Learnin' The Ropes (6 page)

Ty looked down at her in the moonlight and the desire to kiss her swept over him. It had taken less than 24-hours for him to lose his mind out here in no-man’s land. “Yeah, I grew up listening to eighties music. Makes me think of my mom.”

Lexi laughed. “My dad listened to Aerosmith right along with George Jones.”

“Sounds like you had an interesting musical upbringing.” Ty smiled as he walked her to the house, not even aware he’d done so. She stopped when they reached the picket fence.

“Thanks again for coming to the Rockin’ R Ranch. Swede thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread,” Lexi said with a grin before turning and walking up the steps and into the house.

Ty watched her go then strolled to the bunkhouse. He really needed to get his head on straight before he found himself in trouble. Big trouble… with beautiful green eyes, rosy red lips, and perfect white teeth that gleamed behind an irresistible smile.

Lexi leaned against the door as she closed it, waiting for her pounding heart to return to a steady beat and her breathing to return to some degree of normalcy.

Darn that Swede! He should have warned her about the new mechanic. He seemed to find it inordinately funny when she turned around and swallowed her gum at the sight of Ty standing behind her, looking all brooding, dark, and hunky.

Under the assumption her new mechanic would be gaunt and thin the months he spent homeless, Ty appeared to be as physically fit as she’d ever seen a guy. At least she imagined impressive, bulging muscles strained against the fabric of his sweatshirt. She had to tip back her head to look in his face and figured he had to be around six-four, because she was nearly six-foot tall in her cowboy boots.

His hair was a little too long, but it fell in finger-tempting tousled waves of brown tipped with sun-bleached highlights. It looked too natural to be from a salon and a man who had been unemployed as long as he had, not to mention as virile as he appeared, wouldn’t be getting his hair highlighted anyway.

His lips were full and enticing, his chin strong and solid. Then there were those eyes, those beautiful blue eyes that seemed to bore right into her soul.

It had been way too long since she had a date. That had to be the reason her heart tripped at the sound of his resonant voice and sparks shot up her arm when they shook hands this morning.

With a haircut and a shave, the man would be positively dazzling. As it was, his longer hair and scruffy stubble made him look mysterious and dangerous.

Way more dangerous than a girl who obviously needed to get out more could handle. Thoughts of running her fingers through that rich hair or seeing if those inviting lips would be as warm as they looked made Lexi shake her head at her wayward thoughts.

She walked into the kitchen to find Baby waiting near the refrigerator, wagging her tail. The dog somehow managed to open doors if they weren’t locked and could be found just about anywhere on the place at any given time. If she wasn’t so well behaved, her failure to recognize boundaries could have been a problem.

“Baby, what are you doing in here? You know the rules about being inside.” Lexi rubbed the dog’s head, earning a slobbery lick to her hand. “I can’t believe you like our new mechanic. Other than Swede and Dad, you just tolerate everyone else. What is up with that, Baby?”

The dog barked once then gave Lexi a look she was sure was a canine smile. Lexi gave her a good scratch along her back then ushered the dog outside. After locking up the house, she went to the office where she sorted through the mess her dad made of the ranch books during the year he was ill. Instead of focusing on the entries in the ranch journal, her mind wandered to a tall broad-shouldered mechanic who listened to rock music from the eighties.

Lesson Three

Learn the Native Tongue

“If yer gonna buckaroo at this here spread,

ya got to learn the lingo.”

“I’m not kidding, sis,” Ty said as his sister laughed.

“You’ve got to be teasing, Ty, because nothing that ridiculous can be true.” Without success, Beth tried to contain her laughter. She was thrilled Ty called on his day off so they could have a nice chat. Nate was trying to reconfigure their sparse furnishings to find room for a crib since the baby was due to arrive in just three weeks.

“I’m dead-honest serious, Beth.” There had been many moments in the past week when Ty questioned if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Except this one was full of foul smells, dirty animals, and a language he was trying very hard to understand. “I called Jimmy ‘dude’ the other day and he threatened to punch me. I didn’t know dude was a term they use to refer to people like me who grew up in civilization and prefer not to walk around with animal waste covering their clothes. You wouldn’t believe all the odd ways they have of talking. I feel like I need one of those Idiot’s Guidebooks to figure out what they are saying.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Beth said, curtailing her amusement. She knew Ty was struggling to adjust to his new environment. “You’re smart, you can figure this out.”

“I could if there was any reason or rhyme to what they say. The other day I was at the gas station and someone said ‘nice outfit,’ so I looked down at my jeans and sweatshirt and said, ‘thanks.’ The guy gave me a disgusted look and pointed to my pickup and said, ‘no, your outfit.’ Swede said they call pickups outfits. Apparently mine falls in the nice category.”

Ty sighed when Beth launched into another round of giggles. “You wouldn’t believe the way they blend words together either. Instead of ‘you,’ it’s ‘ya,’ and ‘you are’ is ‘yer.’ Anything that ends in ‘ing’ automatically gets shortened by a letter like ‘running’ is ‘runnin’.’ You’ll love this…” Ty inflected a nasally twang into his voice. “I’m fixin’ to learn ya up in how to speak our lingo, pard.”

Beth laughed so hard Ty could hear her gasping for air.

“Ty, you’ve got to stop. I can’t keep laughing like this. Stop, stop, stop,” she begged before he could further educate her on the language of his new home.

When she regained the ability to speak, she released a long breath. “Other than the language barrier, how is everything else going?” Beth easily read between the lines. She could discern Ty was homesick, but also enjoying his work.

“Good. I’ve learned a lot this week about big equipment repairs. The crew at the John Deere dealership has been really helpful when I’ve called with questions,” Ty said, thinking about all he accomplished in the week and a half he had been at the ranch.

 Since Sunday was his day off, he took a drive in his pickup and parked on the side of the road so he could talk to Beth without any interruptions from humans or animals.

Baby, that overgrown lapdog, had adopted him as her own personal human and followed Ty everywhere. She decided the shop was her new domain and spent hours hanging out with him there. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but he enjoyed her company, as long as she kept the slobbers to a minimum.

As Ty talked to Beth, he watched Lexi drive by in a pickup Swede had said was her dad’s and waved. She wore her hair down and he almost didn’t recognize her. He’d seen her drive the pickup before. Since he was parked at the end of the ranch road where it connected with the county road, he knew it was her. She smiled as she drove past him, heading toward the ranch.

After seeing all her lustrous dark hair around her face, he could hardly concentrate on what his sister said.

“Are you listening to me?” Beth finally asked with an indulgent smile in her voice.

“Yes, I am, but I better run. Call me if there is anything I can do for you,” Ty said. He planned to send a sizeable portion of his wages to Beth as soon as he received his first paycheck next week.

“I will, Ty. Be safe and have fun learnin’ the ropes,” Beth teased. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Ty disconnected and turned the pickup around, deciding to go back to the ranch. He really didn’t have anything to do and the thought of driving around aimlessly, wasting gas, really didn’t hold much appeal.

Back at the ranch yard, he parked his truck and strolled into the bunkhouse. Everyone else was gone and the place seemed quiet. Too quiet. He needed something to distract him from thoughts of his lovely boss and all that glorious black hair. Quickly changing into work clothes, he went to the shop, turned up his music, and worked on the engine he’d pulled out of a tractor on Friday. 

Although the first tractor he fixed was simple, this one was proving to be a much bigger challenge. If he only had a computer in the shop, he could compare photos of parts, do some online diagnostics, and make much better time in getting things repaired.

As it was, he kept referring to the owner’s manual. When he got stuck, he called the dealership with questions. They referred him to a website that was helpful, but he either had to use his phone or the computer in the bunkhouse to pull up the info and neither was very conducive to quickly accessing the information he needed.

With all the great equipment and tools in the shop, he was hesitant to ask for anything although Lexi had inquired a few times if there was anything he needed. The next time she asked, he might suggest an inexpensive laptop.

Baby opened the door and came inside, greeting Ty with a friendly yip. He closed the door, patting her on the head and getting a slobbery lick on his neck.

“Are you staying out of trouble today, Baby?” he asked the dog while he worked. Her giant tail wagged in response to the question.

“Is everyone else gone?”

Another tail wag.

“Is Lexi home? Did you tell her hello when she came back?”

The dog barked and turned around in a circle before settling onto an old blanket in a corner on the shop floor.

Lexi was surprised to see Ty in his pickup at the end of their road, talking on his phone. He looked happy. Her new mechanic didn’t smile much and she couldn’t help but think how good it looked on him.

She wondered if he was speaking with a girlfriend. That thought made her grasp the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white.

This was ridiculous. Why should she care if he had a girlfriend in Portland? Or in Burns? Or a dozen between here and there?

She shouldn’t care, but she did. Lexi cared far more than she wanted to admit.

Since her fiancé called off their wedding a year ago, men had been the last thing on her mind.

James dumped her because he couldn’t bear the thought of being married to someone who had a “questionable lineage,” as he referred to her family. The break up didn’t devastate her as much as it probably should have.

He was as shallow and pompous as they came. The fact she’d once thought him charming and wonderful made her question her sanity and vanity. Eventually, she realized James had been more interested in how much the ranch was worth than he was her.

The girl she was a year ago was so different from the woman she’d become since her father’s death.

At twenty-nine, she owned a successful ranch she was determined to keep running smoothly or die trying.

 The only real problem was that her dad had withdrawn funds from several of his investment accounts and she couldn’t trace any record of what he had done with the money. Exactly $500,000 was unaccounted for and she really needed to find it. The ranch was in no means hurting financially, but that was a lot of money to disappear into thin air.

She spent hours poring over bank statements, record books, and files. As a financial planner, she handled all of her dad’s investments personally. Or so she thought.

After his funeral it came as a shock to discover a paper trail leading to a series of investments she knew nothing about, only to find he’d made odd withdrawals from each for the total of half a million dollars. 

Unable to find paperwork that he invested the money elsewhere or any record of the funds in any of the ranch books, she wondered what he had done with it. Donated it? Gambled it? Purchased something she had yet to find? Buried it?

The endless possibilities gave her a headache.