“Anywhere else?” he asked after a few hours.
“Yeah, I need to take a look at your water source,” I said. “Eyes on. New requirement.”
He sighed. “Look, that’s all the way across the ranch, and we’d have to take horses out. It’d take the rest of the day, and I wanted to take a look at the western fences.”
I winced and looked down at my jeans and shoes. I’d ridden in flats before, but I didn’t like it.
“All right,” I said. “How long a ride out there is it?”
“’Bout an hour, maybe a little more,” he said. “We check the pipes every week or so, I can take you to my office and show you the maintenance logs.”
I sighed. “All right,” I said. “Let’s look at the logs, and I’ll come back tomorrow morning to look at the source.”
The man eyed me and looked as though he had just bitten a lemon, but was trying to keep a poker face – sort of disgruntled, but polite about it.
“I appreciate it,” he said.
We spent the next part of the afternoon looking at the logs. Even though my eyes were almost glazed over with boredom, I thought I saw him glancing at me in a friendlier way a few times, and when he opened the door for me as I left, I could have sworn that I saw his eyes drift down to my chest, and a hint of a blush spread across his tanned face.
I looked up and met his sparkling eyes. I couldn’t resist smiling at him.
My ride away from the Cannon ranch was a lot more cheerful than my ride away from the Yates place.
The next day, I started with the long drive out to the ranch. Clint was waiting for me, sipping a cup of coffee and leaning on a hitching post beside another man, having a conversation. Two horses were tethered and tacked up beside them.
I left my car where I’d parked it yesterday, and walked over.
“You know how to ride?” Clint asked, without a hello.
I nodded.
“I’m no barrel racer, but I can stay on a horse’s back okay,” I said. I was dressed for it, with an older pair of jeans and some worn-in boots. I carried my own helmet, too.
He nodded.
“This is Lightning. She’s an old dude ranch pony, pretty easy,” he said.
She was, too. By the time we were a mile out from the ranch, I was wondering if snails outran Lightning.
“Her name is your little joke, isn’t it?” I asked him, out of the silence.
He chuckled, and then looked surprised at himself.
“Sure is,” he said. “Pretty sure she’d lose a race against a turtle.”
“You don’t have anything faster?” I asked.
“Never seen you ride,” he said. “Couldn’t risk you getting thrown off and suing me to high heaven. Lightning’ll get you there.”
The rest of my conversational attempts were met with grunts or nods. I gave up after another mile.
The inspection was pretty straightforward. Everything looked well-maintained and orderly.
I didn't try to talk to him for the entire trip back. He clearly wanted me to remain silent, and I saw no point in antagonizing him - and, okay, I'll admit it, with my long hours, I didn't spend a lot of time with any handsome men, and I wanted this one to think well of me.
Finally, after going through the last barn, checking on sheep and occasionally exchanging a word with one of the other men on the place, he turned to look at me. "Are you done with that?" he asked, jerking his head at the clipboard.