Still smiling, I rubbed Rosa’s shoulder. “I’ll try harder next time.”
“Take a break,” she replied, while studying the monitor. I knew what that meant. Rosa liked to look things over without me lurking nearby. She knew those reports better than I did, anyway.
I strolled to the front porch from the door to my office and stepped out. I quietly closed the screen door and was instantly slammed with a solid wall of heat. My lips curved. Summer was hitting us sooner than usual, which was just fine with me. I walked to the stairs that led down into the yard and felt the sun kiss my shoulders and what was exposed of my chest. In the distance, I saw Rosa’s husband brushing down his favorite mare. The white vinyl fence that separated us was in need of a good cleaning, so I walked around the side of the house to the garage.
Rosa and Clint had recently hired a teenager named Farley to mow the lawn and it was obvious that he was still getting the hang of the riding lawn mower, with all the grass and mud kicked up all over the bottom half of the fence. I made a mental note to show him how to mow more efficiently.
I slid my mud-caked, burgundy polka-dot rubber boots on over my skinny jeans, grabbed a bucket, brush, some old towels, soap, and a giant sponge and lugged it all out to the fence.
Clint lifted his head and saw my determined walk out to where he was. “Are you fixing to play in the mud?” he called out to me.
“Nope, but preparing for it!” I replied, plopping the bucket down. “Are you going to be out here with Buttermilk much longer?” I asked, gesturing towards his honey-colored horse with the brush in my hand.
“Just finishing up. Grab the power washer, will you? I’ll power wash the fence for you first to make it easier,” he said, leading Buttermilk back to the barn.
“I’ll do it, Clint. Gives me something to do.” I walked back to the garage and grabbed the power washer and the extension cord. Then I grabbed the hose from the side of the house and brought it all back to the fence. After hooking it all up, I started spraying the fence down. Water splashed back onto my legs and trickled down to the inside of my boots. But I could quickly see that Clint was right, the power washer was taking off most of the gunk from the lawn mowers, tractors, dust, and mud. It might seem like a futile task to clean the fence, but with all our upcoming events at the ranch, I knew we had to spruce the place up a bit.
Though it was still early in the day, the heat was strong and with no trees to provide shade, the back of my neck was starting to collect sweat. I bent over at the waist and pulled my long, chestnut-colored hair into a messy bun on top of my head.
Just as I started running a soapy sponge along the fence, I heard Rosa call from the porch. “Annie, do you not understand the definition of a break?”
She knew how to make me laugh. I turned towards her and shielded my eyes from the sun so I could see her, knowing full well her hands would be on her hips. “Apparently not!” I called back.
She meandered her way down the steps. Her limp was still present as she made her way towards me, though it didn’t take any power from her walk. Rosa was in her fifties, short and fit, and the most resilient woman I knew. She’d inherited the ranch from her father and had kept it running like a queen residing over her kingdom. But this queen didn’t wear gowns and often spent time cleaning up horse shit. Her black hair hung in a bob to her shoulders, though the top half was pulled back in a style that was entirely functional. Around her neck was a tied handkerchief, something I should have thought to grab myself.
“Get your skinny butt back in there and fiddle with some numbers. I want projections for next month. I have had three inquiries for boarding and I think I need to add more stalls to the barn.” The reason Rosa and I worked so well is that we both knew how to be brief. We didn’t waste time explaining our thought process because half the time, we practically read each other’s minds.
“I’ll get to it after I finish this section. I want to finish it before noon, so it has time to dry in the sun.”
Rosa allowed me a small smile before swinging an arm around my shoulders. “You’re my favorite, you know that?” She laughed and glanced towards the barn, where her ranch hands were taking care of the boarded horses. Rosa oversaw the operations of the ranch, but I was the only one she worked closely with.
“You mean Farley has been demoted?” I laughed, and gestured to where Farley was currently mowing the area around the pond, down the hill from the house. He was zigzagging across the area adjacent to the beach. He kept glancing all around him, the look of “oops” clearly written across his face.
Rosa sighed. Farley, while clearly inexperienced, was a sweet kid and eager to learn. He’d get there, and we both knew it. “That mess is my fault. He needs to be trained. I need to get around to doing that at some point, but for now I ‘spose we’ll just pretend the zigzags are on purpose.”
“I had that on my mental list. To train him, that is. I can do it this weekend before that family reunion pulls in for a week next weekend.”
“I completely forgot all about that. We’ll have to get the arena ready for them too.”
We both glanced to the fenced arena past the barn. “That’s why I started on the fence. And Dylan knows. He’s going to work on the arena after the rain we’re expecting tonight. I reminded him to wear a mask, too.” Dylan was one of the ranch hands who helped the most in the arena when we had tourists come through.
Rosa’s ranch also boarded horses whose owners couldn’t properly house and care for them themselves. The big house served as a bed and breakfast, with outlying cabins that came in handy when a large party like the family reunion rolled through. I lived in one of the cabins. Most of the ranch hands lived nearby, but Dylan was the only one who also lived in one of the cabins, which was convenient if the horses got out, or if any wild animals ventured onto the property. The inconvenient part about him living a few cabins down from me was that he was a former one-night stand of mine. Though truthfully, it wasn’t all that awkward now, as a deep friendship had grown from that experience.
When I first came to Rosa six years earlier, I behaved a little recklessly. Six had kept me on lockdown for five months until things died down a little. After he’d procured enough documentation for me to live freely under my new, chosen name, Andra Walker, he sat me down and told me he was going to send me to stay with his mother’s friend, Rosa. I knew Six had to get on with his life, and I needed to get on with my own, so he sent me here for employment and a place to live. For a foundation. And, I think he knew I needed a babysitter.
It took me a week before I’d set my sights on Dylan. I know how it sounds. I needed to experience something consensual. I wanted power, I wanted the choice. Call it what you will, but I needed to move forward in all aspects of my life.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make my intentions clear to Dylan before the night I followed him into his cabin. I was a “one and done” sort of girl. That night was the beginning and end of our sexual relationship.
I’m not afraid of love. I’m not scared of the big C word: Commitment. But Six and Rosa are the only two people who know me. Not Andra Walker, but the girl I was before. Cora Mitchell. They know the road I’ve taken. I can’t afford to share that with anyone else, so it’s not fair to play with someone’s feelings if I’m not going to allow them to know the real me. My experience with Dylan reminded me the importance of honesty. I liked having choices, not allowing anyone inside. There was darkness in my soul, abused innocence. My darkness was mine alone to carry; I didn’t want to burden anyone else with it.
After the Monster woke up and found me gone, he reported me to the police as a runaway. When my history of complaints to school counselors surfaced, suspicions were raised about what had really happened to me. The media reported every time the Monster was pulled in for questioning. A warrant was issued for the apartment we lived in, but of course, nothing was found.
As tips stopped coming in, the online sleuths started speculating. I spent those five months with Six in hi
s basement guest room, and that gave me a lot of time to study all the blogs that popped up, the forum threads, all with web detectives hypotheses of what could have happened to me. The most popular hypothesis was that my uncle was involved. But my case was cold; the only thing everyone could agree on was that I had disappeared.
Six coached me on what to say and how to act so I wouldn’t cause doubt in the minds of anyone I encountered. It was the same rehearsed lines over and over.
“I’m estranged from my parents” – which was less suspicious than having deceased parents. All I had to do was gesture towards my multiple piercings and tattoos and it was assumed that I had strict, disapproving parents.
“I was homeschooled” – which made not having class reunions or close friendships understandable.
“I grew up in Los Angeles” – big city. I studied enough maps to come up with a neighborhood that the fictional Andra Walker had lived in. Rosa and I took a trip to Los Angeles after I’d been working for her for a year under the guise of visiting my family. We chose an easy to remember neighborhood and if I played off the sheltered life story, it was believable. And Six had moved to the west coast a few years after my disappearance, so he was a good frame of reference for me to share experiences that weren’t actual truth.
Those were the main answers I used. I used them so often in fact, I was starting to believe them myself. It was a nicer story than the nonfiction version of my life:
I ran away from my uncle after years of sexual abuse. My mom died a tragic death and my dad was a nobody.
I went to a normal school, tried to report my abusive uncle and when it backfired on me, the abuse escalated.
I grew up in a town in Michigan that still believes I was murdered by my uncle.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t host a big, dramatic pity party. My life was good. I had Six, I had Rosa, and once Dylan got over the fact that I essentially used him, we became good friends. I had Clint, I had the other employees on the ranch, the horses, and a cozy little home. But most importantly, I had a life, and choices.
“Girl, what’s in your head that’s got you so distracted?” Rosa cut through my thoughts.
I shook my head, and tried to focus on something else I needed to think about. “Running over the guest list for this weekend,” I replied, looking down at my boots. Rosa was the only person in the world who could tell when I was lying.
She didn’t say anything for a moment. I waited for her to call me out on my lie, but she just sighed before asking, “Cabins or big house?”
“Three in the big house and one in the cabins. The cabin rental is for a month.”
Rosa shoved her hands in her front pocket and grabbed a sponge from the bucket. “That’s right, the writer. Wants a quiet place to finish his manuscript.” She frowned as she wrung out the sponge. “He’s the one waiting for his fancy new house he just bought to be completed.” She started where I left off on the fence, so I grabbed an old rag to work beside her.
“That’s him. Julian Jameson. Goes by J.J. He made sure to make note of that on his reservation.” I might have said that last part snidely. I experienced my fair share of snobs, being an hour from the popular Coloradan ski resorts. But something about Julian Jameson’s email correspondence had turned me off. Writers in general made me nervous, but snobby ones made me quickly lose my patience.
Rosa laughed. “Let’s see if he likes when you blatantly refuse to call him what he prefers. Kill him with kindness, sweetheart.”
Rosa knew I would never be intentionally rude to someone providing me a paycheck. But I also wouldn’t put up with pretentious assholes. “You get me, Rosa. And that’s why you’re my favorite.”
Rosa laughed. “Yeah, and the feeling is mutual. Just don’t tell Clint.” She winked, before heading back into the big house.
“Or Farley!” I called after her. I heard her laugh before I turned around and finished the section of fence I was working on.
After finishing the fence, I ran another report for Rosa and then went into the supply closet off the kitchen to grab a few things to stock the cabin being rented by the mystery author later that day. All of our guests were treated to a welcome basket that had brochures featuring local attractions, some of Rosa’s famous huckleberry popcorn, a keychain with Seven Diamond Ranch’s logo, and other Seven Diamond Ranch swag.
Loading some fresh towels and toiletries into my messenger bag, I glanced at my watch. It was just past noon, which still gave me two hours until check in for the cabin’s month-long guest.
There were fifteen cabins on Rosa’s property, with all of them being set just to the edge of the forest that the entire property was surrounded with. The first fourteen cabins were studio-style, with open areas for the bedroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen. The only actual room in the cabins was the bathroom, which was unusually large. The last cabin, which was the one I lived in full time, had been converted four years earlier with Rosa and Dylan’s help. I’d wanted a separate space for my bedroom. I sacrificed having a bathtub in the original bathroom to make adequate space for the bedroom and installed a stall shower in the bathroom instead. I sometimes missed not having the bath to leisurely lounge around in, but living and working on a ranch kept most of my leisure time occupied.
Each cabin was spaced about thirty feet apart with gravel driveways between them, to allow for some semblance of privacy, though they weren’t soundproof. Which was why I’d chosen cabin fifteen, so my only neighbors were cabin fourteen and the forest beyond the cabins.
The forest served as a reminder of my escape years earlier, something that comforted me. I didn’t often lose myself in thoughts of my former life. I didn’t look behind me as much anymore and I didn’t let myself think too much about the Monster or what became of him. I was safe here, and I was happy. Six visited a few times a year, and Rosa was the foundation of my life. Six knew what he was doing when he sent me to her.
Unlocking cabin ten, I set the basket on the small dining table and brought the towels to the bathroom, pausing to open the blinds and curtains around the cabin. While in the bathroom, I looked at my reflection for a moment. My hair was still in the messy bun on top of my head, with a few tendrils loose, unintentionally framing my face.
I wasn’t naïve or self-conscious about my physical features. I had large, wide, hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and a small mouth, with full lips. I pierced my lower lip on one side and favored a small hoop ring. My mother was Greek, and I had inherited her certain je ne sais quoi that had people pondering my nationality. I still resembled the girl on all the MISSING posters, but I lived far enough away from Michigan to ensure that the chances of someone recognizing me were very minimal. And that lip ring proved enough a distraction that people didn’t get too caught up in the rest of my face.
I turned my head towards the mirror. Today I wore my work face, which was little mascara and lip gloss if I remembered to apply it, with a nice smear of dust gracing my jawline. The nice thing about summer was the tan it gave me, making my need for cover-up or foundation nonexistent. I never knew if I would be crunching numbers, cleaning empty cabins, shoveling hay or horse shit, so I found makeup kind of unnecessary. The horses didn’t care if my lashes were voluminous and they didn’t appreciate lip gloss kisses.
While rubbing the leftover dust on my jawline, I heard the unmistakable sound of tires coming up the gravel road. I knew we weren’t expecting any deliveries, so I slung my messenger bag over one shoulder and walked back to the front door of the cabin I’d left open to see if I recognized the vehicle.
A sleek midnight blue convertible came into sight. The driver, clearly unfamiliar with driving on gravel roads fishtailed up the driveway a bit before slowing to a snail’s pace. I snorted.
Before I knew it, I was stalking out to the entrance of the big house, where the convertible was pulling in to park. As the dust around the car died down, the top of a very dark head of hair came into view. I frowned, trying to figure out who it could b
e, when the door opened, and the driver climbed out.
He was wearing shiny, dark grey shoes. His long legs - he had to be well over six feet tall - came into view as he stood up, allowing his light grey slacks to fall just perfectly from his narrow hips. A white dress shirt was tucked into the slacks, which were secured with a thin black belt. I only had the back view of him as he reached in the backseat to grab something, but what a view it was. This man was not allergic to the gym. Even as covered up by clothing as he was, I could see the muscle tone through his shirt, and the muscles of his forearms, exposed by his rolled up sleeves. His dark hair was short on the sides with a little length on top, and I could just make out some facial hair, at least a couple weeks growth, lining his jawline.
Yum. That’s basically what I was thinking.
And then he turned to face me. His expression when he saw me was stunned. No matter my lack of naiveté about my attractiveness, I knew I wasn’t looking particularly drop-dead gorgeous at the moment, so my guard was up. His expression lasted for just a second before he broke into a smile. The smile crinkled up around his bright brown eyes and his appeal burst through the roof of my suddenly instantaneous desire. I was in trouble.
“See something you like?” he called out.
Big trouble. Clearly, he’d caught me staring. Cocky bastard. Reaffirming my annoyance at his entrance, I stalked closer to him. “Just trying to figure out where you’re headed,” I replied, stopping ten feet from him, making it a point to eye his vehicle and his clothing, confusion clear on my face.
He cocked his head to the side, “Pardon?”
“Well, I don’t know anyone who’d show up to a dude ranch in fancy shoes and clothes fit for an office in a high-rise,” I answered, arms crossing my chest.
He narrowed his eyes at me, but the corners of his lips lifted up in a crooked smile. “Would you prefer I show up in obviously brand-new cowboy boots, jeans fresh from the store, and a goofy hat that wasn’t even broken in yet?”
He Found Me Page 2
