Jamie’s expression when he looked at Leland was one of confusion, even though the last thing he wanted to do was confuse Jamie or unsettle him. Yet, that’s exactly what he’d done in his clumsy way. His heart was just not used to asking for what it wanted this way.
“My problem is that, as a boss, I have a rule about fraternizing with employees. It means—”
“I know what it means,” Jamie said, sounding like he was tearing at the words with his teeth. Then he shook his head and scraped his hair out of his eyes. “It’s a rule. You have a lot of rules, you know.”
“Yes, it’s a rule, and yes, I know,” Leland said. He took his hat off and laid it on his knee and looked out the window and blew out a long breath, trying to ease the tension in his chest. “It has been pointed out by a friend of mine that this rule might be getting in the way of something sweet, somethinggood—”
Again Leland stopped, feeling his breath stutter in his throat, the words about to bounce off his tongue in uncontrollable leaps. When he looked at Jamie once more, he thought of all the dreams, liquid in moonlight, of cowboy poetry and long sunset rides, which his heart had always told him was too much to say aloud in the bright light of day. But they needed to be said. He needed to say them. So he would say them. Out loud. Right then and there.
“You brought feelings into my life that I didn’t know I wanted or needed,” Leland said, as simply as he could. “And maybe you need that, too. Maybe you need the same things. Only I don’t know because we never really talked about it. And we should, only I’m so damn bad at it.” Leland scraped his hand through his hair, frustration at his own inadequacies rising up inside of him.
“I can quit the ranch, then we can be together,” said Jamie, as if it were just that simple. “Fire me. You won’t be my boss then, so we can be together, if that’s how the rule works.”
“Jamie.” Leland’s heart banged in his chest, and suddenly it was too hot in the truck’s cab, too confined.
“Just let me be with you and I can get a different job.” Rising up, Jamie was closer now, close enough that Leland could see the reflection in Jamie’s eyes of the sunlight bouncing off the chrome fittings of the truck. See the hard flush to Jamie’s cheeks. Sense his breath beating so rapidly in his chest. Sense the hope. “I can work at the Rusty Nail. Anywhere. I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”
What Jamie deserved was the best Leland could give him. What he did not deserve was to be jerked around based on Leland’s pole-up-his-ass notions of how things should work.
What Leland needed to do was step up and handle how he felt without relying on the idea that they could only be together if his job and Jamie’s job weren’t connected. Theywereconnected. Every task that everyone on the ranch did was connected, from Bill, the owner, right on down to Jamie, the new guy, scything in the fields and picking up the odd end jobs that nobody else had time for.
Jamie stepped onto the ranch and into Leland’s life, making changes he didn’t know he was making. But maybe they needed to be made. Maybe Leland needed to let them be made, or rather, maybeheneeded to make them. He sure as hell didn’t want to let go of the way Jamie had made him feel, like he used to before Laurie Quinn had gone missing and nearly ruined the ranch, like he could look up from the work from time to time and enjoy the world around him.
He wanted to look into Jamie’s eyes and see happiness blazing from him, from every pore, every minute of every day. That’s what he wanted.
“I’m not going to fire you,” Leland said, plopping his hat on his head a little harder than necessary. “I don’t need to fire you for us to be together. What I need to do is fix it in my head—”
Leland stopped, almost bruised by his own hesitation. He turned to look at Jamie, really look at him, at the patient way he was waiting for Leland to fumble through his own self, his own doubts. Like he was waiting for Leland to get to where he had gotten to long ago. Where what they had between them was easy and natural and right. The drifter was teaching him, the foreman, this time.
“You can go if you want, you know,” Leland said, because it needed to be said. Or did it? “You have a bank account now—”
“With a thousand dollars in it,” Jamie said, a wry smile flickering in his eyes. “Plus my pay on Saturday.”
“A thousand can turn into more, after a season on the ranch,” Leland said. Then he shook his head. He was a practical man, but in this moment, he needed to push that part of him away and say what was in his heart. Say the exact thing that would get Jamie to stay. Which was, “I’d like you to stay. Iwantyou to stay. Stay on the ranch and find what suits you, work wise. As for you and me, I’d like to—I’d like to court you, do it slow. Do it properly, this time.”
“Court me?” Jamie asked with a sweet, small laugh under his breath. “You’re an old-fashioned cowboy, that’s what you are.”
“Yes, I am,” he said, feeling a smile on his face. He wasn’t ashamed of it, but had never really admitted it to himself before. “I’ve got an old-fashioned heart, and it wants to court you. Will you stay on the ranch and let me?”
“You know,” said Jamie. There was a small pause as he looked down and picked cottonseed fluff from the knee of his jeans. Then he looked up at Leland, and his eyes were so very green, as green as a moss-covered rock in a cool summer pond. His smile was shy. “I kept looking for you, hoping you’d ask me like you did. Kept going to the barn to see if you were there. Kept an eye out for you in the dining hall. Walked slow in case you were nearby. I was always looking. Hoping you’d find me.”
“I did find you,” said Leland, chuffing out a hard-fought breath. “I’m glad I found you, despite my own foolishness.”
“Me too.”
Slowly, slowly, so Jamie wouldn’t get spooked, Leland leaned close. And then, even more slowly, doing his best to be gentle, he reached and cupped the back of Jamie’s neck, pulling him near. Twining his fingers in Jamie’s wild hair. Jamie leaned forward in response, willingly, closing his eyes as Leland kissed him.
Their lips met like soft, silken promises, and Leland sighed into the kiss, feeling regret at the time he’d wasted, feeling joy bubbling up in his chest at the promise in that kiss that they gave to each other.
When he felt Jamie smile, he pulled back, brushing his thumb along Jamie’s cheek.
“Is that all right?” he asked, and though he was unsure why he asked it, he knew when Jamie nodded that he asked because he needed to know for sure that Jamie was okay. That the two of them were going to be okay. That the two of them were going to be together.
“You’re a good kisser,” said Jamie, completely without guile.
“Yeah?” asked Leland, pleasure flooding through him.
“Probably the best ever, though I’ve not kissed a lot of guys, you know—”
