Damn, that laugh. Just hearing a few notes of it seemed to change my whole outlook. Not a total one-eighty, of course, but maybe a half of a percent. If someone like Jesse could laugh like that, the world couldn’t completely blow.
“Yeah, I suppose ranch bitch is a more fitting title, come to think of it,” Jesse said as he grabbed my bag and heaved it over his shoulder. From the way he’d just man-handled that thing, you’d have thought it was filled with feathers. When Alexander, my mom’s boyfriend-of-the-month—a Grade A Douche by my standards—wrangled the bag into the trunk, I was fairly certain he’d have to meet with a chiropractor twice a week for the next year.
“Man, Rowen,” he said, lifting the bag like he was trying to guess the weight. “From the weight of this sucker, I believe you could have a dead body zipped inside.”
“Consider yourself warned,” I said as we made our way into the parking lot. “Don’t piss me off, or you’ll wind up in a black travel bag.”
Another couple notes of laughter rolled out of him. Two genuine laughs in less than a minute. Surely that had to break some sort of record.
“Thanks for the heads up.” Jesse made his way around a truck that had been seeing better days for the entire twenty-first century before tossing my bag into the bed.
“What is this thing?”
“It’s a truck,” Jesse said slowly, giving me an odd look.
“It was a truck thirty years ago,” I said, examining it again. The thing couldn’t be street legal. “This is a corpse on wheels.”
“What? No way,” he replied, sounding a little offended. “This is Old Bessie.” He tapped the truck as he made his way to the passenger’s side. Opening the door, he stepped aside, obviously waiting for me to climb in.
I wasn’t sure what to be more disturbed by: that he’d named his truck Old Bessie or that he’d opened a car door for me. I didn’t think guys actually did that outside of movies and books. The door opening, that is. I’d known plenty of guys who’d named their cars, but none had named them Old Bessie.
When I stood in a frozen stupor, Jesse cleared his throat. “Not what you were expecting?” He admired his truck as if he could see no wrong. I suppose if you were cool with your vehicle having more dents and dings than there were stars in the Milky Way galaxy, or if you didn’t mind the car being new when your parents first got their licenses, there was nothing “wrong” with it.
“Jesse, I didn’t have any expectations when I came here,” I said. “Least of all expectations about the truck of the guy picking me up from the bus station.”
“Then climb on in,” he said, motioning me inside, “and let Old Bessie redefine some non-expectations for you.”
I bit my cheek and tried not to smile. It didn’t matter what I threw at the guy; I couldn’t shake that darn sunny attitude of his. Worst of all, I was afraid it might be contagious. “Just so I’m prepared . . . Are all cowboys like you?” I asked, stepping up into Old Bessie.
Jesse stepped between the door and me before I could close it. His body took up almost the entire door frame. “There’s no other cowboy like me,” he said with a half smile.
I had to swallow before I could respond. “I suppose ‘Old Bessie’ should have alerted me to that.”
He had no other reply than that half smile of his becoming a whole one before moving out of my way. My door was closing at the same time his opened.
“Miss me?” he teased, shifting in his seat until he got comfortable.
“Like a tumor,” I shot back.
Jesse chuckled, shaking his head. “Rowen Sterling: Putting the wise back in wiseass. I think I’ve found a kindred spirit.”
Before I knew what was happening, I was laughing. Laughing. I’d been under the impression I’d forgotten how, but whether I’d remembered or Jesse had taught me a new kind, I was unmistakably laughing.
“So, other than hauling dead bodies around and being a wiseass, who is Rowen Sterling?” he asked before the truck fired to life. It was a good thing he’d completed his question first because Old Bessie’s engine firing up was damn near a sonic boom.
“I think you’re breaking noise ordinances in the next state over,” I shouted above the noise, but he didn’t hear me. By the time we were out of the parking lot, the engine had quieted a few decibels so my brain wasn’t vibrating into my skull any longer.
“So?” he said over the engine. “Rowen Sterling life story? Bible-sized biography?”
He wouldn’t let that go. Too bad I didn’t sigh anymore because I could have used one about then. “How about I give you the one-word story that sums it all up?”
“Wiseass?” he said, his eyes gleaming at me.
I smirked at him. “Complicated,” I stated, rummaging through my purse. “Very complicated.”Locating my cell, I slid it out to check the reception. At least I still had some out in Middle-Of-Nowhere-Ville. “There. That was two words. What more could you possibly want to know?”
“We’re all very complicated, Rowen. Sorry, you don’t corner the market on very complicated” he said, shifting in his seat. Probably because his jeans were five sizes too small and cutting off the circulation to his junk. “So there’s a whole bunch more I’d like to know about you.”
Dammit. Cowboy Jesse was a closet philosopher. I hadn’t seen that one coming.
“You’d like to know,” I said, rolling down my window. Not only because it was hot but because Jesse’s all-man scent was getting to me. What he did or didn’t smell like shouldn’t get to me.
“I’ve been around long enough to know no man or God can get a woman to open up if she doesn’t want to.” Jesse rolled his window down, too. “I’d like to know, but I don’t need to know. We have a right to keep our secrets.”
My brow quirked. “Spoken like a person who knows what it’s like to keep some.”
Not a second passed before he replied. “We all have secrets, Rowen. Every last person on the planet. And you know what else? We all experience the same kinds of things. We just go through them at different times and to different degrees.” Jesse paused as he rolled up to a stop sign. Checking both ways, he turned down a dirt road that looked like it went on for a hundred miles. “If we were to just accept we’re not so different from each other, we wouldn’t feel so alone.”
There was only about an entire world more to Jesse than a pair of tight jeans. “What are you doing digging fence posts when you can arrive at those kinds of ideas and put them into easy-to-understand words?” I asked, peering over at Jesse. He peered over at me. “Get yourself a few certifications to frame and put up on the wall, and you could make a killing preaching this kind of stuff to all the head-cases out there. The money my mom alone spent on her shrink last year could keep a person living upper-middle class.”
Jesse shook his head once. “I think I’ll stick with what I’m doing. I’d rather dig fence posts than dig too far inside of some people’s heads, you know?”
“Oh, believe me, I know,” I replied, looking at the landscape passing by. Other than a house or a farm dotted throughout, there was a whole lot of nothing.
Nothing except for blue sky and green grass. So much color. I almost wished I’d picked up some watercolor paints before coming out here. I usually worked with charcoal or pencil since it was easy to take with me and, back in Portland, most of the landscape was some shade of graphite. Here, though . . . I could put some watercolors to good use.
“So what about you, Jesse? What’s your life story? What’s your Bible-sized biography?” I asked, utilizing my favorite conversation weapon: dodging the topic and turning it around.
“I’ll give you more than the one-word reply I got from you, but I’m not going to give you everything because then what kind of incentive would you have for opening up to me?”
My brows came together. “Why would you holding back stuff about yourself be an incentive for me to tell you more about myself?”
“Because what I do tell you, and what you learn about me, will b
e so darn intriguing you’re going to want more. You’re going to need more.” I could tell from his tone he was teasing, but I rolled my eyes anyways. “You won’t be able to settle with just knowing eighty percent of me. You’ll want the whole one hundred and ten percent.”
“Cocky much?” I muttered, hanging my arm out the window like Jesse was. I opened my hand and splayed my fingers to feel the wind rushing through them.
“Only when a pretty girl is sitting next to me and trying her hardest to pretend I’m the most irritating thing in the world,” he replied, staring at the road and smiling.
That statement confirmed it: Jesse had a screw loose. I wasn’t pretty, not by any definition of the word. Edgy, yes. Mysterious, maybe. But pretty? Fuck, no.
“So you open up to me if I open up to you?” I said, trying to sum it up.
Jesse gave a shrug. “Pretty much.”
“Sorry to break it to you, Cowboy, but there’s a serious flaw in your little plan there.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jesse replied, turning down another dirt road that looked like it went on forever. “What serious flaw?”
“Assuming I want to open up to you.” That was one giant-sized beast of a flaw.
He slid his hat off and dropped it on the dashboard. That mop of blond hair fell back into its perfectly imperfect style. “We all want to open up to someone, Rowen. The hard part is finding someone we trust enough to open up to. That person we’re not afraid to let into the darkest parts of our world.”
By that point in the conversation, I wasn’t as shocked when that little gem came from his mouth. He seemed full of them.
“And you think you’re the person I’ll trust enough to open up to?” I said, pulling my arm back inside the truck to cross my arms.
Jesse lifted his shoulder. “Only time will tell.”
I’d been in some strange situations in my eighteen years of life, seen some crazy shit, but that. . . having the deepest kind of deep conversation with a Montana cowboy I’d met fifteen minutes earlier at a Greyhound station had to rate in the top ten.
“Do you ever just do casual conversation?” I asked, hoping he answered with a yes or that Willow Springs was less than a minute away.
“Once in a blue moon,” he replied.
I pursed my lips to keep from smirking. I’d never heard the blue moon reference come out of the mouth of someone who didn’t qualify for the senior citizen discount.
“Since it’s still light out, let’s just assume that tonight, the moon’s going to be blue,” I said. “It’s casual conversation time for the rest of the ride.”
“Fair enough. What do you want to talk casually about?”
I rolled my eyes. “If it’s easier, we could just not talk.”
“Nah, that’s definitely not easier for me. I like to talk. I like to talk so much, sometimes I find myself carrying on one-sided conversations with the cattle,” he said, as Old Bessie hit a pot hole that made me bounce a good foot in the air. Apparently modern conveniences like paved and maintained roads were not so “modern” or “convenient” out here. “I’m a pretty good listener, too. You know, if you ever have anything you want to open up about.”
I groaned and contemplated shoving his arm. I didn’t though because, judging from the size of his arms and knowing those arms could lift my bag like it was a two-pound dumbbell, my weakling shove wouldn’t even register.
“How about a little harmless Q and A?” Jesse suggested. “You ask me a question. I ask you one. Round and round we go until we get to Willow Springs.”
I was opening my mouth when Jesse cut back in.
“Don’t worry. We’ll keep the questions as impersonal as possible.” Studying my face for a moment, he quirked a brow. “That work for you, Miss Very Complicated?”
Only because I was already exhausted from going back and forth with him did I nod.
Jesse smiled like he’d just pulled off a solid victory. “Ladies first.”
I rolled my fingers over my arm. I wanted to ask Jesse a bunch of questions; at least a dozen fired off in my mind. But only one made its way through my vocal chords. “Why in the hell do you wear such tight jeans?”
Jesse’s face flattened for a second before it lined from the laugh bursting from his mouth. “I thought we said nothing personal,” he managed to get out around his laughter.
“Eh . . . is that a personal question?” It didn’t seem like one to me.
“Yes,” he said, his laughter dimming. “And no. But I’ll answer it anyways.”
“How very open of you,” I tossed back.
“Ignoring that wiseass comment . . .” he said, giving me a look. “I wear tight jeans because I’m on a horse at least a few hours every day. Tighter jeans mean less chaffing. Your first lesson in Ranch Survival 101? Avoid any and all forms of chaffing.”
“Noted.” I nodded once and tapped my head. “Your turn.”
“I wasn’t done answering your question yet.” He gave me a look that suggested that should have been obvious.
“Carry on,” I said with a wave of my hand.
“I wear tight jeans because when I’m out in the fields, I don’t want anything crawling or slithering past my knees. I knew a guy who wore a baggy pair of jeans one day when he was setting a fence, and let’s just say his wife has been a very unsatisfied woman for the past six years.”
“Yikes.” Just the thought of a snake, a spider, or some other creepy-crawler heading up my leg was enough to make me want to invest in a pair of tight-as-tight-could-be jeans.
“And last but nowhere near least, I wear tight jeans because I like the way the girls’ heads turn when I walk by.” His eyes twinkled. They goddamned twinkled.
Groaning again, that time I did lean over and give him a half-hearted shove. “They’re only looking because they’ve been taking bets on when those things are going to bust a seam.”
“Ah, please,” he said, pursing his lips. “Don’t pretend you weren’t checking my butt out when I walked by you earlier. I felt like my ass was about to catch on fire from your unblinking, laser eyes.”
I wasn’t much of a blusher, but I might have just felt the heat of one surfacing. I wasn’t sure if it had more to do with being caught or the image of Jesse’s backside flashing through my mind again.
“Are you going to ask your question, or are you going to go on and on about your love affair with your backside?” I tried to glare at him. It wasn’t working.
He raised a hand in surrender, but those dimples of his stayed drilled deep into his cheeks. “Sticking with the whole personal attire thing . . .” he said, glancing at me. “Do you have a thing against color or do you just really love black?”
It was clear from Jesse’s tone and expression that there was nothing antagonistic about his question. Just genuine curiosity.
“No,” I answered, moving in my seat. “Color has a thing against me.”
I felt Jesse’s eyes on me, waiting for me to say something else,—explain just what the hell I meant—but he could wait for the rest of eternity before he’d get any more out of me.
“And you said I’m the philosophical one?” he said after a while.
“Yep, that’s what I said.” I sat up and stared out the window. “Now that was two questions, so I get two before you get to ask me another.”
“Wha . . .?” he said before it registered. Jesse sighed. “Just for future reference, rhetorical questions don’t count in this little question game.”
“A question’s a question,” I stated, all matter-of-fact.
Jesse sighed again. Louder that time. “I didn’t take you for the question rule police.”
“And I didn’t take you as the question rule corrupt.” I continued to stare out the side window so he wouldn’t see the smile twitching at my lips.
Jesse chuckled. “Fine. You win. Besides, I learned years ago that to start an argument with a woman is to lose an argument.” Before I could praise him with a Smart Man comment, he continued. “We’r
e getting close to Willow Springs. You better hurry and ask your two questions.”
Looking at him, I took a guess before asking, “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
Not bad. I’d guessed twenty, so I’d been pretty darn close.
“Next,” he prompted, turning down yet another dirt road. It had two tall logs on either side of the road with a rusted metal sign hanging from the top that read Willow Springs Ranch.
Home not-so sweet home. For the next three months.
Just shoot me now.
Jesse was persistent, and the road leading into Willow Springs was never-ending. That’s the only reason I agreed to continue our twisted game of question and answer.
“Okay, okay,” I said, finally giving in. “This is a big one. In fact, it’s so big, our future friendship hangs in the balance.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic,” he said, slowing the truck down a bit. Maybe he wasn’t ready for our question game to be over. “But I hear you city girls have a flare for the dramatic.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And I hear you country boys have a flare for some good, old-fashioned bigotry. But I like to give a person the benefit of the doubt before I make assumptions about them being a bigoted asshole.”
“Or a melodramatic diva?” he added, grinning like the devil. Before I could snap back, his wicked expression flattened. “Anytime today with that big, pivotal question, Non-Melodramatic-Rowen.”
“Okay, Non-Bigoted-Asshole-Jesse,”—now I was the one smiling wickedly—“do you, have you ever, or do you in the future plan to . . .” I drew it out a few more moments for “melodramatic” flare, “ . . . listen to country music?”
Jesse’s eyes flickered to Old Bessie’s newer CD player, then to me. He moved fast, but I moved faster.
His hand had barely left the steering wheel before I hit the eject button and snatched the CD that popped out of the player.
“Johnny Cash?!” I shouted. “Shit, this is worse than I thought. You don’t just listen to country. You listen to prehistoric country.” Pinching it with my fingers, I held it out for him. “Take it. Just take it. Before it burns me.”
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