Star Bright (10 page)

“I have, yes, but tires are expensive.”

“Not around here, they aren’t. I’ve got enough old tires in the shed to build a pyramid to rival Tutankhamen’s.”

“Why on earth do you keep old tires?”

“Well, for one thing, they aren’t biodegradable. You can’t dump ’em just any old place. For another, we always change our tires
before
they go totally bald, and I hate throwin’ ’em away when they still have some tread on ’em. Seems wasteful, and I always think they may come in handy sometime in an emergency.”

“And I’m an emergency?” she ventured.

“Not yet. That’s my whole point, that you’re gonna be one unless you give me your keys so the ranch mechanic can give your car a good goin’-over.” He held up a hand to stop her from speaking. “Mac is on the payroll. He gets paid the same each month whether he works or not. Some days I keep him plenty busy, but the shop’s slower than a whore-house on Sunday right now. He’s probably swillin’ coffee and playin’ solitaire on my dime. The way I see it, he’ll be happier with somethin’ to do, I’ll be happier knowin’ that your car’s safe for you to drive, and you’ll be happier, too.”

“I will?”

“Yes, ma’am. Your car won’t be throwin’ oil, and you’ll be able to put off buyin’ tires for a few more months.”

“I feel funny about taking a free set of tires.”

“Why? They’ll just sit out there and rot over time. Somebody may as well be gettin’ some use out of ’em.”

Rainie couldn’t argue the point. She fished her keys from her purse and handed them over. He smiled and held her gaze for a moment. “Thank you.”

The way Rainie saw it, she was the one who should be grateful. “For what?”

He winked at her. “For workin’ up the courage to trust me just a little. You looked more than a little alarmed when I asked for your keys.”

Rainie could think of no response to that. In truth, she had been alarmed.

“Mac will have your car ready to roll before your shift ends.” He tossed the keys into the air and caught them with a swing of his hand. “He’s good. He’ll have that Mazda purrin’ like a kitten.”

“Can I at least pay for the oil and any parts he has to buy?”

“Sure. We’ll work somethin’ out.”

As he walked away, Rainie made a mental note to find out how much the car repairs cost and deduct the total from her first paycheck. She refused to become any more indebted to Parker Harrigan than she already was.

Chapter Five

T
wenty minutes later, Rainie was at Parker’s desk, sorting through mounds of paperwork that had obviously been there for weeks, or possibly even months, judging by the layer of dust on some of the pages. She began the daunting task of bringing order to chaos by creating small piles, attempting to put the documents in alphabetical categories. But she soon had so many stacks that she ran out of space and couldn’t remember which pile was for which letter. She needed a better system.

After thinking about it, she pulled all the file cabinets over to stand in a semicircle around his workstation. When she opened the top drawer of the first cabinet, she nearly groaned. He’d dumped even more loose papers inside it—hundreds of them. How on earth did the man do business like this? The next drawer down was in just as big a mess. How long had he been throwing receipts and purchase orders into these cabinets? For years, she guessed.

And he expected her to sort through all of it.

Rainie reminded herself that he was paying her handsomely for her trouble. What she needed was a box. Strike that. She needed at least three. Then she could empty the file cabinets and start over. In the bottom pullout of one cabinet she found unopened containers of hanging files and folders, which nearly made her laugh. Parker had had good intentions at some point.

Out in the hallway, Rainie had glimpsed several closed doors. Venturing forth, she opened three of them to investigate, discovering grain, tack, and medicine rooms. On the fourth try, she found what she sought: a storage area filled with boxes. She found three empty containers that were large enough to suit the purpose. Armed for battle, she returned to the office to make war on Parker’s paperwork. The first skirmish was to remove everything from the file drawers so she could use the vacated space to categorize his records. Later, when she had accomplished some semblance of order, she would file the receipts and invoices under company headings, putting everything at her fingertips.

Within minutes, she grew so absorbed in her task that she lost track of time. She’d filed one-third of the loose papers that she’d dumped into one of the boxes when a thump came at the door. When she went to investigate, Parker pushed into the room, his arms laden with take-out cartons.

“Lunchtime,” he informed her.

“Oh!” Rainie brushed her palms clean on her skirt. Though she’d had the office to herself for only a few hours, his sudden presence felt intrusive. She wished he’d just go away and leave her alone. “I brought a sack lunch. Normally I eat while I work.”

“Not around here, you won’t. You have an hour and a half designated for breaks each day, and I expect you to use every second. You can eat, take a walk, or play games on the computer. I don’t care how you spend your free time, but I’m a firm believer in takin’ breaks. You can keep your sack lunch in the fridge and have it for dinner.” He sauntered toward her desk. “You like Chinese, don’t you?”

For two years, Rainie had barely been able to breathe without asking Peter’s permission, so now she resented anyone who tried to boss her around. It seemed to her that she should be able to spend her breaks working if she wished. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet recovered enough from the brutality of her marriage to argue the point. “I, um . . . Chinese is all right, I guess.”

“All
right
?” He posed the question with feigned amazement as he set the cartons on her desk blotter. “Darlin’, that’s damned near a sacrilege. I’ve got pork and chicken chow mein, Szechuan beef, Mandarin beef, chicken fried rice, beef and broccoli, and snow peas with water chestnuts. Surely, with a selection like that, there’s somethin’ in there that you think is better than just all right.”

Rainie hadn’t really looked at the cartons until now. He’d ordered enough to feed an entire army. “Who all’s coming?”

“You, me, and two forks.” He started toward the coffee room but stopped dead when he came to the boxes, now filled with the contents of his file cabinets. “Holy hell, how will I ever find anything?” When he saw the look on her face, he chuckled. “Just kiddin’. You’ve taken on quite a chore.”

In Rainie’s opinion, that was putting it mildly, but she refrained from saying so. Speaking her mind was yet another freedom she’d been denied during her time with Peter.

Boots thumping on the hardwood floor, Parker returned a moment later with a roll of paper towels, two plates, and a fork for each of them. It still amazed her how he seemed to dominate a room. Hooking a toe under the pedestal of his chair, he rolled it to her desk.

“Don’t be shy,” he urged as he arranged the plates. “I order takeout for lunch a lot, and I’ll feel uncomfortable eatin’ if you don’t join me.”

Rainie reluctantly sat down across from him. He tore off two sections of paper towel and thrust one at her. She placed it on her lap as she watched him pile food on his plate. When he realized she was staring, he paused with his fork poked into a carton to give her a questioning look.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . well, such a lot of food.”

He went back to serving himself. “I work hard. It takes a lot of calories to keep my weight up. I start my day with a half pound of bacon, three eggs, a small bag of hash browns, and three pieces of toast with butter and jelly. For morning break, I have two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. By noon, I’m starving.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I burn it off.” He pushed a couple of the cartons toward her. “You’d better dish up before it’s all gone.”

Rainie giggled, an involuntary sound that burst forth and became a muffled snort when she tried to stifle it.

Parker glanced up at her again. “You got a problem with how I eat?”

“No!” she rushed to assure him. “No, no, not at all. I just can’t believe you can consume so much and not gain weight. I’d be as big as a house.”

He gave her a measuring look. “No offense intended, but you could stand to put on a couple of pounds.”

“I’ve lost some weight recently.” Rainie realized what she’d just said and wanted to call back the words. Issuing him an engraved invitation to ask questions about her personal life was not in her game plan.

Instead of pressing her for more information, he surprised her by crossing himself and silently blessing his meal. Then, between bites of food, he asked, “So how’s it goin’ in here? You wantin’ to quit yet?”

He was paying her too well for her to consider quitting, but that seemed an inappropriate thing to say. “I’ve made some headway.” She glanced at the mess she had unearthed. “It’s going to take me a while to get things organized, though.”

“No worries. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I wish I could tell you that I’ll clean up my act, but chances are, I won’t. I keep a tidy underwear drawer, I never leave dishes in the sink, and I can’t stand a messy house. That’s about as good as it gets.”

Rainie had no desire to hear about his underwear drawer. Striving to keep him focused on the business at hand, she replied, “My initial plan is to get all the paperwork in alphabetical order. When that’s done, I’ll create company folders so everything will be at my fingertips when you need it. But it is going to be time-consuming.”

“I’m not settin’ any deadlines.” He tucked back into his meal with unabashed enthusiasm. The muscles along his jaw bunched each time he chewed. “On a ranch, you learn that deadlines only frustrate you. Just when you think you have everything planned out for the day, God, the weather, or Murphy’s Law blows your schedule all to hell.”

A brief silence fell, and Rainie dreaded what might come next. This morning when she’d arrived, he had acted as if nothing untoward had occurred yesterday, but she would be foolish to believe that he intended to let it go at that. He was surely curious about her past, and sooner or later, he’d start pressing her for answers. She braced herself for a probing question, or another of those penetrating looks that made her feel as easy to read as large print.

But once again, Parker Harrigan surprised her. Gesturing with his fork, he said, “A rancher’s philosophy is, ‘What doesn’t get done today will wait till tomorrow.’ ” His dimple flashed in a slow grin that tipped up one corner of his firm lips. “You’ll hear different versions of it, of course. My foreman, Toby, will say, ‘Ain’t a lick of work I ever seen that’ll take off runnin’ if I don’t find time to git to it.’ My dad is fond of sayin’ that a chore is like a faithful woman: She’ll always wait for you.” After taking another bite of Mandarin beef and pausing to chew and swallow, he added, “I’m not a procrastinator, don’t get me wrong, and I don’t suffer laziness in any of my employees. But by the same token, I’ve also learned to be laid-back. If I weren’t, I’d go nuts. Every blessed mornin’, I plan the day and hold a crew meetin’ to get everybody lined out. Some days, the chores get done like clockwork. Other days, shit happens, and nothin’ on the work roster gets finished. Say a horse gets sick. Everything else takes a second seat. Everything but the other horses, that is. You learn, in short order, to get the urgent stuff done and do the rest as time allows.”

“Being an office employee, I’m sure that philosophy will never apply to me,” she inserted.

“Maybe not,” he agreed, “but then again, maybe so. If I have an emergency out there”—he inclined his head to indicate the arena area—“I may interrupt your workday by sendin’ you to town for horse medicine or some kind of paraphernalia I need to treat an animal. On a ranch, you never know from one minute to the next what might happen. About a month ago, Montana, one of my prize studs, got a hornet up his nose and went berserk. The walls of those stalls are reinforced nine ways to hell, but he managed to put a rear hoof through the wall anyway, and got his leg stuck up to the hock. Talk about a mess; that was it. I damned near lost a fine animal in that go-’round. By the time I got his leg free, he’d cut himself and was bleedin’ bad. My vet—he’s also my brother-in-law—was out in the field and took forty-five minutes to get here. Trust me when I say everybody within a mile was at a dead run, doin’ whatever needed doin’ to save my horse.” He forked some more food into his mouth and made short work of swallowing it. “Like I said when I hired you, the horses come first. The paperwork won’t up and die on us if you don’t tend to it for a day. An injured stud or a foal with pneumonia won’t be so patient.”

Rainie had never considered all the mishaps that could befall horses. Now it was easier for her to understand why this man’s office was in such turmoil.

“It sounds like a demanding line of work. Were you and your siblings born into the business?”

“We teethed on saddle leather.” He poked a big piece of broccoli in his mouth. “Not really, of course. It’s only a sayin’. But if any kids ever came close to teethin’ on leather, we did. Right after Clint was born, our mom insisted that Dad put new flooring and walls in one of the stalls to create a playpen.”

“A
what
?” Rainie had forgotten all about her earlier tension. “She put her baby in a horse stall?”