. “Pilates?”
“Yes. It’s great for the core.”
I laugh. “If you’re going to feed me pies and cookies, I do believe I should.”
“It’s a date, then. Six a.m. every Saturday and on random other days we can work out, but Saturday is always Pilates.”
“Wait. What? Six a.m. on Saturday?”
“When the rooster crows,” she says. “Literally. Now, let’s get those cookies baking, how about it?”
And so we do. I actually help her bake and it’s surprisingly fun. We talk and talk. She asks me to share stories of my divorce nightmares, names excluded of course. I ask her to tell me stories of the ranch, with names of course. Jason stars in most of the stories, all of which I gobble up, and I tell myself it’s simply because she’s such an engaging storyteller. Time flies and we sample so much of the goodies that when she tries to feed me lunch, I decline. I still manage to eat a cookie, or three. Okay, four. I had four. My diet of chocolate, pie, and cookies isn’t ideal, but I earned it by not making a scene with my ex’s secretary-lover that would have demoralized me further.
I pick up another cookie.
…
It’s late afternoon when I should be writing, but I’m helping to ice a coconut apple cake while Martha takes a short nap. I’m attempting to not eat the icing when Jason walks in and scowls at me. “I’ve been trying to call you.” If he wasn’t so darn cranky, he’d look so darn sexy, his hair rumpled, his jaw shadowed with dark stubble.
The Truth About Cowboys Page 9