Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

“It’s perfect.” Olive stood at the barn’s epicenter, the lens of her eyeglasses reflecting the rafters. “All but the junky truck.”

She couldn’t have cut Wes to the quick more had she requested a strip-down then compared his manhood to the broken crankshaft she swiped on her way in.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re sharing my barn, remember?”

He had just about had enough sharing for one morning. After a normal weekday breakfast evolved into something of an event upon their arrival on the ranch, with Willie squeezing fresh orange juice and January whipping up banana pancakes and practically squealing like their guest was some long-lost sister, further delaying already-late ranch chores, Wes itched to set things back on schedule and establish some territory. Six months would be an eternity if he let Olive run amok, the way her curiosity got loose in the truck.

Wes had been certain she would ask his underwear preference, his greatest fear, and how many women he’d bedded before his truck tires peeled off onto Meier land.

“You realize how large this bronze statue will be?”

“’Bout the same size as your entitlement.” He snatched the part from her hands and laid it back on the old saddle blanket where he’d carefully staged the parts to rebuild the engine. “Truck stays.”

“I’ll need space to extract the statue—in pieces, of course—when it goes to the foundry.”

“Back wall opens up.”

“And I can’t work where others would see the progress.”

She fiddled with a few other parts on her moving inspection in an absent, irreverent way. He was sure she could catalog a hundred different chisels, but the engineering marvel that was the Ford flathead V8 in the days of his grandfather’s youth was clearly lost on her. If she didn’t look so absolutely fitting in the space, in her baggy overalls and long hair blown every which way from the ride in his truck, he might have backed out of the agreement, mayor or not.

“It stifles me—creatively,” she said. “I don’t know of any other artist who works on display.”

“What about performance art?”

She leveled a stare at him. “Someone belching the alphabet at the local fair is an underwhelming medium at best.”

God help him, but her dry wit flirting with pretentiousness drew him to her all the more and reminded him of Daniel. Guy had a sophisticated humor that, every now and again, when you most needed a laugh, something positive in a day otherwise gone to hell, reached down to the most common denominator between people and surprised.

“Fine. We’ll use the extra hay bales to make a partition.”

“And the noise?”

“You have to have quiet, too? It’s a wonder you’ve managed to create anything at all without the planets being in alignment.”

“We can work out a schedule.”

“So long as it involves me being in here whenever I want.”

“Not much for sharing, are you?”

He wanted to give her the rundown of exactly what it was like inside a unit, deployed to the middle of nowhere, where the only thing you had to call yours was what could fit within the walls of a six-by-six shipping container when your sleeping body took up half the room. Or better yet, on patrol in the hills, where you slept body-to-body for protection. He had done enough sharing for one lifetime, and when he came home, he wanted space—more than a decent meal, a comfortable bed, and a willing woman. Space. But explaining all that would involve a subject he was determined to keep off the table between them. Her being there already brought Daniel too close, too often, in his mind.

“Look, I know you didn’t ask for it, but no more special meal times. We’re a business, not a guest ranch. And you don’t have to help with chores, but it’d sure go over well around here if you didn’t make more work for others. My music in here, low. And absolutely no talking. My time here with my grandfather’s truck is mine.” Wes heaved three bales atop each other then peered around them.

Her frown was aggressively sexy.

“Agree to all that, and I’ll configure the barn however you like,” he said.

“And if I need to get your attention?”

Wes wanted to tell her it was far too late for that—that his body tightened at her presence and his imagination tangled in a mindless play of tongues and limbs, merely to suppose what unexpected thing she might do next. He lacked the courage to do anything but reach for her scarf, barely more than a dyed length of wispy, woven cotton. He tugged it free of her neck and reached for the clip hooked to a length of cable and a pully at the barn’s highest pitch. The russet fibers telegraphed the warmth from her neck through his palms and up his arm. He clipped the scarf and raised it like a flag.

Olive’s expression softened, almost to a smile. “I’m sorry if I’ve been difficult. It’s just that I’m used to working under certain conditions. Namely, isolation.”

“We’ll leave you alone. As much as possible.”

She nodded. Her gaze drizzled to the ground, retreated like it so often did behind the veil of her glasses and a curtain of dark, tousled hair. The distance was just as well. Her mental game of evasiveness and plundering tempted him too much, and the flush of her cheeks every time he stared at her with any insistence nearly drove him to put his mouth on hers and taste how her barely-there accent whispered his name. She represented everything he needed to put behind him to be okay, to move forward as he always did.