Huckleberry Lake

by Catherine Anderson

  “Don’t look!”

  Wyatt read those two words, but she said more that he couldn’t see with her uplifted arms blocking his view. “I’m not looking.” That was a lie, but he was trying not to, and that had to count for something. “Just—um—relax.”

  He didn’t want to let her sleep in her clothes, but he needed to get her covered up, not undress her even more. He grabbed a handful of her bedspread and jerked it over her.

  “There, honey, you’re all covered again.”

  She hugged the chenille close. “Thank you, Wyatt.” He saw her larynx bob, and she grimaced. “Oh, no.”

  He ran for the bathroom, grabbed the waste receptacle, and made it back to the bed just in time. Afterward, he decided she might need a bucket during the night. “I’ll leave the trash can right next to you. Okay?” He saw that her eyes were closed and wasn’t sure if she’d heard him. “Erin, look at me. I’m talking to you.”

  “I’m not deaf, Wyatt. I can hear with my eyes closed.”

  “Okay. What did I just say?”

  “You’re leaving the trash can.”

  “Very good.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Goodnight, then. Try to sleep it off.”

  She lifted her lashes as if even that motion took all her concentration. “Thank you. For taking care of me, I mean. I would have slept on the toilet.”

  Wyatt left her bedroom and scoped out the sofa, which was too short for him. But he’d slept in worse places. He kicked off his boots and sat to text Kennedy. Tell the boss I got held up in town. I’ll be on time in the morning. I’m spending the night with a friend.

  That made him grin. He hadn’t lied. Erin was a friend. He opened the clock function on his phone and set the timer for two hours so he would wake up to check on her. Chances were that she’d be fine, but having been drunk a couple of times himself, he knew how sick a person could get. Unfortunately, he also knew that drunks who woke up still half-lit could do some pretty stupid stuff, like deciding they needed to walk it off and falling into snowbanks. There was no snow on the ground, but Erin’s house overlooked the creek. He didn’t want her to tumble in and drown.

  Grabbing a sofa pillow, he wedged it against the cushioned arm of the couch and lay down. His feet hung out over the end, and his legs might go to sleep. But that was okay as long as the rest of him could grab some shut-eye, too. He slipped the cell into his shirt pocket, confident that the vibration would wake him, and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  * * *

  Erin woke up before dawn. Her mouth tasted like a science project on a refrigerator shelf, and her head felt twice its normal size. She rolled, sat up, and planted her feet on the floor to keep her balance. What on earth did I do? She remembered snatches of last night. Quitting her job. Then Wyatt meeting her here with wine. Wyatt talking with her. But after that, it all got blurry. She staggered to her feet, groaned when she looked in the wastebasket, and made her way into the bathroom, thinking that a shower might clear away the cobwebs in her brain. She stripped off down to her underwear, planning to step under a warm stream of water. But, oh, God, her head hurt. She decided that the sooner she took some ibuprofen, the better. That way, it might start working while she showered.

  She was halfway across the living room when she noticed Wyatt sitting on the sofa, his shoulders hunched as he pulled on his boots. She shrieked. He didn’t even glance up. She realized that he didn’t know she was there. She ran back to her bedroom and slammed the door, one thought pounding inside her aching head. Thank God he didn’t see me. She stood at the closed door, listening. Pretty soon, she heard him walk outside and close the door behind him. A moment later she heard the rumble of a diesel engine.

  * * *

  * * *

  Wyatt couldn’t get the picture out of his head of Erin wearing only French-cut panties and a skimpy bra. He didn’t get why she was so self-conscious about her body, because he thought every inch of her was perfect. Seeing her in the buff might have been even worse, but he doubted it. His imagination was doing a fine job of peeling away what little clothing she’d had on.

  Driving to the ranch, he barely noticed the countryside, which was uncommon for him. His brain was stuck on seeing Erin naked. Well, almost naked. And all he could do was pray he didn’t remember what she looked like when he was trying to fall asleep at night.

  When he parked his truck near the main house, he saw Kennedy hotfooting it across the patchy grass toward him. As he opened his truck door, Kennedy started signing to him in ASL, asking if he knew how Jenette was doing.

  Wyatt swung out of the vehicle. “The last I heard, she was still in critical condition. I was hoping to get more updates from Erin, but she quit her job last night.”

  “She what? I thought she planned to work through next winter. What happened to change her mind? She wanted to pay her folks off before quitting.”

  Wyatt held up his hands. “What happened to Jenette was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She’s been unhappy with her job for a long while, and this just pushed her over the edge.”

  Kennedy folded his arms and closed his eyes. “She thinks Jen is going to die, then?”

  “I didn’t say that. The last I heard, she’s still hanging on.” Wyatt curled a hand over his brother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take the day off and drive to Crystal Falls? Her parents are probably at the hospital in a waiting room. Maybe you can find them, and they’ll tell you more. I don’t know if anyone at the sheriff’s department is being kept in the loop, but if they are, they may not tell us anything because of patient privacy laws.”

  “But I’m supposed to work. I don’t have classes today.”

  “I’ll cover for you. Just go. The boss will understand.”

  Wyatt watched his brother race to the bunkhouse like the place was on fire and he had the only water bucket. He smiled slightly and shook his head. At twenty-two, Wyatt had still been a virgin, and he had never been in love until now. As difficult as it was for Wyatt to stick to his guns and resist Erin, he was kind of glad of the misery. It helped him to better understand how Kennedy must be feeling. His brother might fall in love a few times before he found his forever lady, and it would be nice to understand the range of emotions he might experience each time.

  Wyatt worked all morning, took a break for lunch, and then hit it again. On a ranch, there were always chores, and the two fellows Slade had hired as spring help were still in training. Normally, Wyatt was teaching new guys the ropes when there was still snow in the pastures. Getting married and being blissfully happy for the first time in over forty years had messed with Slade’s usual schedule. They weren’t technically shorthanded, but right now the new hires still didn’t know their asses from holes in the ground.

  As a result, Wyatt was tired when he resumed work after lunch. With Kennedy gone, he had to do his brother’s chores as well as his own. The spring grass wasn’t yet nutrient-rich enough to sustain the herd, so they were still throwing hay. Kennedy often did that, but today it was Wyatt’s ball game. He didn’t trust the two new guys to do it right. And it was vitally important that the lactating cows got plenty of nourishment. Water troughs also had to be checked, and on a ranch so large, that alone took a couple of hours, because there was often a water leak to fix, and it sometimes took a trained eye to notice something was wrong.

  Around two o’clock, judging by the angle of the sun, Wyatt saw Erin’s black Honda pull in. He was surprised, because the last time he’d talked to Buck at the Timing Light, he’d been told the car would be out of commission for at least another week. He half expected Erin to walk over in a temper and chew him out for putting the estimate on his credit card. Instead she went straight into the main house. He guessed maybe she’d come to tell her uncle about quitting her job. He figured Slade and Vickie would take it pretty well. Unlike Erin’s parents, all they really wanted was for Erin to be happy.

 
Two hours later, Wyatt was mucking out stalls when he saw Erin finally emerge from the house. She made a beeline for him. He leaned on the pitchfork handle and struggled not to smile. She had hangover written all over her. When she drew close, he said, “Looks to me like you need some hair of the dog.”

  She rolled her pretty blue eyes. “I’ve sworn off wine forever, amen. First, let me say thank you for paying the repair costs on my car.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Second, you can start holding a portion of my wages back to pay for my half.”

  Wyatt thought for a moment that he’d misread her lips. “Come again?”

  “You read it right. I asked Uncle Slade for a job, and he gave me one. That makes you my boss now, I think. He sent me out here so you can get me lined out.”

  Wyatt could have groaned. A picture of her in sexy underwear flashed through his head, and the first question that entered his mind was where in the hell she was going to sleep. The bunkhouse wasn’t set up for unisex use. There wasn’t a privacy screen in the whole place, and except for a spare toilet for emergency use, he and the other men shared a full bathroom.

  “You don’t look overjoyed to hear that I’ll be working under you.”

  Wyatt wouldn’t have minded her working under him. Scratch that. He couldn’t allow himself to think about things like that. He realized he was scowling and made a herculean effort to relax his forehead. “I’m sorry. I have to admit I’m taken by surprise. I never got the impression that you even like horses and cows.”

  “I like them. From a distance. And, um, I kind of left one part out. Uncle Slade left the final decision to you. About hiring me, I mean.”

  Wyatt was relieved to hear that. But a fat lot of good it did him. If he nixed the idea, he’d be the Shithead of the Year. Definitely in Erin’s eyes, and his boss might not like it all that much, either. “Erin, you can’t admire the horses and cows from a distance. You’ll be up close and personal with them a dozen times a day, and even well-trained horses and docile cattle can be dangerous.” That wasn’t a stretch of the truth; it was fact. He didn’t want to scare her, but he didn’t want her to get hurt, either. “You know next to nothing about livestock.”

  She looked away and swallowed hard. He had a bad feeling she was battling tears. When she faced him again, two bright spots of color dotted her cheeks. “I need a job, Wyatt. Sheriff Adams called me this morning to tell me I can have my position back, and he even suggested that I take a short, paid vacation before I make a final decision.” She swallowed again. “But I’m done. Law enforcement is slowly killing me on the inside, where no one can see.”

  After talking with her last night, Wyatt figured he understood that better than most people. “I guess it can’t hurt to give you a fair shot,” he finally said.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Upon lifting her lashes, she said, “Thank you. I promise to work harder than anyone else on the ranch. You won’t regret taking a chance on me.”

  Wyatt already regretted it, but his reasons had nothing to do with Erin’s future performance. He just wasn’t sure how he would handle being around her all the time. “Where will you sleep? I don’t mean to sound sexist, but the bunkhouse is no place for a lady.”

  “Aunt Vickie says I can have the whole upstairs to myself now that Brody and his family have moved into their own house.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Okay. Well, that’s good.”

  “You’re not happy about this. I can tell. Is it because you’re afraid I can’t do the work?”

  “No, absolutely not. Ranching is hard labor, but a woman can do it as well as a man. This just came as a surprise to me. The first time I met you, you weren’t exactly another Calamity Jane. More like just a calamity.”

  She finally smiled. “A-hole.”

  He laughed. “Well, you were a calamity, the way I saw it. Making me cut the twine on expensive, certified weed-free hay. Refusing to believe I was deaf. Trying to walk back to the trailhead barefoot. You were awful.”

  “And you were as well. You didn’t like me at first sight. You felt that I’d been neglecting my uncle and didn’t love him.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Wyatt picked up the pitchfork and rammed the tines back into the dirt. “I was wrong about all that. But you were wrong about me, too.”

  Her cheek dimpled in a grin. “I’m glad I was.”

  Wyatt really, really wished she wouldn’t smile at him like that. It made him feel like he’d just lassoed the moon for her or something. “I’m glad I was wrong, too. Even though Brody is here now, and Slade’s got plenty of family to love, he still holds you in high regard. He’ll enjoy having you at the ranch.”

  And wasn’t that just the problem? Wyatt knew he was between a rock and a hard spot about hiring Erin. He’d be damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

  Chapter Eleven

  Seemingly oblivious to Wyatt’s turmoil, Erin squinted against the sunlight. “So,” she said. “Where do I start?”

  Again, Wyatt couldn’t help but smile. “You can’t learn all there is to know in five minutes. But if you’ll wait while I finish cleaning stalls, I’ll give you a tour.”

  “I’ve seen it all before.”

  “Yes, but as a visitor, not a hired hand.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m game.”

  When Wyatt turned to go back into the barn, she followed him. “Do you have another pitchfork?” She leaned around his arm to look up at him so he could read her lips. “I’d like to help.”

  Wyatt jabbed a thumb at where another implement hung on the wall, and the next thing he knew, she was in the next stall, throwing manure mixed with straw into a pile in the alley. She had apparently overlooked the fact that he was throwing stuff into the uplifted skidder bucket, which made waste removal a one-throw job. He was pleased by her willingness to work up a sweat, though, especially since he knew her head probably ached, but he also grew concerned, because she was pitching hay faster than he was. To last at ranch work, a person had to pace himself.

  He stepped out into the alley. “Whoa! This isn’t a race.”

  She gave him a startled look. “Okay. Trust me when I say that I can work as hard and as fast as any man.”

  “When you see me busting my ass to be quick, you can. That’ll mean something has to be done fast or all hell will rain on our heads. But otherwise pace yourself. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “I’m your foreman. Boss is a title reserved for Slade.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. What’ll I call you, then?”

  “Wyatt will do. And you aren’t supposed to pitch that shit into a pile. It goes in the skidder bucket, the way I’m doing it. Now you’ll have to fork it twice. Get it in the bucket. When it’s full, we’ll run it out to the compost pile, dump it, and then come back for more.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Erin couldn’t help but feel excited as she climbed into one of the side-by-sides to take a tour of the ranch with Wyatt. She was actually going to work here, and she couldn’t wait to start. Domino almost jumped up to go with them, but he saw Pistol and Four Toes off in the trees and ran to play with them instead.

  As they set off, Wyatt hit a rut, and she grabbed a bar of the roll cage. “You okay?” he asked. “Nobody here has been killed in one of these yet.”

  “I’ve driven in high-speed chases when I was in training at the academy. Trust me, vehicles don’t scare me.”

  Ten seconds later, she almost wet her pants when the side-by-side hit mud and nearly flipped end over end. Erin was thrown forward. Wyatt let loose with a string of curse words, many of them mispronounced, which was a first.

  “Water main leak!” he said. “I told the new hired hands to watch for soggy ground. These pastures are always well drained unless there’s a line leaking. It happens all the time.” He
jumped out of the vehicle and immediately sank into muck almost to mid-shin. He didn’t seem to mind mud oozing over into his boots. He grabbed a shovel from the back cargo area. “Come on. If you’re going to be a ranch hand, you may as well get friendly with mud.”

  Erin hoped if she climbed out of the side-by-side and stepped lightly, she wouldn’t sink. No such luck. Only unlike Wyatt, she sank almost to her knees. “Oh, God!”

  He flashed her a grin that displayed beautiful, white teeth. “Sure you want to work here? Leaks are always muddy. Normally not this bad. I let the new hires check the water troughs this morning, and they must have ignored the soggy ground. When a main line is leaking and left to spew water, it gets bad fast.”

  Erin held on to the closed door of the vehicle to pry one foot loose from the muck. She wore her commando boots, and it felt as if she had toilet plungers on her feet. A loud sucking sound came from the mud, and bubbles rose to the surface. She watched Wyatt trudge over to an aluminum pipe. She struck off after him. A couple of times, she almost fell. But using all her strength, she managed to reach higher ground and better footing. Then the work began, and Erin became well acquainted with mud.

  Two hours later, they had replaced a section of main line, which was large-diameter pipe and heavy to work with. Erin didn’t know if she could have done the job by herself, and the thought frightened her. If she couldn’t carry her weight at the ranch, she couldn’t keep the job, even though her uncle might make exceptions for her. That wouldn’t be fair to the other employees.

  When she and Wyatt got back into the side-by-side to resume touring the ranch, Wyatt started the engine and smiled at her. “Good job. You were there whenever I needed you. If you ever come across a broken main line when you’re out alone, call for help. It requires two people.”