by Claire Adams
“I guess I’ve just got baby hands.”
“Have you ever worked on a ranch before? Have you ever even worked at all? These hands are absolutely pitiful.”
“No,” I laughed, but then I quickly became aware that I was supposed to be Garrett Reynolds and I had a complete back story that I needed to stick to. “Well, a little, but not this much,” I added. “Your dad has gotten more work out of me here than I think I did throughout my entire years in college.”
I was joking, but it was probably pretty close to being true. Working hard was relative to me. In my real life, I worked hard to build my company and I probably worked twice as much as other people who had normal jobs, but I did my work whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to sit at my desk all day and I certainly wasn’t getting blisters from shoveling horse crap.
“Where are you from?”
My mind hesitated as I tried to remember the history of Garrett. I hadn’t actually had to tell the story to anyone yet. I had successfully avoided any deep and meaningful conversations with people since I had arrived on the ranch. It probably wasn’t the best way to get to know my fellow workers, but I just couldn’t risk messing up the story that I was supposed to know about my own past.
I also had stayed pretty quiet because I was afraid of getting confused and telling people different stories about my past. If I started talking to anyone, I needed to be one hundred percent sure of my story so I wouldn’t look like a liar when I told people bits and pieces about my past.
“Originally from Wyoming, was on my way to Washington, but decided to stay and work for the summer.”
“What’s in Washington?”
“A job.”
“Not one where you use your hands I hope?” Sarah laughed.
Her laugh brightened the room as her smile took over her face. I was sure that any man who had ever laid eyes on that smile had probably tried to land her as his woman. My body even reacted with a stiff hard on as she grabbed one of my hands and started to work on draining the blisters and bandaging me up. I had to resist from flirting with her though, as sweet as she was; there were men who wanted to kill me and flirting with a rancher’s daughter wouldn’t help me in any way.
There were men who wanted to kill me. The thought lingered for a moment as Sarah worked. I had always been a decent guy throughout my life. Never getting too angry or fighting with others. It was odd that there was a man in the world that genuinely wanted me dead. But I knew for a fact that Frank Gordano would kill me if he had the chance. He had killed my pilot and, without a doubt, he would get rid of me too.
I knew more than my pilot Thomas had known. The truth was, if Frank Gordano wanted to kill someone who could hurt him, I was the person to be killed. He shouldn’t have even bothered killing Thomas. But that was why I had agreed to testify. I knew so much about Frank’s business and where his supplies and money were coming and going to. The information I had in my head was enough to put Frank away for life and he knew it.
A bit of panic filled me as I again thought about what life would be like after the trial. I wouldn’t be sitting in a back room with a beautiful woman taking care of me, I’d probably be hiding out and afraid for my life still. It was a sobering thought.
At that moment, I was hiding and I felt safe, but what would happen after the trial? Would I have to give up my old life all together if I wanted to stay safe? How would I survive at all if I couldn’t keep my company?
If I had to sell my company, I could live off of the money for years, but I wouldn’t be happy. I liked working. I liked being busy. I liked building something new and exciting. I felt the anxiety as my chest tightened up. I wasn’t ready to have to testify yet and I wasn’t ready for what my life my look like outside of the safety of the Miller’s ranch. For the time being, I was going to enjoy the safety I had and do my best to avoid thinking about what might come next.
“It’s a little different job,” I said with a smile. “I saw a picture of you in an office. Did you leave that job?”
“More like I was fired.”
“Really?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I wasn’t shocked; I knew it could happen. It’s a tough world out there. If you’re not making money for a company, they have no patience at all and get rid of you. It’s the way of the corporate world. But I was making money for them and they still took it for granted and let me go. Life isn’t fair sometimes, but there’s no time for crying about it.”
“Yeah, money is the root of all businesses and all evil.”
“So what are you hiding from here?” Sarah asked as she looked straight into my eyes.
My stomach sunk as she looked at me. How on earth did she know why I was there? Sid didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would go back on his word and tell my story. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would expose me like that. I stared back into her eyes as I tried to evaluate what she might know about me and my situation.
Sarah didn’t appear as if she really did know. The nonchalant way she asked me and looked into my eyes made me think she was fishing for information and didn’t actually have any of her own. But I was still nervous.
“Um, I … uh…” I started to talk but my words just wouldn’t come. I had no idea how to respond to her.
“I’m kidding, jeez,” she laughed. “But with that response, now you have me wondering.”
“I’m just a wanderer. You know. A typical guy who doesn’t like commitment,” I joked.
“In my experience, everyone is hiding from something when they show up here. But I’ll let you keep your secrets for now.”
Sarah held my hand in hers as she continued the process of cleaning out each of the blisters. It was disgusting as the puss, blood, and ooze poured out of my hand. I had to look away to avoid vomiting up my lunch. But Sarah didn’t seem fazed by it at all. She diligently cleaned out each one and clipped the dead skin off; when she was done, my hand was practically one giant open wound.
“I suppose you’re going to throw some vodka on there and kill all the germs off,” I joked.
Sarah reached for a small, white container and a large piece of medical gauze that was sitting right next to her. I watched as she continued to work and only looked up briefly to give me a quick warning.
“It’s alcohol and it’s going to hurt like a bitch; try not to scream.”
“Oh, I think I can handle …” I started to say as she dabbed the alcohol around my hand.
I couldn’t continue talking and avoid swearing and screaming; the pain shot through every nerve in my hand. She was gentle though, and I knew it was for my own good. I had so many open sores on my hands that I was sure to get some sort of infection if they weren’t cleaned out and bandaged up correctly.
I felt embarrassed that my hands were so destroyed by just a couple of weeks of work. Perhaps I wasn’t holding the shovel right, or maybe I just hadn’t built up a tolerance for that level of work; but either way, it was embarrassing to have my hands covered in blisters and needing the level of care that Sarah was providing to me.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said through gritted teeth.
“The rest of the process is easy, if that’s any consolation,” She smiled at me.
Again with that smile; she was mesmerizing. Even in the midst of horrible pain, I felt my throbbing member kept rising to attention at the kindest of glances from Sarah. Luckily I was in jeans and sitting down, because I was certain if I was standing she would have noticed how my body seemed to love her smiles.
She smelled delicious, too. Not like the women in Los Angeles smelled though. Sarah wasn’t covered in perfume and she didn’t have a fake tan on, or fake anything from what I could tell. It was just her natural scent that drove me crazy. I honestly couldn’t get enough of breathing her in and continued to do it as inconspicuously as I could manage as we sat there.
“What’s left? Amputation?” I joked.
“Actually, after I get you all bandaged up, you
will probably feel pretty good for the next week or so. Hopefully when your hands heal up they’ll be a little more like man hands and less like little boy hands,” she winked.
I had to laugh. If only she knew the truth about me. The only blisters I had ever had were on my feet after running on the treadmill for too long. My life had admittedly been very comfortable and not physically demanding, but I wasn’t going to complain.
Safety was why I was on the ranch and Sid would have let me lessen my load of work if I had asked him. But I didn’t want less work. Keeping busy was the only thing that kept my mind occupied and I needed that. If I didn’t have my mind occupied, I would have been fixated on Frank Gordano and the threats he had made to my life.
While I hadn’t seen the crime scene myself, I heard all the details about Thomas’ murder. Thomas had flown a couple of Frank’s people back to Los Angeles from Mexico. It was a typical flight and there hadn’t been anything unusual that I could tell. But when they landed at the airport, one of Frank’s men tried to shoot Thomas. Something must have happened and Thomas had been shot in the shoulder.
From the police report and photos that I had seen, it looked like a very bloody scene on the airplane. Thomas must have tried to run and the he was shot again in the back. A blood trail led from the front of the plane to the back of it and then down the stairs to the outside. Finally, Thomas was shot in the head and his body fell at the foot of the steps to the plane.
A baggage guy was driving by and saw two men run away from the plane with a couple black duffle bags. They got into a black, unlabeled car and drove away, leaving my friend on the ground to die. I was called shortly after that when the police took Thomas to the station. But when I went out to my car, there was a bloody message on the windshield that read “Next.” My body went cold and I called the police. I wasn’t about to end up murdered, if there was anything I could do about it.
“Well I hope you’re right because I don’t want to have to go through this again. I have to keep these baby hands looking good,” I laughed with Sarah.
As scared as I had been back home, I wasn’t scared at that moment. Being on the Miller ranch was a relief, and being there with Sarah made it even better. Just being around a woman made me feel happier than I had been in weeks.
“How about tomorrow I teach you a little more about the horses and we have someone else do the shoveling?”
“Now that sounds like something I can get excited about, but who will do the shoveling?”
“There’s a new guy coming tonight; it’s tradition that the newest person does the shoveling.”
“Well I’m glad he didn’t take another month to show up.” We both laughed.
I could already tell that I liked being next to Sarah. She was kind and knowledgeable. Although, she didn’t seem to be taking to me like I was used to women doing. Typically, if I flirted with them a little and gave them a wink, they were practically throwing their panties at me. But I figured that Sarah was only one of two women on the ranch and she was the only single one; she was probably pretty familiar with men flirting with her.
It was nice just to have a woman to talk to. Men weren’t much for talking and hanging out, it just wasn’t a trait that I had found very often in my male friends. But women loved to talk and spend time together. Even if Sarah was nothing more than a friend to me, I’d be all right with that. It would be enough for me. I desperately needed a friend while I was here on the ranch and couldn’t wait to grow that friendship with Sarah.
“Tomorrow, try and wake up for breakfast and afterwards I’ll show you how we feed the horses. It’s much more fun than picking up their shit.”
“I honestly don’t know how anyone wakes up so early. Is there some sort of trick to it?”
Sarah just laughed and then stood up and went back to work. I didn’t know why she was laughing or why everyone seemed to think it was some sort of joke that I couldn’t wake up. I had tried over and over again and I just couldn’t get my body to wake up that early in the morning without some sort of alarm clock.
Then, like a strike of lightening to my head I finally figured it out. Forest had offered to take me into town to get a watch and on a watch there would be an alarm clock. That must have been how all the other guys were getting up in the morning. But I would have thought that all their alarms going off would have woken me up as well. Either way though, I was going to find Forest and give him some money for a watch, although it wouldn’t help me with waking up the next morning.
“I have a proposition for you,” I said to Sarah as I stood in the doorway.
“Oh, that sounds intriguing.”
She looked wary of me as I stood there. It was clear that she didn’t fully trust me yet, but that seemed reasonable. I hadn’t been honest with her at all and I wasn’t who I said I was either. I couldn’t fault her for wanting to keep her distance from me. Although I wanted her to be close to me more than I wanted anything else at that moment.
“Wake me up when you start cooking and I’ll help you.”
“You just want me to be your alarm clock,” she teased.
“God, I could only be so lucky,” I smiled and moved a step closer to her.
I could feel the sexual chemistry between us. There was no doubt that she wanted me, but she was doing everything in her power to block the signals from her body to mine. Sarah took a step backwards and looked away from me. If she did want me, like I felt she did, Sarah was doing what she had to in order to make sure I didn’t think she wanted me. Oh, the twists and turns of male and female relationships.
“So your solution to not waking up on time is for me to come wake you up even earlier? Did you ever think that your body is just tired and perhaps you should go to bed earlier?”
“Don’t go throwing your common sense at me, young lady,” I laughed.
“Yes, I’ll wake you up. But only this one time; my father would kill me if he found out I went into the bunkhouse. And he’d kill you, too.”
I could only imagine that what Sarah was saying was true. A bunkhouse full of young men wasn’t the best place for a young woman to be in the middle of the night. But I was getting to know the other guys a little and I didn’t think any of them posed a threat to Sarah. Plus, they would all be sleeping at that hour anyways.
I didn’t just want to wake up in time for breakfast; I actually wanted to spend some more alone time with Sarah. If that meant that I only got a few hours of sleep, then so be it. I would much rather be tired and happy than just tired.
“I bet you’re right. Your father would kill me. So don’t go telling him,” I said as I took one more step closer to her.
She put her hand out and pressed it against my chest as her big, brown eyes caught a hold of mine. Sarah was a powerful woman. I felt it in the way she pressed against me and I felt it in the way she looked into my eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would give in easily to my advances. Sarah was going to take some work if I ever wanted to land her. Although that plan still seemed very dangerous given the fact that I knew her father had plenty of guns on the ranch. He would probably hesitate a little to actually kill me, since he was being paid to protect me, but I suspected and accidental shoot to the foot wouldn’t get him in too much trouble with the feds.
“Get going,” she said as she pushed me toward the door.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” I smiled.
Chapter 4
Sarah
“Wake up,” I said as I poked Garrett in the cheek.
I only stood there long enough for him to open his eyes and realize it was me and then I quickly left. My father would have killed me if he saw me anywhere near the bunkhouse. When I was younger, I loved to flirt and hang out with the ranch hands and my father never allowed it. It was fun back then to go against his wishes, but now I knew better. Many of the men who worked for us were on the run from the law, family, and other obligations. Some were good men who had made bad choices, but some weren’t good men at all.
The ranch was a world all of its own. As much as we had to work, most of the people who worked the ranch also lived there and everyone was friends as well. We didn’t get days off and we didn’t have much time for going into town or socializing. The ranch was our morning, noon and night; so I was happy to have someone cute and interesting around.
The ranch was quiet at four o’clock in the morning; I loved the feeling in the air before the sun rose. Over the years, one of my favorite parts of helping out at the ranch was making breakfast for the men. It was the start of a new day and optimism was always in the air. All the tiredness from the day before had worn off and most of the men had a smile and were ready for the new day of work.
“How do I even know it’s morning? It still looks like nighttime,” Garrett said as he jogged up behind me. “Why on earth do we need to get up this early anyways? Can’t we make breakfast be at a respectable hour like, eight o’clock or something?”
I knew the feeling. I hated that we served breakfast so damn early, too. By the time everyone got to lunchtime, they were starving again. I could only imagine how hungry Garrett had been when skipping breakfast all together.
The days on the ranch were long and having the ranch hands working so many hours wasn’t ideal. Sure, a ranch hand job was expected to be long hours. But the guys on our ranch often worked seven days a week and from five in the morning to nine at night. It couldn’t be legal, but I suspected my father paid many of them under the table and most of the men liked it that way. They weren’t working on our ranch so they could work up in their careers. The men who came to our ranch were only worried about getting some cash in their pockets and moving on.
