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His skin was ridiculously smooth and perfectly tanned, and his lips were plump and inviting. I bit back a curse. Leave it to Oscar to send me temptation wrapped up in an annoying-ass package.
“You going to tell me where we’re going, or are you just going to scowl and sneer at me the whole time?” he asked without opening his eyes. “I’m cool with either, but I’d love to know how much time we’ll be in the truck so I can catch a quick catnap. Mucking stalls takes it out of a man. Especially this man.”
In truth, that was one of the reasons I’d decided to take him into town with me. I needed to pick up a few odds and ends at the feed and hardware stores, and I’d figured I might as well grab the kid some steel-toe boots while I was at it, but that was really just an excuse, and I knew it. The guy needed a break, and I wasn’t cruel—I knew full well that you couldn’t just jump right into ranch work. A man who’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter couldn’t be expected to work a full day on a ranch without keeling right over.
But at the same time, I wasn’t about to let him off easy or give him any indication I was soft on my ranch hands.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Normally I could make the trip in twenty minutes if I drove with a lead foot, but today, with the weather being so nice and the breeze through the open window playing through the truck, I decided to take my time. “Thirty minutes,” I told him. And then, to prove to myself that my decision to take the longer route into town had nothing to do with giving Richard a break, I added, “Sleep while you can since you’ll be hauling feed bags once we get to the tractor supply.”
It wasn’t true. Sue Raintree would have her boys load up the truck for me, but I didn’t bother to tell Richard that. He was here to earn his keep, after all, and it wasn’t my job to make life easy for someone who’d already spent twenty-odd years living easy.
I’d thought he’d fallen asleep when about ten minutes later, he piped up.
“I wish I could tell my father that I was right. It turns out there is work out there for people who don’t remember the cause of the First World War. Who knew?”
“The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife,” I informed him. “Among other things.”
He cracked an eye and rolled his head to look at me. “Yes, but a ranch hand doesn’t need to know that.” He frowned. “Wait. How did you know that?”
I kept my eyes on the empty highway to town. Fields rolled by on either side, empty and wide. In the distance, the mountains hulked along the horizon as always. “They teach shit like that in school. Some of us paid attention.”
My teeth ground together as I forced myself not to try and prove anything to this kid. Yes, I went to college. No, I wasn’t some ignoramus who’d never left his small farm town.
“I paid attention,” Richard said with the slightest hint of… something in his voice. “It just wasn’t as easy as I would have liked.”
Easy, right. Because that’s what he expected out of life.
I felt a muscle tick along my jaw.
“Mpfh.” I reached for the radio and flipped it on again, changing the input on the dash to connect to my phone so I could play the most recent episode of my favorite ranching podcast. Justin Mills’s familiar voice came over the speaker to introduce the topic of increasing the viability of sex-skewed semen in a cow/calf operation. As soon as the words penetrated Richard’s brain, I saw his head tilt.
“Is that…?”
“Hush.”
The host explained the partnership between ABS Global and a large ranch up in Montana, but before they could get into the details of the economic return on using this in a large operation, Richard interrupted again.
“Can you just… maybe explain why you’re listening to a podcast about semen?” The teasing smirk on his face was annoying. What was he, a teenage boy?
“Never mind,” I said, knocking the power button to shut the whole damned thing off.
“Don’t be petulant,” Richard said. “Nobody likes a grumpy bastard.”
I turned my head in slow motion to glare at him. “What did you just call me?” Had he forgotten who was the rancher and who was the cowhand?
“Petulant. It means—”
“I know what the hell it means.” I tried not to growl at him, but I failed. “And do you know what employer means?”
He flapped a hand in the air. “Pfft. Like you’re going to fire me for speaking my mind. Then who would pitchfork all of your horseshit? And I mean that in the literal sense, not the figurative one. Figurative means—”
