The Rancher's Untamed Heart

He laughed and pushed the plate out of my reach.

"I can't let it," he said, "They'll get worse if they sense weakness. These sweets are for the fellas," he added. “I buy them by the ton at Costco, pretty cheap way to get them to work on time.”

I rolled my eyes.

He ducked his head. "Besides, when Brandon and Will were still circling each other, I was the one leading the caterwauls," he admitted.

My laugh startled a bird on the windowsill. I was glad to hear about him being silly, he spent so much of his time serious. I understood why, he’d had a lot of responsibility, earlier than he expected it, but I loved his humor and wanted him to be comfortable expressing it around me.

"How did they meet, anyways?" I asked. "Will seems like a nice guy, but not quite like the rest of your ranchhands."

Clint nodded. "They met at a rodeo, like I said. Brandon was risking his ass, Will came up afterwards to congratulate him on his win. They ended up going out to dinner, and doing the Lord knows what else."

He looked pious for a minute, as if he hadn't been ready to tear my clothes off the first time we met, and I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Anyways," he went on, "Will lost his job when the newspaper shut down, and Brandon asked me to give him a try. I owe Brandon, so I said I would. Man saved me twenty thousand dollars his first month on the job."

I whistled. "That's quite the penny," I said, tearing my Danish into smaller pieces. "How'd he manage that?"

Clint nodded, all business.

"He caught Glenn Yates trying to short-change me, when the other hands would have signed the paper and moved on," he said. "I was trying to be neighborly, he offered to buy some old equipment I had rusting in the barn, and I didn't see any reason why not to. Will took a closer look, though, when Yates was loading up his truck, and saw a few pieces that weren't for sale that had - Yates assured me - accidentally ended up getting loaded with them."

I popped a bite of Danish into my mouth. "You couldn't have gotten them back, I guess?" I asked.

"Once they were on his property, I would have had a devil of a time getting it back, with or without the law," he said.

"Scoundrel," I declared. I’d told Clint about my horrible visit to the Yates ranch before we met – but I hadn’t told him where it took place. It didn’t seem professional of me to name names.

"I pay the rest of my hands to be strong," he said. "I pay Will to be smart."

"What about Brandon?" I asked.

He snorted. "I pay Brandon to be strong, and to be smart, and to deal with the rest of the hands. I pay him so much I wonder if he'll buy his own damn ranch in a year or two and leave me high and dry."

"What would you do without him?" I asked.

Clint shuddered, wiping Danish off of his mouth with a big calico napkin.

"I'd have to stop being so grumpy or I'd lose the rest of the men," he said. "I'd have to actually talk to people every day."

"Oh, poor you," I said. "Do you think Brandon wants his own place?"

"I don't know," Clint said. "I've asked him a few times, he says he's happy here for now. I kn

ow he loves it here like I do, but he loves Will, too, and I don't see Will working as a ranch hand forever. It’s hard to find a job in town when you live all the way out here."

I nodded, sympathetically. That sounded like a tough fix for him to be in.

"What do you think Will would rather do?" I asked.

"He doesn't seem to mind being on a ranch," he said, "I think that he'd rather be managing things than patching fences and dealing with sheep, though."

I nodded again. "Could he do more of the paperwork? You don't seem to mind patching fences."

Clint looked suspicious.

"I don't know," he said. "Will's a good guy, but my father always did all his own paperwork, and said that it wasn't something a man ought to let get out of his hands."