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“You’ll want to take this,” the waitress said, placing a pie box in front of me. “Cherry pie. It’s Boone’s favorite. Trust me, he’ll thank you.”
I nodded my appreciation. A new ranch hand and a cherry pie—I was about to become Boone’s favorite person in the whole world.
When I was finally on the road back to the ranch with a box of warm cherry pie on Tyler’s lap and the cow medicine order in the back seat, I couldn’t help but get a little nosy.
“Trouble at home?”
Tyler kept his face turned away from me. “My dad’s an asshole. What else is new?”
I wanted to laugh at the irony, but there was too much bitterness when it came to thoughts of my own father. Instead, I said, “Join the club. We would have shirts made, but the collar would be tight enough to choke a man.”
Tyler let out a huff of laughter and seemed to relax a bit. He studied me out of the corner of his eye. “When did you hire on?”
“Little over a week ago.”
He made a hm sound. After a moment, he added, “No offense, but you don’t seem like the usual type to work on a ranch.”
I laughed. “I think I’d be more offended if you thought I was,” I teased. “I’m from New York. I’m more used to corporate meetings than cow shit.”
He frowned, clearly confused. “Why the heck did you come here, of all places?”
I opened my mouth to tell him it was temporary, that this was all a kind of lark. I’d accepted a bet from a smarmy asshole, that was all. But then I thought of Boone and the nights he was spending in a cold barn making sure none of his animals suffered during the delivery of their babies.
“I needed a job, and a friend of a friend told me Boone was hiring,” I said instead before turning it back on him. “Tell me what happened with your dad.”
He kept his eyes out the window as he thought about it for a minute. Finally, he said, “You ever feel like no matter how hard you try, you can’t do anything right?”
I thought about my father and the perpetual look of disappointment in his eyes when he spoke to me. When I was growing up, I’d tried hard to please him, but I’d learned that he was always going to move the goalposts. It wasn’t enough to get good grades; I had to get the best grades. It wasn’t enough to be a team player; I had to be MVP. It wasn’t enough to be successful; I had to live up to his measure of success.
So yeah, I knew what it was like to feel as though you couldn’t do anything right.
Tyler didn’t wait for me to answer. “I can’t ever do anything good enough for him. He’s always mocking me in front of the hands, and then they tease me when he’s not around. It’s like he can’t see past the boy I was, and he still thinks of me as this awkward kid who trips over his own feet. He’s got a handful of guys who’ve been with him a while now, and I overheard one of them telling another that he thinks my dad’s gonna train him up to take over the ranch one day. I thought it was a joke at first, you know?”
I didn’t say anything, but I could hear the pain in his voice. It hit so close to home I almost felt the slice to my own heart too.
He sucked in a breath. “Anyway, I asked my dad about it, and he didn’t deny it. Said Johnny would be a good boss one day and seemed to have ranching in his blood. Can you believe that? If anyone has ranching in his blood, it’s me. And I don’t know how to work any harder than I already am. I’ve been busting my ass my whole life to prove myself to him.”
That was where the two of us differed. I suddenly realized I’d done no such thing. In fact, I’d pretty much done the opposite. I’d spent so much of my time trying to please my father and failing, I’d eventually given up. Not just that, I’d started fucking off, hoping he would love me regardless of how good I was at school or business.
Of course, this had backfired spectacularly. Not only had my father never gotten on board with the unconditional love thing, I’d shot myself in the foot by failing to become the sort of person I could be proud of. I’d spent so much time focused on my father and what he wanted me to be I hadn’t really considered what I wanted myself to be.
Hell, that was probably part of what had compelled me to accept Oscar’s deal too. I wanted to make it on my own to prove to my father that I didn’t need him or his money or his business, even if that meant making a bet with Oscar.
