“Sorry,” she says with an embarrassed laugh. “Just, um, my shoes? I… probably shouldn’t be walking in the fields in these?”
She says it almost hopefully, and if it wouldn’t be genuinely dangerous to have her wandering around the high grasses in those things, I might be tempted to insist. Maybe the thought of getting her stupidly expensive shoes a little dirty would be enough to send her running. Instead, though, I just sigh and head back toward the tack room.
From the looks of it, she’s already stepped in shit somewhere. I can see the smear of it on the side of one of her shoes, and it clearly hadn’t sent her running for the hills, since she’s still here bothering me. It’s a little upsetting to know that getting rid of her won’t be as easy as I hoped, but there’s still time. The ranch has more to disgust a city girl with than cow shit.
I don’t bother to turn the light on when I reach inside to snag a pair of mud boots. They’re probably too big for her, since I only have sizes for my ranchers, and everything about her is petite—well, noteverything, since she’s got a figure straight out of my dreams—but they’ll have to do. They’ll certainly be better than trying to wobble around the grass in those skinny little heels, at least.
Tossing them down in front of her, she looks at the boots with almost the same amount of disgust as she did the afterbirth of the calf.
It’s almost impressive to watch her muster up that much disdain for a pair of rubber boots.
“Seriously?” she asks, glancing between me and the boots.
The only answer I give her is to look at my own feet, where I’m wearing an identical, if slightly more muddy, pair. She looks like she’s about to argue for a moment, but then she tilts her chin up and nods sharply. Snagging the boots, she touches them as little as she can while making her way over to one of the benches on the barn wall.
I force my gaze away when she turns and leans one hand against the wall to balance herself as she takes one shoe off and replaces it with an over-large boot. The absolute last thing I need to be doing is staring at her ass. I’m trying to get the damn woman to leave, not torture myself.
“This looks ridiculous,” she whines after a few moments.
I can’t help the bark of laughter that forces its way up my throat. She looks almost like she’s playing dress up in herparents’ clothes, the pantsuit a truly awful contrast with the bright blue of the mud boots, but I think it’s the pout on her face that really sparks my amusement. It’s so absurd that it’s cute.
“Yeah, well, you ain’t in Kansas anymore,” I scoff, turning toward fields again. “C’mon, Ms. Bryce.”
I can hear her grumble something about not being from Kansas along with another pointed comment about her name, but she doesn’t outright argue with me.
I really don’t know what my daughter thinks hiring some big marketing firm will do for the ranch, and I’m quite certain that Mary can very well see that there’s nothing left here to be fixed, but all I can do for now is play along. The ranch is going under, the fences are all rotting through, and I barely have the desire to get myself out of bed most days.. Having Mary around will just become another thing that happens around me, and I’ll figure out the problems that I’m sure she’ll drag up as they arise.
I can’t deny that she’s nice to look at, at least, even if she doesn’t know a damn thing about manual labor.
MARY
Black Spruce Ranch isn’t anything like I’d expected.
It’s not really what I’dhopedit’d be either.
It smells like shit and animals, I can hardly hear myself talk over the constant noise of one animal or another, and I’m sweating. I definitely didn’t put enough perfume on to get as dirty as I’m getting. To be fair, that’s because getting dirty is absolutely not part of my job description. I knew it was a ranch, but I didn’t know what exactly that word meant until today.
“Tell me about the ranch,” I say, my voice as bright and preppy as I can manage while wading through waist-high weeds in boots that don’t fit me. “What’s the vision here? I want to make sure we’re on the same page while I get my proposals together.”
The answer I get is a grunt.
I grit my teeth, forcefully reminding myself that I’m here for a reason, and that Everett Riggs is absolutely not going to stop me from doing my job.
“Okay, let me rephrase,” I try again. “What do you want out of the ranch?”
I follow him through a gate that leads from one of the pastures out toward the footpaths again, doing my best to avoidthe huge cow that just seems to be hanging out right next to it. It’s not really doing anything, just idly chewing and staring off into the distance, and it hardly reacts when Everett runs a hand over its flank as he walks past.
I give it a wide berth.
“Seems like you’re doing a whole lot of work out here. If we can work together here, the ranch can start workingforyou instead of against you.”
He sighs, walking right past me without answering again. I’m not going to let him get out of answering my questions just because the way he furrows his brow makes my heart flutter.
The ranch is falling apart around us, and while he’s made his antisocial personality quite obvious, I can’t understand why he wouldn’t want to fix the issues that litter the property.
“No vision,” he finally says. “It’s a ranch. We planned to sell to two main branches—meat packing and performance cattle. Don’t have many ties to the rodeo crowd these days, so it’s mostly meat from the cattle and the pigs, a few dairy cows, and calves during season. The eggs go to the same customers who buy our meat, usually. If they don’t sell, the boys take the leftovers home.”
His back is still to me, and he hasn’t so much as paused his trek back toward the barn. An answer is an answer, though, and I grin to myself in victory. I guess he doesn’t really need to have any grand plans on marketing the ranch for me to figure something out. I’ll apparently be working with his daughter for the most part, anyway, so all I need from him is the background to spin a good story out of.
