by Jeannie Watt
* * *
LILLIE JEAN DROVE to town shortly after Gus left, carefully maneuvering her grandfather’s car around the remaining mud holes in the long road leading to the highway. She hadn’t noticed the mailboxes when she’d driven into the property, but as she slowed to a stop where gravel met pavement, she caught sight of the lone metal box with bullet holes in the side. Welcome to rural Montana. Rural anywhere, for that matter. Texas mailboxes had their share of bullet holes, too.
Once in Gavin, she stopped at the first grocery store she came upon and stocked up on cleaning supplies and staples—bread, two jars of peanut butter, crackers, fruit, milk, eggs. The stuff she’d subsisted on while growing the business. She might have a right to stay on the ranch, but she didn’t have a right to eat Gus’s food, even if she was helping with chores—although if today was anything to judge by, the word help was a stretch to describe her part of the operation. Opening a gate, then shutting it barely qualified.
Maybe this was the learning phase. Maybe she’d drive the tractor soon and he’d open the gates.
Right.
In her experience, men didn’t give up control of the gas pedal and steering wheel easily. He was keeping her on the ranch for one reason only—to stay in the loop as she made decisions. And she was okay with that, because staying on the ranch felt right. For now.
She arrived home ahead of Gus, took the bags of groceries to the old house, then returned to the main house with the second jar of peanut butter. She’d just walked into the kitchen when her phone buzzed and she dug it out of her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number, but the text said it all.
This is Andrew. There’s serious stuff we need to discuss.
Speak of the devil. Lillie Jean set the peanut butter on the counter and texted back.
Contact my attorney.
A heartbeat later she hit the phone icon next to the text. She wasn’t going to wear out her thumbs. Andrew answered immediately.
“Lillie Jean. Where are you?”
“None of your business.”
“We’re missing some designs.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Moon over Texas dress and the Morning Ride jacket among others.”
“Have Taia draft them.”
“You know she doesn’t draft and, besides that, we no longer have the samples.”
That was because she had the samples. And the patterns. Because she’d designed that intricate dress and jacket, two of their mainstays, prior to setting up the business. Those designs were her property. Her last official act before surrendering her keys to the store had been to go to the storage area and remove the items she’d brought to the company. She’d left behind plenty of designs, the ones she’d created after A Thread in Time was born.
“What I took were mine. It’s well documented.”
“Everything you brought to the company became a company asset.”
And that was a flat-out lie, because in a heart-pounding moment after discovering that Taia and Andrew no longer wanted to share the business, she checked the contract and then did a thorough internet search.
“Nice try, Andrew.”
“You know that Taia’s dad is a lawyer, right?”
Of course, she knew that, just as she knew that Andrew was trying to intimidate her.
“Bite me.”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Send the patterns back and we’ll leave you alone.” This from the man she’d planned to marry. The man she’d sat up late with planning their store. Their future.
“You have photos. Hire someone to draft it.” She couldn’t stop them from copying her dresses, but she wasn’t going to make it easy on them.
“We’re on a tight deadline for an event.”
“Not my problem.”
“It’s for Isabella,” Andrew said in a strangled voice. Their up-and-coming country music star client. Having Isabella wearing A Thread in Time designs had been huge. “The dresses she ordered for her big tour.”
Just before Andrew and Taia pushed Lillie Jean out of the business. He probably thought that nice contract would be the beginning of something big.
“Again. Not my problem. Goodbye, Andrew. Give my best to Taia.”
Lillie Jean turned off the phone, then tilted her chin up to stare at the ceiling. She’d never been a fan of drama and here she was in a full-fledged soap opera. She’d almost kissed Gus that morning, and now her blood pressure was redlining thanks to her ex-fiancé.
Enough.
She headed back to the old house, where Henry met her at the door, as did the musty smell that permeated the place.
“There will be changes,” she told the dog. She didn’t know exactly what those changes would be, but she was going to take charge of her life. Leave Andrew and his issues far behind.
She glanced down at Henry. “We’re painting.” That should take care of some of the smell as well as the sad beige color.
The dog cocked his head and her phone rang. Kate.
“I just heard from Andrew. He wanted to know if you’d stored your designs with me. He made it sound like you stole them.”
“Jerk.”
“You know about this?”
“We talked. He texted me from an unblocked number. I answered.”
“L.J.—”
“It was fine. I’m fine.”
“Are the things he’s looking for in the boxes in my attic?”
Lillie Jean had stored the boxes there because Kate’s attic was little more than a crawl space—not an obvious place to store bulky boxes.
“They are. But you don’t know that.”
“No. I do not.”
Lillie Jean let out a breath. “Sorry to get you into this.”
“I’m glad to help.”
“If you see Andrew skulking about, alert the authorities.”
“You don’t really think he’d skulk, do you?”
“I didn’t think he’d dump me and steal my business. I’m taking no chances.”
A cry went up in the background and Kate sighed. “One of the babies. Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do. And if Andrew bugs you again, let me know.”
She set the phone down, then jumped a mile when the front door rattled, and Henry let out a menacing bark. Gus had returned. When he saw her through the window in the door, he pushed the door open and stepped inside, carrying the jar of peanut butter.
“You forgot this.”
Lillie Jean shook her head. The last time she’d seen him, she’d been on the brink of losing it, had come close to blowing everything by kissing him, so it was doubly important that she regain lost ground. “No. I left that on purpose.”
“Payback?” he asked in a disbelieving tone.
“You have a problem with that?”
“You ate two sandwiches. One for dinner and one for breakfast.”
“I figured the extra PB would help offset the bread.”
“You’re kidding.”
Lillie Jean folded her arms over her chest. “I’m a payer-backer.”
“Hope you don’t plan to pay me back for the Band-Aid on your forehead.”
She felt like smiling. She didn’t. “I guess that remains to be seen.”
“Is that a threat, Lillie Jean?”
Lillie Jean coolly raised her eyebrows before saying, “This place needs painting. It’ll help with the smell.”
“We have paint in the basement of the other house.”
“Beige?”
“Maybe?”
“I was thinking color.” She didn’t see how Gus could object to painting the depressing walls.
He set down the jar on the rickety end table next to the recliner. “Do what you need to do.”
“Do you want me to wait until everything is officia
l with Thad?”
Gus shook his head. “Like you said, the place needs to be painted.”
She picked up the jar of peanut butter and handed it back to him. Gus scowled, but she held his gaze, silently daring him to put the jar down again. He tucked the small jar into his coat pocket.
“I have a bed in my truck if you’ll give me a hand.”
He’d gotten her a bed and she was giving him a hard time.
No—you’re keeping your distance.
“Happy to.”
With Lillie Jean’s help, Gus brought the mattress and box spring into the house, leaning them against the wall in the bedroom. He started to set up the frame, but Lillie Jean stopped him.
“I’ll do that later.” She stood back and slipped her fingers into her back pockets. “I guess I’ll see you at six tomorrow morning?”
“You’ll see me in about half an hour. We have a heifer about to calve and then you’re going to learn to stretch wire.”
Lillie Jean smiled a little as he let himself out the door. The guy was smart. The guy was playing it right. Acting as if nothing had happened this morning, getting things back on an even keel. She bit her lip as she watched his cowboy hat disappear when he descended the porch steps.
Of all the guys in the world, why did this one fascinate her so?
* * *
GUS DUCKED HIS head against the wind as he started to the barn. Life had been a heck of a lot easier when he hadn’t known that Thad had a partner; when he’d thought he’d had his future figured out—when his biggest problems were coming up with money to fix the ranch and contending with Carson Craig’s unreasonable attitude. There was so much to do on the ranch and here he was, dealing with peanut butter and painting. A woman who he wanted to know more about...a woman who’d felt so totally right in his arms that morning. He had a feeling that she wasn’t immune to him, either—not judging from the way she’d studied his mouth before easing herself out of his embrace.
Not going to be friendly. Right.
It would be interesting to see how long the professional-distance thing lasted as he and Lillie Jean worked together—if they continued to work together. She could pack up at any time and head back to Texas, but if she did, he hoped she didn’t leave Sal’s house half-painted. He dove into most jobs with a willing attitude. Except painting. He hated that chore. And he didn’t want Lillie Jean to leave before the ranch issue was settled, which left them in something of a conundrum. He couldn’t think of one instance where he’d worked shoulder to shoulder with someone and didn’t develop a level of intimacy...except for Geoff Mahoney. They’d put in fences on the H/H his first summer there. What a rich-boy jerk old Geoff had been, put to work by his father so that he’d know how it felt to be a common man. He’d treated Thad, his boss, like dirt, and hadn’t lasted more than a couple weeks. Gus had been happy to do twice the amount of work if it meant no more Geoff.
Cool. He’d think of Lillie Jean as a female version of Geoff.
Except she wasn’t.
She was a woman who’d been burned by her partner and didn’t intend to be burned again. A woman who was going to screw up his life. Had already started making inroads.
He wasn’t getting anything done.
He checked the heifer, who was down, but not looking too distressed, then went to the other side of the barn to load the four-wheeler with the fencing gear. When he was done, he grabbed the peanut butter jar from the top of a grain barrel and carried it into the kitchen and stowed it in the cupboard. Lillie Jean was a payer-backer. That was so...businesslike. But she’d also been tense when they spoke—like she wasn’t any more immune to him, than he was to her.
Would that work for or against him? He had a bad feeling that it was the latter. Lillie Jean was self-protective and he had to be careful not to send her running back to Texas.
The wind hit him hard as he left the house again. The forecasted snow was on its way. So much for fencing. He just hoped that the heifer got her calf safely on the ground before the weather hit.
He went to Sal’s house and knocked on the door. Henry let out a ferocious warning bark a few seconds before Lillie Jean pulled the door open. A blast of warmth hit him.
“The furnace works.”
“Good to know.” One less thing he’d have to deal with. She pulled on her coat, then frowned up at the sky.
“Is the cow in the barn?”
“Not yet. But she will be.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Hope that nature takes an uneventful course.” Which was about a sixty-forty proposition with the heifers.
Despite being a heifer and clueless as to the process, the cow allowed herself to be herded into one of the three straw-filled pens in the barn. She didn’t like the looks of Lillie Jean, and eyed the new human suspiciously until she suddenly lay on her side, stretched her neck out and groaned. Gus stepped back to join Lillie Jean where she stood near a stack of small bales.
“First calf birth?”
“You have to ask?” she said, tucking a few strands of dark hair behind her ear. “But I did help deliver a baby once.”
“Kitten or puppy?”
“Human.”
The expression on his face must have been something, because for the first time since they’d met, Lillie Jean laughed. A light, infectious sound that stirred something in him he didn’t want stirred, and made him feel like smiling. “How’d that come about?”
Her expression sobered, as if she’d just realized that she was breaking her rules again, getting too friendly. But her tone was matter-of-fact as she said, “My friend Kate was expecting twins. Her first kids. When the contractions started, she realized that things were not going slowly and called me. I beat the ambulance.”
“And delivered the baby.”
“Baby number one. The paramedics delivered number two.”
“I’m impressed.”
“It was pretty much a lot of reassuring talk followed by catching a very slippery little bundle. I was terrified.”
“What other impressive secrets do you have, Lillie Jean?”
“That’s pretty much it. Other than that, ho-hum life.”
He made a noise in his throat. “Kate have a husband?”
She shot him a sidelong look. “Neither of us were lucky in love.”
“Ah.”
Lillie Jean started to move closer to the pen and without thinking Gus reached out and took her wrist, felt her give a start at the contact.
“Don’t want to distract her,” he murmured. “She doesn’t like you.” Lillie Jean eased back a step and he let go of her wrist. “Cows are like that. They don’t take to strangers.”
“She doesn’t seem to be doing much.” Lillie Jean lightly rubbed the wrist he’d grabbed.
“Heifers can take time.”
But this one didn’t. He’d barely gotten the words out when the birthing process started and less than fifteen minutes later the young mother was nuzzling her calf. Lillie Jean stayed a careful distance away, watching wordlessly until the newborn bull latched on to his mama and had his first meal.
“All is well,” Gus said as the bull calf slurped away and the mother showed no signs of being anything but motherly.
“Now we fence?” Lillie Jean asked faintly. The snow was blowing sideways past the open bay door.
Gus scowled at the uncooperative weather. “Maybe we’ll put that off for a while.”
“Fine by me.”
“Did you really think we’d work in these conditions?”
Lillie Jean gave him a considering look. “I didn’t know if this was a case of following common sense or cowboying up.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think it’s fairly self-explanatory,” she said. “Where I come from guys do a lot of unnecessary stuff in the name of bei
ng a cowboy.”
“I thought you came from suburbia.”
“Doesn’t keep guys who didn’t know which end of a horse to feed from professing to be cowboys.”
He couldn’t help smiling.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He’d wanted to say that he liked her take on life, that he liked her, but according to Lillie Jean, he wasn’t allowed to like her. According to his own common sense it wasn’t good to like her. So maybe he’d just focus on the reason Lillie Jean was there on the ranch, instead of wondering over and over again what would have happened if she’d gone with her instincts and kissed him that morning.
* * *
THE OLD FURNACE had done its job and the house was wonderfully warm by the time Lillie Jean ducked inside and started brushing snow out of her hair. But despite the warmth, and the vague odor of hot dust, the house was musty.
“We need to paint,” she repeated to Henry, who whined and lifted one stubby front paw. Lillie Jean looked at him, then sighed. When you gotta go, you gotta go. She picked up the reindeer sweater and buttoned it under his belly, then put her coat back on and pulled up the hood, tightening the string so it wouldn’t blow off this time.
“Make it snappy, okay?”
Henry rolled a brown eye at her as if to say, “What else would I do in the middle of a blizzard?”
But Henry had never seen snow and he liked it a whole lot more than she did. He ran and rolled and turned circles in the white stuff while Lillie Jean stood on the porch, her hands shoved deep into her pockets as the wind whipped at her. Finally Henry had enough and raced to the house, his tongue hanging out.
“Are you done?” she asked wryly.
Henry answered her by scratching on the door, as if she needed a reminder as to what her next step was. Like she was going to stay in the weather a minute longer than she had to.
But she had to admit once the door was closed, and her coat was laid out over the back of the old orange-and-brown-plaid recliner to dry, that she felt kind of invigorated. And really happy to be inside.
She stood at the window, watching the snow blow by. There were no swirling, drifting flakes, like in the movies. These were snow pellets moving at warp speed, creating a blur across the window, disorienting her. Or maybe it was the blur of her life doing that. A lot had happened in a short period of time and she was still adjusting to things that would have sounded crazy to her six months ago.
