Just standing in the same room with her I couldn’t help but imagine what she would look like naked and sprawled across a bed. My mind drifted to the way I would caress her skin and how my lips would take in every inch of her. I certainly wouldn’t let her leave my bed without being totally satisfied.
I loved women. It wasn’t a surprise to most people who knew me that I loved everything about women. But I wasn’t one of those guys who said he loved women but then secretly didn’t respect them in the office or the workforce. I whole-heartedly loved women. The female perspective on things was always different and innovative compared to how I viewed a project. I cherished the insights of the women who worked in my company, although I didn’t have nearly enough women there.
Working with airplanes didn’t appear to be a job many women enjoyed very much. I only had one female pilot and a few office employees. I also had one woman that was in charge of my marketing and sales. She was blonde and beautiful and the rich men she pandered to had a very hard time resisting her sales pitch. But I honestly hadn’t hired her because of her looks; I hired her because she sold me on her abilities and that was why I loved women in the workplace.
As far as Sarah and the ranch were turning out, I could already see that both Sarah and her mother Meredith contributed greatly to the running of the ranch. It was their ideas and hard work combined with Sid’s that made the ranch operate as well as it had been going. But I also suspected that Sid wasn’t bringing in the kind of money that he needed to bring in. A ranch had to be a very expensive business to operate and I didn’t see where Sid was optimizing the opportunities at all. He only sold his cows and some smaller livestock but he had thousands of acres of land. There had to be something more useful he could be doing with all that land.
“Sit down and tell me why your hands are gentler than a newborn baby’s,” Sarah said and then started to laugh.
“I guess I’ve just got baby hands.”
“Have you ever worked on a ranch before? Have you ever even worked at all? These hands are absolutely pitiful.”
“No,” I laughed, but then I quickly became aware that I was supposed to be Garrett Reynolds and I had a complete back story that I needed to stick to. “Well, a little, but not this much,” I added. “Your dad has gotten more work out of me here than I think I did throughout my entire years in college.”
I was joking, but it was probably pretty close to being true. Working hard was relative to me. In my real life, I worked hard to build my company and I probably worked twice as much as other people who had normal jobs, but I did my work whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to sit at my desk all day and I certainly wasn’t getting blisters from shoveling horse crap.
“Where are you from?”
My mind hesitated as I tried to remember the history of Garrett. I hadn’t actually had to tell the story to anyone yet. I had successfully avoided any deep and meaningful conversations with people since I had arrived on the ranch. It probably wasn’t the best way to get to know my fellow workers, but I just couldn’t risk messing up the story that I was supposed to know about my own past.
I also had stayed pretty quiet because I was afraid of getting confused and telling people different stories about my past. If I started talking to anyone, I needed to be one hundred percent sure of my story so I wouldn’t look like a liar when I told people bits and pieces about my past.
“Originally from Wyoming, was on my way to Washington, but decided to stay and work for the summer.”
“What’s in Washington?”
“A job.”
“Not one where you use your hands I hope?” Sarah laughed.
Her laugh brightened the room as her smile took over her face. I was sure that any man who had ever laid eyes on that smile had probably tried to land her as his woman. My body even reacted with a stiff hard on as she grabbed one of my hands and started to work on draining the blisters and bandaging me up. I had to resist from flirting with her though, as sweet as she was; there were men who wanted to kill me and flirting with a rancher’s daughter wouldn’t help me in any way.
There were men who wanted to kill me. The thought lingered for a moment as Sarah worked. I had always been a decent guy throughout my life. Never getting too angry or fighting with others. It was odd that there was a man in the world that genuinely wanted me dead. But I knew for a fact that Frank Gordano would kill me if he had the chance. He had killed my pilot and, without a doubt, he would get rid of me too.
I knew more than my pilot Thomas had known. The truth was, if Frank Gordano wanted to kill someone who could hurt him, I was the person to be killed. He shouldn’t have even bothered killing Thomas. But that was why I had agreed to testify. I knew so much about Frank’s business and where his supplies and money were coming and going to. The information I had in my head was enough to put Frank away for life and he knew it.
A bit of panic filled me as I again thought about what life would be like after the trial. I wouldn’t be sitting in a back room with a beautiful woman taking care of me, I’d probably be hiding out and afraid for my life still. It was a sobering thought.
At that moment, I was hiding and I felt safe, but what would happen after the trial? Would I have to give up my old life all together if I wanted to stay safe? How would I survive at all if I couldn’t keep my company?
If I had to sell my company, I could live off of the money for years, but I wouldn’t be happy. I liked working. I liked being busy. I liked building something new and exciting. I felt the anxiety as my chest tightened up. I wasn’t ready to have to testify yet and I wasn’t ready for what my life my look like outside of the safety of the Miller’s ranch. For the time being, I was going to enjoy the safety I had and do my best to avoid thinking about what might come next.
“It’s a little different job,” I said with a smile. “I saw a picture of you in an office. Did you leave that job?”
“More like I was fired.”
“Really?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I wasn’t shocked; I knew it could happen. It’s a tough world out there. If you’re not making money for a company, they have no patience at all and get rid of you. It’s the way of the corporate world. But I was making money for them and they still took it for granted and let me go. Life isn’t fair sometimes, but there’s no time for crying about it.”
“Yeah, money is the root of all businesses and all evil.”
“So what are you hiding from here?” Sarah asked as she looked straight into my eyes.
My stomach sunk as she looked at me. How on earth did she know why I was there? Sid didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would go back on his word and tell my story. He didn
’t strike me as the kind of man who would expose me like that. I stared back into her eyes as I tried to evaluate what she might know about me and my situation.