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Max simply shook his head and headed for the door, the dogs on his heels. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Are you still living here?”
“Until I buy a place...if that’s okay with you.”
Max nodded and pulled the door open, but Jason had the distinct feeling that the wheels were turning in his head.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING when Jason showed up at the ranch wearing his new boots, with his new gloves stuffed in his back pocket and the tools he’d borrowed from his dad riding in the back of the truck, Allie was sitting on the porch with a mug of coffee cupped in both hands. As he walked up the path, her gaze traveled over his squeaky clean new work clothes, making him glad he’d left his hard hat in the truck. “You look well outfitted,” she commented.
“I’m hoping to be here for more than one day.”
“We’ll see,” she said, picking up a folder of papers sitting beside her. “I just need some signatures.”
Jason signed and then she gestured at the collapsed barn. “Have at it. I’ll be back from work by four. Do you need anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
Allie drove away not long after, leaving Jason to analyze the structure he was about to disassemble. It’d fallen into a heap after the roof had blown off, and the easiest thing to do would be to dismantle the roof, which lay several yards away in a crumpled mound. His dad had offered to send equipment and operators to dispose of the barn in a day or two, but Jason thanked him and said no. The purpose of his temporary job was to have something to do with his hands as he thought. Watching a guy bash the building with a front-end loader wasn’t going to be the same.
Jason went back to the truck, put on the hard hat, grabbed a crowbar and hammer and set off across the field to where the roof had landed. After circling the thing, he chose a place to start prying wood away from wood and began the dismantling process. Within a few hours, his shirt was soaked from the unseasonably hot May weather and he was getting hungry. He had a nice pile of salvageable two-by-fours, a pile of scrap, a bucket full of old nails...and a whole lot of work ahead of him. He ate while sitting on the tailgate of his truck, studying the ranch. All the buildings had been reroofed recently and most of the buildings had been freshly painted, with the exception of the big barn. There was a large building next to the big barn, canvas stretched over ribs, which had been damaged by debris from the building he was working on. Curious about what was inside, he opened the man door on his way back to the demolition site. There was sand inside. A lot of it. And judging from the barrels stowed in one corner and the tack hanging from the wall, the thing was some kind of a horse arena.
Did Allie ride?
He sorted through what he knew about her and came up with very little other than tying for valedictorian and both belonging to chess club. Not that she ever spoke to him there—not even when they played. They’d pretty much coexisted at Eagle Valley High without a lot of interaction. But he’d known who she was. Thought she was attractive in a cool and distant sort of way. She still was attractive, but he saw now that cool and distant hid a rather prickly personality.
What made Allie Brody so prickly?
Did he care to find out?
Better question—did he dare to find out? Allie was kind of scary.
Jason went back to work, putting in his hours without a break until Allie’s little white car turned into the ranch driveway. Then he grabbed the only tools he’d used that day—the crowbar and hammer—and headed back to his truck as Allie got out of the car. She shaded her eyes as he approached, a smile tugging at her lips. An amused smile. And then he realized he was wearing the hard hat.
“Once you get used to wearing a helmet, it’s hard to go without,” he said as he approached.
“I think legally you’re supposed to wear a hard hat.”
“There’s that, too.”
She started walking toward the rubble and he fell into step beside her as she passed the collapsed main building and walked to the roof, where she stopped to silently study his progress.
“This will take a while.” She nudged a truss with the toe of her shoe.
“I can haul in the big equipment. Just say the word.” Inwardly he was fairly certain she wouldn’t say that word. She was doing this to save money.
“No. It looks like you got a good start.” She brushed her hand over her cheek as if to push her hair back from her face, even though there’d been no hair in her face, and tilted her chin up to look him in the eye. “We’ll give it another day.”
He let out a soft snort. “Another day.”
She nodded as if working day-to-day on approval was a normal business practice.
“I assume then that you’ll be paying me daily?”
Her eyebrows lifted as if she hadn’t considered that. “That does make sense,” she said slowly. “Will you take a check?”
He exhaled. “Yes...you can pay me for two days tomorrow. Unless, of course, you wanted to go wild and hire me for an entire week.”
“Do you think it will take that long?”
He was about to explain to her exactly how long he thought it would take when he realized that she was kidding. “Why the day-to-day bit, Allie?”
“So I don’t overspend.”
“You’re just going to shut down demolition when you hit the end of your budget?”
“Something like that. I can’t afford to go into debt. Not when I have student loans.”
“You’re paying for this yourself?”
Her expression started to frost over. He was edging too close to personal. “Never mind. If you want to work day-to-day, fine by me. You can pay me at the end of the time.”
“I made up a time sheet.”
“Of course you did.”
She shot him a look, which he met with an innocent look of his own.
This was kind of fun.
* * *
ALLIE WAITED UNTIL Jason had driven away before checking on her stubborn calfless cows and found to her surprise that calf number one had been born. The adorable little black heifer peeked at Allie from the safe side of her mother, who was placidly grazing near the edge of the herd, so Allie assumed that all was well.
“See that?” she called to the other cows. “That’s what I want to see—healthy calves on the ground when I get home from work.”
Talking to the cows. No sign of insanity there.
Allie grimaced as she headed back to the car to get her purse. After the wild day in the library, staying home and talking to cows didn’t seem like a bad idea.
Be grateful that you have a job.
Allie was grateful, which made it all the more difficult to deal with the growing doubts she had about whether she’d trained for the right career. One week in and, while she enjoyed parts of her temporary job, she was becoming painfully aware of her shortcomings as a future elementary-level teacher. She liked little kids, found them entertaining and charming, but she had no experience managing them and no natural talent in that arena. High school kids...they were different. After completing a double major in elementary education and secondary art, she’d done her practicum teaching in high school, where she’d had no problem with discipline. Smaller children... Dani and Jolie would laugh their asses off if they knew that she was being taken advantage of by six-year-olds. Oh, they’d started off sweet and shy, like new puppies, then, the next thing she knew, they were practically chewing on her shoes.
Allie pulled her purse out of the car and shut the door again. She’d get better at managing the kids as time went on. If her friend Liz could do it, so could she. She just needed practice holding the hard line and ignoring the cuteness factor. Or pray that the impossible happened and the high school art teacher quit, something Liz assured her wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
The next morning Jason showed up early, just as she’d stepped out of the shower. Jolie had taken her dog with her, so Allie had no warning system, and she might have to rectify that. She’d only known that Jason had arrived because she’d happened to glance out the window and noticed his truck was parked near the arena, at least an hour earlier than he’d arrived the day before.
He was at the back, unloading a bucket of tools, and Allie leaned forward to get a better view. The guy was something, she’d give him that. She wondered how long he’d continue on her job before he’d had enough thinking time and moved on to pizza catching.
Allie’s mouth quirked as she turned away from the window. That hadn’t been a nice thing to say, but he hadn’t taken offense. In fact, Jason Hudson seemed like a patient guy in general. She’d never sensed that about him before.
Yeah, in all the many minutes they spent together.
Even their chess games had been relatively quick. And, if she recalled correctly, they’d tied there, too. Not the games themselves, but the number of wins.
Allie put on a summery dress and cardigan, pulled her damp hair into a loose knot, slipped into flats and headed out to feed her cows.
“Remember,” she said to the ladies, “healthy calves on the ground when I get home.”
Then she looked over her shoulder to make certain that Jason was indeed where he was supposed to be and not witnessing her cow conversation. Another reason she needed to get a dog. Talking to dogs was socially acceptable.
* * *
ALLIE LEFT A little earlier than she had the day before, stopping just long enough to say a cool hello before heading off to her job at the school. Jason watched her car until it turned onto the road, then tossed a two-by-four in a pile a little harder than necessary. If he hadn’t been working today he would have been running—straight up the mountain. His dad was driving him crazy and his former teammate Pat wasn’t helping matters.
Jason had gotten home yesterday to find his sister one step away from throttling their old man. Jason had stepped in to referee and the fight had shifted to him. It was so hard to hold his tongue as Max outlined all of his usual gripes, but he managed. Barely.
Once Max had stomped off to his bedroom, Jason and Kate had had a summit. They decided that Max was still working on facing his own mortality and that they should give him a little more time to come to terms with his current life situation. In other words, they gave him a pass. But the passes weren’t going to last long if he continued the controlling, demanding behavior.
In the morning his father was back at it, trying to pick a fight about Jason not being available for his walks. Jason hadn’t reacted, but his jaw had been clenched tightly by the time he got to his truck. Then to top things off, he’d received a text from Pat, whom he hadn’t heard from in weeks. It’d been short and to the point—was Jason applying to Brandt?
The “for the job I didn’t get” went unsaid.
Jason texted back, saying that if he had an opportunity to apply, he would, but that the job hadn’t officially opened yet.
Pat never responded, which concerned Jason on one level and irritated him on another. Not once had Pat confided in him during his downward spiral. He’d never reached out for any kind of help and when Jason had tried to express his concern, offer support, Pat had turned away. Now he resented Jason for having legs.
Another two-by-four hit the pile with a clatter and Jason realized that he had the perfect job in which to take out his frustrations. Easier than running up a mountain, and almost as satisfying.
* * *
ALLIE HAD JUST unlocked the library and snapped on the lights when the door behind her opened.
“Sorry to be here so early,” Liz said without fully meeting Allie’s eyes. “I need to find a couple of books on butterflies for my science lesson today.”
“What’s wrong?” Allie asked before her friend could brush by her. Something was definitely wrong. Liz’s usually perfect hair wasn’t so perfect and there were dark circles under her eyes.
Liz hesitated, then let out a shaky sigh. “It’s Zach.” She sank down into one of the tiny chairs next to the kindergarten table as if no longer able to support herself. “He rolled in at four o’clock this morning. I was worried sick about him, so now that he’s home safely, I’m furious.”
“Of course you are.”
“And I blame Derek as much as I blame Zach.”
Allie sat in the small chair on the other side of the table. She reached out and touched Liz’s hand. Liz and her husband had broken up less than a year ago and their high-school-age son, Zach, had been coping fairly well until his dad moved his new girlfriend onto the family ranch a few weeks ago and told Liz that he didn’t think that Zach should work for him as planned that spring.
“Now I wish I hadn’t encouraged him to graduate early so that he could work for his dad...and now I know why Derek kept putting off having Zach move to the ranch.”
It was not a good situation and there wasn’t one thing Allie, the problem solver, could do about it, except listen.
“At least I have the day to cool off before I deal with him.” Liz looked up at the ceiling briefly as if blinking back tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Allie said. “If I can do anything to help...let me know.” Although she couldn’t think of anything she could do, except to listen, and she was happy to do that.
“Will do.” Liz got to her feet and headed for the lower elementary science section while Allie booted up her computer. A few minutes later, her friend left the library with the butterfly books and Allie let out a sigh before focusing back on her keyboard.
She knew how rough it was to get divorced, but she could only imagine what it felt like to have a failed marriage affect your child.
* * *
BY THE TIME Allie returned from work, Jason was feeling more in control—almost to the point of being ready to go home and take a few hits. Kate had texted him earlier to say that she was leaving Max in Uncle Jimmy’s capable hands and all Jason could think was that it served Jimmy right for being in cahoots with his father. Let him get a taste of the wrath of Max.
Allie went straight into the house after parking, but he figured she’d be out to inspect soon. It took her longer than he’d expected, but eventually she came out of the house dressed in jeans and a V-neck T-shirt that looked pretty damned good on her. Her long blond hair was caught in a messy knot that gave her a disheveled, just-tumbled-out-of-bed look that could spark a fantasy or two if he allowed himself. And then she spoke.
“This is taking longer than I thought it would.”
“It’d go faster if I didn’t take those naps in the afternoon.”
Her head snapped around and then color rose from the neckline of her shirt as she realized he was playing her.
“If you mess with the boss, she’ll dock your pay,” she said. She propped a hand on her hip, looking him up and down. “But you’re here more for the workout than the paycheck, right?”
“Allie?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you being so snarky toward me?”
She frowned as her lips parted. But she didn’t say anything. He held her gaze, refusing to let her off the hook. She moistened her lips. “I, uh, am perhaps taking my day out on you?”
A question. As in “Would you accept this as an explanation?” No, he would not.
“I know you explained it all in detail in Culver Ranch and Feed, but I admit, I still don’t get where all the animosity is coming from. Do you hate all football players?”
“I...”
“Or all people with money?”
“Just those that try to buy my ranch when it isn’t for sale.” She’d gotten an unexpected toehold.
“I don’t want your ranch anymore. So maybe you can quit sniping at me.”
Another pause, then she said slowly, “All right,” sounding as if she hadn’t been aware she had been sniping at him. Or maybe that was how she treated the men in her life. Maybe that was why she was divorced...but he didn’t think so.
This had something to do with him personally and he wanted to know what and why, but now was not the time. “Thanks,” he said easily.
“No problem,” she replied stiffly.
Yeah, he decided as he loaded his tools a few minutes later, patience was a good thing and he was going to be patient with Ms. Allie Brody. Because as odd as it seemed, this job was one of the few bright spots in his life right now.
