by Claire Adams
I’d been here less than a week, but I’d already come to love it. I was left alone for most of the day to handle my work the way I saw fit. As long as it got done, no one bothered me much about the how. Lacey was nice, but had been so busy with training Elroy, she hadn’t had time to really chat with me since Monday. Not that I minded. And, I’d successfully avoided another drawn out conversation with Pete by making a beeline from my car to the barn as soon as I arrived.
Speaking of Pete, as soon as I opened the rear alleyway door, there he was riding out to the far field on his John Deere tractor. I leaned into the door, staring at him openly while his attention was elsewhere. The sun was a hazy ball rising from the eastern end of the ranch, hidden behind a filmy layer of clouds. It would be hot today, but, right now, it was breezy and nice.
I heard a truck coming up the driveway and spun away from the sight of Pete on the tractor, his broad shoulders square and strong back straight in the seat. I hurried out of the barn in time to see Lacey climbing down from her pickup. She waved as she walked over, and I lifted my chin instead of waving back, my arms crossed over my chest.
She was nearly as tall as Pete — well past six feet tall in her boots — and dressed in her normal faded jeans and flannel shirt. She wore a white tank top underneath in case she needed to strip off the over shirt once the sun lifted into the middle of the sky. I started most of my days off in a tank top. The summer was coming, and the heat was only going to increase the deeper we got into it.
Lacey didn’t bother with good mornings, which was one reason I was starting to like her, despite her relationship with Pete. I kept telling myself I didn’t care about that. I didn’t have time to date. Besides, Lacey and Pete were pretty perfect for each other. He was such a goofball. He needed someone strong and steady like Lacey to keep him in line.
“I see you already have Elroy in the pen,” she said, nodding over to the horse pawing at the grass in the corral.
My lips twitched at the name. “He’s staying Elroy, then?”
She laughed as she tipped her hat back to a more comfortable angle on her head. She didn’t have on a single piece of jewelry, not even earrings, which was all I ever wore — a pair of small silver studs that’d belonged to my mother.
“I think so,” she said. “It fits him, though, doesn’t it?”
I had to nod. I’d been thinking the same thing myself.
The more time I spent around Lacey, the more curious I was about her. I could plainly see why Pete liked her so much, but I wanted to know more.
“How long have you been on the farm?” I asked her as we watched Elroy prancing around the paddock.
“Oh, there’s never been a time I wasn’t out on this ranch.” She grinned over at me, her brown eyes scrunched at the ends. “Pete’s daddy and my daddy were best friends. So we grew up together.” She took a deep breath as she dropped her hands onto her slim hips. “When Pete’s daddy died the summer after twelfth grade, I was supposed to go to college upstate, but I just couldn’t leave him. His mama died when he was young, which kind of knocked him off balance a little for the rest of his childhood. He doesn’t have brothers or sisters. Just me. So, I stuck around to help him on the farm over that summer and never left.”
I thought on that. It certainly shed some light on a lot of things. I respected Lacey a little more, even if she was the reason Pete was off limits. I chided myself for the hundredth time this week. Pete was off limits because he issued my paychecks. And, I wasn’t looking to date anyone. Remember?
“You’re actually the first person Pete’s ever hired,” Lacey continued, looking over at me again. “He likes you. So do I. I think you’re good for the place. It’s just getting to be too much work. And, we need fresh blood. Pete and I have spent our whole lives together. We’re always about three seconds away from killing each other!”
She laughed again and I couldn’t help but smile. It was easier to relax around her than it was Pete. It felt like he was always trying to figure me out. But Lacey was just happy to talk without working me like some stubborn puzzle.
“I guess it makes sense that y’all would fall in love,” I said.
Lacey’s eyes widened as her dark eyebrows squeezed together, her mouth dropping open in momentary shock. “What?” She shook her head, braying another loud laugh as she wiped at the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Oh, hell no! Me and Pete?” She stuck out her tongue. “That’s the nastiest thing I ever heard! He’s like kin to me. We lived like brother and sister for years after my parents died in middle school. His daddy all but raised me from then on. Dating him would be like dating my own brother.” She made another face and held her stomach like she was about to puke all over our boots.
I couldn’t help the laugh that snuck past my lips. The ground felt like it had shifted under my feet, changing the landscape entirely. So, Lacey and Pete weren’t dating. Did that mean Pete was single? I was burning to ask, and here was someone standing right in front of me who would definitely know. But I couldn’t very well ask her. She’d probably tell Pete. And, anyway, I reminded myself, he was off limits, girlfriend or no girlfriend.
But that didn’t have to stop me from appreciating his rippling muscles when he took off his shirt the way he had yesterday. Or from looking extra hard when he bent over to pick something up. That tight ass in his jeans. Sweet Kord. I was getting hot just thinking about it.
While Lacey crossed to the paddock to work with Elroy, I went back to the stables to get them in order. After several hours of scrubbing, spraying off surfaces, and laying down freshly-cleaned stall mats in each of the horses’ booths, I was ready to start in on the grooming.
At home, we washed our horses on alternating Fridays, depending on how hard they’d worked over the prior week. I meant to do the same thing here. It took most of the day, with Elroy going last after he was done training. By the time I finished with the playful little quarter horse, it was dinner time. I fed and watered them, then put them in their stalls for the night. The horses had warmed up to me, which I’d expected. I’d always been easy around horses. I liked them better than just about every human I’d ever known besides Daddy and Kasey.
I walked up to the house under a darkening sky. Pete was sitting on the porch the way he always was when I arrived in the morning and left in the evening. He’d told me to come up before I left to get my wages for the week. I was proud of how hard I’d worked this week. Being away from the farm life for the four years I was in school in Austin had been hard. The summers, winter breaks, and occasional weekends back home in Round Rock were the only things that had kept me sane. I needed this the same way Daddy needed it.
“Good job this week, Emma,” Pete said, grinning up at me as I stood over his chair. He handed over an envelope of bills that I'd tucked into my back pocket without counting. I trusted him not to cheat me. He wasn’t wearing his hat, and his black hair was fluffy on his head, blowing around in the strong breeze. I wanted to flatten it, but that definitely wasn’t my place.
“Thanks,” I said. “I like it here.” And, I did. I wanted him to know that.
“I’m glad to hear it.” He watched me for a moment, his blue eyes doing that digging thing they were good at, like he was trying to get inside my head. “Next week, I want you to start having coffee with me before you start for the day. I want to get to know you. What makes you tick.”
I pressed my lips together, not sure I wanted to let him in any more than I already had, but nodded anyway. He was my boss. If he wanted to drink a cup of coffee with me in the mornings, what could it hurt? And it might not be so bad learning more about him. As much as Lacey teased him to his face, she sure did praise him enough behind his back.
“Okay,” I said.
His smile grew, and I felt a little tingle at how happy I’d made him just by agreeing to drink some coffee with him. Before it could go much further than that, I told him goodnight and escaped to my car.
Chapter Eleven
Pete
Monday
Coffee wasn’t enough, I’d decided over the weekend. I needed more. As long as we were on the ranch, Emma would never relax enough around me to really open up. I needed to take her somewhere else, shake things up a little by getting her out of her element.
I waited for her on the porch before sunset. She’d arrived earlier and earlier last week, finally getting to the farm an hour before the sun rose on Friday. It wasn’t even six o’clock when she came up the driveway in her little sedan, the headlights cutting through the hazy dark.
“Stay,” I said to Riley, who obediently didn’t move a muscle as I got up and walked out to Emma’s car.
“Morning!” I said.
She turned quickly, gasping at my sudden appearance. “Morning. I didn’t see you.”
“Let’s go out for breakfast before we get started with the day’s work. There’s a place I like in town.”
She watched me, her eyes too dark to read in the lack of light…not that I’d ever been able to read them in full sunlight.
“Don’t worry,” I said with a smile. “I won’t take it out of your pay!”
She didn’t laugh, but she nodded. She seemed smaller without her hat on, like she’d shrunk five inches overnight. “Okay.”
We drove to town in my truck. The ranch was only a fifteen-minute drive from the western edge of Round Rock, which was where the Texan was, an old diner that had been serving the same country dishes since before I was born.
“They open at six,” I said as we pulled into gravel parking lot. I’d kept the conversation going singlehandedly the entire way. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea, after all. She seemed tenser than I’d seen her all week. I climbed out of the truck and waited for her to follow me. If the food at the Texan didn’t warm her up a little, I didn’t know what would.
I held the door open for her, enjoying the sweet vanilla scent of her as she walked by and the tickle of her auburn-tipped hair as the wind blew it across my outstretched arm.
“You have to meet the old timers,” I said. We walked over to the round table in the corner, all but one chair taken. The old guys called out to me as we approached. The leader, Big Tom, took a good long look at Emma.
“Hey, Petey,” he said, smiling up at us. “Come join us.”
“I can’t this morning, Big T. This here’s Emma. I just hired her last week. She’s my breakfast date for today.”
I looked over at Emma. Her cheeks were blazing red, but the rest of her face was serene and unaffected as usual, her pretty mouth pressed into a thin line. Had I embarrassed her in front of the guys by calling this a date?
“I’ll catch up with y’all tomorrow morning. We’re gonna get something to eat before heading back to the farm.”
We sat down at a booth and grabbed the menus already on the table. While Emma’s eyes were averted, I took stock of her thick hair pulled back into a ponytail and tousled by the wind, the deep v of her t-shirt plunging down from the bottom of her long neck to the tops of her rounded breasts. My eyes darted to my own menu as soon as she looked up at me.
“What’s good here?” she asked.
“You were born and raised in Round Rock and have never been to the Texan?”
She lifted her chin in that defiant way she had. “My daddy didn’t believe in eating out when he could make a perfectly good meal for us at home.”
I could appreciate that. “My daddy used to bring me to the Texan most days before school. He had a game he liked to play to see who would end up paying for coffee. It was always a lot of fun. Things sure could get pretty damned competitive over a tab of a few dollars!”
That drew a smile out of Emma. I even saw some teeth. I counted that as a victory. I was getting into that safe slowly but surely.
“My daddy made breakfast every morning for us at home when we were little,” she said. “Once we grew up, we took turns.”
She was damned near chatty this morning, or at least that was how it felt. When the waitress wandered by, we ordered our food. When it came, Emma looked impressed.
“This is pretty great,” she said. She dug into her eggs while I poured a bowl of white gravy over my plate of biscuits.
“Is it just you and your daddy at home?” I asked in between bites of sopping biscuit.
She shook her head, lifting her eyes to meet mine. She held my gaze longer than usual, her green eyes widening before they darted back down to her breakfast. I still couldn’t read her worth a damn, but I’d felt something just then, a buzz of electricity between us. Or had I imagined it?
“I live at my own place now. But I have a sister who still lives at home. It’s just the three of us.” She glanced up at me again, her lips curling into a shy half smile.
“Three’s not bad,” I said, smiling, too, loving the feeling of her eyes on me and the sight of the sexy little grin on her pretty mouth. “I’m all that’s left of my family. Well, besides Lacey.”
“She said she grew up with you.”
I nodded. “Yep, we took her in like the stray she is.”
Emma’s mouth twitched into what closely resembled a smile. Reading her might not have been getting easier, but I was learning how to make her smile. I’d happily take what I could get.
We drove back to the ranch after breakfast, the silence companionable. I kept half of my attention on the road and the other half on Emma as she watched the countryside whip by through the passenger side window. She jumped out of the truck as soon as we came to a stop in the driveway. I did the same, nearly running into her as she came around the front of the pickup to get past me and to the barn. It was the closest we’d been to each other since she started here. She backed up with a few shuffling steps.
“Thanks for breakfast, Pete,” she said, her eyes dancing all over my face before locking onto mine. She had a deep, steady gaze that knocked the breath out of me.
“Anytime.” I was standing awkwardly in her path, just staring down at her as she stared up at me.
“I’m gonna get on feeding the horses.” She stepped to one side of me, and I turned to watch her walk off. A thought occurred to me as I was enjoying those swaying hips and the tightness of the denim over her round ass.
“Emma!”
She turned back, eyebrows lifted and emerald eyes wide in a questioning expression.
I walked a few paces closer. “This morning was nice. Would you like to go out to dinner sometime?”
The open expression on her face slammed shut, her eyes shadowed with something I couldn’t quite read, but that made them appear much darker than before. The look on her face never stopped being serene, but it was no longer open. She shook her head, her ponytail moving over her back.
“I’d like to keep my personal and professional life separate, Pete,” she said, and sounded honestly sad about it, which heartened me to hear, even if she was turning me down flat.
“Yeah, I understand,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.
She nodded once, then went on her way. After a moment of watching those swaying hips, I went my own way, too, kicking my boots through the dusty driveway as I walked up to the house. I sank into my seat on the porch just as Emma was pulling open the alleyway door to the barn.
“Shit,” I said, speaking low to Riley, who was sleeping on his side right next to my chair. “She’s getting to me, Riley. I just can’t help the way I feel about her.”
Riley didn’t budge, his breaths staying short and even.
“I’m going to figure out a way to get her out to dinner with me. She opened up at breakfast. We just need another change of scenery.”
Riley didn’t respond. Or wake up. I’d have to figure this Emma thing out on my own.
Chapter Twelve
Emma
Thursday
I waved to Pete on the porch before getting in my car and driving away at the end of the day. I couldn’t get my mind to sit still around him anymore. Part of it was from going to breakfast with him the other day and listeni
ng to him talk about his daddy. But that wasn’t all of it.
I couldn’t stop watching him walk around the ranch like he was putting on some lurid show for my eyes only. Lacey sure didn’t seem to notice how sexy he was in his fitted jeans that were tight in all the best places. And those blue eyes. Goddamn. I could hardly stand to have him staring at me anymore. Not after he asked me out to dinner.
I could pretend breakfast hadn’t been a date. But dinner would’ve been. And, I’d wanted to go something terrible. But I couldn’t let my feelings for Pete interfere with this job, not now that I was enjoying it so much and making good money, too.
Daddy’d asked me over to dinner a few days earlier, so I drove straight there. I stepped into the house and Kasey hollered my name from all the way in the dining room.
“We’re back here!”
I went to the rear of the house and sat down at my place at the table.
“I cooked tonight!” Kasey exclaimed, still shouting though I was right in front of her. When she left to get whatever mess she’d made and bring it to the table, Daddy and I shared a long, flat look that seemed to say Lord help us, our lips twitching into tight lines to keep from lifting into matching smiles.
Kasey brought out her latest concoction, which actually wasn’t half bad — meatloaf, lumpy mashed potatoes, and string beans. We served ourselves as the conversation bounced between her and me, with Daddy playing the part of spectator, as usual.
“You still liking that job?” she asked, lifting eyebrows that were much darker than they should be. She had on a full face of makeup just to eat dinner with the two of us. I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel honored.
I had to chew up a mouthful of spongey meatloaf to answer. She’d put too much cracker crumbs in there, but I wasn’t about to tell her. This was one of the best meals she’d ever made. “I love it, actually. I get to do all the things I like. And, you know how I feel about horses.”