Despite my disbelief, her smile remains steady as I try to process her words.
Jennifer never really discussed her “save the ranch” plan with me, but I vaguely remember her mentioning someone from a marketing company staying at the ranch while they worked on improving things. It’s all fine and dandy for her, I’m sure. My daughter is probably thrilled to have this girl around to bounce ideas off of and dream up whimsical ways to fix everything.
But I’ve got things to do.
I don’t sit in the air conditioning and crunch numbers all day. I have actual work to do to keep the ranch afloat. Things that don’t include holding her hand because she’s too scared to walk through cow shit.
“Ms. Bryce,” I say, hoping that I sound just as reasonable as I’m trying very hard to be, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m just too busy. You’ll have to come back when my daughter is here so the two of you can work together.”
I should have shut my mouth when her eyes narrowed at the way I called her by her last name, but I’ve been pissing people off for far too long to slam the brakes on such a small thing.
“My name is Mary,” she reminds me, and her smile is no less wide or bright, but it issignificantlychillier. “And I understand that you’re busy. I’m very grateful for your time. However, I’m already out here, and I’m expected by my bosses to be working.”
A grin twitches at the corner of my mouth at the steel in her gaze, and I decide it’ll be more worth my while to just accept defeat for now. My late wife was the same sort of level headed stubborn, and I never won an argument against her.
It’s not like this Mary girl reminds me of Laura in any tangible fashion. Her hair is darker, and Laura always wore hers in a braid, not a ponytail. The only thing that really reminds me of my wife is the way she’s looking at me—no nonsense, expecting me to step up and get my head in the game, no matter how much I want to bury it in the sand.
She’s not here for me to reminisce about Laura, though. She’s here to do her job, and if she’s so insistent on getting to work, we can get to work. After all, the sooner she gets started, the sooner I can get her out of my hair and get back to doingmydamn job. Depending on how the afternoon goes, the happenings around the ranch may offend her delicate sensibilities enough to send her running back to the city. Jennifer would be pissed at me, certainly, but she probably wouldn’t do more than glare silently, and it’s not like that’s an usual occurrence, anyway.
“Working,” I scoff under my breath, raising my brows disbelievingly. “Right. Well, I need to get to work myself, so…”
“Excellent,” Mary says.
She sounds less than pleased, but her smile doesn’t waver at all. It looks like she’s expecting me to say something else, but I’m not good with small talk. I nod, scratching at the back of my neck.
“Great,” I agree.
I just want to get the day over with. Today isn’t panning out to be an easy one, but easy days are rarer than a blue moon on a ranch like this.
We’re coming up on the tail end of calf season. My ranchers split between keeping Katie updated on the last few births and weeding out the calves who are fully weaned from the ones still suckling. Picking who will head to the feedlot and who will go to pasture is plenty of work on its own, and we’re all feeling Al’s hardships right now. He’s been my right-hand man on the ranch through everything, but I never realized how much all of us leaned on him until he got sick. Nowadays, it’s a tossup of whether I’m trying to keep him on his feet or he’s trying to keep me on mine.
It’s all starting to really be too much, and part of me wonders if I still care enough to keep it all going. After my wife passed, I lost passion for pretty much everything, the ranch included, and, well… it shows. I’m man enough to admit that.
“I guess you can stay and do…whatever it is you do,” I say finally, scratching at my cheek in a weary fashion.
She brightens immediately, the stoic determination that had been pointed at me almost like a weapon shifting to a mix of triumph and excitement. I keep my grumbling about her having too much damn energy to myself, turning toward the fields. I need to check in on the rest of the heifers and make sure we don’t have any new calves to separate, and the feed guy is coming around noon. They hired some new kid who can’t be bothered to check expiration dates, so I have to look at every damn bag they bring me.
Like the day isn’t already exhausting enough.
“Wait, Mr. Riggs!” Mary calls. “Where are you going?”
I turn back, one brow arched in confusion. She’s standing right where the concrete floor of the barn gives way to the dirt paths that twist through the ranch, looking at me expectantly.Doesn’t she have a catchy slogan to come up with or something? Her shoes are already dirty, and the path back to the house is much better maintained than the trails that wind through the rest of the ranch. If she’s going to make anything happen out here, she’s not going to do it standing on the pavement.
It’s not like herworkrequires anything but a Wi-Fi connection anyway. Hopefully, she’ll go find a nice air conditioned room in the house and leave me to do what I need to do.
“I’ve got work to do,” I explain once more.
She smiles even wider, and I have to look away before I start noticing just how pretty she is when she looks at me like that.
“Perfect!” She’s practically beaming at me, and I’m sure I look like someone shit in my soup. “How about you show me around, let me get a feel for your day-to-day life out here?”
Well, there goes the hope of having time to get my job done.
I hesitate, debating how pissed Jennifer will be at me if she thinks I’m actively trying to sabotage her attempt at rebranding the ranch. Ultimately, I sigh, nodding my head toward the trails. Mary looks like she won the lottery, but she doesn’t move to follow me.
“Come on, then,” I say.
She winces slightly, probably at the obvious exasperation in my voice, but all I do is look at her questioningly. Wasn’t she the one who asked for a tour? Why the sudden hesitance?
