Expelled

by Claire Adams

  I had to laugh. If only she knew the truth about me. The only blisters I had ever had were on my feet after running on the treadmill for too long. My life had admittedly been very comfortable and not physically demanding, but I wasn’t going to complain.

  Safety was why I was on the ranch and Sid would have let me lessen my load of work if I had asked him. But I didn’t want less work. Keeping busy was the only thing that kept my mind occupied and I needed that. If I didn’t have my mind occupied, I would have been fixated on Frank Gordano and the threats he had made to my life.

  While I hadn’t seen the crime scene myself, I heard all the details about Thomas’ murder. Thomas had flown a couple of Frank’s people back to Los Angeles from Mexico. It was a typical flight and there hadn’t been anything unusual that I could tell. But when they landed at the airport, one of Frank’s men tried to shoot Thomas. Something must have happened and Thomas had been shot in the shoulder.

  From the police report and photos that I had seen, it looked like a very bloody scene on the airplane. Thomas must have tried to run and the he was shot again in the back. A blood trail led from the front of the plane to the back of it and then down the stairs to the outside. Finally, Thomas was shot in the head and his body fell at the foot of the steps to the plane.

  A baggage guy was driving by and saw two men run away from the plane with a couple black duffle bags. They got into a black, unlabeled car and drove away, leaving my friend on the ground to die. I was called shortly after that when the police took Thomas to the station. But when I went out to my car, there was a bloody message on the windshield that read “Next.” My body went cold and I called the police. I wasn’t about to end up murdered, if there was anything I could do about it.

  “Well I hope you’re right because I don’t want to have to go through this again. I have to keep these baby hands looking good,” I laughed with Sarah.

  As scared as I had been back home, I wasn’t scared at that moment. Being on the Miller ranch was a relief, and being there with Sarah made it even better. Just being around a woman made me feel happier than I had been in weeks.

  “How about tomorrow I teach you a little more about the horses and we have someone else do the shoveling?”

  “Now that sounds like something I can get excited about, but who will do the shoveling?”

  “There’s a new guy coming tonight; it’s tradition that the newest person does the shoveling.”

  “Well I’m glad he didn’t take another month to show up.” We both laughed.

  I could already tell that I liked being next to Sarah. She was kind and knowledgeable. Although, she didn’t seem to be taking to me like I was used to women doing. Typically, if I flirted with them a little and gave them a wink, they were practically throwing their panties at me. But I figured that Sarah was only one of two women on the ranch and she was the only single one; she was probably pretty familiar with men flirting with her.

  It was nice just to have a woman to talk to. Men weren’t much for talking and hanging out, it just wasn’t a trait that I had found very often in my male friends. But women loved to talk and spend time together. Even if Sarah was nothing more than a friend to me, I’d be all right with that. It would be enough for me. I desperately needed a friend while I was here on the ranch and couldn’t wait to grow that friendship with Sarah.

  “Tomorrow, try and wake up for breakfast and afterwards I’ll show you how we feed the horses. It’s much more fun than picking up their shit.”

  “I honestly don’t know how anyone wakes up so early. Is there some sort of trick to it?”

  Sarah just laughed and then stood up and went back to work. I didn’t know why she was laughing or why everyone seemed to think it was some sort of joke that I couldn’t wake up. I had tried over and over again and I just couldn’t get my body to wake up that early in the morning without some sort of alarm clock.

  Then, like a strike of lightening to my head I finally figured it out. Forest had offered to take me into town to get a watch and on a watch there would be an alarm clock. That must have been how all the other guys were getting up in the morning. But I would have thought that all their alarms going off would have woken me up as well. Either way though, I was going to find Forest and give him some money for a watch, although it wouldn’t help me with waking up the next morning.

  “I have a proposition for you,” I said to Sarah as I stood in the doorway.

  “Oh, that sounds intriguing.”

  She looked wary of me as I stood there. It was clear that she didn’t fully trust me yet, but that seemed reasonable. I hadn’t been honest with her at all and I wasn’t who I said I was either. I couldn’t fault her for wanting to keep her distance from me. Although I wanted her to be close to me more than I wanted anything else at that moment.

  “Wake me up when you start cooking and I’ll help you.”

  “You just want me to be your alarm clock,” she teased.

  “God, I could only be so lucky,” I smiled and moved a step closer to her.

  I could feel the sexual chemistry between us. There was no doubt that she wanted me, but she was doing everything in her power to block the signals from her body to mine. Sarah took a step backwards and looked away from me. If she did want me, like I felt she did, Sarah was doing what she had to in order to make sure I didn’t think she wanted me. Oh, the twists and turns of male and female relationships.

  “So your solution to not waking up on time is for me to come wake you up even earlier? Did you ever think that your body is just tired and perhaps you should go to bed earlier?”

  “Don’t go throwing your common sense at me, young lady,” I laughed.

  “Yes, I’ll wake you up. But only this one time; my father would kill me if he found out I went into the bunkhouse. And he’d kill you, too.”

  I could only imagine that what Sarah was saying was true. A bunkhouse full of young men wasn’t the best place for a young woman to be in the middle of the night. But I was getting to know the other guys a little and I didn’t think any of them posed a threat to Sarah. Plus, they would all be sleeping at that hour anyways.

  I didn’t just want to wake up in time for breakfast; I actually wanted to spend some more alone time with Sarah. If that meant that I only got a few hours of sleep, then so be it. I would much rather be tired and happy than just tired.

  “I bet you’re right. Your father would kill me. So don’t go telling him,” I said as I took one more step closer to her.

  She put her hand out and pressed it against my chest as her big, brown eyes caught a hold of mine. Sarah was a powerful woman. I felt it in the way she pressed against me and I felt it in the way she looked into my eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would give in easily to my advances. Sarah was going to take some work if I ever wanted to land her. Although that plan still seemed very dangerous given the fact that I knew her father had plenty of guns on the ranch. He would probably hesitate a little to actually kill me, since he was being paid to protect me, but I suspected and accidental shoot to the foot wouldn’t get him in too much trouble with the feds.

  “Get going,” she said as she pushed me toward the door.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I smiled.

  Chapter Four

  Sarah

  “Wake up,” I said as I poked Garrett in the cheek.

  I only stood there long enough for him to open his eyes and realize it was me and then I quickly left. My father would have killed me if he saw me anywhere near the bunkhouse. When I was younger, I loved to flirt and hang out with the ranch hands and my father never allowed it. It was fun back then to go against his wishes, but now I knew better. Many of the men who worked for us were on the run from the law, family, and other obligations. Some were good men who had made bad choices, but some weren’t good men at all.

  I thought Garrett was one of the good guys. He looked the part at least and didn’t disrespect me, although he certainly could flirt better than most of the guys o
n the ranch. When men normally tried to flirt with me, they ended up fumbling their way through it, but Garrett seemed much more confident. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was quiet the ladies’ man outside of a ranch environment.

  The ranch was a world all of its own. As much as we had to work, most of the people who worked the ranch also lived there and everyone was friends as well. We didn’t get days off and we didn’t have much time for going into town or socializing. The ranch was our morning, noon and night; so I was happy to have someone cute and interesting around.

  The ranch was quiet at four o’clock in the morning; I loved the feeling in the air before the sun rose. Over the years, one of my favorite parts of helping out at the ranch was making breakfast for the men. It was the start of a new day and optimism was always in the air. All the tiredness from the day before had worn off and most of the men had a smile and were ready for the new day of work.

  “How do I even know it’s morning? It still looks like nighttime,” Garrett said as he jogged up behind me. “Why on earth do we need to get up this early anyways? Can’t we make breakfast be at a respectable hour like, eight o’clock or something?”

  I knew the feeling. I hated that we served breakfast so damn early, too. By the time everyone got to lunchtime, they were starving again. I could only imagine how hungry Garrett had been when skipping breakfast all together.

  The days on the ranch were long and having the ranch hands working so many hours wasn’t ideal. Sure, a ranch hand job was expected to be long hours. But the guys on our ranch often worked seven days a week and from five in the morning to nine at night. It couldn’t be legal, but I suspected my father paid many of them under the table and most of the men liked it that way. They weren’t working on our ranch so they could work up in their careers. The men who came to our ranch were only worried about getting some cash in their pockets and moving on.

  “Can’t you feel the crisp air? It’s so much different than normal air. I mean, regular air, oh … you know what I mean.”

  Garrett looked at me out of the corner of his eye and started to laugh, I tried to resist laughing with him but soon we were both laughing. It was fun being up early; I liked having the world all to myself. I was happy to help my mother with the meals throughout the day and on that morning, I was happy to have Garrett with me.

  He was funny and I had found myself thinking about him a lot since we first met. He seemed so naive to the ways of the ranch, but not necessarily naive to the ways of the world. The way he held himself and even the way we talked with each other made me think that Garrett had seen much more in his life than he was letting on.

  “Normal air?” he said through his laughter.

  “Oh, shut up. You know what I meant.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes out for the normal air later this afternoon,” he teased me.

  There was no use fighting with him; I had to just laugh. I tended to fumble my words when I was around a man who intimidated me. It had happened in my office all the time and I hated it. I always wanted to be a strong woman who couldn’t be rattled by what was going on around me, but it didn’t work out for me the way I wanted it to. Instead, I often ended up fumbling for the words I wanted to say and unable to argue the points I wanted to get across.

  I had hoped that building my abilities in my workplace would help with my confidence and therefore help with my ability to stay on point when I was intimidated. But I had to leave before learning those skills. Then as I stood in front of the very handsome new ranch hand, I felt just as disorganized as I had felt in front of a boardroom full of executives.

  Garrett commanded an energy about him that felt so similar to how my coworkers had felt. The confidence with which he looked at me had me feeling like I couldn’t say or do anything right. It was uncomfortable, in a weirdly erotic way.

  “How are your hands feeling? Do you think you can handle cutting up some vegetables?” I asked as I grabbed a knife for him.

  We had bandaged his hands up with some gauze and medical tape and they looked perfectly capable of helping me. I had notice he was moving them just fine and seemed to not have any pain at the moment. I suspected he would heal up just fine in the next couple of days.

  “Show me how you like it done,” Garrett said in a low sexy voice that rattled me to the core.

  It was like he was purposely trying to titillate me. The look in his eyes spelled out trouble and I had to look away quickly, but not before I caught a deep gaze from his brilliant blue eyes. Oh, how those eyes seemed to look right through me. It was as if he read every secret I had with just a simple gaze.

  “Just cut them in small bits; I’m going to put them in the omelets,” I said as I handed him a knife and some onions and started cutting them into small pieces.

  “Like this?” Garrett said as he grabbed the knife with his whole fist and started moving it roughly over the onion.

  “God no, you’re going to cut off your fingers.”

  “Like this,” I said as I moved next to him and put my hand gently over his and guided him along. “And keep the tips of your fingers tucked under to keep them safe.”

  “Show me some more,” he said with a mischievous smile and that damn low sexy voice.

  I grabbed his other hand and tucked the fingers under for him as I moved the knife gingerly along the onion. Slowly we moved it up and back down again as our bodies pressed up against each other. I could feel his breath next to me and I felt like he moved purposely closer to me as we progressed through one onion.

  His body was warm and I wanted to know what it looked like under his clothes. I could tell he was in good shape and I suspected he had muscles almost everywhere. Normally I didn’t have such fantasies about seeing a guy naked, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Garrett and his delectable, naked body. I knew I wouldn’t get to see it, not as long as my father was around, but I couldn’t stop thinking how good he would make me feel.

  Normally, I would have pulled away from any other ranch hand who had moved that close to me, but I didn’t want to pull away from Garrett. My heart pounded with the excitement of having him so close to me, feeling his breath near me, and feeling the touch of his hands and mine together. My heart pounded with the anticipation of each movement.

  “Think you can handle it?” I asked.

  “I think so. But if I get into trouble I’ll need you to give me another demonstration,” he said with a glance.

  As we started preparing the breakfast for everyone, I was pleasantly surprised with Garrett’s abilities in the kitchen, his cutting speed quickly picked up. Most of the men who worked on the farm had probably never made their own meals except for things that could be heated up in the microwave. But Garrett knew what he was doing. I watched as he expertly cut up the vegetables, his fingertips curled under to prevent himself from getting cut. That was a tip not many people remembered when I showed them, unless they were familiar with cooking.

  I also watched his arms as they moved to hold the vegetables. Garrett was strong; his biceps looked like he could bench press me if I gave him the chance. Oh, how I wouldn’t mind having his hands on my body. After working to clean out his blisters the day before, I longed to find a reason to hold his hands again, to touch him, or to have him touch me.

  His blond hair caught the reflection of the lights that were over him and I realized just how perfectly symmetrical his face was. Garrett looked like he could have worked as a model somewhere; it was curious to me that he was at our ranch. I didn’t mind, not at all, but there was something different about him compared to the other men working for my father. And it wasn’t just his good looks.

  We continued to prepare for breakfast quietly as we both did what needed to get finished. But as I watched Garrett I started to get a sneaking suspicious that he really did know how to cut vegetables. His fingers were still tucked under and he was expertly gliding his knife from one end of each vegetable to the other. He quickly twisted the cut pieces and diced them i
nto perfectly cubed small bites.

  “Have you worked in a restaurant before?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  Garrett smiled at me and I knew there was so much more to him that he wasn’t telling me. He had been trying to get me near him and pretending like he didn’t know how to cut up vegetables. It was clear that he really did know how to work in the kitchen and I had to think there was so much more about him that he was keeping secret.

  I didn’t mind him keeping some secrets, just as long as I didn’t feel like he was manipulating me. I hated it when men lied for the sole purpose of getting what they wanted from a woman. I was an adult, and if I wanted to have Garrett in my bed I would, but I didn’t need to be manipulated into agreeing to it.

  That was one thing I hated most about the men in New York. If I could find a man who was interested in a strong woman, he always wanted to play games and manipulate the situation. They were rarely honest and hardly ever actually interested in a relationship that lasted longer than a night.

  New York had to have been one of the worst places in the world for dating. Although, the middle of nowhere Montana probably wasn’t the best place either. I was pretty sure Garrett was the only man even remotely worth me flirting with, and when he decided to leave I’d be left with no one.

  Leaving was what the ranch hands did. I knew not to have feelings for them or to expect much more than a little flirting. But it was fun to imagine a little fun with a guy like Garrett around.

  “You seem to have picked up the art of cutting vegetables very quickly.”

  “Maybe I just had a really good teacher?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to help me with my French kissing skills later?” Garrett asked as he moved toward me.

  “Hold it, bucko; I don’t think you need help with those skills.”

  “How do you know?” Garrett said as he inched closer toward me.