Montana Homecoming

by Jeannie Watt

  The barn was empty—of human beings, that is. Something small and furry scurried for cover near the rear door. Whatever it was, it had a lot of hiding places. Despite a good two hours of hauling things out the previous day, there was still plenty of junk to tackle today.

  So where was the guy who’d been so gung ho to start at eight o’clock on the nose?

  She heard another faint scuffling noise in the junk, but when she moved toward it, the noise stopped. She definitely had company. A cat or a rabbit maybe. It wasn’t a pack rat, or she would have smelled it. Pack rat was possibly the only smell, other than skunk, that this old barn didn’t carry. She hoped the pressure washing did its job.

  The sound of an ATV caught her ear and she walked out of the barn to see Travis coming across the field. He stopped to open the gate, drove through, got off and closed it again before once again mounting the machine.

  “Busy morning?” she asked after he pulled to a stop a few feet away from her.

  “Fencing problem,” he said after turning off the engine.

  “Something you need to deal with now?”

  He pulled off his gloves. “I’ll handle it after we’re done.”

  Cassie casually slipped her hands into her back pockets. “Need help?”

  A surprised look crossed his face, giving her a whisper of satisfaction. She did love to catch him off guard, but that wasn’t why she offered. She’d offered because that was what neighbors—and people who were trying to prove points to themselves—did. She could spend time with Travis and have a normal, noncontentious relationship. That was the perspective she’d gained from her good night’s sleep. She only hoped it didn’t change as she spent time around the man.

  “I might,” he allowed.

  “Depending on how well we do today?” she guessed.

  “Pretty much.”

  Great, because she planned to have a nice cooperative day. “I came up with a tentative plan of action.”

  “So did I.”

  “After you,” Cassie said with a gracious gesture, even though it was harder than it should have been. He was right. She did love to take control, but there were times and places and she needed to differentiate between needing to take the helm and wanting to. At work she needed to. With Travis she wanted to.

  “My plan is to not mention Ray Quentin or anything relating to the Shamrock Pub.”

  So, he’d done some thinking, too. Her gaze strayed to his bruised eye, which looked only slightly less swollen than the day before, and for some unknown reason her cheeks began to warm. Guilt? She shook it off and drew herself up another half inch or so. “I agree.”

  Not only had the incident itself gotten in the way of their truce, rehashing it had done the same. Plus, there was no way she was ever going to get him to admit that if he’d simply stepped back when she’d asked, none of it would have happened. Even Darby agreed that while Ray might look scary and shove furniture, he was unlikely to hit someone weaker than himself. But in the long run, as much as she loved being right, what did it matter?

  “And your plan for the barn?” she asked.

  “Pretty straightforward. We move everything out and pressure wash the heck out of the interior, sort through the junk and put the essentials back.”

  “And we’ll hide the ugly stuff with some kind of paneling,” Cassie added. She simply couldn’t see a wedding venue with the things a barn kept out of the weather in plain view.

  “Do you have panels?” Travis asked.

  “We can come up with something.”

  His eyebrows rose as he silently mouthed, “We?”

  Somehow his lips were even sexier when no sound came out.

  Get a grip.

  “Yes, we, working cooperatively,” she said, sounding very much like a substitute teacher who had no idea how to talk to kids.

  Travis frowned at her overly bright tone, giving her the uncomfortable feeling that he could tell that she was playing a part in the hopes that acting would become reality, as in, she was here to do a job and she was not attracted to a guy who drove her nuts.

  Her defenses started to rise, and she firmly squished them back down again. “No blood on the walls, remember?”

  Travis’s forehead cleared at her more normal tone of voice. “Right. I guess we can brainstorm on that later.” He gestured with his chin toward the upper part of the barn. “We’ll also have to clean the loft so that dirt and debris don’t rain on the guests when the kids run around up there.”

  “Kids...” Cassie glanced up at the loft above them, thankful that (a) he wasn’t looking at her so that she could get that grip, and (b) her normal voice had come back. “I don’t suppose we can block entry?”

  “Could they have kept you out of the loft with a mere barricade back when you were a kid?”

  “Unlikely,” she agreed. Especially if she’d been dared to do something. She kind of missed those damn-the-torpedoes days.

  She glanced up to find Travis studying her, and again her cheeks began to warm. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d blushed, but here she was, two blushes in and the day had barely begun. It was putting her in a bad mood.

  “Tell you what,” he said thoughtfully, “if you help me string the wire for the fence when we get done, if there’s still no blood on the walls, I’ll go to your place, haul your mare back here and work her when I have some free time.”

  Cassie stared at him, wondering what had prompted the out-of-the-blue offer.

  “Well?”

  She cleared her throat as self-conscious blush number three threatened. “That would be excellent. I’d pay you, of course.”

  He looked like he was going to give her a flat negative to the payment option, but instead he said, “We will come to some kind of a cooperative solution in that regard.”

  She mouthed a silent “We?” and he grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “Look at us. We’ve made a couple of decisions that haven’t involved raised voices or fisticuffs.”

  The unexpected intimacy in his voice tugged at her a little too strongly and she once again felt the need to drive that wedge, protect herself, before she freaking blushed again.

  But before she took action—or talked herself down, she wasn’t certain which would have happened first—Travis stepped back and turned to face the interior of the barn. Cassie let out a silent breath.

  “Where do you want to start?” he asked.

  “There,” she said, pointing to the corner closest to them which was jammed with metal containers holding who-knew-what.

  “Fine with me. Unless you want to work on separate areas again.”

  He shot her a questioning look and she shrugged, even as her brain was shouting, Yes, yes, yes.

  “I think it’ll go faster if we work together.”

  He gave a low laugh. “One would hope anyway.”

  “Yes. One would hope.” And she hoped she got through the day without either picking a fight or making a fool of herself. She had a lot to learn about navigating these new waters, but as he said, they were doing better.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CASSIE PULLED THE fencing pliers out of her back pocket and skillfully pried the rusted staples out of the wooden post. Once done, she bent and collected the staples off the ground, tossing them into the metal container in the back of the side-by-side UTV.

  Travis brought his attention back to the wire stretcher, which he clamped onto the broken ends of the top wire. Once he had the wire stretched, Cassie hammered a new staple into the post, holding the wire in place while he slipped a narrow metal sleeve over the broken ends and crimped it. They worked well together—when they didn’t speak.

  Once the top wire was secured to the other posts, Cassie pushed her blond hair back from her forehead and stared out over the pasture, making Travis wonder what she was thinking
. She seemed more relaxed in the open air, surrounded by the country she’d grown up in. Who wouldn’t be happy in knee-deep grass with a gentle breeze ruffling their hair?

  Did she like living in the city?

  He’d thought he’d be okay with it back in the day, but the job he’d given up before returning home had been with an agriculture-consulting business funded by the government. Although he’d have been based in a small city, he would have spent a lot of his time in rural settings advising ranchers and farmers.

  Cassie spent all her time in town. In fact, it sounded like she spent all her time in her office.

  She shot a look his way, her expression distant, as if she was pulling herself out of deep thoughts. “I can’t believe you didn’t lose any cattle through this break. You could have driven a truck through it.”

  An old post had gone over—Travis suspected a moose might have been responsible since all the cattle were accounted for—taking out a good twenty feet of wire. They’d reset a new post, then managed to fix the broken and stretched wire without having to add more.

  “My good luck.” He set the wire stretcher into the back of the side-by-side, then held his hand out for the fencing pliers.

  “Mmm.” She took a last look around, then got into the side-by-side. They’d barely spoken that day, which was one way to keep from sniping at one another, but despite the lack of conversation, the air between them had practically crackled whenever their gazes connected.

  A pent-up need to engage? Or something else?

  The third time Travis caught her studying him, he decided it was something else.

  When he’d caught her staring the previous day, he’d assumed that the guilty shift of her gaze had to do with feeling bad about his black eye.

  But two days of black-eye guilt?

  He didn’t think so. Cassie didn’t operate that way. Putting together the clues—surreptitious looks coupled with the way she looked totally ticked off when he caught her—he suspected that she found him interesting in a way she hadn’t expected.

  Funny, but the exact same thing had already happened to him.

  “I have an idea,” she said as he started the side-by-side.

  “Yeah?” He gave her a sideways look. Her hands were settled in her lap, loosely clasped, giving her a prim look that he would have never seen on Cassie’s face back in the day.

  “I’ll load McHenry’s Gold tomorrow morning and bring her over when I come to work.”

  Travis put the machine in gear and started across the pasture. “I take it you’ve spent enough time in my company?”

  “Yes,” she said simply, and he couldn’t help smiling.

  “Sounds good.” Because he wasn’t about the push things.

  Yet.

  * * *

  CASSIE DIDN’T LIKE the way Travis kept studying her, as if he knew something about her that she didn’t want him to know, especially when she couldn’t keep her eyes off the guy—or keep herself from getting clumsy when they worked together hauling a barrel or some such thing out of the barn. She was so concerned about Travis discovering her unfounded fascination with him that she was self-sabotaging.

  And she was going to stop doing that.

  She squeezed her hands together in her lap, wishing she wasn’t so ridiculously aware of the guy driving them across the bumpy field.

  He’s winning...

  It’s not a contest.

  When had things not been a contest with him?

  Now. Things are no longer a contest.

  She glanced over at him. “Things are no longer a contest.”

  He shot her a bemused look in return. “Good to know.”

  “Just stating a point out loud. Getting myself on track in the name of peaceful relations.”

  “Thank you for including me.”

  She nodded at the windshield. “Anytime.”

  Travis drove the rest of the way to the ranch with his eyebrows knit together. Cassie knew because of her excellent peripheral vision, which she’d developed during her early teaching days. Mission accomplished—he was no longer giving her those see-into-her-head looks. Instead he was wondering what her new tactic was.

  When in doubt, divert. Of course, she should have known that Travis would not be diverted for long. After parking the side-by-side, Travis hesitated before opening his door.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive over and pick up the mare? The trailer’s hooked up.”

  Indeed, there was a long gooseneck cattle trailer hooked to the ranch flatbed truck.

  “That’s okay,” she said. They’d had enough together time for one day. They got out of the side-by-side and he walked her to her car.

  “I plan to put her in that pen there.” He pointed to a corral next to the barn. “Just in case you get here before I get back from feeding.”

  “She can get to know her sisters over the fence.” The corral abutted the pasture where Travis’s three McHenry mares grazed. If McHenry’s Gold didn’t work out, he might have four, and she would have to let the mare go for less than she’d paid for her. Depressing thought, but maybe what she deserved for letting impulse and her competitive nature get the best of her.

  He cocked his head at her as if he was about to comment on the horse situation, but instead he reached for her with one hand, and Cassie, having no idea what was going on, leaned away from him. Part of her wanted him to touch her and the other part was afraid of what that might lead to. Impulsive behavior with Travis had led to her downfall more than once and this—

  “Hold still,” he said gruffly, interrupting her analysis. “There’s a spider.”

  Cassie made a startled exclamation, then abruptly pressed her lips together and did the impossible, clenching her fists and holding stone-still as Travis gently swept the spider from the shoulder of her shirt with the backs of his fingertips. The little beast landed in the gravel and scuttled away, thankfully in the opposite direction.

  “Wolf spider. It was probably on you since we left the barn. We have a lot of them in there.”

  Cassie’s eyes probably doubled in size. Logically she knew that a wolf spider wasn’t a threat, but the thought of the creepy, crawly thing clinging to her for hours...

  “On that note, I think I’ll just go home,” she said in a choked voice.

  “Do you want me to check for more spiders?” he asked blandly.

  Now her skin was crawling as if there were spiders everywhere. “No. Thank you. I’ll just go home and burn these clothes, and everything will be fine.”

  “I never knew you were afraid of spiders.”

  “Not afraid, creeped out,” she said as she opened the car door. She looked at him over the top of the door. “I dare you not to be creeped out by the thought of a spider riding around on you for an hour.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Remember, Cassie. This is not a contest.”

  Cassie made a face at him and got into the car, shushing the small voice that once again whispered, He’s winning.

  * * *

  “I WOULD APPRECIATE help with the haying,” Travis said after he and his grandfather settled into their chairs on the front porch. His grandfather seemed suspiciously enthusiastic about a chore he once said made him want to put a stick in his eye. Will had never made a secret about preferring cow work to farming, and had been unreceptive to Travis’s suggestion to invest in headphones and listen to music or podcasts.

  Will propped one foot up on the wooden box he used as an outdoor footstool. “I think it’s important to get that barn cleaned out ASAP. Rosalie will rest easier once it’s done.”

  Travis tipped up his beer instead of saying, “Only Rosalie?” Because as he saw it, his grandfather was just as invested in the wedding plans as his bride-to-be.

  They sat in silence, watching a flicker peck away at the pine tree closest
to the house. The air was warm and heavy with humidity. Another storm was brewing.

  “How are things going in the barn?” Will asked a little too casually.

  Travis gestured at the piles stacked on either side of the barn bay door. “I can’t believe how much more we have to do.”

  “Yeah,” Will said conversationally. “There’s about a century worth of collecting there.”

  “The Callahans cleaned their barn yearly,” Travis pointed out.

  “They had more manpower,” Will said without any hint of taking offense. Rosalie had softened the man.

  The ranch had kept Travis, his dad and his grandfather busy to the point that there really wasn’t a lot of barn-cleaning time.

  They’d hired help after Travis’s dad had started to lose his mobility, but while Will was an excellent bronc-riding coach who volunteered with the local high school rodeo team, he was not an easy man to work for. After three guys had been hired and subsequently quit, Travis had decided he needed to put his career on hold and come home to help his father and grandfather through a difficult time. By the time his father had to depend on his wrist crutches and made the decision to move to Arizona, Travis knew he was staying on the ranch. Some things were meant to be, and this was one of them.

  “Nice afternoon,” Will murmured as he reached down to the cooler at his side and pulled out another beer. Travis shook his head when he offered it up, and Will closed the cooler before popping the top.

  The flicker moved from the pine tree to the eaves of the barn, hanging sideways as it picked at insects hiding in cracks between boards. Now that his grandfather spent more time off the ranch than on it, Travis enjoyed these sit-downs with him. And he enjoyed watching how the old man changed as new things came into his life. Funny that Will’s life was taking new turns, and with the exception of Cassie, his continued on the same path.

  “Are you and Cassie getting along all right?”

  “Fair to middling,” Travis replied, hoping his grandfather wouldn’t ask for details.

  “Rosalie’s worried about her. Thinks that job of hers is eating her alive.”