“Maybe,” Reese said. “I’m looking for some outdoor work. I saw you had several big barns out back and a granary. Do you have any openings?” Automatically, Reese tensed inwardly. He knew he looked rough with a month’s worth of beard on his face and his clothes dirty and shabby. At one time, he’d been a Marine Corps captain commanding a company of 120 Marines. And he’d been damn good at it until— “I’m Charlie Becker, the owner,” he said, shifting and thrusting his hand across the desk toward him. “Welcome to Wind River. Who might you be?”
“Reese Lockhart,” he said, and he gripped the man’s thin, strong hand. He liked Charlie’s large, watery eyes because he saw kindness in them. Reese was very good at assessing people. He’d kept his Marines safe and helped them through their professional and personal ups and downs during the years he commanded Mike Company in Afghanistan. Charlie was close to six feet tall, lean like a rail and wearing a white cowboy shirt and blue jeans. Reese sensed this older gentleman wouldn’t throw him out.
The last place he’d gone into to try to find some work, they’d called him a druggie and he was told to get the hell out. He smelled. Reese, when walking the last ten miles to Wind River, had stopped when he discovered a stream on the flat, snow-covered land and tried to clean up the best he could. The temperature was near freezing as he’d gone into the bush, away from the busy highway, and stripped to his waist. He’d taken handfuls of snow and scrubbed his body, shivering, but hell, that was a small price to pay to try to not smell so bad. He hadn’t had a real shower in a month, either.
“You a vet by any chance?” Charlie asked, his eyes narrowing speculatively upon Reese.
“Yes, sir. Marine Corps.” He said it with pride.
“Good to know, Son.” Charlie looked toward a table at the rear of the store that held coffee, cookies, and other goodies that he offered his patrons. “Why don’t you go help yourself to some hot coffee and food over there?” he said, and he gestured in that general direction. “My wife, Pixie, made ’em. Right good they are. I usually get a stampede of ranchers comin’ in here when word gets ’round that Pixie has baked goodies,” he said, and chuckled.
Reese wanted to run to that table, but he stood as relaxed as he could be, given the anxiety that was tunneling through him constantly. “I’d like that, sir. Thank you . . .”
“Don’t call me sir,” Charlie said. “Americans owe so much to ALL of you men and women who have sacrificed for us. Now, go help yourself. There’s plenty more where that came from. Pixie usually drives in midafternoon with a new bunch of whatever she’s been inspired to make in her kitchen that day.”
Reese needed something worse than food right now, so he hesitated. “Do you have any work I might do around here, Mr. Becker?”
“Call me Charlie. And no, I don’t need help, but I got a nearby rancher who is looking for a hardworking wrangler type to hire. You look like you’ve worked a little in your life,” he said, and he grinned, standing, pointing to Reese’s large, callused hands at his side. “I’ll call over there while you grab yourself some grub,” he added, and he waved his hand, urging him to go eat.
Nodding, Reese rasped a thank-you and felt his stomach growl loudly. He hoped like hell Charlie didn’t hear it. But judging from the man’s facial expression, he had heard it as he picked up the black, ancient-looking landline phone sitting on the counter to make a call to that ranch. As Reese halted at the long table against the back wall of the store, his mouth watered. He was chilled to the bone, his combat boots wet, his socks soaked, toes numb. The coffee smelled so damned good and he poured some into a white Styrofoam cup with shaking hands. He took a cautious sip, the heat feeling incredible as it slid down his throat and into his shrunken, knotted gut. God, it tasted so good!
Reese kept one ear cocked toward the phone call Charlie was making. Let there be an opening for me. He worried because even though he no longer stank, his clothes were dirty and long past a washing. He knew he looked like a burned-out druggie or a homeless person, his hair long, unkempt, his black beard thick and in dire need of a trim. Reese didn’t have a pair of scissors on him to do the job. His scruffy dark green baseball cap was frayed and old, a holdover from two years ago when he was a Marine.
He eyed the box of colorfully frosted cupcakes and his mouth watered. He wanted to grab all of them, but his discipline and his sense of manners forced him to pick up just one. His fingers trembled again as he peeled the paper off the pink-frosted cupcake.
Swallowing the accumulated saliva, Reese bit into the concoction, groaning internally as the sweetness hit his tongue and coated the insides of his mouth. For a moment, he was dizzy from the sugar rush, his whole body lighting up with internal celebration as the food hit his gnawing stomach. Standing there, Reese forced himself to take slow sips of the coffee. It tasted heavenly. He heard Charlie finish the call and his footsteps came in his direction.
“Hey, Mr. Lockhart, good news,” Charlie said. “The owner, Shay Crawford, is still in need of a wrangler. She’s coming into town in about two hours, going to be dropping by here to pick up some dog food and such. Said she’d meet you at that time.”