“How do I even know it’s morning? It still looks like nighttime,” Garrett said as he jogged up behind me. “Why on earth do we need to get up this early anyways? Can’t we make breakfast be at a respectable hour like, eight o’clock or something?”
I knew the feeling. I hated that we served breakfast so damn early, too. By the time everyone got to lunchtime, they were starving again. I could only imagine how hungry Garrett had been when skipping breakfast all together.
The days on the ranch were long and having the ranch hands working so many hours wasn’t ideal. Sure, a ranch hand job was expected to be long hours. But the guys on our ranch often worked seven days a week and from five in the morning to nine at night. It couldn’t be legal, but I suspected my father paid many of them under the table and most of the men liked it that way. They weren’t working on our ranch so they could work up in their careers. The men who came to our ranch were only worried about getting some cash in their pockets and moving on.
“Can’t you feel the crisp air? It’s so much different than normal air. I mean, regular air, oh … you know what I mean.”
Garrett looked at me out of the corner of his eye and started to laugh, I tried to resist laughing with him but soon we were both laughing. It was fun being up early; I liked having the world all to myself. I was happy to help my mother with the meals throughout the day and on that morning, I was happy to have Garrett with me.
He was funny and I had found myself thinking about him a lot since we first met. He seemed so naive to the ways of the ranch, but not necessarily naive to the ways of the world. The way he held himself and even the way we talked with each other made me think that Garrett had seen much more in his life than he was letting on.
“Normal air?” he said through his laughter.
“Oh, shut up. You know what I meant.”
“I’ll keep my eyes out for the normal air later this afternoon,” he teased me.
There was no use fighting with him; I had to just laugh. I tended to fumble my words when I was around a man who intimidated me. It had happened in my office all the time and I hated it. I always wanted to be a strong woman who couldn’t be rattled by what was going on around me, but it didn’t work out for me the way I wanted it to. Instead, I often ended up fumbling for the words I wanted to say and unable to argue the points I wanted to get across.
I had hoped that building my abilities in my workplace would help with my confidence and therefore help with my ability to stay on point when I was intimidated. But I had to leave before learning those skills. Then as I stood in front of the very handsome new ranch hand, I felt just as disorganized as I had felt in front of a boardroom full of executives.
Garrett commanded an energy about him that felt so similar to how my coworkers had felt. The confidence with which he looked at me had me feeling like I couldn’t say or do anything right. It was uncomfortable, in a weirdly erotic way.
“How are your hands feeling? Do you think you can handle cutting up some vegetables?” I asked as I grabbed a knife for him.
We had bandaged his hands up with some gauze and medical tape and they looked perfectly capable of helping me. I had notice he was moving them just fine and seemed to not have any pain at the moment. I suspected he would heal up just fine in the next couple of days.
“Show me how you like it done,” Garrett said in a low sexy voice that rattled me to the core.
It was like he was purposely trying to titillate me. The look in his eyes spelled out trouble and I had to look away quickly, but not before I caught a deep gaze from his brilliant blue eyes. Oh, how those eyes seemed to look right through me. It was as if he read every secret I had with just a simple gaze.
“Just cut them in small bits; I’m going to put them in the omelets,” I said as I handed him a knife and some onions and started cutting them into small pieces.
“Like this?” Garrett said as he grabbed the knife with his whole fist and started moving it roughly over the onion.
“God no, you’re going to cut off your fingers.”
“Like this,” I said as I moved next to him and put my hand gently over his and guided him along. “And keep the tips of your fingers tucked under to keep them safe.”
“Show me some more,” he said with a mischievous smile and that damn low sexy voice.
I grabbed his other hand and tucked the fingers under for him as I moved the knife gingerly along the onion. Slowly we moved it up and back down again as our bodies pressed up against each other. I could feel his breath next to me and I felt like he moved purposely closer to me as we progressed through one onion.
His body was warm and I wanted to know what it looked like under his clothes. I could tell he was in good shape and I suspected he had muscles almost everywhere. Normally I didn’t have such fantasies about seeing a guy naked, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Garrett and his delectable, naked body. I knew I wouldn’t get to see it, not as long as my father was around, but I couldn’t stop thinking how good he would make me feel.
Normally, I would have pulled away from any other ranch hand who had moved that close to me, but I didn’t want to pull away from Garrett. My heart pounded with the excitement of having him so close to me, feeling his breath near me, and feeling the touch of his hands and mine together. My heart pounded with the anticipation of each movement.
“Think you can handle it?” I asked.
“I think so. But if I get into trouble I’ll need you to give me another demonstration,” he said with a glance.
As we started preparing the breakfast for everyone, I was pleasantly surprised with Garrett’s abilities in the kitchen, his cutting speed
quickly picked up. Most of the men who worked on the farm had probably never made their own meals except for things that could be heated up in the microwave. But Garrett knew what he was doing. I watched as he expertly cut up the vegetables, his fingertips curled under to prevent himself from getting cut. That was a tip not many people remembered when I showed them, unless they were familiar with cooking.
I also watched his arms as they moved to hold the vegetables. Garrett was strong; his biceps looked like he could bench press me if I gave him the chance. Oh, how I wouldn’t mind having his hands on my body. After working to clean out his blisters the day before, I longed to find a reason to hold his hands again, to touch him, or to have him touch me.
His blond hair caught the reflection of the lights that were over him and I realized just how perfectly symmetrical his face was. Garrett looked like he could have worked as a model somewhere; it was curious to me that he was at our ranch. I didn’t mind, not at all, but there was something different about him compared to the other men working for my father. And it wasn’t just his good looks.