Chapter Nine
Heather glanced at her new clock one more time, noting that only five minutes had passed since the last time she checked. Two-fifteen in the morning, and she couldn’t sleep.
Damn cowboy.
The kiss haunted her, but she couldn’t fathom why. Maybe because she and Tristan had a semi-past together, albeit a very short one. Perhaps he didn’t remember her, though, at least not the way she remembered him. He had been her first crush at a point in her life when hormones ruled her every waking daydream. And she’d had plenty starring him. But the schoolgirl infatuation she had harbored did not even compare to the hot sting of desire he now resurrected.
Damn cowboy.
And now she was locked in a tug-of-war with him over a ranch she really didn’t want except for the resale value. She was tired of living paycheck to paycheck, never having quite enough to get ahead. She was sick of having to rob Peter to pay Paul, only to turn around the next month and reverse it. She’d done every trick in the book, including sending checks with wrong names on them. But she got herself into the mess, and she’d get herself out of it, even if it meant cleaning horseshit.
Three days down on her month-long safety net. One task almost complete. Finish all those stalls in one day? She snorted in disbelief. No way. It took her at least thirty minutes to enter a damn stall once she stood in front of it, staring at the mess that lay before her. Good thing she didn’t drink.
Twenty stalls left. Ugh.
Damn cowboy.
With a deep sigh of resignation, Heather rose and dressed quickly. First, as quietly as she could, she went to the kitchen and grabbed the box full of sugar cubes she had spotted the other day and then exited out the side door. She paused for a moment as she stared around the dark shrouded grounds of the ranch, illuminated by the large moon overhead. The cool air ruffled her hair and brought a sheen of goose bumps to her arms. She hadn’t expected the land to be so still, so peaceful. The moment made her feel as if she were all alone in the universe.
Slowly, she made her way to the horse barn, almost enjoying the solitude the night offered her. She had never been up at this hour of night, except occasionally in L.A. when she had been out with friends. Louisiana was a completely foreign land to her, beautiful and strange at the same time.
Starting where she left off, Heather gathered her tools and equipment and led the first horse out of his stall. Some things she did remember from her one time visiting. Contrary to what she said, she had enjoyed walking the horses back then, helping to bathe them and cool them down after a day’s work. She patted the horse on his neck and crooned soft words to him, giving him a bit of sugar to sweeten the deal.
Over and over she repeated the routine until the sun touched the horizon, and the dawn of a new day began. She continued, even as ranch hands came to collect horses, harness the animals up, and ride off for a day’s work. The men were pleasant to her, though she did get many odd looks. Heather guessed that they were remembering her aerobics session the first day, and had to cringe a little bit. Thinking about it now, she wondered how she had the gall to be so outrageous. Her pride had gotten in her way. The old man had hit a nerve, and she just had to act out, a folly she’d been doing ever since the incident in her past. She had learned early on that the only person she could rely on in life was herself, so she tended to take her self-sufficiency to extremes.
She worked through the morning, not even stopping when Tristan came looking for her. She knew he watched her, because her skin tingled every time he came near her. But she ignored him and stayed focused.
Somewhere along the way, she had decided she wanted to prove she was more than just a pretty face and more than Old Man Hart’s granddaughter. This ranch and this competition provided a platform unlike anything else in her life, though she still struggled to understand how to balance on it. Every day seemed to be getting a tad easier, and when she clicked the last stall’s latch, she knew she had just accomplished something tremendously huge.
Heather had no idea of the time as she deposited the last of the manure into the recycling compound, but her stomach rumbled loudly. She made her way back to the house, taking her time to really look around the spread of the land. The recycling compost lay at the far end of everything, probably because of the smell. A dirt path led back to the immediate happenings of the ranch, several outbuildings, and fenced-off areas. The main horse barn lay farther away, nearer to the main house, with the arena some distance away to the right of everything. Beyond that were pastures, green grass as far as the eye could see, with the landscape dotted with cows. She had never thought of it before, but where did all the cows go at night? Were they rounded up and brought into a large holding area, or did they just stay out to graze all the time? She had vague ideas from seeing movies and from books she’d read, but they were questions she honestly never thought she’d ask her whole life.
People were everywhere, performing tasks she couldn’t even begin to fathom. She heard laughter, yelling, talking, animals baying, and hammering, a cacophony of sounds all merging together that made her feel left out. This was a world she hadn’t grown up in, could never fully understand, and yet something inside her wiggled to be understood and to understand, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was.
As she walked slowly back to the house, she saw a crowd gathering over by a fenced-off area of yard and hollers rising from the spectators. Curious, she went over to see the goings-on. Tristan sat on the back of a chestnut-colored horse, one end of a rope around his saddle horn and the other end pulled tight on the bridle of a wildly bucking horse. The unbroken horse neighed in protest, rearing on hind legs and pawing the air. Tristan kept the rope taut, but allowed his own horse to move with the bucking horse enough as to not cause it damage or allow it to hurt itself. Men stood around watching the duel between man and beast, as magnificent to watch as it was sad, because Heather saw the freedom in the horse who didn’t want to be broken.
She turned away, left the men cheering behind, and continued toward the house. She walked through the kitchen, not saying a word to Mabel who sat at the table cutting vegetables, and went up the stairs. She entered her grandfather’s bedroom, ignoring the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and sat next to his bed. He lay sleeping, his face still a mask of pain, even in rest. His labored breathing hurt her ears. He looked sunken and sallow as his body slowly imploded upon itself.
If things had been different, if her father had stayed at this ranch and let her grow up here, then she wouldn’t have run from watching the horse being broke, and it wouldn’t have taken her three days to clean forty stalls. If she had grown up a part of this land, would she have been stronger? A better judge of character?
Would she still have an unbearable sin eating at her soul?
She didn’t know how long she stayed by her grandfather’s side, but she didn’t leave until night had fallen completely and Mabel had come to check on the old man and shooed her out.
Perhaps it said something morbid about her that the only man she felt truly comfortable around happened to be at death’s door.