Chapter Six
She had barely finished with the seventh stall when the cowboys started coming back for the evening. Her body ached in places she never knew existed, her mind completely blank with exhaustion, and her nose finally immune to the smells around her. She was so tired she didn’t even notice any of the men making a wide berth around her as she walked, in zombie fashion, from the barn up the path that led to the house.
All she cared about in that moment was sliding into a hot bath. Her eyes glazed over at that heavenly thought.
“Heather!”
The call of her name brought her up short, and she stopped about ten feet from the back door of the house. She turned and saw Tristan striding up to meet her, his eyebrows raised.
“You’re not thinking about walking in there dressed in the rubber boots caked in shit and grime, are you?”
Heather blinked and then looked down at herself. Her clothes would have to be burned. No way would she ever wear them again.
“Oh my God,” she moaned. “That was utterly horrific.”
“I’m impressed that you managed to finish seven stalls,” he murmured in a soothing tone, much like one he used with the horses. “You can finish the rest tomorrow if you get an earlier start.”
She just stared at him, her brain too slow to think of a witty retort. Instead, she started shedding her clothes. Being careful to touch only the tops, first went the nasty rubber boots. Then she unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, shimmying out of them down to her lilac-colored panties. Next, she whipped off her top and threw that on the small pile. She looked at Tristan, who stared with his mouth hanging open and his eyes almost bugging out of his head as he took in her thong and see-through bra. Satisfaction hummed through her. It was almost worth it, cleaning out those horrendous stalls, to have him this flustered.
Turning, she paused long enough for him to get the full effect of the bottom of her well-shaped ass cheeks. Then she marched into the house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.
She ignored Mabel, who shook her head in disbelief. She ignored Duke who sat at the table with his fork halfway to his open mouth. She marched up the stairs to the bathroom and turned the shower on full blast, peeling off her undies and dropping them in the trash can. At this rate, she’d need that money just to go shopping for more clothes.
The hot water was the best thing she’d felt against her skin in a long time. Just washing away the stink of the day was pure bliss. She lathered herself from head to toe, rinsed, and lathered again. She stayed until her fingers pruned, and the suds were all washed away. Then she stepped out of the shower and wrapped herself in a big towel before sitting on the closed toilet seat to mentally regroup.
The fading light trickling in from the bathroom window intensified the depression lingering in her soul. She’d always been alone, having only herself to rely on, and today had taken out a huge chunk out of her self-reliance. Tristan expected her to go back tomorrow and do it all again, and in order to win this ranch, she had to. But every single muscle on her body ached, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She looked at her hands and saw the beginnings of blisters that had formed despite the gloves she had worn.
How Tristan would laugh at her if he saw her, practically defeated over a little hard work. She let her mind drift for a moment, remembering the last time she had been at the ranch. Her grandfather had been healthy then, working the ranch alongside his men. Her father had argued with him constantly, yelling matches that had only embittered both.
Her father had walked away, on this ranch and on her. For a moment, a very brief second, she opened the door to her memories, to the darkness that had turned her from a child into a shell of a person. Her life had forever changed because of one stupid decision, and her father had given up when the pressure to believe in the innocence of his only child had become too great. If only she could go back and be a young girl again, back to being fifteen and visiting this ranch again for the first time. She would do so many things differently.
Heather sniffed away the tears threatening to fall. She closed her eyes and cleared her mind, as she always did when things seemed too overwhelming to bear. Obstacles made spirits stronger, and she considered hers unbreakable. She might bend but she would never snap.
With her equilibrium back in place, she rose and exited the bathroom, heading into her bedroom, where she dressed in her nightclothes before sitting on her bed to comb out her hair. By now the sun had set and the night sounds started their lullaby.
She lay back on her quilt, intending only to take a quick nap. But exhaustion pulled her under, and she slept like the dead.