by Jeannie Watt
More like halfway home. Kristen worked up a smile, feeling very much as she had in the Silver Bow, and came forward. Austin introduced her to Ellie and Clinton Callahan, as well as to Katherine, Ellie’s aunt, and the rest of the branding crew—Tom, Clay and Rusty—all of whom seemed to know Austin well. She was the odd man out.
Nothing new there.
“Would you mind manning the clipboard?” Ellie asked. “We’re one hand short, so I’m delighted that you came.”
“Sure. Just tell me what to do.”
A shadow crossed the woman’s face. “Have you ever been to a branding?”
“A few,” she said dryly. “My mom grew up on a ranch in Montana. We branded twice a year.”
Ellie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, probably because Kristen was dressed in clothing no one wore to a branding—running shoes, skinny jeans and a flowered tunic top—and then she smiled. “Excellent.” She gave Austin a thumbs-up. “Nice work, Austin. Better than last time…”
He smiled sheepishly, then went to join the men who were heading into the pen where the calves were being held, making Kristen wonder what wasn’t being said.
Ellie instantly filled in the blanks. “Austin brought a girl a couple of years ago who lectured us on the cruelty of freeze branding.”
“Guess she’s never seen hot branding.”
“She hadn’t seen anything. Austin spent more time calming her down, than helping out. Finally, she sat in the truck and ignored us all.”
“Interesting.” She meant that sincerely.
“But you guys aren’t…” Ellie made a gesture with the clipboard as if encouraging Kristen to set her straight one way or the other.
“No.” Kristen gave her head a quick shake. “He’s friends with my twin sister and things just worked out for him to give me a ride to Salt Lake.”
“Are you going to watch him ride there?”
“I’m catching the bus the rest of the way home.”
“To Marietta.”
“Yes.”
Ellie frowned at her and seemed about to say something, then instead she nodded at Kristen’s shirt. “Do you want something old and beat up to wear over that?”
“I probably won’t hurt it manning the clipboard.”
Ellie arched an eyebrow. “You’ve been to how many brandings?”
Kristen smiled—a genuine smile that made her feel lighter inside. “Right. If you have something I’ll borrow it.”
“If I have something. Dear heavens.” She jerked her head toward the house, then moved toward the side-by-side ATV. “Come on. My Aunt Katherine is still at the house and I promised to give her a ride to the corrals. You can pick a grubby jacket, and by the time we’re back, the guys will be ready to start moving calves through the chute.” Ellie gave her a wry smile. “And you can meet Duane.”
“Duane?”
“The world’s yappiest dog and the center of my aunt’s universe.”
*
Kristen’s mother had grown up on the Marvell Cattle Company ranch, so Austin wasn’t surprised to see that Kristen was very much at home at the chutes, wearing one of Clinton’s old denim jackets and jotting information on the clipboard. What did surprise him was that she and Ellie acted like old friends.
But, like Whitney, Ellie had never met a stranger. And maybe Kristen did better with people who didn’t have a preconceived idea about who she was. She was more relaxed than he had ever seen her…unless their gazes met. Then there’d be that little jolt he was certain she felt as much as he did.
A jolt of…what?
He didn’t have that pinned down yet, but it kept him thinking as they worked their way through a hundred calves. The three younger guys, Clinton’s cousins, pushed the calves through the chute. He and Clinton clamped them onto the calf table, rotated it, taking turns branding and vaccinating. Ellie’s Aunt Katherine helped Ellie load the needles while Kristen recorded exactly what vaccinations and medications each animal received.
Midway through the day, they broke for lunch and Katherine got her little poodle dog, Duane, out of the playpen where he’d been barking all day while they worked. Austin didn’t know what it was about ranchers and small yappy dogs, but he knew a lot of bona fide ranch guys who carried the little beasts around on one arm. He didn’t get it.
When he left the AEBR tour and got a dog, it would be a real dog. A dog with some size to him and some baritone to his voice. Duane had a high-pitched yip that made Austin’s shoulders go tight every time he heard it. And he heard it a lot that day.
After the break, they went back to the branding. Kristen was all business as she did her job. He knew because he didn’t seem to be able to keep himself from watching her. Clinton caught him a couple of times and gave him a look that clearly said, “You sure you’re only traveling together?”
Austin kept his mouth shut, because he knew the dangers of protesting too much. But the truth of the matter was that he was surprised that Kristen seemed to fit in with his friends. She fit in better than Sierra had a couple years ago…and maybe that was it. Anyone would have fit in after Sierra’s behavior that day. It wasn’t the last time he’d dated an urbanite, but it was the last time he’d brought one to a ranch.
Now he was here with Kristen, whom he wasn’t dating at all, but who kept drawing his eye, just as she had in high school. This was different though. He was studying her because he was trying to figure her out. She didn’t mind being touched, but she wasn’t used to it. That’s what she said anyway. Yeah. It had him thinking.
“Any time now,” Clinton said.
He brought his attention back to the calf, slid the needle under the skin on his neck and pushed the plunger.
“Four more,” Clinton said as they tipped the table together. The calf had a low tag number—one of the first born that season. Heavy guy.
“I could use a beer,” Austin muttered.
“Or four.”
He laughed. “Maybe not four. Three. I’m in training.”
Clinton grunted an acknowledgment just as Katherine let out a shriek.
“Get him!” Ellie yelled, pointing toward the white streak heading straight for the pen where the cows were mothering up with their babies. “Those ladies will stomp him into the mud.”
Austin doubted that ‘those ladies’—the cows—could catch him, but if they got lucky, Katherine would be inconsolable. Both he and Clinton dived for the dog, who swerved away, and the last thing he saw before going down was Kristen dropping her clipboard. A split second later a cheer went up, and he raised his head to see Kristen lying on her stomach in the dirt, her hand wrapped firmly around squirming Duane’s hind leg.
She was instantly surrounded by a crowd—Ellie helping her up, Katherine scooping up Duane and nuzzling him and then throwing an arm around Kristen and hugging her close. Clinton smiling and helping her brush off—although some of the stuff she’d landed in didn’t brush easily. Only Austin and the teenage boys in the pens didn’t mob her. But across the distance their gazes locked, and then she looked back at Katherine, who was trying to hug her again. Austin went back to the table, groaned as he tipped it upright and released the calf.
Kristen laughing—genuinely laughing—was an amazing sight. She was covered in cow shit from the knees down and her chin was dirty from where it had hit the dirt, but she looked beautiful.
Austin shook his head and motioned for the boys to bring the next calf down the chute. He’d thought his days of having Kristen Alexander stir things deep inside of him were long gone.
Apparently, he’d been mistaken.
*
Brandings at the Callahan Ranch always ended with a big dinner. Both Clinton and Ellie had put in a day’s work getting the meal ready so that all components could be pulled out of the oven, the fridge, or microwaved with the least amount of effort when the tired crew returned to the house.
Katherine took over the kitchen while everyone else washed up and then settled in the living room with much-needed be
er. Kristen changed her clothes, politely refusing Ellie’s offer to wash her jeans, and then disappeared into the kitchen with Katherine. When she didn’t come back, Austin went in to find her washing the roasting pan while Katherine made gravy.
“Need help?”
Kristen gave him a look over her shoulder while Katherine said briskly, “You shoo on out of here. We have everything under control.”
Austin allowed himself to be shooed out of the kitchen and rejoined the crew in the living room. He didn’t know if Kristen was hiding or making herself useful, but she appeared comfortable where she was and who was he to interfere?
There was just one thing that he hadn’t counted on and he had a feeling Kristen wasn’t going to be that happy after he told her. He waited until the dishwasher was loaded, the extra dishes done and every freaking surface in the house had been wiped down before he ambled over to where she was draining the sink and asked if he could speak to her outside.
Instantly cautious, she followed him out the door.
“I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to jump right in.” Her eyes rounded with alarm, so he hurried to say, “Nothing earth-shattering. It’s just that there’s no room for…us…” meaning her “…in the house. Katherine has the spare bedroom.”
He’d been offered the bedroom on every single branding he’d attended on the Callahan Ranch, but had always slept in his bedroll in the truck. Now, the one time he’d counted on the spare bedroom, Katherine had come to visit. Apparently, Ellie had just assumed he’d be arriving alone and following his usual custom. Which was fine…as long as Kristen was okay with it.
Not that she had a lot of choice.
“The boys are bedding down in the living room,” he added when she didn’t respond immediately.
“I see.”
Austin cleared his throat. “I’m sleeping in the bed of the truck.”
“Where am I sleeping?” she asked in a grim voice.
“Well…in the bed of the truck.”
She put up her hands. “Unacceptable.”
“We can sleep head to toe.”
She grimaced and he had to admit, sleeping with someone’s feet in your face didn’t sound all that inviting.
“Sleep face to face.”
No grimace, but she didn’t look at all happy with the idea. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t know Katherine would be here.”
“I understand.” She folded her arms over her chest, looked toward the Dodge, then back at him. “I can sleep in the back seat of the truck.”
“How?” It was a reasonable question. Kristen was almost as tall as he was.
“I’ll scrunch.”
“Sleep in the bed with me and I’ll build a divider.”
“A divider.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want a divider. I just don’t want to sleep with you.” Her mouth tightened. “You know what I mean.”
She didn’t want to have sex with him. That was very clear. “You want to pick who you sleep with. I mean sleep literally. I get that.”
“I’ll sleep on the back seat.”
“Suit yourself.”
Chapter Six
Ellie gave Kristen blankets after she confessed that she’d “forgotten” her sleeping bag. Later, after she and Austin had excused themselves, she arranged the blankets on the rear seat while Austin rolled out his canvas bedroll. After climbing into the back seat and closing the door, she stretched out as far as she could. It was tight, but she tended to sleep on her side anyway. Except that the seat was just that much too short and that much too narrow. She could open the door and let her feet hang out. Yes. That was one solution. Awkward, but doable.
“Sure you don’t want to come back here?” Austin asked about five minutes after she’d opened the door—possibly because the dome light wouldn’t go off and it was keeping them both awake. And running down the battery.
“Fine.” Kristen got out of the truck and pulled on the blankets, bundling them into her arms and then carting them to the rear of the truck, where she dumped them unceremoniously on the open tailgate.
“Want me to build the divider?”
“Bite me,” she muttered, sounding more like Whitney than herself as she climbed in to the truck bed. She stretched out on top of his canvas bedroll, pulling the blankets up over her. The canvas made a decent barrier and since she was fully clothed, it wasn’t that cold. Really.
It felt so good to stretch her legs all the way out that she was willing to put up with a little cold.
“And thank you for not asking me where to bite,” she said as Austin rolled over, presenting his back to her.
“Saving that for later.”
“Right.” She snuggled deeper into her blankets, wishing he hadn’t said that. What would it be like to be nipped with those very white teeth? Her stomach tightened as a warmth unfurled deep inside of her. Even on top of the canvas, she was too close to the man, and it didn’t help matters that she really loved the way he smelled. But she was not sleeping head to feet. That would be admitting defeat.
Da head. Da feet. Hahaha.
She was losing it.
Kristen sucked in a breath, thought back to saner times, when she wasn’t sharing the bed of a truck with a bull rider, when she’d had a nine-to-five job. When she was traveling along her planned trajectory. Amazing how one unplanned event could throw everything off track so effectively. And try as she might to get things back on track, nothing seemed to work. The loss of perceived control was devastating to her world view.
‘Perceived’ being the key word. Yes, you could do all the planning in the world, but shit happened…and you ended up sleeping in the back of a truck with a bull rider who was more attractive than he had any business being.
What was a person supposed to do?
Suck it up. Roll with the punches.
Easy to say, hard to do, but she couldn’t keep living as she was, on the edge of anxiety, ashamed of the fact that she’d failed. She needed to get some perspective.
She needed to stop feeling as if she wanted to snuggle closer to Austin, and not just for warmth.
Really…what would that get her?
Answers to questions she’d once wondered about…questions she was still wondering about.
Sometimes it was best not to know; not to add new complexities into a life she was already having a hard time managing.
“Kristen?” Austin spoke softly, but his voice sounded overly loud in the quiet desert night.
“Yes?”
“Go to sleep.”
How, when she was so damned aware of him that her entire body was throbbing? She let out a long breath. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
He rolled over so that his face was close to hers. She felt the warmth coming off him, the warm scent rising from the bedroll he was enveloped in. Felt like leaning in. Getting closer.
A shiver went through her and it wasn’t because of the cold.
“Austin…”
“Yeah?”
“It feels really crazy to be here like this.”
“It must be like a dream come true.”
Laughter bubbled up at his ridiculous statement and escaped her lips before she could stop it. She cleared her throat.
“You can laugh, you know. It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost control of a situation.”
His comment stopped her cold. Was she that transparent? Or was he that intuitive? Did it matter which, when he’d hit the nail on the head?
“You might be right.” Why not admit it? It was true. There was a brief silence, then she said, “Are you going to tell me to be more like my sister?”
“Do you hear that a lot?”
“Practically never, actually.”
Austin rolled over on his back and stared up at the stars. “Do you want to be more like Whit?”
“I…want to break free a little.”
“Just a little?”
Her voice was small when she said, “A lot. I
want to break all the habits I’ve developed over the years. I want to say screw it, and do what I want and not care about what people think.”
And there it was in a nutshell. She’d spent way too much time in her life worrying about what other people thought. What their perceptions were. It wasn’t how she wanted to live.
He said nothing. Kristen rolled over onto her back, mirroring his position, flopping an arm over her forehead.
“And you’re right,” she murmured. “About laughing.”
“You were laughing today. After catching Duane.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
She let out a sigh. She couldn’t articulate how it was different, but it was. Not everything had to be placed in a specific box. The thought had no sooner entered her head than she realized how out of character it was for her. She loved her boxes.
She lay back down, watching a meteor streak across the sky. Unfettered. Free. And perhaps close to crashing and burning. The thought made her give another small shudder. Crashing and burning was no fun, but freedom… Might it be worth the risk? She’d already crashed and burned.
And never wanted to do it again.
She closed her eyes, but they flashed open when Austin dropped a lazy arm over her.
“Give me your back.” His voice was low and close to her ear, sending another shiver through her.
“Excuse me?” Her voice was thick.
“Roll over so your back is to me. We’ll spoon through miles of canvas. You’ll be warmer because of it and maybe…just maybe…you might fall asleep.”
Kristen opened her mouth to protest, then thought, ‘Screw it.’ He was right. She needed more warmth and he needed his sleep.
She turned her back to him and he pulled her closer. The canvas of his bedroll bunched between them. She pulled in a breath, let out a sigh as her muscles relaxed. It didn’t feel bad, having Austin at her back.
Crazy, crazy times.
Snuggled up to a bull rider in the middle of the desert.
She hadn’t seen this one coming.
*
Kristen woke with a start, rising on one elbow and pushing her hair back with her free hand as she tried to remember where she was, why she was outdoors. Why she was no longer soaring through the air, as she’d been doing just seconds before.
