At the end of a long day, once all the horses were fed and put away for the night and Lacey had left for her place, I sank onto my favorite spot on the porch to watch the sun set over the ranch while I picked through what I knew about Emma Flowers. She was a locked safe. But that only made me more interested about what might be hidden inside. Hopefully, a sense of humor. Or at least a smile. Damn.
I looked over at Riley, who was lying flat in front of the steps down to the yard, his skinny legs sticking out.
“We got a new girl starting on Monday, Riley,” I said to him.
He took a deep breath and let it out again, his side rising and falling, but he didn’t lift his head.
“Lacey’s right, I can’t get involved with her. No matter how pretty she is. Not that she seems the least bit interested. But that’s a good thing, too. She really knows what she’s doing. It would be bad for the farm if something happened between us. You know?”
Now he lifted his head, staring over at me with his black eyes, his mouth opening and pink tongue lolling out. He wagged his tail once, thumping it on the porch.
I nodded and he put his head down again. “Glad we agree, old boy.” I sat back in my seat, content to watch the sunset paint the sky pink, purple, and blue.
Chapter Eight
Emma
Monday
I’d set my alarm for four thirty in the morning, not wanting to be late to my first day on the Gains Ranch, though I hadn’t actually been given an exact time to turn up. I was showered, dressed, and out in the car by five thirty, with a full belly and plenty of nerves running through me about the new position.
Not the job itself. I knew I was capable of taking care of anything on the farm, having done it for years on Daddy’s property. It was everything else that got me jittery as a new foal.
I drove up the long driveway from the country road that ran along one side of Pete’s property as the sun was rising on the far end of the farm, a blinding ball of light slung low on the horizon. Pete was on the porch reading the paper, as seemed to be his way in the morning. I parked my car and walked up to the house, but he didn’t get out of his seat like he had last time.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” I said back.
“Come on up and take a seat.” He motioned to the empty chair on the other side of his wiry-haired dog, who hadn’t lifted his head yet.
I hesitated, unsure of why we weren’t getting right to work. Surely, there was plenty to do. But maybe he had a few things to tell me about the running of the farm and figured this was the best way to do it. After that, we’d get to it.
I sat down but didn’t relax, my back straight and fingers twitching over the jeans I was wearing. Pete wasn’t wearing his hat yet today — it was sitting next to him on the ground — so I could see his thick shock of shiny black hair, which he wore clipped short to show his ears and pushed back away from his forehead. He’d shaved this morning, his strong jawline glistening and smooth.
“Tell me about yourself, Emma,” he said with an easy smile.
I didn’t see what this had to do with my place on the farm, but he was the boss. “Not much to tell. I was born and raised here, went to school in Austin, and came back after graduation.”
“John Flowers is your daddy?” he asked.
My eyebrows twitched, but I kept them from pulling together. Had he been asking around town about me? “Yeah.”
He looked at me, waiting on something. Maybe for me to ask him about himself. I was interested to know something about him, but I was more interested to get started with my duties on the farm. That was what I was being paid to do. I imagined I’d do most of my work throughout the day without seeing him much. I might see the trainer more, whose name I still didn’t know.
“I grew up on this ranch,” Pete said, staring out at our view of the front end of the property. From here, it was nothing but rolling green land and the country road far out in the distance. “My daddy raised heads of cattle part of the time, but he really loved horses.”
I snuck a glance at him from the corner of my eye while his gaze was elsewhere. His straight nose led to lips that were used to smiling and a chin that was strong and square. He ran a hand over his dark hair, flattening it before setting his brown cowboy hat onto his head.
“He passed after I finished high school. I took over from there. It was hard, mostly because I was used to goofing off more than I was used to working, but I’d been on the farm since before I could walk. And, I had help. My best friend works on the farm right beside me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never met a cowboy who talked as much as Pete did. And he never stopped smiling, even when he was talking about his daddy passing away. I was getting more uncomfortable as the conversation went on. It would be good to get to my duties, but I couldn’t really insist on that. This was his ranch. If he wanted to jibber jabber, that was just what we’d do.
After another twenty minutes of him talking nonstop while I watched and drop
ped the occasional nod or single word response, we finally got started with the day. I hung a step behind him as he led me to the barn so I could check my watch without him seeing me do it.
We’d wasted nearly an hour on the porch, letting the sun get higher and the horses hungrier. We’d always fed our animals before school on Daddy’s farm and again before we sat down to dinner. Stables needed mucking out before we did anything else. Even chatty Kasey had known to knuckle down to get her chores done while keeping her lips buttoned. I hoped this morning’s conversation wouldn’t be as regular with Pete as reading the Register.