Startled, she turned her chair in Mitch’s direction. She hadn’t realized anyone was there. She still wasn’t getting used to him materializing out of nowhere.
“He thinks he is,” she said, frowning. “Whittaker’s in charge of one group. I have another. Nobody’s really the boss except for Aaron Blackwell, the man who started the firm,” she told Mitch. She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. “I didn’t realize that you were eavesdropping.”
“I wasn’t. You had that guy on speakerphone and I think the horses in the stable heard him,” Mitch quipped. “Sounds like a charmer,” he commented. “He always that pleasant?”
“Even before his wife left him,” Ena replied.
“Well, I can definitely see why his wife left him,” Mitch commented. “Listen, I know your dad’s will said you had to work on the ranch for six months, but it didn’t specifically say constantly.”
She looked at him as they walked out of the house. “What are you getting at?”
“Maybe you could go to Dallas a couple of days a week, hold that guy’s hand, so to speak, if you need to. I wouldn’t want to see you get fired,” he told her.
What he meant was that he didn’t want to see her self-esteem take a beating, even though the whole idea behind Bruce O’Rourke’s will was to get his daughter to change her mind about running the ranch rather than selling it.
“Whittaker can’t fire me,” she told Mitch.
He wondered if she was just saying that because the truth embarrassed her.
“He certainly sounded as if he thought he could,” Mitch said.
“Well, he can’t. Especially since I do have all that vacation time accrued.” She slanted a glance toward Mitch. He meant well and she appreciated that. “But thanks for the thought,” she murmured.
“Don’t mention it,” he told her. “Why don’t you come to the stable and see how Bruce and his new mother are doing?” he urged.
Because of the way her mind had been trained to work, anticipating the worst, Ena immediately thought something had gone wrong. “Is there a problem?”
The smile on his face alleviated her initial anxiety. “On the contrary, I think you helped fill a need in both their lives.”
“You were the one who suggested it,” she reminded him. She didn’t want him to think she could be manipulated with empty flattery.
“I did,” he agreed, “but you were the one who kept encouraging the little guy to keep trying even after he’d been rejected over and over again.”
She looked at him in surprise. “How would you know that?”
“I have my spies,” he teased. And then he said, “Billy told me.”
She jumped to what was, to her, the natural conclusion. “You had him watching me?”
“No,” Mitch replied patiently, “he made that choice on his own. If you ask me, I think that Billy has a crush on you.”
She thought Mitch was kidding, then realized he wasn’t. Ena sighed. That was all she needed: to have a wet-behind-the-ears cowboy following her around like a puppy dog.
“Well, I didn’t ask,” she informed Mitch, dismissing the entire incident.
“Point taken,” the foreman replied with a good-natured grin.
Ena picked up her pace as she walked toward the stables. Despite everything, she was eager to see for herself how well the foal was getting along with his newfound “mother.” She silently admitted that she needed that sort of boost to her frame of mind, which was at the moment, despite what she had said, at a low point thanks to Whittaker. Not to mention the feeling that she was in over her head when it came to the ranch.
The second she walked into the stall, she was saw that the mare was indeed allowing the foal to nurse. And when Paulina decided that her new foal had had enough, she made her wishes known by forcefully nudging the colt aside.
Mitch watched in silence right beside Ena.
“No matter what you say, that’s all thanks to you,” he finally told her. He could tell that compliments made her uncomfortable, so he dropped it at that. “Seen enough?”
Obviously, that was her cue to leave, Ena thought, so she began to walk out again. “Yes. What do you have in mind now?”
For the briefest of seconds, her question gave birth to an entirely different response than he was free to make. Because what he had in mind was nothing he was able to actually say.
So instead, he said, “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the same old routine as yesterday.” And then he thought of an alternative. “Unless you feel like helping fix a part of the fence that’s just about ready to fall apart.”
“Sure,” she told him almost eagerly. “Where is this fence that’s on the verge of crumbling?”
His suggestion had been an offhanded comment, thrown in on a whim, nothing more. He hadn’t expected her to respond in such a positive way.
“It’s just at the end of the northern pasture.” Mitch looked at her somewhat uncertainly. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. I like working with my hands,” she told him.
Mitch picked up one of her hands and carefully examined it. It was just as he’d thought.
“Your skin’s smooth and your nails aren’t broken. You’ll forgive me if I have my doubts about your claim about working with your hands.”
She tossed her head, sending her blond hair flying over her shoulders. “Just take me to what you need fixed and prepare to eat your words, Parnell.”
For her to be that confident in her abilities could only mean one thing. “So your dad did have you working on the ranch,” Mitch concluded.
“No,” she contradicted. “I took a woodworking class after hours at the high school. My father made it clear that he didn’t think I could do anything. I took that class just to show my father that I actually could be handy.”
“And did you show him?” he asked as they headed toward his pickup truck. The back was loaded with posts, planks of wood and the tools that were necessary to do the required work.
Ena shrugged in response to his question. “I never got the chance. I figured I’d do it the day after graduation. But then there was this one last knock-down, drag-out argument between us just before the graduation ceremony.” Her face clouded over as she relived every single detail in her head. “I took off the next day.”
“Maybe you should have waited,” Mitch said. “Things might have turned out differently between the two of you if you had.”
“I really doubt it,” she said, climbing into the passenger side of the cab. She knew he was thinking about the way her father had supposedly changed over these last ten years. “I think he changed because you came into his life.”
Mitch started up the truck, then looked at her, stunned. “Me? No, I think you got that wrong.” As a matter of fact, he was quite certain of it.
But Ena shook her head. “I don’t think so. You turned out to be the son he had always wanted. Once you came into his life, from what you’ve said, it looks to me that he started to be less angry at the world and started turning into a human being.”
But Mitch didn’t quite see it that way. Bruce had been fair with him, but he didn’t feel that the older man had thought of him as a son in any way—even though for his part, he had regarded his boss as a second father.
“I think you just might have put the carriage before the horse,” he told her.
She wasn’t going to spend any more time arguing with Mitch about this.
“Whatever. Let’s go see about that fence that needs fixing,” she told him.
He was more than happy to oblige.
* * *
“I take it back,” Mitch told her almost two hours later.
He and Ena had been working on the fence this entire time, taking down the sagging poles and replacing them, then nailing in new lengths of wood between the poles. It was
going faster than he had anticipated. They were more than half-finished. He hadn’t expected that, certainly not from her.
“Take what back?” Ena asked, taking a short break. She did a quick survey of her own work and was basically satisfied, although she noted that there were areas where she could have done a better job.
“You still have pretty hands, but you certainly know your way around fixing a fence,” Mitch told her with a grin. “That shop teacher would certainly have been proud of you. Was it Mr. Pollard?” he asked, remembering the class he’d had with the man, except back then, Pollard had doubled as a football coach.
It had been years since she had thought about the potbellied shop teacher with the sagging trousers that he was forever hiking up. Envisioning him now, she recalled that he’d also had unruly yellow-white hair that looked like a haystack that was being blown around by a fierce wind.
Ena nodded in response to his question. “Yes, it was Mr. Pollard.” More memories came back to her. “That man insisted on keeping us trapped in that room for the first half hour of each session while he regaled us with all these stories about the projects he’d made and how he always kept his students in line, no matter how unruly they tried to be.”
Mitch was more than familiar with the man’s shortcomings. “Well, he might have liked to hear himself talk, but he seemed to have done a good job teaching you how to work with wood.”
She slanted a look in his direction. “Is that a compliment?”
“If you have to ask, I guess I wasn’t being clear enough, but yes, that was a compliment. You did a really good job—and so did Mr. Pollard,” Mitch added. “Too bad your dad couldn’t see this.” He gestured toward the fence they were just working on. “He would have been really impressed.”
But Ena wasn’t buying any of it. “I really doubt that.”
Mitch remained firm. “I don’t.”
Ena was silent for a long moment. And then she suddenly turned toward him. “Mitch?”
There was a different look in her eyes that caught his attention immediately. “Yes?”
“Where’s he buried? My dad,” she added in case he thought she was asking about Mr. Pollard or someone else for some reason.
Ena didn’t know if her father had been buried, or if he’d been cremated and his ashes scattered somewhere. It hadn’t even occurred to her—until just now.
“In the farthest corner of the cemetery,” Mitch told her. “Just behind the church.”
“The church?” she repeated in surprise. “My father never stepped one foot into a church in his entire life. Not even when my mother died.” She recalled that awful day. It had rained appropriately enough. Nothing else had been appropriate about that pain-filled day. “He had her buried on the ranch.”
“Your father changed his mind about that,” he said, watching the surprised look on her face. “He had her casket exhumed and transferred to the cemetery. Miss Joan actually talked him into doing that,” he explained. “She told him that your mother would be more at peace there. Shortly after that, your father made it known that he wanted to be buried next to his wife when his time finally came.”
“So that’s where he’s buried? In the church cemetery?” Ena asked in surprise. That didn’t sound like her father, she thought.
“Yup. Right alongside your mother. The whole town turned out for the funeral,” he added.
“Did you pay them?” she asked, surprised by Mitch’s statement. She couldn’t recall her father ever having any friends. Why would anyone attend the funeral of a man they hardly knew?
Mitch almost laughed at her question but managed to catch himself just in time.
“No, but I think Miss Joan threatened a few people into going. Nobody says no to that lady. Not if they ever want to be able to eat at her diner again.”
Ena nodded her head. That made more sense, she thought.
Chapter Nine
“Would you like me to take you?” Mitch offered when Ena had made no further comment about her father’s burial plot.
Did he think she was a helpless female incapable of finding her way around? She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted or if this was Mitch’s attempt at being chivalrous.
“I grew up here, Parnell. For the most part I know every inch of this postage stamp–sized town. I can certainly take myself over to the cemetery—if I wanted to go.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t. I just thought you might like some company.”
Ena looked at him. That wasn’t what he meant, she thought. “You mean moral support, don’t you?” she corrected him.
But Mitch stuck to his guns. “No, I mean company but if that’s the way you want to see it,” he went on amicably, “then I’m not going to argue with you.”
“No?” she questioned, annoyed. “I thought you liked arguing.”
“Not even remotely,” Mitch replied. When she still didn’t answer his initial offer to accompany her to the cemetery, he decided to prod her a little more. “So?”
Right now, Ena found that she couldn’t deal with the thought of looking down at the ground that was covering the loud, angry man who had once been her father. So instead of giving Mitch an answer one way or another, she waved at the partially completed section of the fence and said, “Let’s just finish this, okay?”
Mitch inclined his head, acquiescing. “You’re the boss.”
For a moment, that gave Ena pause as she rolled the foreman’s words over in her head.
“Yes,” she finally agreed, brightening at his response. “I am.”
Although, if she were being truthful with herself, it was hard for her to think of herself in those terms. Her father had been the boss on the Double E. With his death, all that there was left behind was a vacuum, not a place for her to take over and fill.
Logically, Ena knew she should aspire to that title, but it honestly held no allure for her. She felt the same way about becoming the boss at the accounting firm where she worked. She had drive and ambition, but having others bow and scrape before her didn’t interest her in the slightest. She had always been far more interested in doing the work than in pontificating to those who were working for her.
However, for argument’s sake, she agreed with Mitch’s pronouncement that she was the boss. In her estimation it was the fastest way to get things moving along—and that, in her estimation, was all that really counted.
* * *
“Are you tired?” Mitch asked out of the blue after they had been at repairing the fence for close to another full hour.
“No,” Ena answered a bit too quickly and, she realized, a bit too defensively. “Why?”
“No real reason.” It was a lie actually, Mitch thought. He decided to be honest with her. “You just seemed to have slowed down, that’s all.”
It wasn’t that she was tired. She’d slowed down because she felt that as soon as they finished repairing the fence, Mitch would ask her again if she wanted to visit her father’s grave. She really didn’t want to have that discussion. Didn’t want Mitch thinking that she was afraid to go see the grave for some reason.
It wasn’t fear that was keeping her from going. It was dealing with the idea of seeing both her parents in the ground while she was still alive and well, doing her best to come to grips with the whole scenario in which she was now all alone in the world.
“You’re imagining things,” she told Mitch dismissively.
Again he gave her no argument. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m tired, too.”
He was humoring her, saying that he was tired for her benefit, she thought. Under normal circumstances, she might have very well called him out on the lie. But in her present state of mind, she didn’t want to get into it. It was better this way.
She was about to say that she felt like working longer, but he seemed to have anticipated that, as well.
&
nbsp; “Hey, what do you say we call it quits for now and hang up our tools for the day?” Mitch’s tone sounded pretty final.
Ena decided to take him up on his suggestion. The truth was she had pushed herself a bit too much just to prove that she could handle the work and now she was regretting it. Or at least her arms and shoulders were. She was really going to be sore tomorrow.
“Fine with me,” she answered, trying to sound nonchalant. “Do you want to go back to the stable?”
“Eventually,” he told her, putting the tools into the truck’s flatbed.
Eventually. Okay, here it came. The last thing she needed was to have him lecture her about paying her “respects” to her father and that she would feel better once she made herself deal with that. Mentally, she dug in, waiting for Mitch to fire the first shot. She deliberately ignored the fact that being near him like this raised her body temperature and caused her heart to beat faster than it was supposed to. She tried to tell herself that she was utterly oblivious to him and the effect he had on her—but deep down inside her soul, she knew she was lying.
“And what is it that you intend on doing now?” she asked, spoiling for a fight and hoping that would get her mind off the rest of it.
Finished with the tools, he opened the driver’s-side door. “I thought I’d swing by town, pick up some more supplies. We’re running short on a few things.”
“And that’s it?” she questioned, stunned and disappointed, as well. “You’re going shopping?”
“Yes, unless you have something else you want to do instead,” he answered her innocently, knowing he was goading her. He loved seeing the fire enter her eyes. Someday soon, he promised himself, that fire would be meant for him—and in a good way.
“Let me get this straight. You want to go into town to pick up some supplies,” she repeated incredulously.
“That’s what I said, yes,” he told her, keeping a straight face.
“That sounds like an errand,” she protested. “Don’t you have someone you could tell to do that for you?”
Her Right-Hand Cowboy (Forever, Tx Series Book 21) Page 8
