Harper
“4:58. Well, I am impressed,” Austin says, checking his watch when I meet him at the ranch’s front gate. Besides the idle of my bike’s engine, there isn’t a sound for miles, and the sun is barely peeking up above the horizon.
“You said five,” I say, parking my bike off to the side. “Where’s everyone else?”
He grins. “Probably still getting out of bed.”
“You got me here early?”
Reaching out, he gives the braid that’s hanging over my shoulder a gentle tug. “Sure did. Kinda wanted to keep my pretty little thing all to myself.” He gives me a wink then inclines his head for me to follow. “This way.”
I follow along, breathing in the damp, earthy air while his words roll around in my head. Pretty isn’t exactly the kind of word I’d use to describe myself. And little? Ha! I’ve never been little a day in my life. Although, I suppose next to him I seem fairly normal in size. Still, I’m left wondering exactly what this thing happening between us is. In my life, I’ve had a whole host of male friends. In fact, I get along with guys far better than I do with girls, which I suppose is why I’m always the friend who’s a girl and never thegirlfriend.But with Austin, this feels...different, like he wants something more from me than just my company.
“I realized I never said thank you to you last night,” I say, breaking into the quiet and shutting down my thoughts.Just be cool, Harper. Don’t overthink this.
“For the food? It was no trouble,” he says, turning that square jaw of his my way.
“Not the food. I mean, I am grateful for the food, but I was meaning the way you saved me from that bull. I’m not normally the kind of girl who needs rescuing, but I believe I owe you a debt of gratitude. I thought I was a goner, but you swooped in just at the right moment. In my head, it’s like you’re the hero of a well thought out stunt in a movie or something.”
“You think that bull comin’ at you was staged?”
“What? No. No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m just trying to say thank you. That’s all.”
“Well, I’m just glad you weren’t hurt too bad. I’d be short a ranch hand today if you were,” he says, grinning as we stop outside a great big shed and he pushes the doors open. “This here’s where we keep all the feed.”
When he flicks the light on, I’m met with pallets filled with feed bags, the scent of grain hitting me in the nose.
“You must havea lotof cattle.”
“About three thousand. Property covers a good forty thousand acres.”
“Holy shit. How many of you are there to run this place?”
He chuckles as he grabs a set of keys from a box on the wall. “A lot,” he says. “We’ve got our own little community going on up here.”
“I was thinking I’d come out here, and we’d throw some buckets of grains into a trough, but by the looks of that forklift over there, this is going to be a much bigger operation.”
“Not quite,” he says, an amused glint in his eye. “These keys are for the pickup outside. You and I are lookin’ after the cows and calves this mornin’. We only need a dozen of these bags.” He tosses the keys my way, and I’m quick to catch them in the air. “Hope you know how to drive a stick.”
Over the next few hours, I get what I imagine is the introductory version of ranch work. I haul bags of feed, I mix milk powder with a power tool, and I help shovel out the stable where Austin’s horse, Atticus resides before we saddle up—me on a beautiful fawn-colored mare named, Buttercup—and take a long ride along the fence line, checking for any damage while Austin explains to me how they rotate the cattle from paddock to paddock so they always have plenty of fresh grass to graze on.
He asks me about the city where I grew up, and I tell him about my dad and the way he always taught me to be strong and independent above all else. Then he tells me about his brother who left town right after high school to pursue a different lifestyle than one Cedarwood Valley could accept. It saddened him that his brother felt so confined here, but he understood the need to leave. But it’s a big reason behind why Austin spends most of his time with those living and working on the ranch. They have their own community going on, and they feel like family.
By the time we take a break, it’s only 10am, but I’m already exhausted. I can’t even imagine how much work he puts in when he’s not babysitting me. I always considered a mechanic’s work as taxing and dirty, but Austin could run rings around me, repair a motor, birth a calf, and drive a full herd of cattle in the same time it would take me to pull an alternator apart and clean it. The man makes physical work look easy. He blows my mind.
“What made you decide to name your horse Atticus?” I ask as we sit side by side, sharing coffee kept hot in a thermos, and a chicken salad sandwich from a paper bag. The moment I take a bite, I realize how absolutely ravenous I am and groan.
When he still hasn’t answered me, I look up from my food and find him just staring at me like he’s somehow in awe. I reach up and tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear before I look away, feeling embarrassingly warm to my core.
He clears his throat. “You’re gonna think I’m a nerd if I tell you.”
I let out a laugh. “Austin, I doubt anyone could ever consider a working man like you a nerd.”
“I named him after Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was my favorite novel in high school.”
“You had to read it for English?”
He licks his lips before he laughs, and I find myself staring at his mouth as it moves. “That’s the nerd part. I read it for fun.”
