Chapter Ten
Daniel
I slipped out of Rachel’s cabin through the back kitchen door without being seen and got cleaned up in my own quarters. I looked out my window and saw men gravitating toward the long table on the back porch for dinner. The next day, the table would be full of finger foods, barbecued pork and beef, habanero cornbread, and tureens of chili varying in heat from “you’ll regret this tomorrow,” to “melt your face off at first bite.”
Tonight, it was the simple fare that usually preceded a feast. Fresh vegetables from the garden were barely cooked and set out with melting pats of butter and sprinkled liberally with salt and pepper. Slow cooked chicken and rice and beans were served in their pans with hot sauce and pickled jalapenos on the side. The smell of fresh rosemary and pepper made me salivate as I joined the others at the table.
The men were all freshly showered and changed from their work clothes. It was an unspoken rule that we never showed up to mom’s table dirty. The rule had only ever applied to us boys as we were growing up, but the men of the ranch had all started cleaning up as examples to us, and it was just part of our tradition now.
I watched for Rachel, but the seats around me, coincidentally, the ones closest to the food, filled fast, and by the time she arrived, the only room at the twenty-foot table was at the end near my parents. I watched her easy way with them, talking and laughing with my mother and even coaxing a smile out of my taciturn father. Something about her just fit here. She was as much a part of Lago Colina as the sunrise, the mustangs, and the stables she loved so much.
The waning light of the evening sky touched her hair and gave her a halo. A nudge to my ribs reminded me that I wasn’t alone and I stopped staring at her, while Pete and the guys around me snickered at me.
“You gonna put a ring on that or just keep sneaking back to your own place when yer done?” teased Hugh, a grizzled old cowpoke who came out of retirement each year to help with the summer and fall herding.
I dipped my head and laughed. I should’ve known I couldn’t put anything past these men. They’d been rooting for me since the day Rachel arrived, and the constant reminders that she’d be good for me were only going to increase now that I’d given them ammunition.
The teasing quieted down after they got rowdy enough to attract the attention of their boss at the end of the table. I watched and hid my grin behind my hand as he casually looked up and the guys went silent, each of them suddenly deeply interested in the food on their own plates. Everyone was excited for the following day, even if the guys each had to take turns gently reminding folks to stay at the party, instead of in our stables or in the big house, where inevitably, a few curious party-goers would get lost.
My dad stood up as the supper din died down, and while my mother and Patty cleared the table, he read off the morning rotations and changes made to accommodate the celebration. He then asked Rachel to stand. Shyly, she got to her feet, shooting me a furtive glance. I shrugged my shoulders, but couldn’t stop smiling.
“As you all may know, Rachel came to us to learn from our technological advancements, to help her as she finishes her veterinary degree from our own Texas A&M this fall.” The guys all whooped and clapped in support, and he waited a moment before continuing. “While learning from us, she has made significant improvements in our own procedures and found more effective ways to treat some of our most difficult foaling circumstances.”
She smiled, blushing at his praise, and her eyes widened in utter shock when he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Rachel has not only given us the opportunity to continue breeding with our own beautiful Pesky, with less risk to her or her foals, she has also gained us access to a stallion with a truly impressive bloodline, the arrival of which we are celebrating tomorrow with our friends.” He paused and looked at Rachel. “Let’s all give Rachel the thanks she deserves for all her hard work and the amazing addition she’s been to our core crew. Don’t know what we’re gonna do in September without you, girlie,” he admitted.
I smiled and clapped with the rest of our guys, but his words hit me like a fist to the gut. I truly didn’t know what I’d do without her, and being a two-hour drive from her school could’ve been two hundred, what with running the ranch and her trying to study and probably working somewhere more convenient. I ignored the tight ball of worry that settled somewhere under my supper, making me feel a little queasy.
Our clapping and cheering increased when Dad handed her the check I’d filled out earlier for a finder’s fee of five grand. My mother brought out a cake she’d somehow found time to bake between party preparations and Patty followed with fresh local chocolate ice cream from the dairy down the road from us.
Rachel blushed, and I saw her eyes shining in the lantern light from unshed tears and almost laughed out loud when she threw her arms around my dad in a huge hug. Her gratitude touched him, and he ducked his head and patted her on the back awkwardly. She pulled back and thanked him again as she accepted the plate of cake and ice cream offered her.
After we had all binged on dessert and sat talking and laughing long enough that the remaining ice cream was nothing but a puddle in a bucket in the middle of the table, a few guys were conscripted to finish cleaning and do dishes, and Rachel escaped, ducking into the dark and heading toward her quarters. I heard her call for Skipper and his barked reply, followed by sweet, feminine laughter. I considered breaking the promise I’d made to myself and knocking on her door, but instead, I went to my office and locked myself in. I worked until my eyes burned and the computer screen became unreadable to me.
The house and property were all completely quiet and still, and the stars lit the yard as I staggered to my cabin by the tree line. I rubbed my eyes as they adjusted to the darkness of the interior and looked down just in time to avoid stepping on the soft, sleeping form of Skipper, who had made his bed in the middle of my rug.
Fully awake now, I quietly snuck to my bedroom doorway. Inside, sleeping peacefully on top of the covers, was Rachel. She was lovely in a little tank top and a pair of my boxers. Her hair feathered out across the pillow, giving the effect of a dark wash of ink against the white pillowcase. I watched her sleep for a minute, then went ahead and stripped down to the boxers I was wearing. I gently lifted her and slipped the bedding out from under her.
I pulled the sheets and quilt up around her shoulders, freezing for a second when she stirred and sighed in her sleep. Assured that she wasn’t about to wake up, I climbed in next to her and cuddled in close, spooning her like I had earlier in the day. She melted into my body as though we’d been sleeping like this for years. Her small frame fit against me like a key to a lock, and I wrapped my arm around her, resting it in the soft curve of her tiny waist. I breathed in the clean soft scent of her hair and let the rhythm of her breathing lull me to sleep.
When I woke in the morning, she was already gone. There was a note on the bedside table. She reminded me that she had to skip our ride today to get her chores done in time for the party, and told me she expected me to save her a dance. I smiled at the thought that I’d have room for anyone else on my dance card with her around.
Kaiser was irritable when I got to the stable. It seemed that he was unhappy that Peacemaker and Rachel weren’t with us, so I asked Pete if he would do me a favor and saddle up Peacemaker while I texted Rachel and let her know we were taking him out for her. Pete and I rode out to the high pasture, where Kaiser automatically turned toward the path to the creek we usually took with Rachel. Instead, I led him in the opposite direction, and we rode the fence line and talked about how our equestrian center was going to be growing, now that we were expanding our breeding program.
The ride was just what I needed to center myself and get focused on work, and the hours flew by. Before I knew it, my mother was popping in with a sandwich and a glass of sweet tea for lunch. I looked at the ever-decreasing mountain of paperwork and receipts my father had left me to organize when he handed over financial responsibility of the ranch. Between Jackson and I, we’d actually been able to make some sense of his unique organizational methods and after hours and hours of moving documents to the computer, I could actually see people when they stood in the doorway.
That fact did nothing to prevent me from looking up and jumping nearly out of my skin when Rachel was standing there. Her eyes widened and she bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud at my discomfiture.
“Oh, your face,” she gasped when she could finally speak at all. “I am so sorry, really,” she added when I cocked and eyebrow at her. “I was all finished and asked your mother if I could help before I go get ready for the party. She said the only thing she could think of was to collect your dirty dishes and remind you to lock the office behind you tonight, just in case someone got ‘lost’ from the party.” She made quote signs with her fingers when she said “lost.” I laughed and nodded at her. Someone always did seem to find their way away from the party, and it was inevitably the curious “plus one” of a friend.
I stood and stretched, gathering up the dishes that had started to pile up on the windowsill next to the desk. My back was sore and my legs felt tight, and when I looked at my watch, I realized that it was a lot later in the afternoon than I’d thought. Rachel let me stack some of the dishes on her arms, and I kept the rest. I dutifully locked the office up and followed her cute, swaying walk to the kitchen, where the caterer was already running roughshod over her servers and sous chefs.
Rachel made a face at the caterer behind her back and winked at me. I walked her to her quarters and offered to help her with her shower, but she shooed me away, telling me she wanted how she looked to be a surprise.
“Believe it or not, I actually know how to girl,” she teased. “You might not recognize me, all dressed up.” She smiled and I leaned in for a chaste kiss before I let her walk in alone. I sauntered back to my own place, showered, and dressed quickly. With the time I had left before I was expected to make an appearance at the big house, I wandered over to the stables. That morning, Texas Tango had arrived. He was every bit as beautiful as Rachel had described and remarkably friendly for such a spirited horse. Rachel had laughed when I told her what I thought.
“Oh yeah,” she’d agreed. “He doesn’t mind the lead at all. But, just you wait until you’re not headed the same direction he is, or you have the audacity to try to ride him.” She had smiled and stroked the big horse’s nose affectionately. “Just know that you will be on your ass in front of him at some point, so there’s no use in letting it embarrass you when it happens.” She’d kissed his soft nose and walked away, leaving me to contemplate the liquid, brown eyes of our four-legged guest.
His owner had been less exciting for me, but the aging soap opera actress had been the object of much gushing from my mother and Patty. When I asked him, my father had just shrugged.
“She was beautiful, in her heyday,” he’d offered. “But it was never the kind of beauty that I figured would translate off-screen.” My parents had put her up in one of the suites in the big house, according to preferences my mother had gleaned from Rachel. I thought Miss Vale was the opposite in personality of what I’d expect from an actress. She was down-to earth and unaffected.
“Of course she is,” Rachel had agreed. “She’s a horsewoman first, actress second.”
I’d had to chuckle at her assessment. She was right, though. In Texas, there were ranch-women and glamour-women. Wasn’t often you saw both or even saw them together as friends. It was like watching two separate species that sometimes circled the same watering holes.
My phone buzzed with a text from my parents. It was time to be the host of the shindig, and I heaved a sigh of self-pity even as the text on the screen reminded me that I was the one who had wanted the party in the first place. I dragged my cowboy boots all the way to the huge, back veranda, where the homey scene of the night before had been replaced with strings of lights, topiaries, and mountains of food on the wide terrace, with two wet bars set up near the garden and a band already warming up on the small stage we’d built at my mother’s behest.
I greeted my father with a handshake and let him introduce me to some of the business contacts I hadn’t met yet, all the while, keeping an eye out for a certain, petite Latina who’d promised me a dance.