by Claire Adams
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 its 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 into 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 be
en 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 place 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.
There was no doubt in my mind that Garrett didn’t need help with French kissing or any other skills that involved his mouth. He had the confidence level of a man who spent plenty of time with the ladies. Plus, Garrett was just too damn handsome to need help with any of the stuff like that. Even if he was a horrible person, which he wasn’t, he would have gotten plenty of girls.
“Stop playing with me; I don’t think you need help French kissing,” I said as my face turned bright red.
“Perhaps you’d like to teach me how to saddle up a horse sometime? I’d love to learn that.”
I was much more comfortable with the request to help with horses, but it did seem odd to me that the man had come to work on a ranch but didn’t know how to work with horses. It was one of those things that almost all the men who came to the ranch knew how to do. Why else would they be looking for work on a ranch unless it was something they were familiar with?
“So why exactly did you come to a ranch to work if you’ve never been around horses before?”
Garrett looked away from me and walked back over to his vegetable work area. He smiled but then looked back down at his vegetables and started to cut them again. I hit a nerve with him, I was sure of it. It was a tell-tell sign that he wasn’t interested in telling me why he really had arrived at our ranch. But I was open to hearing the version of his story that he wanted to tell me too.
“Oh, you know. A man’s got to work.”
I waited to see if there was anything else he was going to add to his story. Maybe why he was traveling from Wyoming to Washington? Or how he had even found our ranch in the first place. I wanted something, any sort of real explanation, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to give it to me.
Over the years, I had heard some pretty crazy stories for why people ended up at our ranch. Some were traveling away from their past, others just trying to waste some time. I tried not to judge people when they ended up at our ranch. Ranch hands were needed, that was a fact. It didn’t really matter how they arrived on our doorstep; we needed them and they needed work. But I did prefer to know the truth of what was going on with them. The truth was something I valued very much in the people I associated with.
“Yep, that’s true,” I said. “Let’s finish up and get you out of here so you can eat and get started on all that work you need to do,” I said as I tried to hide how annoyed I was with him.
Why couldn’t he just talk to me like a normal person and tell me why he was there? Garrett seemed to love keeping secrets and it was all fun and games at the moment, but I was going to get really tired of it really quickly.
“I’m happy to help serve the guys too if you’d like.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t let the guys see you back here with me,” I said as it got close to breakfast time. “Go wash up and come in for breakfast with the rest of them. I don’t need help serving.”
Our short conversation had reminded me exactly why my mother had always told me to steer clear of the ranch hands; they never stayed long. When I was younger, I thought she didn’t like me hanging around them because they were older, or because they were poor. I even remembered getting into a huge argument about one young man who had arrived at our ranch suddenly in the middle of the night. My father had brought him and he looked scared to death to be there. He was quiet and I naturally reached out to him to make him feel more comfortable. After a couple of weeks on the ranch, we had grown close and we were laughing and flirting with each other every chance we got.
My mother warned me to stay away from him, she told me I had work to do and so did he. But we kept talking and flirting, then suddenly one morning the young man was gone. He had just up and left us in the middle of the night, just as suddenly as he had arrived. He never said goodbye to me, never told me he was thinking of leaving; I was so heartbroken that I hardly left my room for a week. It was then that I realized my mother had only been trying to prevent me from getting a broken heart.
Sure, there were good guys and bad guys who worked at our ranch. But they were all going to leave sooner or later and that meant I needed to guard my heart and keep it from getting broken. Even a good-looking, funny guy like Garrett wasn’t going to catch me off guard. I had already had my heart broken by the company I loved, there was no need to open it up and have it broken by a man in the same month.
“You’re afraid the other guys will get jealous of me?” Garrett joked.
“Just do what I tell you,” I said sternly.
I didn’t mean for my words to come out so bitchy, but I wasn’t going to take them back. The truth was, I was his boss and he was an employee of the farm. I wasn’t going to flirt with him and I didn’t need him flirting with me. If he couldn’t even be honest with me about little details of his life I wasn’t going to hold out hope that he was even going to be at the ranch for long.
Men who had lots of secrets to hide weren’t my type. I liked guys who were strong, handsome, caring, and honest. So far, I was beginning to wonder if Garrett was honest at all. He certainly seemed to be strong and handsome though. He was the kind of guy I could see myself marrying somewhere long down the road, but the one I finally settled on would have to be caring and honest too. I wasn’t going to settle for anyone that didn’t have all four traits.
“You must have been a really good boss; you’re excellent at giving orders,” Garrett said.
“I wasn’t a boss.”
“In that picture I saw, you looked like a boss.”
“Why? Because I was dressed in a suit? I asked him.
Again, I noticed the stern tone in my voice, but I didn’t mean to argue with him, my work was just a bit of a sore subject. I had dedicated myself to my job since getting out of graduate school. I worked up to twenty hours a day sometimes, yet at the first sign of financial distress, the company chose to let me go. It wasn’t what I had expected. I certainly couldn’t have planned it or even prepared myself mentally for the news. But there I was, back home on my parents ranch at twenty-seven years of age.
It was hard not to feel like a failure and Garrett bringing that photo up just reminded me that I was no longer that person. Maybe I had never really been that woman at all. All I knew at that moment was I enjoyed being home and I was going to do everythin
g possible to ensure my father could keep his farm. Maybe we would have to sell part of it, or maybe we would have to change how things were done, but I was home for a reason and that was to help my family.
“And the large corner office.”
“Well, in New York there are a lot of corner offices; I wasn’t anything special.”
“I doubt that,” Garrett said as he took a couple steps forward. “You’re special no matter what you’re doing for your job.”
He was only about a foot away from me as his large chest hovered near me. I looked up at him and felt my breath catch as my body reacted to him. Garrett had a delicious looking smile filled with confidence as he looked down at me. For a moment, I could have sworn he was going to kiss me from the look he had in his eye. I quickly took a step back and looked away. There would be no kissing going on in that kitchen on that morning. I appreciated a good man as much as the next woman, but Garrett needed to understand that I wasn’t interested in his charms.
Okay, maybe I was interested; but I wasn’t going to give in until I knew more about the man. He was going to have to show a little bit of honesty before I would be falling for his flirting. But I suspected Garrett wouldn’t be around all that long. From the way he was keeping secrets, he was probably going to be back on the road within the week.
“You better get out there so you can eat.”
Garrett nodded his head and gave me one last glance before he turned to leave the kitchen. Every muscle in my body relaxed when he had finally left and I shook my whole body in a big shiver. The way Garrett made me feel was unsettling in a way a man hadn’t made me feel in a really long time.
I hated it, but liked it all at the same time. I felt energized and ready to take on the day like I had just finished a whole pot of coffee. I wouldn’t give up on him totally, not just yet. There was always the possibility he would come around.
I wasn’t the type of woman who had one night stands, or even relationships that I knew wouldn’t go anywhere. But if I was that sort of woman, the idea of sleeping with Garrett even if he was only at the ranch for a short time, well, that didn’t sound all that horrible.