He held out the money and when Jamie didn’t take it right away, he clasped the back of Jamie’s hand and pressed the money into it. Held his own hand there until Jamie’s fingers tightened around the bills. His face flushed in the soft light and he looked up at Leland. His eyes told Leland he hung the moon, and the thought of this twisted deep inside of his heart.
“Clay said you did a good job today,” said Leland, switching the conversation to more mundane matters and away from all he wanted to say. “The only thing is, you need to take breaks. It’s easy to get dehydrated up here. Understand?”
“Take breaks?” he asked. “I thought—I thought. Well, there was so much to do in the barn, I was afraid I wouldn’t get it all done. And then I’d get fired. And when Maddy came by about the policy, I thought—”
Jamie had worked hard that day and now had come to Leland in the darkness to hand over money he thought wasn’t rightfully his. He was worried about the repercussions of this, worried about taking breaks. Just plain worried about everything.
Again, Leland wanted to invite him up to the porch to sit in the other Adirondack chair so they could talk, or maybe just be as the evening turned into full darkness. But he couldn’t do any of that.
“It’s okay to ask for help,” Leland said, gently, dipping his head so he wasn’t looming over Jamie quite so much. “If the task is too much for one man, always ask. We’re a team here, and you’re part of that team.”
“I am?”
The question came quite softly, and they were close enough so that when he blinked, Leland saw the surprise in Jamie’s eyes, the sense that he’d found out he was a part of something.
“Yes, you are. I told you, remember?” Leland took another step closer, and the look on Jamie’s face was so raw and vulnerable Leland knew if he took another step, he’d be in danger of breaking one of his own rules. Something pulsed in the air between them, a scent, a sigh, an unspoken longing. But that was all his imagination, it had to be. “You’re a ranch hand. Just keep in mind the ranch becomes a part of you the longer you are here.”
Leland stopped himself from going on in this way, too poetic for words spoken out loud, words he usually kept hidden in his heart.
Jamie’s behavior, the way he stood there, told Leland without words that he simply wasn’t used to being cared about or looked after. That he expected to be rebuffed and turned away out of hand, simply because he was a drifter. Which was exactly what Leland had done upon meeting him.
Now he knew differently. But what could he do about it? Jamie was like anyone who worked on the ranch, off limits to Leland, regardless of the fact he could picture it in his mind’s eye the two of them on the porch, talking over some cold root beers. Or teaching Jamie how to ride, for he certainly didn’t know how. A closeness could grow between two people in those circumstances, though it certainly couldn’t grow with Leland as his boss. And yet, that’s what he was.
All of this, these images, swirled around inside of him, and he realized he’d been standing there, looking at Jamie in the glow of the porch light without saying a word. And that all the while, Jamie’d been standing there, patient and still, like he was waiting for something from Leland. Not anything Leland could define, but something.
“You did right by bringing me the money,” Leland said, nodding at Jamie’s hand, which still held the bills clutched between tight fingers. “Seriously, well done, but keep it. You earned it.”
A change shifted through Jamie when Leland saidwell done, like he’d been waiting for it to open a door that had been shut for a good long while. Leland was given a smile, like a gift, and that smile reached those green eyes of his in a way that tugged at Leland’s heart.
Jamie should smile more, for he had a lovely one. And as he scraped his hair out of his eyes, Leland wanted to ask him never to cut it, for it was lovely as well, draped like liquid ink. And again, his mind was going on when it should not have been.
“Well, good night,” Leland said. “After the meeting tomorrow morning, check in with me, so I can lecture you about taking breaks and drinking enough water.”
Regular hydration was the last thing he wanted to be talking about with Jamie, but it was necessary and so there they stood.
“And how are those ribs?”
“I’m fine,” said Jamie. “I guess moving all day eased the soreness.” He smiled as he looked down at his boots, as though somehow fascinated by them. “And thank you for the new hat and not being mad when I ruined the first one.”
“Happens more than you might think,” Leland said, a little surprised that Jamie’d think he’d get mad. Then again, at their first meeting he’d been frustrated with Jamie, and sent him packing.
Part of Leland wanted to convince Jamie he wasn’t that straight-laced all the time, and explain he needed to be in foreman modemostof the time. There was so much he was responsible for making in the ranch run as it should. And being responsible made him strict and careful.
He was not the kind of man who got mad at the drop of a hat, but that’s what Jamie thought, what someone had taught him to think. Leland wanted, needed, to teach Jamie to think differently about himself and the world, and to know he could come to Leland if something came up, that he wasn’t simply going to lash out for no reason. Leland knew he never did. He wasn’t like that. But Jamie thought he might be.
“My first week here,” Leland said conversationally into the small silence that had grown between them. “You wouldn’t believe it, but I backed a brand new F150 Ford truck into the wooden porch on the office. You know, where Maddy works? That’s why the wood railing looks so new.”
“You busted it?” asked Jamie, his eyebrows going up, his sense of humor coming to the fore and relaxing the worry from his features. “What did Bill do?”
“Oh, he hollered a good bit, but then I offered to make it right.” Leland smiled at the memory of it, his horror at having messed up so badly his first week, and Maddy’s calm nature, which had taken over the conversation between him and Bill. “Which I did, in my off hours.”
“And you didn’t get fired?”
“No,” he said. “Nobody’s perfect. When you make a mistake, you offer to make it right and get on with things. And that’s how we operate on this ranch.”
He hated to think that when Jamie’d made mistakes in the past, someone had decided that asking for his head on a plate was the best solution. What Leland also found himself not enjoying very much was the banal nature of the conversation, when what he wanted to do was to get to know Jamie better, to find that closeness that teased him with its fickle nature.
“Well, you look tired. Better get some rest,” he said instead of everything else he wanted to say. “Work starts early on the ranch.”
