by Tiana Cole
“What’s up, Jack?” came a voice on the radio.
“Steve, I need you to go over to your sister’s house and pick up Tommy,” he said into the mic.
“Drunk?” came the reply.
“Yes. He took her home,” Jack told him.
“On my way,” Steve replied.
Jack clipped the radio back onto his belt and continued looking at her, awaiting her response.
“Just one big dysfunctional family here, huh?” The words popped out before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but now that she had, she realized, in a sense, they were true.
This was much more like a family than anywhere else she had worked and that came with its own set of downfalls. Like the knowledge that his ex’s brother also worked on the ranch. This was just a bad idea. She knew it, and yet the look on Jack’s face told her made her unable to say no. He looked like a helpless child dealing with a situation that was beyond his control.
“Yes, we are,” he admitted with a sheepish smile.
“Why do I know I am going to regret this?” she sighed, looking around the ranch she had come to rather enjoy. She thought again of the home cooked breakfast this morning; something she would certainly never get working at a big office.
“You won’t. I’ll make sure of it,” he told her quietly, and there was a promise in his voice that she couldn’t ignore or deny.
She looked at him for a long moment, hesitating just a minute more before finally capitulating.
“Okay, boss. I guess I better get to work then,” she plastered a smile on her face, determined to be optimistic about her new job now that she’d decided to stay, heading into the office without waiting for a reply. She heard him let out a deep breath as she closed the door and sat down at her desk, getting busy with inputting data in the new accounting software to get them started on a new way of doing things.
After several hours, her stomach growled, reminding her that it was past time to take a break, and she decided to go out for lunch. She locked the office and taped a note to it before heading to her car. When she returned, Jack was sitting at his desk in the office setting up his computer. She noted a small dorm fridge had been added to the office by the filing cabinet.
“It’s a gift,” he replied.
“Bribing me?” she asked, once again wondering if he was reading her mind.
“Well, uh…Yes. It just has some water in it right now. I didn’t know what you like. Feel free to take some petty cash and stock the office with some snacks and drinks when you have time. Just bring back a receipt for the new accountant. I have a feeling she’ll be a real stickler for things like that,” he told her with an infectious grin.
“She seems like the type to me,” she replied with a big smile she couldn’t help but return. “Thanks, boss. I appreciate it.”
“Please, Jack will do,” his blue eyes were glued to the computer assembly in front of him, and it took her an extra moment to reply.
“Okay, Jack. Let me show you what I’ve come up with so far,” she told him, walking over to his computer to show him how to remotely access the reports he would need. “Right now, it’s incomplete data. I’m still entering items.
By the end of the week, I’ll have everything inputted and you’ll be able to get a full picture of where things stand with a few clicks.”
Jack watched as she stood by him and pulled up data from several different angles. He was all smiles at being able to have such quick access to his finances. Cecilia couldn’t help but feel a bit like she was giving that little boy she had caught a glimpse of earlier a very early Christmas present. It felt pretty good.
“I could kiss you right now,” he said, taking over the keyboard and clicking on buttons as he looked through what she had set up so far.
“Glad you like it,” she was suddenly warm, trying to ignore his words, moving away and back toward her desk. She was suddenly finding it a little hard to breathe. This attraction to him really had to pass, and statements like that were not helping matters at all.
“Oh, listen, while I’m thinking about it. I am going to need inventory numbers for the tax assessment on Tuesday. Can you find those and let me know if anything needs to be verified before then so we can get them squared away?” he said, stopping her before she had taken more than a few steps away.
“Sure, no problem,” she told him, smiling as she returned to her desk to work. Cecilia sighed in relief as he turned to his computer, clicking away contentedly, trying to make sense of all the new data suddenly at his fingertips. She took the opportunity to watch him for a moment, even though she knew she shouldn’t.
There was just something about him that kept drawing her gaze back to him again and again. Stop it right now! Cecilia reprimanded herself, forcing her thoughts back to the mountains of work still waiting for her. She had told him the truth: all of the old records and files would be up to date in the new system by the end of the week, but only if she could stop drooling at him long enough to actually get some work done.
She gave herself a mental shake of her head, staring blankly at the computer screen for a moment before throwing open the ledger book in front of her, finding the place she had left off, and getting to work.
They worked quietly on opposite ends of the office for a while before he excused himself to go check on other things.
Jack eased out of the office, softly closing the door behind him with a quiet snick of the latch catching. He heaved a sigh of relief as he walked further away. But he sniffed the air, and it was still there: a ghost of her perfume wrapping around him, refusing to let go. It was something sweet and citrusy. It smelled like the summer and woman.
He castigated himself as he headed toward the barn, inhaling deeply despite himself. He couldn’t deny that Cecilia was beautiful, with her dark curly waves that she piled on top of her head so that tiny pieces fell out to tease the back of her neck distractingly.
Her big, almond-shaped eyes that held such intelligence and humor he just found himself staring into them sometimes, when he knew to the tips of his boots that he really shouldn’t.
She had curves in all the right places, and when she walked around in those jeans that seemed perfectly sculpted to her… Forcibly, he cut off the thoughts.
Jack knew he had no right to be thinking about her that way. She was his employee, and he couldn’t take advantage of that, despite the look she had in her eyes sometimes when she looked back at him, like a fire quickly banked.
He shook his head again, remembering the scene with Barbara and wishing beyond hell that Cecilia hadn’t had to be there for that. He sighed again, wondering what to do about his ex’s increasingly unstable behavior. With no answers forthcoming, either about his ex or his new employee, he walked into the barn to see what else had gone wrong that day.
Chapter Four
A few days later, she was getting ready to go home when she noticed what had to be an error on the inventory report. She tried to reach Jack on the radio, but couldn’t. After a few minutes, she decided it was quicker to just go to count it herself.
It wouldn’t take long and she could just fix it herself so that he was ready to go in the morning when the auditor arrived. She locked up the office, and headed out of the building, enjoying the warm sunlight on her short walk down the slight hill.
Walking into the barn, she was surprised to find no one there, but looking at her watch, she noted it was past the time most of them would have already gone home for the day. Many of the employees left well before her, as they arrived in the wee hours of the morning.
She made quick work of her count, finding that the numbers were way off, as she had suspected. She made a quick note on the pad she had brought with her and began walking toward the open barn doors when she looked up at an odd noise, noticing the diminishing light in the barn just as they were being shut. She hurried her pace, not wanting to get locked in. She called out that she was in there, but apparently it wasn’t heard over t
he loud sound the doors made during their subsequent locking. Who would close and lock doors without doing a sweep to make sure the barn was empty, she wondered, annoyed.
“Hey, who is out there? I’m stuck in here. Unlock the doors!” She yelled as loudly as she could, beating on the inside of them. When there was no answer, she began beating and screaming louder as panic began to rise higher inside her. Just, stay calm, Cecilia. You can get out of this. You’ve been in trickier situations than this.
The memory arose of the time when she was sixteen, caught at a friend’s house where she wasn’t supposed to be, and then she’d had to climb out of the second story bathroom window. Luckily, there had been a big patch of bushes to aid her landing, otherwise, she was sure she would have ended up with more than a few scrapes.
Cecilia shook her head at her sixteen year-old self, when she thought about the trouble she used to get into, believing she was invincible.
Remembering made her smile, eased her panic at being trapped in the big, dark space, and she set about finding a way out of there.
Finally, she gave up and decided to look for another way out of the barn. Surely there was a side door or something that would open from the inside. She turned to look around, seeing the small, barred windows up too high for her to reach. She ran her hand along the wall to see if there was a smaller door she had missed or even a loose board she could wiggle through.
She suddenly found herself coughing, the air thicker than it should have been, and she realized that it appeared a bit hazy at the back of the barn. It only took a moment for the smell of smoke to waft toward her.
Her eyes began to burn and she began to cough as more and more smoke filled the barn. Terrified now, she turned back toward the large front doors and began beating and throwing her weight against them, screaming for help. When the smoke got to be too much, she dropped to the floor in an attempt to stay beneath it, coughing as she continued to kick at the door with both feet. Desperate now, she used the last of her strength to yell for help one last time. Her voice was little more than a whisper as everything went black around her.
“Cecilia, hang in there. I’ll get help,” she heard Jack saying, but she couldn’t see him. It took her a long moment to get her eyes open just in time to see him coming towards her again, scooping her up in his large arms as if she weighed nothing and carrying her away from the growing cloud of smoke. Gently, he laid her down just a short way away, and she reveled in the feel of the cool, clean grass beneath her.
She tried to sit up, but she was too weak, as everything was going dark around the edges again, and Jack was there, easing her back down until she was laying on her back once more.
“Hey, take it easy, okay?” His voice sounded like it was miles away, but she could feel his hands on her face, soothing her. Suddenly, they were gone. Her vision was blurred, but she could see someone pushing him backwards, screaming at him in a high-pitched voice.
“How dare you kiss another woman right here in front of me!” Cecilia heard the voice say as she became dimly aware that it was his ex. Those dulcet tones were unmistakable.
“You’re crazy, you’re completely insane. She was trapped in there with the barn burning, she’s lucky to be alive at all!” he screamed back, pushing her away from him. Cecilia could barely make out that he was holding Barbara down on the ground before hearing him on the phone with what she assumed was a 911 dispatcher before everything went black again.
The next thing she remembered was that there were paramedics putting an oxygen mask on her and placing her on a gurney. She could hear Jack somewhere nearby giving a statement to what sounded like policemen, but everything was still too hazy to make out.
Cecilia’s vision cleared enough to make out Barbara being walked to a police car. The woman was glaring at her malevolently. Then, the vision was gone as she was placed in the ambulance and whisked away.
The ride in the ambulance seemed to take forever to her. Each breath was a struggle in itself and her lungs felt so tight, as if there was a hundred pound weight pressing her down into the gurney. The emergency responder tried to ask her questions, but whenever he removed the oxygen mask she let out another peel of painful, gasping coughs and he immediately replaced the mask, telling her to try and relax and he would get her to the hospital soon.
She was dimly aware of what was going on around her as she was wheeled into the emergency room and treated for smoke inhalation.
Once she was stabilized, they put her in a room for overnight observation. Her mother called, already making plans to fly in, but she told her she was fine and would be home by morning. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with her overzealous pampering. She loved her mother, but also knew they got along better from a distance.
As the medication they gave her to ease the inflammation and help her rest kicked in, she dozed off to sleep.
Dreams haunted her sleep. They started off pleasant enough, with images of Jack pressing her against a rough, wood-slatted wall. It was almost a mirror image of the dream she had had the night before, the one that had left her aching and wanting more.
His lips were hard and hot on her own, devastating her senses. His big body was pressed hard against her curves, emphasizing all of their delicious differences. Her body felt so heavy, a sweet ache drawing through her, making it impossible to stand on her own two trembling legs.
She kissed him back just as savagely, but suddenly she was coughing. She tried to kiss him again, but another fit had her doubling over. Jack was gone, in the manner of dreams, and she was left in the dark, alone, locked in a big barn, a nightmare version of the real thing. And the air was thick and black with smoke. She couldn’t breathe, she was going to suffocate, she couldn’t…
Cecilia woke with a gasp, blinking her eyes open as the dream faded, leaving nothing but a vague discomfort even though she didn’t know why. It was then that she noticed the bright fluorescent lights, the white walls, and antiseptic smell in the air.
“Hello there,” Jack said from a nearby chair as she awoke some hours later.
“Hey,” she whispered weakly. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” he asked, concern in his voice. Her dark brows furrowed in concentration.
“Bits and pieces, but it is all fuzzy,” she told him as she tried to sit up, noticing the cords and tubes that linked her to the steadily beeping machine next to the bed.
“I’m so sorry, Cecilia. I promised you I would not let her bother you.” There was an edge of anger to his words, but she could still hear it as he said them, looking down at the floor. “And this was a hell of a lot more than just bothering.”
“What?” she asked, trying to make sense of what he was saying, still a bit groggy from the medication and not really comprehending what he was trying to say to her. He sighed, as if the last thing he wanted to do was say what he had to say next.
“Barbara. She locked you in the barn and set it on fire. I was coming down from the back pasture and heard you screaming. I didn’t see her, so didn’t realize what had happened. I got the doors open as fast as I could and carried you out. She saw me giving you mouth-to-mouth and, in her drunken state, thought I was kissing you. She came out of nowhere and attacked me while I was trying to help you, but I got her down and called 911. She’s in jail and will be for a long time,” he said, letting the words tumble out as his voice choked up.
She sat in silence for a long moment, trying to absorb what he was saying.
“I see,” was all Cecilia could manage to say, her muddled brain still trying to remember, to make sense of it all.
“Listen, Cecilia, I can’t say how sorry I am. How terrible I feel that this happened at my ranch, especially after I promised you…” A nurse came in, cutting off his words and disrupting their conversation and giving her more medicine. She noted the large vase of flowers sitting on the side table opposite of where Jack sat and smiled. He must have noticed her looking at them.
“I hope you l
ike them. There wasn’t a lot to choose from in the gift shop when I got here,” he told her, and she swore he blushed a little as she admired them.
“They are so beautiful,” she mumbled sleepily as the drug the nurse had administered began to take effect. She glanced at him one last time before drifting back off into sleep.
She opened her eyes several times during the night, each time finding Jack sleeping in the chair next to her. Dreams still came to her, all of Jack, but this time they were nothing but sweet images filling her slumber.
When she awoke the next morning, blinking against the bright morning light shining in the single window, he was still there. He was curled awkwardly in the lone hospital armchair, slouched at an angle she was sure would have him waking up with his neck tied in knots. His long, lanky legs were spread out in front of him and one of the nurses must have given him a blanket sometime during the night. It barely reached his knees.
She watched him sleep for a while, noting how truly beautiful he was. It made her dimly self-conscious about the way she must look right now.
Hastily, she ran her hand through her hair, wincing as her fingers caught on a bird’s nest of knots at the back of her head, probably from falling asleep with her hair still up in a bun. She did what she could, and then shrugged. He had seen her last night, dirt and soot covered from laying on the ground, choking and half unconscious. She was sure she had to look at least a little better than that.
He awoke a bit later as the doctor came in for early rounds, checking her over and letting her know he was going to let her go home. She was relieved to be getting out so soon, and that there was no serious damage done by being trapped in the smoke-filled barn.
“I’ll take you home and get one of the guys to bring you your car for when you feel up to needing it.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I can stay with you if you like,” Jack offered. Cecilia shook her head, aware just how busy he was with the ranch. He had already missed a day’s worth of work.