Authors: Claire Adams
“Get
going,” she said as she pushed me toward the door.
“I’ll
see you in the morning,” I smiled.
Chapter 4
Sarah
“Wake
up,” I said as I poked Garrett in the cheek.
I
only stood there long enough for him to open his eyes and realize it was me and
then I quickly left. My father would have killed me if he saw me anywhere near
the bunkhouse. When I was younger, I loved to flirt and hang out with the ranch
hands and my father never allowed it. It was fun back then to go against his
wishes, but now I knew better. Many of the men who worked for us were on the
run from the law, family, and other obligations. Some were good men who had
made bad choices, but some weren’t good men at all.
I
thought Garrett was one of the good guys. He looked the part at least and
didn’t disrespect me, although he certainly could flirt better than most of the
guys on the ranch. When men normally tried to flirt with me, they ended up
fumbling their way through it, but Garrett seemed much more confident. If I
hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was quiet the ladies’ man outside
of a ranch environment.
The
ranch was a world all of its own. As much as we had to work, most of the people
who worked the ranch also lived there and everyone was friends as well. We didn’t
get days off and we didn’t have much time for going into town or socializing.
The ranch was our morning, noon and night; so I was happy to have someone cute
and interesting around.
The
ranch was quiet at four o’clock in the morning; I loved the feeling in the air
before the sun rose. Over the years, one of my favorite parts of helping out at
the ranch was making breakfast for the men. It was the start of a new day and
optimism was always in the air. All the tiredness from the day before had worn
off and most of the men had a smile and were ready for the new day of work.
“How
do I even know its morning? It still looks like nighttime,” Garrett said as he
jogged up behind me. “Why on earth do we need to get up this early anyways?
Can’t we make breakfast be at a respectable hour like, eight o’clock or
something?”
I
knew the feeling. I hated that we served breakfast so damn early too. By the
time everyone got to lunchtime, they were starving again. I could only imagine
how hungry Garrett had been when skipping breakfast all together.
The
days on the ranch were long and having the ranch hands working so many hours
wasn’t ideal. Sure, a ranch hand job was expected to be long hours. But the
guys on our ranch often worked seven days a week and from five in the morning
to nine at night. It couldn’t be legal, but I suspected my father paid many of
them under the table and most of the men liked it that way. They weren’t
working on our ranch so they could work up in their careers. The men who came
to our ranch were only worried about getting some cash in their pockets and
moving on.
“Can’t
you feel the crisp air? It’s so much different than normal air. I mean, regular
air, oh … you know what I mean.”
Garrett
looked at me out of the corner of his eye and started to laugh, I tried to
resist laughing with him but soon we were both laughing. It was fun being up
early; I liked having the world all to myself. I was happy to help my mother
with the meals throughout the day and on that morning I was happy to have
Garrett with me.
He
was funny and I had found myself thinking about him a lot since we first met.
He seemed so naive to the ways of the ranch, but not necessarily naive to the
ways of the world. The way he held himself and even the way we talked with each
other made me think that Garrett had seen much more in his life than he was
letting on.
“Normal
air?” he said through his laughter.
“Oh,
shut up. You know what I meant.”
“I’ll
keep my eyes out for the normal air later this afternoon,” he teased me.
There
was no use fighting with him; I had to just laugh. I tended to fumble my words
when I was around a man who intimidated me. It had happened in my office all
the time and I hated it. I always wanted to be a strong woman who couldn’t be
rattled by what was going on around me, but it didn’t work out for me the way I
wanted it to. Instead, I often ended up fumbling for the words I wanted to say
and unable to argue the points I wanted to get across.
I
had hoped that building my abilities in my workplace would help with my
confidence and therefore help with my ability to stay on point when I was
intimidated. But I had to leave before learning those skills. Then as I stood
in front of the very handsome new ranch hand, I felt just as disorganized as I
had felt in front of a boardroom full of executives.
Garrett
commanded an energy about him that felt so similar to how my coworkers had
felt. The confidence with which he looked at me had me feeling like I couldn’t
say or do anything right. It was uncomfortable, in a weirdly erotic way.
“How
are your hands feeling? Do you think you can handle cutting up some
vegetables?” I asked as I grabbed a knife for him.
We
had bandaged his hands up with some gauze and medical tape and they looked
perfectly capable of helping me. I had notice he was moving them just fine and
seemed to not have any pain at the moment. I suspected he would heal up just
fine in the next couple of days.
“Show
me how you like it done,” Garrett said in a low sexy voice that rattled me to
the core.
It
was like he was purposely trying to titillate me. The look in his eyes spelled
out trouble and I had to look away quickly, but not before I caught a deep gaze
from his brilliant blue eyes. Oh, how those eyes seemed to look right through
me. It was as if he read every secret I had with just a simple gaze.
“Just
cut them in small bits; I’m going to put them in the omelets,” I said as I
handed him a knife and some onions and started cutting them into small pieces.
“Like
this?” Garrett said as he grabbed the knife with his whole fist and started
moving it roughly over the onion.
“God
no, you’re going to cut off your fingers.”
“Like
this,” I said as I moved next to him and put my hand gently over his and guided
him along. “And keep the tips of your fingers tucked under to keep them safe.”
“Show
me some more,” he said with a mischievous smile and that damn low sexy voice.
I
grabbed his other hand and tucked the fingers under for him as I moved the
knife gingerly along the onion. Slowly we moved it up and back down again as
our bodies pressed up against each other. I could feel his breath next to me
and I felt like he moved purposely closer to me as we progressed through one
onion.
His
body was warm and I wanted to know what it looked like under his clothes. I
could tell he was in good shape and I suspected he had muscles almost
everywhere. Normally I didn’t have such fantasies about seeing a guy naked, but
I couldn’t stop thinking about Garrett and his delectable, naked body. I knew I
wouldn’t get to see it, not as long as my father was around, but I couldn’t
stop thinking how good he would make me feel.
Normally,
I would have pulled away from any other ranch hand who had moved that close to
me, but I didn’t want to pull away from Garrett. My heart pounded with the
excitement of having him so close to me, feeling his breath near me, and
feeling the touch of his hands and mine together. My heart pounded with the
anticipation of each movement.
“Think
you can handle it?” I asked.
“I
think so. But if I get into trouble I’ll need you to give me another
demonstration,” he said with a glance.
As
we started preparing the breakfast for everyone, I was pleasantly surprised
with Garrett’s abilities in the kitchen, his cutting speed quickly picked up.
Most of the men who worked on the farm had probably never made their own meals
except for things that could be heated up in the microwave. But Garrett knew
what he was doing. I watched as he expertly cut up the vegetables, his
fingertips curled under to prevent himself from getting cut. That was a tip not
many people remembered when I showed them, unless they were familiar with
cooking.
I
also watched his arms as they moved to hold the vegetables. Garrett was strong;
his biceps looked like he could bench press me if I gave him the chance. Oh,
how I wouldn’t mind having his hands on my body. After working to clean out his
blisters the day before, I longed to find a reason to hold his hands again, to
touch him, or to have him touch me.
His
blond hair caught the reflection of the lights that were over him and I
realized just how perfectly symmetrical his face was. Garrett looked like he
could have worked as a model somewhere; it was curious to me that he was at our
ranch. I didn’t mind, not at all, but there was something different about him
compared to the other men working for my father. And it wasn’t just his good
looks.
We
continued to prepare for breakfast quietly as we both did what needed to get
finished. But as I watched Garrett I started to get a sneaking suspicious that
he really did know how to cut vegetables. His fingers were still tucked under
and he was expertly gliding his knife from one end of each vegetable to the
other. He quickly twisted the cut pieces and diced them into perfectly cubed
small bites.
“Have
you worked in a restaurant before?” I asked.
“Why?”
Garrett smiled at me and I knew there was so much more to
him that he wasn’t telling me. He had been trying to get me near him and
pretending like he didn’t know how to cut up vegetables. It was clear that he
really did know how to work in the kitchen and I had to think there was so much
more about him that he was keeping secret.
I didn’t mind him keeping some secrets, just as long as I
didn’t feel like he was manipulating me. I hated it when men lied for the sole
purpose of getting what they wanted from a woman. I was an adult, and if I
wanted to have Garrett in my bed I would, but I didn’t need to be manipulated
into agreeing to it.
That was one thing I hated most about the men in New York. If
I could find a man who was interested in a strong woman, he always wanted to
play games and manipulate the situation. They were rarely honest and hardly
ever actually interested in a relationship that lasted longer than a night.
New York had to have been one of the worst place in the
world for dating. Although, the middle of nowhere Montana probably wasn’t the
best place either. I was pretty sure Garrett was the only man even remotely
worth me flirting with, and when he decided to leave I’d be left with no one.
Leaving was what the ranch hands did. I knew not to have
feelings for them or to expect much more than a little flirting. But it was fun
to imagine a little fun with a guy like Garrett around.
“You
seem to have picked up the art of cutting vegetables very quickly.”
“Maybe
I just had a really good teacher?”
“Maybe.”
“Perhaps
you’d like to help me with my French kissing skills later?” Garrett asked as he
moved toward me.
“Hold
it, bucko; I don’t think you need help with those skills.”
“How
do you know?” Garrett said as he inched closer toward me.
There
was no doubt in my mind that Garrett didn’t need help with French kissing or
any other skills that involved his mouth. He had the confidence level of a man
who spent plenty of time with the ladies. Plus, Garrett was just too damn
handsome to need help with any of the stuff like that. Even if he was a
horrible person, which he wasn’t, he would have gotten plenty of girls.
“Stop
playing with me; I don’t think you need help French kissing,” I said as my face
turned bright red.
“Perhaps
you’d like to teach me how to saddle up a horse sometime? I’d love to learn
that.”
I
was much more comfortable with the request to help with horses, but it did seem
odd to me that the man had come to work on a ranch but didn’t know how to work
with horses. It was one of those things that almost all the men who came to the
ranch knew how to do. Why else would they be looking for work on a ranch unless
it was something they were familiar with?
“So
why exactly did you come to a ranch to work if you’ve never been around horses
before?”
Garrett
looked away from me and walked back over to his vegetable work area. He smiled
but then looked back down at his vegetables and started to cut them again. I
hit a nerve with him, I was sure of it. It was a tell-tell sign that he wasn’t
interested in telling me why he really had arrived at our ranch. But I was open
to hearing the version of his story that he wanted to tell me too.
“Oh,
you know. A man’s got to work.”
I
waited to see if there was anything else he was going to add to his story.
Maybe why he was traveling from Wyoming to Washington? Or how he had even found
our ranch in the first place. I wanted something, any sort of real explanation,
but it was clear that he wasn’t going to give it to me.