by Merry Farmer
“So what exactly happened in that IED explosion that landed you in a military hospital with shrapnel?” Ted asked as they walked on.
Ironically, Laura relaxed. He definitely wouldn’t ask her something so gruesome and personal if he was still interested in dating her. “A jeep drove over the IED several yards in front of me. The blast was close enough to hit me, but not close enough to obliterate me.”
“Lucky,” Ted said, then took a bite of ice cream from the top of his cone.
“Yeah, a hell of a lot luckier than the guys in the jeep.”
Ted stopped cold, the color leaving his face. “Did they…”
Laura just nodded. She’d worked hard to forget that day. She hadn’t known the guys who were killed, but they had all been affected by it. That wasn’t the first time she’d lost someone, though, and while it hadn’t made the whole thing easier to cope with, it meant she hadn’t been as messed up about it as some of the other guys in her platoon had been. Instant death had been far better than watching her brother suffer through round after round of chemotherapy on the way to a slow and painful death from cancer.
She drew in a breath and shook her head. “You live on and enjoy your life because they can’t. It’s the best tribute you can give someone.” She took a fortifying lick of ice cream.
She expected Ted’s horrified expression to linger, but instead it resolved into something tender and filled with grief. “Yeah, I lost my mom a year and a half ago, and you’re right.” They continued walking, inching closer together, tongues slurping out to lick cones. “Mom would have wanted me to keep going.”
“Yeah, Blake would have wanted the same for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “One of the guys in the jeep?”
“No, my brother,” she said.
Ted winced. “Your brother died too?”
She nodded. “Leukemia. He was twelve.”
“Shit.”
“Honestly, that’s why I joined the Little League team back home. Because he couldn’t. He used to love coming out to watch me, even after he lost all his hair and had to get Dad to carry him from the car and—” She swallowed hard, not even chocolate ice cream taking the bitter taste from her mouth. “Could we talk about something else?” she asked with a wry laugh.
“Absolutely.” Ted smiled, and went on with an overenthusiastic, “So, dinosaurs, eh?”
Laura’s laughter took on a more relaxed tone. “I love them. That’s all.”
The teasing returned to his eyes. “Wanna come out to the ranch to see my dinosaur?”
She stopped and turned to him with a flat stare. “Is that some kind of euphemism?”
He snorted as he took another bite off the top of his ice cream, then wiped his mouth with his free hand. The gesture sent shivers down Laura’s spine, so she deliberately looked away.
“No, I mean, we actually have a dinosaur bone on our ranch.”
She snapped her head back to him, brows rising. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He continued walking with an off-handed shrug. “It’s been out there in the field for as long as I can remember. Just a part of it is sticking up out of the ground. Well, not sticking up. It looks more like a long rock.”
“You have a dinosaur fossil on your property?” Laura’s heart began to race over something that wasn’t Ted’s heat, spicy scent, and flickering tongue beside her.
“It probably is just a rock. Or an old cow bone. Who knows how many cows died out there in the hundred and fifty years the ranch has been running.”
“But it could be a fossil,” she went on, buzzing with the possibility.
“I suppose it could be.” Ted licked a drip of ice cream that threatened to run over his fingers. Laura’s full attention zoned in on his mouth. Parts of her tensed up with longing. “There are a lot of fossil sites in Wyoming, after all.”
“What?” She blinked hazily at his tongue. A moment later, she shook herself. “I mean, yeah, there are.”
“So, you should come check it out,” Ted went on between licks around his melting ice cream. He seemed to know what he was doing with his mouth.
“Mmm.” It was the only response she could manage.
Ted chuckled. “Come check out my bone.” Laura had to fight not to let her eyes drop to his crotch. “Now that’s a euphemism.”
She tried to laugh along with him, but the sound coming out of her was more like a prolonged, airy moan. “Yeah, I’ll have to do that.”
A cold, sticky sensation hit her fingers. She blinked and looked down at the rivulets of melted chocolate ice cream running across her hand. It came as something of a surprise that she was still holding her cone at all. She’d managed to completely forget about it while watching Ted’s tongue.
Pull yourself together, she warned herself with a shake of her head.
“This is my apartment,” she said, nodding up at the building in front of them.
“Oh. So you took Howie up on his employee housing thing?”
“Yep,” she answered, glad to talk about something that wasn’t a euphemism for things she would spend the rest of her night obsessing about. “This is it. And it’s been really handy to live above a hardware store.” She paused, feeling more awkward than usual when he didn’t immediately answer her comment. “I should probably go up. It’s getting dark.”
“When do you want to come out to the ranch?” he asked.
She should have said never. But how could you possibly resist the lure of Ted’s bone? His dinosaur bone, that was.
“Saturday?” she suggested.
“Sounds good.” He sent her a lop-sided smile that made her wish it was Friday night instead of Tuesday. “Well, thanks. This was a great date.”
“Wait, what?” Laura blinked hard, instantly back to full alert. “This wasn’t a date.”
“Sure it was.” Ted’s grin grew and his eyes flashed.
“It wasn’t.”
“Of course it was. I bought you food, we talked, we engaged in an activity together.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Okay, then how about we go out for a real date? Like dinner on Saturday after you check out the non-euphemistic potential dinosaur fossil at the ranch?”
Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. Dangit, he’d taken her by surprise again. “No thanks. Let’s just stick to fossils,” she blurted before she could really stop and consider.
He arched a brow and narrowed his eyes in a way that was both teasing and scolding. “I’m going to wear you down eventually.”
“No, you aren’t,” she said, as much for the fun of arguing with him as because of the weirdness of him wanting to.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you—” She let out a hissing breath. “I’ll come out to your ranch to look at your non-euphemistic potential dinosaur fossil on a platonic basis only on Saturday. That’s it.”
Ted heaved a showy sigh. “All right. I’ll take what I can get. For now.”
She nodded in mock seriousness. Just because she was freaked out by his attempts to ask her out didn’t mean she couldn’t joke with him too. She did manage a smile, though. “And thanks for the ice cream. I’ll treat you sometime, if only to prove it wasn’t a date.”
“I—” Ted stopped, his shoulders dropping, shaking his head. “Okay. I’ll let you continue to think that. Until Saturday, then.”
“Until Saturday,” she repeated, then started past him toward her apartment door. She managed to get the key in the lock, turn it, and push open the door before peeking back over her shoulder to see if he was still there.
He was absolutely still there. He smiled and saluted her with what was left of his ice cream cone. She returned the gesture, then scrambled into the safety of her apartment, her heart pounding. Ted Flint and his bone. There was no way she couldn’t giggle over that.
Chapter Four
By the time Saturday rolled around, Laura had given herself precisely sixteen pep-talks and twelve stern lectures on how she had no
reason to be nervous about visiting the Flint ranch. Ted hadn’t asked her out there so he could ambush her with another date request. The visit was all about a rock sticking out of the ground. It could be anything or nothing. Ted was just taking advantage of her expertise. It was what friends did. Nothing more was implied. And getting ice cream with him after baseball practice was not a date.
Although, would it have been so bad if it was?
She silenced her rebellious thoughts with a grunt and gripped the steering wheel tighter as she turned off the main road and onto the Flint’s long, gravel driveway. She wasn’t Ted’s type, and he would only be disappointed if he pursued things. And she was loath to get attached to someone only to be crushed when she lost him. Again.
Images of Blake and his indomitable smile squeezed her chest and filled her with happy-sad. No, it was better to stick with her mission—investigate the bone.
The dinosaur bone.
She had almost talked herself around to facing the morning with professional detachment when Ted waved to her from the front porch of his family’s house. According to what Casey had once told her, the current Flint house was a reconstruction of the original homestead built by her ancestor Jarvis Flint’s adopted mother, Virginia Piedmont, in the 1860s. Part of it had been torn down in the 1920s, but since then, several additions had been added, giving the house a quirky combination of historic charm and modern sensibility.
But it wasn’t the house that snagged Laura’s attention as she parked next to a pair of old trucks and climbed out of her puny sedan. Ted was even more gorgeous than usual when he was in his element. He had on worn jeans and a faded t-shirt, both of which did amazing things to show off the hard, lean lines of his body. His tanned arms stood out in all their muscled glory as he strolled toward her, hands in his pockets. He must not have shaved that morning, but the shadow of stubble looked good on him. Really, really good. And to top it all off, he wore a beat up old cowboy hat that completed the picture he made with perfect style.
“Hey,” he said as he met her halfway across the gravel drive. “You made it.”
“Yep. I said I would.” She tried to smile, but was reasonably certain the expression that came to her face was a dorky smirk. Do not ask to see his bone, do not ask to see his bone, do not ask to see his bone, she chanted to herself.
“Do you want something to drink or a snack before we walk out there?” he asked. “I’ve got some iced tea in the fridge.”
Laura licked her lips at the mention of iced tea…then realized too late how that gesture might come off to Ted. “No, that’s okay,” she rushed to say.
“Maybe when we get back.” Ted shrugged. “It’s kind of a long walk out there and back.” He gestured toward a wide pasture that seemed to reach to the horizon, then began walking.
“Is it?” she asked, following.
“Kind of. Almost a mile.” He paused. “Do you ride? We could saddle up some horses and ride out that way and maybe beyond. I’ll show you the whole ranch if you’d like, tell you its history.”
“No, I don’t ride,” she blurted. Really, it might have been fun to learn. She’d been on a horse before at summer camps during her childhood and she’d enjoyed it. But riding around the ranch felt a little too cozy for her. She was here for business. That was all.
“I’ll have to teach you someday,” Ted went on, continuing their journey away from the house, past a stable, and out into the wilderness. “Unless you’re planning to stay holed up in town all the time, riding is an essential skill in these parts.”
Laura snorted. “‘In these parts.’ You sound like a real cowboy.”
“Technically, I’m a rancher. But I’ll accept cowboy in a pinch.” He grinned, sending her a look that was both sheepish and sexy as hell.
“Oh. Okay.” She laughed, definitely sounding like a dork. “Is that what you’ve always done? Ranching?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” He shrugged, smiled, and glanced around at the sprawling prairie around them. “This land has been in my family since forever. Working it, raising cattle and all, has been what I’ve known I’d do with my life since day one.”
“Huh.” She studied him as they walked.
“What?” he asked with a self-conscious, sideways look.
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “It’s just that I can’t imagine knowing what I was going to do with my life from the day I was born.”
“So you weren’t born a rocket scientist and dinosaur expert?” he teased.
She raised a hand. “Technically, I’m not a scientist. I’m more of an engineer. And no, I discovered my interest in rocket design after the Army reassigned me to a desk job post-injury. Remember?”
“Right.” He nodded. “And the dinosaurs?”
An old, hollow quiver passed through her heart. “That was more because of Blake.”
“Your brother who died?” he asked in a reverent hush.
She nodded, eager to change the subject. “Isn’t knowing what you’re going to do with your life from the time you are born a really old fashioned kind of thing?”
He must have sensed that she didn’t want to talk about Blake, because he launched right into, “Well, yeah, I guess. But it never bothered me. I love ranching. I ‘get’ cattle.”
“You get cattle?” She arched a brow, so tempted to make a joke.
“Don’t laugh. There’s a complex science to animal behavior. It helps to know all the ins and outs of your job.”
“True.” She nodded, conceding the point.
Ted glanced out at the land around them again before continuing with, “To tell you the truth, it’s been a harder job than I would have expected. At least, until recently.”
“Oh? How hard? And what changed recently?” She swayed closer to him as they walked. She was genuinely interested in the answer. Also genuinely interested in whatever brand of after shave he wore. She might have to write a thank you letter to the manufacturer.
Ted swiped his cowboy hat off his head, ran the back of his wrist across his forehead, then put his hat back on. “The beef market is tricky in the best of times. We’ve been in a bit of a market slump these last few years. There are a couple of big corporations that have been making it harder and harder for the little guys, like us, to get by. Even though we have an agreement to sell to a distributor.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” In fact, Laura knew nothing about the cattle industry. Every bit of anxiety she had about Ted getting the wrong idea about whether or not they should be together vanished. She always did like learning about new things.
“It’s good,” he started, not sounding so sure, “but it also means that we’re stuck when it comes to negotiating prices. For a while there, the price we were getting per head wasn’t enough to cover expenses, especially the year we lost a chunk of the herd to a virus.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It was,” he said in a grim voice. “But we recovered. And thanks to Scott, we’re in a really good place.”
Laura blinked. “Scott Martin? My boss?”
Ted grinned. “My future brother-in-law, you mean.”
His smile was contagious. “So what did Scott do?”
“He bought a corner of land from us,” Ted explained. “And while that drove Casey nuts at first, it meant that we were able to pay off the last of the mortgage.”
“That is a good thing.” Inside of her, she could feel the excitement radiating off Ted.
“More than you know,” he said. “After over twenty years of the bank owning most of our family’s land, as of two months ago, we own it all, fair and square, again.”
“That’s fantastic. I’m so happy for you guys.” And she was. There didn’t seem to be enough stories of the underdog winning these days. “Do you have any plans to expand or are you just going to keep doing things the way they’ve been done?”
“We’re not sure,” Ted said. “The industry is always changing, and there are all sorts of things we could do to keep up. T
hey take capital, though, and just because we’ve paid off the mortgage doesn’t mean we suddenly have money growing on trees.”
“There aren’t a lot of trees out here,” Laura agreed with a grin.
“Nope. So unless something else comes along—and frankly, I don’t think we can expect another lucky windfall any time soon—it’s business as usual.”
He slowed down and came to a stop near a cluster of bushes. A thin stream wound its way through the mostly barren and scrubby landscape. Far up its course, a dozen or so cattle were drinking out of the stream. To Laura, who had grown up in fertile, Midwestern splendor, the entire area looked bleak and unvaried.
“Here we are,” Ted said, extending his arms to the side. “Welcome to the bone.”
Laura furrowed her brow in confusion and looked around. There wasn’t anything there. The bushes and the tiny stream, yes. Other than that, the ground around her held nothing but sandy, beige dirt, scrubby plants, and—
She gasped when she saw it protruding from the ground.
“No way.” Laura sucked in a breath and lunged toward the bone.
Ted felt a moment of uncertainty as she dropped to her knees, disregarding her clothes in a way he’d never seen a woman do, and brushed at the loose dirt around the bone.
“No way,” she repeated with even more emphasis.
“Do you think it’s something?” He stepped toward her and crouched by her side, staring at the bone.
She didn’t answer at first. She brushed away with her bare hands. And they were nice hands. Small, but with a sense of strength about them. And no silly manicures, like women seemed to be so into. The bone was the same as it always was—nothing but a long, dark rock, worn a bit by sun and wind.
“I’m not sure when I first noticed it,” he said as she brushed, going so far as to dig into the hard-packed dirt with her unmanicured nails. “It definitely wasn’t there when I was a kid playing out this way. Or rather, it probably was, but it wasn’t uncovered. Or maybe I just didn’t see it. I figure the wind and natural erosion have been working away at it for a while.
