Chapter Ten
“I’m impressed.”
“Shut up, Duke,” Tristan absently said, his words devoid of any passion. He was quite used to telling his friend to shut up.
“She got up early to finish all the stalls. Not bad for a city girl.”
“It took her three days.” Tristan threw some gear into the back of the truck and then walked around to the driver’s side.
“And it takes me three days to change my underwear. Time is all relative, my friend.”
“You’re a really gross man, you know that?”
Duke grinned and opened the passenger side.
“Uh-uh,” Tristan replied with a shake of his head. “Take the day off.”
“Why? Those stumps need to be pulled.”
“I got it covered.”
“You can’t do it alone.”
“Of course not.” Tristan raised an eyebrow full of meaning.
“Oh,” Duke replied shaking his head. “That’s not very nice. That lake is filthy.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Duke closed the door and grinned at him through the open window. “I expect details.”
Tristan rolled his eyes and started the truck, driving over the dirt road that led up to the main house.
****
If she thought she’d get rest on Sunday, she had been very mistaken.
Tristan maneuvered the truck over the hilly terrain with ease as the morning sun broke through the trees. Heather yawned as she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, wishing she either had a cigarette or her bed. Cigarette first and then her bed. Her nice warm, comfy bed with the covers pulled up over her head and her pillows piled around her.
“Are you okay?”
Heather bolted up, blinking at her disorientation. “Huh?”
“You groaned,” Tristan said without looking at her. “I thought maybe you were in pain.”
She eyed his mouth, positive she just saw it twitch.
“Do you work seven days a week?”
He shrugged. “I will if need be. Spring and fall are labor-intensive.”
“What happens in the spring and fall?”
“Calving in the spring, and weaning in the fall.”
“So, what does a foreman actually do?”
“Care for the ranch and livestock, maintain vehicles, equipment, work on fencing and roadwork. Ranch security.” He shrugged. “A little bit of everything.”
“Have you ever thought of a desk job?” She snapped her fingers. “Right. You’d have to take that hat off your head. By the way, do you ever wash your hair? Do you even have hair?”
“Do you stay up at night thinking of completely ridiculous questions to ask me?”
“Sometimes. So, do you? Have hair?”
“Yes, I have hair, and yes, I wash it. You’ve seen me without the hat.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, pointing at him. “Middle-of-the-night breakfast. I remember now.”
He shook his head and muttered something too low for her to understand. Heather turned her head to hide the wide grin that popped on her face.
They came to a halt next to the rather large lake that lay in the field east of the house. Several large weeping willow trees graced the banks, providing a charming picture.
“What are we doing here?” she asked.
Tristan brought the truck to a stop before pointing with his finger. “See that area over there, where several large trees are growing out of the water? We’re going to remove them.”
“Why? They look like perfectly good weeping willows to me.”
“The seeds form this spongy encasement that hogs the water supply. It prevents draining through the levees for the herd.”
“And how do we remove them? Do we pull them up?”
“We tie a chain around the spongy trunk and then yank it out. Then we’ll go back and repack the dirt at the levee from the bottom up, making sure to blow back through the pipe to clear it.”
“I know you’re speaking English, but all I’m hearing is blah blah blah. Is there a translation you can give me?”
“This lake provides water to the cows over at the other pasture through underground pipes, but the trees have formed a stoppage with the root ball.”
“Oh. That I understand. And are there snakes in the water?”
“Focus, Heather.”
She stuck her tongue out.
He reached behind him and pulled a folded piece of vinyl off the backseat. With a deceptively innocent face, he handed her the garment.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Waders.”
“Waders? As in wading?” Comprehension was immediate. “Oh man, why do I always have to get dirty?”
“Because you’re learning.”
“I hate you.”
He only smiled widely.
She sighed and grabbed the waders out of his hand, then opened the truck door with a little growl. As she stepped into the large waterproof pants, Tristan turned the truck around and backed up to the edge of the pond. He jumped out of the cab and unhooked the steel cable from the winch on the tail bumper.
“You’ll have to loop the cable around the spongy trunk twice and then use the hook to secure it.”
“Wait, you never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Are there snakes in there?”
“Probably.”
“What! Oh, no fucking way, Tristan Rogers!”
He laughed. “Just water snakes, nothing poisonous. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“That’s so not true.”
“Get a movin’, Heather,” he said, still chuckling.
She grabbed the chain from him and marched to the edge of the pond, biting the inside of her lip as she stared over the murky water. Her hands were encased in rubber gloves, but they were pretty useless in keeping them dry, because she had to submerge her arms into the water to wrap the chain around the spongy trunk. The muddy bank sucked at her feet, her weight pulling her down into the ooze.
“Wrap it around twice so it doesn’t slip off!” Tristan called out from the dry, clean truck cab.
Heather really wanted to punch him.
Instead she huffed and took a baby step forward. Luckily, the trunk wasn’t too far into the water so she only was in up to her knees. She felt something brush past her, and she jumped, dropping the cable.
“What was that?” she cried, spinning around and looking, trying to see through the muddy water.
“A fish, Heather,” he answered in a humorous tone.
She gave him a poisonous look and shot him the bird, which only made him laugh more.
The morning was long and tedious, and Heather learned more about water and runoffs then she ever wanted to know. Even though he had teased her, Tristan worked next to her, dressed in rubber pants and boots just like she was. Side by side they waded in and out of the lake, scraping mud and piling it away as they traced the pipelines and cleaned the end caps. They repacked the levee from the bottom up. By the end of the day, Heather wondered if more dirt and mud caked her than what lay in the water. She was absolutely filthy and tired, and her stomach rumbled.
They used towels to clean up as much as they could. Heather wondered if the mud that had seeped into her pores was cleansing or not. Probably not if it had fish and snake poop in it. She made a face at the mental picture.
“Ready for lunch?” Tristan asked.
“I’m so hungry I don’t even care about sitting here covered in God-knows-what.”
He reached into the truck bed and lifted up a blanket and a picnic basket. As he set up the surprisingly romantic gesture, she could only watch him with raised eyebrows.
“Come on,” he urged as he walked to a nearby tree and spread out the blanket. “This is the best spot on earth to enjoy lunch.” He sat down and stretched out his long legs, which managed to spike a sliver of lust in her tired body. He proceeded to lift the various plastic containers full of food and set them around in an organized manner.
“What’s all this?”
“Hm? Let’s see … cantaloupe, some cheese and crackers, pasta salad, and fried chicken. Mabel’s special.”
“Fried chicken? You know how much cholesterol that has in it?”
He shot her a pointed look. “You smoke, and you’re worried about cholesterol?”
“I’m surprisingly complex,” she answered as she sat cross-legged next to him. She grabbed a plate and took everything but the chicken. “Besides, I don’t eat meat, remember?”
“I don’t understand how anyone can be a vegetarian,” he replied, holding up a drumstick and licking his lips in an exaggerated manner. “This is the best fried chicken ever.”
“That is so gross.”
They ate in silence. Heather felt comfortable, for once, being near him. The thrum of sexual attraction still arched between them, but the animosity had dimmed. After the food was gone and the dishes put away, they lay on the blanket and stared up into the blue sky.
“You grew up here, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah. My dad worked here. He died when I was six … heart attack. Then my uncle became foreman. He was great friends with Avery.”
“And they died together.”
“I used to wish that I could stay forever on this ranch, and then when they died, I got my wish. Took me a long time to get over the guilt.”
“Guilt? You didn’t kill them.”
“No, but I benefited from their death.”
“And now there’s me.”
He turned his head to look at her. She turned her head as well to meet his gaze.
“And now there’s you,” he confirmed.
“God, I wish I had a cigarette,” she muttered.
“So when did you start smoking?”
“Right before my sixteenth birthday.”
“Why?”
She fell silent, watching the clouds, thinking of the right answer. “At first people expected me to act a certain way, so I obliged them. Pretty soon, however, it became a way to cope.”
“Why did they expect you to act a certain way?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t without revealing too much of her inner struggle, so she shrugged the matter away. He understood the message and changed the question.
“You gonna quit?
“Someday. But not right now.”
He reached over and touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. Heather turned her head to look at him. Whatever pull existed between them snapped like a rubber band, stinging her skin and sensitizing her nerves.
His fingers trailed around to her neck until they tangled in her hair. He pulled her face up and fitted his lips securely over hers, teasing her lips apart to allow his tongue to dance in and twirl with hers. Heather breathed in his scent, an intoxicating blend of male and raw sexuality. She raised her arms and encircled his neck, allowing his body to press into hers. She felt the hard ridge of his cock and shifted to part her legs and brought him flush to the area where she needed him most.
He settled into her, his heartbeat striking against her forcefully. He moaned a sexy sound that hurled her closer to losing all sense and control. Tristan pulled away from her mouth to trail hot kisses over her cheek toward her ear. He sucked on her earlobe, tracing the shell with his tongue. She shivered and clutched him tighter. He started working on the buttons of her shirt, opening them to reveal a white lace bra, the cups pushing her cleavage up. He licked over the swells, pushing the delicate lingerie up and baring her nipples to his hungry mouth.
Heather arched her back, urging him, and he wasted no time. His held her breast to his mouth, and he feverishly sucked the nipple deep. His other hand, meanwhile, traveled down over her hip to reach the apex of her thighs. He pushed against the material that hid her sex, and through the tough denim he found her clit, teasing the sensitized nerve nexus.
“Mmm,” she groaned, her hips moving to grind against his hand.
It took only a moment for Tristan to undo her pants and ease his calloused fingers inside, sliding through the curls and into her wet heat. He dipped his finger into her slit, teasing and then finding a rhythm that quickly escalated the fire in Heather’s blood. He traced the moist path to her clit, brushing it lightly as she started to wiggle from the torture. Another finger moved in, as his palm applied just enough pressure to make her writhe. In and out his second finger moved as the first one hit her clit. In seconds an orgasm flushed over Heather, robbing her of breath for a few moments. She rode it out, humping his hand that still teased, desperate for more and yet wanting his flesh in hers.
“Take off your pants,” she begged when her ability to speak returned.
He eased back, not far enough for his body heat to leave her but allowing enough space to stare down into her passion-filled gaze.
“I’m not gonna have sex with you here, Heather,” he told her. Heather tensed, the warm glow of climax slipping away quickly. “When I do, we’re going to do it right.”
“Do it right?” She pushed him off her and scrambled hurriedly to her feet, zipping her jeans. “What the hell does that mean?”
He sighed and encircled his knees with his arms, linking his hands together as he watched her. “It means we’re not going to fuck where anyone can ride up and see us. It might get back to Lincoln.”
Heather stiffened. “Is that what you’re worried about? Him finding out you fucked the competition?”
In a flash Tristan was on his feet, his hands balled on his hips. “Competition? Is that how you still view me, Heather? As your enemy?”
“You are the enemy, Tristan. You want to take this away from me.”
“Take what from you, Heather? A ranch you care nothing about?”
“Just because I didn’t grow up here doesn’t mean I’m not capable of learning. This land may not be in my blood, but you aren’t blood either.”
“You can be such a bitch.”
Heather folded her arms. “Sticks and stones.”
He swore under his breath and marched past her. He opened the door to his truck and got in. He didn’t even look at her as he started the engine. She watched as he drove away without once looking back at her.
Heather looked at the picnic basket and blanket still lying on the grass. She could see the ranch house in the far distance, if she squinted. She could walk back, but it would be dark by the time she arrived.
She wished she had a cigarette.
Damn cowboy.