Reno laughed, which did a lot to relax the tension he wore on his face. “Did you give them a treat?”
She harrumphed. “Of course. Carrots and apples all around.”
“Thanks.”
“Now are you sure I can’t get you guys something to eat before you head to bed?”
“I’m fine,” Clint said.
“Me too,” replied Reno. “But I am bushed. I’m headed up. Come on, Dad.”
Clint picked up a small overnight bag by the back door. “Good night, Magda.”
“Night, sir.”
Reno’s parents stayed in Whispering Springs for a week, alternating nights in the hospital. Magda made sure Darren’s room was clean and the bed made for whichever parent was staying that night. There wasn’t much Magda could do to help Clint and Nadine during their stay, but at least she could make sure there was food if they were hungry and a clean room for them.
The weather was cold the day they left. The wind coming out of Canada was harsh and biting. Reno didn’t go to see them off at the airport, explaining he had too much to do without Darren.
Mitch sent a couple of cowboys over the first few days to give Reno a hand, but even Magda knew that was a stopgap measure. The drive between the ranches was long, and the D&R wasn’t set up to house a working staff. No bunkhouse. No hookups for trailers. Some long-term planning was needed.
The second week Darren was in the hospital, Reno came in for dinner late, close to eight o’clock.
“I was wondering if you got lost,” Magda joked.
Reno parked his hat and coat and collapsed into a kitchen chair. “I am exhausted.”
“I can see that. What’s your plan? You can’t keep this up forever.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t afford to pay someone to work for me and I can’t keep imposing on Mitch or my uncle or Cash for labor.”
She set a bowl of beef stew and cornbread in front of him.
“Looks good,” he said, digging in with gusto. He moaned as he chewed. “So good.”
The moan, deep-chested and raw, made goose bumps jump up on Magda’s arms. She remembered another moan like that, only that one hadn’t been about her food, but about what her mouth had been doing to Reno’s cock.
“You okay?” he asked. “You got all quiet.”
“Fine. I was just thinking. I know you’ve turned me down before, but I could help more outside. I’ve never mucked a stall, but I’m sure I could.”
He laughed. “That’s the worst job on the ranch.”
She shrugged. “You remember washing your underwear?”
That made him laugh harder.
“That was mean,” he finally gasped out.
Chuckling, she said, “My point being, let me do more.”
He nodded. “Maybe. I think I’ll move the cattle closer to the house. Not that they will care one way or the other, but it’d help if I didn’t have to travel so far every day to see to them. But that you can’t do. I’ll get a couple of my uncle’s guys to come over this week to help with the move. After that, I might be able to handle most of it alone, or with minimal help.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“If nothing else goes wrong, I’ll be okay until we can get Darren back on his feet and back to ranching.”
“And I can help with the animals, you know.”
Reno gave her a sideways glance. “Maybe. We’ll see.”
If there was a phrase Magda hated, it was we’ll see. In every foster home she’d been in, “We’ll see,” meant, “No, but I just don’t want to say it.”
Well, he would see…see that she was more than just a woman who could dust.
Chapter Eight
Exhaustion became Reno’s middle name. The question of the hour was how could he keep up all the work without another pair of hands?
He’d gotten spoiled having Magda here to keep him in clean clothes and the kitchen cabinets full of food. So sending her on her way, as had been his plan before Darren’s accident, was now scratched.
Still, she was a problem.
The nightly erotic dreams about her compounded his fatigue. Sometimes, he woke so confused he was unable to separate his dreams from reality. One morning, he almost kissed her when he went in the kitchen for coffee, but he passed it off as a joke, which she believed, or at least pretended to.
This morning, he’d again awoken murky and rattled. A strange whistling sound echoed off the walls. As he lay there, he realized it was the wind. A heavy, strong wind.
And there was something else. Cracking sounds against the windows. He pulled back his thick curtains. His gaze was met with a white-out vision. The television weather chick had missed the forecast…again. The slight flurries she’d promised had become a couple of inches of snow covering his truck and the ground around it. If the snow didn’t slow soon, this was going to be a nasty day. But he could handle one nasty day, or at least one nastier than usual.
He dressed in haste, knowing that he had to get a jump on today. The aroma of fresh coffee met him at the top of the stairs, which brought a smile to his lips. Yeah, having Magda here was killing him. But damn, he really liked it. He’d just have to figure out how to convince his cock that she just wasn’t that into him.
“Morning,” she said over her shoulder when he entered the kitchen.
“You mean, good snow morning, don’t you?”
She looked at him. “It’s pretty.”
“Sure is, as long as you get to stay in the house and watch it through the window.”
“We could have a snowball fight later. I bet I could cream you.”
“No take. You might cry if you damaged my pretty face.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah. That’d be me. Crybaby central. I made oatmeal for breakfast. I figured you needed something warm that would stick to your ribs. The offer to help still stands.”
“I’ve got it under control. No problem.”
He really did need another pair of hands, but not Magda’s. He’d have to think about who he could hire for cheap to cover for Darren.
After breakfast was done and the dishes washed, Magda went up to Reno’s room to straighten up and see if anything needed to be done. Out his bedroom window, she could see him driving the tractor with a round of hay jutting out from the lifter. She could do that. Drive that tractor. Had to be as easy as riding her Harley. Picking up the bale of hay might take her a little practice. But it looked fun…if it weren’t in the high teens for temperatures.
Apparently, the cows were pretty smart when it came to chow. As Reno unrolled the round, the cows lined up to start scarfing it down.
She’d just pulled the quilt up on the bed as the first ping hit the window. Damn. The sleet had stopped about an hour ago. Sounded like it was back.
She stepped back up to the window and opened the curtain to see what looked like sheets of ice falling. Yep, the sleet was back, but this time with a vengeance. A thick pelting of ice landed in the yard on top of the snow accumulation. Both snowflakes and ice pellets were falling now.
Magda headed to her bedroom to change into something warmer and grab the heavy winter boots she used when she had to ride in bad weather. She was not going to let Reno kill himself trying to do everything alone.
The wind was worse than she expected, pushing her backward when she stepped onto the back porch. Leaning into the wind, she started walking toward the barn. Wind-produced tears rolled from her eyes and froze on her cheeks. If nothing else, she could muck the stalls and get the horses settled for the weather.
She knew what to do. She’d seen it done maybe a million times when she’d been with Zeb during the time she worked for Travis as his housekeeper. Come on, she told herself. It’s getting a pitchfork and tossing out the manure. How hard could it be?
She found the wheelbarrow and pitchfork
and rolled to Layla’s door. After moving the mare into an empty stall, Magda got to work.
Mucking was so much worse than she’d imagined. Stinky, dirty work. But hay lifting, shaking and pitching made her smile, because she could hear Zeb’s voice in her head as he chewed on a cowboy for not doing the mucking properly.
Cleaning Layla’s stall took a while, but then doing something new usually did. Watching something done and having to duplicate it were totally different activities.
After dumping the collected contents in the manure pile outside the barn, she was surprised when the wheelbarrow wheel bumped into a boot as she rolled back inside. A wet, ice-encrusted boot worn by a cold, snow-encrusted cowboy.
“What are you doing?” Reno asked, following a long sigh.
“Helping. If you scoot over, I can get back to it.”
“Give me that wheelbarrow.” He tried to grab the handles but she moved them off to the side.
“Nope. Now move.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Do I get in your kitchen and make a mess? No, I do not. Do I try to hip bump you over in the laundry room to get to the washer? Don’t answer. You know I don’t. So what are you doing out here in the freezing-ass cold in my barn?”
Magda leaned on the pitchfork and stared at him. “It’s like this. I like my job. I don’t want to look for another one, or at least not right now. But if you keep up this pace, you’re gonna die, and how would that affect me? I’d be out of a job and have to live with Zeb and watch him make goo-goo eyes at his girlfriend.”
The corner of Reno’s mouth twitched as though he was restraining a smile. “So you’re out here to keep me from dying?”
Raising her chin and giving him the best snobbish look she could, she replied, “That’s right.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Well, who am I to keep someone from saving my life?” He stepped to the side and waved her through.
“Thank you.”
She pushed the wheelbarrow up to Gordo’s stall, which happened to be empty. Damn. Should have started here. Would have been way easier.
And to make matters more uncomfortable, Reno leaned against the wall and watched. Handling a pitchfork wasn’t her strongest asset. And sifting through the straw for the manure treats left by the horses wasn’t easy. But she’d be damned if she’d let Reno Montgomery intimidate her.
After about five minutes of studying her, Reno nodded. “Good job. Why don’t I give you a hand? I’m pretty much done for today.”
“Seriously? You could have mentioned that you’d finished outside and were getting to this.”
He grinned. “You looked like you were having so much fun. Who am I to take that from you?”
“Grrr.”
With a laugh, he hip bumped her. “I’ll get started on Archie’s stall. We’ll be done in no time.”
Considering that Reno could do two stalls in the time it took her for one, they were done in a flash. But afterwards, Magda wanted nothing more than a hot shower with her lavender-scented soap. She wondered if she would ever get the stench out of her nose.
A surprised awaited them when they exited the barn. The snow and ice was heavier than before. Magda hadn’t thought that was even possible. The frigid wind pushed them up the hill to the house as though there were a huge hand on their backs shoving them along.
They’d just stepped onto the back porch when the first crack resounded behind them. Magda jumped.
“Gunshot?”
Reno looked over the pastures. “Don’t think so.”
Then another crack split the air.
“There.” Reno pointed to some trees near the road. “That limb just broke off. The ice has coated everything, and I guess some of the smaller limbs are going to take the brunt of the hit.”
“Great. As long as nobody is aiming to shoot me, I’m going inside and directly to the shower.”
“Want me to scrub your back?”
The offer was made in jest, or at least to Magda’s ears it was. But to her heart? It flopped around in her chest like a fish on a line. Her sex clenched at the image of a naked Reno.
She stepped inside. “Thanks, but I’ve got it covered.”
The grin he gave her was total devil. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”
“I’d never say that,” she said with a laugh. She hurried away before she could change her mind.
After her shower, as she put on warmer clothes, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved that Reno had headed up to shower alone or depressed that he’d headed up to shower alone.
She’d left a beef stew in the oven, so getting dinner on the table was basically baking some cornbread to go with it. As she lifted the heavy iron skillet from the oven with the baked bread, her shoulders let it be known that today’s mucking was not on their to-do lists for the future. Unsteadily, she sat the skillet on the stove with a loud clank.
“You okay?” Reno asked.
“Fine.”
“You’re moving a little stiff. You didn’t hurt yourself today, did you?”
The girl from the streets, the one that didn’t show weakness, the one who always wore tough on her face to keep from getting beaten up by the really bad street people, answered, “No, I didn’t hurt myself. Jeez, give me a break.” She flexed her right biceps, which wasn’t as big as his but popped up nonetheless. “I got me some muscles too.”
Reno laughed softly. “Yeah, tough girl. I see your muscles. I also saw the way you set that heavy pan down. After dinner, let me take a look. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
She blew out a loud and long frustrated breath. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
He muttered something under his breath. She didn’t catch it completely but she thought it might have been, “I’ll always worry about you.”
Reno ate his stew, mad at Magda for possibly hurting herself doing his job, but more mad at himself for letting her. After dinner, he insisted that she put an ice pack on that shoulder and he’d clean the kitchen. Of course she argued. He’d expected nothing less from her. In the end, she grabbed the ice pack he kept shoving at her and went into the living room.
It was possible Reno spent more than seven minutes cleaning up after dinner, but he doubted it. Best described as spotless, the only things needing cleaning were two bowls, two spoons, two glasses and a knife. He knew better than to tackle the cast-iron skillet, so he covered the leftover cornbread with aluminum foil and left it for her. The stew was already in a deep casserole dish with a glass lid, so he shoved that in the refrigerator. Done. Easy as pie.
Pie? Yum. He wished he had some. Since Magda had arrived, there were almost always cookies or pies or something sweet to eat. He started looking.
“What are you doing?”
Reno’s head caught the corner of the cabinet door when he jumped in response to the question.
“Who? Me?” When he turned toward Magda, he was sure his face looked as guilty as the time his mom had caught him and Darren with a Playboy magazine.
“Who else is going through the cabinets if not you?”
“Oh, yeah.” He gave her his guilty chuckle. “Looking for something sweet.”
“You still hungry?”
“No, but my sweet tooth is killing me.”
With the ice wrap on her right shoulder, she walked to the deep freezer and opened it. From under a couple of packages of frozen purple hull peas and a package of frozen sausage links, she pulled out a plastic container. She popped off the lid. Inside were balls of uncooked cookie dough.
“I got bored one day,” she said with a shake of her head. “I made way too much dough, so I froze these to cook when needed.”
“That’s too much trouble. Don’t worry about it.”
“Ha. Watch this.”
Magda removed a small glass cooking dish, dropped in a couple of balls of dough
and put the dish in the microwave for forty seconds. When it was done, she put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
“There,” she said. “One gooey cookie with ice cream.”
Reno moaned with the first bite.
God, he loved this woman.
He stopped chewing. What? He didn’t love Magda. He loved her cooking. Yeah. That was it.
“Taste okay? You’ve got a funny look on your face.”
“Sorry,” Reno replied. “I was in nirvana for a second,” he lied.
Magda restored the cookie dough and ice cream and went back into the living room. Reno followed, scooping and eating and moaning the whole way. As his spoon scraped the last drops of melted ice cream and the very few crumbs of cookie, he sighed and then licked his spoon.
“That was delicious. Don’t show me how to do those. I’ll gain fifty pounds by Valentine’s Day.” He dropped on the end of the sofa. “How’s the shoulder feeling?”
She rotated it in a circle. “Better. I guess I’m a little more out of shape than I thought.”
“Scoot over here. Let me have a look.” He patted the sofa cushion next to him. When she didn’t move, he added, “I promise not to gnaw on your neck.”
She snarled. “Ha. That damn hickey you gave me last May looked like I’d had a fling with a vampire.”
He grinned and loudly snapped his teeth together a couple of times. “Chomp. Chomp.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Scout’s honor. I won’t bite you.” The fact he’d never been a scout wasn’t relevant to the conversation, was it? “And I brought lotion,” he said, holding up the bottle of hand lotion she kept on the window sill by the sink.
She scooted down the couch. “Let me guess. You were never a scout, right?”
He snorted. “I’ll never tell. Now sit still.” He moved his fingers over her shoulder. Pressing only slightly produced a hiss. “That hurt?”
“Not too bad.”
“You are the worst liar ever, Mags. So don’t be looking to go into professional con jobs as a career.”
Texas Bossa Nova (Texas Montgomery Mavericks Book 5) Page 8
