Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

He turned, arms crossed. “You be around in twenty years?”

“It won’t be that long. Say you’ll let me. Even if we only talk about it.”

“I’ll let you drive it.”

Her feet slipped free of the door. She scooted behind the steering wheel and adjusted the tiny, oval-shaped rear mirror as if there were a parade behind her and she wanted to take a good look at the fanfare. A smile stretched beneath the flush of her cheeks, raised her glasses just so. Her quiet theatrics, only in front of small audiences, seemingly only in front of him, seemed a window into her world. How nice it must be to live on a plane of creation, always the cause, rarely experiencing the fall out.

“And we’ll light up a cigarette—even though I don’t smoke—just to pretend to use the ashtray. And you’ll stand on the side things.”

“Running boards?”

“Right. Running boards.”

She drew him back in—some kind of infectious crazy that tapped into the way Clem had told stories of the ranch back in the day, the way work wasn’t the only thing they used the running boards for, the light in his grandfather’s eyes the day he told Wes that he wanted him to have his pride and joy—the first thing he had bought after the war, the truck in which he convinced his love to spend her life with him. Wes pictured it all now, and the history filled him as much as the wonderment on the face of the most captivating woman he’d ever met. He pointed to the roof’s underside and filled the conversation with words so he wouldn’t kiss her.

“Used to have handles here for the farm workers to hold onto at harvest time.”

“So, it’ll have handles again.”

“Right.”

For that span, in her plane of creation, he imagined the truck upon completion, full restoration: Bright Coach Maroon with patches of worn patina preserved under a glossy coat; freshly sanded, cut, and stained oak bed boards; the softest buff-colored leather covering a plump fill around the seat springs. Not in twenty years, but in the time it took her to erect a statue on Main, and it made his knees weak from the possibility, from the temptation to make a fully restored 1939 Ford truck a reality sooner rather than later.

“If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d say you’re starting to change your mind about sharing the barn with this truck.”

She shimmied closer, back to where the passenger seat would be, sat all prissy-like, ramrod straight, and politely cleared her throat. After a stretch of zero response, she said, “I sure hope you don’t lose those Southern manners in the twenty years it takes to finish.”

Wes realized that she hinted at the way he had always opened the door for her. Still inside a game they were both reluctant to leave. He complied, and she bounded out and turned, alive and energetic, the contrast of darkness and light: dark tendrils of barely-there curls down her back, smoky frames, and skin paled by the night. Her scent, an orchard, maybe—vaguely fruity but masked by long stretches in the sun—replaced that of grease and synthetics used to clean metal.

Face to face, her gaze traveled his features.

He stared back, heated, the first twitch of hardness twisting through him. This time, she didn’t have to say the name for him to be there, between them. Daniel. How he was there one moment and gone the next. How he must have thought of his family, of her, in his final moment when his lungs no longer pulled enough oxygen, instead of realizing what Wes had done to get them to that moment.

Wes glanced away, shattered the moment, as he had Daniel’s final one in this life.

“Olive…” he whispered, by way of explanation.

But she knew. She, too, backed away and slipped around a curve of distance—emotional, physical, sexual.

“I should go,” she said, the power behind her voice barely enough revolutions to generate sound. She padded away, her soundless feet against the whispering hay.

Wes nodded. With nowhere left to go, his sanctuary gone, beyond the hay wall simply wasn’t enough space. The moment she was out of sight, he snagged a wrench, hummed it at the barrier, and stormed out of the barn.

6

Over the next two weeks, more rented equipment filled the barn—things that ran on motors and required industrial-length power cords and a backup generator and safety goggles. Had Wes been oblivious to the undertaking behind the hay wall, he might have decided she was constructing a Boeing aircraft for all the bizarre belches of noise and intermittent cursing that rained down on Clem’s truck like those heated summer storms that snuck up and surprised you.

For the most part, Wes kept to his word to stay on his side. Since Olive had planted the seed all those days ago, his motivation to make progress on the old truck shifted into overdrive. She wasn’t the only one accepting deliveries. Nearly every day was like an early Christmas, except what filled the boxes was what most would consider scrap parts. Wes aimed for authentic but wasn’t above substituting a creative solution every now and then.

He always heard her but rarely saw her. With one exception.

On a night not unlike the others, when Wes had shared an inch of whiskey with Willie on the back porch—tapped from Clem’s reserve because it was the anniversary of when he and Willie went into ranching together, forty-eight years earlier—Wes retreated to the barn and heard the biggest carrying-on Olive had ever brought to his barn. The female noises raining down on him were closer to a wild night of sex—breathless grunting mixed with moaning and bringing the Almighty into things. Wes blamed the liquor for floating his libido into images of her riding him, his instant erection. It came down to a cold shower or a peek.

A peek was immediate, more befitting his current drive.

What he saw was the single most unsexy thing he could have witnessed: Olive lying on the plywood platform between two lengths of pipe that loosely resembled a human figure’s legs, a full-mask over her face. She had a gruesome tool for cinching in one hand and a welding torch in the other, aimed directly at what he assumed was the statue dude’s junk. Apparently, it wasn’t going well. The blowtorch was clogged—the grunting and moaning was on account of a too-tight bracket she failed to loosen, and the Almighty was just along for the frustrating ride. In the time it took him to bark out one laugh, he thought to extend an offer to help, but the velocity with which she ripped off her welding mask sent him in full retreat behind the partition. Certainly not the gentle, reverent, and quiet worldly soul who had ingratiated herself to the entire Meier clan faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind.

Two exceptions, really.