Page 14 of Rescued By the Mountain Man

I reached for my water glass. “For good reason. It was not my finest hour.”

“What did you say?” Isaac asked Zara. “Please, we want to know.”

“So, you can hold it over my head for the rest of my life?” I said. “Absolutely not. Marie, could you please?—"

“I have five Tupperware containers packed up for you in the kitchen,” she cut me off, almost psychic about what I was about to say. “It's all ready for you, and it should serve you for at least two days.”

“Thank you, Marie, you really are the linchpin in this house,” I replied, getting up from my chair. “Miss Harrington, we’re off.”

“When will you be coming back?” she asked.

“Hopefully, in four days,” I replied. “And for you four, not all of you can be at the fair at the same time; two of you need to be here each night, but which two is up to you.”

“Oh damn,” Lucas groaned. “Right in the nu—acorns.”

Laughing, Zara replied, “I like you guys.”

“Oh good,” Isaac replied, his first words in a while.

“Just don’t give me shit about me and the bossman,” she said.

Lucas and Santos shared a look. “Is there a please in that statement?”

“There is,” she replied. “But if you don’t, I don’t wear stilettoes anymore, but I do have a pair, and I will shove the six-inch heel of one up your butt.”

Face twisting into a grimace, Lucas nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter Five

Zoe

By the time the truck began the descent from the ranch, I heard thunder rumbling in the distance. That didn’t worry me much—what did bother me was how friendly I’d been with the guys at the ranch.

That stiletto remark made me cringe a little.

Keep your head down, don’t make waves, don’t make a lasting impression and no paper trail. We’ll find out who ratted you out, but until then, be invisible.

Could what I’d done at the ranch be classified as making waves?

“Are four men enough to wrangle all those bulls?” I asked

“We used to have more, but yes, with me on the turf with them, we can handle everything,” I added. “Remember that ranch I told you about in Texas? They have a seventeen-thousand-acre ranch and have a ten-man team beside them. My ranch had some financial troubles a few years ago, and I had to downsize. But we manage.”

The night was filled with static electricity, and I could feel the storm coming.

“The weatherman has promised it will hold off until the morning, and I hope he is right,” Warrick said. “We’re supposed to get a couple of fair days after this, and I hope it sticks because hundreds of people and mud do not go along.”

With the storm rolling in, the dusk had grown so dark I could barely see a foot in front of the high beams, and I could bet that if I stepped outside, I wouldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

“Are storms like this normal?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “Just be glad we’re not on the tornado radar right now. Didn’t you have rainstorms in…New York, was it?”

“Snowstorms out the wazoo, yes, and a few heavy falls that made the city flood, but not…not this,” I rubbed my arms. “I can feel the charge in the air and god knows I am scared that I’d get hit by lightning.”

“You have a greater chance of getting famous overnight than getting hit by lightning.”

“I guess those guys who did get hit by lightning are real unlucky bastards,” I muttered.

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