Chapter Three
Summer
“This is your cabin.” Brady swung the door open to a small log cabin.
The word “cozy” immediately entered my mind. We walked into the front room where a dark brown and beat-up leather sofa sat before a weathered planked coffee table which sat in front of a wood fire stove. A tiny kitchen was tucked off to the side with a two-stove burner, sink, a tiny fridge, and enough counter space to set down a cutting board and a plate. And not a big plate either.
Brady showed me past the kitchen to the bedroom, complete with saloon style doors. Inside, a double bed took up most of the space, and a bathroom only big enough for one person was in the corner. The decor was very ranch style, with some deer antlers over the bed (yeah, those would have to go), and a painting of the frontier with a few cows dotted in for good measure. There was a small wooden side table with a lamp that was shaped like a log, a leather lampshade sitting atop it. The room was all browns, dark greens and tans, the same colors reflected in the patchwork quilt on the bed.
In the living room, the dead animal theme was continued with the cow-hide on the floor underneath the coffee table. It was soooo completely different to the French style of my bedroom back home, complete with chandeliers and beautiful antiques. I just had to remind myself that all of this was a temporary situation until I got my life figured out. And once I did get my life figured out, I’d definitely scrap this whole cabin-living thing.
Brady had agreed to hire me for the spring and summer and that was going to be the end of my employment here, as far as I was concerned. Then I’d start to think about a real job... and a real house and real furnishings and starting my “real life.”
I glanced around myself again, silently bemoaning the fact that my room back home was twice the size of this cabin. But then I had to remind myself that none of that mattered anymore because Connecticut didn’t matter anymore. I firmly set my things in the corner and with renewed determination to make this new life of mine work, I walked over to the large window which faced Pikes Peak.
“Good enough for you?” Brady asked as he set my other bag down.
I immediately worried that my distaste was showing and instantly felt guilty. Who the hell was I to be thinking the way I was? Here, Brady was doing Liza and me a favor and all I could think about was how awful my surroundings were. And the truth of the matter was that the cabin wasn’t that awful. Small yes but...
“Yes, this is perfect and I really appreciate you putting me up here,” I said firmly as I faced him with a smile.
“This all your stuff?” he asked as he motioned to my two suitcases, laptop, and iPad.
“Yes, that’s it. Thank you.”
“Surprised you didn’t have more,” he answered with a quick shrug. “Important city person and all.”
“Oh, I’m not an important city person,” I corrected him with a quick laugh. “And now I’m not even a city person period.” Then I smiled broadly and he returned it.
“We have breakfast at six each morning in the kitchen up at the main house but you’ll be needed before then to help cook. Then, we start chores. Lunch is on your own, and dinner is at 6:30 after chores.”
“Great,” I said, although this was starting to sound a bit too much like the summer camp my mother made me go to when I was twelve. I’d never wanted to go but my mother insisted that Camp Yodelanda would help make me a well-rounded individual. So, she sent me there for the entire summer. And I hated every second of it. All I’d wanted was to be back home with my horse. Plus, I’d started my period halfway through the summer. Stained the white shorts I was wearing. I became the joke around camp. The nurse even called home and suggested my mom come out and at least talk to me about it.
But had she?
No. Because she couldn’t be bothered to miss a single practice with her hot tennis instructor. Fiery anger quickly replaced my pity party. Even four years later, I still hadn’t gotten over her betrayal with Ryan, my ex-boyfriend. If nothing else came out of this trip, I wanted to be free of the stranglehold my mother still had on my emotions.
I took a deep breath and tried to look at the cabin with fresh eyes as I prayed that this wouldn’t be anything like that summer camp. And even if it were, at least this time I had Aria with me.
Brady approached the door and pushed the screen open. “Get yourself settled. I’m sure you’ll want to check on that mare of yours in a bit. We feed alfalfa here. I assume that’s okay?”
I shook my head as my stomach dropped. “No. She’s been on Orchard and Timothy hay. I give her supplements as well.” I still had a bale of each left in the trailer from the trip, but my bag of supplements was almost gone. Alfalfa absolutely wouldn’t do! She’d get sick.
“Huh. Well, I’ll give you the number to the feed store then, and that’s a cost you’ll need to absorb. I got a program here and it’s alfalfa.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. There was no way I could feed alfalfa to Aria. It was too high in protein and she wasn’t used to it. I was sure with my new workload that I’d be backing off her exercise program, which meant the alfalfa would make her fat. I groaned to myself as the weight of this new information settled on my shoulders like boulders. I should have thought this through better. But, really, how was I supposed to know what he fed his cow horses?
Our deal was that I would work the ranch for Brady and in return, he would supply room and board for both Aria and me. I didn’t have any other money coming in and I was down to my last hundred twenty bucks. There was no way I’d be able to purchase her feed, but I didn’t want to jeopardize the job here either.
“Okay,” I said as my voice fell and I started worrying my lower lip. “Um… but, I’m not sure how I can do that. I, uh, I’ll need some actual money to buy her feed.”
“Guess you might have to get a second job in the evenings, then,” Brady answered with an uninterested shrug like this wasn’t his problem. Which it wasn’t. “My good friend Sharon owns a diner in town and just last week she said she was looking for a part time waitress. Ever wait tables before?”
My heart sunk even further. “No.” The only thing I’d ever done in a restaurant was eat. I had less than zero experience with anything that I was about to take on here and that realization was going to keep me up at night, I had a feeling.
“That’s alright, Sharon’s place isn’t exactly a five-star restaurant. I’m sure she can use you if you can learn quickly.”
I nodded, not really sure what else to say. Waitressing? In a diner? God, this situation just kept getting better and better. “Yes, I pick things up quickly.” I thought I did. Hopefully I did. Hopefully I would.
“You’re pretty, so just smile a lot and act like you’re happy to be there,” Brady advised. “People around here are easy to please. I’ll give Sharon a call an’ see if I can’t get you in for an interview.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, basically speechless. I didn’t want to admit that maybe I’d made the wrong decision to come here, because I was out of options. There was only here. So now it was time to make lemonade.
I plopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. This was so not me. This place… was… so… not… me… I sighed and told myself that for the next few months, I had better let this become “me,” and get my shit together. No more worrying and dwelling on a past that I couldn’t change, no matter how badly I wanted to.
God. Waiting tables. I closed my eyes as memories started to flood my mind. Situations that I’d played witness to over the past ten weeks flashed through my head, turning into a myriad of colors—finally going red, black and then gray. And, that was how I felt inside—gray.
As exhaustion shifted through me, I heard a scratch at the door—or, thought I did anyway. Then again. It sounded like a dog. I’d had a dog once, but that was also something my mother took away from me, as she felt the cocker spaniel my father had bought me was simply too high maintenance. Please. Nothing was more high maintenance than she was. She just hated anything that could possibly take attention away from her.
I got up and opened the door. In bounded a medium-sized dog who immediately padded into the bedroom and then jumped on my bed, tail wagging. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t even tell what type of dog it was until it lay down with big brown eyes looking at me with keen interest. Holy shit, it was a pit bull. But its tail was wagging, so I imagined it probably didn’t want to kill me. Or maybe that was what pit bulls did—pretended to be nice and then attacked you when you least expected it.
That brought up the question of just how in the hell I was going to get the thing off my bed and out of my house. There was no way I was going to reach for it. Maybe there was a broom somewhere around here that I could prod it with? But then it might think I was attacking it and it would attack me instead.
God, that jaw was a big one and the idea of it wrapped around my throat didn’t exactly thrill me.
“Bob! Bob!” a deep voice yelled from outside.
Bob? I opened the door wider and peered out to see my new friend, Jake, racing toward the cabin, yelling “Bob.”
“I think he’s on my bed,” I said once Jake was within earshot.
He jogged closer, panting. “I’m sorry.” He scraped his boots on the step up into the doorway. “She’s, uh, well this was our cabin for a bit, and she hasn’t gotten used to our new digs.”
This had been his cabin? Well, Jake’s and Bob’s? I glanced over at the dog who was now curled into a ball on top of my bed and snoring. I couldn’t conceal my surprise and the more I thought about it, the more guilty I felt.
“Wait, you guys didn’t have to move out because of me, did you?” I asked, looking up at those damn blue eyes of his as I nearly forgot what I was saying.
Jake patted his leg. “Bob. Come. Come here.” Bob opened one eye and then shut it again.
“Did Brady make you move out of here?” I continued, wanting an answer from Jake because I could tell by his body language that he wasn’t eager to give me one.
“Bob, damn you! Come when I call you,” he yelled at the dog. Bob opened both eyes, sighed and then jumped down off the bed as Jake grabbed his collar. Or was it her collar? Hadn’t Jake mentioned Bob was a girl?
“We didn’t mind moving. Besides, we’d been talking prior to you coming out here—Brady and me—and we decided it was a good idea for me to sleep in the apartment above the stables.”
“You’re living above the stables?” I asked as I felt even more sorry for him.
“Girl, I lived in way worse places.”
“You have?” I couldn’t imagine a worse place actually.
“Yep,” he insisted. “Anyway, it’s a good thing I’m in there now ‘cause we had some issues in the past couple of months.”
“Issues?” I repeated dubiously. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s nothing,” he answered as he waved away my concern with his free hand. A hand, that I noticed was very, very … large. Of course, I immediately asked myself what else would be large on this man and then blushed in spite of myself.
“What’s nothing?” I demanded.
“We had a break-in about a month ago, had a couple of saddles stolen and some other items go missing. But now that I’m up over the main barn, I doubt that’ll happen again.”
I swallowed hard because all I could think about was someone getting into that barn and harming Aria, or taking my stuff. I had a Devoucoux saddle that was expensive, to say the least. Yes, I could’ve sold it but it was made custom for Aria and me, and I couldn’t part with it. Ok so that would now be coming into my cabin with me…
Aside from my concern for my six-thousand-dollar saddle, I also felt bad that Jake and Bob had to move out on my account. I had no idea what the accommodations were like in the apartment above the barn, but I did know what the apartment above the barn back in Connecticut was like, and even though I’d ridden in one of the most prestigious barns in the area, the barn apartment left something to be desired. Although my cabin was quaint, it certainly wasn’t what one would call luxurious and I could only imagine the apartment in the barn was tons worse.
Bob somehow slipped past Jake and was now lying on the bed again, staring at us like we were interrupting her slumber.
“Bob,” Jake repeated. “Come on, you pain in the ass dog.” Then, he glanced down at me with a shrug. “She’s kind of stubborn.”
“So I see,” I started with a frown. “How did she get the name Bob?”
“Well, let me tell you, Posh,” Jake started with that boyish, up to no good smile of his. “Her full name is Roberta Flack, after the singer. I shortened it to Bob. Much easier.”
I swallowed hard again, caught completely off-guard by him. I didn’t understand any of my reactions to him because they were the complete opposite of how I normally was. And that was avoidant, where men were concerned. Maybe it was owing to what had happened with Ryan and my mother, but I hadn’t had a boyfriend since. In general, I tried to keep away from men because I didn’t trust them. Most men, as far as I had decided, were out for sex and nothing else. But Jake… well, I didn’t know him well enough to think otherwise.
“Roberta Flack?”
Jake nodded and looked at me oddly. “Yeah. You know… “Killing me Softly,” “The Closer I Get to You,” “The First Time Ever.”
I held up my hand. “I know who she is. My grandma used to listen to her, and my mom, and… Of course, I know who she is.”
“Point for you, Posh.”
I smiled in spite of myself. Because there was something about Jake that was softening me, something that was drawing me to him. And I didn’t like it. Not one bit. I’d have to fight whatever blossoming feelings these were because Jake was trouble. As far as men went, he was probably the last one I should have anything to do with. Jake was absolutely a flirt and a player. If he was having this reaction on me, I was more than sure he had the same reaction on every other woman he came into contact with. And did I want to end up being another name on his bedpost? The short answer was no.
After the shit storm that had been my life lately, there was no way I was signing myself up to get played. Yeah, Jake was a big, red, blaring no way.
“Bob get your butt down from there and come on,” he insisted as Bob thumped her tail hard against the bed, staring at him with defiance. Jake walked over and grabbed her by the collar, but she must have weighed a ton, because they got into a tug of war that made me lose control of myself and break down into a fit of laughter. They just looked so ridiculous! Jake set his big, broad shoulders and tugged harder until Bob begrudgingly slid off the bed.
I stifled my laugh and bent down to scratch her between the ears. “She’s welcome anytime. Sorry I took over your space, Bob. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Don’t be sorry at all,” Jake said as he looked me up and down and then seemed to remember himself and looked me in the eyes. Asshole. “And the bed is mighty comfortable.”
It must have been the way he said it—how he looked me dead in the eyes, and then licked his lips. Because suddenly my cheeks were on fire. And I was convinced I was blushing. Jake had slept in my bed. God knew what else he’d done in it. And although I really didn’t want to admit it to myself, I did want to know what else he’d done.
“That’s good,” I answered as I dropped my attention to the floor because I couldn’t hold his gaze any longer. “I think I’ll head out, too, and give Aria that much deserved turn out.” My voice was high pitched and nervous. I hated the way it sounded.
Jake didn’t say anything but just held the door open for me, allowing me to go first. He quickly caught up to me with Bob trudging along behind us.
“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he offered.
“You didn’t,” I said even though it was a lie.
“Your cheeks went a pretty convincing shade of pink as soon as I mentioned the bed,” he argued. Then he shrugged. “I was just being honest, swear. I didn’t mean to sound…suggestive if that’s how you took it.”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Not even a little bit? I mean, you were definitely blushing.”
“That’s just what I do.”
“Blush?”
“Yeah, I’ve got this condition. It makes me hot sometimes…like flushed. And sometimes I even get hives.”
“Hives?”
“Yeah, hives.”
“Hmm,” he said and nodded as he appeared to be processing. “I’ve got a condition too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. It’s called I-can-tell-when-someone’s-bullshittin’-me-syndrome.”
I glanced over at him and erupted into a fit of giggles.
“Hives,” he said as he chuckled loudly.
I cleared my throat and shoved my hands into my pockets. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything at all.
“I made Brady a promise,” Jake continued like he was bringing up the weather.
“About what?” I kept my eyes on the ground.
“That I wouldn’t try to have sex with you.”
And that did it. I stopped walking because my feet suddenly stopped functioning. My knees started to feel wobbly. And my heart was pounding through my chest.
“How… how did that even come up?” I managed.
Jake shrugged. “He saw me checking you out.” Then he reached over and nudged my upper arm. “I’m not trying to make you even more uncomfortable, Posh, but you have probably… the best ass in all of Colorado Springs.”
“Oh my God,” I grumbled as I shook my head. “Skip Scary Spice. Your new nickname is Oversexed Spice.”
He chuckled as I glanced up at him and then immediately regretted it because he was smiling down at me and his smile was charming enough to make me want to crawl under the nearest rock and die.
“So, if you aren’t trying to make me uncomfortable, then why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want you to worry that I’m going to try to get you into bed,” he responded as he gripped me by the arm and pulled me into him, wrapping his arm around me like I was his younger, much shorter friend. “Because I’m not. Orders from the man.”
“Okay,” I answered, not really sure what else to say.
“So that means you and I can be good buddies,” he continued as he reached over and gave me a pretend noogie on top of my head like we were twelve years old.
“That sounds good,” I answered with a laugh as I backed out of his hold.
“Wanna chase a cow some time?” He grinned. “Do a little cutting? Jenny is one heck of a cuttin’ horse.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know about that. I’m not big on corporal punishment.”
“We’re not punishing the cows, silly,” he responded with a shake of his head. “They have to be rounded up. They have to be branded. Sometimes, they need vet care. We’re a working ranch, in case you haven’t noticed, Posh.”
“And sometimes you eat them.”
“That’s right. Sometimes we do.” Then he held his hands up on either side of his face as his mouth dropped open into a perfect circle. “Oh no. Tell me you’re not a vegetarian or one of those vegans I think they’re called? Do you eat dairy or eggs?”
“Yes I eat meat,” I answered with a laugh as I shook my head and couldn’t help the fact that I found him completely charming. “I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan, but I also don’t know if I could get acquainted with a cow and then wind up eating her.”
“Don’t get acquainted.” He winked at me. “It’s that easy.”
My stomach flip-flopped as I stared at those blue eyes, all the while wondering why I was upset that he’d agreed to keep his hands off me.