Running Blind (6 page)

As soon as the horses were back in the pasture, Zeke told Spencer, “Throw together something hot and fast while we fix this fence.” They’d be working late tonight, thanks to the damn fence and the damn horses.

“Sure, boss.” Spencer bobbed his head and headed for the bunkhouse kitchen at a fast trot. Zeke spared a brief moment of appreciation for the kid. The other hands rode him hard, teased him about all the shit chores that got thrown his way, but the way Zeke saw it, Spencer was showing his mettle by doing what was asked of him, instead of quitting. Give the kid another ten years or so, and he figured Spencer would be foreman here, bossing some of the same men who were giving him such a hard time now. Not all of the crew would still be here, of course; some would move on to other ranches, some to different jobs, but a few would hang in there. He had a good crew now, so he hoped they’d hang together for at least a few more years.

“Hope he doesn’t cook that oatmeal shit again,” Darby grumbled as he nailed a heavy board into place.

“We’d still be chasing horses if it wasn’t for him,” Zeke said, no temper in his tone but enough grit to tell the men to lay off Spencer no matter what he served up for them to eat—not that
he’d
be real thrilled to get oatmeal. It wasn’t that he didn’t like oatmeal … normally … but Spencer’s oatmeal tended toward a gluelike consistency.

They needed something more substantial for the long day ahead of them. Ranch work didn’t pay any attention to the clock; summer was short, and they had only
a set amount of time to get enough hay cut and baled to last through the long winter.

His ex-wife, Rachel, had called the winter weather “inhuman” and “brutal” and insisted no one with any sense would live here. If he wanted to be strictly fair, he had to admit she had some truth on her side, but “strictly fair” had gone out the window with the divorce, and as far as he was concerned she was a spoiled bitch who wouldn’t know what real work was if it bit her on the ass. He was a Wyoming native, he loved where he lived and what he did, and he figured everything else more than made up for the winters.

The hard truth was that he hadn’t missed Rachel after she left. By then all he’d felt was a sense of relief at having some peace and quiet again. Hell, with Libby there taking care of the cooking and cleaning and his laundry, life had rocked on exactly as it had before Rachel had come along. She hadn’t made a place for herself, hadn’t put her stamp on the household, hadn’t taken over any of the decisions. Instead she’d left all of that to Libby, and spent her time sulking because there was no place to shop, no coffee bar, no friends nearby. She could have had friends; it wasn’t as if there weren’t women in town. But Rachel hadn’t wanted Wyoming friends. She’d wanted her friends—or others just like them—from Denver.

Yeah, like people flocked to Denver for its great winter weather.

Rachel hadn’t liked summer in Wyoming, either. Summers meant unrelenting work, from before sunrise until sometimes long after sunset, getting ready for winter. Hay became the most important thing in his life, and a bad growing season could spell disaster for the ranch. The ranch hands traded horses and four-wheelers for tractors. Every night he’d pray for good weather, because any rain caused a delay he couldn’t afford. His hay fields weren’t counted in acres, but in square miles; that was a
lot of hay that had to be cut, dried, and baled. When he’d come dragging in at ten o’clock at night, after an eighteen-hour day, Rachel had wanted attention and he’d wanted a shower and then sleep, another thing that had made his wife very unhappy.

Another truth: he missed Libby way the hell more than he’d ever missed Rachel. This morning he’d discovered—again—that he was out of clean socks. Maybe he’d have noticed beforehand if he’d folded his laundry and put it away in the dresser drawers the way Libby had always done, but this was summer and all he had time for was taking the clean clothes out of the dryer and dumping them in a laundry basket. That was his system: dirty clothes on the floor, clean clothes in the laundry baskets. Unfortunately, in the tangle of underwear, he hadn’t noticed that there were no more clean socks. He’d taken the time to throw a bunch of clothes in the washer and turn it on, and he just hoped to hell he remembered to transfer them to the dryer when he dragged himself back to the house tonight.

Come to that, he hoped he’d put detergent in the washer, but he couldn’t remember if he had or not. Shit. Maybe he’d be able to tell by smelling the wet clothes whether or not they’d been really washed, or just rinsed. If not, he guessed he’d have to run the washer again, just to be sure. He sucked at this housekeeping stuff.

He swung the hammer and it glanced off the heavy nail, catching him on the side of the thumb. “Fuck!” He said several more swear words, shaking his hand. That was what happened when you let your mind wander while you were trying to hammer something. Good thing he hadn’t been on a horse, or he might have ended up sitting on his ass on the ground.

But thinking about his domestic arrangements—or lack of them—wasn’t exactly letting his mind wander. Since Libby’s departure, all of that crap had been an ongoing
problem. He and the men worked hard; they needed meals prepared for them, he needed clean clothes, by now it would probably take a pitchfork to clean out the house, and all of that made running the ranch harder than it needed to be.

But damned if he knew what the solution was. In the months since Libby had left he’d hired three different women to take her place. Well, no one could take her place; all he wanted was someone to cook, clean, and do laundry. Was that too much to ask of a decently paid employee? Apparently so, because none of the three had stayed. One had sat on her ass watching TV most of the time instead of getting things done. Another had said it was driving her nuts to be so far away from everything. In Zeke’s opinion, that particular drive hadn’t been a very long one. And the third one had caused trouble between the men, which had taught him a lesson about hiring a young single woman who was even remotely attractive.

So they were back to eating Spencer’s cooking again, and Zeke had been doing his own laundry, when he happened to remember it. As for cleaning the house … well, it would get done, eventually.

Aggravations aside, Zeke was a man who knew his place in the world and was happy in it—as happy as a man who didn’t have any clean socks could be, anyway. While other ranches were losing money, being sold, even turned into—God forbid—dude ranches or summer homes for movie stars with more money than sense, he worked hard to keep his corner of the world the way he liked it. Maybe the cash didn’t flow in nonstop, but he always found a way to get by, to keep his accounts in the black. It didn’t hurt matters that he’d been a big saver back when things had been great. Those savings had come in handy over the years.

His gaze went beyond the men to the mountains in the
distance. He wasn’t a sentimental sap, but this was home. He didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Just about the time they finished repairing the fence, Zeke saw Spencer step out onto the bunkhouse porch. “Come and get it!” the kid yelled before ducking back inside.

Zeke pulled off his gloves and tucked them into his belt. After putting away their tools, everyone trooped toward the bunkhouse. As ranch accommodations went, the bunkhouse wasn’t too bad. Only five of the men actually lived there; two were married and had their own houses, and the foreman, Walt, who was both the oldest and had been with Zeke the longest, had his own very small private house beside the bunkhouse. The larger building had six small bedrooms and three full baths, as well as a sizable common area that was furnished with battered recliners and a big-screen TV, and a full, if not very modern, kitchen. The bunkhouse was solidly built, had a wood-burning stove to back up the heating system just in case, and essentially served its purpose. The long trestle table would comfortably fit all of them; sometimes Zeke ate with them, though most of the time he opted for a sandwich, eaten alone, while he slogged through paperwork.

As soon as he stepped into the bunkhouse, his heart sank. It was oatmeal, all right, but then all he’d specified was that the food be “hot and fast.” Spencer had also added some cheese toast to the mix. The consistency of Spencer’s oatmeal aside, cheese toast wasn’t something Zeke would ever have picked to go with it. He felt like gagging. Judging from the expressions on the other men’s faces, he wasn’t the only one. Jesus. When he had time to do something about it, he seriously needed to look for a cook.

But not a woman. After the last fiasco, never again would he hire a woman unless she met the triple criteria
of being at least middle-aged, married, and completely uninterested in horny cowboys. What he really wanted, now that he thought about it, was a male cook. Men could cook as well as women. Weren’t all the great chefs men? The fact of it was, nine dicks and one vagina together on one large slice of land just didn’t work, unless the woman was married to one of the men.

With a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, some of the men sat down to shovel in a bowl of the gluelike oatmeal. Others opted for the cheese toast. None of them ate both. Patrick mentioned, in an almost offhand way, that he’d had instant oatmeal before and it wasn’t too bad. Figuring the cheese would stick with him longer than the oatmeal, Zeke grabbed a couple slices of toast before the others beat him to it.

Hell, he couldn’t fault Spencer. The kid hadn’t hired on to be a cook, didn’t want to be a cook, but did whatever Zeke asked of him. He did a marginally decent job in the kitchen, but he wanted to be a cowboy. God knew he’d never be a brain surgeon.

“Where do you need me, boss?” Spencer asked eagerly, around the toast he’d stuffed in his own mouth. His gaze went to the window, scanning the land before him and the mountains in the distance with the same kind of reverence Zeke himself felt. It would be cruel and unusual to put him to housework full-time. “Won’t take but a minute to do the dishes.”

“All hands in the hay fields,” Zeke answered briefly. Until the hay was in, everything else was on hold, including collecting semen from his prize bull, Santos. Selling bull semen had turned into a profitable business aspect of the Decker ranch, and no one was better with animals than Spencer. Whatever it was about him, he had a calming influence on them: horses, dogs, cattle—even bulls. When you were collecting semen from a two-thousand-pound bull, keeping him calm was important—or at least
as calm as could be expected, under the circumstances. Therefore it only made sense that even though he was the youngest of the hands, and the one who had been here the shortest time, Spencer was the one in charge of this job.

Sperm collector and cook. Wouldn’t that look impressive on a résumé?

Walt cleared his throat. “Any answers to your latest want ad?”

Spencer looked up, hope in his eyes.

“None that’ll do.” He’d had one query, but the “no housework” stipulation had stopped that one cold. He’d rewrite his ads. He didn’t think he could get away with “elderly battle-ax preferred,” but he could sure add that a man was preferred. “Someone will turn up, though. Let’s get going, boys. This hay won’t get cut and baled by itself.”

S
UMMERTIME, AND IT
was barely seventy degrees in the middle of the day. After the broiling heat of Texas, Carlin enjoyed the mild temperatures, but she couldn’t help but wonder what winter would be like here—not that she’d be around to find out. Winter was months away, and there was no telling where she’d be by then, but it almost certainly wouldn’t be here.

The thought of moving on was surprisingly tough; the regular customers already treated her like she was one of their own, and always had been. She’d have been suspicious of a stranger showing up out of nowhere, but Kat simply told everyone she was a friend, and that was good enough for her customers.

Had
she
ever been that trusting? Yeah, she had—once upon a time. But not now, and maybe not ever again. Before waiting on her first customer, she’d decided to tell them all to call her Carly. It was nice that Kat called her by her real name, that she hadn’t disappeared completely into
a false identity, but to have an entire town—no matter how small—knowing her name wasn’t a good idea. One post on a social site about Carlin at The Pie Hole might be enough to bring Brad here; it simply wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, Carly was close enough so that she didn’t stumble when someone called her by that name.

Not for the first time in her life, she wished her parents had given her a normal name, like Mary, or Maggie, or any one of a hundred well-used names that didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Her brother and sister hadn’t been spared the family curse, but Robin was a relatively normal name for a woman, and Kinison could be shortened to Kin. Her parents had loved to laugh so much they’d named all three of their kids after their favorite comedians. God, she missed them. They’d died too soon.

Today’s lunch crowd was a good one: mostly men, as usual, but there were a couple of women chatting away in a corner. One of the regulars was a skinny cowboy named Sam who tipped his hat and winked as he walked in the door. Carlin had already learned to dismiss the flirts, taking her cue from Kat. Usually all she had to do was simply ignore any overtures. If that failed, a cool look would do the trick. Maybe single women were a hot commodity in these parts, because a new one certainly did stir up a lot of interest.

Kat said business was up some since Carlin had started working there. Two single women, serving pie and burgers and endless cups of coffee, were apparently an irresistible draw for many of the cowboys Kat had warned her about.

That kind of attention made her a little nervous, but the flirting was good-natured, and most of the men—once rejected—seemed resigned to satisfying themselves with baked goods, caffeine, and a little harmless staring. She hadn’t had any real trouble with any of them, so she stayed.

She was settling into a comfortable routine. In the back of her mind she knew comfortable meant dangerous, but it felt good to just relax a little, let her guard down a notch and pretend she had a halfway normal life. She liked what she was doing, liked her employer, liked the lack of drama. She wanted to hang on here for just a while longer.