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“List,” he said as the door was closed, and he headed to the kitchen. “I don’t do lists. How about you just hang with me today and get the feel of the place?”
I liked that just fine. “Sounds good. I’ll admit to never handling horses or a lot of the things you probably do here.”
I was poured a big mug of coffee and Noah slid over a sugar bowl and tiny cream pitcher. “It’s a small ranch, three hundred acres. I mostly breed a few horses, have a small herd of cattle, and from those, I take what I eat for the year. All the beef you eat here, my cattle.”
“That’s another reason it was so good?”
“None of that crap that’s fed to them, no drugs unless they’re sick. And I don’t allow my animals to get sick.”
I liked the way he saw things, spoke about things. “Good to know.”
The coffee was strong and great, and there wasn’t a bit of the bitterness I hated. “This is… different.”
“Pinch of salt in the grounds before it’s brewed. Works like a charm.”
He wasn’t exactly bouncing around and happy, the gruffness still giving him that edge, but I saw a change in him from the previous day. I thought I knew why. He had help finally, when he’d needed it.
He cooked me up a couple eggs and bacon, sliding it over to me as well. “Eat up. We’ll grab a sandwich around noon, but nothing else until supper.”
Supper. I had heard the word in association to the last meal of the day, in books, on television, but I’d never known anyone that used it for real.
After I ate, I again wanted to help him clean the mess, but he’d already done it while I was eating. I thanked him and we left the house together, heading right over to the horses.
“This country is hilly, some shale, and it’s not for novices,” he explained as they got to the corral.
“Do you ever ride ATVs? I’ve noticed they’re used more now on ranches and farms.”
“They are, that’s the truth, but those places are a lot flatter than mine. Horses, here, they’re better.”
That was a problem for me, being I’d never been on a horse. I figured if he had an ATV, it would be easier for me to help him out away from the house and barn.
If I couldn’t ride, then how was I going to work for him? He’d think me a lazy ass and boot me off the place, then I’d really be sleeping under a bridge and likely worse. I’d be thrown in jail once Harvey sent the cops after me.
With a calming voice, Noah said, “Stop.”
When he did that, I assessed myself, wondering why he’d said it, and I figured it out pretty quickly. I had been obsessively cracking my knuckles and my breathing was ramped up like I was running.
His voice slid through that like a hot knife through butter, and my hands fell to my sides. He was like valium.
“No need to get jumpy. You don’t have to ever get on a horse if you don’t want to.”
Again, though I caught it that time, my hands curled into fists, and I felt myself start to panic. “How am I gonna help you, then?”
Noah turned completely to me and flicked the brim of his straw hat back so he could better see me. “There is plenty of work on a ranch, even a small one. And, if you want to learn, I can sure teach you how to ride.”
His voice… it was stern, like every statement was the last fact I’d ever have to know, and yet Noah had this… calmness. That was the only way I could describe it to myself. The soothing tenor of it worked on me like a damn shot of whiskey, and I felt all my worries leave. That and the way his usually steely eyes softened when he calmed me. It was a miracle wrapped up in a good-looking, rough cowboy.
“Okay. Yeah, okay, thank you.”
The way he looked at me right then, besides calming me, I felt a wave of heat between us. I might have been imagining it, and I sure as hell wouldn’t act on it and get thrown off the place if I was wrong. Still, his eyes locked with mine and I felt a connection, like I’d known him forever. Then his voice, that deep, sexy voice, said, “You’re surely welcome.”
The first chore he’d give me that day was to clean out the stall in the barn where the milk cow was. He called it that,milk-cow, but he didn’t say cleaning the stall, he said mucking. I got a chuckle from that, but come to find out, it’s no laughing matter.
I had to take a mucking fork. It looked like the hay fork to me, the one that was on another wall, set on hooks, but what the hell did I know? Noah said right then, there was a difference, and if he caught me using the hay fork to muck stalls, I’d have hell to pay.
I cleaned out the stall and got Bossie back into it. That wasn’t her name, but all the milk cows I’d heard of were Bossie. Then, he told me to milk her, and that had me “jumpy” again, as he liked to call it, so he got a short wooden stool, set it to the side and back of the cow and had me kneel there to watch him.
When he asked me the question he did, I almost fell over on the new, clean hay I’d laid over the concrete floor. “You pull your pecker, right?”
