Chapter 3
Garrett
My isolation at the Miller ranch was suddenly looking up quite a bit. I hadn’t actually seen a woman in weeks, besides Mrs. Miller, and Sarah Miller was just the woman I needed to take my mind off the torturous work I was doing.
My mind was filled with all sorts of ideas about what I could do while I was at the ranch. How I could continue to build my company, better myself, plan out my testimony. But instead of being able to concentrate on any of the things I had wanted to, I was physically exhausted. My body hurt more in the few weeks I had been on the ranch than it had hurt after I ran a marathon just out of college.
Before coming to the ranch, I had imagined what it would be like to work all day and thought I could handle it. I was used to working hard at my company, but my work allowed me the opportunity to do much of it from behind a desk. Physical labor wasn’t something I had ever been afraid of and hard work was comfortable to me, but the past few weeks had felt more like a concentration camp than a place of work. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would willingly choose this as their job. The physical exhaustion was taking its toll on me.
Not only were my hands torn up and bloodied, but my whole body felt like I was only moments away from collapsing. Every night when I crawled into bed, I couldn’t imagine being able to wake up and actually move my body. I couldn’t read a book and I could barely write my ideas down in my journal before the sleep took over. Yet, day after day, I was up and working again in the horse stables. I was proud of myself for not complaining and trying to fit in with everyone.
My job there was temporary and I knew that. I had a court hearing coming up and if I could just get through a few weeks of working, then I’d be able to get back to my normal life. Although, I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t ever be able to get back to any sort of normal life. Frank Gordano wanted me dead, even if I testified against him and he got sent away to jail, I wasn’t sure I would ever really be safe. It was one of many thoughts that rolled through my mind as I fell asleep at night.
Sarah was much more beautiful than the picture of her I’d seen in the main house. She had been wearing jeans that were tight enough for me to see every last curve of her beautiful body. And boy, did she have some fabulous curves. I wasn’t sure if I lusted after her so much because I hadn’t seen a woman in such a long time at the ranch, or if it was because I was actually attracted to her. But from where I stood, either option was perfectly fine. I wasn’t going to be able to go after her though; I knew that Sid had been joking with me, but I also knew that I could be pulled away from the ranch at any moment. But Sarah was going to make for some great fantasies when I was alone in my bed at night—if I could manage to stay awake long enough to think about her.
When lunchtime came, I hurried over to the gathering room and was one of the first men there to get lunch. Missing breakfast was my normal routine back at home, but sitting at a desk all morning hadn’t made me nearly as hungry as shoveling horse excrement did. I was famished and scooped the food into my mouth as fast as I could.
“Careful, youngin’, you’re going to give yourself a stomach ache.”
“Forest, I can’t go any slower. I swear I’m starving to death,” I said between bites. “It’s like I haven’t eaten for a week or something.”
“That’s what happens when you skip breakfast.”
Forest knew I had missed breakfast every single day I had been on the ranch so far. It felt like some sort of hazing that the guys were doing to me and I didn’t want to give in. From what I knew about hazing, it was important for me to keep my head up and keep pushing forward to prove I could withstand anything they put me through. I imagined they were getting up very quietly in the morning so they wouldn’t wake me up. Yet, I couldn’t imagine how they all woke up on time at all. It was a mystery.
Most of the men slept in the bunkhouse with me, but there were a few who had their own small cabins just outside the edge of the main house. Forest, who had a beautiful cabin out that way, as well as Walter—although I hadn’t seen Walter in a while.
“What happened to Walter?” I asked as I chewed my food.
“Oh, he moved on.”
Forest said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I almost didn’t want to ask any more questions. Sid had told me that there was pretty quick turnover in the ranch, but I hadn’t really thought it would happen so quickly.
“So you’re in charge now?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, I better get back to work then,” I joked. “How long have you been on the ranch?”
“Long enough.”
Forest was a man of very few words. He was about my age, although he looked much older than me. I could tell the hard work and time in the sun had worn down his body over the years. Yet, Forest worked harder than I did every single day and barely looked tired by the time we wrapped up dinner. It was a little depressing to realize just how out of shape I really was.
Over the last few weeks, I had felt weaker than I had my entire life. Sure, I went to the gym several times a week back home and even had my personal trainer; but nothing had prepared me for 12-to-15-hour days of physical labor. The physical work was much different than workouts at the gym and my body wasn’t taking too well to the changes. Although, I did feel like I had started to bulk up a little in my upper body. Maybe I would even come to enjoy my long days of physical labor.
“Man, if I could figure out how the hell to wake up in the morning, I would do it in an instant. Do you guys have some sort of trick or something?”
Forest just laughed at me and then went back to eating his meal. His red hair was dirty from working in the field that day. It was longer than mine and Forest had a red beard to go along with the long hair. Most of the men on the ranch had longer hair and beards, which I suspected was simply because they couldn’t find the time to get to a barber. The mornings and evenings were busy and I had struggled to find time to shave when I first arrived. But then I started doing it while I was in the shower to save time; that seemed to be working well for me. Although, I was the only one who kept a consistently clean shaven face.
“You’ll figure it out,” Forest answered me.
“I don’t think I will.”
“I’m going into town tomorrow if you want to get yourself a watch,” Forest said as he looked up at me.
“Nah, that’s okay, I don’t really care what time it is. I just work until you guys tell me to stop,” I laughed.
It was the truth; I didn’t really care about the time. I didn’t have any place to be and I certainly couldn’t go into town. So, working, eating, and sleeping were all I had to keep myself busy. What I needed was an alarm clock, but since none of the other men had blaring alarms going off in the morning, I didn’t think it was a good idea. I just had to figure out how the hell they silently woke themselves up each and every morning. It was a baffling mystery to me.
“Suit yourself.”
“Thanks though,” I said as I finished off the last of my lunch. “Do you know if Sarah is back there? I’m supposed to have her look at my hands.”
I held up my hands and watched Forest flinch at the sight of them. I had gotten used to the oozing and puss that was coming out of the blisters, but they didn’t look very appealing to have around food. I pulled them back and placed them on my lap again.
“Come on man, I’m trying to eat here,” he said then looked away. “She’s usually around back. Go that way,” he pointed toward the west.
“Thanks.”
My hands had hurt a lot when I first started getting blisters on them. But over the last few days, they were pretty much numb and I couldn’t feel them much at all. No one else used gloves unless they were loading large items or pulling the ropes. I hadn’t wanted to seem like a pussy so I had avoided using gloves as well, which was obviously a huge mistake. My hands weren’t used to the kind of work I was doing all the time and I finally decided the gloves Sarah had given me were worth using to avoid totally damaging the skin on my hands for the rest of my life.
“So you’re the local nurse, too,” I said as I came into the back room and saw Sarah pulling out some first aid equipment.
“I’m anything I need to be,” she replied flatly.
Sarah was busy; I hated to take up her time, but I obviously didn’t know how to take care of the blisters I was getting. I needed her to do what had to be done and I promised myself I wouldn’t distract her too much so she could get back to work. Although, she was extremely distracting to me to even be near.
Just standing in the same room with her I couldn’t help but imagine what she would look like naked and sprawled across a bed. My mind drifted to the way I would caress her skin and how my lips would take in every inch of her. I certainly wouldn’t let her leave my bed without being totally satisfied.
I loved women. It wasn’t a surprise to most people who knew me that I loved everything about women. But I wasn’t one of those guys who said he loved women but then secretly didn’t respect them in the office or the workforce. I whole-heartedly loved women. The female perspective on things was always different and innovative compared to how I viewed a project. I cherished the insights of the women who worked in my company, although I didn’t have nearly enough women there.
Working with airplanes didn’t appear to be a job many women enjoyed very much. I only had one female pilot and a few office employees. I also had one woman that was in charge of my marketing and sales. She was blonde and beautiful and the rich men she pandered to had a very hard time resisting her sales pitch. But I honestly hadn’t hired her because of her looks; I hired her because she sold me on her abilities and that was why I loved women in the workplace.
As far as Sarah and the ranch were turning out, I could already see that both Sarah and her mother Meredith contributed greatly to the running of the ranch. It was their ideas and hard work combined with Sid’s that made the ranch operate as well as it had been going. But I also suspected that Sid wasn’t bringing in the kind of money that he needed to bring in. A ranch had to be a very expensive business to operate and I didn’t see where Sid was optimizing the opportunities at all. He only sold his cows and some smaller livestock but he had thousands of acres of land. There had to be something more useful he could be doing with all that land.
“Sit down and tell me why your hands are gentler than a newborn baby’s,” Sarah said and then started to laugh.
“I guess I’ve just got baby hands.”
“Have you ever worked on a ranch before? Have you ever even worked at all? These hands are absolutely pitiful.”
“No,” I laughed, but then I quickly became aware that I was supposed to be Garrett Reynolds and I had a complete back story that I needed to stick to. “Well, a little, but not this much,” I added. “Your dad has gotten more work out of me here than I think I did throughout my entire years in college.”
I was joking, but it was probably pretty close to being true. Working hard was relative to me. In my real life, I worked hard to build my company and I probably worked twice as much as other people who had normal jobs, but I did my work whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to sit at my desk all day and I certainly wasn’t getting blisters from shoveling horse crap.
“Where are you from?”
My mind hesitated as I tried to remember the history of Garrett. I hadn’t actually had to tell the story to anyone yet. I had successfully avoided any deep and meaningful conversations with people since I had arrived on the ranch. It probably wasn’t the best way to get to know my fellow workers, but I just couldn’t risk messing up the story that I was supposed to know about my own past.
I also had stayed pretty quiet because I was afraid of getting confused and telling people different stories about my past. If I started talking to anyone, I needed to be one hundred percent sure of my story so I wouldn’t look like a liar when I told people bits and pieces about my past.
“Originally from Wyoming, was on my way to Washington, but decided to stay and work for the summer.”
“What’s in Washington?”
“A job.”
“Not one where you use your hands I hope?” Sarah laughed.
Her laugh brightened the room as her smile took over her face. I was sure that any man who had ever laid eyes on that smile had probably tried to land her as his woman. My body even reacted with a stiff hard on as she grabbed one of my hands and started to work on draining the blisters and bandaging me up. I had to resist from flirting with her though, as sweet as she was; there were men who wanted to kill me and flirting with a rancher’s daughter wouldn’t help me in any way.
There were men who wanted to kill me. The thought lingered for a moment as Sarah worked. I had always been a decent guy throughout my life. Never getting too angry or fighting with others. It was odd that there was a man in the world that genuinely wanted me dead. But I knew for a fact that Frank Gordano would kill me if he had the chance. He had killed my pilot and, without a doubt, he would get rid of me too.
I knew more than my pilot Thomas had known. The truth was, if Frank Gordano wanted to kill someone who could hurt him, I was the person to be killed. He shouldn’t have even bothered killing Thomas. But that was why I had agreed to testify. I knew so much about Frank’s business and where his supplies and money were coming and going to. The information I had in my head was enough to put Frank away for life and he knew it.
A bit of panic filled me as I again thought about what life would be like after the trial. I wouldn’t be sitting in a back room with a beautiful woman taking care of me, I’d probably be hiding out and afraid for my life still. It was a sobering thought.
At that moment, I was hiding and I felt safe, but what would happen after the trial? Would I have to give up my old life all together if I wanted to stay safe? How would I survive at all if I couldn’t keep my company?
If I had to sell my company, I could live off of the money for years, but I wouldn’t be happy. I liked working. I liked being busy. I liked building something new and exciting. I felt the anxiety as my chest tightened up. I wasn’t ready to have to testify yet and I wasn’t ready for what my life my look like outside of the safety of the Miller’s ranch. For the time being, I was going to enjoy the safety I had and do my best to avoid thinking about what might come next.
“It’s a little different job,” I said with a smile. “I saw a picture of you in an office. Did you leave that job?”
“More like I was fired.”
“Really?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I wasn’t shocked; I knew it could happen. It’s a tough world out there. If you’re not making money for a company, they have no patience at all and get rid of you. It’s the way of the corporate world. But I was making money for them and they still took it for granted and let me go. Life isn’t fair sometimes, but there’s no time for crying about it.”
“Yeah, money is the root of all businesses and all evil.”
“So what are you hiding from here?” Sarah asked as she looked straight into my eyes.
My stomach sunk as she looked at me. How on earth did she know why I was there? Sid didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would go back on his word and tell my story. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would expose me like that. I stared back into her eyes as I tried to evaluate what she might know about me and my situation.
Sarah didn’t appear as if she really did know. The nonchalant way she asked me and looked into my eyes made me think she was fishing for information and didn’t actually have any of her own. But I was still nervous.
“Um, I … uh…” I started to talk but my words just wouldn’t come. I had no idea how to respond to her.
“I’m kidding, jeez,” she laughed. “But with that response, now you have me wondering.”
“I’m just a wanderer. You know. A typical guy who doesn’t like commitment,” I joked.
“In my experience, everyone is hiding from something when they show up here. But I’ll let you keep your secrets for now.”
Sarah held my hand in hers as she continued the process of cleaning out each of the blisters. It was disgusting as the puss, blood, and ooze poured out of my hand. I had to look away to avoid vomiting up my lunch. But Sarah didn’t seem fazed by it at all. She diligently cleaned out each one and clipped the dead skin off; when she was done, my hand was practically one giant open wound.
“I suppose you’re going to throw some vodka on there and kill all the germs off,” I joked.
Sarah reached for a small, white container and a large piece of medical gauze that was sitting right next to her. I watched as she continued to work and only looked up briefly to give me a quick warning.
“It’s alcohol and it’s going to hurt like a bitch; try not to scream.”
“Oh, I think I can handle …” I started to say as she dabbed the alcohol around my hand.
I couldn’t continue talking and avoid swearing and screaming; the pain shot through every nerve in my hand. She was gentle though, and I knew it was for my own good. I had so many open sores on my hands that I was sure to get some sort of infection if they weren’t cleaned out and bandaged up correctly.
I felt embarrassed that my hands were so destroyed by just a couple of weeks of work. Perhaps I wasn’t holding the shovel right, or maybe I just hadn’t built up a tolerance for that level of work; but either way, it was embarrassing to have my hands covered in blisters and needing the level of care that Sarah was providing to me.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said through gritted teeth.
“The rest of the process is easy, if that’s any consolation,” She smiled at me.
Again with that smile; she was mesmerizing. Even in the midst of horrible pain, I felt my throbbing member kept rising to attention at the kindest of glances from Sarah. Luckily I was in jeans and sitting down, because I was certain if I was standing she would have noticed how my body seemed to love her smiles.
She smelled delicious, too. Not like the women in Los Angeles smelled though. Sarah wasn’t covered in perfume and she didn’t have a fake tan on, or fake anything from what I could tell. It was just her natural scent that drove me crazy. I honestly couldn’t get enough of breathing her in and continued to do it as inconspicuously as I could manage as we sat there.
“What’s left? Amputation?” I joked.
“Actually, after I get you all bandaged up, you will probably feel pretty good for the next week or so. Hopefully when your hands heal up they’ll be a little more like man hands and less like little boy hands,” she winked.
I had to laugh. If only she knew the truth about me. The only blisters I had ever had were on my feet after running on the treadmill for too long. My life had admittedly been very comfortable and not physically demanding, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Safety was why I was on the ranch and Sid would have let me lessen my load of work if I had asked him. But I didn’t want less work. Keeping busy was the only thing that kept my mind occupied and I needed that. If I didn’t have my mind occupied, I would have been fixated on Frank Gordano and the threats he had made to my life.
While I hadn’t seen the crime scene myself, I heard all the details about Thomas’ murder. Thomas had flown a couple of Frank’s people back to Los Angeles from Mexico. It was a typical flight and there hadn’t been anything unusual that I could tell. But when they landed at the airport, one of Frank’s men tried to shoot Thomas. Something must have happened and Thomas had been shot in the shoulder.
From the police report and photos that I had seen, it looked like a very bloody scene on the airplane. Thomas must have tried to run and the he was shot again in the back. A blood trail led from the front of the plane to the back of it and then down the stairs to the outside. Finally, Thomas was shot in the head and his body fell at the foot of the steps to the plane.
A baggage guy was driving by and saw two men run away from the plane with a couple black duffle bags. They got into a black, unlabeled car and drove away, leaving my friend on the ground to die. I was called shortly after that when the police took Thomas to the station. But when I went out to my car, there was a bloody message on the windshield that read “Next.” My body went cold and I called the police. I wasn’t about to end up murdered, if there was anything I could do about it.
“Well I hope you’re right because I don’t want to have to go through this again. I have to keep these baby hands looking good,” I laughed with Sarah.
As scared as I had been back home, I wasn’t scared at that moment. Being on the Miller ranch was a relief, and being there with Sarah made it even better. Just being around a woman made me feel happier than I had been in weeks.
“How about tomorrow I teach you a little more about the horses and we have someone else do the shoveling?”
“Now that sounds like something I can get excited about, but who will do the shoveling?”
“There’s a new guy coming tonight; it’s tradition that the newest person does the shoveling.”
“Well I’m glad he didn’t take another month to show up.” We both laughed.
I could already tell that I liked being next to Sarah. She was kind and knowledgeable. Although, she didn’t seem to be taking to me like I was used to women doing. Typically, if I flirted with them a little and gave them a wink, they were practically throwing their panties at me. But I figured that Sarah was only one of two women on the ranch and she was the only single one; she was probably pretty familiar with men flirting with her.
It was nice just to have a woman to talk to. Men weren’t much for talking and hanging out, it just wasn’t a trait that I had found very often in my male friends. But women loved to talk and spend time together. Even if Sarah was nothing more than a friend to me, I’d be all right with that. It would be enough for me. I desperately needed a friend while I was here on the ranch and couldn’t wait to grow that friendship with Sarah.
“Tomorrow, try and wake up for breakfast and afterwards I’ll show you how we feed the horses. It’s much more fun than picking up their shit.”
“I honestly don’t know how anyone wakes up so early. Is there some sort of trick to it?”
Sarah just laughed and then stood up and went back to work. I didn’t know why she was laughing or why everyone seemed to think it was some sort of joke that I couldn’t wake up. I had tried over and over again and I just couldn’t get my body to wake up that early in the morning without some sort of alarm clock.
Then, like a strike of lightening to my head I finally figured it out. Forest had offered to take me into town to get a watch and on a watch there would be an alarm clock. That must have been how all the other guys were getting up in the morning. But I would have thought that all their alarms going off would have woken me up as well. Either way though, I was going to find Forest and give him some money for a watch, although it wouldn’t help me with waking up the next morning.
“I have a proposition for you,” I said to Sarah as I stood in the doorway.
“Oh, that sounds intriguing.”
She looked wary of me as I stood there. It was clear that she didn’t fully trust me yet, but that seemed reasonable. I hadn’t been honest with her at all and I wasn’t who I said I was either. I couldn’t fault her for wanting to keep her distance from me. Although I wanted her to be close to me more than I wanted anything else at that moment.
“Wake me up when you start cooking and I’ll help you.”
“You just want me to be your alarm clock,” she teased.
“God, I could only be so lucky,” I smiled and moved a step closer to her.
I could feel the sexual chemistry between us. There was no doubt that she wanted me, but she was doing everything in her power to block the signals from her body to mine. Sarah took a step backwards and looked away from me. If she did want me, like I felt she did, Sarah was doing what she had to in order to make sure I didn’t think she wanted me. Oh, the twists and turns of male and female relationships.
“So your solution to not waking up on time is for me to come wake you up even earlier? Did you ever think that your body is just tired and perhaps you should go to bed earlier?”
“Don’t go throwing your common sense at me, young lady,” I laughed.
“Yes, I’ll wake you up. But only this one time; my father would kill me if he found out I went into the bunkhouse. And he’d kill you, too.”
I could only imagine that what Sarah was saying was true. A bunkhouse full of young men wasn’t the best place for a young woman to be in the middle of the night. But I was getting to know the other guys a little and I didn’t think any of them posed a threat to Sarah. Plus, they would all be sleeping at that hour anyways.
I didn’t just want to wake up in time for breakfast; I actually wanted to spend some more alone time with Sarah. If that meant that I only got a few hours of sleep, then so be it. I would much rather be tired and happy than just tired.
“I bet you’re right. Your father would kill me. So don’t go telling him,” I said as I took one more step closer to her.
She put her hand out and pressed it against my chest as her big, brown eyes caught a hold of mine. Sarah was a powerful woman. I felt it in the way she pressed against me and I felt it in the way she looked into my eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would give in easily to my advances. Sarah was going to take some work if I ever wanted to land her. Although that plan still seemed very dangerous given the fact that I knew her father had plenty of guns on the ranch. He would probably hesitate a little to actually kill me, since he was being paid to protect me, but I suspected and accidental shoot to the foot wouldn’t get him in too much trouble with the feds.
“Get going,” she said as she pushed me toward the door.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I smiled.
Chapter 4
Sarah
“Wake up,” I said as I poked Garrett in the cheek.
I only stood there long enough for him to open his eyes and realize it was me and then I quickly left. My father would have killed me if he saw me anywhere near the bunkhouse. When I was younger, I loved to flirt and hang out with the ranch hands and my father never allowed it. It was fun back then to go against his wishes, but now I knew better. Many of the men who worked for us were on the run from the law, family, and other obligations. Some were good men who had made bad choices, but some weren’t good men at all.
I thought Garrett was one of the good guys. He looked the part at least and didn’t disrespect me, although he certainly could flirt better than most of the guys on the ranch. When men normally tried to flirt with me, they ended up fumbling their way through it, but Garrett seemed much more confident. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was quiet the ladies’ man outside of a ranch environment.
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 it’s 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 been 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 places 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-tale 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 everything 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.
“No, no, no; you stay away from that one,” my mother said as she walked into the kitchen. She was smiling as she looked at me and I knew right away that she was joking.
“What are you talking about? He was just helping me with breakfast.”
“Oh, I saw how you looked at him. Just remember, we know nothing about these men and any one of them could have a past that is dangerous. He could be a murderer.”
“Mom, any man could have a past he’s not telling a woman about. You can’t tell me to stay away from every man on the planet. Anyways, why are you up? I told you I could handle breakfasts. There’s no reason you can’t sleep in.”
My mother had already started unloading the plates and piling them up near the front of the kitchen. It felt like when I was a teenager and I was helping her out; she was instantly in charge of everything. I knew she just wanted what was best for me and I wasn’t going to argue with her logic. It was true: Garrett could be hiding a lot from me. I felt like he was hiding something, but I certainly didn’t think he was a murderer.
“I’ve been getting up before dawn for over twenty years. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”
“So what do you know about Garrett?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Do you know something about him that I should know?”
We continued setting up the line for breakfast as we talked. The men were going to start arriving shortly and I liked to have everything ready for them before the first one entered the hall. They worked hard and a good meal was the least we could do for them. I actually really enjoyed helping with the meals on the ranch; it was more fun than dealing with the pigs — that was my least favorite job on the farm. Those damn things always ran from me and I inevitably ended up injuring myself in some way.
“I thought you weren’t interested? Hmmm?”
“I’m not. But Dad wants me to teach him about the horses so I was just wondering if you knew anything about him.”
“You probably know more than I do. I’ve only had a couple conversations with him. He seems like a good kid, from Wyoming, I think. Not sure how your father found him or how he ended up working here. I can see you took care of his blistered hands for him.”
“Oh, yeah, they were the worst I have ever seen. But the strange thing was that he wasn’t even complaining about them. He was going to just keep working. It actually was pretty impressive. Remember that one guy who got blisters and stopped working by noon each day? Oh man, that was hilarious.”
My mother stopped to think for a moment as she looked up into the air. My mother was a beautiful and kind woman. Over the years, we had taken in many men who just weren’t cut out for working on a ranch. But she was always kind to them and always did her best to help them out. Even my father would pull the men aside and work with them to teach them what they needed to know to get by. It had always been strange to me that some men would just show up at our ranch and think that the work was going to be easy. Within a day or two, they were obviously in over their heads; it was quite funny to watch.
“Oh, yes, that poor guy. I remember father ended up teaching him how to use the tractor mower and having him mow for us and feed the animals.”
“That guy certainly didn’t earn his paycheck. I remember he’d always be reading books before anyone else had even finished their jobs. Why did father let him stay for so long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he felt bad for the guy. You know your father; he’s always trying to help people out.”
“Yeah, he needs to start being a little more selfish.”
As the men started to line up for their plates, I noticed Garrett as he walked into the building. Damn he was a good-looking guy. His chiseled jaw and brilliant, blue eyes were embedded into my mind and I couldn’t get them out of it. Garrett Reynolds was much too good-looking to be a ranch hand.
I could see Garrett as a model or business man, certainly not a ranch hand. I was going to have to work hard to get his story out of him though, because he wasn’t willingly going to share it.
“He is handsome, I’ll give him that,” my mother said as she noticed me looking at Garrett. “But you need to stay away from him. Let him do his job and you do yours. You said you wanted to come home to get your mind straight, I don’t think anything about that man will help you plan for your future.”
“I know.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes, mother. I’ll stay away from him.”
“Your father said one of the guys he’s hired just got out of prison. I don’t know which one it is, but you need to keep your wits about you. A handsome man can still be a bad one.”
My mother cracked me up. She was so kind to everyone who came through our doors yet she was trying to warn me away from Garrett. I knew that she wasn’t afraid of him anymore than I was. She had a good eye for people just like my father did, even the ones who recently got out of prison.
That was a big lesson I had learned at a young age; just because people did something bad in their past didn’t mean they were bad people. And just because they didn’t have a criminal record didn’t mean people were automatically good either. People were complicated characters and I felt like I was constantly learning and trying to understand them.
“Mom, I seriously doubt Garrett is a killer. The man looks like a fraternity boy who got lost on a camping trip.”
We both laughed as Garrett stood in front of us with his plate held out for his breakfast. He grinned and looked between my mother and me before moving down the line. I swear I held my breath every moment he was standing there.
Garrett had charisma and I liked that. His thick muscles made him a joy to look at and that was all I planned on doing. Like the fancy merchandise in the stores, I was going to look and not touch. Well, I might touch a little, but I wasn’t going to fall in love with the guy. A quick, summer fling before he took off on the road, that’s the most I would do: nothing more. I had to think about my own future and the plans I wanted to start working on for Garrett and myself would certainly distract me from those plans.
“You know, you two could be sisters,” he as he walked back past us and just before heading to his table.
“Mr. Reynolds, it’s nice to see that you were able to wake up this morning and eat some breakfast. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow morning,” my mother said.
She was horrible at taking a compliment and Garrett was a little too cheesy with his. Although, I had heard people say my mother and I looked a lot alike and some had even tried the sisters line before. But my mother had aged a lot over the last few years. The sun, work, and money stressors were taking their toll on her.
“I will be here tomorrow morning,” Garrett responded confidently as he sat down next to Forest.
“Do you think Forest has told him how everyone manages to wake up in the mornings?” I asked my mother.
“Well, he was up this morning, so maybe.”
I wasn’t about to tell my mother that I had woken Garrett up on my own. She certainly wouldn’t have been happy with me and I liked when my mother was happy. My mom could get pretty wild when she was angry. There had only been a few times in my life that I had witness her truly upset with me and I didn’t plan on repeating that experience anytime soon.
“Yeah, he must have told him.”