True Love at Silver Creek Ranch

Chapter Five

Adam got in a run before dawn, then arrived at the Silver Creek Ranch just as the sun crested the mountain peaks. He saw activity at the newer barn closest to the house, lights on inside against the gloom, horses out at pasture. It must be crowded in that barn, with the old one destroyed.

He found the ranch office easy enough, and Mr. Thalberg met him inside and offered coffee, muffins, then paperwork. Nate was already hunched over his computer, and he waved a good morning.

Adam was glad for the chance to work, to not twiddle his thumbs or elude another tarot reading. He loved his grandma, but too much togetherness had made him itch for some freedom. But he couldn’t help gnawing over the fact that the Thalbergs surely hired him out of pity because his grandma had put in a word. He was a vet with no job at the moment, with little ranch training. He would probably be a hindrance more than a help, but he was determined to work as hard as he could to prove to Mr. Thalberg that hiring him had been the right decision.

As for his attraction to Brooke, Adam was going to ignore it. The Marines had taught him honor, and that didn’t include chasing after his employer’s daughter—his boss.

Mr. Thalberg told him to head to the shed, the huge metal building where all the big trucks were stored, and that’s where he found Brooke. She was outside the doors, standing on a ladder, head beneath the hood of a massive flatbed truck already stacked with bales of hay for feeding cattle. Some kind of crane was mounted on the flatbed, with what looked like a giant yellow fork attached, probably for picking up hay. Guess he wouldn’t be riding a horse anytime soon, he thought, a little disappointed.

Brooke was layered up in cold-weather gear, from coveralls to at least a couple jackets, and a thick wool cap on her head. And then there were her high, all-weather boots. He looked at those, then dubiously down at his cowboy boots, already sinking into the winter mud.

That’s when she chose to straighten out from beneath the hood, dipstick in her hand. She followed his gaze to his boots and shook her head.

“I thought you might not have the proper gear,” she said. “There’s an old pair of Nate’s boots in the cab, along with some coveralls and a couple hats. That cowboy hat’ll fly right off your head in this wind.”

“Thanks.” He looked past her. “You’ve already loaded the hay.”

She shrugged. “I like to get an early start, especially since this retriever burns oil like crazy, and I have to keep checking it. And the stackyard would be a sinkhole of mud if I wait until the sun hits it. You’ll figure everything out.” Then she ducked back under the hood.

He studied her while she wasn’t looking. He knew there might be men who thought what she did was unfeminine. He wasn’t one of them. He could see the rope of her braid down her back and imagined what it looked like all spread out in chestnut waves around her shoulders.

Uncomfortably aroused, he opened the retriever’s cab door and donned all his gear. By the time he was done, she slammed the hood down and walked swiftly back inside the shed. When she came back out, she got up inside the driver’s side of the cab. He hopped up beside her.

“Where’s Josh?” he asked.

“We drew straws,” she said as she started up the engine. “I lost.” She gave him a dubious glance. “I get to train the greenhorn today, and Josh gets to do some horse doctoring.”

It was going to be an awkward day if her attitude was any indication. She started to drive down the bumpy dirt road, away from the buildings and out onto the rolling pastures enclosed with barbed-wire fence. He couldn’t see grass for the white depth of the snow, and the wind swirled it across the windshield. Brooke drove like she could have done it with her eyes closed.

“We’re feeding the yearlings first, farthest from the house,” she said.

She stopped at a gate and just looked at him, one brown eyebrow lifted. After a second’s incomprehension, he jumped out of the warm cab and into the cold, even more biting out there, where it came off the mountains with no trees or buildings to hinder it. He opened the gate, and after she drove through, he closed it again before getting back into the cab.

The several dozen yearlings looked like fully grown cattle but much smaller, steam rising as they breathed. Their heads came up when they heard the retriever coming, their lowing growing louder.

“They’re expecting us,” Adam said.

She nodded, pulled out a bungee cord, and affixed it the steering wheel, then climbed out the door and onto the runner, leaving the cab driverless. The retriever was still moving, but now in a slow, wide circle.

She ducked her head back inside and gave a wicked grin. “You coming?”

Grinning back, Adam opened his door and clambered up onto the bed of the retriever. The bales took up almost all the space, and he could only hang on to the chains and pull himself on top of the double stack of bales. The ground looked fifty feet away.

“If you fall, make sure you push yourself away from the truck,” she advised, still smiling. “Those are big wheels.”

And he did fall, several times that morning as they ripped the string off bales of hay and together unrolled them so that they fell in a long, uneven line, startlingly green against the white snow. It was grueling work, each bale eight hundred pounds and frozen solid. The yearlings didn’t seem to care as they chomped happily.

On the drive back to the truck shed for lunch, Adam glanced at Brooke with new respect. He might have been unloading cargo ships the last few months, but much of it was done by cranes and modern equipment. This was a more intense manual labor, and Brooke did it with ease.

She saw him looking at her. Her skin was red from the wind, tiny curls of escaped hair framing her face.

“What?” she demanded.

“You impress me.”

She looked back at the road that only showed their previous tire tracks. “Surely you’ve seen some impressive women overseas.”

“A few. You could handle yourself among them.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t look at him.

“You’re blushing,” he said.

Brooke felt the heat of that blush spreading across her cold cheeks. “I’m not.” But she was. He sounded like he admired her strength. She didn’t want to think that because it didn’t lead anywhere she could go. “So tell me about the job you took after you were discharged. It must have needed strength because you handled yourself okay for a greenhorn. Or was it all that Marine training?”

“I worked in the shipyards on the coast of Louisiana.”

“How did you get into that?” she asked with surprise.

“A buddy worked there before the Marines and went back. I had nothing better to do, so I went with him.”

“You didn’t want to come home to Valentine Valley?”

“Not really.”

She glanced at him curiously, but his head was turned to look out the window. She could see his strong jaw, the silhouette of his throat and Adam’s apple since he’d opened his coat. That alone was sexy, but she was able to overlook it. She turned back to the road. “But your grandma—”

“That’s who I’m here for.”

“And there was nothing else that made you want to come home?” She couldn’t even imagine it—everything she loved was here, everything she knew. But there was a whole world out there, and maybe he liked the diversity.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her, brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“Are you asking if there was a woman I wanted to come home for?”

She frowned, keeping her eyes on the road. “Of course not. After ten years?”

“I’m sure the grapevine would have been buzzing if a girl had waited that long for me,” he said with faint sarcasm. “There’s a constant need around here to know everyone else’s business. One of the reasons I didn’t look forward to returning,” he added.

She shrugged. “It can be good sometimes—or so I tell myself. I’m not a big fan of gossip even if I do share a juicy tidbit with my girlfriends now and then.”

“Who are your girlfriends?”

Fair was fair—she was asking questions, so she had to answer some of his. “Emily, Nate’s fiancée, and Monica, of course.”

“Of course.”

He must remember that she and Monica were best friends—maybe he even realized Monica told her everything—everything—he’d done while they were dating. Brooke hadn’t appreciated his behavior at the time and had been indignant on behalf of her friend. But that was a long time ago.

“Monica’s not married?” he asked.

“Nope. Surprised?”

“A little. I thought she was the marriage-and-baby type.”

Brooke smiled. “I think she’d like to be but she hasn’t met the right guy.” She gave him a speculative glance. “Interested in picking up where you left off?”

“After ten years? No. I’m a different person, and I imagine she is, too.” He paused. “You don’t seem to have changed all that much.”

She stiffened, not sure if she should take offense. “I grew up knowing I’d be a rancher like my dad. And that’s what I’m doing. I always knew what I wanted.” But did she? a little voice inside her whispered. It was startling, even frightening, and she wondered where that voice was coming from. “I’m not sure it’s flattering to be told I haven’t changed.”

“On the outside you’ve changed, maybe even in other ways I can’t see.”

Surprised, she looked at him again, and their gazes met and held for a long moment. Something hidden seemed to uncurl inside her, a sudden rising of desire that took her by surprise. He held himself so still, but it made her think of what strength he kept hidden, what emotions he restrained.

She glanced away. “Naw, I’m just me, Brooke the cowgirl. So did you quit your job to come here, or are you on vacation?”

“I quit. They’ll take me back when I’m done here.”

“Lucky you.”

They rode the last ten minutes in silence, and Brooke told herself she was relieved. The wind had kicked up worse, and she was glad to be taking a break for lunch. When they parked the retriever, she wordlessly gestured with her head for Adam to follow her. They stopped in the barn because the dogs had gathered to greet her, and it was too cold to linger outside. They had three cow dogs besides Scout, who was usually with Nate. All three dogs greeted Adam with friendly reserve, and after a couple sniffs, with open enthusiasm, which he accepted affably.

“Let’s get lunch,” she said, not looking to see if he followed her. “My mom might have rung the bell while we were gone, but she also texted me.”

“Modern ranch life,” Adam said. “You don’t have to feed me.”

She glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the now-uneven, frozen yard, squinting against the wind. “It’s part of the job, so be quiet and eat.”

In the mudroom off the kitchen, they peeled their winter garments off in wet, dirty layers and walked in stocking feet into the kitchen. Her mom’s wheelchair was pushed to the table, which spanned the many windows along one wall. Josh and Nate were already seated opposite each other, heads bent over their plates, although they did give twin waves while holding their hamburgers aloft. The ranch’s part-timer, Lou Webster, seated across the table beside Nate, gave Adam an openly curious look. Lou had to be in his seventies, with bright blue eyes that peered out of wrinkly, leather skin, bald on top with a scraggle of white hair outlining the shining dome.

Sandy smiled. “Glad you two could join us. Not sure how everything tastes. Your dad insisted on cooking.”

Brooke put a hand to her heart and pretended to reel. “I remember the last time . . .”

“Hey!” Doug called from behind the stove. “The recipe was wrong. In any case, it’s hard to ruin hamburgers.”

“I haven’t tried the coleslaw yet,” her mother said in a stage whisper. “But at least we have Grandma’s leftover cake.”

Brooke introduced Adam to Lou, who stood up and grinned as he looked Adam up and down.

“I was in Korea. Nice to meet a fellow vet.”

Once again, no military talk for Adam, who simply shook Lou’s hand, then sat down opposite him next to Josh. Brooke felt like scurrying all the way around the table instead of sitting next to Adam. She knew it would look stupid—it was stupid—so she sat next to Adam and helped herself to one of the burgers piled on a platter at the center of the table.

For a while, talk was concentrated on the ranch, from estimating how many of the cows were pregnant to which fence had to be repaired to Adam’s first eventful day. Adam said little, eating as if he hadn’t eaten in a long time, which amused Brooke. He’d done his best to act like feeding cattle was easy to learn, but she could tell by his appetite that he’d worked hard. He hadn’t questioned her, hadn’t tried to suggest doing something a different way, as some men might—hell, like he used to. Now he just listened to her instructions and followed her lead. He’d made mistakes—and his sore body would remind him of that by tomorrow—but he usually didn’t make the same mistake twice.

Very different behavior than when he was in high school, she mused. She could remember when they’d been assigned to work in the same group on a history project. He hadn’t wanted to put in the effort of leading, but he always had a comment on everyone else’s work. He thought he was way too smart. Apparently, the Marines had taught him otherwise.

During a lull in the conversation, Brooke said to Lou, “Too cold a day to expect any tourists, I bet.”

Lou shrugged. “I’ll hear the bell if anyone rings it, so yeah, I’ll probably get other chores done.”

Adam glanced sideways at her curiously, but since he had a burger at his mouth, she answered his unspoken question.

“We have a beautiful old sleigh from my great-grandparents’ day. Dad had it fixed up last winter, and we started giving sleigh rides to tourists in the afternoons. We’ll even do it in the evenings if someone makes a reservation. Otherwise, they just show up and ring the bell. There are signs in town advertising it at the community center, and we put some ads in the paper. But that’s it.”

“It’s pretty successful,” Josh said, after taking a swig of milk. “Nate’s good with the advertising.”

“The sleigh is actually a big draw,” Nate added. “Josh did the leather tooling on the bench.”

“It’s beautiful,” Brooke agreed. “And I take my turn driving occasionally when Lou can’t. It’s very relaxing, and I’m always surprised by the people I meet.”

“She tries to pretend she’s all into the solitary ranch life,” Nate said in a teasing voice. “But sometimes I wonder.”

Brooke laughed along with her family, but inside she felt a little jolt of surprise. What did he suspect?

Adam glanced at each of them dubiously. “Do you three get along this well all the time?”

“It gets a little sickenin’,” Lou said, cutting himself a slice of cake from the pan.

“Oh, they’ve had their fights,” Sandy added, leaning back in her wheelchair from her half-eaten plate.

Brooke frowned at how much of her mom’s food had gone untouched. Her appetite didn’t seem quite the same yet. She told herself her mom had just gotten home from the hospital, that the meds affected her appetite, so it was only natural . . .

And then she heard a guffaw, and realized all the men were laughing hard. She’d missed the punch line. Even Adam’s eyes seemed bright with amusement although he hadn’t given in to open laughter.

“What did I miss?” she asked, smiling.

Josh leaned forward to see around Adam. “Don’t you remember how mad you were that Nate graduated from a pony to a horse?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not that story again. Let’s not forget that I was, what, six?”

“Eight,” Doug said, sitting down at the other end of the table. “We caught you on Nate’s horse about a mile from the house, clingin’ to its mane, ’cause the saddle’d already fallen off.”

“I wasn’t clinging,” she said patiently, then looked at Adam with a twinkle in her eye. “I was riding bareback, and my brothers still can’t acknowledge my talent.”

There was a collective groan from those same brothers, and though she grinned at them, she reached past Adam and smacked Josh on the shoulder. That pressed her up against Adam’s arm, and she quickly pulled back, feeling suddenly flustered.

“Can you just let this stuff go?” she asked. “Now pass me the cake.”

That evening, Adam fell sound asleep at the dinner table and awoke with a crick in his neck as his grandma was clearing the dishes.

He surged to his feet, feeling a dull ache settle in his lower back. “Let me help, Grandma.”

She tsked. “I told you you wouldn’t need to run for exercise.”

“And I didn’t listen to your warning. But it’s a habit that’s hard to break.”

The other widows must have gone while he’d drifted off, and it was just the two of them at the kitchen sink. He wanted to lead her to a chair but already knew how badly that worked. She’d rather stand and tremble occasionally than admit to any weakness.

“So Brooke worked you hard,” Grandma Palmer said, smiling.

“The ranch chores worked me hard,” he amended. “They took it easy on me in the afternoon. I rode fence for several hours, looking for damage. A bull tried to escape, and I had to chase it back into the pasture.”

“What happened?” she asked, staring up at him.

“I radioed Brooke, who brought the barbed wire for repairs. That was a challenge, considering the wind picked up.”

“She wasn’t with you?”

“She had me ride one way along the fence, and she went the other.”

“She couldn’t be avoiding you,” Grandma teased.

Adam shrugged as he continued to wash and dry the dishes. There were moments during the day when they’d looked into each other’s eyes, and it was as if things had shifted between them. She’d turned away faster than he did, so he was never sure. She was determined to be impartially in charge, and she was in charge. He wasn’t about to forget that. She ordered him around a lot—which was what he expected of the girl he remembered—yet she still did her own half of the work with equal parts stubbornness and independence. She was obviously used to working alongside her brothers. Some of their quiet ways must have rubbed off on her, for she seemed to have lost the nervous need to chatter, which was a relief.

She was good at what she did, had all the knowledge and the skill to teach him anything he needed to know. Yet every time he glimpsed that strange softening in her eyes, he saw a mix of fierce cowgirl and vulnerable woman that was more appealing than he’d ever imagined.

But it was an appeal he had to resist. It was strange to have lunch with the Thalbergs and be so very conscious of not looking at their daughter more than he had to. And then she’d plopped herself down beside him, their shoulders occasionally brushing. He caught a tropical scent, like a Caribbean night, and wondered if it was perfume or shampoo. Just watching her peel off her winter clothes in the mudroom until she was down to tight jeans and an even tighter long-sleeve t-shirt was incredibly sexy. And then he’d noticed her earrings again, smaller for the workday, when he’d never cared about a woman’s jewelry before. Was it because she was forbidden to him that he had to notice so much?

“Was it good to be back on a horse again?” Grandma asked.

Adam shook away thoughts of Brooke. “It’s been a long time.”

“You were good with your father’s horse,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “I know he sold it while I was gone. He had to, I’m sure,” he added dryly.

She said nothing, and a look of such sadness crossed her face. She didn’t often let him see those emotions.

“He’d lost his job,” she began.

“Wait,” he interrupted. “Grandma, I really don’t want to talk about him. They’re in my past.”

“But don’t you think—”

“No. I’ve spent ten years not thinking about them. And it was good.”

She nodded and let it go. They worked silently, easy companions in the kitchen, and he tried not to imagine how it must feel to know the only daughter you raised had failed as a mother herself. He usually thought Grandma was too sensible to blame herself, but as she grew older, maybe it was more difficult. He had to make sure she knew how much he loved her, how much she’d been a mother to him more than his own. He told himself this wasn’t because time was winding down for them—he couldn’t face that, not after everything that had happened this year. He didn’t want to be haunted by another ghost. Grandma would get better.

He played cards with the widows, amazed at how they had perfected the art of cheating on each other. Then he went to bed early, so Brooke wouldn’t start work without him.