“But....”
“You’ll be fine. For now, grab one of those brushes over there. I’ll hook Roo up and give you the rundown on how to groom. Then you can help Jax and Jeff finish with the rest of the horses.”
Chapter Nine
“Kansas? Are you serious, ‘Lisa?” Eddie rubbed at the scar on his left hand, a nervous habit he’d picked up since his last stint in jail.
“What do you expect?” Angelisa demanded, taking her eyes off the road to glance at him. “You think I should let him go? Let him get away with what he did to me?”
“Of course not,” Eddie protested. “He must pay.”
“Which means we must go to Kansas to get him. He won’t be coming back on his own.”
“Are you sure? His parents still live in town....”
Angelisa shook her head. “I’ve had watchers on them. The mother is still a drunk, and the father is still a workaholic. I called once and asked after him. The mother freaked out, saying how he was dead to her, how both of them were dead. She screamed and screamed at me. She was very drunk, but I don’t think she was lying. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to come home to that. I think he’ll stay away a very long time, and I don’t want to wait to get payback.”
“But Kansas?”
“It’s less than 300 miles, mijo. You drive farther to get to Albuquerque for a drop. We’ll go in June for the fair,” she said decisively, ending any sense her cousin may have had that she was asking for his opinion. Eddie tried hard to be an American, eschewing much of his Latino heritage, but he was still bound to some Mexican traditions. He often had to be reminded that his American cousin was the boss in this outfit. “You and the boys will like that.”
Eddie snorted. “A cowboy fair? Maybe not.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, mijo?” she teased. “You can see what real cowboys are like.” Angelisa pulled the minivan up the alley to park behind the warehouse, then got out. She couldn’t wait to get back behind the wheel of her Mercedes.
“Real cowboys are boring. They couldn’t even make that reality show about them last. It’s not like The Good the Bad and the Ugly, or 3:10 to Yuma....”
“Madre de Dios, Eddie. We’re not going to live there. We’re just going to pay a visit to la rata and either make him come home or make him pay.”
⋘⋆⋙
Mitzi was waiting by the bunkhouse when Tim came to get cleaned up for supper. As appeared to be her norm, she was in uniform. Jax and Jeff both tipped their hats in her direction, each mumbling “Ma’am” as they passed her.
She surprised Tim with her casual response. “Boys,” she said, nodding back.
The Mitzi he grew up with would have decked them for calling her “ma’am.” More than once, Tim had heard her say that was a title reserved for old ladies and politicians. He raised his brow and she shrugged.
“I can’t keep ‘em from saying it,” she responded. “Apparently, their mommas whipped it into them.”
“Huh.”
“I’d guess they’ll think you’re a barbarian if you can’t be respectful.”
“Well then, I guess I had better be respectful…ma’am,” he said, slapping at his sleeves to try to dislodge some of the dust and horsehair he had accumulated over the course of the day.
Mitzi snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“Hey, I learned to be respectful in the last five years. I had to.” He looked around to see if any of his new co-workers were around. “I’ll just pretend that everyone is a prison guard.”
Mitzi looked as if she didn’t know what to say to his attempt at humor, so he waved it off. They both had to learn to see the humor in it, since it was a fact that wasn’t going to go away.
“What can I do for you, Deputy?” he asked.
“Just wanted to see how things were going. You getting along?”
“A couple of the guys are real nice,” he said. “I worked with Blue yesterday. Your husband is quite a man. And I groomed horses with Jax and Jeff today.”
Mitzi tilted her head and thrust her chin out slightly, raising her eyebrows as if to say, And.…
Tim knew Blue had told her about him spending some time with Janie. “And I’m helping Ms. Thomas with one of the horses who has an injury. I had to walk Roo a few times today, and I will again tonight.”
Mitzi heaved a sigh. “Janie is a sweetheart.”
“Yes, she is. But I have no doubt she could kick my butt if I get out of line,” he said, trying to forestall any warnings she might have to give him. Thankfully, she let it rest at that.
“How about the food around here, huh?” she said, waving an arm in the general direction of the pasture. “Nothing like fresh beef. Who knew, right?”
Tim laughed, happy to change the subject. “It’s a good thing they have me working so hard or I could gain a hundred pounds. Hey,” he said, deciding to be proactive. “My understanding is that I might have to be out late helping Janie tonight. I wanted to make sure you were okay with that.”
“Well, if it is out here on the ranch, and you stick with Janie, I think it will be okay. Just don’t let me hear about any problems....” She left the sentence hanging and Tim nodded, knowing what it would mean if he got into any trouble.
“Understood, ma’am,” he said solemnly, giving her a tight smile, trying to make her laugh.
She actually cracked a smile in return. “Great,” she mumbled. “My own brother can’t resist.” She turned away, heading toward her truck with a parting shot over her shoulder. “Behave, Reardon.”
“Always,” he replied before heading for the showers.
In the chow hall, Tim was one of the last to sit down. Deke was the only one not present, and the rest of the hands took advantage of the lack of supervision to have a free-for-all on the dinner platters. Baked potatoes, broiled beefsteak, asparagus, and cut corn were loaded onto plates with alacrity, no one bothering to say grace before they dug in. Tim filled his plate, realizing he was starved.
“Hear you’re spending time with Janie,” Kenny said. Tim looked up when he realized the comment was directed at him. Something in the way the man said her name got Tim’s hackles up immediately, and he stared a moment before putting his attention back on his steak. “She’s one fine piece of ass,” Kenny continued, and Rick guffawed.
Tim didn’t respond, but carefully placed his steak knife on the table. If the idiot kept at it, he didn’t want to be holding anything he might reflexively use as a weapon.
“As if she’d ever give you the time of day,” Rick said, poking at Kenny with the spoon he’d been using to serve up corn.
“Oh, she’d give me time, all right,” Kenny said, standing up to thrust his hips against the table. “Once I gave her a taste of—”
“Sit down, jackass.” Every head at the table turned to see Deke standing in the doorway. The foreman scowled, glaring around the room before taking two strides to his chair at the head of the table. “I don’t even want to know who you were speaking of, Kenny,” he said as he pulled out his chair and sat. “I’d hate to have to beat you while my dinner gets cold.”
Talk around the table was effectively quelled until Deke asked Pete to pass him the potatoes. Then Ray brought up the weather, and they kept the rest of the conversations to nice, safe topics.
“I heard about Roo,” Deke said conversationally. Tim looked up and nodded. “Quite a day to get introduced.”
“Yes...sir,” he agreed, remembering to be respectful.
“I think it will be all right, though. How is he?”
“Jeff said he thinks he’s responding to treatment,” Tim said, nodding toward the head wrangler. His head was still spinning with all the horse terminology he had learned that day. Like the fact that Jeff was the go-to guy for most of the day-to-day horse care. He was the one responsible for breaking green horses to the saddle, keeping their hooves trimmed—the Lazy J didn’t shoe their horses, which he understood was a bit unusual and somewhat controversial—and making sure they w
ere healthy enough for work. He also delegated chores like mucking out stalls, feeding, and grooming, although he was very hands-on for most of it. “Ms. Thomas said she’ll be back tonight to check on him, though.”
“You make sure you’re available to help if she needs it,” Deke said, glancing up at him. “Blue said he wanted you to bond with Roo, and I can’t think of a better way than being there for every aspect of his care while he recovers.”
⋘⋆⋙
“You’re such a chicken,” Janie scolded herself for at least the tenth time as she drove down the driveway to the Lazy J’s Homeplace.
The plan had been to stop in for dinner at the Chew & Brew on her way out, but as she approached, she saw Cody’s SUV in the lot and had been unable to make herself turn in. It was getting ridiculous how much avoiding him was affecting her life. And if she were being honest, it wasn’t him. It was her. She knew she should let him have his say so she could be done with him, but part of her did not want to hear it. Apparently, part of her wanted to hang onto her anger.
As a result, she was here without any food in her stomach, looking forward to a long night with a sick pony…and a rather hot, brooding ranch hand.
Tim Reardon had crossed her mind more than once as she’d gone about her day after leaving the ranch this morning. She definitely felt drawn to him. The more time she’d spent with him, the more traits she found to like.
She absolutely loved that he didn’t pry about her personal life. The one attempt he had made at small talk had quickly led to a topic she didn’t want to discuss. She’d been prepared to deflect it, but he simply didn’t ask the obvious question, which was a nice change from her well-meaning but nosy small-town customers and friends.
He knew nothing about taking care of animals, but instead of making him a difficult student, it made him more like a whiteboard…clean and ready to be filled with information. He stayed focused on the task at hand, learned everything he could, and didn’t have to be told twice.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was all kinds of sexy. He had a mouth that looked hard and uncompromising...until he smiled. When he smiled, she found it increasingly hard to stop fantasizing about kissing him.
He had started the day clean-shaven, but by the time she left before lunch, he was already growing stubble. That early five o’clock shadow just begged to be touched. His jaw was all angles and points, giving him the look of a super villain, reminiscent of that fellow who played Loki in those Thor movies. Heaven help her, Janie loved the bad boys. At least in the movies.
But while Loki had blue eyes, Tim’s were hazel when he was outside. Inside, they looked dark brown, inscrutable and nearly unreadable. The times he actually met her gaze, giving her that metaphorical glimpse into his soul, the content she found there was intriguing. Not that she knew what she was truly seeing, but her imagination gave her plenty of story to fill in.
She knew very little about Mitzi’s family. Her sister-in-law never spoke of them, so she imagined countless stories about Tim. A tragic marriage. An international traveler. A spy. Nothing as boring as an accountant or lawyer. She imagined the myriad reasons someone would want or need to come to Kansas, but couldn’t decide which one fit the enigmatic Tim Reardon.
Of course, whenever she caught herself daydreaming like that, she had to remind herself that the best way to find out was to ask.
Chapter Ten
Janie pulled up, headlights illuminating the barn.
Tonight, I’ll ask him what brings him out here, she decided, although the consideration that he might ask about her history in return gave her pause. Simply being from the big city didn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t hold her in judgment for having a child out of wedlock.
As she climbed out of the LUV, she spotted the object of her thoughts heading toward her from the bunkhouse. She knew it was him from his lack of a hat and his lean outline silhouetted in the porch lights.
“Hey,” she said, aghast that she sounded breathless, as though she had jogged up from the road instead of having driven. It had been ages since a man last stole her breath just at the sight of him.
Stop it! she scolded herself.
“Ma’am,” he said in response. That one word, uttered in a deep, affected drawl, caused a flutter in her belly.
She bit the side of her tongue and inhaled, hoping he couldn’t see the blush she could feel in her cheeks.
“Oh my,” she said, striving to regain her composure and the level of banter she tried to engage in with everyone. “Did someone give you a talking-to about respect? Calling women ‘ma’am’ is really a rather antiquated practice.”
He paused, coming to a stop a good four feet away. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I kind of like it. In the city, they may as well be calling out ‘hey, you!’ Out here, it somehow feels right.”
“I suppose,” she said, reaching back into the truck for her bag. “But you feel free to call me Janie. I won’t be offended at all.”
She hoped to get a smile out of him, but she couldn’t really tell since he was still in shadow.
“Sure,” he replied, and Janie realized she had been hoping for an ‘as you wish,’ like Westley in The Princess Bride.
Good grief. When did I become such a romantic? she asked herself, knowing the answer already. Since you stopped believing true love was real. Dreaming of romance was the only way to get a fix for her broken heart.
Time to change the subject. “How’s Roo?”
“Good, I think. Jeff and I walked him twice since you left. He didn’t say anything.”
Janie laughed. “Jeff talks even less than you do, but he would have commented if anything looked bad.”
“S’what I figured.”
Together, they walked into the barn through the man door, Tim keeping that physical distance between them. Even as she puzzled over it, she realized he was just being respectful. Playing it safe, she decided, since she was the boss’ daughter. Speaking of which....
“Have you met Dad and Trip yet?” she asked as they rounded the corner into the stable section of the barn.
“Not yet,” he said. “Who is Trip?”
“Trip is my oldest brother. Colton Benjamin Thomas, the Third. You should meet them soon enough. I think they must be pretty busy negotiating the buying and contracting of the spring herd, plus getting the hayfields started.”
“Hayfields? I thought this was a ranch.”
“We try to be self-sustaining, growing as much of our own hay as possible. We have ten thousand acres of pastureland, which supports five thousand cattle, and forty-five hundred acres of timothy grass and alfalfa that we put up for winter feed. If we have a bad harvest, sometimes we have to buy in, but growing our own has really saved us money. And Momma has her garden, where we get a lot of our green groceries. And remember the Little J? That’s where the pigs and other livestock are kept.” She realized she still referred to the ranch as “we” and “us” and “ours”, even though she had technically removed herself when she moved to town.
“Why aren’t they kept here?”
She chuckled, setting her bag down on a worktable as they reached Roo’s stall. “Pigs and goats are loud. And if you think cattle smell bad.... Well, let’s just say that Mee-maw put her foot down and made Granddaddy build the farm so she could sleep in peace. Hey, Roo,” she said, sliding the stall door open. “How you doing, buddy?”
The horse looked up and actually took a step toward her. “Well, look at you,” she said with a smile. He still had a definite limp, but the fact that he was taking steps on his own was an important improvement. “You wanna go for a walk, big guy?” She turned her head toward Tim. “Grab his lead rope, would you?”
“Sure,” he said, and appeared at her side a moment later, ready to clip it on.
“Bring him out into the aisle so I can check and make sure his slippers are still cushy enough. I’m on the fence about giving him another shot of painkiller. Maybe a low dose to stay ahead of the pain.” She
was talking more to herself than to Tim.
She walked around Roo, running her hand down his legs, feeling for swelling and checking the pulse in the nerve bundle at the back of his leg, just above the hoof. Compared to the heat she felt earlier, his hooves had cooled, but they still weren’t what she would call “normal” temperature. She lifted each hoof to check the foam cushions and make sure his soles hadn’t flattened out any further. Roo’s back legs were in better shape than the front.
“You up to leading him?” she asked as she came around the horse.
“I guess. Where are we going to go?”
“Probably out to the corral again. Because of the dark, I don’t want to go too far, and the way to the corral and back is easy.” She walked ahead a bit and pushed open one half of the big barn door, sliding it against the track’s wheel guides before standing aside. Tim led Roo out into the halo of light cast by the halides in the yard. They turned toward the corral and walked Roo through the open gate, starting a circuit.
When they turned their backs to the yard lights, the night was inky black in front of them.
“Let’s wait a minute for our eyes to adjust,” she said, coming to a stop beside Tim. “It’s a beautiful night.”
She turned her head to watch him looking up at the sky, and wondered how a city boy would see it. Even living in town, she still saw the familiar glitter of stars. Out here, the blackness was velvety, and the shiny Milky Way was a breathtaking sight. She wondered if Tim would appreciate it.
He didn’t say anything, just let loose a long, slow sigh.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” she prompted.
“I have no words,” he said at last.
Without planning it, she found herself reaching for his free hand, slipping her fingers between his to grasp them lightly. He tensed for a moment, then relaxed. In the light from the yard behind them, she saw him turn to look at her. Oh, how she hoped he would kiss her.
His face was impassive as he gazed at her. She blinked slowly, wondering what was going through his mind. Only the lightest touch of his thumb grazing the top of her thumb gave any indication he was thinking anything at all. She noticed he was clean-shaven again, which only enhanced her desire to feel his cheek against hers.
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