Chapter Four

AFTER RUBBING a few proffered noses as he walked past the line of stalls in the barn, Russ settled on a bench halfway down the aisle and kicked his feet up on a straw bale to wait. Phyllis would be coming after him, once she’d dealt with the trust-fund brat, sure as God made little green apples.

Everybody knew she was grooming him to take over the place someday, but the one area she despaired of ever getting him ready was in groveling for the patrons, and she was right. If the spoiled baby had come to him, throwing his name around and expecting special treatment, Russ would’ve laughed in his face and sent him packing. The last thing they needed was a whiny little princess to coddle night and day when they had real work to do.

“Russ!”

He winced. The woman might be small and pushing seventy, but she had a voice like a bullhorn when she wanted.

“Here.”

With a sigh, he rose to receive his tongue-lashing. He’d be damned if he took it sitting down, even if he knew she was right.

“Got anything to say for yourself?” she challenged with her hands propped on her denim-clad hips.

“Nope.” Best not to give her any more ammunition.

“You’re gonna have to do better than that if you want to keep this place running for more than a year after I’m gone,” she scolded.

“You’re not going anywhere. You’ll outlive all of us,” he sent back with a wink and a smile.

“Bull hockey,” she snorted, but a smile crept across her face no matter how hard she tried to fight it.

“So, what’d you do with him?” he asked to distract her.

“He’s in the green room, close enough he can find you if he needs something.”

He groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, mister. You know as well as I do his parents have donated more to this place over the years than any other single donor. You’ve seen the checks. Plus, they happen to be friends of mine.”

“Friends?”

She glared at him a second before rolling her eyes too. “Of a sort. They’ve always been kind and real generous. What they give helps us keep doing what we do here, and if that ain’t a friend, I don’t know what is.”

“But they’re not really friends,” he pressed. “They’re rich people who chose us as their pet project, somewhere to throw their money to feel good about themselves. That doesn’t make them friends… not real ones anyway… not like us, and Jon and Ernie.”

She sighed and threw up her hands. “One of these days you’re going to realize not everything in this world has to be all or nothin’. You can care about somebody, call ’em friend, but not have your heart crushed to pieces just ’cause they don’t give as much as you. Without us to do the work, the animals would suffer, but without them to pay the bills, they’d suffer just as much. Both are necessary. That young man upstairs is necessary. Besides, I should think you’d be pleased to see one of them pitching in and doing the dirty work. Isn’t that what you’re always preachin’?”

He grunted. “What’s he doing here anyway?”

She shrugged. “Wouldn’t really say. I have a feeling there’s a story there.”

“Oh God,” he groaned. “Not another wounded bird, Phyl, please. We’ve got enough of them as it is.”

“At the B STAR, there’s always room for a second chance,” Phyllis intoned, and Russ groaned even louder. “Quit your grousing. You care about these wounded creatures here as much as I do… even the human kind. Otherwise you never would’ve stayed on, you big softie.”

“I’m not that soft,” he grumbled.

She grinned and patted his bicep. “I noticed… and by the by, I think our newest volunteer noticed too… and he ain’t too shabby neither.”

With a grin and a wink, she spun on her booted heel and strode away, patting a few hopeful muzzles on her way.

“Great.”

Just what he needed, a spoiled pretty boy complicating his peaceful, ordered existence. Luckily, “Jordan Thorndike of the Virginia Thorndikes” probably wouldn’t last the week, and Russ would get his peace and quiet again sooner rather than later. He could hold on to his temper for a week.

A COUPLE of hours later, Russ plunked down on the bench at the kitchen table with a gusty sigh of relief. After cracking his neck and rolling some of the stiffness from his shoulders, he breathed in a deep lungful of chili-and-cornbread-scented air and smiled for the first time in hours.

Phyl’s heaven in a bowl just about made up for the day he’d had.

Ernesto slumped onto the bench beside him with a groan of his own. “How’s our pretty bird, Calliope, today?” he asked, his characteristic grin widening.

The ranch’s one and only ostrich might be a big draw for the tourists, but she was the bane of Russ’s existence too.

Throwing a scowl at Ernie, he growled, “Maybe I’ll let you find out for yourself tomorrow. Let her use your head for target practice this time.”

“Oh no, Boss, she’s all yours,” he replied, throwing up his hands and laughing. “I already been bit once, and that’s enough for me. I’ll do my part and clean her water when it’s my turn again, but beyond that, I’ll stick to the llamas and alpacas. They let me keep in touch with my South American roots.”

Ernie always used that excuse to keep away from most of their problem children, but he was good with the camelids, including Ralph, the one actual dromedary camel they’d rescued from a traveling circus last year, so no one really called him on it.

“Rosa leave you to fend for yourself tonight?”

“Sí. She and her Tía Angela are headed to Dallas for the long weekend, wedding dress shopping for her sobrina, Sofia.”

“So we’ll be seeing a lot of you this weekend,” Russ teased.

Ernie rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? I have a date with my couch, a pizza, and a six-pack. The kids are with their abuela. Nothing but quiet and solitude for me. Besides, the weekenders will be here. You don’t need me to come in on my days off.”

Russ opened his mouth to say he’d take Ernie over a dozen weekenders any day, when Jon Parks, the other full-timer, plunked down across from them with a relieved sigh of his own. “A little birdie told me we had fresh meat come in today,” he said, pointing a finger at the ceiling before reaching for the basket of rolls on the table.

He didn’t get within five inches of it before a wooden spoon came out of nowhere and smacked him on the back of the hand.

“Ow!”

“Serves you right,” Russ snickered.

Phyl might be getting up there in years, but she could move like a ninja in that kitchen.

“You’ll wait with the rest of us until dinner’s ready,” she huffed, wagging the spoon at him to make her point.

Jon grimaced and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Russ grinned. “You shoulda known better.”

“I’m hungry,” Jon whisper-whined back, keeping a wary eye on Phyl’s retreating form.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way home to your own kitchen anyway?” Ernie chimed in with a smirk.

Jon scowled at him and crossed his arms. “It’s chili day,” he said, as if the answer should have been obvious, and Russ had to agree. No one could beat Phyl’s chili.

Jon’s wife, Cylla, was a gorgeous woman with a full-time job at the bank that let Jon do what he loved on the somewhat meager salary the ranch could afford to pay him, but a gourmet chef she was not. Still, she insisted, since she sat behind a desk all day while he toiled in the sun and her commute was only a five-minute walk, meals were her responsibility, and Jon kept his mouth shut, like any smart man would, and ate what he was given. That didn’t stop him from sneaking some grub at the ranch whenever he thought he could get away with it.

“So what’s with the new guy in the fancy convertible?” Jon tried again.

Both men looked to Russ.

With a wary eye on Phyl across the room—the woman had selective super hearing when she wanted to—Russ gave them a shrug. “Don’t know much. Says he wants to come on and help us for a while. He’s the kid of our biggest donor, so Phyl rolled out the welcome mat.”

“Great,” Ernie said, rolling his eyes. “Another greenhorn to train.”

Phyl banged her wooden spoon on the edge of the pot. “No complaints. You’ll give him the work no one else wants, just like you do with all the new volunteers, until he’s caught up—”

“If he stays that long,” Russ muttered under his breath.

“—and you’ll be nice while you’re at it,” Phyl finished, giving Russ the full weight of her glare.

“Yes, ma’am,” the three men said in unison.

Before anyone could add anything, the object of their discussion sauntered through the door to the kitchen, clean and shiny as a new penny, in slightly wrinkled linen khakis and a blue-striped polo that brought out the color of his eyes, not an expertly highlighted hair out of place. Ten or fifteen years ago, a young Russ wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off him, but now all he saw was trouble with a capital T. No one looked that good after being on the road all day without spending way too much time in front of a mirror. And vanity was not a quality Russ greatly admired.

“Hey! I hope I’m not late,” Jordan said, flashing a smile at them that probably broke hearts wherever he went.

Phyl rushed over, smiling broadly, and waved him to a seat. “Not a bit. We haven’t even set the table yet.”

After a pointed look from her, the three men currently seated at the table sprang up to get the dishes and silverware, practically tumbling over each other in the process.

Russ lagged behind the others, coming back as Phyl made the introductions.

“You met Russ earlier, but this is Ernesto Ruiz and Jon Parks, the other two full-timers here. We’d be lost without them. Jon, Ernie, this is Jordan Thorndike, and he’ll be staying on for a while to help out.”

They shook hands and exchanged greetings before Jordan said, “So you guys volunteer full-time?”

“Would that we could, but no. We’re not independently wealthy, so we gotta take a paycheck to help cover the mortgage,” Jon answered, then winced when Phyl shot him a look.

“We can’t quite pay ’em what they’re worth, but we give ’em what we can,” Phyl cut in smoothly with a smile. “The ranch is a big operation, and the animals need looking after 24-7-365, plus the home inspections and interviews and training, so a few experienced paid employees are necessary to manage the volunteers, as well as care for our babies. We could always use more help, but we make do with the budget we have.”

Russ knew the speech, in one form or another, by heart after all these years, but thank God, he hadn’t had to make it himself yet. Phyl was the master at getting money out of people to keep the B STAR alive. Russ didn’t know what they’d ever do without her. He cringed just thinking about having to deal with all those people on his own.

“Well, I hope I can be of some help too, while I’m here. I’m ready to work as hard as you need me,” Jordan answered with another of those smiles that probably got him everything he ever wanted, and damned if Phyl’s eyes didn’t go all soft and motherly in response.

Russ’s palm itched to give her a little tap on the back of the head to knock some sense into her, but he ignored it in the interests of self-preservation and slapped the silverware on the table.

Jordan cast a searching glance in his direction before smoothing a hand over his perfect hair and clearing his throat. “Whatever that is in the pot, it smells delicious. Is that cornbread in the oven? My mouth’s watering already.”

He shot doe eyes at Phyl, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and Phyl beamed at him. “Why, ain’t you sweet. That’s my world-famous chili and jalapeno cornbread supper. And I whipped up a little side salad in honor of your first night with us.”

“You cooked all this yourself?” Jordan asked.

“Yep. When we have guests for the tours and fundraisers and such, I hire a sweet gal from town, but most of the time, there’s only a few of us to feed, and since I can’t do as much of the hauling and lifting as I used to, I try to make sure them that do, get a good meal in ’em.” As she talked, Phyl went back to the stove and pulled the trays of cornbread out of the oven.

“Can I help with anything?” Jordan replied.

Phyl shook her head. “Don’t you worry, we’ll put you to work plenty in the morning. You just sit down and enjoy your supper tonight.”

She filled bowls and handed them to Jon and Ernie to carry to the table, which left Russ to bring the salad. Once the cornbread and salad had been passed around, they waited for Phyl to say grace before digging in.

Russ stayed silent while Ernie and Jon satisfied their curiosity about Jordan, peppering him with questions about Ivy League schools, his flashy car, and East Coast horse country. Russ got a few strange looks from his friends, but they soon ignored him in favor of the something new and shiny. Russ didn’t pay much attention to what was said. All he really heard was Jordan’s friendly, warm, and smooth delivery wash over the room like honey. Jordan had the other three eating out of his palm without even breaking a sweat, but Russ didn’t plan on being taken in. He knew the type. He’d gotten his heart ripped out and stomped on in his twenties by a man who could’ve probably been Jordan’s clone, and he wasn’t dumb enough to fall for it twice.

Because he was outside the conversation, he was able to see something the others missed. Jordan wasn’t actually eating the food in front of him. For all the show he put on, praising Phyl’s cooking to the skies, he barely ate half the bowl of chili. He picked around the croutons and shredded cheese on the salad and only ate the lettuce and tomato. He barely made a dent in the cornbread, other than to crumble it up a bit to make like he’d eaten more.

Russ scowled as he carried his dishes to the sink. Phyl was a damned fine cook, best cook Russ had ever had the pleasure of enjoying, but somehow that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Ivy League. Maybe it was because there weren’t any radish rosettes or artfully arranged tidbits drizzled in au jus on a great big white plate for him to nibble daintily on.

“Here, let me.”

Russ jolted and looked up to find pretty blue eyes smiling at him as Jordan set his own dishes on the counter next to the sink. “You’ve worked hard all day. I think I can manage to clean a few dishes.”

With a shrug, Russ swept his arm in a grand flourish to show he was more than willing to accept the offer. Jordan’s killer smile drooped a little, which actually made Russ crack the beginnings of a grin himself. If Jordan thought Russ was going to treat him with kid gloves and refuse because of his family’s generous donations to the ranch, he had another think coming.

Phyl frowned at him while she helped clear the table, but she didn’t offer to take Jordan’s place either.

“Good night, everybody. I think I’ll go up and read for a while. See you in the morning,” Russ called as he headed for the door.

Jon and Ernie waved at him, and Phyl nodded and said, “Good night, sweetie.”

Jordan gave him a nod and a considerably less brilliant smile from the sink before turning back to his work. Unable to stop himself, Russ did take a quick glance at Jordan’s admittedly outstanding ass in his perfectly fitted slacks before he moved out of sight. He had absolutely no intentions of going there, but he wasn’t dead either. The brat came in a fine package, that was for sure. It was a shame, really.