He got there early, as was his habit, but this was much earlier than he should have – which he blamed on nerves like he hadn’t felt them in years - considering the mounds of work that he knew were piling up in his absence. But there was no one to send to get her, not that he would have done that even if he had someone available. She deserved for him to pick her up at the airport, and that was what he was going to do, even if he had to kill himself getting his work done once they got home.
It had been so long since he’d flown that he hadn’t had to deal with the new security issues, and he decided he didn’t much like being kept back behind a windowed wall as he watched the passengers deplane. It seemed she must’ve been in one of the very last seats, or perhaps she was having a problem getting her bag down from the overhead compartment. He hoped some guy was gentleman enough to help her with that, since he couldn’t, although he didn’t hold out much hope.
She was the very last person off the plane, looking anxiously around until she saw his face, then smiling so brightly he felt his entire body flood with warmth. It was a foreign experience to him, but one to which he could easily become addicted. He couldn’t remember anyone in his life besides his father being that glad to see him, and it seemed quite genuine on her part.
Jayne was trailing a little suitcase on wheels, but it didn’t slow her down any. She parked it on its end when she’d just made it through the door and walked over to him. He’d been prepared for a nice, polite handshake, but she’d reached up on her tippy-toes and hugged him – full out. There was no sense of reserve from her in the least, and, just before she pulled away, he relaxed enough from the surprise to wrap his arms around her and squeeze very carefully, as if she was the Dresden doll he’d equated her to in his mind.
They found baggage claim without having said a word to each other, although the silence between them didn’t feel all that awkward to him, and he hoped it didn’t to her. She’d brought two big bags – which was part of why her flight cost so much – but then she was staying for a whole month – hopefully.
He’d brought his only vehicle – one of the few times he wished he owned something a bit flashier, newer and much, much cleaner. The truck was an old standby that was held together by bailing wire and spit, but he couldn’t afford to buy another one, so he just kept fixing it as best he could.
Trieve helped her up into it, trying not to notice how light and small she was, yet deliciously curvy in all the right places.
Despite how torturous it was for him to touch her, picking her up only reemphasized just how utterly and completely wrong she was for his purposes, no matter how much he wanted to stop the truck the moment they got onto his land and make love to her right there in the front seat.
She was wearing a pair of skin tight jeans that looked like she’d just bought them. She was wearing a pretty navy pea coat that he knew would be a dull shade of shit brown in no time if she helped him at all around the ranch. Her boots were relatively workaday, but they were also obviously brand new. And her hat . . . her hat was pure white, had ears, eyes and nose, making it look like a polar bear. He doubted it would keep her head very warm through a frigid cold Montana winter, but it certainly did look cute on her.
He knew he should have just put her on the next plane back to her cozy little life and not have dragged her into his hard, messy one, but then she’d hugged him – unreservedly – her soft, warm body pressing against his – not lewdly or suggestively at all – but comfortingly, somehow, and he couldn’t resist having a bit of her sunshine in his life, no matter how impractical, and even for just a short time.
In a month, he’d send her back. It would be a horrendous month, having her there but not touching her, but it would be that welcome, too.
He did his best to be a bit of a tour guide on the drive home, although he really only showed her what she could see from his usual route home, because he really did need to get back to work.
They chatted quite amiably about all sorts of things, and she oohed and ahhed in all of the appropriate places. Soon they were well out of the city, though, and the land became more desolate and much, much less populated. It had its own beauty, though, and he hoped – although he knew he shouldn’t – that she would see it, too.
He found how she was acting like a tourist in New York City, craning her head around so as not to miss anything, to be quite endearing, and had to suppress a smile.
But when he pulled up and looked at the place through her eyes, he knew for sure that it wasn’t going to be his choice that she go home. He fully expected her to refuse to get out of the truck and demand that he take her right back to Billings so she could go home. He’d been so concerned with getting the ranch away from its own fiscal cliff that he hadn’t noticed how dilapidated the house had become. The second floor shutters were each hanging by a thread. The house had been a bright white at one time, but it was a dull, dishwater gray now. She couldn’t see it because of the snow, but what there had been of grass in the yard hadn’t been able to hold its own against his driving tendencies – he parked the truck wherever it was most convenient for him, not necessarily where the driveway was, and the result was that the front lawn was more dirt than grass. Weeds had long since turned the gardens and bushes his mother used to take such care with into a jungle, and neither he nor his father were going to spend any of their precious energy trying to save them, or even just beating them back.
None of the other outbuildings looked quite this bad, but then, the house didn’t do much for the fiscal health of the overall ranch, either. It was just a place into which he could come out of the cold after working for fifteen hours straight, grab something to eat and some sleep, then get up and do it all again the next day.
Embarrassment wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to. He had never felt the need to apologize for the way he lived his life, but then he’d never much cared what anyone thought about him in the least since his father had died. Trieve flushed bright red, planted his hat on his head, grabbed her suitcases from the back and trudged ahead of her inside, then thought better of it and came back to get her from where she stood at the top step, looking at the holes in the floor of the verandah as if she was trying to figure out the correct sequence of steps to use to get to the door and remain alive, as if she was living in a video game.
He took her hand, not giving her any choice in the matter, and guided her into the house. The grimy cupboards, dirty floors and piles of newspapers and bills that covered nearly every flat surface piled another load of pure discomfort on him as he wished he’d been able to clean up a bit before she’d arrived, but there just wasn’t enough time in a day to get everything he had to get done, much less then things he might want to.
Besides, it wasn’t that dirty – just messy, really.
He doffed his hat and stood in front of her, feeling – and looking, he was sure – big and dumb and awkward. He hadn’t felt like this since high school, and it was even more unwelcome now, so he was happier than usual to get back to work. “I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll be back at about six.”
He turned and stalked out the door before she could say anything, leaving her standing there in the middle of the kitchen, looking around at the mess and wondering what the hell she was doing there.
An uncooperative herd had him coming in the back door more than an hour later than he’d told her to expect him, fully ready to apologize for being so abrupt when he left and looking forward to taking her into Heartbreak – even all the way back to Billings, if she felt like it – for a nice dinner. What greeted him when he opened the door, though, had him standing there, dumbfounded, uncharacteristically letting nearly every bit of heat in the house – and thus dollars he couldn’t afford to lose – escape out around him as he just stood and stared.
The kitchen was immaculate. How she’d managed to make it so in such a relatively short time, he had no idea, but the woman was obviously a miracle worker. Every flat surface was spotless, the floor was sparkling, and the room – the whole house, it seemed – was filled with the scent of something delicious that had been made with a slew of garlic.
And was that – no, it couldn’t be – biscuits he smelled, too?
He was salivating so badly a river of drool almost poured out of his mouth.
Jayne appeared then, a cleaning rag in one hand, a roll of paper towels under that arm, a bottle of some sort of cleaning spray under the other arm and a feather duster in the other hand. She also had one of those cheap plastic grocery bags hanging – looped – from her belt. It appeared to be full of dirty paper towels. “Oh, you’re home. My word you work long hours!”
After putting her tools away in a bucket under the sink, she moved behind him to reach up – it was the only way to get to him – and helped him take off his heavy shearling coat, amazed at how heavy it was and barely able to get it up onto a peg on the row of them that was very near the door. “Wash up, please, then go into the dining room and sit down. I’ll bring dinner in.”
As he did as he was told – which was a rarity in and of itself – he glanced around the room at the wonders she had performed. She had been busy, and that was even more points for her, his eager mind added into the “plus” column, under the category “Never Let Her Go”, and he doubled them as she put a heaping bowl of beef stew – full of corn, carrots peas, green beans, potatoes, and onions – down on the plate in front of him, along with an overflowing basket of biscuits on the table between them, and butter and raspberry jam to top them.
He hadn’t had a meal like this in longer than he could remember. Well, since his mother died, probably, since neither he nor his Dad cooked. He tucked into the stew with gusto, finishing a bowl and three biscuits before she’d taken more than a spoonful of her own much smaller portion. When she heard his spoon clink against the empty bowl, she rose and refilled it, seeing him reaching for another two biscuits as she laid his second portion down in front of him.
“Save room for dessert,” she cautioned.
His mouth still full of stew, he rhapsodized, “Dessert?!”
She grinned, and he knew she was laughing at him, but at that point he didn’t much care.
When he’d finally had his fill of the stew – as well as about seven of the dozen or so biscuits she’d baked – he leaned back in his chair and sighed contentedly. “Beats the ever loving hell out of peanut butter sandwiches.”
She frowned, even though she knew he’d meant it as a compliment. “Those,” she said, distaste dripping from every word, “are in the freezer, and, while I’m here, they’re only to be used as food if we lose power or the world comes to an end, or something equally as cataclysmic.”
“Done,” he said. He could live quite happily never tasting peanut butter again in his life.
For her part, Jayne had been much more appalled when she’d opened the fridge to see the forlorn little pile of lunches – and probably dinners, too – that he’d been subsisting on for Lord knew how long, than she was with the condition of the house by far. He was obviously just barely eking by, putting all of his effort into the ranch and neatness be damned. But he did a lot of hard, physical labor all day, and she couldn’t imagine that peanut butter sandwiches – on Wonder Bread, for crying out loud - helped him much nutritionally.
“How did you manage all this? I didn’t think there was this much food in the house!”
Jayne shrugged. “Once I got the kitchen somewhat organized, I ventured downstairs and found the freezer, where there was a package of round steak that didn’t look too freezer burned, and there were hash browns – with onions and potatoes in there, as well as a couple bags of frozen veggies. I took those and the can of beef broth I found in the pantry, along with a small can of tomato paste and some spices that looked like they had seen better days, that, in the crock pot I found on the top shelf of the pantry made the stew. I was a little short on the flour for the biscuits, but they came out all right.”
“Hell yes!”
“I’ll put the stew in the fridge for leftovers – you’re not allergic to them, are you?” she asked, staring down at him with their empty bowls in her hand.
“Allergic?”
“I have several friends whose husbands won’t eat leftovers.” Jayne couldn’t keep her eyes from rolling as she said it.
“Idiots! Stew and stuff like that is even better the second day!”
“My thoughts exactly. Then I’ll do what my Mom used to do – cook through the week, and have Friday as a leftover day.”
Far be it for him to delay the presentation – and devouring – of whatever dessert it was that she had made – he didn’t care if it was just a Twinkie, for crying out loud – but he felt he had to say it, “You can’t not cook on Saturday and Sunday, too, you know. I have to work both of those days, so you have to cook.” He did so unapologetically, though. It was a fact of life he couldn’t change, and she would either have to adapt or this was going to be a very short month.
She stopped in the doorway on her way back, her hands full of something he couldn’t see yet, then chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I will, then, won’t I? My Dad was a business man – he sold insurance - and my Mom stayed home with us – my sister and I. We did Saturdays in town – Burlington – and had lunch and dinner there, usually, then Sunday breakfasts were out, lunch was catch as catch can, and dinner was always pizza Sunday night.”
“So no problem?” he asked as she put what looked like a chocolate cream pie down in front of him, cut him a huge hunk, then drizzled it with Hershey’s syrup and handed him a spoon.
But it was her unconscious actions when she spilled a bit of the syrup on her fingers, which she brought to her mouth and washed thoroughly, that held his attention. The parts of him that were most interested in her doing that to them were beating against the zipper of his jeans, and he wondered if it had the strength necessary to hold him back.
“No – the only thing I can say is that I need supplies. I mean, this chocolate cream pie should have a pastry crust, and I didn’t have enough flour to do it, and there’s no shortening at all.”
He hadn’t noticed anything wrong with the crust, in face he would swear his erection was getting that much worse because of how the delicacy melted in his mouth – a symphony of chocolate that he thoroughly enjoyed, even though it was his second favorite flavor.
“What’s the crust?” he mumbled, again through a mouthful of delicious food.
“Brownies.”
He moaned, caught off guard, then stifled it to the not unwelcome sound of her giggles.
“Yeah, I’ve decided that pastry is overrated, too,” she said, sighing over her own small piece. “But, if I’m going to do the cooking and cleaning, I’m going to need a whole list of stuff.”
He had been looking a lot more relaxed, until now, when she literally watched him tense up.
Despite the fact that this was probably not the time to mention it – although perhaps it would be a good diversion – she said, “And every one of my girlfriends was appalled at the fact that you listed cooking and cleaning as what would be expected of me, I’ll have you know.”
“Why were they appalled? It’s the truth,” not that he cared that much, but he was a bit curious.
Jayne didn’t look at him as she took a sip of milk – which was the only thing she’d found to serve as a beverage for their meal. “They found it unbearably chauvinistic.”
Trieve snorted loudly, then put his hand up, as if to forestall an argument. “I have no problem at all with equal pay for equal work. Any cowgirl - who can match my strength and skill - should be paid exactly what I am, absolutely no doubt. But your friends would prefer that I send all five foot nothing, ninety eight pounds of you out to deal with the cattle, in the freezing cold, when you could probably barely lift a saddle onto a horse, while I’m back here with a frilly apron on, burning everything I set in or on the stove and creating more of a mess than I clean up?”
She had to grin – against her will – at the idea of him in any kind of an apron at all, but then she tried – with only a modicum of success – to be serious. “Yes, well, you have to admit that we’ve done a reasonably good job of obliterating the stereotype that a man has to go off to earn the bacon and the little woman has to stay at home, taking care of the house and kids.”
“And in a clean, warm, corporate world, that’s very possible to achieve,” he agreed. “But out here, we’re quite a bit closer to the edge of civilization than Wall Street. And just because they became stereotypes doesn’t mean they weren’t valid in the first place,” he pointed out. “Those gender roles served us very well for an extremely long time. Men are bigger and have better upper body strength, so they hunted or farmed or whatever. Women are the only ones who can physically bring the next generation into the world, and despite the incredible strength necessary to do so, the majority are still physically weaker than their male counterparts, so they stayed home and did the gathering and the childrearing.” She barely heard him add under his breath, “Some of them, anyway.”
Jayne wasn’t at all sure what she was going to say to refute his points, but Trieve was already done with his first slab, and was holding his plate out in front of her for another. She restrained herself from asking if his arm was broken, reminded by his speech just how much work he’d probably already done today, out in the cold with animals stepping on him and such while she’d worked here in relative comfort, and just gave him another piece.
But she did say, as she put the pretty pie server back onto the plate, loudly enough that she knew he couldn’t miss it, “You’re welcome.”
She would never have expected the response she got, which was a hearty, self-deprecating chuckle. “You’re right. Thank you, Miss Jayne, for a wonderful meal. If you keep feeding me like this, I’m not going to be able to waddle out of the house.”
Beaming, she thanked him for the compliment.
When they were both done, he cleared the table, but she noticed that he didn’t make a move towards doing the dishes. Instead, he retired to the living room, which she hadn’t tackled yet, hearing him sink down into his chair, then get up again as she began to load silverware into the bottom of the sink she was filling with hot, soapy bubbles.
“Where are your suitcases, Jayne?”
That tone had sent shivers up her spine while they were on the phone, and it had her knees knocking in real life, but she ignored them as best she could. “Upstairs.”
He wasn’t wearing his boots, so she didn’t hear him clomping into the kitchen to stand behind her, but she certainly could feel that he was there, staring at her back. “You brought them all the way upstairs by yourself?” he asked quietly.
“I got them here by myself . . .” she replied, turning with a dishrag in her hand to lean against the sink and stare back at him.
“No one helped you?” he asked, looking outraged at the idea for some reason.
Jayne frowned. Come to think of it . . . “Well, I offered the taxi driver a little extra if he’d come in and get them for me, and he did – he didn’t even take the extra tip I offered,” she said almost proudly.
But he didn’t look at all impressed. In fact he looked pretty annoyed.
Trieve was thinking that he wouldn’t have charged her, either, if she’d just smiled at him like she seemed to have a habit of, and he was sure the cabbie felt the same way.
Jayne blithely rambled on. “And when we arrived at the airport, he got me a Skycap who helped me get checked in.” It was her turn to blush. “I guess you’re right. I did have help. But I did drag them out to the foyer myself,” she said, turning away from him to pile more dishes into the dishwater.
Those bags were each nearly bigger than she was, and together they probably weighed a good twenty pounds more than she did, at least. He knew – he’d hefted them into the kitchen for her before he’d left.
Trieve didn’t know why the idea of her slogging those suitcases up the stairs had him so incensed, but it did. There was plenty enough for her to do around here – there was no need for her to do donkey labor like that. She was much too delicate, and he was definitely enough of a chauvinist that he intended she shouldn’t do that kind of thing while he was around.
And, as he walked slowly up behind her, he let her know – in no uncertain terms – that he did not consider that to be acceptable by popping her several times – relatively hard – over her jeans. Jayne whirled around in outrage, soapy hands held up like weapons, although all they did was drip down her arms, outrage plain on her face.
“I did mention that I wouldn’t put up with a lot of nonsense, didn’t I?” he asked.
Her face clouded violently. They both knew the answer to that question, damn it. He’d capitalized it so that she couldn’t miss it! But her lips pursed tightly nonetheless. “But that’s not -”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat what I expect of you, Jayne,” he said, not quite putting his hands on the counter behind her, but standing closely enough that she knew that – if he wanted to – he could easily prevent her from moving away. “And if you decide that my way is abhorrent, then I’ll take you back to the airport right now, or any other time you ask.
“You see, I happen to kind of like the stereotypes we were talking about earlier. I think that, especially out here, they’re particularly valid. And one of the things I don’t want my wife – or potential wife -” he corrected quickly “ – doing are things that might hurt her, especially those that I can do easily – like lifting heavy suitcases.”
Jayne, who fancied herself a pretty practical, down to Earth person, found herself entranced by his words and the low, gentle voice in which he was delivering them, however autocratically. So much so that she let herself be turned around again, so that her front was against the counter, as that huge hand of his began what seemed to be an unending volley of swats that cracked loudly against her backside in the silence of the kitchen.
“Am I making myself perfectly clear, Jayne?” he asked huskily as his hand still rose and fell like clockwork.
“Yes, yes, you are!” she practically yelled. Damn, her jeans were no defense at all! She’d have to shop around for a thicker pair! Snow pants. That’s what she needed. A pair in every color, if necessary. She’d even wear them in the summer if she needed to, and she had a feeling she might well end up having to do just that.
“Good. Because the next time I feel the need to do this, you’re going to be over my lap and bare bottomed, as you always should be when you’re being punished.”
She swallowed hard, her mouth doing its impression of the Sahara again, her bottom throbbing long after he left her, leaving her wondering – although not reconsidering – about her decision to come up here as she finished the dishes and tried to ignore the fire he’d set in her behind.
They spent the evening – short as it was for the both of them – companionably, although that was after he let her discover – slowly and painfully for her, but amusingly for him – that he didn’t have cable. Or satellite. Or any form of internet – even dial up.
“No internet?” she asked, her eyes glazed over like a junkie who badly needed a fix.
This time he actually laughed, and although it was at her expense, she still got a flash of pride, knowing instinctively that this man hadn’t had much to laugh about in his life.
She checked her phone compulsively, hoping she’d find something other than the two bars on an edge network that would let her make and receive calls – of dubious quality – and probably text, but not surf the web.
Dear God, how was she going to go a month with no Facebook? No Pinterest? No Farmville? No anything – not even non-cable TV with only local channels!
“You know, if you have an antenna, you can get one of those converter boxes -”
He just sat there, grinning like a fool and shaking his head.
He laughed again at her pained whimper, then relented a bit. “I don’t have any of those new fangled conveniences, but I have a reasonable amount of games.” He didn’t mention that they were all decades old. “And cards.”
“What kind of games?” she asked suspiciously, as if she had read his mind.
Trieve had to think for a moment. “Cribbage. Scrabble. Trivial Pursuit. Squence. Sorry. Aggrivation. Maybe more.”
Well, Scrabble was just Words with Friends without the annoying Facebook tie in, so she chose that. The living room didn’t sport much for furniture – and what there was was ancient and covered in dust – kind of like the Munster’s, as if he’d been adding dust to it instead of trying to get rid of it.
But it did have a big, square oak coffee table that was damned near perfect for games if they both sat on the floor, which was easier for him – at least at first – than it was for her.
Trieve watched her carefully lower herself onto her spanked backside and did his best to keep his smile to himself.
They quickly found that they were quite evenly matched.
“Where’d you go to college?” she asked, assuming facts that were not in evidence.
“I didn’t.”
“Oh. You have a very good vocabulary.”
“Thanks. I read a lot.”
“Not much else to do here,” she mumbled not so quietly.
He laughed, a bit awkwardly, but she thought she might have inadvertently hurt his feelings. They played some cribbage and gin rummy, but he got up to stretch after only an hour and a half or so. They were in the middle of a game.
“Well, I’m going to turn in. I suggest you do, too. Morning’ll be here before you know it.”
How she regressed into being an eight year old, she would never know. “But it’s only nine-thirty!”
“And breakfast is at six, so you’ll have to get up earlier than that to make it.”
She was just starting to get up when she did a Mrs. Broflovski “What-what-WHAT?” that he would never recognize the origin of, she’d bet, as cloistered as he was out here.
This time he looked like he was trying – sort of – to suppress a grin, but not very hard, at her complete surprise. “Welcome to ranching, Jaynie.”
She stopped in her tracks on the way to the stairs and sealed her own fate, turning to give him the stink eye. “Don’t call me Jaynie.”
“Whatever you say, Jaynie.”
She rolled her eyes, saying, “You are such a man!” Then she waved her small fist at him in what she hoped was a very threatening manner and mounted the stairs.
“G’night,” he offered up entirely too happily from the bottom of them.
She couldn’t stifle the yawn that took over her mouth, despite the early hour. “G’night.”