He stared at her. “That’s an income stream for you, Kira.”
She hesitated and sat back. “You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Why don’t you go to one of those stock photo websites and upload the one of the bull elks fighting?”
“I think I will.” She shrugged. “Now, you have to realize those photos could sit there for a year or more and make no money. It depends upon what a person coming to the website needs for a project.”
“Still,” Garret persisted, “you’re a damn good photographer, Kira. Someone will like your photos.”
“You have to understand that stock photos are used in a hundred different ways. It could be for someone’s blog, a newsletter, maybe for a website. It’s not about people wanting to buy my photo to frame and hang it on their living room wall.”
His brows rose. “This is a whole new world you’re introducing me to. Who determines the price if they want to use your photo?”
“Well, there are lots of i’s to dot and t’s to cross on that,” Kira said. “When you put up your photos on a stock site, you determine how much it’s worth. Some go for as little as a dollar. Others for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.” She clicked the mouse and went to a stock site on the Internet. “I would set the prices on my photos differently. There would be a price if it’s used on a blog versus used in a video or TV program, for example. There’d be a different price if it’s used in a commercial advertisement. Plus, you make it a one-time-only use and retain copyright on your shots at all times.”
He gave her a look of praise. “You’re an astute businesswoman. You know that?”
Heat swept up across her face and Kira drowned in the admiration she saw in his eyes. “Thanks. My dad said the same thing. I told you, when I first got home after the hospital he tried to buy me a camera to replace the one I lost. He urged me to make a livelihood out of photography.”
“I think he was on to something,” Garret agreed.
“At the time,” she admitted hollowly, “I was a mess. I was so grief-stricken, so overwhelmed with PTSD, I couldn’t think straight, much less take good photos. I was lost, Garret. Really lost.”
He brought his hand down and smoothed it across her tense shoulders. “Well, a year’s passed and you’re climbing out of that hole now, Kira. But I think your dad knew what he was talking about. Would you like to become a professional photographer selling your photos online? A second career to being a translator?”
“Oh,” Kira sighed, smiling, “I’d love that! But it takes a while to build your portfolio, to get enough photos out there and start making a name for yourself in the photography community.”
He gave her a lazy shrug. “So? Why not? Shay’s fine with you using her camera. Why don’t we take time out at least a couple of times a week, an hour here or there, and go look for areas where you’d like to shoot?”
Kira felt such a sharp stab of hope. “If I could earn money doing translations and selling my photos, that would be perfect.” She searched his face, seeing how serious he was about the idea. “But the PowerShot isn’t a pro’s camera, Garret. I’d have to save money to get a professional one.”
“Why not let your dad get it for you?”
Shaking her head, she said, “No. That’s something I have to do for myself. He’s already given me enough over this past year to survive. All I want to do is be able to call him weekly, keep in close touch with him and not take any more of his hard-earned money. He’s not rich. He’s a hardworking man who owns a small lumber company. I do not want to spend his retirement savings. He’ll need that someday.”
“Okay,” he said, “that’s a good plan. Your translation duties are increasing. That means more money you can save to buy the camera.”
She glowed beneath his look, which sent her heart tumbling with joy. When he removed his arm from around her shoulders, she missed that sense of care he always bestowed upon her. “It’s a solid plan,” she agreed.
Rising, Garret said, “It’s supposed to snow the next two days. Maybe on the third day, if we can manage it, I could take you up to the Grand Teton National Park entrance area. There are a couple of moose that always hang around the bridge area, eating the willows along the banks of the Snake River. You might get some good shots of moose if you want them.”
“Oh, I’d love that!” She drowned in his smile, feeling as if Garret were embracing her invisibly. “My strong point as a photographer is wildlife and landscapes. This is a perfect time to capture a portfolio of winter landscapes.”
“Good,” he murmured, halting at the open door. “Let’s plan on it.”
* * *
Thanksgiving was hectic for Kira. With Garret’s help, they got Ray into the truck and drove him up to the main house. There, Shay and Reese greeted him at the door. They guided Ray to the head of the trestle table in the warm kitchen so he could watch Kira and Garret work. He was as short with his sentences and always grumpy with Shay. Kira had smelled alcohol on this breath earlier that morning and knew Shay did, too, by the anguished look in her eyes.
Shay said nothing to her father. Ray was able to get along with a cane now and pushed everyone’s offer of help aside with a sharp gesture of his hand. She had smiled a hello to him and brought him a cup of coffee after he sat down. Shay and Reese left Kira and Garret alone with him; they had ranch duties to attend to. Ray made it tough on everyone, especially his daughter.
“Are you any good at peeling potatoes?” Kira asked Ray, wrapping the apron around her waist.
“Dunno. Never tried it before. That’s women’s work.”
She kept her smile in place. “Well, Garret and I want to make mashed potatoes for the family this evening and we need potatoes peeled. It would help us if you could do it.” Kira knew he was working hard to get his weakened right hand to work again. And using a peeler would be good physical exercise for him. She saw his brown eyes remain flat and hard. His mouth was always a straight line, almost lipless.
“Yeah, I’ll give it a try.”
“Good,” Kira said. “And if it doesn’t work out, no worries, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Kira hurried to get a large wooden cutting board to place in front of Ray. She gave him the peeler and ten recently washed, large baker-sized potatoes to peel. Showing him how to do it, she asked, “Think you got the hang of it, Mr. Crawford?”
“A numbskull could do it.”
Right. Kira said lightly, “Well, let me know if you need any help.”
Ray said nothing, holding the first potato over the board and trying to peel it with his right hand, which didn’t always work well.
Kira turned away, knowing Ray didn’t need the extra pressure of her watching him. Joining Garret at the sink, she saw him give her a concerned look. She smiled a little, silently letting him know everything was all right.
To say he was protective of her right now was an understatement. The energy practically flowed off him toward her. Garret was more tense than usual and she understood why. Her heart went out to Shay and Reese. Both were equally strained this morning. The feeling in the ranch house was that Ray would ruin the happiness of the holiday for all of them sooner or later. Kira was going to try her best to distract Ray and hopefully get through the day without a major flap.
Noah ambled into the kitchen, his hands in his jeans pockets. “You need any extra hands in here?” he asked Garret, nodding a hello in Kira’s direction.
“Naw, we’re okay,” Garret said.
Noah’s face broke into a grin and he leaned casually against the counter. “If you let me mash those potatoes, I’d probably screw it up. I’m no cook.”
Kira laughed outright, peeling the carrots on the other side of Garret. “Oh, come on, guys. Mashing potatoes isn’t that hard to do.”
Kira smiled and focused on the mound of carrots in front of her. Harper ambled into the kitchen. She loved the ragging the men did on one another. Originally from Appalachia, he was six feet tall, wit
h short, dark brown hair and dancing blue eyes. He’d been a Navy corpsman attached to a SEAL unit near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border for four tours of duty. Normally, he was very quiet, almost shy around people. He wasn’t outgoing and she was glad to see him taking part in the rivalry between the three of them.
Harper was lean and, like herself, not as heavy as he should be. Often, he spent time alone and liked it that way. Garret called him a loner, but Kira understood why. Sometimes, she would take a break from her translating duties and go visit him. Harper was a good mechanic, plumber and electrician. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do when it came to those areas of expertise. Right now, he was replacing all the old wiring in the barn with newer, up-to-code electric cables. It was a long, intricate job, but he was a hard, consistent worker.
“Hey, Harper, is it true?” she asked, looking up at him. “Shay said you had a job to replace electric cables at another barn in the valley?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. I’m taking off after tomorrow and heading south to do it. Two-story barn.”
“Not a lot of fun in this cold weather,” Kira said, giving him a concerned look. She saw him shrug his broad shoulders.
“It’s something I enjoy. No one is going to be looking over my shoulder while I do it.”
“Yeah,” Garret said, “you’ll be alone and like it.”
Kira saw a flash of pain in Harper’s large, intelligent blue eyes, but he said nothing. She knew he’d been married but, after his last tour, come home with severe PTSD. His relationship with his wife, Olivia, had disintegrated, and Harper had signed the divorce papers and left. He’d become homeless because he couldn’t stand being around people for very long. Kira loved the gentle, soft-spoken man fiercely because in his off time he volunteered his healing skills to Taylor Douglas’s clinic in town.
“Aren’t you working on becoming a paramedic?” she demanded.
“Sure,” he murmured, resting against the counter, his arms crossed over the chest of his blue flannel shirt. “About halfway through the course right now.”
“How are you doing?” Garret asked.
“Okay. Carrying a B average.”
“Good,” Kira said. Harper hadn’t finished high school. He’d had trouble reading. She knew he wanted to graduate as a paramedic and then try to join the Wind River Fire Department. They had a separate medical unit from the firefighting component. Harper loved being a medic and was good at what he did. Until then, Kira knew his other skills would contribute to the Bar C, as well as save money for his future.
As a vet, he could use government money to get through college. He was so shy, but he’d been that way ever since she’d met him. Sometimes he’d be down at the horse training area, helping Noah with the training. Kira felt sorry he’d lost his wife; Garret had told her how much he loved her. Harper saw himself as broken, as all the other vets did, unable to bridge the gap and be normal again where it counted.
Kira wiped her hand off on her apron and touched Harper’s shoulder. “You’re a wonderful medic. I know the people you help will be so much better off because you were there for them.” She saw his cheeks go ruddy and his gaze dart past hers. It looked as if he didn’t believe her. PTSD had taken so much from all of them. She wanted to cry at that moment and swallowed, battling back her emotional reaction to Harper’s quandary.
“You want me to do something to help?” he asked. “Maybe set the table?”
“Sure,” Kira choked, her eyes still moist. “That would be great. Thanks, Harper.”
Never let it be said that vets weren’t part of a team; they knew how to pitch in and help. Kira returned to her carrots.
“You got any other horses in the pipeline that can make us some good money?” Garret asked Noah, who was now chewing on a stick of celery.
“Yes. I’m going up to an auction in Idaho Falls in four weeks. I’ve been working with that six-year-old black quarter horse gelding, Poncho. He’s a kicker, but I’m trying to break him of it.”
Kira frowned. “That’s a dangerous habit.”
“Tell me about it.” Noah held up his hand and showed the swelling on it. “Got this from Poncho this morning.”
Frowning, Garret said, “Damn. You okay?”
Grinning, Noah said, “Yeah. I had our resident corpsman, Harper, look at it early this morning. He said I’d be fine, cleaned up the scrape and off I went.”
Shaking his head, Garret muttered, “Whoever made Poncho a kicker ought to be shot.”
“Oh,” Noah said mildly, pushing away from the counter, “don’t get me started on that topic. Love is the way to train up these horses. They’re superintelligent. My way of training just takes more time, which is why some other horse trainers are using pain and punishment instead. It gets them through the pipeline faster, but the horse becomes a risk to the rider and everyone else around them.”
“No, pain is never a good way to train a man or an animal,” Garret agreed, pulling over the twenty-pound turkey to stuff it. “Have you talked to Shay and Reese about it? Getting another horse trainer to help you?”
“Yeah, Shay’s going through the Veterans Administration to try to locate someone who would come out here to work with me.” He shrugged. “I’m not very hopeful. Not a lot of vets were horse trainers before they joined the military.”
Kira handed Noah a peeled carrot. “Here, keep eating. You really need to put on more weight.”
He smiled and took the carrot. “Thanks. And are you the pot calling the kettle black, Ms. Duval?” He wriggled his eyebrows.
Laughing, Kira said, “Guilty as charged.”
“Hey,” Harper called, “why don’t you help me set the table, Noah, instead of eating everything in sight? Save some for the rest of us, okay?”
Kira giggled and returned to the carrots, placing them in a large pan to steam. Later she would drizzle them with warm honey and melted butter. “You two are like brothers, I swear.”
Noah reached over her, grabbing a bunch of plates. “Just ignore him.”
Harper walked over, taking the plates Noah handed him. “Me? No, Bro, it’s you. You know how I know?”
“No. How, genius?”
Harper pointed at his right hand, swollen from Poncho’s kick. “I don’t know of any idiot who would willingly work with a broken horse like Poncho. This is the second time he’s kicked you inside of a week.”
Grumping, Noah said, “It’s not the horse’s fault. It’s the human who trained him. He’s confused.”
“Yeah,” Harper muttered, “right. You couldn’t get me to be a horse trainer for nothing.”
“It’s just a matter of patience and time,” Noah told him smugly.
Kira said nothing, thinking that was exactly what was needed between her and Garret: patience and time.
Chapter Fifteen
Garret covertly watched Kira deal with Ray Crawford throughout the day. She knew he liked crossword puzzles and had thoughtfully brought one of his magazines along so he would have something to do. After peeling the potatoes, he got up with the aid of his cane and went into the living room. There, Shay remained with him for a while, relieving Kira of her duties with the grumpy bastard. He didn’t like Crawford and knew he had an agenda. The older man wasn’t saying much to anyone, but then, he wasn’t nasty either.
Near five p.m. everyone sat down for the sumptuous dinner, the fragrance of the baked turkey and the sage-and-chestnut dressing filling the air. Shay had placed Ray at one end of the trestle table, Reese at the other and her on the right of her husband. Garret was glad to sit with Kira, with Noah and Harper opposite them. Garret gave the two vets credit; they kept up a friendly patter, although they never directed anything toward Ray. He ate in silence, which put a pall over the entire table.
Most of all, Garret felt for Shay. She was stressed out to the max with her father among them, knowing he disliked vets. He gave her credit for her always including him in the talk around the table, although he barely acknowledged her. Garret saw the ange
r banked in Reese’s eyes for his struggling wife, who was trying to smooth things out. He understood better than most, with an alcoholic in the family, that the disease strained and darkened every event. It destroyed all happiness, too, between the other members of a family.
Toward the end of the dinner, when Garret and Kira were serving up warm pumpkin pie with whipped cream, he decided to help Shay a little. She looked devastated and was unable to hide it. With PTSD, it was nearly impossible to hide how one felt. As Garret served Reese and Shay, he said, “What do you think of the odds of getting a military vet with horse training experience out here? Have you heard anything from the VA yet?”
Kira looked up a little as she served Ray his dessert. Then she went back to the kitchen to retrieve Harper and Noah’s pie.
Shay gave Garret a relieved look of silent thanks. “No, not yet. Reese called and they said they were looking but for us not to hold our breath.”
“That’s all?” Garret asked dryly. He walked to the kitchen to get Kira and his pie.
“Yes,” Shay said. She picked nervously at the pie with her fork. “We told them it was urgent, that we needed someone right away.”
Garret sat down, giving Kira a warm look. She sat at Ray’s left elbow. To his relief, she seemed to be feeling steady compared to poor Shay. Returning his attention to the couple, he asked, “Are you wanting a specific type of horse trainer?”
Noah said, “We’ll take anyone they can give us.” Giving Shay a smile, he said, “They’ve called since we put in the request. We all know the VA is like a fat, bloated worm that doesn’t react fast to anything.”
“Is there some other way to get a trainer?” Garret pressed Noah.
“Not that I know of.”
“Hate working with the VA,” Garret muttered, digging into his pie. He slid a glance to his right. Kira was eating heartily despite the tension at the table and he was glad. Every day she seemed to have more purchase and confidence with Ray. That was good, and he relaxed a little inwardly. Soon this dinner would be over, and so far, no one had stepped on a land mine with Ray. He noted the rancher was cleaning his plate as well.
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