by Aubrey Gross
Leave it to iTunes to have impeccable timing. She almost skipped the song, but then realized Chase probably wouldn’t see the irony in an angry song about a girl falling in love playing at this precise moment, and instead drank her water.
“I haven’t heard Sugarcult since I was in college.”
She almost choked on her water. “You know this song?”
Chase shrugged, the fabric of his t-shirt stretching across his shoulders. Thank God this one was looser than the one he’d been wearing yesterday. That one had fit like a second skin. This one at least kept her from drooling quite as much.
“I did go to school at UT and play baseball. There’s a really wide variety of stuff played in the locker room.”
“Not to mention all those walkup songs.”
He grinned. “Those, too. One time we paid the PA guy to switch out Shawn O’Malley’s usual walkup song with Sir Mixalot.”
Jo snorted. “What was his usual walkup song?”
“Garth Brooks’ ‘Ain’t Going Down’.”
“Seriously?”
“As a heart attack.”
“That’s classic.” Her anger was apparently fading.
“Yeah, he was pretty mad about it. But then he jacked a grand slam out of the ballpark. He wasn’t so mad anymore.”
“Until he realized he was stuck with it.”
“We baseball guys are a superstitious bunch.”
Jo chuckled and set her water aside. She grabbed her phone and turned down the volume slightly.
“I’m sorry I interrupted your workout.”
“It’s okay. Squats are the next to last thing I do anyway.”
He shuffled his feet. “Do you want me to leave?”
She considered him for a few seconds before dropping to the floor and picking up the kettle bell she’d previously abandoned. “You can stay if you want.”
“Pretty Girl” drew to an end, and as she heard the opening strains of Alex Clare’s “Too Close,” Jo began her Turkish Get Ups and wondered why she had so many angry songs about love.
~~*~~
Chase tried not to watch Jo as she went through the motions of her final set, but it was incredibly difficult not to.
Incredibly.
She was wearing a pair of those short, tight workout shorts that seemed to be so popular among women these days—booty shorts, he privately called them—and a light blue sports bra that really did nothing to diminish her breasts.
They were kind of glorious.
He noticed the dumbbells sitting off to the side, and almost did a double take. Those weren’t the dainty pink dumbbells he was used to seeing women use, but rather honest-to-God, serious dumbbells. He looked closer and saw the 75 etched into each one and almost swallowed his tongue.
She really did lift.
Curious, he looked at the kettle bells she’d set beside the dumbbells. Thirty-five pounds each. Looked at Jo and the bell clutched in her hands. Fifty pounds.
“You were just doing fifty-pound swings?”
She lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t speak until the song switched over. Matchbox twenty’s “Busted.” This was one he definitely knew.
“This was my walk out song my freshman year of college.”
She set the kettle bell aside, pushed up off the floor and grabbed a fresh bottle of water. “I know.”
“You know? How?”
She drank, and he had the feeling she was buying time more than quenching her thirst. Finally, she spoke. “I may or may not have gone to a few games.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “But you never said anything.”
“Embarrassed teenager?”
“Right. So how many is a few?”
She took another gulp of water. This time he knew she was stalling.
“How many, Jo?”
“Does it matter?”
He shrugged. “Not really, I’m just curious.” Yes, it matters, dammit.
“Every game Texas played at Baylor. And a few down in Austin when Baylor played there.”
“Every one?”
She nodded. Slowly. Barely.
“Even the one that went to twelve innings and lasted ‘til midnight?”
“You were amazing that game.”
He had been amazing that night. The bullpen was drained when they put him in at the bottom of the inning, game tied at one run each. He pitched a shut-out ninth inning. And then a shut-out tenth, eleventh and twelfth, after Maldonado had jacked one out of left field in the top of the twelfth. He’d gone in at the bottom of the twelfth, finally in a place to close the game.
He threw six strikes in a row. The third batter came up, popped up to short on the first pitch he saw, and that had been the ballgame.
It was one of his favorite memories, and she’d been there.
“So who’d you cheer for?” Why he asked, he didn’t know. He wasn’t one of those men who needed to have his ego stroked by a beautiful woman. For some reason, though, he wanted to hear that she’d pulled for him despite everything that had happened.
How fucked up was that?
“I have to admit that there were times when I was a terrible Baylor fan. I always cheered for the Bears, unless we were playing Texas.”
“So you cheered for the Longhorns while going to Baylor?” That was an interesting little fact he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.
“I think it’s probably more appropriate to say I cheered for you—that way it didn’t feel quite like cheating on my school.”
He laughed. “No one ever questioned where your loyalties were?”
She shook her head. “I always went to those games by myself so that I wouldn’t get that question.”
“So you were secretly in love with me and went to all of my baseball games in Waco. What other secrets are you hiding?” he teased, which caused her to sputter.
“Not to bruise your ego, Roberts, but I wasn’t secretly in love with you.” Something flashed in her eyes, making him think that maybe she wasn’t telling the complete truth, but he decided to let it go for now.
“Ouch.”
She poked him in the chest. “It’s not like you were secretly in love with me, either.”
Chase felt his stomach tighten, and the words were out before he could snatch them back. “Are you so sure about that?”
So much for letting it go for now.
Jo froze, her eyes round, an almost panicky expression on her face. It would have been comical had his gut not been churning with his own anxiety.
“You…you never said anything.”
His voice was surprisingly calm when he said, “I could say the same thing to you, Jo.”
She drew in a sharp breath. Yup, she’d definitely been skirting the truth. “I guess I deserved that.”
“Kind of. But I didn’t mean for it to sound so harsh. Just, that, both of us were stupid teenagers.”
“And this is why I tell my kids to actually talk to their problems,” she muttered.
“Talk to their problems? Not about them?”
“Oh, about them, too. The thing with teenagers, though—and I know this from far too much personal experience, remember—is that their problems tend to be people more than anything else. Parents. Teachers. Boyfriends. Girlfriends. Friends. Crushes and unrequited love. Every now and then I get through to one or two of them, and they actually follow my advice and talk to the person. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but they always feel better for having at least tried.”
“They’re lucky to have you.”
She smiled. “Thanks. Speaking of occupations…we’ve talked a lot about mine. What do you do these days?”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the focus of the conversation swinging back to him. “Commercial real estate, wild game ranch management.”
“Well, that’s a bit divergent.”
He laughed, and some of the tension eased between his shoulders. “I actually was wondering if you’d like to come up to the ranch with me. I’ve gotta take some feed and supplies up. That is, if you don’t already have plans or need to help your grandma.”
“Let me check with Gran and take a quick shower. Come on in, I’ll grab you something to drink for while you wait.”
As he entered Nellie Westwood’s house, Chase wondered if he was crazy to ask Jo to spend that much time alone with him.
And then he looked down at her ass in those booty shorts and realized the real craziness was in asking her to change clothes.
~~*~~
Chapter Six
“Oh, Chase, it’s beautiful.”
Several hours and errands later, Jo leaned forward as though to better see the vista spread out in front of her as an automatic gate swung open. Over the gate was an arch that proclaimed, “Devils Ranch.” She chuckled at that.
“Creative, huh?”
Chase grinned as he pulled the truck and attached trailer through the gate. “Not really. We couldn’t all agree on a name, though, so we flipped a coin and Owen won.”
“So Owen named it?”
“Kind of. He, Matt, a buddy of Matt’s and I tossed in a bunch of names and came up with that and another one. I can’t even remember what it was now.”
“So all four of you own it?”
He nodded and pulled up to a huge barn. As he put the truck in park, a young lanky cowboy strode out of the barn and met them at the front of Chase’s F-350. The two men shook hands in greeting before Chase gestured towards Jo. “Daniel, Jolene Westwood. Jo, Daniel Hernandez.”
“Nice to meet you Miss Westwood,” Daniel smiled and tipped his cowboy hat.
“Oh, just call me Jo. Miss Westwood makes me feel like my grandmother.” She smiled, and the younger man winked at her.
“Jo, then. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
Jo suddenly felt the gentle pressure of Chase’s fingers on her lower back. Was he being possessive?
Well then.
“Daniel’s our ranch manager. Kind of like a foreman, only even more important.”
“Basically, I do all the work while Chase’s lazy ass sits in air conditioning all day.”
Jo couldn’t help but laugh at the friendly banter. She gestured towards the outbuildings and main house and said, “Well, it certainly looks like you work your ass off.”
“Good staff, Jo, good staff.” He winked at her again, and the pressure on her lower back increased.
Chase was being possessive.
Interesting.
“I brought up the alfalfa you emailed me about Friday, and the other supplies you mentioned, too.”
Daniel nodded. “Thanks. I’ll get Jose and Lawrence to unload it. I’ve got something I wanted to show you anyway.”
He called two teenage boys over, gave them instructions, and then they headed towards one of the out buildings, a small log building nestled in between the barn and the main house. Once they stepped inside Jo realized it was an office.
The desk was clean, a laptop and wide screen monitor the only things taking up space. A credenza behind the desk was polished to a high shine, a stuffed bobcat lounging on top of it.
At least, she was pretty sure it was stuffed. It looked pretty freaking real.
Daniel placed his cowboy hat on the credenza before taking the seat behind the desk and turning the monitor to face Jo and Chase. Chase took a seat and gestured for Jo to follow suit. Without the hat, Daniel looked like he was about twenty-five with dark blue eyes and sand-colored hair. Very attractive in a young, rugged sort of way.
“I pulled these off of Shorty’s game camera earlier, hadn’t had a chance to tell y’all about them yet.”
Jo watched the screen as Daniel clicked through folders and photos of what looked like nothing but the night. And then Daniel stopped on one, enlarged the photo to full size, and sat back.
She looked at the dark image on the screen, then to Chase. “Is that what I think it is?”
Chase nodded. “That’s the second black bear this month.”
“I didn’t think we had bears in this part of the state,” Jo said.
“We do, they’re just not incredibly common. With the drought the past few years they’ve been coming further east out of west Texas and the Big Bend area. They’ve also been coming up from Mexico. We have quite a bit of water on the ranch, what with the Devils River bordering it on one side, not to mention feeders everywhere.” He turned to Daniel. “Have you let Miranda know?”
Daniel nodded. “Yup. She’s out in Comstock today, said she probably wouldn’t be able to get down here ‘til tomorrow. She wants to take a look at Shorty first and the area around it, see if she can figure out where they’re coming in from. She’s debating between trapping them and taking them somewhere else, or tagging them to study them.”
Jo watched Chase as he mulled that over. “I’ll let Miranda form her own opinion first, but there’s a lot to consider. It’s their breeding season right now, which means we could have bear cubs come January.”
“Which means a pregnant, hibernating mama bear during busy season.”
Chase nodded. “I don’t want to drive them out of their natural habitat, but we have to take safety into consideration. And I really don’t want Miranda and Texas Parks and Wildlife jumping on our asses if one of our guests sees one and gets trigger happy, thinking he’s taking home a trophy.”
“They’re endangered, right?” Jo asked, trying to recall what little knowledge she had of black bears, which wasn’t much.
“Yes, so they can’t legally be hunted. If one of our guests was to kill one we could lose our license, permits and be shut down. There’s also that whole threatened species thing, too. We manage our wildlife population, which means helping threatened species flourish, among other things.”
Daniel tilted his head towards the screen. “There are a couple of others here I thought you might like to see, too.”
Jo watched as the photos changed from night to early morning. Daniel stopped on one, and she gasped. “Is that a baby buffalo?”
Chase smiled. “Correct again. We’ve been waiting to see if we had any this year. This one’s the first we’ve caught on the trail cams so far.”
Daniel smiled. “It gets better.”
He clicked through a few other photos until he stopped on a photo of three white tail does, four small fawns close by, their legs long and gangly and their fur dotted with ivory colored spots. Chase’s smile widened, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and Jo fought to keep her heart at a steady pace in her chest.
Good Lord the man was sexy when he smiled.
“We’re seeing signs of a good fawn crop this year. Early, too.”
Daniel nodded and closed the photos. “That, we are. Figured you’d want to see those. Good and not so good.”
They all three stood and Chase turned to Jo. “Wanna see some of it? We don’t have time to tour all of it, but I can show you around a little bit.”
She smiled. “I would love to.”
~~*~~
Chase turned and grabbed a set of keys off a hook on the wall. “We’re gonna take Shirley. Radio me if you need anything.”
He resisted the urge to grab Jo’s hand as they left the office.
Bears and bison and white tails. Oh my. And here they’d all figured this summer was going to be quiet.
They entered the barn and Chase led them to Shirley, a two-seater utility vehicle that was used primarily by staff to get around the ranch for fun and minor projects. Before he climbed onto the seat he checked the gun boot across the back of the roll cage, made sure the rifle inside was on safe and loaded. Satisfied, he shoved it back into the boot and climbe
d onto the seat.
“Can you open the glove box and make sure there’s a first aid kit and box of thirty ought six in there?”
Jo opened the small glove box. “I see a red kit with a first aid cross on it.” She reached in and shook the box of bullets. “And it looks like we’re good to go on thirty ought six.”
She closed the glove box and he started the engine, released the brake and moved out of the barn. “Have you hunted before?”
She shook her head. “Nope. My dad’s idea of hunting included rare texts and libraries. Mom’s idea of hunting…well…she was a different type of maneater.”
Chase turned the UTV onto a well-worn trail, away from the main buildings and towards one of his favorite places on the ranch.
“What’s Shorty?” Jo asked as they bounced along the rutted, rocky trail, dust kicking up behind them.
“One of our feeders. It’s the shortest one we have, thus, Shorty.”
“You name the feeders?” Amusement laced her voice.
“It helps us keep them straight.”
“Makes sense.”
He grinned. “We thought so.”
Jo gestured towards the wide expanse of scrub brush and cacti surrounding them and asked, “So how in the world did you get involved with this?”
“Well, you know Matt and I grew up hunting. As kids we would stay up late some nights, dreaming of owning a ranch where we could raise cattle and have horses and hunt when we wanted without having to pay for a deer lease. This place was foreclosed upon a few years ago. Being so big, and with the economy being what it’s been, no one bit and it went to auction. Owen heard about it from a client, mentioned it to me. I mentioned it to Matt, who mentioned it to his agent, who’s also a good friend of his. We decided to give it the old college try—why not? If we bid and lost, we were out nothing, but if we bid and won we could potentially get this place at a steal. Needless to say, we won. And with that, here we are.”
He killed the engine and opened a toolbox on the inside of the dump bed of the UTV and pulled out two pairs of snake gaiters. Chase handed one pair to Jo and said, “You might want to put these on. Just in case we come across any rattlers.”
