This morning should have been her chance to convince her dad—and herself—that she could handle a man being on the property. Humiliating herself and nearly getting trampled by her own mount had not been on the agenda.
As she watched, LJ took the lead rope and hid it under a pile of hay. Taz eyed him from across the stall, looking wary, her head ducked low. He leaned against the wall, shoved his hands in his pockets, and started whistling. It took Andra a second to recognize the tune, and she frowned. Rage Against the Machine was an odd choice for soothing an animal.
LJ was an odd choice all around. She was determined to hire the best person for the job, man or woman, but she hadn’t expected him to be so . . . big. She’d been the tallest girl in her class at five ten, but he towered over her by more than half a foot. Not the lanky kind of tall, either. Every inch of him was packed with muscle.
Not that it should matter. He didn’t seem like a creep, and that smile of his wasn’t the least bit threatening. It was mischievous and full of fun, brightening his whole body from his suspiciously clean cowboy hat to the tips of his scratched boots.
She hadn’t planned on going toe-to-toe with her overprotective father until after she hired someone. And it especially sucked that she’d had to do it in front of LJ. She should explain, but he probably wouldn’t be any happier to learn her dad’s objection was because he was the wrong gender instead of the wrong race.
Taz nosed through the hay until she found the lead rope, and then she backed away, ears laid back. LJ didn’t react, keeping up his whistling until the filly forgot the rope. Then he took his hands out of his pockets, hid the rope behind his back, and started playing a game with the horse that was somewhere between follow the leader and hide-and-seek. Andra smiled. It was similar to a game she played with her own mare, Gracie. When no one was watching, that was.
Even if he had witnessed one of her freeze-ups, she was glad she’d kept LJ around for the interview. He was the only candidate who’d answered her emailed questions by talking about horses instead of himself. And in those moments when she’d been helpless, locked up tight by a glitch in her own brain, he’d only moved to protect her.
LJ led the way through to the outdoor pen attached to the stall. He laughed as the filly trotted to follow, nosing around to see what he had hidden behind him.
Andra squared her shoulders. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, or even if he’d already seen her at her craziest. What mattered was if she could trust him with her babies.
For the next forty minutes, she watched his every movement. She’d found that you could tell a lot about a man by what he thought was wrong with your horses. As far as she could see, LJ couldn’t find a thing wrong with hers. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry, either. He spent the whole time playing games with Taz, sometimes with the lead rope he was supposed to be training her for, sometimes without. One thing was for sure, though: neither she nor the horse could take their eyes off him.
She cleared her throat. “That’s good for today.”
“Good” was putting it lightly. Instead of forcing obedience, he’d teased the horse toward a curiosity that soon had it doing exactly what he’d wanted in the first place. She liked his style.
LJ patted the filly one more time and let himself out of the stall, smiling almost shyly. “Tell me you’ve got another twenty questions as smart as that one, and I’d just about work for free.”
Without the fence between them, anxiety tightened her belly, like it did every time a man got within arm’s reach of her. Her vision was drawn to the thick knuckles of his work-scarred hands. They were big enough that his fist could cave in most of her face with a single blow.
He frowned. “Are you all right, Ms. Lawler?”
She blinked. She was at home, and safe. Not only that, his talent with horses made it clear she couldn’t afford to let her phobias keep holding her back from hiring men.
She planted her feet, the decision already made. “You can call me Andra. How long will it take you to gather your things and move up here? We’ve got an on-site apartment furnished and ready to go.”
This was about her horses, not her. She wouldn’t have to see him that often, so it didn’t matter if she still wasn’t comfortable around men. She faked calm for the benefit of a dozen animals a day—every trainer did.
Doing it for a single human shouldn’t be any harder than that.
* * *
• • •
LJ walked across the stable yard, wondering exactly how much tonight’s dinner was going to suck. On a scale of one to aggressive foot fungus, he was guessing maybe an eight.
Jason Lawler walked with him, dead silent, which seemed to be the normal state of being for Andra’s brother. He’d met broken trombones with more to say. Of course, LJ had been known to talk the ears off everything from horses to grocery checkers, so he wouldn’t have taken Jason’s relative quiet too personally if he hadn’t been getting the freeze-out from the rest of the family as well.
Daddy Lawler had spent most of the last three days giving LJ heavy-browed sideways looks, always finding tasks to do nearby, as if LJ might shoplift a quarter horse. And Andra, the Lawler whose opinion he cared about most, was straight-up avoiding him.
Since starting here, he’d glimpsed her only a few times: once in the far pasture, jumping ditches on a chestnut gelding. In the main arena, teaching a bay mare to do lead changes. Her back, heading out of the stables every time he headed in.
Her name, on the other hand, followed him everywhere he went. The staff told him Andra wanted to try crossing these bloodlines, Andra taught this horse to pick up its own fallen rein, Andra did the imprint training on this foal and this one and this one . . . and yet she was nowhere to be found when he wanted a rundown on the stock he was supposed to be working with.
The breeze kicked up dust around their boots, and Jason sneezed.
“Bless you,” LJ said automatically.
Jason nodded and kept walking. LJ wondered if it was possible to lose brain cells from lack of conversation. He’d been here only three days, and he already missed his gregarious hometown neighborhood.
He dropped his eyes as they got closer to the ranch headquarters with its raw log pillars and river rock accents. Everything was so new here, the paint all fresh and smooth without humidity creeping in under every tiny chip. He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he’d thought to paint Mama’s steps one more time before he left.
He took a breath and tried a new topic on Jason. “You know what would really help me with the colts? Balloons. Or horns, maybe, if you’ve got them.”
The other man gave him a sideways look, incredulous eyes nearly as brilliant a green as his sister’s. “You throwing a birthday party or breaking a colt?”
He shrugged one shoulder and grinned. “Hell, why not do both at once? Think we can get cake and ice cream out of it?”
“Wait, how is ice cream going to help with the colts?” Jason just looked confused.
“Uh . . . never mind.” LJ braced himself for the dinner ahead, preparing to carry the conversation for an entire family of turnips. Thank God these people’s horses had more of a sense of humor than they did, or he’d have gone barking crazy already. At least he’d gotten a couple of smiles out of Andra that first day. Apparently not enough to make her forget their rocky initial meeting, though, or she wouldn’t be avoiding him. “So what’s the occasion for dinner?”
“No occasion. Meals are provided with your wages. Didn’t they tell you when you got hired?” Jason stopped on the porch of the main ranch house and scrubbed his boot through the cleaning brush bolted to the floorboards.
“Might have missed that part.” Probably because he’d worked through dinner all three nights. Now that he was finally free to use his own training ideas without his uncle glaring over his shoulder, he couldn’t get enough time with the horses.
&nbs
p; “Guess that explains why you haven’t been showing up. Stacia was starting to take it personally.”
“Stacia?” He followed suit on the boot scrubber.
“She’s the cook and mechanic.”
“Huh. Can’t say that’s a combination you see every day.” He almost made a joke, but with Jason as his only audience, it didn’t entirely seem worth the effort.
Jason scratched the back of his neck, glancing off the side of the porch. He lowered his voice. “Stacia’s parents have never been great at holding a job. Back in high school, she was always running around here with Andra, soles of her shoes falling half off, jeans all stained up and ripped. Dad started paying her to cook for everybody, then when he found out she knew how to change oil, he paid her more to work on all the ranch trucks.”
Jason paused with his hand on the doorknob and smirked.
“You’re lucky you didn’t hire on a few years ago. We were all eating grilled cheese for a long time. She was faster learning the car stuff, mostly because she figured out there were YouTube videos of everything.” He opened the door. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Understood.” LJ came inside, wondering why he hadn’t seen the women together, if she had been Andra’s best friend since childhood.
Jason led him through a high-ceilinged, rough-beamed foyer and into a dining room sparkling with windows. The space was dominated by a scarred oak slab of a table so battered that it immediately transformed the mansion-sized room into a home.
A woman slid a big pan of meatloaf into the center of the table, curly brown hair swinging around her round face. She turned, and LJ struggled not to stare at her shirt. It was a Harley-Davidson tank that left her toned shoulders bare, the skull picture on the front outlined with a glitter of purple sequins.
“That old flatbed’s engine get the best of you yet, Stace? Heard you cursing again today.” Jason took off his hat with a smile and dropped it onto one of the hooks lining the wall. LJ hung his battered old cowboy hat on the next peg, glad to have ditched the too-tight job-interview Stetson back at his new apartment.
“No, but that roping horse sure got the best of you when you dropped your loop over your own fat head,” Stacia said. “You were hoping nobody saw, weren’t you?”
He coughed once into his fist. “Stacia, this is LJ. He’s starting our colts.”
“Don’t change the subject, and don’t you dare sit at my table without washing those hands you just coughed into, Jason Lawler.” Stacia turned her blue eyes on LJ and smiled. “We’re happy to have your help. I know your apartment has a kitchen, but you’re always welcome up here. If you can stand the company.”
She stuck her tongue out at Jason, who feigned like he was going to wipe his still-unwashed hand on her. She narrowed her eyes and didn’t move. LJ had to stifle a laugh as Jason’s bluff fell short.
Stacia nodded to the people filing into the room. “Let me introduce you around to everybody else who works here.”
LJ shook hands with people for a few minutes, though he’d met most of them here and there around the ranch in the last few days. Now that they were all in the same room, though, it was hard not to notice this was the Hollywood fantasy version of a ranch staff: all women with a smattering of old men. He and Jason were the only males under fifty in the entire place.
LJ hesitated for an extra second, trying to decide where he was supposed to sit, but the room was rowdy enough that nobody noticed. Apparently not everybody was as quiet and uncomfortable with each other as they were with him.
Jason and Stacia elbowed each other back and forth, their horseplay escalating until they knocked one of their plates askew. Bill Lawler winged a dinner roll at his son from his place at the head of the table, nailing him squarely in the temple.
“Dear Lord, thank you for this food,” Bill said, “and for giving my old muscles enough aim that I can still hit my son with it. Amen.”
Jason reached for one of the platters, and Stacia smacked his hand.
“What? Dad already said grace.”
“It’s Sunday.”
“It is?” Jason pulled his hand back, glancing toward the door.
LJ kept his hands in his lap, his peripheral vision raking the rest of the table for clues as to what people in Montana did differently on Sunday, if it wasn’t praying.
“Andra usually shows up on Sundays. We’ll give her another five minutes,” Stacia said.
One of the older cowhands piped up, “Hey, you know what else is special about Sundays, Jason? That’s the pornless day.”
“When you’re as awkward with the ladies as Jason is, no day can afford to be a pornless day,” said Rachel, a forty-something woman in a Coors Light cap whom he’d met yesterday.
Stacia snickered. “Isn’t that God’s own truth . . .”
“Last I checked, Curt—” Jason began, but broke off when his sister came into the room. The laughter died away, too. LJ gave Andra a smile to say hi, but she had her eyes down and didn’t see.
“Hey, guys. You didn’t wait on me, did you?”
“Nah,” Rachel lied, and grabbed a dinner roll. Everybody started passing food, but the room stayed quiet as Andra took a seat.
LJ shifted, his chair creaking under his weight.
“Hey, Andra,” Stacia said. “The flatbed I was working on today—that old Dodge? When you rev it, it sounds almost like that band you used to blast my ears out with.”
Andra blinked, pausing in the middle of dishing up some green beans. “Um, Nightwish? Wait, or do you mean Black Sabbath?”
“Black Sabbath.” Stacia smiled. “Remember, you used to say you were going to walk down the aisle to one of their songs, even after I swore I wouldn’t be your maid of honor if you did. You said your wedding was going to have the biggest dress and the loudest music in the whole damn county.”
A slight smile touched Andra’s face, and her eyes flickered to Stacia as she passed the green beans down the table. “I can’t believe you remembered all that. It’s been so long.”
“Hard to forget. My ears have never recovered.”
Andra took a breath like she might say something else, then hesitated and fell silent. LJ fidgeted with his fork. For having been Stacia’s friend since high school, Andra seemed pretty shy around the other girl. He dug up a chuckle just to break the tension of the moment. “I wouldn’t have minded seeing that. White wedding dress or black?”
Everyone stared at him, and Bill glared.
“Uh, I don’t know.” Andra poked at her green beans. “Hadn’t thought about it in years.”
Ouch. He’d stepped into something there that he hadn’t meant to. Maybe she’d had a broken engagement or something. “So, uh, did anybody see that last Cubs game?”
No one answered.
LJ concentrated on dishing up his plate, stealing glances at everyone as he tried to puzzle out the shift in the mood of the room. The dirty jokes had ended as soon as Andra showed up, and it wasn’t only him she was avoiding looking at—it was everyone.
He snuck another look at Andra, her dark head bent toward her food. He was the new guy, so of course he was going to be a little left out at first. But this was her home, and he was here only because she’d stood up for him. She shouldn’t be uncomfortable or isolated here.
He couldn’t stand the idea that she might feel alone.
Three
Boots thumped from outside on Andra’s porch. She blew a hair out of her face and straightened from her downward-dog stretch. After all the upheaval in her normal routine this week, afternoon yoga sounded perfect. Unfortunately, all it had done was remind her how sore she was from getting bucked off during that morning’s training session.
The footsteps were even heavier than her dad’s. They stomped like somebody was trying to make a lot of noise or kick something off their shoes. Must be Jason, then. Her co
ttage was a good half-mile walk over a hill from the ranch. Of the two people who ever made that trek, her brother was the most likely to kick his dirt off on her porch instead of in the yard. Andra rolled her eyes and stepped off her yoga mat, headed for the door even before the knock sounded. It was lower down than usual and muffled, as if Jason were knocking with his boot.
She opened the door, and the frown froze on her face as LJ’s shoulders filled the doorframe.
He was holding . . . a cake?
“Um, hi,” she managed.
She reached behind her back to undo the knot that pulled her T-shirt tight against her chest, shaking the baggy hem so it would fall to cover some of her leggings. What was he doing here? Oh crap, she’d promised to talk to him about the horses.
“Look, I’m sorry. I know I said I’d come talk to you a couple days ago, but then Socks kicked one of the grooms, and Mary Kay lost a shoe, and I completely forgot.” She hadn’t forgotten, so much as she was . . . working up to it. Giving him a few days of seeing her around the ranch when she was in control of herself, before she got close enough she’d have to see his opinion of her in his eyes.
He shrugged, careful not to tip the tall cake off its platter. “I think we got off on the wrong foot the day we met, and our do-over didn’t really stick.”
Oh God. Apparently, he wasn’t tiptoeing around anything today.
LJ grinned—a playful, twinkly-eyed one that made him look like he was just having more fun than everyone else. “Besides, nobody’s afraid of a guy with a cake.”
A smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. “I’ve never heard that.”
“No? It’s completely true. Not to mention, bringing a cake is the best excuse to eat some. I mean, it’s yours. You don’t have to share. Of course, if you don’t, you may want to pass a tissue or two my way, is all I’m saying.” He widened his eyes mournfully.
She glanced at the cake, the white icing whipped into gorgeous swirls. “Did Stacia make that? She used to be terrible at baking.” She gripped the edge of the door a little tighter. Maybe her friend had been practicing. It wasn’t like she knew what Stacia was up to these days.
Unbreak Me Page 2