“It was no problem,” the new guy said taking her hand. He had a hypnotic smile. It played over his lips like he was listening to someone tell the best joke in the world. Jess wished fervently that she could hear that joke too as she gazed into his eyes. They were such a light brown that they really did look golden.
“I’m Wyatt Wade, by the way,” he said taking his hand back.
Jess felt awkward and silly and ran her hands down her sodden jeans. God she was behaving like she was in high school again. This man…this man was most certainly trouble.
“And you are?” he asked.
She blinked. “I’m Jess Lincoln, sorry for being so rude. I mean this morning I was in New York and now I’m here-- and there were the cows--how did you get them to come in anyway?”
Wyatt grinned, looking every bit the naughty boy, “Oh, I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged, “You might not invite me over again if I tell you my secret.”
“Oh really?” she cocked her head on one side and then caught herself. Flirting? Really? The ink was barely dry on the damned divorce papers and here she was parading her wet-t-shirted breasts in front of a man she’d literally only just met.
Just then Charlie coughed. “You two want I should leave the room?”
“No! Please! What would give you that idea?” Jess said smiling a little too brightly and wishing she hadn’t gotten her towel all full of tea. She could feel the flapping come on. Whenever she got nervous she tended to talk incessantly and flap her hands around like a mildly concussed albatross. She would have to get him out of her house before she did something really stupid, again. “Look it’s getting late, I think, and well I still have to find my bed…” she looked out into the hallway and saw boxes piled up any old how and sighed.
“Can I help you with anything?” Wyatt asked. “Look I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you seem a little disorganized.” Then seeing the look on her face he held up his hands, one still clutching the towel and said, “I just call it like I see it. You don’t know the first thing about running a ranch like this do you?”
Jess shook her head. “Not as such,” she said. “But I am a fast learner.”
Wyatt clicked his tongue. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said shaking his head so his hair flew off his forehead. “Those are good cattle you got there and they can’t wait around for you to figure things out.”
“So what are you saying?” Jess asked suddenly feeling bone weary. All she wanted to do was slide into a hot bath and then crawl into her bed and sleep until the Second Coming.
Wyatt sighed.
‘What he means,” Charlie piped up from his chair, “Is that you gonna need more help’n just me. You gonna need hands to work, at least while you sort yourself out.” He indicated all the boxes of stuff she had brought with her.
Jess knew they were right, but did they have to talk about it right now? Why now? Couldn’t it wait until morning, when there wasn’t lightning and thunder outside and she didn’t feel like road kill? Surely after a good night’s sleep she would feel better and all of this would seem less weird and confusing. For a moment she wished that Conrad were here. He always knew how to handle things. Then she caught herself and mentally shook herself. She wasn’t allowed to want Conrad back. She didn’t really want the no good, lying, cheating freak that he was anywhere near her. And frankly, even though Wyatt had a smile that could melt icebergs, and was built like a Roman god, she wanted neither him nor Charlie in her house bothering her right now. Not about her disorganized life and not about her stupid cows.
“Thank you so much for rescuing me, Mr. Wade,” she said taking the towel from him and walking him to the front door. “But really, I can’t do this now, okay?”
“But…”
“No, I really can’t. So please, tomorrow is another day and hopefully the stupid cows will stay put just for one night,” she said opening the door to the pouring rain. “Thank you so much, but good night.” She tried to push him out into the storm.
“I was just gonna mention that my horse is on the other side of your house,” Wyatt said.
Jess opened and then shut her mouth.
“Okay then,” Wyatt said and walked back through the house and out the French doors he’d come in earlier. “Charlie, good luck with her.”
“I’m gonna need it,” Charlie agreed waving him out.
Jess couldn’t stand it. Why was she always surrounded by disapproving men? Well she’d show them!
She made her way upstairs and found her bed behind the third door she opened. It had been dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the floor and was still wrapped in plastic. She had linen somewhere, but finding it now would be too much effort. So she went down the stairs and into the living room. Charlie was gone too. Good, Jess thought as she picked up a box and carried it upstairs.
She stripped off her wet clothes and remembered she didn’t know where her dry clothes were. Oh well. So she laid a towel from the box on the mattress, wrapped herself in another one, and lay under a bath-sheet with another towel rolled up as a makeshift pillow. Then she lay in the dark, watching the lightning play across the sky and cried herself to sleep.
Morning happened.
At first, Jess thought that something was wrong. There was so much birdsong. It was as though every bird in creation had decided, just that morning, to sit outside her window and exercise its vocal chords. This couldn’t be normal. But then she had stuck her head out of her window and the world appeared to be working just fine, only with more music in it than she had heard before.
She crept downstairs and found a suitcase with some of her clothes in it. They were office attire, all pencil skirts and tailored suits. What had she brought them for? She was a ranch owner. Her life was one of jeans and T-shirts now. Rummaging in another bag produced a creased Tee with Hello Kitty on it, a joke present from her sister, and a pair of cut-off denims that were fraying their way into non-existence. The Tee was too small, stretching over her more than ample bosom. She sighed. Well maybe she could go into town and buy something more suitable, but for now…
Dressed, she walked into her new kitchen. It was huge and sadly empty. She would have to unpack, but first things first. There was a kettle and a stove so she managed to heat some water to make tea. This cup was infinitely better than the one from last night, and Jess was beginning to feel mostly human when there was a knock on her kitchen door.
It was a stable door, so she unlocked and opened the top half on the second try. “Yes?”
“Mornin’,” said Wyatt. He looked as fresh as a daisy, and smelled that fresh too. It was as though he’d had a bath in dew and rubbed himself dry with fresh green grass. Jess sighed.
“Early isn’t it?” she asked walking back into the kitchen leaving him waiting outside.
“Not really,” Wyatt said leaning on the door. “We generally start before dawn.”
“Is that a fact?” Jess was standing at the stove, contemplating what she could have for breakfast in a house with no groceries.
“May I come in?” Wyatt asked.
“If you must,” Jess said.
“Look, Ms. Lincoln, you need our help,” Wyatt said with no preamble at all. “I thought we’d settled this last night.” He was now standing in her kitchen and there were four other men behind him.
Jess bore down on him. “Look, Mr. Wade isn’t it? I just need to find some breakfast. So unless you have some crispy bacon and eggs sunny side up under that shirt-- I don’t need your help!”
Wyatt sighed, “Actually you do. These are my friends and we’re gonna look after your cattle for you, for a really reasonable price.”
“Now hold on just one moment,” she snapped raising a finger in the air. “How do I know you know what you’re doing? What if you’re nothing but a lying shark?”
Wyatt smiled at her. “You know I like you. You’re spikey. And those are really good questions, but I thought after I rode in o
n my charger last night and saved you, you’d be…”
“I’d be…?” Jess asked folding her arms across her chest. She eyed the other men. They were watching her and Wyatt with every indication of amusement. “I’d be what?”
“More grateful for one thing,” Wyatt said. “You didn’t lose one cow last night. Not one! And you could’ve lost the whole herd.”
“Well!” Jess yelled and then stopped. She stared into another world, another time and then deflated, her anger draining away. “I’m sorry. You’re right and I’m wrong. Everyone’s just been fighting with me at every turn lately and…”
“And you thought it would be fun to fight with a total stranger?” Wyatt asked grinning. “I can see the appeal.”
“So, what is this decent price you mentioned?” she asked dreading the figure.
Wyatt smiled then. “Consider today as us just being neighborly. We can talk about it, over dinner?”
Jess’s inner voice yelled at her to refuse. Hadn’t she learnt that all men were evil, cheating little liars? But her mouth was running on automatic and said “yes” before it could be stopped.
Wyatt’s smile was positively dreamy. It was intoxicating and probably infectious she thought, as he lined his friends up for her to meet them.
There was Kyle, blonde with dimples. Then came Ryan with hair as dark as hers and as quiet as a shadow. He was in stark contrast to the last two who were introduced as Tyler and Jesse Crowe. Brothers, one look told her that anyway. Tyler, the younger had a goatee, but other than that the two were very similar, with blonde hair and big broad shoulders.
“You all have the same color eyes,” Jess noted looking at them standing around her kitchen.
“We’re sort of related,” Jesse said smiling.
“That must be one heck of a strong gene for you all to get it,” she remarked. The men looked at each other and then Wyatt said “Well boys, time to go do some work.”
Hats were donned and they marched out into the clear, bright day. Jess watched them go and only then did she realize that she had a dinner date and no idea what to wear.
Jess found Old Charlie’s room after half an hour. He had his own little cottage on the property, tucked away behind the barn. It was a neat little place with a small patch of garden in front that was bursting with flowers. He seemed less than thrilled to see her but let her in anyway.
He was washing his dishes, a pan and one plate in a small sink. The house smelt of recently cooked bacon and eggs. Jess was ravenous. She hadn’t eaten a thing since her flight yesterday. She had meant to visit a grocery store before driving out to the farm, but the call about the cattle had ended that plan.
“So what can I do for you?” Old Charlie asked his back to her as he continued washing up.
“Um, well I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night. This whole lifestyle is new to me and I’m sorely unprepared for it.” She stood in the middle of his tiny living room floor with its sparse furniture and watched him busy in his kitchenette.
After an age, Old Charlie turned around and smiled. “Well that took guts,” he said. “Apology accepted.”
Jess smiled and nodded nervously.
“Was there something else?” he asked as he scrubbed down his kitchen counter.
“Yes actually, I need to go to town urgently and I was wondering if you would consider coming with me?” There she’d asked.
Old Charlie put down his sponge and looked at her properly for the first time since letting her in. “Yeah I can see why, you can’t run a ranch looking like one of those Playboy Bunnies. You gonna need good boots and jeans and maybe a shirt that fits.”
Jess folded her arms across her chest. This just made her breasts bunch together and seem even more likely to break out of the Tee. So she settled for placing her hands on her hips instead. Well he wasn’t wrong.
It was an hour’s drive to the nearest store. This town, Jess missed the name, was so small she would have called it a Hamlet back home. The general store was nestled between a post office and a diner along with what passed for a main street. Too early for the general store, the sign in the front window indicating that they only opened at eight thirty, Jess took them to the diner.
As she found a seat in a booth, and Old Charlie slipped in opposite her, Jess couldn’t help but smile. She had changed out of the silly Tee and decaying jeans, settling for pale blue slacks and a delicate cream blouse. At least now she felt more like herself.
She ordered coffee for them both, and seeing as how the least fattening thing on the menu was toast with a poached egg, she ordered that. She asked Charlie if he wanted anything but he refused. Then, hearing her order, Old Charlie shook his head. “No reason to watch your figure out here,” he said. “You gonna be working too hard for fat to cling to you.”
“Oh, but I hired Wyatt and his friends for the hard labor,” Jess said meaning it as a bit of a joke.
Charlie obviously didn’t get it and she had to admit it was at the bottom end of the humor barrel. So she sipped her coffee and ate her toast in silence. From their booth, she had an excellent view out of the window. The main street was coming to life. She watched people, mostly in jeans, moving to and fro going about their business. Next door the general store opened. Jess only realizing this as a line of people entered it. And then suddenly her breath caught in her throat. Across the street was a hotel. It was a quaint building with a small turret and a bay window, a flower filled garden and the name, “Grandma’s Inn,” displayed with great pride on the gate.
In front of the gate stood a man. He wasn’t particularly tall, or short but somewhere in between. He was muscular, that was obvious under his jeans and red check shirt. His hair looked greyish in the light.
Jess almost dropped her coffee mug, sloshing liquid over the table.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” Old Charlie exclaimed grabbing a handful of napkins to wipe up the mess.
“He’s here,” Jess said starting to shake. “That lying a-hole is here!”
A waitress appeared with a cloth and in the turmoil of cleaning her mess, Jess lost sight of the man and swore.
Old Charlie grinned. “I knew we’d manage to dislodge that bug up your butt eventually.”
But Jess wasn’t listening. How could he be here? How could he find her?
“So who was that?” Charlie asked. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
“I thought I saw my ex. But Conrad can’t be here. I mean I left him in New York with his stupid physiotherapist. He can’t have found me can he?” Jess knew she was rambling but she was scared now. Conrad Petersen was a mean piece of work. Oh, at first he’d be charming, suave and you let things slide. Little cruelties, wrapped in a sick sense of humor, and fancy words would be dealt out on a daily basis. Eventually you would take his obsessive narcissism to just be his way of joking with you. But that was before you saw him in the light of day, before you realized that he was mean through and through. Jess had found out about Conrad’s temper, his nastiness and something even more horrible.
“Bad guy,” Charlie said.
Jess hadn’t realized she’d been speaking aloud.
“Well look, it’s probably not him,” Charlie said. “I read somewhere that everyone’s got a double somewhere in the world, so maybe that poor feller has the rotten luck of looking like…what was his name again?”
Clay (BBW Secret Baby Bear Shifter Romance) (Secret Baby Bears Book 4) Page 131
