Home on the Ranch

by Trish Milburn

  “You can walk through the house if you like,” Austin said. “But if you already know you’re not interested, I understand.”

  She looked at him and would swear he’d stiffened up. The tension was radiating off him like heat rising off a long stretch of Texas highway in July. He did not want to be here. Whether it was because of memories or the monumental task of cleaning out his grandparents’ things, she couldn’t tell.

  “I’ll look around.” As she walked from the living area into the kitchen, she tried not to let her excitement start galloping like a runaway horse. But it was difficult considering the wealth of tins, crockery, utensils and even an old percolator-style coffeepot on the stove.

  As she moved from one room to another, Austin didn’t leave the living room. It was as if he didn’t want to be out of view of the front door. She didn’t dawdle, but she took enough time to get some idea of what was available before returning to where Austin waited, definitely closer to the open door than when she’d left him.

  “So how much to haul this away and how long will it take?” he asked.

  Her gaze landed on several mason jars full of buttons behind him but she forced herself to focus on Austin, even if he did make her heart beat faster than normal.

  “How much are you keeping?” she asked.

  “None of it.” He glanced around as the space between his dark eyebrows scrunched, as if he were perplexed why she would ask that question.

  He wasn’t the only one with questions. Had he already retrieved any mementos or heirlooms he wanted to keep? Or did he truly not want anything? She had never encountered a haul this large, and she worried about how she would manage to get it all out in a timely fashion and still meet her other obligations. But she’d have to because she was standing in the midst of a treasure trove of possible income.

  Considering the situation, she reined in her giddiness. “I’ll haul it away for free, but it’ll take me several days since I’m a one-woman operation.”

  Austin’s confusion deepened as he shifted his attention back to her. Damn, that man’s eyes were enough to turn a woman’s insides to puddles of undiluted desire.

  “How can you make a living hauling trash for free?”

  “It’s not trash.” She gestured to their surroundings. “I can make a lot of really wonderful home decor items from all this. Upcycling and repurposing are very popular right now, and a good way to keep items that still have use from ending up in landfills.”

  He shook his head. “If you say so. I just want it gone as quickly as possible.”

  She couldn’t imagine throwing away a legacy as he seemed determined to do. She’d moved around so often as a kid that her belongings had necessarily been kept to a minimum. The only things she had left of her father were a quilt she’d made from his shirts and a small album of photos. Her mom, in grief at his loss, had given everything else away, as if doing so would ease her pain.

  Was that what Austin was doing?

  “Would you like me to start today?”

  “If you can. But you might want to see the rest of it before you start.”

  “The rest?”

  He motioned for her to follow him outside. This time, not only did she have to avert her eyes from his shoulders but also how nice his long legs looked in his jeans. Honestly, why couldn’t it have been a frumpy niece who’d called her out here?

  Austin headed toward the barn, not slowing his stride to accommodate her shorter legs. This dude was in a hurry, and she wondered if he would give her enough time to go through his grandparents’ belongings. Would she have to haul it all away and sift through it later? As she walked, she tried calculating the number of trips that would take, how many hours of work.

  When Austin opened the barn door, her preliminary calculations got blasted to smithereens.

  He must have seen the surprised look on her face. “I told you it was a lot.”

  “You weren’t kidding.”

  “And there’s more in the two small outbuildings out back.”

  Holy macaroni. She strode into the barn, glancing from side to side. Though it wasn’t as packed as the house, there was indeed a lot of extra stuff lining the alleyway down the middle of the barn and occupying the stalls that didn’t hold the one chestnut-colored horse in residence.

  “So people really buy stuff made from junk?”

  The way he said “junk” rubbed her the wrong way, as if what she put her heart and soul into was foolish and the people who bought it even more so. But she held her tongue. She wasn’t going to let momentary annoyance prevent her from scoring enough raw materials to keep her hands and imagination busy for months. And with plans in the works for a new arts and crafts trail to lead tourists to the shops of local artisans, this stockpile would help her have plenty of offerings for new customers.

  “Yes, and I appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me here.”

  Austin crossed his arms across his chest, causing her to gulp. Good grief, she hoped that hadn’t been audible. But really, she couldn’t be blamed if it had been. Or for the fact she wondered what it would feel like to be wrapped in those well-defined arms. It wasn’t her fault that the mere sight of him made her hormones jump up and start dancing the jitterbug.

  “This is too much for one person to clear out,” he said. “I should call in some more help.”

  “No, I can do it.” It was going to be exhausting, but she hated the idea of a sanitation crew hauling everything off to the dump.

  Austin let out a long exhale. “You have until I finish up some repairs and get the ranch listed. If it’s not all gone by then, I’m calling in someone who can get everything out of here in a day.”

  She hastily agreed to his terms, even though she had no idea how she was going to manage such an undertaking on her own. Especially when she couldn’t afford to hire any help.

  “I’ll get started now.”

  He gave her what felt like a long look with those gorgeous eyes then nodded once before walking past her out of the barn.

  Unable to help herself, she turned and watched him stride away. Fearing he would sense her gaze, she spun back toward the interior of the barn. She’d set herself a near impossible task. She certainly didn’t have time to ogle Austin Bryant, however pleasurable that might be.

  Chapter Two

  Austin battled the frustration eating at him from the inside as he walked back toward the house. For some reason that escaped him, he’d just agreed to let a woman who barely came up to the midway point on his chest have the time to haul all his grandparents’ belongings away by herself. When she’d said that the piles of stuff could be useful, he’d been jerked back to his childhood, to when his grandmother had explained they couldn’t throw anything out because they might need it someday.

  Most of the time he couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like, but he could hear her say that clear as day in his memory.

  Even as a little boy, he’d known that there was no use for a black-and-white television that no longer worked or dozens of plastic butter containers that had been washed after the butter was eaten then stashed in the kitchen cabinets. What Ella Garcia saw in a lifetime of hoarding, he had no idea. And he didn’t care as long as she got it out of his sight.

  He fought against the urge to haul everything outside and set it on fire. But his rational brain managed to beat down that visceral need. While he might want it all gone now, realistically what did a few more days matter? It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough work around the place to keep him busy while Ella toted away everything.

  He stopped at the corner of the house and took a couple of deep breaths, ashamed that he let being here upset him so much. He needed to focus on things other than the past—things like fixing the sagging gutters on the house, checking the fencing around the ranch to see if it needed repair
s, doing research to figure out what asking price he should shoot for when he talked to a real estate agent.

  Movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. Ella Garcia hurried up the front steps of his grandparents’ house. Now that he had a plan for clearing out the house and surrounding buildings, it was as if a layer of distraction that had been blinding him to her physical appearance had been peeled away.

  Damn if he didn’t feel his blood rush a little bit faster in his veins as he watched her fit legs carry her up the steps and toward the front door. As if they had a mind of their own, his eyes made a quick perusal up her legs and over her backside, all the way up to where she’d pulled her dark, curly hair into a pseudo ponytail on the back of her head. And his very male eyes liked what they saw, sending a message south to react accordingly.

  Austin cursed under his breath. He already had about a dozen helpings too much on his plate. The last thing he needed was to be attracted to Ella. In a few days, his time in Blue Falls would be up and he’d be back in Dallas, where he wouldn’t feel as if the world was caving in on him.

  Needing to fill his mind with anything other than Ella Garcia’s curves, he retraced his steps to the barn. While he didn’t want to walk inside, he needed a ladder if he was going to start work on the gutters. At least the barn wasn’t as bad as the house, he told himself as he stepped into the dim interior.

  Luck was finally on his side when he spotted a ladder hanging on the wall about halfway down the alleyway. He started in that direction but paused when he reached Duke, his grandfather’s sorrel stock horse.

  “Hey, fella,” he said as he scratched between Duke’s ears. He smiled when he thought about how the horse had gotten his name, after John Wayne.

  Austin’s grandfather must have seen each of Wayne’s movies at least a hundred times. The old VCR tapes were likely buried under fifty pounds of other stuff inside the house. Despite the happy memory of watching those movies with his grandfather, he didn’t want the tapes. But he did sometimes find himself flipping channels at home or on a business trip and stopping to watch The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

  His heart squeezed at the fact that he’d never again be able to talk to his grandfather, the man who’d been so much more than a grandparent to him. Dale Bryant had been the only father he’d ever known.

  As if Duke could read Austin’s thoughts, he lifted his head and bumped it against Austin’s hand.

  “You miss him, too, don’t you?”

  Duke let out a sad-sounding snort as if to give an affirmative answer.

  Austin rubbed his hand along Duke’s neck. “We’ll go out for a ride tomorrow, boy.” He let his hand drop away and made his way down the narrow path between wooden crates and old ranch equipment to reach the ladder.

  But when he reached it, the crumbling wooden rungs made it obvious that he wasn’t going to be using it to clean and fix the gutters. “Damn it.”

  “Something wrong?”

  He spun toward the entrance to see Ella’s petite form backlit by the strong sunlight outside.

  “Useless ladder.” He pointed toward where it hung on an old metal hook.

  “I have one you can borrow. No need to get another if you’re not keeping the place.”

  His instinct was to decline. Though when he stopped to think about it, that didn’t make sense. What did make sense was not buying a ladder that he’d be using for only a few days, one that he couldn’t transport in his car anyway.

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  “No problem.” She held up something. “I found this and a bunch of other toys. I thought maybe they were yours when you were a kid and, well, you might want to keep them?”

  It took him a moment to figure out that she was holding the engine to the wooden train set he’d had as a young boy. He hadn’t even seen that in probably twenty years. For a split second, he thought maybe... He shook his head. “No. Like I said, there’s nothing here I want. If you find things you can’t use, I’m happy to pay you to haul them away. Or leave them and I’ll have a trash crew come in and get the rest.”

  She glanced at the toy in her hand, and he’d swear he saw a flicker of sadness in her expression. Maybe she was just one of those people who got attached to things. He wasn’t. Things had to be useful, a means to an end. There was no other reason to have them.

  And yet there was some strange part of him that wanted to keep the train engine simply because she evidently wanted him to for some reason. Crazy.

  “Okay,” Ella finally said. “I’ll bring the ladder with me tomorrow unless you need it sooner. I could take a small load of stuff home then come back with it.”

  “No, that’s not necessary. There are plenty of other things I can do without it.” And he’d rather she make a fast dent in the piles before they decided to multiply when he had his back turned.

  She gave a quick nod then headed out of the barn.

  He sighed and realized the only thing that was going to give him any sort of relief from his frustration was a ride out across the ranch. He knew that from years of experience.

  Well, that’s not all that could give you relief.

  Jeez, the woman had been on his property only half an hour at most and he was already having sexual thoughts about her.

  You’re only human. A man.

  Yeah, but he wasn’t an animal. And Ella Garcia was definitely not the type of woman for him. Her excitement over getting to possess piles of junk, as if she’d won the kid lottery on Christmas morning, told him that much.

  Needing a lot of fresh air and wide-open sky, preferably far away from the temptation of the woman currently carrying a big box out to her truck, he moved toward the tack room. Once he retrieved his grandfather’s saddle, he walked over to Duke’s stall. “Change of plans, boy.”

  Maybe somewhere out on his grandparents’ acreage he’d find a sense of calm and his common sense.

  * * *

  ELLA SHOVED A box of vintage lace doilies into the back of her truck, already imagining the beautiful lampshades she could make from them. As she raised her hand to wipe sweat from her forehead for what had to be the thousandth time since she’d arrived at the Bryant ranch, the muscles in her arms screamed at her. She was sweaty, dirty, aching and needed a Coke approximately the size of the Blue Falls water tower, but she was going to cram as much stuff into her truck as possible. The quicker she emptied the house, the better. She didn’t want to risk Austin changing his mind, thinking it was taking her too long. It would be a crime for all these items to end up at the dump.

  She just wished she could clone herself a couple of times to make the work go faster. So would having Austin’s help, but then that’s what he’d “hired” her for, right? Plus, he’d disappeared on his grandfather’s horse a few hours ago. The moment she’d seen him astride the horse, riding off across the pasture, she’d nearly tripped over her feet again. That certainly was a dangerous and annoying effect for a guy to have on a girl. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to face-plant in the driveway and not be able to tell him why. She’d have to claim supreme klutziness or something.

  If she’d thought he looked like a movie star cowboy earlier, him astride a horse with the wide, blue sky as a backdrop had only increased that impression tenfold. If he’d been wearing a cowboy hat and boots, it was possible she would have just drooled herself into dehydration.

  Despite the lack of traditional cowboy attire, there had been something so totally right about the sight of him astride that horse, like he belonged here in this place.

  Why she thought that, she had no idea. After all, she didn’t have a lot of experience with deep connections to a place. Growing up in a military family came with a certain rootlessness. Only since moving to Blue Falls had she started to feel a real connection to a slice of the world. According to the frie
nds she’d made here, it was one of those small towns where people enjoyed growing up and many liked to stay.

  Except, evidently, Austin Bryant. When he’d shown her around the place and asked about how long it would take her to empty all the buildings, he’d been fighting a barely contained fidgetiness. It was as if he thought the place was going to cause him to break out in a rash if he stayed too long. And though Dale Bryant had been a nice guy, it seemed his grandson couldn’t be rid of anything that reminded him of his grandparents fast enough.

  With another swipe at the sweat beading on her forehead, she headed back into the house.

  By the time she was wedging the last possible thing—an old sewing box filled with lots of notions—into her truck, she was so tired and hot that if there were a flowing creek nearby she’d just lie down in it, clothes and all.

  As if the universe were offering her the next best thing, she spotted a water spigot between the house and the barn. Like a desert traveler heading toward a mirage, she crossed to the spigot and turned it on. She stuck her entire head underneath the flow of water, and it felt so good that she had to resist the urge to stay underneath it until she ran the water source dry.

  She did extend the top half of her body under the flow, soaking her T-shirt and bra. Good thing she was heading straight home because she no doubt looked like she’d been dragged behind a boat across Blue Falls Lake. When she got her truck unloaded, she was going to take the longest shower in the history of showers.

  Though she didn’t want to, she turned off the spigot and wiped the water from her face as she stood. She opened her eyes to find a man standing a few feet away. An involuntary scream left her mouth before recognition hit. This time, she wasn’t able to prevent the tangled-feet phenomenon from dumping her flat on her butt in the mud she’d just created.