Lost and Found

THERE ARE LOW points, and there are low points. This—rattling down an endless stretch of interstate in a Greyhound bus toward the middle of farm-country-nowhere a week after barely graduating high school—was my low point.

I didn’t understand why “barely” graduating high school was indicative of how I would do in art school in the fall—high school was designed to torture teenagers, not teach them—but Mom thought otherwise.

If the art school in Seattle I wanted to attend didn’t cost a fortune and a half, I wouldn’t have given a damn what Mom thought. She was on the road so much I was lucky to see her one day a week. Even on that one day, she was usually in and out so quickly you would have thought my brand of “freak” was contagious. I didn’t understand why a woman who had ignoring her one and only spawn down to a science was putting her foot down when it came to funding my future.

I’d been accepted into the art school I’d been dreaming about since I’d given the proverbial finger to Home Economics in eighth grade and taken Art 101 instead. I’d never been so excited about anything in my life. But that didn’t matter to Mom. She wouldn’t foot the bill for school unless I convinced her I could step up to life’s plate and prove myself a responsible member of society, unlike the drain to it she was convinced I was.

So where, in all the possible places, could I prove myself to dear, suddenly-concerned, checkbook-holding mom?

Willow Springs Ranch, smack in the middle of Hickville, USA.

That’s right. A ranch.

I’d never been on one, but I didn’t need to in order to know ranches and Rowen Sterling should stay on opposite ends of the universe. I was a city girl who’d never been around anything four-legged other than dogs or cats. I believed wide open spaces and starry nights were overrated and only idealized so the country music industry could stay afloat. I thought rural was synonymous with hell.

I was the lucky girl who’d be spending my entire summer up to my knees in “rural.”

I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do it, but I had to. Three months in hell was worth four years of art school. My life had never been easy, so I knew I could handle whatever waited for me at Willow Springs. A long time ago, I’d learned I was good at “handling” life. I didn’t excel at it, and I certainly didn’t thrive at it, but I could handle life and everything it had thrown at me.

My secret? I’d simply accepted that life was pain.

There wasn’t a rhyme or a reason to the universe and those who occupied it. We were here. Some of us for long durations and some of us for not so long, but the one thing we humans could depend on from life was pain.

Accepting that had somehow made living easier. I’d stopped looking for happiness and, in so doing, wasn’t living in a steady state of let-down anymore. I didn’t let myself hope either. That was the real poison that put the vacant expression in so many people’s eyes.

I accepted.

That was the only reason I was about to hop off the Greyhound bus in western Montana. I’d accepted that if I wanted to go to art school, I’d have to pay a pain price to get there.

After twelve hours on the road, everyone practically bolted out of their seats the moment the bus came to a stop. Even though “Big Sky Montana” wasn’t anything to bound out of a bus toward, it was more appealing than hanging back in the recirculated air that had gotten especially rank the last hundred miles. The middle-aged guy who’d snored his way through the whole trip leapt out into the aisle without a look or word my way. After shouldering my purse, I tucked my hair back into my hoodie and slid the purse strap over my head.

I took a few steps toward the aisle and waited for someone to let me into the line. I was sitting in one of the first few rows. Surely the entire bus wouldn’t have to offload before I got to. Part of my strategy for getting a seat in the front of the bus was so I could sneak off at the earliest opportunity.

As the line of bodies continued by me, it became obvious I would be the last one off. I wasn’t invisible to the other passengers. They just treated me like I was. I was familiar with that act.

Moms steering cartfuls of kids and groceries through the store would shoot me sideways glances like they expected me to roll my sleeve up and shoot up right there in the middle of the cereal aisle. When I’d passed my peers in the hall, they narrowed their eyes because I had the audacity to take up space on the planet.

People had never ignored me, but they wished they could. They wished people like me would just disappear or fall off the face of the earth so they wouldn’t be reminded their little lives were so fake and full of shit.

As one guy about my age passed me, his attempt to ignore me faltered. Giving me a quick once-over, he shook his head and mouthed Yikes before he went on his Abercrombie-wearing, cheerleader-screwing way. I was tempted to give his back the bird, but for once, I controlled myself. Besides, that was nothing new. I lived that at least a dozen times a day back in the lowest form of purgatory known as high school.

I’d worn so many different labels I lost count. People liked to label things; it made them feel like the world made some sense. Like, if I was one thing, they were the other. I guess that made people feel better about themselves. If they focused on how screwed up I was, they could pretend they weren’t just as screwed up.

I’d been labeled a goth, an emo, a druggie, a loser, and my personal favorite only because it showed just how ignorant people were: a freak.

I’d been called a million and a half other colorful names, but those were the most popular. However, labeling me a goth or an emo was just an insult to actual goths and emos. I didn’t want a label; I didn’t want to fit into a certain crowd. I was who I was, wore what I wore, and did what I did because that was who I was. Or at least the person I’d convinced myself I was.

I wasn’t overly mysterious like a goth or exceptionally sad like an emo. I’d done drugs, but I’d never wandered into first period stoned off my ass like the hardcore druggies. I wasn’t sure “loser” fit either, since I was a conscientious objector to all things that made conventional “winners” and “losers” out of people. So maybe out of all of those labels, the one that fit me best was freak.

A few more people shuffled by, and their attempts and immediate failures to ignore me confirmed I did freak well. As I fell in line behind the second to last person, my belief that people basically blew went up a few conviction levels.

Montana was bit warmer than Portland; that was the first thing I noticed as I stepped off the bus. The next thing? It already smelled like cow shit. Not overwhelmingly so, but that pungent tinge was in the air, along with the sweet note of grass and the not-so-sweet note of a sucky summer to come.

I almost sighed. I came so close.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t sigh anymore. Sighing showed disappointment, but I didn’t hope anymore . . . thus eliminating disappointment from my life.

But I came pretty darn close when I examined the landscape. I’d been right. Wide open spaces, no building in sight taller than two floors, and nothing remotely resembled something I was familiar with.

“This must be your bag, young lady,” the Greyhound employee said as he held out my bag.

“Why would you assume that?” I snapped, ignoring the man’s overdone smile. “Because it’s as dark and dilapidated as my clothing?”

That overdone smile fell quicker than my GPA in middle school. Apparently Montana and I were already off to a rocky start.

“Ehhh . . . no,” the man said, clearly flustered. “It’s the last bag in here.”

I glanced at the storage compartments. Empty.

Well, crap.

“Oh.” I took my bag from him. “Sorry about that.”

“I meant no offense.” The man dusted his hands off on his pants before closing up the compartment doors.

“Me, either,” I said as I headed away from the bus. “It just comes naturally, unfortunately.”

My bag had to weigh almost as much as I did. I wasn’t exactly a light packer, and sporting a black hoodie in the heat of a Montana summer day while attempting to haul my huge bag was my bad. I didn’t make it far before giving up my one-woman trek toward the parking lot. Tossing my beast of a bag on the ground, I plopped down on it. I couldn’t tear out of that hoodie fast enough.

I was supposed to meet one of the ranch hands from Willow Springs in the parking lot. I couldn’t remember his name, just that it began with a J and was one hundred and ten percent a cowboy name. I was supposed to link up with some total stranger, after driving across a couple state lines on a Greyhound bus . . . and that was the first step toward proving my responsibility to my mother?

Yeah, that was f*cked up.

Tilting my head back, I searched the sky, half expecting buzzards to be circling.

Man, even the sky was different. Too big and too blue. Where I came from, the sky was gray on most days, and on the rare day the cloud cover did shift, the sky was never quite blue. Almost as if it couldn’t let go of the gray consuming it more days than not.

I was just about to close my eyes for a quick siesta and let Mr. Ranch-Hand-With-A-Gritty-Cowboy-Name wait when a figure passed by me.

On a typical day, I was passed by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Passed by, passed over, passed something, so I don’t know why that particular figure caught my attention. Leaning up, I shielded my eyes from the sun and watched the “figure” I couldn’t ignore. After a second, I understood why.

The guy was wearing positively the tightest, most painted-on jeans I’d ever seen a guy slide into. And my generation thought guys sporting skinny jeans was socially acceptable.

However, that cowboy, in what I could only assume were a pair of faded Wranglers, had just secured the sash and crown in the Tightest Pants in the Universe title.

“Excuse me, sir?” Tight Pant Boy tapped the shoulder of the employee I’d snapped at. He waited for the employee to turn around and acknowledge him before continuing.

“Yes?” the employee said, shaking Cowboy’s hand when he extended it.

“Is this the bus that came up from Portland?” Cowboy Tight Pants glanced up at the windows like he was looking for someone.

“Sure is. Last passenger just got off a few minutes ago.”

The cowboy’s back was to me, although his back wasn’t exactly what I zeroed in on. My attention had nothing to do with ogling, lusting, or wanting to run my hands all over it . . . I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how those stitches were holding strong with pants two sizes too small cupping those butt cheeks.

“Was there a young woman on board? A girl about my age?”

“There were lots of young women on board, son,” the employee replied, doing a better job of masking his sarcasm than I would have. “Do you have a description? Maybe a name?”

“I think she’s blond, maybe strawberry blond,” he began, tilting his head to the side. “Petite, I’m guessing . . . I don’t know. I’ve only seen a picture of her that’s ten years old.”

My stomach fell a little.

“I’ve got her name right here,” the cowboy said, sliding a piece of paper out of his front pocket. I didn’t need to hear him say it. I already knew the name scratched down on that scrap of paper. “Rowen. Her name’s Rowen Sterling.”

My subconscious couldn’t decide what to curse first, so it mixed, matched, and uttered a Shuk and a Fuit.

When my mom had told me I’d get a ride to Willow Springs with a ranch hand whose name I’d forgotten, I pictured a scratching, spitting, old-timer like the town sheriff in one of those old westerns. Not some young, fit man adhering to the tighter-the-better policy in jeans selection.

I had yet to see his face, but from what I’d seen of his back, I already knew what to expect. And if I was a typical eighteen-year-old girl who liked typical teenage girl things, I’m sure I’d be panting for the opportunity to catch a ride with Cowboy Montana in what I guessed was a big diesel truck with four tires on the back. I’d heard what that kind of truck was called, but I couldn’t remember. Where I came from, people didn’t need six tires because four did the job just fine.

Catching myself right before I let out a long sigh, I stood and made my way over. No sense in stalling.

Stopping a few feet behind the vacuum-sealed ass, I cleared my throat. “Looking for Rowen Sterling?”

Cowboy turned my direction. “Yeah. You know her?”

I gave a shrug. “Kind of.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to get a look at his face. Between his huge-ass cowboy hat and the position of the sun, his whole face was shaded. He could have been the thing of female fantasies. He just as easily could have been eyeless and toothless.

After a few more seconds of quiet—I guessed he was waiting for me to add something—he shifted. “Could you tell me where she is then, please?”

I glanced at the photo in his hand. He’d been right. It was almost ten years old to the day. Taken at my ninth birthday party. I was wearing the biggest, pinkest, most god-awful princess dress ever created, and I was blond and beaming.

I was none of those things anymore. His reaction ought to be fun to witness.

“She’s about two feet in front of you,” I said, thankful I couldn’t see his face. Whether it was a ten or a zero or somewhere in between, I didn’t want to witness the shock and the cringe bound to come.

When someone compared the young girl in the picture to the older girl that was me present day, a cringe seemed the standard response.

What I didn’t expect him to do was remove his hat and extend his hand. “Hey, Rowan.” He flashed a smile that almost made me flinch. I hadn’t been smiled at like that when meeting a stranger in a long time. “I’m Jesse. It’s nice to meet you.”

Jesse. That’s right. The cowboy J name that had slipped my mind was the name that I was certain I’d never forget again. Not because his eyes were the same color as the sky, or because his light hair sort of cascaded down his forehead like it knew just where to fall, or because of the dimples drilled deep into his cheeks from the continued smile. Nope, the reason I’d remember Jesse’s name from that day forward was because of the way he looked at me. He didn’t study me like I was something different and scary. He looked at me like I was a human being, no different from himself, and yet unique just the same.

It was . . . staggering. It made me feel all light and floaty. For a girl who liked to keep her feet firmly on the ground and who, as a policy, didn’t do “floaty,” the whole sensation was a tad overwhelming.

After I’d left his hand hanging in the air like the staggered idiot I was, he dropped it back to his side and lifted his other hand, still holding the picture, toward my face. Studying the picture, then my face, his smile stretched higher. “Yep. You’re Rowan Sterling all right,” he said with certainty. As though he could see past my dyed dark hair, eyebrow ring, dark lipstick, and my inky black combat boots to find the little girl I’d once been. “Do you have a suitcase or anything?” His voice, like his smile, was warm and welcoming. In fact, if I had to pick two words to describe Jesse, those would be the ones: warm and welcoming.

And attractive. There was no denying that. Even to a girl like me, who most people probably assumed would prefer Dracula’s company to a warm-blooded, all-American, sexy-as-all-hell boy.

Reminding myself I wasn’t here to admire the male scenery, I hitched my thumb over my shoulder. “That black bag that looks as if I’ve stashed a dead body in it is mine,” I said, cursing myself. A girl like me shouldn’t talk about dead bodies stuffed in a bag. People wouldn’t assume I was joking.

“Well, if you don’t mind, could we get going?” Jesse asked, sliding that bucket-sized hat of his back into place before heading toward my abandoned bag. “I’ve got about two dozen fence poles to dig and set before dinnertime.”

“Sounds like a killer time,” I said. “Is fence pole maintenance a regular sort of thing on a ranch?”

“That depends how you define ‘regular.’ If thirty to forty every few days does, then yeah, I suppose fence pole maintenance is a regular sort of thing on a ranch.”

“I thought you were a ranch hand,” I said as we paused in front of my monster-sized bag. “Sounds more like you’re a ranch bitch.” I couldn’t quite hide my smile, and it was a totally failed effort when Jesse laughed.

Damn, that laugh. Just hearing a few notes of it seemed to change my whole outlook. Not a total one-eighty, of course, but maybe a half of a percent. If someone like Jesse could laugh like that, the world couldn’t completely blow.

“Yeah, I suppose ranch bitch is a more fitting title, come to think of it,” Jesse said as he grabbed my bag and heaved it over his shoulder. From the way he’d just man-handled that thing, you’d have thought it was filled with feathers. When Alexander, my mom’s boyfriend-of-the-month—a Grade A Douche by my standards—wrangled the bag into the trunk, I was fairly certain he’d have to meet with a chiropractor twice a week for the next year.

“Man, Rowen,” he said, lifting the bag like he was trying to guess the weight. “From the weight of this sucker, I believe you could have a dead body zipped inside.”

“Consider yourself warned,” I said as we made our way into the parking lot. “Don’t piss me off, or you’ll wind up in a black travel bag.”

Another couple notes of laughter rolled out of him. Two genuine laughs in less than a minute. Surely that had to break some sort of record.

“Thanks for the heads up.” Jesse made his way around a truck that had been seeing better days for the entire twenty-first century before tossing my bag into the bed.

“What is this thing?”

“It’s a truck,” Jesse said slowly, giving me an odd look.

“It was a truck thirty years ago,” I said, examining it again. The thing couldn’t be street legal. “This is a corpse on wheels.”

“What? No way,” he replied, sounding a little offended. “This is Old Bessie.” He tapped the truck as he made his way to the passenger’s side. Opening the door, he stepped aside, obviously waiting for me to climb in.

I wasn’t sure what to be more disturbed by: that he’d named his truck Old Bessie or that he’d opened a car door for me. I didn’t think guys actually did that outside of movies and books. The door opening, that is. I’d known plenty of guys who’d named their cars, but none had named them Old Bessie.

When I stood in a frozen stupor, Jesse cleared his throat. “Not what you were expecting?” He admired his truck as if he could see no wrong. I suppose if you were cool with your vehicle having more dents and dings than there were stars in the Milky Way galaxy, or if you didn’t mind the car being new when your parents first got their licenses, there was nothing “wrong” with it.

“Jesse, I didn’t have any expectations when I came here,” I said. “Least of all expectations about the truck of the guy picking me up from the bus station.”

“Then climb on in,” he said, motioning me inside, “and let Old Bessie redefine some non-expectations for you.”

I bit my cheek and tried not to smile. It didn’t matter what I threw at the guy; I couldn’t shake that darn sunny attitude of his. Worst of all, I was afraid it might be contagious. “Just so I’m prepared . . . Are all cowboys like you?” I asked, stepping up into Old Bessie.

Jesse stepped between the door and me before I could close it. His body took up almost the entire door frame. “There’s no other cowboy like me,” he said with a half smile.

I had to swallow before I could respond. “I suppose ‘Old Bessie’ should have alerted me to that.”

He had no other reply than that half smile of his becoming a whole one before moving out of my way. My door was closing at the same time his opened.

“Miss me?” he teased, shifting in his seat until he got comfortable.

“Like a tumor,” I shot back.

Jesse chuckled, shaking his head. “Rowen Sterling: Putting the wise back in wiseass. I think I’ve found a kindred spirit.”

Before I knew what was happening, I was laughing. Laughing. I’d been under the impression I’d forgotten how, but whether I’d remembered or Jesse had taught me a new kind, I was unmistakably laughing.

“So, other than hauling dead bodies around and being a wiseass, who is Rowen Sterling?” he asked before the truck fired to life. It was a good thing he’d completed his question first because Old Bessie’s engine firing up was damn near a sonic boom.

“I think you’re breaking noise ordinances in the next state over,” I shouted above the noise, but he didn’t hear me. By the time we were out of the parking lot, the engine had quieted a few decibels so my brain wasn’t vibrating into my skull any longer.

“So?” he said over the engine. “Rowen Sterling life story? Bible-sized biography?”

He wouldn’t let that go. Too bad I didn’t sigh anymore because I could have used one about then. “How about I give you the one-word story that sums it all up?”

“Wiseass?” he said, his eyes gleaming at me.

I smirked at him. “Complicated,” I stated, rummaging through my purse. “Very complicated.”Locating my cell, I slid it out to check the reception. At least I still had some out in Middle-Of-Nowhere-Ville. “There. That was two words. What more could you possibly want to know?”

“We’re all very complicated, Rowen. Sorry, you don’t corner the market on very complicated” he said, shifting in his seat. Probably because his jeans were five sizes too small and cutting off the circulation to his junk. “So there’s a whole bunch more I’d like to know about you.”

Dammit. Cowboy Jesse was a closet philosopher. I hadn’t seen that one coming.

“You’d like to know,” I said, rolling down my window. Not only because it was hot but because Jesse’s all-man scent was getting to me. What he did or didn’t smell like shouldn’t get to me.

“I’ve been around long enough to know no man or God can get a woman to open up if she doesn’t want to.” Jesse rolled his window down, too. “I’d like to know, but I don’t need to know. We have a right to keep our secrets.”

My brow quirked. “Spoken like a person who knows what it’s like to keep some.”

Not a second passed before he replied. “We all have secrets, Rowen. Every last person on the planet. And you know what else? We all experience the same kinds of things. We just go through them at different times and to different degrees.” Jesse paused as he rolled up to a stop sign. Checking both ways, he turned down a dirt road that looked like it went on for a hundred miles. “If we were to just accept we’re not so different from each other, we wouldn’t feel so alone.”

There was only about an entire world more to Jesse than a pair of tight jeans. “What are you doing digging fence posts when you can arrive at those kinds of ideas and put them into easy-to-understand words?” I asked, peering over at Jesse. He peered over at me. “Get yourself a few certifications to frame and put up on the wall, and you could make a killing preaching this kind of stuff to all the head-cases out there. The money my mom alone spent on her shrink last year could keep a person living upper-middle class.”

Jesse shook his head once. “I think I’ll stick with what I’m doing. I’d rather dig fence posts than dig too far inside of some people’s heads, you know?”

“Oh, believe me, I know,” I replied, looking at the landscape passing by. Other than a house or a farm dotted throughout, there was a whole lot of nothing.

Nothing except for blue sky and green grass. So much color. I almost wished I’d picked up some watercolor paints before coming out here. I usually worked with charcoal or pencil since it was easy to take with me and, back in Portland, most of the landscape was some shade of graphite. Here, though . . . I could put some watercolors to good use.

“So what about you, Jesse? What’s your life story? What’s your Bible-sized biography?” I asked, utilizing my favorite conversation weapon: dodging the topic and turning it around.

“I’ll give you more than the one-word reply I got from you, but I’m not going to give you everything because then what kind of incentive would you have for opening up to me?”

My brows came together. “Why would you holding back stuff about yourself be an incentive for me to tell you more about myself?”

“Because what I do tell you, and what you learn about me, will be so darn intriguing you’re going to want more. You’re going to need more.” I could tell from his tone he was teasing, but I rolled my eyes anyways. “You won’t be able to settle with just knowing eighty percent of me. You’ll want the whole one hundred and ten percent.”

“Cocky much?” I muttered, hanging my arm out the window like Jesse was. I opened my hand and splayed my fingers to feel the wind rushing through them.

“Only when a pretty girl is sitting next to me and trying her hardest to pretend I’m the most irritating thing in the world,” he replied, staring at the road and smiling.

That statement confirmed it: Jesse had a screw loose. I wasn’t pretty, not by any definition of the word. Edgy, yes. Mysterious, maybe. But pretty? F*ck, no.

“So you open up to me if I open up to you?” I said, trying to sum it up.

Jesse gave a shrug. “Pretty much.”

“Sorry to break it to you, Cowboy, but there’s a serious flaw in your little plan there.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jesse replied, turning down another dirt road that looked like it went on forever. “What serious flaw?”

“Assuming I want to open up to you.” That was one giant-sized beast of a flaw.

He slid his hat off and dropped it on the dashboard. That mop of blond hair fell back into its perfectly imperfect style. “We all want to open up to someone, Rowen. The hard part is finding someone we trust enough to open up to. That person we’re not afraid to let into the darkest parts of our world.”

By that point in the conversation, I wasn’t as shocked when that little gem came from his mouth. He seemed full of them.

“And you think you’re the person I’ll trust enough to open up to?” I said, pulling my arm back inside the truck to cross my arms.

Jesse lifted his shoulder. “Only time will tell.”

I’d been in some strange situations in my eighteen years of life, seen some crazy shit, but that. . . having the deepest kind of deep conversation with a Montana cowboy I’d met fifteen minutes earlier at a Greyhound station had to rate in the top ten.

“Do you ever just do casual conversation?” I asked, hoping he answered with a yes or that Willow Springs was less than a minute away.

“Once in a blue moon,” he replied.

I pursed my lips to keep from smirking. I’d never heard the blue moon reference come out of the mouth of someone who didn’t qualify for the senior citizen discount.

“Since it’s still light out, let’s just assume that tonight, the moon’s going to be blue,” I said. “It’s casual conversation time for the rest of the ride.”

“Fair enough. What do you want to talk casually about?”

I rolled my eyes. “If it’s easier, we could just not talk.”

“Nah, that’s definitely not easier for me. I like to talk. I like to talk so much, sometimes I find myself carrying on one-sided conversations with the cattle,” he said, as Old Bessie hit a pot hole that made me bounce a good foot in the air. Apparently modern conveniences like paved and maintained roads were not so “modern” or “convenient” out here. “I’m a pretty good listener, too. You know, if you ever have anything you want to open up about.”

I groaned and contemplated shoving his arm. I didn’t though because, judging from the size of his arms and knowing those arms could lift my bag like it was a two-pound dumbbell, my weakling shove wouldn’t even register.

“How about a little harmless Q and A?” Jesse suggested. “You ask me a question. I ask you one. Round and round we go until we get to Willow Springs.”

I was opening my mouth when Jesse cut back in.

“Don’t worry. We’ll keep the questions as impersonal as possible.” Studying my face for a moment, he quirked a brow. “That work for you, Miss Very Complicated?”

Only because I was already exhausted from going back and forth with him did I nod.

Jesse smiled like he’d just pulled off a solid victory. “Ladies first.”

I rolled my fingers over my arm. I wanted to ask Jesse a bunch of questions; at least a dozen fired off in my mind. But only one made its way through my vocal chords. “Why in the hell do you wear such tight jeans?”

Jesse’s face flattened for a second before it lined from the laugh bursting from his mouth. “I thought we said nothing personal,” he managed to get out around his laughter.

“Eh . . . is that a personal question?” It didn’t seem like one to me.

“Yes,” he said, his laughter dimming. “And no. But I’ll answer it anyways.”

“How very open of you,” I tossed back.

“Ignoring that wiseass comment . . .” he said, giving me a look. “I wear tight jeans because I’m on a horse at least a few hours every day. Tighter jeans mean less chaffing. Your first lesson in Ranch Survival 101? Avoid any and all forms of chaffing.”

“Noted.” I nodded once and tapped my head. “Your turn.”

“I wasn’t done answering your question yet.” He gave me a look that suggested that should have been obvious.

“Carry on,” I said with a wave of my hand.

“I wear tight jeans because when I’m out in the fields, I don’t want anything crawling or slithering past my knees. I knew a guy who wore a baggy pair of jeans one day when he was setting a fence, and let’s just say his wife has been a very unsatisfied woman for the past six years.”

“Yikes.” Just the thought of a snake, a spider, or some other creepy-crawler heading up my leg was enough to make me want to invest in a pair of tight-as-tight-could-be jeans.

“And last but nowhere near least, I wear tight jeans because I like the way the girls’ heads turn when I walk by.” His eyes twinkled. They goddamned twinkled.

Groaning again, that time I did lean over and give him a half-hearted shove. “They’re only looking because they’ve been taking bets on when those things are going to bust a seam.”

“Ah, please,” he said, pursing his lips. “Don’t pretend you weren’t checking my butt out when I walked by you earlier. I felt like my ass was about to catch on fire from your unblinking, laser eyes.”

I wasn’t much of a blusher, but I might have just felt the heat of one surfacing. I wasn’t sure if it had more to do with being caught or the image of Jesse’s backside flashing through my mind again.

“Are you going to ask your question, or are you going to go on and on about your love affair with your backside?” I tried to glare at him. It wasn’t working.

He raised a hand in surrender, but those dimples of his stayed drilled deep into his cheeks. “Sticking with the whole personal attire thing . . .” he said, glancing at me. “Do you have a thing against color or do you just really love black?”

It was clear from Jesse’s tone and expression that there was nothing antagonistic about his question. Just genuine curiosity.

“No,” I answered, moving in my seat. “Color has a thing against me.”

I felt Jesse’s eyes on me, waiting for me to say something else,—explain just what the hell I meant—but he could wait for the rest of eternity before he’d get any more out of me.

“And you said I’m the philosophical one?” he said after a while.

“Yep, that’s what I said.” I sat up and stared out the window. “Now that was two questions, so I get two before you get to ask me another.”

“Wha . . .?” he said before it registered. Jesse sighed. “Just for future reference, rhetorical questions don’t count in this little question game.”

“A question’s a question,” I stated, all matter-of-fact.

Jesse sighed again. Louder that time. “I didn’t take you for the question rule police.”

“And I didn’t take you as the question rule corrupt.” I continued to stare out the side window so he wouldn’t see the smile twitching at my lips.

Jesse chuckled. “Fine. You win. Besides, I learned years ago that to start an argument with a woman is to lose an argument.” Before I could praise him with a Smart Man comment, he continued. “We’re getting close to Willow Springs. You better hurry and ask your two questions.”

Looking at him, I took a guess before asking, “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

Not bad. I’d guessed twenty, so I’d been pretty darn close.

“Next,” he prompted, turning down yet another dirt road. It had two tall logs on either side of the road with a rusted metal sign hanging from the top that read Willow Springs Ranch.

Home not-so sweet home. For the next three months.

Just shoot me now.