Gruff Ass in Love

by Sasha Burke

  Huge fucking mistake to tell me that.

  I glare down at her. “Here on my property?”

  Judging by her wide eyes, she’s well aware that she shouldn’t have revealed that bit of info.

  “Do you think your ranch is the only one I break into to study rocks?” she evades smoothly.

  Really, hearing that she might actually be going out to other ranches shouldn’t make me jealous, but irrationally, it does. “Where else do you go?” I demand, wanting to know partly because I’m a twisted son of a bitch and want to make damn sure that any other property she’s sneaking onto around here doesn’t have a male owner under the age of sixty. But I also want her to tell me so I know where the hell to start searching for her if I ever find out she’s gone missing.

  She gazes back at my land with an affectionate head tilt. “Nowhere,” she admits quietly.

  Huh. Can’t say that I’ve ever been head over heels enough about a woman to be in an exclusive relationship before, but hearing that Katelyn is my little trespassing pain in the ass and mine alone just feels right.

  Back to the argument at hand.

  “Katelyn, there are pits and ravines, dangerous wild horses that haven’t been handled, so many things could happen to you out here.”

  “I can handle myself,” she says matter-of-factly. “Been doing it for years.”

  “I’m not doubting that. But we both know how lost you get when you’re with your rocks. When I came up to you today, you looked like I was a ghost materializing out of nowhere. What if there’d been a territorial stallion nearby? Or a mountain lion seeing you as a threat?”

  “You’re right. I won’t worry you out here again, promise.” She stands up and sticks out her hand to help me up.

  For chris sakes, the woman is just so friggin’ adorable.

  I get up without her assistance—seriously, she’s like half my size—and walk alongside her in a comfortable silence as we head back over to the fence.

  This time, I keep an eye on her until she lands safely on her feet on the other side. “Don’t think that I didn’t hear the way you worded that promise just now. You have no intention of staying away, do you?”

  “We both know you won’t like my answer, Cade.”

  I exhale tiredly, knowing there’s a zero percent chance I’ll be able to keep her off my land indefinitely. The woman’s like a trained covert operative, never using the same way to sneak in.

  It’s actually kind of impressive.

  Not that I’m going to tell her that and encourage this behavior.

  “Look, I get that you like being out here,” I say. “But things are hectic here for me right now. I’ve got an injured mare ready to foal on top of a thousand other things, and I know how you like to come twice in one week sometimes when the weather’s nice—”

  “Don’t worry,” she interrupts with an innocent smile. “I have work for the next couple days so I assure you, you won’t see me again any day this week.”

  Then with a look of perfect innocence glued to her face, she hops in her little SUV and calls out, “Don’t work too hard!” before she four-wheels it out to the main road.

  I don’t even want to think about why she’s heading in the opposite direction than she usually takes to go home.

  4

  | Katelyn |

  Moment of truth time.

  Whistling to myself, I reach down to secure my sleeping bag to my new hiking backpack—an awesome monstrosity I picked up the other day from a used military surplus store. Hefting it up onto my back, I hold my position…and manage to stay on my feet without toppling over.

  Perfect.

  Taking out half my mineral textbooks certainly helped lighten the load, as did nixing the surprisingly heavy night vision goggles. I kept the mining headlamp I got off Craigslist though. It’s going to be pitch black out there with the new moon and my ground lamps will only go so far. The pack is still heavy enough that I’m probably going to be huffing and puffing up the hill, but at least it’s not making me tip over backward like a flailing roach on its back anymore.

  With that done, I check the time. Still an hour left. Lordy, I can’t wait.

  To be fair, I’d been perfectly honest when I told Cade he wouldn’t see me at the ranch again for the next couple of days.

  I didn’t say anything about the nights.

  Sneaking in around sundown when everyone’s showering up for supper, and then getting the whole night out there is just plain brilliant, I don’t know why I’ve never thought of it before.

  With the same goofy smile that’s been making my cheeks hurt all morning, I reach over to squeeze the thick, fluffy wool socks I’d finished knitting yesterday into the side pockets, the only open space remaining in the overstuffed pack. Ole Winston will probably object to the bright red color, but it was by far the softest yarn I could find. I figure even a guy as curmudgeonly as Cade’s eighty-year-old neighbor can appreciate soft things. The man has never greeted me with anything but a ferocious frown and his shotgun over his shoulder, but he always makes a point to tip his dusty hat at me every time I glance back at him from the other side of Cade’s fence.

  He doesn’t know it, but he’s in my own personal version of the Big Brother/Big Sister program. The only difference being that instead of getting a little kid to mentor, I have a cantankerous old grump to try to make crack a smile.

  It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m close. I feel it in my bones.

  Until then, I just keep on keeping on with my self-assigned duties, namely, making sure he’s got food to eat and a few things here and there to make his day better.

  Last week, I’d noticed some holes in the toes of his socks and that just won’t do. Cade’s men have told me how hard Winston took his wife’s passing a couple of years back. I know better than most how lonely life can get when your family is taken away from you. I know I’m not changing the world or anything by knitting the man some socks, but hopefully, it’ll just show him that someone’s still here caring about him and the quality of his life.

  The socks are the last of the mountain of non-perishables I load up into my SUV for tonight before I focus on all the perishable stuff I’ve been working on all day. The cornbread I’ve got baking in the top oven is one of my specialties, a family recipe I’ve made enough times to know exactly when it’s done entirely by smell alone.

  I sniff the air. About two more minutes. Grams would be proud.

  After she passed and Granddad’s memory started to go, this cornbread was one of the only ways to keep him anchored with us. And later, after Mom got sick, even though she couldn’t eat the cornbread, she always used to say the smell of me cooking it could make this little apartment of ours feel as homey as the ranch.

  God, I miss them all so dang much.

  A friend of mine back in undergrad once told me how her family follows a Japanese custom of making a little helping of food for their departed ancestors whenever they have a feast. I’d fallen in love with the idea on the spot, and made grand plans to do just that for Mom, Granddad, and Grams from then on. I even bought three special little plates for the occasion.

  Years passed and the plates just collected dust, mainly because throwing a feast involves having a ton of friends, family, and actual furniture for all these hypothetical people to sit on.

  I had none of this.

  The day I decided to make a giant batch of cornbread for Cade’s guys was the first day I was able to finally start the ritual with the plates. And it’s been my own little tradition ever since.

  Now, as I do each week, as soon as the cornbread is cool enough to cut, I make some room for my family’s three plates on the tiny bit of spare real estate I have on my dining table amidst all the rocks I keep on display there before squatting and having a little helping for myself as well.

  Me, I can eat off my lap on the floor. Rocks need their space.

  After I’m done, I cut up the rest and make individual labeled baggies, the only way to make su
re the guys don’t start up with the cornbread Thunderdome again. Sure, they only used padded jousting sticks and the pedestals they’d balanced on were just big metal pails. Still. Safety first.

  I’ve been making these for the guys weekly for the past few months now, missing only one week on account of my coming down with a really bad cold.

  That’s the week I fell in love with the whole lot of them.

  I still can’t believe they all took turns coming in shifts to take care of me for four nights straight, with the first bunch showing up the with one of everything from the cold and flu aisle of the drugstore, along with all the fixings for every guaranteed-to-work crazy cold remedy they’d ever heard of. From rubbing Vicks VapoRub on my feet, to getting me practically drunk off a potent Hot Toddy recipe one of the guys called his mom to get the recipe for, those guys went above and beyond each night. They force-fed me soup, stayed up to watch DVDs with me, and left flowers on my nightstand to wake up to every morning.

  As far as I’m concerned, they’ll be getting a pan of cornbread a week for life.

  I’m just about done bagging and labeling it all up when the T-minus-30 alarm I set on my phone goes off. I can’t help it, I’m practically bouncing off the walls now. Rushing outside, I begin loading up my SUV, starting with the crate of cornbread baggies and the big pan of meatloaf I made earlier.

  According to the guys, Cade hardly ever eats with them, usually just grabbing a can of chili and a spoon before bed and calling that dinner while the rest of them take turns cooking. Since the man definitely doesn’t strike me as the type to want food with too much fuss, I thought a meatloaf he could freeze and heat up would be a nice change of pace from his pantry cuisine.

  And because I know that asking the guys to deliver said meatloaf to Cade may very well end up with them ‘accidentally’ dropping it (did I mention the Thunderdome?) and then making all the evidence disappear—in their stomachs—before he even has a chance to smell it, I figure it best that I leave it for him in his fridge myself after I get my campsite set-up. Getting in and out undetected shouldn’t be a problem; though I haven’t actually been to the main house before, like the guys’ bunkhouse, I’ve heard Cade leaves his doors unlocked at all hours.

  After stuffing my SUV to the seams, I’m finally ready to set off on my little overnight adventure, big giddy smile already permanently in place.

  5

  | Katelyn |

  Veering off the long dirt road leading to the ranch a little over an hour later, I stop at Winston’s first, as I always do to drop off the socks and the biscuits I brought for him. Since he’s made it clear as mud that he far prefers biscuits to cornbread—something that took weeks of deciphering his special language of “Curmudgeon-ese” to figure out—I of course baked up a big batch of the Southern buttermilk recipe he likes best last night.

  As soon as I pull up to park outside of Winston’s house, a couple of Cade’s guys gallop over to the fence separating his land from Cade’s to come say hi.

  “Late start today.” Jacob rides up first, tipping his hat at me. “Gonna be a cold night. You need me to come by and get a fire going for you out there?”

  Mikey noses his horse in between us and gives me a playful wink. “Nah, she won’t need a campfire. I’ll be there in her sleeping bag keeping her warm all night. Ain’t that right, honey?”

  I shake my head and chuckle. A lot of Cade’s guys have asked me out over the past few months. Never seriously. And I’m not just being modest or anything. I know none of them really mean anything by it when they flirt with me because they’ve all made it abundantly clear that they believe the universe has hand-picked me for their boss.

  Crazy notion, I know. Have they met me? I’m hardly the dream woman for any sane man, let alone someone like Cade who favors control over chaos, the known over the unknown.

  Still, the guys have all got it in their heads that Cade’s got some pre-fated (and totally unbeknownst to him) dibs on me.

  Really, for a bunch of rough and tumble cowboys, they’re all surprisingly romantic.

  Just then, the distinct click of a nearby break action shotgun barrel disrupts our chat.

  When I smile and turn to wave cheerfully at ole Winston, armed and glaring something fierce, the guys just laugh and quickly get in their goodbyes before leaving us be.

  “Hey Winston,” I call out, grabbing the red socks I’d knitted for him from my backpack and heading over to him.

  “What in Sam Hill is wrong with you, girl?” he grouses, sounding even crankier than usual. “You’d have to be a blind man not to spot them bright red things you got on your bag today.”

  I tilt my head at him affectionately. Between him and the guys, I don’t know who’s more invested in making sure I’m the best trespasser I can be.

  From the start, the guys had found my trespassing completely hilarious. In fact, by my third break-in, they even started helping me get better at it. From feeding me intel on Cade’s whereabouts when I get there, to showing me different entry points, to being my lookout when I’m breaching the fence and booking it over to the mountain, they’re just the best undercover crew a girl could ask for. Fact is, I wouldn’t be half as good an intruder if not for all of them.

  Now Winston, he takes more of an advisory approach, complete with critical (a.k.a. abrasive as battery acid) critiques of my break-ins, mostly after the fact when he calls me over to get a full rundown. It’s so cute. Sometimes, I leave out key details just to see how worked up he’ll get. The more cross he gets, the more I know he cares. Hide it though he tries, that grouchy old bear is just a squishy stuffed animal on the inside. And not to toot my own horn, but I’ve become somewhat of an expert at drawing his inner tiny teddy bear out.

  Usually by poking the big grizzly with a stick first.

  I roll up the pair of comically bright socks and toss them at him. “You like ‘em?”

  Catching them midair, he plops down on his rocking chair and wags the fire-engine-red handful of at me as if saying, Bah, hum bug! “Thought you were supposed to be the smart one with all that extra college you’re doing. Is this the kind of stuff you wear to class? You aren’t partying with boys every night, are you? You flunking any courses?”

  “Still single. No parties. And I’m doing great in school, Winston. Thanks for asking.” Really, you just had to know how to translate his testy comments. “And I thought you were the master of observation. Have you noticed that the socks aren’t in my size? Between the two of us, who’s got the clown feet?”

  He stares at the socks in stunned silence for a beat, before saying in a slightly froggier voice, “Why’d you make ‘em so poofy? Don’t think they’ll even fit inside of my boots.”

  “Maybe you could just wear them just around the house then,” I suggest casually, not letting on that I know about the holes he has in the pair he’s wearing now.

  He gives me a gravelly grunt that sounds a whole lot like a thank you in grizzly bear speak before quickly stuffing the socks in his pockets. “Guess that’d be alright.”

  I beam. “In the meantime, I’ll get started making you another pair that’s not so fluffy.”

  “Suppose you do need the practice,” he says ever so graciously.

  I smother back a smile. “I really do.”

  “Nothing too colorful this time though. I can’t be wearing no garish colors under my church suit.”

  Hooking my arm through his, I subtly help him up under the pretense of dragging him back into his house. “Well then I think maybe you ought to show me that church suit so I can see what colors I have to work with.”

  Will wonders never cease. I do believe that’s the ghost of a wobbly smile threatening to make itself known behind his frosty bearded frown.

  I take a mental photo.

  A half hour later, after brewing up some thick-as-tar coffee for Winston and watching him make a good dent in the week’s worth of biscuits I baked him, slathered with what’s left of the homemade jam I canned las
t weekend, I plop a kiss on his weathered cheek and promise to go pick fresh fruit up north for some jelly for him next week.

  Then I take one last look around to take inventory of anything else he may need before heading out to go spend some quality time with my rocks.

  6

  | Cade |

  She’s dressed from head to toe like a cat burglar, only instead of all black, she’s wearing all camouflage.

  She’s really got to stop being so fucking adorable.

  At least she doesn’t have on night vision goggles or anything. The woman has a hard enough time staying injury-free as is in broad daylight. Don’t need her adding any difficulty points that’ll likely send her headfirst into a tree.

  I close in on the clearing she’s chosen for her little campsite. It’s a good spot. Flat and dry with lots of rocks for her to play with. From the looks of it, she’s having the time of her life kneeling in a bed of fine-grained clay she’s found, sifting through the quartz chips and shale flakes all around her like a kid at Christmas. I almost hate to interrupt her, entranced as she looks running her fingers through the gravel-like pieces as if it’s water from some mystic river.

  But, the sun’s set almost fully now and I need to stay close to the foaling barn tonight. I just can’t have Katelyn out here unsupervised.

  Yes, two of my guys offered to keep her company out here overnight, but the day I approve an idea like that is the same day I’ll fire them both on the spot. And I told them as much.

  I give her a few more minutes, waiting until the sun dips below the horizon fully before finally making my way over to her. I hate this part, I really do. But it needs to be done. I worry about her enough as is in broad daylight. Her out here at night is just out of the question.

  With the darkness officially setting in, she walks over to an absurdly large backpack that’s near as tall as she is and pulls out two small flood lamps and a little generator to run them.