Eric pushed a few pieces of his cereal over the side of the tray.
“Now, don’t you start, little man. Your sister’s enough of a handful right now.” Pete caught both his son’s wrists and pressed them together between his palms.
Familiar with the game, Eric laughed, slipped his hands free and pounded the tray, making the scattered cereal bounce. Pete reached down to pick up the pieces that landed on the floor.
“Leave that,” Sharon said. “I’ll sweep up when he’s done.”
“Thanks. You’re the best.” He dropped a few pieces of the cereal into the kitchen trash and then planted a kiss on Eric’s blond curls. “I’d better head out. Charlie’s due to stop in anytime now.” Charlie, the local vet, was coming to take a look at one of the mares with a leg injury. “I’ll see you all later.”
He left the house and strode in the direction of the barn, which sat within easy walking distance, even for Rachel, who spent plenty of time in the adjacent corral and at the Hitching Post.
As he thought again of his daughter, he shook his head.
She had recently begun dramatizing every little incident—very much like her mother always had and still did on her rare visits to town. At the thought of the public scenes Marina had put him through in the past, he shuddered. He dreaded the idea of Rachel taking on more of her mama’s traits. Already, her bossiness seemed like her way of controlling situations. Of getting extra attention.
Or maybe he read too much into his daughter’s behavior. It was hard to tell. Sometimes he didn’t know for sure how to read either of his kids. The thought made him heave another sigh. Though his position as manager of Garland Ranch routinely included long hours, rough riding, unpleasant tasks and backbreaking chores, none of that came close to the challenge of being a single dad.
* * *
TRUE TO FORM, once Rachel’s questions about her mama had sent Pete’s morning off on its wrong turn, the rest of the day followed suit. Though he would never trade his job on the ranch for anything, by quitting time he felt ready for a few weeks of selling ice in Antarctica.
Looking beyond the mare he was tending to, he eyed his boss, who stood just outside the stable door.
Jed had recently made it his mission to revitalize the Hitching Post, the honeymoon hotel on the property, and had lined up all his granddaughters to help with the transformation. Twice in the space of as many minutes, the boss had brought up the name of one of those granddaughters. A name Pete was all too familiar with, belonging to a granddaughter he wanted to go nowhere near.
Plenty of times over the past few years, he’d seen Jane Garland—from a distance—on her visits to the ranch. She didn’t much care for riding, but she would walk over with her cousin Andi when she rode, always resulting in more grief for him. Other than that, their paths had no need to cross, which suited him just fine.
But now he had a bad feeling about the direction of Jed’s conversation.
“Almost done, girl,” he murmured to Starlight. He kept his focus on her sore foreleg as he applied the ointment the vet had dropped off that morning.
“Won’t be long,” Jed went on, “before we’ll have the place on the map.”
The boss had gotten all fired up about increasing business for the hotel. Pete couldn’t find any fault with the plan. Although managing a spread the size of Jed’s already provided him with more than full-time employment, he wouldn’t balk at the extra work. He’d always just added the dude-ranch activities onto his list of responsibilities.
“Andi will fly in with her kids by the end of the week. But Jane—” third mention “—decided to come a couple of days ahead. She’ll be taking pictures at the wedding rehearsal, you know.”
He nodded, his focus still on Starlight. “Yeah, Cole said.” Cole had told him that news and a lot more about all of the boss’s granddaughters.
Since his divorce, happy matrimony was the last thing he wanted to think about. But Jed and Cole both made sure to keep him up-to-date on all the wedding plans. He couldn’t blame either of the men. After all, he had agreed to be one of the ushers, which meant attending that danged rehearsal. And the wedding, of course.
“Starlight’s leg is looking good,” he told Jed.
Finished with the mare’s treatment, he went to the sink in one corner. The sound of running water kept Jed quiet for a moment, giving Pete a chance to think.
The boss had also kept him up-to-date on the renovations going on over at the hotel. That made even more sense, as increased business there meant more dudes for his cowhands to work with and entertain on the ranch. For anything connected with the hotel guests, he and Jed always coordinated with Tina.
“Jane,” Jed went on, “wants to take some photos around the hotel. The rooms downstairs, some of the guest rooms that are already finished...for the new website.”
“Sounds good.” He grabbed the towel from beside the sink.
“I want you to give her a hand.”
He froze with the towel halfway up one wet forearm. Water ran down the other arm and off his elbow. Drip...drip...drip... Like water torture. Like the sound of Jed’s request echoing in his brain.
The boss’s blue eyes looked guileless enough. But then, he couldn’t know how much his manager wanted to avoid this granddaughter, for a whole list of reasons.
He’d had enough of the teenage Jane mouthing off to him during his early days working as a stable hand on the ranch. As a dyed-in-the-wool cowboy, he had no interest in being around a city slicker. And those stories Cole had told him recently only reinforced his determination to avoid her. Her drive for success and single-minded focus on her career gave her too much in common with his fashion-model ex-wife.
Pete finished drying off and hung up the towel again. “What does she need with a cowboy, if she’s only taking a bunch of pictures?”
“She’ll be setting things up, moving furniture around. I want someone to do the heavy lifting.”
“I can spare one of the stable hands for that. They’re fine about doing whatever jobs they’re given, even ones not in their job description.” He forced a laugh. “Since moving furniture’s not in mine, either, I’m sure you don’t want your foreman—”
“I do want my foreman on this job.”
“Speaking of jobs, I’d better get going.” And get the heck out of here before I say something I shouldn’t. “There’s a lot of territory to cover this morning.” He crossed the barn to take a set of reins from their hook. “It’s June, Jed. I don’t need to tell you how busy that makes us around here.”
“And I’ll tell you this, flat-out straight the way I always do. I want someone I can trust to be alone with my granddaughter.”
Eyebrows raised, Pete turned back. From the stories Cole had told him about Jane, a New Yorker who traveled all over the world for her job, he couldn’t think of any woman more able to handle herself. Which meant...
“I’m not saying anything against the boys,” Jed continued as if he’d read his manager’s mind. “I trust every one of ’em. But there’s no one I have more faith in than you.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, boss.” He swallowed hard. “But—”
“And as I recall,” Jed interrupted heavily, “when it comes to job descriptions, the two of us don’t much stick to formalities between us, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” he agreed, knowing those words had just sealed his fate.
He owed the boss for providing everything he needed to take care of his kids.
And now, all too plainly, the man had called in his debt.
Copyright © 2015 by Barbara White-Rayczek
ISBN-13: 9781460384831
The Heart of a Cowboy
Copyright © 2015 by Trish Milburn
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