Sunset Ranch (6 page)

Chapter
Six

Sweaty and dusty after
the chores, I pushed open the screen door to the bunkhouse and hurried toward the kitchen for a drink of water. My mouth was so dry, it felt lined with flannel. The doorway to the kitchen was a brightly lit square in the dimness of the main room, and the sound of voices and clattering dishes issued from the opening. “Miguel,” I called, leaning over the service counter, “can I come in and get—”

I stopped short, the words still in my mouth. Zach was standing at the long stainless-steel prep table, an apron around his neck, kneading a huge pile of dough. Nora stood beside him, wearing those plastic-bag gloves, scooping handfuls of the dough as Zach kneaded it, rolling it into discs.

“Nice apron.” I grinned at Zach, recovering myself. “I thought you were scrubbing water troughs.”

“I was, but Nora needed a volunteer for these tortillas. I was the natural choice, of course.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, of course.” He had a dab of flour on his cheek and more in his hair. “Miguel, do you mind if I get a glass of water?”

Miguel nodded from his post at the eight-burner stove, where he was sautéing beef and onions together. The aroma made me want to go over there and stuff it all in my mouth with my hands.

I eyed Zach as I took a glass from the cupboard. His hair was tousled boyishly, and the apron contrasted with his tanned, muscled arms.

I wandered over and leaned on the counter as Nora handed Zach the rolling pin. “Here now, Zachary, enough of the lesson. You try it.”

“You both just want to see me mess up.” He took the pin, holding it like a club. “I'm outnumbered here.”

I giggled but then stopped as he deftly rubbed flour on the rolling pin, then flattened a scoop of dough with his palm and rolled it flat with a few swift strokes. Nora raised her eyebrows. “Zach, you don't have too much to learn. Here I was, giving you a lesson for half an hour, and I can see you already know plenty.” She laughed and pushed the bowl toward him. “You two finish this up. The delivery truck is here anyway.” She walked toward the back, chuckling.

An apron flew through the air, hitting me in the face. “Hey!” I pulled it from my head.

“Stop slacking off, McKinley. I need an assistant.” He tossed a ball of dough lightning quick, and I just managed to catch it.

“Are you playing with your food?” I threw it back and slipped the apron over my head, then stared at the pile of dough. “Okay, so what do I do with this?”

“Just knead it.” Zach rolled out another tortilla.

I gave the dough a tentative punch with my fist. “Like this?”

“What, are you mad at it? Here.” He pressed the heels of his hands into the dough and tromped them up and down.

I tried the tromping motion too, but apparently I wasn't doing it right, because Zach sighed and shook his head. “Dude, you need to put some muscle into it.” He leaned over my shoulder and covered my hands with his. My pulse zoomed up at his closeness, but I tried not to stiffen up. His hands were much bigger than mine, the skin of his forearms darker. I could feel the muscles of his chest pressing against my upper back. And I could smell him too—a cedary scent, like some kind of soap.

His hands pressed down on mine, much harder than I had been pressing. “There, see? You have to really get into it.” He took his hands away and looked toward the doorway, running the back of his hand over his forehead. I looked down at the dough, trying to calm my breathing.

Miguel switched on the vent fan, and the background noise helped me recover myself. I flopped the dough over and started dividing it into smaller balls. Zach began on another tortilla, his hands flying. “All right, so confess. How come you know how to do this?” I nodded at his deft movements.

He shrugged with one shoulder. “My mom had a little café in Charleston when I was like ten—just for a couple years.” A rueful expression crossed his face. “We were between stepfathers.”

“What was it like?” I rolled a wad of dough between my palms. “The café, I mean. Not being between stepfathers.”

He dipped into the flour canister at his side. “It was actually outside of Charleston, on Johns Island. But it's super country out there.”

“Like cows and corn and stuff ?” I handed him a dough ball.

He laughed and shook his head. “Like little cabins from a hundred years ago, falling over, with huge vines growing all over them. And these trees—they're called live oak trees; they don't don't have them up here—with giant branches that make kind of a canopy over the road and the fields. It gets really, really hot and super humid and the bugs are just huge. And the neighbors used to burn their trash in the drainage ditches by the side of the road, so there'd be fire on both sides of your car when you drove past.” He stopped to take a breath.

“Wow.” I stared at him, my hands still. “You must miss it.” I remembered the dough and began another pile of balls.

He nodded. “Yeah. I miss the food, too.”

“Which? What was the best food in your café?”

“Probably the green beans. My mom would do them with onion and bacon, and she'd simmer them all morning. Once, when I was little, I snuck in and ate the whole pot. She was so mad I thought she was going to throw me right out the door.” He laughed, his face alight.

I laughed too. “You bad little boy. I once ate a whole bowl full of sugar.”

“Are you kidding?” He added another tortilla to the growing stack at his elbow.

“I'm not! My mom was super strict about sugar, and I wasn't allowed to have
any
. So I snuck over to my friend Damien's house next door one day when I was supposed to be taking a nap and just ate huge fistfuls. I finished the whole bowl before they found me. Here. This is the last.” I gave him the final few dough balls, then leaned my elbows on the table as he rolled them out. “I'm starving.”

“Here.” Zach held out an uncooked tortilla.

“Ew, no thanks.” I wrinkled my nose.

“Dude, it's good.” He bit off half. “Dan used—” He stopped suddenly, and a grimace passed over his face.

“Who's Dan?” I reached out and took the other half of the tortilla from his hand, stuffing it into my own mouth. He was right—it wasn't too bad. Like un-sweet cookie dough. “Who's—” I stopped. His mouth was drawn, and the light had gone out of his face.

“My brother.” His voice was oddly muffled. He looked down fixedly at the stack of tortillas.

“Oh.” I was about to ask him where his brother was, but before I could, Zach grabbed a baking sheet from under the counter.

“These can go in the oven.” He started shoveling the tortillas onto it without meeting my eyes. “So, that was awesome this morning, with the horses.”

I sensed he was trying to change the subject. “Yeah. It really was. Thanks for speaking up like that. Jack and Rick weren't even listening to Stephen or me.” I studied his face. He didn't want to talk about his brother—that much was clear. Why, though? What was the secret?

“Well, it was stupid not to give him a chance. He can do it. He's a good horse. You can see it in his face.” He opened the oven and a puff of heat hit us. Zach leaned away and slid in the baking sheet.

“You can. And he has such a pretty mane, too. I found some detangler this morning—I was going to comb it out. I could braid it too—I learned at my old barn.”

“Whoa, Nellie. All the other horses will make fun of him.” He grinned at me, the teasing light back in his face.

“He'll look cute.” A timer dinged somewhere, and Nora hurried back in, with Miguel close behind.

“Where are the tortillas?” she asked, looking around.

Zach nodded toward the oven. “I couldn't stop Chloe once she got started. She was like a tortilla-making machine. Seriously, I couldn't hold her back. She had all those puppies rolled out in like five seconds.”

“He's such a liar,” I told Nora. “All I did was knead. He did the rest.”

“Don't believe her! She should be on kitchen duty the rest of the summer—she's like a professional chef!”

“You're a nut job,” I laughed, shoving him out of the kitchen in front of me. “You shouldn't be trusted.”

He raised his eyebrows. “
That's
for sure.” He leered at me, and I rolled my eyes as I headed for the stairs.

***

“How was the trail ride this morning?” I stood in front of the wavery, spotty mirror in our bedroom that afternoon. Dana was propped up on her bed, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, wearing sweatpants and a tank top and scribbling rapidly in her journal with a chewed-up Bic.

She groaned without looking up. “Those little girls are such brats!”

She meant the Taylors' kids—they'd proven themselves to be every bit as out of control as we'd previously thought.

Dana leaned over and put her journal in the drawer of her bedside table, then lay back again against the pillows. “I'm trying to get the dad mounted and he's being, you know, the way big men are, all stiff and scared but trying not to show it. Making dumb jokes, clutching the saddle horn. So I'm just trying to keep him upright on Mickey, when I look over and they've both gotten on Hans! Without helmets! Which, if Jack saw, he would probably fire me and eat them for breakfast.”

I nodded. Helmets weren't the most attractive headgear and certainly didn't fit my picture of myself galloping in a field of grass with my long hair flowing out behind me, but they were nonnegotiable. Jack had given us a massive lecture about liability. Apparently he could get sued for everything he owned if an accident happened to one of us staff or a guest on a horse and they weren't wearing a helmet.

“So poor Hans is trying to keep from freaking out, but I can see he's getting all trembly and sweaty, and in a minute he's probably going to dump them.” Dana put her hand over her eyes as if to shut out the memory. “And I'm all by myself, you know, since they were supposed to get on one at a time, and now I'm freaking out, my heart is pounding, I'm thinking that this is it, Hans is going to throw those little girls into a tree and then Mickey will spook and dump the dad and they'll have go to the emergency room and then I'll be back in Boise, working at Wendy's for the rest of the summer.” She stopped to take a breath.

“And? Come on, don't leave me in suspense here!” I said.

“Wait, it gets better. So the dad sees what's going on now—he didn't before because he was trying not to fall off—and he shouts at the girls to get off the horse. And Hans thinks he's shouting at
him
, so he starts trotting off, probably going back to his stall, and I swear to God, the bigger girl
jumps off Hans
like she's some kind of stuntman, and does a somersault in the dirt. By now I'm yelling, trying to catch Hans, the dad's gotten off Mickey somehow, he's yelling, the big girl's screaming, and Hans goes straight into the stable and I run after him. He's in his stall with the little girl still on his back.”

“Oh my God,” I said.

“So I grab the little girl off Hans, slip his bridle off, and go back out—Mickey's gotten the lid off one of the outside grain bins and is eating everyone else's lunch,” Dana concluded.

“That's crazy! Were the girls okay?”

My roommate flopped back against the pillows, crossed her eyes, and let her tongue loll out the side of her mouth. “Yeah, they were fine.”

I stood up and rummaged around in the top drawer of her dresser, then extracted a hairbrush. “Here, I'll French-braid your hair,” I offered. “That'll be relaxing.”

“Oh, yay, thanks!” She sat up and turned around on the bed, unwinding the towel from her head.

I knelt behind her and began pulling the brush through her wet blond locks. “Zach and Stephen and I came up with this plan to keep that one horse Jack brought from the auction mart.”

“The one who'd been beaten?” Dana had her eyes closed. “I thought he was some kind of charity case.”

“He was. I mean, he is.” I updated her on the session with Jack and Rick. “We're allowed to try him out—the pack trip is going to be his big test.” I tugged at a snarl.

“Ow! I'll help you. Just tell me when you want to try him on a trail.”

“And . . .” I drew out the word. “I'm going to Garden of the Gods with Stephen in an hour.” My stomach gave a little flip of excitement just saying it. I'd almost forgotten about the date with all that had happened this morning.

“Aww, that's so cute,” she said. “Is it a date?”

I frowned, and picked at a tangle. “I don't know. I think so. What do you think?”

“Hmm. Is anyone else going?”

“No. . . .” I set the brush aside and picked up a few locks of hair at the top of her head. “Well, he didn't say if there are. And he said he'd show me this secret trail.”

“And he asked you specifically—like, ‘will you go with me'?”