“Nope.” Lucas tilted his head, studying him openly. “Your hair is so thick and pretty. What’s your routine?”
There was a beat of silence. Miguel blushed, then blinked. Once. Twice. “My… what?”
“Your hair,” Lucas repeated patiently. “It’s ridiculous. Like, shampoo-commercial good. You using some fancy stuff?”
Miguel was alarmed now. “I don’t—I just—I wash it?”
Lucas grinned. “Wow. So, you’re just naturally blessed.” His gaze flicked up and down Miguel’s face. “And your skin. Seriously.”
Miguel went red all the way down his neck. “I don’t have to do anything for my skin.”
Lucas kept on smiling at Miguel, who now resembled a deer frozen in the headlights, fork hovering uselessly over his plate. “Well, whatever you’re doing—or not doing—it’s working.”
“I need to uhm…”
“I mean,” Lucas went on, apparently unstoppable now. “Isaw you wearing eyeliner that first day at breakfast. And gloss.”
Miguel’s ears went scarlet. “I—I don’t?—”
“I like L’Oréal,” Lucas said brightly, as if this explained everything. “But honestly? Whatever you’re doing beats anything I’ve got in my bathroom.”
Miguel stared at the table like it might open up and swallow him. “I just like sometimes to… makeup,” he muttered. “It’s just… my face.”
“Miguel, will you make sure to check the newborn calves down by the south fence? I want eyes on the red heifer and her calf.”
He looked so relieved. “Sure thing, boss.”
Lucas had no choice but to move as Miguel picked up the bacon on his plate and ate it in one mouthful, then eased out. As soon as it was just Lucas and me, I couldn’t hold back.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?” Lucas said.
“That.” I jerked my chin toward the door Miguel had disappeared through. “Leave the kid alone. He’s a good kid, and you were messing with him.”
Lucas’s eyes widened, real surprise this time. “I wasn’t messing with him.” He frowned, as if he was trying to understand how we’d landed here. “I was talking to him. Trying to find common ground.”
“By backing him into a corner and commenting on his face?”
“I was complimenting him,” Lucas shot back. “You know—something normal people do.”
“He was going redder by the second.”
“Probably because no one ever says anything nice to him,” Lucas said, quieter now. “A man has every right to know he looks good, that he’s pretty. So, I told him, and that’s not a bad thing.”
I stared at him. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Lucas leaned back against the bench, arms folded, studying me the way he studied everything. “You think I did it on purpose to embarrass him?”
“I think,” I said flatly, “people like you don’t do anything by accident.”
For a second, something flickered across his face—gone too fast to name. Then, his mouth tilted, slow and deliberate. “Or maybe,” he said, “I’m just better at talking to people than you are.”
I stood, palms flat on the table, close enough now that he had to look up at me.
“Just leave everyone alone,” I said. “You’re here to do your six months. Sit around. Do nothing. You don’t need to poke at people, and you sure as hell don’t get to mess with my team.”
Lucas didn’t answer right away. His smile was gone now, wiped clean, replaced with something harder and more assessing. He held my gaze, as if he were weighing the words, testing how much truth there was in them—and how much it would cost him to push back.
