“Zannah?” Brady prompted her.
She blinked. “Oh, all right. Time for you to make the acquaintance of a few bovines.”
Zannah quickly texted Phoebe and Chet to tell them where she’d be.
“Um, which horse will I be riding?” His face was a model of reluctance. His hands twitched then settled at his waist. She wondered if he was resisting the urge to rub his backside where he’d landed in the dust yesterday.
“None. We’re only going over to the nearest pasture.” She gave him an innocent smile. “Surely even a blistered tenderfoot like you can go that far.”
“I’m sure I can,” he answered firmly.
Zannah had to admit she liked the way he always had an answer to give her.
As they crossed the yard, she looked around automatically, checking to see what everyone was doing. It was always important to make sure everyone was busily engaged in something productive, not given idle time to get into trouble, especially kids.
She said as much to Brady, who replied, “Probably need more activities for them. Does anybody do hot air balloon rides around here?”
“No, and we aren’t going to be the ones to start.”
“Be profitable.”
The fact that he was sounding so reasonable—yet again—annoyed her even more. “Balloons would frighten the livestock, send them running.”
“Stampede, huh?”
She didn’t like the way he said that, as if it was something to be shrugged off lightly. “You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to turn a herd of panicked cattle.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, lifting his hands in surrender. “We’ll put that idea on the back burner.”
“Where it can set itself on fire,” she retorted, ignoring the grin he was giving her.
Once they reached the pasture, Zannah opened the gate, then closed it behind them. There were about three dozen head nearby, eating and relaxing. She loved the peacefulness of the scene.
“All right,” Brady said, looking around in exactly the way she thought a businessman would when assessing what he needed to learn in order to make a profit, then felt a little ashamed of that thought when he went on. “Start with the basics. What kind of cows are these?”
“Cattle,” she corrected. “Cows are females. Before their first calf is born, a cow is called a heifer. Males are called bulls or steers.”
One part of Zannah’s mind wondered why someone would be willing to invest a significant amount of money in an industry he barely knew. Another part was glad he was willing to learn.
“What breed are they?”
“Mixed breed, but mostly Angus-based beef.”
She walked up to a cow who was lying in the grass with several others.
“You don’t have to worry about approaching a cow the way you do with a horse. They can see almost three hundred sixty degrees and smell you coming as much as six miles away.”
She knelt down and laid a hand on the animal’s rump. Brady crouched beside her.
“Do they have names?”
“They’re not milk cows, Brady. They’re beef cattle. You don’t give a name to something you plan to eat, or sell to eat.”
One of the nearby cows made a rumbling noise.
“Did she just fart at us?” he asked, laughing. “There goes the ozone layer.”
“Are you a third grader?” Zannah asked. “That was a burp, which is what the real concern is to the environment.”
“Burps,” he said, around a laugh. “Wait till I tell my brothers.”
“Great. A whole family of third-grade boys.”
Brady stood up. “I think I’ve seen enough for now.” He bent and offered his hand to help her up.
Zannah was capable of standing up on her own, but she knew he was being polite. She placed her hand in his, aware of how smooth it was against her growing calluses. Self-consciously, she pulled away, and, as she did, she saw a faint smile flicker on his lips, making her wonder if he knew what she was thinking.
“What’s next, Zannah?” he asked.
Her gaze shot up to meet his. For a second, she didn’t know what he meant. Was he asking what was next for them? No, of course not, her common sense corrected her.
She made a production of dusting off her jeans. “What do you mean?”
“What else do you need to show me here at Eaglecrest now that I’ve gotten up close and personal with cows?”
“We need to go for a ride, see the full scope of the ranch and all its operations.”
“Horseback?”
She had to smile at the dread in his tone. “No, although you and Belinda need to kiss and make up at some point. But today, we have a four-wheeler with nice padded seats. Come on. I’ll show you.”
As they left the cattle behind, she went on, “I’ll take you for a ride around Eaglecrest and you can see the entire property.”
“You’ll drive?”
Zannah shot him a sideways glance as she tried to decipher his bland expression and even tone.
“It’s my four-wheeler.”
He gave her a steady look.
“At least until you write a check and are a real partner,” she added, annoyed. “I’ve been driving quads on this ranch since I was twelve.”
He held up both hands. “I believe you.”
But still, he questioned her ability. Somehow that was more irritating than anything else he’d said or done in the two days she’d known him.
She threw her hands in the air. “Then why are you determined to doubt that I can drive one?”
His lips gave that odd little twist she’d noticed a couple of times before. “I’m not. I’m doubting my ability to let someone else take the wheel.”
With a startled laugh, she said, “Get used to it, Gallagher. I’m not sure what kind of jobs and situations you’ve been in before, but this is a whole new world.” She raised her eyebrows in a challenging look and thrust out her jaw. “This is Zannah’s house.”
She didn’t wait for a response but walked faster toward the garage. Brady had to quicken his pace to keep up.
In the garage, she walked to the newer four-wheeler. After checking the gas gauge and the tires, she snagged a couple of bottles of water from a cooler by the door, handed one to him and slid behind the wheel.
“We’ve visited the herd, but there’s plenty more to see. Buckle up,” she ordered, her irritation still simmering.
He meekly obeyed, then grabbed onto the roll bar to steady himself as they began to move.
“Does anyone drive that one?” he asked, pointing to the older quad she’d passed over. It was bigger and would have accommodated his long legs better.
“Needs work. It’s not in the budget right now.”
“Hello,” he said, pointing a thumb toward his own chest. “Car dealership, auto parts stores. I’ve got some mechanic’s skills. I’ll take a look at it.”
“Good. I won’t have to pay you, then. And, since you’re determined to be essential to this operation, you won’t mind paying for any parts you need out of your own pocket.”
“I’ll be sure to keep the receipts.”
“You do that, and then give them to my dad. That way I’ll never see them and won’t have to reimburse you.”
Brady answered with a crack of laughter as she wheeled the vehicle out of the yard and onto a narrow track leading away from the ranch buildings.
CHAPTER FIVE
BRADY TURNED HIS body in the seat so he could watch her and the scenery at the same time. Cedar and pine trees, cottonwoods and willows slipped past as she told him about the terrain, what to expect when it rained too much for the creeks that fed into the San Ramon River to handle the overflow, the floods they’d had and the droughts. Her love for the ranch, and her pride in it, echoed in every word she said. It was obvious that even during the years she’d be
en gone, she had kept up with the goings on at the ranch.
The country they were rolling through was breathtaking, but Zannah was much more intriguing as she talked about the struggles her family had overcome to stay on Eaglecrest and make it successful.
“I’ll take you over to the original homestead sometime. It’s amazing to look at the small scale of that house and realize that all of this started there.” She lifted a hand from the wheel, and with a sweeping gesture, indicated the area around them.
Brady admired the pride in her face, the quiet joy she took in Eaglecrest. An odd feeling sifted through him, and it took him a minute to realize it was simple envy, something that he, with his admittedly privileged life, had never felt before. It was so foreign to him that it took him a while to pinpoint the reason.
A sense of place, he decided. His family had moved often because of his father’s business interests. There was no one place he could point to and say, “That’s mine. It’s been in my family for decades.” Somehow that hadn’t mattered until he’d arrived here.
Knowing he needed to give this a great deal more thought, he smiled at Zannah and said, “Sure. I’d like to see the original homestead.”
He was going to ask more about her ancestors who had first settled this land, but right now they seemed less important than Zannah herself. While she was relaxed and driving over the land she loved, she might be willing to answer some personal questions. If he could ask in something other than a ham-fisted way.
“I understand how much you love it here, so what made you leave? Did you ever intend to come back?”
She shot him a glance. “How much has my dad told you?”
He lifted his hands in an innocent gesture. “That’s it. That’s all Gus told me, which is why I want to know more.”
Zannah looked at him again, as if she was measuring the sincerity of his question. She was a smart woman. No doubt she would tell him barely enough to be polite and to satisfy his curiosity, but not enough to show she really trusted him.
But she surprised him by saying, “I don’t know that I even had a long-term plan. Social work was something my mom and I had talked about often. It’s a way to help people without being in medicine or teaching. I knew I wasn’t suited to either of those professions.”
“But it’s as emotionally draining and demanding.”
“Yes, but—” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “That was one of the reasons it appealed to me. It took up all my mental and physical energy, and even more so when I realized the job and I didn’t fit each other.”
“So,” Brady said slowly, “instead of trying to make things easier for yourself, or phoning it in like some people do when they are overwhelmed, you tried harder to succeed?”
She shot him a swift sideways glance and hesitated before she responded, as if she was examining his question for hidden traps. He could tell her there were none. He was simply curious.
“It affected people’s lives,” she said with a little smile. “And their taxes paid my salary.”
Brady was going to ask another question when she turned suddenly onto a steep, deeply rutted track that appeared too narrow for even a four-wheeler.
Realizing their personal conversation had come to an abrupt end, he glanced down at the sheer drop-off on his side of the vehicle, and said, “Um, Zannah, are you sure you should...?”
She ignored him and gently pressed on the gas.
The upward track was even more spine jarring than it had first appeared. Brady held on tight.
They topped a ridge and rolled onto a wide mesa that gave stunning views of the valleys below. The White Mountains, row upon row, disappeared into the distance. Zannah stopped the quad, and Brady, enthralled, stepped out to experience the full impact of the scenery.
“This is amazing,” he said, turning in a slow circle to take it all in.
Zannah came to stand beside him. “My family used to bring picnics up here in the summers when I was a kid. It was the perfect place to play, although we lost many a Frisbee and softball over the side.” Her fond smile took in the whole area, which he guessed was about ten acres. “It was never too windy up here because of that cliff.” She nodded toward a high ridge that rose up behind them, the only feature keeping the view from being a full 360 degrees of breathtaking majesty.
“Does this place have a name?”
“Sure.” She gestured for him to follow her, and they walked several hundred feet to the north. She pointed to a through-and-through opening near the top of the cliff.
“My great-grandfather thought Eagle’s Eye or Needle’s Eye was a little too obvious, so he called it Hawk’s Eye.”
“Perfect,” Brady said. “Hawk’s Eye on Eaglecrest.”
“It’s a very special place to our family. We still have picnics up here when my nieces come. Joelle and Emma will be here in a few days, and I know they’ll want to come up here. Maybe we’ll invite you, too.”
“I’d like that,” he said absently, his mind racing ahead with plans and possibilities.
They spent the next half hour on Hawk’s Eye Mesa, walking around, examining the topography, looking over the sides and into the valleys.
“Is there a source of water up here?”
Zannah frowned. “Well, no. We’re at the top of the mesa. I’ve heard that there’s an underground aquifer at the bottom of the cliff. But even if we located it, the cost to pump water up here would be astronomical, so we’ve never tapped into it. I suspect it’s as elusive as the Lost Teamsters Mine.”
He wandered away, his feet moving slowly as his mind raced. He was aware of her gaze following him, but he was lost in his own thoughts. He began to feel excited, the way he always did when a plan started to form in his mind.
When he pointed out a trail much less steep than the one they’d ascended, Zannah said, “We used to come up that way, but it washed out at the bottom a few years ago, so we can’t use it anymore.”
“That’s too bad. It must have been much easier.” Brady walked over to study the rutted track that had brought them to the top.
Watching him, Zannah said, “Worried I can’t get us back down?”
He loved the challenge in her voice and couldn’t resist a comeback. “I can drive if you want me to.”
“I’ve got it, thanks. You ready to go?”
“Yup.”
They bumped over the track that took them to the better road they’d been following earlier.
“We’ve had success raising hay in this little valley,” Zannah said, stopping at a pullout that overlooked a lush, green meadow.
“Is this ready for harvesting?” he asked.
“You mean baling? Almost.” She shifted into lowest gear. “We have several fields planted like this, because we’ll need at least a thousand bales of hay in the winter. Let’s take a closer look.”
“Down there?” he asked. The front of the vehicle pointed straight up into the air as she drove over the road’s edge, then straight down onto what looked like another steep decline with no track or trail to follow.
“Yes, it’s much better to be able to see everything up close.” She gave him a bright smile as she drove over some rocks that tilted the vehicle far to the right.
Brady tried to estimate how close they were to tipping over, but Zannah didn’t even break a sweat as she turned the wheel to the left and eased them down the slope.
“I was fine from the top. I can see...” His voice trailed off as he considered that silent prayer might be a better use of his time than talking. Or screaming.
Brady tightened his grip on the roll bar and braced his left hand against the dashboard as he shot a look at Zannah’s face. Her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. Her face was alight with excitement. Her hands were steady on the wheel, and her foot only rode the brake enough to keep them from descending too fast.
&nb
sp; Everything about her, from the look on her face to the way she was sitting, told him she was enjoying this immensely.
When they arrived at the bottom, she gave him a triumphant look, and he realized how much he had underestimated this woman. However, he didn’t plan to make the mistake of telling her that.
* * *
DURING THE NEXT few days, life at Eaglecrest settled into a routine. After a pair of uncomfortable meetings with the staff, who asked many questions and got only a few concrete answers, they carried on with business as usual, while Brady, with Zannah’s help, tried to figure out what Eaglecrest’s business as usual actually was. The two of them finished sorting through all the papers and put the collected information into the bookkeeping program.
Every day since those meetings, she had seen Brady talking to staff members, asking Chet about the horses, his days on the rodeo circuit and his success in teaching roping. He’d also spent time with Phoebe and even sought out members of the kitchen staff. He was getting to know people who seemed to appreciate his efforts, although they were still hesitant to trust him—exactly as she was, Zannah thought as she went about her daily tasks. She knew he wasn’t simply being friendly but was performing his due diligence of finding out exactly how everything and everyone at Eaglecrest worked.
She asked him about it when they were both in the office one afternoon.
“Is this how you always work? Talking to all the employees, getting to know them?”
He gave her a surprised look. “Of course. I long ago learned it’s all about the employees. If they’re not happy, they won’t stay.”
“And that will kill your profits.”
Brady answered with a steady look that made her feel ashamed. “It’s more than that. It affects their lives. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s different here since, for some of them, this is their home. In a way, they’re tied to the land.” He shrugged. “Never experienced that before.”
“Because your family moved so often?”
“Yeah. It’s made me rootless, I guess. Finn and Miles, too.”
He changed the subject, but Zannah was troubled by his admission. How soon would it be before his itchy feet caused him to move on? She knew there were conditions of winning his dad’s challenge that had to be fulfilled, but what if he lost? How soon would it be before he sold out and left? And if that happened, where on earth would she get the money to buy him out?
Rancher to the Rescue Page 7
