There was a sharp nip in the air the next morning when Rory drove her UTV back to the ranch after seeing Killy onto the school bus.
It was early yet, and even though she could have driven back up to the house to spend another hour in the haven of her warm and comfy bed, she went to the lodge.
If Gage Stanton was going to begin shadowing her that morning, she wanted to be ready.
However, as she walked along the quiet corridor, she could hear the murmur of male voices even before she reached the office door.
“—and Rory was just a toddler when her mother and I bought this place,” her father was saying. “Never thought it would become as successful as it did. Figure it was her mom that was the reason. Eleanor had a way of making everyone feel welcome.”
Rory hesitated in the hallway, resting her hand on the doorjamb. Her mother had died eight years ago, and there wasn’t a day since that she didn’t miss her. The ache might not be as acute, but it was still there.
She’d accepted that it always would be. Losing one parent was tragic enough. She was only now beginning to breathe easier where her father was concerned, and it had been two years since he’d received a clean bill of health.
“Did you ever think of selling?”
She winced, easily recognizing Gage’s voice, and quickly entered the office. “G’morning,” she greeted brightly, not even giving her father a chance to answer the developer’s question. “You’re up and at ’em early today.”
She strode past Gage and dropped a kiss on her father’s head, then stood there next to his chair, her hand on his shoulder. She met Gage’s eyes, though it took considerable effort.
She didn’t know how old he was, but she was guessing somewhere near forty. His dark hair was slicked back from his handsome face, revealing strands of silver near his temples. He’d been clean-shaven the day before, but now his jaw was blurred with faint stubble. Instead of lessening his appeal, it conjured an image of what he probably looked like waking up in bed every morning.
Which was definitely not an image she needed in her head. “I didn’t expect you to beat me here to the office. After I left you all after dinner last night, I’m surprised.”
“Your other guests are an interesting lot, but a good bottle of whiskey’s never been enough to distract me from business the next day, no matter how early.”
She hoped that business didn’t include trying to acquire Angel River. “They are interesting people,” she agreed. “Guests come and go here, but each one of them is memorable.”
“Exactly what your mama always said.” Her dad gave her an approving look as he stood. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll head over to see Chef Bart for my daily oatmeal and leave the two of you to get on with it.” On his way out, he straightened one of the framed travel awards hanging on the wall.
She went over to the door and pushed it closed. Now it immediately felt too close inside the room packed with the sofa and chairs along with her dad’s oversize desk from two floors up.
She walked back to the armchair her dad had occupied but didn’t sit. “My father will never sell Angel River to you.” Her words were bold, hiding her shakiness inside, but she kept her voice low and controlled. At least she wouldn’t be overheard by anyone walking down the hallway.
Gage’s brows rose slightly. “I don’t recall making an offer to buy Angel River,” he said mildly.
Her fingers curled into the worn blue-and-green-plaid upholstery. “But that’s what you do,” she said. She’d read enough about him to know that. “Buy up struggling properties and turn them into the next jewel in the crown of Stanton Development.”
His expression didn’t change. “Is Angel River struggling?”
She sank her teeth into her tongue, debating how to answer then cursed herself for not just denying it and being done with it.
Then it didn’t matter anyway, because he waved his hand dismissively. “You don’t have to answer that.” He stood. “I’m not in the market to buy another guest ranch.” He smiled. “I’m not sure what to do with the ranch I already have bought.”
And she wasn’t buying his self-deprecation, either.
She changed tacks. “How is your brother this morning?”
His gaze remained steady. “Still pissed at me, I imagine. Or he will be whenever he unearths himself for the day. Is that what you want to know?”
She felt a little ashamed. There’d been obvious tension between him and his brother when she’d left the lodge for the evening. But thanks to the grapevine—i.e., Marni and Megan—Rory had already heard all about the argument between Noah and Gage because of the beer he’d pulled right out of his brother’s hand. Marni—on official bartender duty—had carded Noah before serving him. The young man was twenty-two, and to hear the story, he’d been furious and stormed out.
“I heard there was a bit of a disagreement.” Understatement of the year. “If there’s a legal reason why Noah shouldn’t drink, then let me know so we can deal with it without causing a scene next time. Is his ID real?”
“Yes. But he’s not long out of rehab, and I’d like him to stay out.”
“Is that why he called you his warden?” She hadn’t forgotten Gage’s curt manner with Noah when they’d arrived.
“I might as well be. He doesn’t want to be here. I’m sure you’ve noticed that already.”
“Maybe Noah’s feelings about being here will change before too long,” she said quietly. Maybe Gage’s would, too, but she kept that thought to herself. “Angel River tends to have that effect on people.”
“To hear your father, it’s not the ranch but the people on it that are the draw.”
“Maybe a bit of both.” She cleared her throat and brushed her hands together. “So, you’re here early this morning, but we might as well get on with things.” She glanced at him. “You did look at the schedule I gave you last night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Why?”
She shrugged, suddenly wanting to laugh. She was wearing her oldest jeans, held together more by iron-on patches than by thread, a hooded sweatshirt and her oldest pair of boots. He was wearing jeans, it was true. But there was nothing old or worn about them, or anything else he had on. He looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. She hoped his hand-tooled leather boots survived the morning or he’d brought a spare pair, because there wasn’t a shoe store anywhere in the vicinity—not unless you counted the mukluks they sold in the Angel River gift shop.
“No reason,” she said blithely and led the way out of the office. “Do we need to stop for some oatmeal for you, too, first?”
He gave a visible shudder. “My mother used to feed me oatmeal every morning when I was growing up. Hate the stuff.”
So did she, but she didn’t feel a need to tell him that.
“Besides, you stocked the kitchen in the cabin very well. Including coffee. Lots of coffee.” A sudden smile hit his eyes, and she nearly tripped over her own feet. He caught her arm. “All right?”
She focused on the carpet as if blaming it. “Just fine.”
They went out through the front door, and Rory flipped up her hood against the chill. It wasn’t freezing yet, but the way temperatures had dropped lately, it wasn’t going to be long.
He didn’t seem to be bothered by it, though. “You did bring a coat, didn’t you?” She blamed the question on the mom in her. Yes, the cashmere hugging his torso looked great on him but it wouldn’t be a match for their weather. “You’re going to need more than a sweater if this weather keeps up.” The gift shop sold sweatshirts, too, but she had a hard time envisioning him in one. They all bore the Angel River logo—stylized wings and all—across the front.
“Your father told me to come prepared for snow, just in case.”
“Smart. I hope we don’t get any, though. Not before Thanksgiving, at least.”
“Why? Snow means skiing.”
“You’d think. But it’s not good for business at Thanksgiving when there is snow.” She stopped next to the UTV she’d used to take Killy to the bus stop. “I don’t know why. Chef’s turkey dinner tastes delicious whether snow’s on the ground or not. It’s just something about the season, I guess.” She waited until he’d climbed onto the seat beside her and started the engine. “After Thanksgiving, though? Guests cannot wait for the snow to hit.”
“Do you have good skiing?”
“If you’re into cross-country, it’s excellent. But we can’t really compete when it comes to downhill.” Fortunately, there were plenty of cross-country enthusiasts who sought them out year after year. She hoped this year wouldn’t be an exception.
She gunned the engine as they buzzed past the lodge, tires bouncing over the ruts. His shoulder brushed against hers and she drove even faster, wanting a quick end to the ride.
They flew past the big firepit next to the lodge and the rest of the cabins of the main camp. The road evened out slightly when she turned toward the hay barn, but even though that meant they weren’t bumping against each other, the damage was done. When she finally parked near the barn door, she quickly hopped out, not waiting to see how quickly Gage followed. She started to rub her shoulder where his shoulder had brushed hers, then realized what she was doing and forced her hand to drop.
She grabbed the cold barn-door handle and pulled. The well-oiled door smoothly slid open, and immediately the three cats sleeping on the floor inside raised their heads.
“Huey, Stewie and Louie,” she told Gage, pointing at each one in turn. “They’re not very friendly,” she warned as they arched their backs and stalked off with tails bushed. “But they keep the mice under control.” She headed toward the tractor parked inside with the spreader already loaded up with bales of hay and straw attached to it. “You can climb up and ride on the bales or take the UTV over to the horse barn,” she told him. “Your choice.” There wasn’t room for them both inside the tractor cab.
She was more than a little surprised when he climbed up over the side of the spreader. And that he did it with such ease.
“You don’t store the bales in the barn with the horses?”
“We used to. In fact the horses were originally kept in this barn, too. But my father considered it a fire hazard, so he built the horse barn ages ago. It’s heated. No need for the insulating factor that the bales offer. Plus it has a sprinkler system. Makes the insurance company happy.”
She waited in case he had more questions, but he just sat down on the bales stacked in the spreader, so she climbed in the cab and started the tractor. They rumbled out of the hay barn and slowly circled around the equestrian ring. The tiers of metal bleachers hugging the far curve could accommodate more than a hundred people. Their current guests and staff would only be enough to occupy a third of them.
He raised his voice above the tractor noise. “What do you use the arena for?”
She glanced at him through the cab’s back window. “Rodeos,” she said loudly. Just not these days. Not since her dad had gotten sick. Now the ring sat empty except as a gathering place for guests heading out on trail and hayrides.
Once they passed the ring, they reached the horse barn. The wide doors on either end of the long structure were already open, and she could see straight through to the pastures on the other side.
Rory drove the tractor right inside and stopped in the wide aisle separating the two rows of horse stalls. She loved the place with its gleaming wood-paneled stalls topped by black pipe. Megan made certain it was meticulously maintained; no one would ever suspect the barn had been built twenty years earlier.
Rory didn’t want to think about how long it had been since her father had actually come to the horse barn. How long it had been since he’d been out for a ride.
Gage stood up, pulling her thoughts front and center to focus squarely on him.
The way he was standing on top of the spreader, his head nearly reached the light fixture hanging from the rafters of the steeply pitched roof. “What do you need me to do?”
Stop giving me shivers?
She swiped off her hood, annoyed with herself. What she’d like him to do was stay out of her way.
“Start tossing down bales,” she told him. “And don’t throw out your back while you’re doing it.” Not that he looked in danger of that, but she’d learned the hard way with overenthusiastic guests who’d helped with the chore in the past.
Naturally, he of the cashmere sweater and all manner of gorgeousness accomplished the task with perfect ease.
There wasn’t a great deal of room in the aisle with the spreader blocking it—just enough to walk alongside it and maneuver the bales. After he’d off-loaded half of them, she pulled the tractor forward and they distributed the rest. Then, once the bales were stacked alongside the stalls, he hopped down and she opened the door to the feed room, where the tools were kept, stored neatly on pegs.
She grabbed a pitchfork, shovel, rake and broom. “Ever muck out a stall?”
“No. But I get the general idea.”
There was that wry smile again. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t.” She went back out into the aisle and closed the feed room door with her hip. “The end goal is to save the straw that’s not soiled or soaked. The stuff that is gets shoveled up and dumped in the spreader. Do the stalls next to the spreader. Finish them and move the spreader to the next stall, and so on and so forth. Once the stall is clean, we’ll spread fresh straw for bedding and fresh hay for feed.” She handed him the pitchfork and rake. “Any experience with horses? Livestock in general?”
“I’ve ridden a time or two.”
Which could mean anything. People either overestimated their abilities or underestimated them. It was fairly rare for a guest to be perfectly honest and accurate. And she didn’t want to make assumptions just because he could toss a hay bale as though he’d been doing it all his life. “Well, first off, Megan—she’s our wrangler—has already done some of our work for us when she checked the horses earlier—” She broke off at his fleeting expression. “What?”
“It’s really early now.”
She almost laughed. And it was probably a little cruel of her to gleefully anticipate the day when he shadowed her as she helped Bart in the kitchen.
That was early.
Maybe by then Gage would decide he wasn’t so interested in how a guest ranch operated. Maybe he’d decide he and his brother didn’t need to stay there for the next six weeks.
The thought was appealing until she thought about having to refund all that money he’d already paid.
To say it’d leave a dent in the bank account was putting it mildly.
On one hand, she might sleep better with him gone, but her personal convenience was a high price for Angel River to pay.
“This is nothing. At least it’s already light,” she told him. “By the middle of next month, it’ll be dark at this time of the morning. Anyway, as I was saying, Megan already moved the horses out to pasture.” She entered the first stall and walked to the far side to glance in the water buckets hanging on the wall. “And she’s already filled the water, so that’s one less thing we have to do.” Even though she knew she didn’t need to, she looked in the feed bucket on the other wall. It, too, had been cleaned.
He glanced down the aisle. “Twenty-four stalls?”
“Twenty-two. All in use.”
“You have more horses than staff.”
“At this time of year, yes.” She didn’t elaborate that they were down several people.
“How much waste does a horse produce?”
She was glad for the turn back to matters other than Angel River staffing levels. “Can be as much as fifty pounds a day. Add in the soiled bedding…” She could see his mind working out the math. “That’s why we do this daily. A healthy horse needs a good environment. And a guest ranch without healthy horses isn’t much of a guest ranch. They work for us six days a week, so we take care of them.”
“I saw in the brochure that you give them Sundays off?”
“Yes.”
“And you do this chore every day?” He gestured at the stalls.
“Well, I don’t do it every single day of the week,” she allowed. “Megan and Marni take days, too, including Sundays. And during the summer we have a seasonal crew, which helps give everyone a break.”
She waited in case he had more questions or comments, but none came, so she pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and took the pitchfork in hand.
“Easiest way to do this is to work from one corner to the other.” She jabbed the tines into the straw, lifting and shaking and turning the pitchfork as she tossed it toward the rear wall. “Don’t want to leave anything that’s wet.” She reached a clump of soiled straw, which she flipped straight into the now-emptied spreader. “Manure management is about a lot more than just shoveling horse crap.” She tossed another pile into the spreader and rotated the rake to drag it across the hard-packed earth beneath the straw. “Have to collect it then utilize it when you can or institute a disposal system.” She glanced at him as she raked, being careful not to look at him too closely, because every time she did, it was embarrassingly difficult to keep a coherent thought in her head. “Sometimes it has to be stored before that happens. In our case, we’re able to use most of it year-round. We have a large compost a ways out beyond the Uptown—”
“That’s your corporate area?”
She paused only for a moment to answer. “Primarily. It’s good for any sizable group wanting to be housed close together without interference from other guests. My father tell you about it?”
“I studied the map Marni gave us when we arrived.”
It was a small matter, but for some reason she was oddly pleased.
She stopped to point at the grilled gate on the exterior wall. Each stall possessed the same emergency gate. The horses could see through it to what went on in the world beyond the barn. It provided them some comfort, because the only times they were ever really happy to be penned up inside was when it was mealtime or there was a blizzard.
“So then you know Uptown is a few miles northwest of the main camp.” She was still pointing through the opening. “Can’t see from here, but Uptown’s just over that ridge.” She started scraping and tossing again. “As the crow flies, the compost windrows are between Uptown and Angel camp.”
“And Angel camp is where most of the staff lives.”
She nodded. Her cabin was in Angel camp. So were her father’s, Megan’s and Bart’s. There were more, but they weren’t in use.
“I’d like to see it.”
“Angel camp or the compost?”
His gaze slid her way. “Compost.”
She was chagrined by the level of her relief. “Then we’ll have to fit in a compost tour. A-anyway, like I was saying, we use a lot of what our horses produce. It’s either composted—what we can’t use for our own gardens gets sold—”
“Good market for it?”
“There’s always a market for quality, organic compost.” Thank goodness.
“And the rest that isn’t composted?”
“Weather permitting, we spread it directly on the fields. That’s Seth’s call. He runs the cattle operation. If you want to see the typical ‘dude’ ranch stuff, too, while you’re here—”
“Isn’t that part of this whole deal?” He looked a little pained. “Playing cowboy?”
“For some,” she agreed. “But guest ranching has come a long way since the days of sleeping on a bedroll and going on a roundup. Now, guests come here wanting Bart’s farm-to-table food and resort-quality amenities.”
“But not high-speed internet,” he inserted dryly.
“The ones who really need it to get through their day don’t usually bother staying.”
His lips twitched slightly. “Touché. So back to the manure. Seth decides whether it gets used now or composted.”
She moistened her lips. “Yeah. After we finish the stalls, he’ll send someone over for the tractor, dump or spread the stuff, then return the tractor to the hay barn for the next morning.”
“Efficient.”
“We try. I don’t know what sort of setup you’ll have on Rambling Mountain—” She hesitated yet again when he gave her a sharp look. “Am I not supposed to know about it?”
“No, I’m just surprised that you do.”
She couldn’t stop her short laugh any more than she could infuse it with actual humor. She switched the rake out for the shovel, scooping up the pile of debris she’d collected.
She moved past him again and pitched it into the spreader. “Everyone in Wyoming is taking notice. Waiting to see what happens. That ranch you’re planning to develop is right on the edge of thousands and thousands of acres of completely undeveloped wilderness. I don’t have to tell you how valuable that is. It has everyone worry—wondering how it’ll affect their business.” Including them.
“That’s a lot of pressure for a little ranch sitting on the side of a mountain.”
She held out the pitchfork and nodded toward the stall next door. “You strike me as a man who thrives on pressure.”
His fingers brushed hers when he took the handle. “I thrive on lots of things.”
Shivers.
She let go of the pitchfork as if it had turned hot. “I hope you thrive on horse manure,” she replied, because surely there was nothing more effective at killing unwanted shivers than talking about horse poop. “This morning and when your Rambling Mountain ranch is up and running. Even a Stanton guest ranch would have to have horses.” Then she turned on her heel. “I’m going to get another pitchfork.”
Only after she was in the feed room was she able to draw a decent breath. She pressed her palm to her chest, feeling the uneven beat of her foolish heart.
A sound outside the room made her quickly snatch more tools from the pegs and go back out. Megan was there, leaning against the tractor, her arms folded as she openly studied Gage at work inside the stall.
Megan wasn’t only Angel River’s wrangler. She was Rory’s best friend. And there was a glint in her friend’s eyes that Rory recognized only too well. Despite Megan’s grudge against most of the world’s male population, she routinely nagged Rory about her lack of male companionship. As in Rory’s total sex-life drought.
She jumped in before Megan could say something. “Are you set to take the trail ride this morning?”
Megan’s expression was full of mischief. “I thought maybe you should.” Her eyes bounced from Rory’s face to the man working inside the stall. She didn’t even flinch when Gage pitched a heavy wad of soiled straw in her direction to land unerringly into the bed of the spreader, missing her by inches.
“If I go on the trail ride, I can’t help Frannie with housekeeping over at Homestead,” Rory told her as if it were breaking news when it was anything but. Homestead was located in the center of Uptown and had higher occupancy than anywhere else on the ranch. It was a lodge in and of itself, though she considered it to have less character than the main lodge. “Are you saying you want to change sheets and dust shelves?” She knew Megan would sooner have her fingernails peeled off. She hated cleaning even her own cabin. And she particularly disliked working alongside Frannie.
But Megan evidently wasn’t going to give in quickly, because she gave an expressive eye roll toward Gage. “But maybe our newest guest would enjoy the ride.” She wasn’t going to win awards for subtlety any faster than she’d win one for housekeeping.
“I should introduce you.” Rory reentered the stall she’d been cleaning and looked through the vertical pipes on the upper portion of the partition wall to see that Gage had already cleared two-thirds of the next stall. At the rate he was going, he’d have his stall finished before hers. “Gage Stanton, this is our wrangler I mentioned earlier. Megan Forrester, Gage Stanton.”
“Head wrangler,” Megan corrected with a faint smile.
“She’s in charge of the seasonal crew,” Rory clarified. “She keeps all the other activities on track, too, not just ones involving the horses.”
Gage pitched another load into the spreader. “Sounds like you all wear more than one hat.”
“More so in the past year,” Megan said bluntly before Rory could telepathically stop her. “The spa director. The office administrator. Head of housekeeping. Everyone’s stretched too thin.”
It wasn’t that Rory intended to hide anything from Gage, exactly. For all she knew, her father had already told him all of this. “It’s a temporary bump.” She tried to send Megan a mental nudge to hush.
But since Rory was not in the least telepathic, she knew the effort would be useless.
“Maybe Gage’s brother would like to join the trail ride,” she suggested brightly, hoping to change the subject. She glanced through the bars again toward Gage. “Does Noah enjoy horses? Does he ride?”
“I doubt it.” He gave her a quick glance, looking like he regretted the terse comment. He stood the fork on its tines and crossed his arms atop the handle. “I should know whether he likes horses or not, but I don’t.” He looked toward Megan. “Do you have a big group going out this morning?”
“Only six, so there’s plenty of room. And it doesn’t matter a lick whether he’s ever been around a horse in his life.” She pushed away from the side of the tractor as if she’d suddenly tuned in to the mental messages Rory was sending. “I’ll just go on over and ask him and leave the two of you to your…work.” She gave Rory a wicked look as she turned to leave. “Nice meeting you, Gage.”
As much as Rory had wanted Megan to move along, once she had, the barn suddenly felt secluded and too intimate. She avoided Gage’s gaze like the coward she was, ducking her head over her pitchfork as she scraped the last bits of muck into a small pile. “You’ll want to go on a trail ride yourself at some point. In fact, you could go this morning like Megan said.” She hated that she sounded overly cheerful. “Experience isn’t necessary, and seeing the place from horseback is one of the best ways to experience it.” Their ATV tours were wildly popular, but Rory personally preferred horseback.
“Do you ever go out on the rides yourself?”
“If we have a particularly large group, I help out.” She exchanged the pitchfork for the shovel and scooped up the pile, carrying it out to the spreader. “I’ve been on horses most of my life, but Megan is the one with the real touch with our guests.”
She saw that his stall was spotless, with all of the clean straw loosely piled in one corner. “Nice job.”
“Cleaning up crap. Been doing it most of my life.”
She couldn’t help smiling. It was suddenly much too easy to like him, and since she wasn’t ready to trust him, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “Well, now you spread the straw back around, toss in more from the fresh bale—some stalls’ll take a whole bale, some’ll take less—until there is a nice, good, fluffy bed.”
He began deftly pitching the straw about. “What about the hay?”
“We’ll put it on the wall next to the water buckets. That’s one of the reasons for the concrete apron around the perimeter of each stall,” she said.
“You don’t stick it in a rack or bag?”
She shook her head. “Leaving it on the ground gives them a natural position to eat. It’s also a good reason for checking the stalls as often as we do. Same reason we use water buckets instead of automated systems. Gives us more opportunity to personally attend to the horse. See how his digestion is going, if you know what I mean.”
“This guy’s digestion seemed just fine to me,” he said with half a smile.
“That’s a good thing.” She took two flakes from the straw bale and went back into the stall with him, handing one to him. “This is Moonbeam’s stall.” She quickly pulled apart her flake, tossing the fresh, fragrant straw around as she automatically backed her way to the stall door. “He’s a big boy, makes a big mess and likes a thick bed. It’ll take a fair—” She broke off when her hand collided with Gage’s. “Sorry,” she mumbled, feeling about as mature as a third grader discovering the boy sitting next to her was cute.
He glanced at her. “Occupational hazard.”
She dammed off the flush threatening to flow through her veins and managed a brief laugh. She cast the rest of the straw and backed out entirely, then crouched to pull several more sections from the bale where it naturally separated. She tossed the flakes toward Gage. “Like I was saying, it’ll take a fair amount of straw. So grab whatever you need.” She glanced up at him as she rose.
His brown gaze seemed to engulf her, and his eyebrow peaked slightly. “Thanks for the offer.”
And her flush spilled right around the dam.