“Computers, huh?” Nick said. “Think you could clean the viruses out of mine?”
“Maybe. I can take a look at it. Can’t promise anything, though.” I laughed again, this time with a touch of actual humor. If he’d been surfing the kind of sites I suspected he had, he needed a serious, up-to-date firewall.
“It’s those goddamned porn sites,” Bull said, echoing my thoughts. “Trust me, you’re better off making a date with a fu—freakin’ hooker.”
“Yeah, well, you can get other kinds of viruses doing that shit,” Nick shot back. “Some that can’t be cured.”
Although I’d warned guys away from porn sites before, I’d never thought to suggest replacing that dubious pastime with an actual prostitute. Judging from the amount of laughter rippling around the table, neither had anyone else.
Calvin shot a scathing glance at Bull before addressing Nick. “You need to find yourself a nice girl, not a hooker.”
Nick stood up, spreading his arms wide. “Do you see any nice girls around here?”
I bowed my head, unable to stop my smile. From the look of him, Nick couldn’t have been long out of high school. As far as he was concerned, I was nothing more than an old maid, proving that at least one of these guys had the proper perspective.
Wyatt cleared his throat. “None that are your age, anyway.”
Nick spun toward me, his eyes wide as he gaped at me in abject horror. “I didn’t mean you. You seem really nice and all, but—”
I nodded. “I’m too old for you. No problem. I’m not in the market for a boyfriend anyway.”
Dean was still collecting the dirty dishes. Two spoons slipped through his fingers to clatter on the table. “You mean you’ve already got one?”
The fact that I was in no hurry to get home should have made the answer to that question fairly obvious. “No.”
“No husband?” He glanced at my left hand for verification.
I should have thought that was obvious too. “Um, no.”
Dean exhaled with patent relief. “Glad to hear it. Wouldn’t want any husbands or boyfriends pounding my head into the floor.”
“You need to ask her another question while you’re at it,” Wyatt advised.
“What’s that?” Dean asked, a befuddled frown furrowing his brow.
Wyatt aimed a challenging gaze at me, a trace of amusement quirking the corner of his mouth in the closest thing to a smile I’d seen on him yet. “You need to ask her if she has a girlfriend.”
Chapter 3
So. Wyatt did have a sense of humor.
“I’m a geek, not a lesbian,” I said, arching a brow. “Although I do love my dog, who happens to be female.” I got to my feet. “Not sure that counts.”
Dean’s frown dissipated. “Well, now that we’ve cleared that up, I should tell you that none of us are married or have girlfriends, except Joe.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “Thanks.” Unless one of these guys was interested in a one-night stand—which I most definitely wasn’t—I doubted I would have any use for that information. “Wouldn’t want any wives or girlfriends pounding my head into the floor.”
“That sounds promising.” The gleam in Dean’s eyes was impossible to miss.
“Not really. Sorry.”
The gleam faded. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like cowboys?”
Every woman I’d ever known had a soft spot for a guy in boots and chaps—even I had been to a rodeo in my youth—but I saw no need to encourage this bunch, especially since I wouldn’t be there long enough for any preference of mine to matter. “Cowboys are okay, I guess.” I shrugged. “I’ve always been partial to firefighters.”
On the word, six pairs of eyes slid toward Wyatt.
“I’m not a firefighter anymore.” With a scowl as ominous as a tornado-spawning storm cloud, he got up from the table, aimed a curt nod in my general direction, and stalked out of the room.
The inevitable flush stung my cheeks as I watched him disappear through a doorway that presumably led to the men’s sleeping quarters.
Nick leaned closer. “He’s a little touchy about that fireman thing,” he said in a confiding whisper. “Don’t worry about it.”
A lot touchy was more like it. I wished someone had warned me.
“I’ll go get my computer,” Nick went on. “You can look at it while we get your room ready. Then maybe we can play pool or cards or watch a movie or something.”
“Hey, now,” Calvin said. “Is anyone going to help with the dishes?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s Wyatt’s turn,” Dean grumbled.
“I’ll do it.” Joe scooted his chair back from the table. “Might be best if we left Wyatt alone for a while.”
There was a story in there somewhere. I, of course, would never have the nerve to ask for the details.
Story of my life.
* * *
Nick set his laptop at the head of the table. “You’ll be warmer sitting over here by the woodstove.”
Rising from my chair, I came around the table and took the seat Joe had just vacated, opened the computer, and pushed it toward him. “Go ahead and type in your password and I’ll work on it.”
His hesitation told the tale.
“You mean you don’t even have this thing password protected?”
Nick hung his head. “No. I never thought it was necessary. It’s not like I have anything worth stealing.”
I shook my head sadly. I’d seen the dish on the roof of the bunkhouse, so I could safely assume they had Internet access. “Ever buy anything online?” If he was visiting porn sites, chances were good he’d paid for something.
“Well, yeah. Sometimes.”
“Then you have something worth stealing. And you can pick up a virus anywhere.” Figuring that what Bull had already said was chastisement enough, I skipped the lecture about porn sites being the most notorious source of malware. “Does your wireless access have a password?”
He nodded. “It’s bunkhouse7—all lowercase.”
“My, how original.” At least it wasn’t 123abc.
Seeming to ignore my sarcasm, he said, “It started acting weird a couple of months ago—loading pages real slow and then going somewhere other than where I wanted to go. Now, anytime I connect to the Internet, it just keeps opening page after page after page. Can you fix it?”
“Probably. I’ll start out in safe mode and see what I find. Worst-case scenario is that I may have to take it down to zero, boot from the disk, and install a new operating system, which means you’d lose all your data. Is there anything on here you can’t live without?”
He hesitated. “Naw. Not really. Can’t do anything with it now anyway.”
“I’m guessing you don’t have any antivirus software installed on it, right?”
The blank look I received answered my question. This kid obviously needed a crash course in computer protection.
“Okay. Let me play with it and see what I come up with.”
“Great!” Nick said. “I’ll go help Dean and Sonny clean your room.”
Bull said something about going out to water the horses and left the room. Joe and Calvin were tidying up the kitchen, which left me alone in the mess hall. I was grateful for the quiet seclusion. I had always done my best work without anyone hanging over my shoulder, and I’d certainly never had to wonder what a computer thought of me. Dogs were the same way. Simple, straightforward, no hidden agendas.
Must be why I like them so much.
Nick was right about his computer being infected. It was an absolute mess, in addition to being full of dust. Several of the keys were sticky—a sniff suggested he’d been eating strawberry jam while surfing the net. Figuring I needed more equipment, I went out to my car and gathered up a few things along with my own laptop. After cleaning the keys and blowing out th
e dust with canned air, I got to work on the virus problem. It wasn’t hopeless, but after about thirty fruitless minutes, I downloaded an antivirus program onto a thumb drive from my own computer, ran it on his machine, quarantined and deleted several nasty bugs, and rebooted.
“Yes!” Clearly, I hadn’t lost my touch. I set up two user accounts, one with administrator privileges and one without, and defragged the machine. It was still acting a bit sluggish, and after scanning the memory usage, I opened his pictures file and wished I hadn’t.
Nick stuck his head in about the time my blush was subsiding. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said. “But you have some work to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your pictures file is seriously slowing down the performance speed. You need to divvy them up into folders.”
“You’ve been looking at my pictures?” His voice was a barely audible squeak.
“No,” I lied. “Just noting the vast number of them.”
“Oh.” He sounded relieved, as well he should. The brief glimpse I’d had showed me some things I would have thought were physically impossible. Maybe they were. With the advent of digital photography, the old saying that pictures don’t lie didn’t hold much water anymore.
“You need to come up with a password—two, actually. One for your regular user account and one for an administrator account. They need to be fairly complex. You can write them down if you need to. It’s unlikely anyone would ever break into your desk and find them, but once you go online, you’re fair game.”
He pulled up a chair and sat down beside me. “Why two?”
“You’ve been surfing the net using an admin account and no firewall, which amounts to computer suicide. Most viruses can only take over your machine if they get into it on the admin level.”
Nick nodded as though he understood, but whether he would take any of it to heart remained to be seen. I’d given enough computers a second and third debugging to know that not everyone heeded my advice.
Dean and Sonny returned. “Your room’s all ready,” Dean announced. “Want us to bring in your stuff?”
Unlike most women my age, I already had the most essential items with me, namely, my dog and my computer.
I’m such a nerd.
However, similar to most women my age, I’d over-packed. “Don’t bother. I’ll get it. I won’t need much.” A toothbrush, my allergy meds, pajamas, and a change of socks and underwear would be plenty—and would save having to lug it all back out to the car in the morning.
Dean’s mutinous expression said otherwise. “You will if you’re staying more than one night.”
I’d never known any men to be so anxious for my company before. Generally speaking, unless they needed me to fix something, I tended to go unnoticed. I’d been told there was nothing wrong with my appearance, although Dean’s “gorgeous blond” remark was unusual—and he’d been standing behind me when he said it.
Then I remembered what Nick had said. These guys weren’t horny. They were lonely.
They probably never had much in the way of company. Never anyone to liven up their lives with a visit. Never anyone new, whether that person was male or female. Even though they were probably more interested in women than men, I doubted that was their only reason for wanting me to stick around. Case in point, Sonny and Nick, who were roughly the same age as my much-younger brothers, and Calvin, who was my grandfather’s contemporary. Aside from that first meeting with Wyatt, everyone had been very hospitable—not at all like I’d expected them to be.
I gave in. “If you insist. Just don’t fuss when I ask you to carry it all back out to the car.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dean said with a wicked grin. “I’ll even help you unpack.”
Discovering what he thought of my rather plain underwear wasn’t high on my list of priorities. I wondered if the foreman’s quarters had a lock on the door.
“No need for that,” I said quickly.
“Ah, but if we unpack your stuff, you’ll stay longer.”
His logic was a tad faulty, even if it did make me smile. “Yeah, all of the twenty minutes it’ll take me to stuff everything back in my suitcase.”
“Touché.” His smile broadened. “I’ll help you anyway.”
“And I owe you something for fixing my laptop,” Nick said. “You gotta give me time to pay you back.”
Dean let out a derisive snort. “What are you gonna pay her with? Rides on your horse?”
“Actually, I was thinking this might be more appropriate.” With no further warning, Nick snaked out a hand to cup my cheek and turn my head toward him. His lips immediately fastened on mine, triggering a full-body blush that left me too astonished to protest. A swipe of his tongue brought me to my senses, and I pulled away.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean exclaimed. “I thought you said she was too old for you.”
“I didn’t say that,” Nick said. “She did.” Grinning, he added, “Besides, I need all the practice I can get.”
His cheeky grin reminded me of Tom Cruise and how the friends of his older sisters reportedly used him for kissing practice. If that was what these cowboys thought I was good for, I probably shouldn’t complain—especially since the kiss Nick had just given me was only the third I’d ever received from anyone outside my family. A more adventurous woman would’ve gone back for another round.
Too bad I wasn’t adventurous.
Still, as cures for shyness went, being repeatedly kissed by a bunch of handsome cowboys wouldn’t be half bad. It might even work.
Then my thoughts jumped to what kissing Wyatt would be like, and my gut tightened in a way I’d only read about in romance novels. Somehow I doubted he would need any practice, and I certainly didn’t intend to ask him for lessons.
“You aren’t the only one who needs help,” Sonny declared. “I could use some of that myself.”
“More like the blind leading the blind,” I muttered.
Considering the amount of laughter in the wake of Sonny’s remark, I doubted anyone other than Nick could have heard me. And if his wide-eyed expression was any indication, he’d not only heard my mutterings, he’d understood them.
Our eyes met, and the quick shake of my head stopped whatever he’d been about to say. I should’ve been used to that sort of thing, but I wasn’t. A pang of regret knifed through my chest and tears filled my eyes. With a sniff, I looked away and reached into my pocket for the ever-present package of Kleenex. “Damned allergies.”
Oddly enough, my sinus and allergy troubles hadn’t bothered me much during the course of my journey. Apparently the Ohio Valley’s bad rap for those conditions was well deserved. Wyoming, on the other hand, seemed to agree with me.
I am not staying here.
Certainly not long enough to warrant going off my meds.
A subtle clearing of Nick’s throat drew my attention again. His puzzled frown prompted me to explain.
“I haven’t dated much,” I finally said. “Twice” would’ve been closer to the truth, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Me either.”
Poor kid. If he stayed on this ranch only working with other men, he probably never would. He obviously wasn’t shy. The kiss he’d stolen proved that much.
Not like me. I’d worked with dozens of men and rarely spoke to any of them beyond what it took to do my job. Tongue-tied, my mother always said. Now that I’d solved Nick’s computer issues, we probably wouldn’t have anything to say to one another.
Calvin came in from the kitchen. “You boys aren’t bothering Tina, are you?”
“No way.” Nick crossed his heart. “She fixed my computer.”
The trace of awe in his tone was something I’d heard many times before. The way computers worked was like magic to a lot of people. Being able to fix them made me a magician by
default, although it was never that easy. If only I could banish viruses with a wave of my wand and a shout of “Expelliarmo Virioso!” But then, I’d never received an acceptance letter from Hogwarts.
“That was nice of her,” Calvin said. “Got her room ready?”
“Yep,” Sonny replied. “Clean as a whistle. We’re just on our way out to bring in her stuff.”
I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke as Calvin sat down in a nearby chair, coughing until he was visibly winded.
“You’ve gotta quit that nasty habit, old man,” Dean advised him. “Those smokes are gonna kill you.”
“We’re all gonna die someday,” Calvin said. “Just a question of when.”
My grandfather had shared that same attitude. Although he’d never explained it to me, I’d heard somewhere that the most valiant soldiers were those who considered themselves dead even before they went into battle. At first, that mind-set seemed rather fatalistic. But if you had to rationalize risking your life to save the lives of others, what better way to do it than to deem it already lost?
What I didn’t understand was why that outlook persisted even after the war had ended. Was it because they’d convinced themselves of their death to the point they couldn’t cope with survival? Grandpa had never listened to his doctors and only took his meds when I insisted. Perhaps he’d believed it pointless to try to save a man who was already dead and buried.
Shaking off my morbid thoughts had become increasingly difficult of late, and today was no different. I’d been on such a roller coaster of emotions. One minute I was up, thankful that Grandpa’s suffering was finally over. The next, I was down, wondering how his life would have turned out if he’d been born on a different day and never been drafted into the Army.
In that moment, fatigue slammed into me like a runaway train, not creeping up on me the way it normally did. I was thankful for the bed I’d been offered, although truth be told, I would have been perfectly content to sleep in my car.
Ophelia nudged my hand. No doubt she was as tired as I was. This was the letdown after the taut wire I’d been stretched into finally snapped now that my tasks were complete. Silly. I was young enough to be able to handle the physical strain. It was the mental part that was sapping my strength.
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