Pamela Britton - Cowboy Lessons

“What are you doing?”

Scott turned, startled to see a wet-haired Amanda standing in the doorway. What’d she do, jump in and out?

You’ll need a cold shower if you keep reacting to her in this way.

Darn, but if he’d thought her pretty with that cascade of hair falling loose around her shoulders, she was even prettier with it slicked back.

“I’m going to cook you breakfast.”

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

Something inside Scott fizzled like a spent fire-cracker. “You don’t?”

She shook her head.

He told himself not to be disappointed. Regroup, Scott. No big deal. She likely wouldn’t have been impressed by his cooking skills, anyway. “Ah, but you’ve never had one of my breakfasts.”

Her pretty blue eyes looked large and luminous without her hair framing her face. “Mr. Beringer.”

“Scott,” he instantly corrected.

“Scott,” she said. “A rancher usually feeds the livestock before he feeds himself.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“But I thought we were the dominant predators.”

“The what?”

“We eat when we want to eat. They eat when we want them to eat.”

She shook her head. “They get mad when they’re made to wait. And you saw what happens when a bull gets angry.”

His suitcase. He’d forgotten about it.

“But I was going to make you my special huevos rancheros in honor of my first day on the homestead.”

Her eyes narrowed—it must have been the word homestead. It didn’t take a man with a doctorate in computer science to figure out that she was thinking it was no longer her homestead.

“Do you want to learn about ranching or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Not until we eat. You know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

“Fine. I’ll go feed the livestock.”

He closed the refrigerator door. “No, wait. I’ll go with you.”

She didn’t look relieved. In fact, she looked kind of irritated. “Hey, slow down,” he called.

“The steers are hungry, Mr. Beringer. I don’t like to make them wait.”

“And here I thought ranchers ate hearty breakfasts.”

“You’re not a rancher, Mr. Beringer.” And her unspoken words were that he’d never be.

Scott stiffened, and if she’d known him better she would have realized her mistake. One never, ever challenged Scott Beringer…not if they hoped to win.

Amanda felt Scott staring at her all the way out to the barn doors.

Had she been too hard on him? Should she care if she had been?

No, she firmly told herself. The whole week she’d waited for his return, she’d thought of ways to scare him off. The first of those plans started right now.

And yet she felt a surprising stab of guilt, and the urge to banter around with him. Ridiculous. The man had stolen her family’s heritage. He was like one of those cattle tycoons of the old days, the ones that squatted on small rancher’s land. His picture should be inserted into dictionaries under the words robber baron.

I’m going to cook you breakfast.

She’d wanted to eat breakfast with him.

Careful, Amanda. You might find yourself actually liking him.

She pulled open the giant wood doors that exposed the interior of the barn to early morning sunlight. Dust motes flew through the air on streamers of sunlight that illuminated a wall of hay.

“Wow,” Scott said. “That’s a lot of bricks.”

Bricks? She almost laughed.

“They’re called bales,” she corrected. “And there’re twenty tons of them.”

“Twenty tons?”

She nodded. “And we’ll go through most of it by the end of next month.”

“But I thought cattle grazed on grass.”

She turned to him. Her hair had dried a bit, despite the chilly morning air. She wore a gray sweater that she realized now was the wrong thing to wear. Slivers of the hay would stick to it and prick her all day. Darn. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.

“Cattle need at least ten acres of pasture grass per head. That means we’d need approximately ten thousand acres for all the cattle we have. Since the ranch is less than two hundred acres, and we’re able to lease only a few hundred more, we have to supplement with rice hay.”

“Rice hay?”

“It’s cheaper than grass, and cattle do well on it.”

“So what the hay?” he joked.

She caught the smile that almost slipped out at the last moment, going to the right and pulling down two sharp metal hooks before turning back to him.

“Planning on dressing as Captain Hook for Halloween?”

“No,” she said. “You are.”

“I are what?”

“Going to be Captain Hook.” She handed him the hay hooks. “Here you go,” she said with a bright smile. “You need to load a ton of it into the back of our one-ton.”

“I what?”

She really shouldn’t feel bad about the look on his face. She shouldn’t. But it was hard not to feel just a little bit guilty at the expression of horror he shot her.

“A ton of it,” she reiterated. “That’s about twenty-five bales.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She shook her head, having to fight back the smile again. “No, I’m not.” She refrained from telling him that she usually helped her father load the bales. It was easier with two people. Instead she said, “If you want to be a rancher, this is one of the chores you’ll have to do. Daily.”

“Daily?”

Now he looked horrified. Poor guy. Poor what? Now wasn’t the time to start feeling sorry for him. “What’s the matter? Not up to the task? ’Cause if you’re not, we can certainly stop right now. Of course, you’ll have to give up on your plan to become a cowboy.”

His eyes narrowed. And once again that odd transformation came over him, the one she noted the first day they’d met. Like the chameleon she’d seen in the local pet store he changed right before her eyes. He seemed to stand straighter, the intelligence that always shone from his eyes intensifying until it made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. This was the man who’d formed a software company from the ground up. Who was worth more money than she would ever see in an entire lifetime. Who did not, if the press was to be believed, take no for an answer.

“I’ll do it.”

“Great,” she said. But she really didn’t think he’d make it past five bales. Okay, maybe seven. “I’ll wait here while you go get the truck.”

He gazed at her a moment longer, something within Amanda stilling at that look. She was almost relieved when he turned away, set the hooks on one of the lower bales, then headed out of the barn.

“Keys are in it.”

He lifted a hand in silent acknowledgment but didn’t glance back. Less than five minutes later, he was backing the diesel into the barn in a manner that made Amanda wonder if he’d driven big vehicles before. She’d expected him to have to struggle to fit the wide truck through the double doors, but he cruised on in as if he’d done it a hundred times.

That was her first surprise.

Her second came when he turned off the loud motor, the smell of diesel making her wave her hand in front of her face and cough. The dust motes were in action again, tickling the inside of her nose. A dove nesting in the barn’s rafters coo-cooed into the sudden silence. Scott hopped out of the truck, reached up and removed his glasses only to drop them into his pocket, then went to the tailgate. It lowered with a thud. Next, he picked up the hay hooks, one in each hand, turned to the nearest golden bale and sunk the hooks with a thunk that belied an ease Amanda would have never thought possible. He lifted the one-hundred-and-twenty-pound bale, saying, “How do I stack it?” and sounding not at all out of breath as he did so.