Chapter Nine
Cash
The Following day, Late Afternoon
The way he’d been looking at Hailey, it flat out surprised me how long it took Eric to turn up at the ranch again. If a halfway decent-looking girl was involved, he was usually the first one in line, slavering and making a complete fool of himself, but he’d left Hailey alone for days, tending to whatever business he had in Jackson before coming back up to the ranch again.
We took off on our favorite horses—me riding Dusty and him on Lettie—hitting the back trails at a healthy gallop before slowing up so we could talk while we rode.
“So, how’s things going on the ranch these days, Cash?” Eric asked. We didn’t usually start the conversation until after we had the horses saddled up and were going at a decent clip and the land had opened up in front of us, the mountains clumped far off in the horizon.
I couldn’t really say they were going poorly, except for the fact that the feeling of having someone else in my house was driving me a little crazier as the days wore on. I’d also made the mistake of walking by the guest room yesterday when she was in the bathroom. I was on my way to the library room, and she’d left her door open. I’d stood in the hall, unable to believe my eyes at how much shit she had laying everywhere. It looked like more than I had in my entire house, and none of it was arranged in a tidy manner. I didn’t understand how someone could live in such disorder. It was bothering me just thinking about that mess sitting in a room in my house. I’d purposely stayed away from that area since, even avoiding the library room. But the thought of all that untidiness hidden away behind closed doors in my house—I could only imagine the filth building up in the bathroom; I hadn’t been in there to clean with the bleach spray I blended myself since before Hailey arrived, not wanting to invade her privacy, even if it was my damned bathroom—turned my stomach. I’d taken to just flat out avoiding her in the last several days. It wasn’t like I didn’t already have plenty of shit to do around the ranch. As much as I didn’t like the idea of being run out of my own damned house, I liked the idea of another uncomfortable conversation about keeping things clean even less.
“I could knock you right off that horse right about now,” I said to him, but in a disinterested tone, my eyes moving over the landscape as we rode along.
“What?” Eric sounded surprised. “Why?”
“You managed to find the biggest slob on the face of this good earth and brought her to live in my damned house. I can’t even explain the mess in that guest room, and I didn’t even see the half of it. Just her being in my house is throwing off my daily routine.”
Eric had a good old-fashioned belly laugh at that, leaning over so his forehead was almost grazing Lettie’s neck. It reminded me of Hailey and her too-loud voice. I shifted a little on the saddle while I waited for him to shut the hell up enough to get to whatever had struck him so damned funny.
“Your routine?” he asked, and laughed again, shaking his blond head. “You act like you got to report to a factory or something. You work on a ranch that you own. It’s not like you got a hardass boss you have to answer to. You get started a little late on something, that must mean you finish late too.”
“I don’t know why I bother to bring shit up to you,” I said, shooting a nasty look his way before continuing to take in the sweeping terrain. I had my eye out for rattlers in particular. I’d run across another one during my trail ride the other day. That made two in less than a month, which had never happened before. Usually, it was rare to see them in this part of the county.
“And besides,” Eric said, continuing like I hadn’t said a damned word. “Everyone’s a slob compared to you. I never seen anybody else scrub a place that’s already clean the way you do.”
“Cleanliness is next to godliness, Eric,” I reminded him, and he chuckled again, this time more quietly.
“If that’s true, you’ll be the first guy they let in at the pearly gates.” He spit into the dirt. “I swear you are living proof that reincarnation is real.”
“How’s that?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.
“You must’ve been one a them maître ‘ds at some snobby, fancy pants restaurant with the way you keep things so tidy.”
I just shrugged my shoulders. I wasn’t about to apologize for being neat. There wasn’t a thing wrong with it, and anyone who thought there was could go straight to hell. I was a grown man who was going to live his life, conduct his business, and run his house however I damn well pleased.
“Don’t you have nothing else to say about that girl except she’s a slob?” he asked, still smiling, but all the laughter had drained out of his voice, so I knew he was being serious.
“I don’t really know that much about her,” I admitted, and was shocked to realize that was the truth considering she’d been staying in my house for more than a week. “She asks me things about the ranch or the animals, and I answer, but that doesn’t happen very often. She watches me do my chores, scribbling all kinds of notes in her notebook. We don’t really spend that much time together or chat about our lives. She’s here because she has research to do and had money to pay upfront, money I needed, or I wouldn’t have allowed this shit to continue past the first day.”
Eric looked at me for a long time, his dark eyes narrowed. It got damned uncomfortable, to the point that I had to cut my eyes away, focusing instead on the mountains in the distance. Sometimes I wanted to ride out there, past the mountains, and just keep riding. It had always been my dream as a kid, though I knew there was more civilization on the other side, I pretended there wasn’t, that I’d find nothing but open land with buffalo roaming the way they did hundreds of years ago.
“Hailey’s here for the next several months. I know you won’t throw her out now that she’s paid, no matter how messy she is. And if you want to be an asshole to her, that’s up to you and well within your right as a red-blooded American. But the woman makes her living writing books, and maybe, given the reader that you are and always have been, you might be able to find something that y’all have in common. But you’re not really even trying right now. Maybe you don’t want to. I ain’t gonna force you. I think you should get to know Hailey. She was funny and smart in the emails she sent me. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a looker, too.”
I chewed long and hard on the words just he’d launched my way. I couldn’t really argue with a damned thing he’d said. He was right, which was rare for him. I’d never even tried reaching out to Hailey once since she arrived. I begrudgingly let her tail me sometimes while I went about my tasks here on the ranch, but she stayed well back, and I never invited her to actually see and understand what I was doing. We hadn’t shared a meal or a conversation that took more than a few sentences, most of my end forced. I felt ashamed of the way I’d treated her up to this point. My mama had taught me much better about how to act around guests. She’d be damned disappointed if she knew how I’d treated this girl, slob or not.
“I see your point,” I said, and Eric smiled at me, knowing he’d put me exactly where he’d wanted me to be all along. “I haven’t been the best host.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he agreed. “Another way is to say you’ve been an asshole.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded once, allowing that. I had been less than gentlemanly, so I deserved that. “I can try reaching out to her more. I haven’t really shown her around the ranch or given her a real idea of what goes on here.”
“That would be a good start. I think she would enjoy learning more about what you do. It’s why she came out here to begin with.” His grin turned sly. “And if something were to happen while you were showing her around, that’d be even better.”
Now it was my turn to chuckle, and I did it low in my throat. “I won’t be going that far. Despite what you think, I’m just fine living life as a bachelor. There’s less complications that way.”
“There’s less sex, too.”
“That ain’t the only important thing in life.”
“Maybe not,” Eric said but didn’t sound convinced. “But I sure as hell don’t want to go months and years without it.”
I had to laugh at that too. Eric and I might have been friends for years, but we just weren’t ever going to see eye to eye when it came to anything to do with women.