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Sawyer cleared his throat. “Well, got nothing to do at home right now. Offseason’s always pretty boring.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sawyer winced, knowing how they sounded. Like being here was a chore he only showed up for because he had nothing better to do. He rubbed at the back of his neck, embarrassed, while Luke gave him a deadpan look.
Sandy, however, took pity on him and offered him another smile, this one a little less frosty and a little more genuine.
“Nice car,” she said, tilting her head at the sports car, which looked fragile and small compared to the work vehicles parked next to it.
“Thanks,” Sawyer said. “Made the drive here easy.”
“Is it new?” Luke asked, arms folded as he looked over the car.
“A few months old, yeah.”
There was a lull that no one quite knew how to fill. Sawyer cleared his throat and resisted the urge to get into said car anddrive far, far away. Any mention of money or purchasing things had always been a sensitive topic for both Luke and their dad.
“You hungry?” Sandy asked, changing the subject to everyone’s relief.
Sawyer nodded. “Always.”
“I’ll make us some lunch. Give me half an hour and we’ll get you fed.”
“You need help with those bags?” Sawyer asked.
“Nah. I’m tough. Besides, you have jobs of your own to be getting on with, it seems.”
She nodded to Luke and walked off, stepping nimbly up the porch stairs, pushing the door open with her hip and disappearing inside. Luke pulled a folded-up piece of note paper from his back pocket.
“Here,” Luke said, shoving the list at Sawyer.
It was scribbled out in Luke’s chicken-scratch writing that hadn’t changed since elementary school: a perfunctory list of things that needed to get done before they could sell the place.
Fix fencingwas at the top, underlined several times. Okay, so that was the priority, got it.
Paint barn.
Clear cattle pen — side yard.
Dismantle and sell ATV 4 scrap.
It was a short list, but the jobs themselves were big ones. Fixingonefence wasn’t a problem, but fixingallof the fences on aproperty so large that you needed a vehicle to get around it? That was a task in itself.
Sawyer felt his frown settling in deeper with each job he read, looking up to see Luke watching him carefully.
“Too much?” Luke asked. It was a dare more than a question.
“No,” said Sawyer, not rising to the bait despite very much wanting to. “Not too much. I’m here to work.”
Luke just smiled to himself, though Sawyer couldn’t tell what exactly he found amusing, and turned to go back into the house with his fiancée.
“Come in when you’re hungry, I guess,” he said, disappearing as the door closed behind him.
Sawyer was left alone in the front yard of the ranch, all this space and silence stretching out around him after the hustle of Houston left him feeling like he was in a vacuum. He might as well have been dropped onto the surface of the moon. With a sigh he copied out the list into the notes on his phone, knowing if he lost the thing, Luke would use it as an excuse to have his head removed from the rest of his body.
Well. This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 2
SAWYER
