Learnin' The Ropes

by Shanna Hatfield

  “Good. I’ve learned a lot this week about big equipment repairs. The crew at the John Deere dealership has been really helpful when I’ve called with questions,” Ty said, thinking about all he accomplished in the week and a half he had been at the ranch.

  Since Sunday was his day off, he took a drive in his pickup and parked on the side of the road so he could talk to Beth without any interruptions from humans or animals.

  Baby, that overgrown lapdog, had adopted him as her own personal human and followed Ty everywhere. She decided the shop was her new domain and spent hours hanging out with him there. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but he enjoyed her company, as long as she kept the slobbers to a minimum.

  As Ty talked to Beth, he watched Lexi drive by in a pickup Swede had said was her dad’s and waved. She wore her hair down and he almost didn’t recognize her. He’d seen her drive the pickup before. Since he was parked at the end of the ranch road where it connected with the county road, he knew it was her. She smiled as she drove past him, heading toward the ranch.

  After seeing all her lustrous dark hair around her face, he could hardly concentrate on what his sister said.

  “Are you listening to me?” Beth finally asked with an indulgent smile in her voice.

  “Yes, I am, but I better run. Call me if there is anything I can do for you,” Ty said. He planned to send a sizeable portion of his wages to Beth as soon as he received his first paycheck next week.

  “I will, Ty. Be safe and have fun learnin’ the ropes,” Beth teased. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Ty disconnected and turned the pickup around, deciding to go back to the ranch. He really didn’t have anything to do and the thought of driving around aimlessly, wasting gas, really didn’t hold much appeal.

  Back at the ranch yard, he parked his truck and strolled into the bunkhouse. Everyone else was gone and the place seemed quiet. Too quiet. He needed something to distract him from thoughts of his lovely boss and all that glorious black hair. Quickly changing into work clothes, he went to the shop, turned up his music, and worked on the engine he’d pulled out of a tractor on Friday.

  Although the first tractor he fixed was simple, this one was proving to be a much bigger challenge. If he only had a computer in the shop, he could compare photos of parts, do some online diagnostics, and make much better time in getting things repaired.

  As it was, he kept referring to the owner’s manual. When he got stuck, he called the dealership with questions. They referred him to a website that was helpful, but he either had to use his phone or the computer in the bunkhouse to pull up the info and neither was very conducive to quickly accessing the information he needed.

  With all the great equipment and tools in the shop, he was hesitant to ask for anything although Lexi had inquired a few times if there was anything he needed. The next time she asked, he might suggest an inexpensive laptop.

  Baby opened the door and came inside, greeting Ty with a friendly yip. He closed the door, patting her on the head and getting a slobbery lick on his neck.

  “Are you staying out of trouble today, Baby?” he asked the dog while he worked. Her giant tail wagged in response to the question.

  “Is everyone else gone?”

  Another tail wag.

  “Is Lexi home? Did you tell her hello when she came back?”

  The dog barked and turned around in a circle before settling onto an old blanket in a corner on the shop floor.

  Lexi was surprised to see Ty in his pickup at the end of their road, talking on his phone. He looked happy. Her new mechanic didn’t smile much and she couldn’t help but think how good it looked on him.

  She wondered if he was speaking with a girlfriend. That thought made her grasp the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white.

  This was ridiculous. Why should she care if he had a girlfriend in Portland? Or in Burns? Or a dozen between here and there?

  She shouldn’t care, but she did. Lexi cared far more than she wanted to admit.

  Since her fiancé called off their wedding a year ago, men had been the last thing on her mind.

  James dumped her because he couldn’t bear the thought of being married to someone who had a “questionable lineage,” as he referred to her family. The break up didn’t devastate her as much as it probably should have.

  He was as shallow and pompous as they came. The fact she’d once thought him charming and wonderful made her question her sanity and vanity. Eventually, she realized James had been more interested in how much the ranch was worth than he was her.

  The girl she was a year ago was so different from the woman she’d become since her father’s death.

  At twenty-nine, she owned a successful ranch she was determined to keep running smoothly or die trying.

  The only real problem was that her dad had withdrawn funds from several of his investment accounts and she couldn’t trace any record of what he had done with the money. Exactly $500,000 was unaccounted for and she really needed to find it. The ranch was in no means hurting financially, but that was a lot of money to disappear into thin air.

  She spent hours poring over bank statements, record books, and files. As a financial planner, she handled all of her dad’s investments personally. Or so she thought.

  After his funeral it came as a shock to discover a paper trail leading to a series of investments she knew nothing about, only to find he’d made odd withdrawals from each for the total of half a million dollars.

  Unable to find paperwork that he invested the money elsewhere or any record of the funds in any of the ranch books, she wondered what he had done with it. Donated it? Gambled it? Purchased something she had yet to find? Buried it?

  The endless possibilities gave her a headache.

  Lexi went upstairs to her bedroom and changed out of her church dress into jeans. She tugged on a tank top and a flannel work shirt then braided her hair.

  The pastor and his wife invited her to stay for lunch. Not eager to return to the quiet house on the ranch, she joined them and their boisterous children for a lively lunch at a local restaurant. She spoke with them about her need for a new housekeeper and they promised to help find some candidates for the job.

  Once she bid the pastor’s family goodbye, she ran by the grocery store and picked up a few supplies before driving home. She thought about her new mechanic and what a good job he was doing when she happened to look up and see him sitting in his truck, as handsome as ever. The bright blue of his eyes and his alluring smile still lingered in her thoughts.

  After making a cup of tea, Lexi took it into the office. She stared at entries in a ledger book for an hour before she gave up, put on her boots and coat, and wandered outside.

  A deep breath of cold winter air cleared her head. She decided to check on the cows Swede had penned up in the barn waiting to calve. He was worried they might require help calving and brought them in from the herd.

  They ran fifteen hundred head of Hereford cattle, many of them registered. The ranch produced enough hay to feed their livestock. In addition, they sold one-ton bales, wheat, and barley to diversify their earnings.

  Lexi’s passion, however, was horses. She loved to ride and train them. Her dad never liked the idea of getting into breeding horses, so he kept just enough working horses on the ranch to get the job done.

  Now that he was gone, Lexi fully intended to start a breeding program with quarter horses. Despite bad roads and Swede’s repeated warnings about her not going, she drove to Reno last week so she could pick up a new stud horse. He would start her down the road to her dreams for the ranch. As soon as she finished the spring farm work, found the missing money, and got the ranch back on track, she was ready to move forward with her plans.

  In the barn, she checked the five stalls where cows contentedly enjoyed the warmth away from the cold outside. One first-year heifer appeared restless, so Lexi stepped into the stall and assessed the situation. It looked like the poor heifer had been laboring fo
r quite a while and not making any progress. The calf would have to be pulled and Lexi didn’t have the strength to do it on her own. Usually one or two of the cowboys were around, but everyone just happened to be gone.

  She remembered seeing Ty’s pickup parked by the bunkhouse. Running outside and across the ranch yard to the bunkhouse, she knocked before stepping inside and calling his name. When he didn’t answer, she rushed to the shop. At the door, she stopped to catch her breath. Rock music blasted out a steady beat, making her smile. If she remembered her big hair bands correctly, he was listening to Whitesnake today.

  Quietly opening the door, she wasn’t surprised to see Baby curled up in the corner asleep while Ty labored over a tractor part. He looked up when she stepped inside.

  “Hi,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag as she shut the door. He turned off the music and gave her a curious glance. Lexi generally avoided him unless she had a direct question. It was easier to keep her thoughts regarding the hunky mechanic in line when she stayed away from him.

  “Would you mind coming to the barn to help me with a cow? She’s in distress and I need a little assistance.” Lexi held her hands tightly together in front of her. She was afraid if she left them hanging by her sides they would somehow find their way into Ty’s tousled hair. Lexi didn’t know what it was, exactly, about his bad-boy looks that drew her interest, but the attraction was there just the same.

  “Sure. I don’t know a thing about the cows except not to stand too close behind them,” Ty said as he held open the shop door for her, closing it behind him. If Baby wanted out, she’d open the door herself.

  “You’ll be standing behind her, and things could get a little...” Lexi searched for the right word. “Messy.”

  “As in, scrubbing manure off my pants messy? Or worse?” He absolutely loathed trying to get cow poop off his clothes. He thought being a mechanic was a dirty job, but he usually wore coveralls when he was working in the shop to protect his clothes. A little motor oil was nothing compared to the stench and staining ability of manure. He learned that lesson in a hurry, thanks to Jimmy initiating him to cow pies his second day on the job.

  Jimmy had a cow in the chute by the barn and asked Ty to step up behind her and catch her tail before she got it caught in the fence. Instructed to hold it up high out of the way, the cow unloaded on him, covering his jeans and boots in manure. Ty didn’t even flinch, just held the tail until the cow was done. Jimmy, expecting Ty to lose either his lunch or composure, looked at him in surprise. The teasing cowboy nodded his head and offered a simple word of thanks. Casually, Ty sauntered away as though he didn’t have a care in the world until he was out of sight. He made a beeline for the bunkhouse where he took a shower, changed his clothes, and thought he might have to toss his jeans rather than try to get them clean.

  As he walked beside Lexi, he reflected on the crash course he received in both ranching and practical jokes in the past week. If her request for his help wasn’t sincere, he wasn’t sure he could handle her teasing and tormenting him, too.

  Instead of answering Ty’s question about how dirty he was going to get, Lexi smiled at him, causing him to trip as they went in the barn door. He caught himself on the doorframe and tried to keep focused on anything except his disturbingly attractive boss.

  She really shouldn’t fling her smile around like that. It could be hazardous to her hired help, especially the one who was finding himself completely infatuated with her.

  “You’ll need to take off your coat,” Lexi said, motioning to the warm wool coat he wore.

  After he shrugged out of it, she shook her head. “You’ll need to take off your sweatshirt.” She laughed when that revealed a thermal Henley-style long-sleeved shirt. “How many layers have you got on? You do realize this isn’t Antarctica. I promise I won’t let you freeze here in the barn, but you need to take all that off.”

  “Portland is quite a bit warmer than it is here. I just haven’t gotten used to the cold yet,” Ty explained, pulling his long sleeved shirt over his head. It appeared he fought the urge to shiver as cool air skimmed over his bare arms.

  Lexi fought a few shivers of her own as Ty’s T-shirt slid up his well-toned abs while he was removing his other shirt.

  “Now, I need you to scrub your hands.” While he washed at the barn sink, she set a box of gloves on the shelf beside him. “Dry your hands and pull on a pair of those,” she said, pointing to the long gloves.

  Convinced the gloves were an obvious sign he would hate whatever they were about to do, he pulled them on, struggled to get the ends over his biceps and up to his shoulders.

  As he worked to get the gloves on, Lexi peeled off her coat and outer layers, down to the tank top she wore.

  Ty swallowed hard as she washed her hands and yanked on a pair of gloves. He’d envisioned what she’d look like beneath her bulky coats and heavy shirts, but his wildest dreams hadn’t conjured up such a delectable image of her in the tank top with faded jeans and dusty boots.

  She smeared lubricant on the gloves and directed Ty to the stall where the painful moans of the heifer echoed off the walls.

  “I would normally let Swede take care of this, but since he and the rest of the hands are gone, this little lady needs some help now and can’t wait.” Lexi stepped beside the frightened heifer where she labored on a bed of straw. “I’m going to stick my hands inside and see if the calf is heading the right direction. Depending on what I find, I may need you to help pull it. For now, if you can try to hold her still, that would be great. The goal is to keep her down and not kicking me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ty said, scared not of the cow, but of Lexi getting hurt. Although she was tall and looked strong, she had a smaller frame and he didn’t think it would take much effort on the cow’s part to knock her down. “Does she have a name?” he asked as Lexi examined the heifer.

  “What’s on her ear tag?” Lexi asked as she determined the calf was not breech, just too big for the poor little heifer to have on her own.

  “A number.” Ty glanced at the ear tag.

  “That would be her name, unless you’d like to give her one.” Lexi pulled her arm from the cow and stepped out of the stall. She returned with a set of chains that made Ty’s eyes widen uncertainly.

  “What are those?” He rubbed the cow’s head with a calm he was far from feeling.

  “Calving chains.” Lexi slipped them around the feet of the calf. “This is where I need your muscle. Come back here and help me pull.”

  Lexi instructed Ty on how to position himself. On the count of three, she told him to pull for all he was worth.

  If pulling the calf hadn’t required her full attention, Lexi might have fallen into a transfixed state as Ty’s muscles bunched and strained while he worked. His physique was more than a little impressive and a lot disruptive to her normal ability to block out everything except what needed her attention.

  Ty was worried about hurting the calf and the cow not to mention Lexi hurting herself with the strenuous pulling. After he gave another strong tug, the baby slipped out. Lexi wasted no time in cleaning out its nose and mouth, laughing when it bawled pitifully. The cow moaned as she finished her work then turned to look at her offspring.

  “You did a fine job number fourteen-seventy-three.” Lexi pushed the baby toward the heifer’s nose. The mama sniffed her newborn then started licking it and mooing softly.

  Ty was on his knees in the straw, observing both the cow and calf. He’d never witnessed a birth and the miraculous experience left him experiencing a rush of strange emotions.

  “Wow! That was just… Wow!” he said, watching the calf as it tried to stand on wobbly legs while the cow nuzzled it.

  “I’ve seen hundreds of babies born, but it’s special every single time.” Lexi wiped her teary eye on her shoulder. After cleaning the chains and returning them to their proper spot, she stripped off her gloves and washed up. Ty washed but appeared hesitant to put his outerwear back on over his filthy
shirt and jeans.

  Lexi glanced down at her dirty clothes and wondered if she could make it to the house without freezing dressed only in her tank top and jeans. Just thinking about it made her shiver with cold.

  Ty reached out to her toned arms and rubbed his hands up and down their length, trying to bring her warmth. The contact of his hands to her skin caused a nearly irresistible urge to fall into his arms and passionately kiss him.

  Lexi went from freezing to a feverish state in mere seconds. She made the mistake of glancing up at Ty as his hands seared her flesh with their touch. Hot blue eyes reflected the intense longing flowing through her. She wanted, more than anything, to get lost in Ty’s strong embrace.

  Before she surrendered to the unreasonable voice in her head telling her to kiss Ty, she took a step back and picked up her coat and shirt.

  “As a thank you for your assistance, would you like to have dinner with me?” Lexi asked, walking toward the barn door. “I owe you for helping on your day off.”

  “You don’t owe me,” Ty said, as they stood at the door. Part of him wanted to have dinner alone with Lexi. The other part, the part with some sense, told him it would be a huge mistake.

  “Yes I do. Big time. And I’d welcome the company.” For reasons she was unwilling to explore or examine, Lexi wanted Ty to say yes. “I’ll take a quick shower and have something on the table in an hour.”

  “I really don’t…” Ty began but was cut off by Lexi holding a hand up in front of him with a warm smile.

  “I insist. Just come in the back door in an hour. I’ll have dinner ready.” She opened the barn door and sprinted to the house.

  Ty watched her go. Finally, he sauntered toward the bunkhouse, hoping the frigid air would cool him down so he wouldn’t have to stand in a cold shower.

  With a disgusted sigh, he removed his filthy clothes, sprayed them thoroughly with stain remover, and left them soaking in the washer while he tried to wash the smell of barnyard from his skin and visions of Lexi from his mind.