True Love at Silver Creek Ranch (6 page)

Grandma Thalberg joined her and worked on the mashed potatoes. “Adam seems like a nice young man.”

“Yep,” Brooke said, concentrating on the task at hand—and hoping to dissuade her grandma.

“You two had a lot to talk about.”

“We were talking about our grandmothers' exploits, nothing more. We're polite, Grandma, but we might as well be strangers.”

“You don't have to be.”

“We do. Let's just leave it at: It's nice to talk to someone new.” Nothing more complicated than that, she reminded herself. Something was going on inside her, a new question about her plans for her life, and she needed to focus on that, not a relationship.

The dining-room table was big and rough-hewn, a legacy from Brooke's great-grandparents. It seated the eight of them comfortably, and she found herself sitting opposite Adam, her brothers next to her, the widows next to him.

As they ate strawberry and walnut salad, the conversation ranged from the burned barn, to Thanksgiving, to the harsh early-winter conditions that might complicate calving season come January. Her dad, a veteran of Vietnam, brought up the current war, and though Adam did say he had sometimes visited the NATO base at Kandahar, he added little else. In fact, though he looked politely around the table as people spoke, he didn't contribute much. He made her quiet brother Josh look talkative. For a man who once boasted about his football receiving records, he had nothing to say about his service with the Marines. She found herself full of sympathy; she couldn't image what he'd experienced, what he'd seen.

Her father chewed a slice of prime rib, swallowed, then glanced at Adam speculatively. Brooke found herself tensing, even though she knew her father wasn't the sort to pry.

“So are you plannin' to stick around for a while, Adam?” Doug asked.

“A while,” Adam responded.

Mrs. Palmer beamed. Brooke noticed that she hadn't touched much of her food except to push it around on her plate. She was a hearty woman, full of passion for life and people—and food. Sandy met Brooke's gaze curiously after noticing Mrs. Palmer's lack of appetite, and all Brooke could do was give a tiny shrug. She didn't know what was going on, but it certainly had something to do with Adam.

“You ride a horse, if I remember,” Doug continued.

“I used to, sir,” Adam answered.

Brooke looked between them, uncertainty making her frown. Where was her father going with this?

“If you're going to be here through the holidays, I could offer you some work as a ranch hand. I've been thinkin' about pullin' back some, maybe even be what they call semiretired.” He grinned at Sandy, who looked surprised but not displeased.

Brooke shouldn't be surprised that her dad was pulling back from his ranch duties to concentrate on her mom. Nate was in charge of the business side of the ranch and their investments, and she and Josh handled the day-to-day ranch operations. But semiretirement? She was bemused that he hadn't brought it up before now.

Her brothers each had their work passions—Nate for the business, Josh for his leather tooling. Hell, he'd begun to sell his products in town. The ranch was her love. She was a cowgirl, a barrel-racing champion, a rancher—like her dad. But was that all she was?

Adam exchanged a glance with his hopeful grandma. His face was impassive, and Brooke wondered what emotion he was feeling as he next met her gaze. And then she realized she'd be his boss, and all of these hot and achy feelings of desire that she'd just begun to acknowledge would have to be ignored. How would it look to her family if she proved herself so unprofessional as to chase after an employee? Doug was all business about the ranch. Distractions got cattle killed. Every head lost was money out of their pockets. She'd grown up with these words constantly ringing in her ears. And yes, things were better financially since Nate had begun expanding their investments, but that didn't mean the day-to-day job was any easier.

“Sir, I appreciate the offer,” Adam began at last, “but I can't mislead you. I've never worked on a ranch.”

“But you ride a horse,” Doug said. “You visited when your father hired on occasionally with us. Brooke and Josh can teach you what you need to know.”

“Or,” Mrs. Palmer began, “I could always use an assistant in my tarot business.”

Brooke pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at her obvious ploy. She wondered what else was a ploy.

“Business?” Adam echoed dubiously.

“I didn't tell you about my plans, my dear boy? But of course, if you're workin' for Doug here, I'd understand.”

“I don't think you have much of a choice, Adam,” Josh said dryly. He glanced at Brooke. “Training a greenhorn. Think we can handle it?”

“We'll work him hard,” Brooke said, finally looking at Adam and offering a polite smile. “But then, I'm sure he's used to hard work after being in the Marines. Now, if you'll excuse me, Grandma baked a cake that needs to be served.”

As she rose, Doug slapped the table, his smile satisfied. “Then it's settled.”

Though Brooke retreated to the kitchen, she could still hear his voice.

“We do work hard on the ranch, son,” he said. “Ranchers don't take vacations, after all. But there was one time Sandy and I wanted to go down to Denver to see a show for the weekend—”

“And a Broncos game,” Sandy interrupted dryly.

Brooke heard the chuckles as she picked up the chocolate-cake pan.

Doug continued, “So, Adam, we hired your dad to be here over the weekend to work alongside Nate, who was still in high school.”

Brooke arrived back in the dining room in time to see Adam nod, but there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before. She knew his mom had been an alcoholic, but all she knew of his dad was that he seldom held down a job for long. Obviously taking care of his family wasn't that important to the man.

“So who'd like cake?” she asked from the buffet, where she began to cut slices and put them on small plates.

“Wait a sec, Cookie,” her dad said.

With her back to the room, she closed her eyes and winced. She loved that nickname, but hearing it right after she found out she was to be Adam's boss in what many would consider to be a man's world . . .

“So, Adam, your dad and Nate had a trailer-load of cattle and got a flat tire. While your dad was fixin' it”—Doug started to laugh, along with Nate—“the steers seemed to line up and”—he could barely get the words out now—“take turns pissin' on his head!”

It was a famous story in their house, and Mr. Desantis wasn't the only one it had ever happened to. But she was watching Adam's face, and although he forced a smile, it was obvious he had no good feelings for his dad.

Brooke set a plate of cake in front of Doug. “Okay, guys, shut up and eat.”

Her dad was actually wiping away tears. But Sandy was watching her curiously, and Brooke went back to serving the cake.

“Okay, okay, I'm done,” Doug said, his voice almost hoarse. “Adam, we'll feed you lunch every day, so no worries about that. You'll even have as much steak as you want for cookin' on your own. Get here at dawn tomorrow and work hard, that's all I ask. Come over to the business office first thing, and we'll fill out the papers.”

“Yes, sir,” Adam answered. “Thank you, sir.” He started to eat his cake.

Brooke had to stop looking at him, had to stop caring about his feelings. He might be in a world of hurt the next few days as he adjusted to life on the ranch, and it wasn't her job to sympathize. Her job was to get a good day's work out of him.

And stop thinking about him except as an employee.

Chapter Five

A
dam got in a run before dawn, then arrived at the Silver Creek Ranch just as the sun crested the mountain peaks. He saw activity at the newer barn closest to the house, lights on inside against the gloom, horses out at pasture. It must be crowded in that barn, with the old one destroyed.

He found the ranch office easy enough, and Mr. Thalberg met him inside and offered coffee, muffins, then paperwork. Nate was already hunched over his computer, and he waved a good morning.

Adam was glad for the chance to work, to not twiddle his thumbs or elude another tarot reading. He loved his grandma, but too much togetherness had made him itch for some freedom. But he couldn't help gnawing over the fact that the Thalbergs surely hired him out of pity because his grandma had put in a word. He was a vet with no job at the moment, with little ranch training. He would probably be a hindrance more than a help, but he was determined to work as hard as he could to prove to Mr. Thalberg that hiring him had been the right decision.

As for his attraction to Brooke, Adam was going to ignore it. The Marines had taught him honor, and that didn't include chasing after his employer's daughter—his boss.

Mr. Thalberg told him to head to the shed, the huge metal building where all the big trucks were stored, and that's where he found Brooke. She was outside the doors, standing on a ladder, head beneath the hood of a massive flatbed truck already stacked with bales of hay for feeding cattle. Some kind of crane was mounted on the flatbed, with what looked like a giant yellow fork attached, probably for picking up hay. Guess he wouldn't be riding a horse anytime soon, he thought, a little disappointed.

Brooke was layered up in cold-weather gear, from coveralls to at least a couple jackets, and a thick wool cap on her head. And then there were her high, all-weather boots. He looked at those, then dubiously down at his cowboy boots, already sinking into the winter mud.

That's when she chose to straighten out from beneath the hood, dipstick in her hand. She followed his gaze to his boots and shook her head.

“I thought you might not have the proper gear,” she said. “There's an old pair of Nate's boots in the cab, along with some coveralls and a couple hats. That cowboy hat'll fly right off your head in this wind.”

“Thanks.” He looked past her. “You've already loaded the hay.”

She shrugged. “I like to get an early start, especially since this retriever burns oil like crazy, and I have to keep checking it. And the stackyard would be a sinkhole of mud if I wait until the sun hits it. You'll figure everything out.” Then she ducked back under the hood.

He studied her while she wasn't looking. He knew there might be men who thought what she did was unfeminine. He wasn't one of them. He could see the rope of her braid down her back and imagined what it looked like all spread out in chestnut waves around her shoulders.

Uncomfortably aroused, he opened the retriever's cab door and donned all his gear. By the time he was done, she slammed the hood down and walked swiftly back inside the shed. When she came back out, she got up inside the driver's side of the cab. He hopped up beside her.

“Where's Josh?” he asked.

“We drew straws,” she said as she started up the engine. “I lost.” She gave him a dubious glance. “I get to train the greenhorn today, and Josh gets to do some horse doctoring.”

It was going to be an awkward day if her attitude was any indication. She started to drive down the bumpy dirt road, away from the buildings and out onto the rolling pastures enclosed with barbed-wire fence. He couldn't see grass for the white depth of the snow, and the wind swirled it across the windshield. Brooke drove like she could have done it with her eyes closed.

“We're feeding the yearlings first, farthest from the house,” she said.

She stopped at a gate and just looked at him, one brown eyebrow lifted. After a second's incomprehension, he jumped out of the warm cab and into the cold, even more biting out there, where it came off the mountains with no trees or buildings to hinder it. He opened the gate, and after she drove through, he closed it again before getting back into the cab.

The several dozen yearlings looked like fully grown cattle but much smaller, steam rising as they breathed. Their heads came up when they heard the retriever coming, their lowing growing louder.

“They're expecting us,” Adam said.

She nodded, pulled out a bungee cord, and affixed it the steering wheel, then climbed out the door and onto the runner, leaving the cab driverless. The retriever was still moving, but now in a slow, wide circle.

She ducked her head back inside and gave a wicked grin. “You coming?”

Grinning back, Adam opened his door and clambered up onto the bed of the retriever. The bales took up almost all the space, and he could only hang on to the chains and pull himself on top of the double stack of bales. The ground looked fifty feet away.

“If you fall, make sure you push yourself away from the truck,” she advised, still smiling. “Those are big wheels.”

And he did fall, several times that morning as they ripped the string off bales of hay and together unrolled them so that they fell in a long, uneven line, startlingly green against the white snow. It was grueling work, each bale eight hundred pounds and frozen solid. The yearlings didn't seem to care as they chomped happily.

On the drive back to the truck shed for lunch, Adam glanced at Brooke with new respect. He might have been unloading cargo ships the last few months, but much of it was done by cranes and modern equipment. This was a more intense manual labor, and Brooke did it with ease.

She saw him looking at her. Her skin was red from the wind, tiny curls of escaped hair framing her face.

“What?” she demanded.

“You impress me.”

She looked back at the road that only showed their previous tire tracks. “Surely you've seen some impressive women overseas.”

“A few. You could handle yourself among them.”

She didn't say anything, didn't look at him.

“You're blushing,” he said.

Brooke felt the heat of that blush spreading across her cold cheeks. “I'm not.” But she was. He sounded like he admired her strength. She didn't want to think that because it didn't lead anywhere she could go. “So tell me about the job you took after you were discharged. It must have needed strength because you handled yourself okay for a greenhorn. Or was it all that Marine training?”

“I worked in the shipyards on the coast of Louisiana.”

“How did you get into that?” she asked with surprise.

“A buddy worked there before the Marines and went back. I had nothing better to do, so I went with him.”

“You didn't want to come home to Valentine Valley?”

“Not really.”

She glanced at him curiously, but his head was turned to look out the window. She could see his strong jaw, the silhouette of his throat and Adam's apple since he'd opened his coat. That alone was sexy, but she was able to overlook it. She turned back to the road. “But your grandma—”

“That's who I'm here for.”

“And there was nothing else that made you want to come home?” She couldn't even imagine it—everything she loved was here, everything she knew. But there was a whole world out there, and maybe he liked the diversity.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her, brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“Are you asking if there was a
woman
I wanted to come home for?”

She frowned, keeping her eyes on the road. “Of course not. After ten years?”

“I'm sure the grapevine would have been buzzing if a girl had waited that long for
me,
” he said with faint sarcasm. “There's a constant need around here to know everyone else's business. One of the reasons I didn't look forward to returning,” he added.

She shrugged. “It can be good sometimes—or so I tell myself. I'm not a big fan of gossip even if I do share a juicy tidbit with my girlfriends now and then.”

“Who are your girlfriends?”

Fair was fair—she was asking questions, so she had to answer some of his. “Emily, Nate's fiancée, and Monica, of course.”

“Of course.”

He must remember that she and Monica were best friends—maybe he even realized Monica told her everything—
everything
—he'd done while they were dating. Brooke hadn't appreciated his behavior at the time and had been indignant on behalf of her friend. But that was a long time ago.

“Monica's not married?” he asked.

“Nope. Surprised?”

“A little. I thought she was the marriage-and-baby type.”

Brooke smiled. “I think she'd like to be but she hasn't met the right guy.” She gave him a speculative glance. “Interested in picking up where you left off?”

“After ten years? No. I'm a different person, and I imagine she is, too.” He paused. “You don't seem to have changed all that much.”

She stiffened, not sure if she should take offense. “I grew up knowing I'd be a rancher like my dad. And that's what I'm doing. I always knew what I wanted.” But did she? a little voice inside her whispered. It was startling, even frightening, and she wondered where that voice was coming from. “I'm not sure it's flattering to be told I haven't changed.”

“On the outside you've changed, maybe even in other ways I can't see.”

Surprised, she looked at him again, and their gazes met and held for a long moment. Something hidden seemed to uncurl inside her, a sudden rising of desire that took her by surprise. He held himself so still, but it made her think of what strength he kept hidden, what emotions he restrained.

She glanced away. “Naw, I'm just me, Brooke the cowgirl. So did you quit your job to come here, or are you on vacation?”

“I quit. They'll take me back when I'm done here.”

“Lucky you.”

They rode the last ten minutes in silence, and Brooke told herself she was relieved. The wind had kicked up worse, and she was glad to be taking a break for lunch. When they parked the retriever, she wordlessly gestured with her head for Adam to follow her. They stopped in the barn because the dogs had gathered to greet her, and it was too cold to linger outside. They had three cow dogs besides Scout, who was usually with Nate. All three dogs greeted Adam with friendly reserve, and after a couple sniffs, with open enthusiasm, which he accepted affably.

“Let's get lunch,” she said, not looking to see if he followed her. “My mom might have rung the bell while we were gone, but she also texted me.”

“Modern ranch life,” Adam said. “You don't have to feed me.”

She glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the now-uneven, frozen yard, squinting against the wind. “It's part of the job, so be quiet and eat.”

In the mudroom off the kitchen, they peeled their winter garments off in wet, dirty layers and walked in stocking feet into the kitchen. Her mom's wheelchair was pushed to the table, which spanned the many windows along one wall. Josh and Nate were already seated opposite each other, heads bent over their plates, although they did give twin waves while holding their hamburgers aloft. The ranch's part-timer, Lou Webster, seated across the table beside Nate, gave Adam an openly curious look. Lou had to be in his seventies, with bright blue eyes that peered out of wrinkly, leather skin, bald on top with a scraggle of white hair outlining the shining dome.

Sandy smiled. “Glad you two could join us. Not sure how everything tastes. Your dad insisted on cooking.”

Brooke put a hand to her heart and pretended to reel. “I remember the last time . . .”

“Hey!” Doug called from behind the stove. “The recipe was wrong. In any case, it's hard to ruin hamburgers.”

“I haven't tried the coleslaw yet,” her mother said in a stage whisper. “But at least we have Grandma's leftover cake.”

Brooke introduced Adam to Lou, who stood up and grinned as he looked Adam up and down.

“I was in Korea. Nice to meet a fellow vet.”

Once again, no military talk for Adam, who simply shook Lou's hand, then sat down opposite him next to Josh. Brooke felt like scurrying all the way around the table instead of sitting next to Adam. She knew it would look stupid—it
was
stupid—so she sat next to Adam and helped herself to one of the burgers piled on a platter at the center of the table.

For a while, talk was concentrated on the ranch, from estimating how many of the cows were pregnant to which fence had to be repaired to Adam's first eventful day. Adam said little, eating as if he hadn't eaten in a long time, which amused Brooke. He'd done his best to act like feeding cattle was easy to learn, but she could tell by his appetite that he'd worked hard. He hadn't questioned her, hadn't tried to suggest doing something a different way, as some men might—hell, like
he
used to. Now he just listened to her instructions and followed her lead. He'd made mistakes—and his sore body would remind him of that by tomorrow—but he usually didn't make the same mistake twice.

Very different behavior than when he was in high school, she mused. She could remember when they'd been assigned to work in the same group on a history project. He hadn't wanted to put in the effort of leading, but he always had a comment on everyone else's work. He thought he was way too smart. Apparently, the Marines had taught him otherwise.

During a lull in the conversation, Brooke said to Lou, “Too cold a day to expect any tourists, I bet.”

Lou shrugged. “I'll hear the bell if anyone rings it, so yeah, I'll probably get other chores done.”

Adam glanced sideways at her curiously, but since he had a burger at his mouth, she answered his unspoken question.

“We have a beautiful old sleigh from my great-grandparents' day. Dad had it fixed up last winter, and we started giving sleigh rides to tourists in the afternoons. We'll even do it in the evenings if someone makes a reservation. Otherwise, they just show up and ring the bell. There are signs in town advertising it at the community center, and we put some ads in the paper. But that's it.”