Page 28 of Baker
I let my eyelids close. I breathed him in, hearing his words as if they were being handed down to me atop Mount Sinai. Of course there were no stone tablets. Only a parking lot filled with older cars and scattered bits of trash and tree debris. Yet, it did feel like a bit of a revelation. Something that I would need to accept and then absorb, not unlike the tenets of the program I was trying my best to work on the daily.
“You’re speaking from experience, it sounds like,” I replied, unwilling to poke at the open wound this little talk had carved in my chest.
“Very few of us have ideal childhoods. There’s a reason that I roam and rarely go home.”
I gathered myself. Sat back, rubbed at my weary eyes with my left hand, and then searched his face. “And that is not the talk we’re having now. We need to get your meds, get you home, and I have to head to my camp to see if all my gear was carried to Missouri.”
“Shit, yes, I’ve been keeping you from your stuff with all my stuff. Sorry.” He waved it off. “Sometime I’d like to hear tales of your youth. If you’re willing to share them with me.”
He smiled wanly. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather share them with.” He stole a kiss and then cranked the truck over. “Now, where is the pharmacy?”
After we got the prescription filled at the lone drug store on the outskirts of Bastian Grange, we rolled on home, my arm achinglike a kick to the balls. My eyes saw little of the vast countryside we drove through as I let my mind drift back in time. To when Mom was alive and all of that emotional upheaval. Reflecting back, even though she was the parent, it was me who took care of her. Granny, too, but back then Granny was trying to keep the ranch from sinking, so it fell to me to care for my mother on her bad days. As time went on, the bad days outnumbered the good, and the ranch was losing ground as beef prices fell while feed costs soared. I began to do more at the ranch to help my grandmother after school, which left Mom alone more in that old house filled with memories of fucking Cash.
If only Cash had stuck it out. Been a fucking husband, son, and father like he had promised he would be, but no…
“They’ve been busy,” Hanley said as the truck slowed. Shaking out of my trip into a not-so-pleasant past, I realized we were home. Christ. I’d not even seen or spoken to Hanley during the last twenty miles or so.
“Yeah,” I whispered as my gaze moved to the oak lying in the yard. Half the tree had been dealt with, big chunks piled up for splitting, while the brushy top had been trimmed and hauled off. “Shit, they’ve gotten a lot done.”
The relief washed over me. I’d have been at that job a damn week or more alone. The guys all paused, chainsaws quieting, and lifted gloved hands in greeting.
“Nice to have help, huh?”
I smiled feebly at Hanley. “It’s nice.”
Reallynice. Just like the man sitting beside me. Hell, maybe the man in the seat next to me was too damn nice for a surly cowpoke like me.
11
Chapter Eleven
Imeandered over to the guys sweating it out under a warm spring sun, feeling like a turd on the bottom of a boot about how I’d been ragging on my siblings. They had really put their backs into this mess, and I was grateful beyond words.
“Doing good,” I stated as Granny opened the front door to announce that lunch was ready. “Thanks, guys. Really.”
They all nodded. I grabbed Dodge as he was removing his dirty leather work gloves. “Minute?”
“Sure.” The others ambled inside, casting curious looks back at us until the screen door slapped closed and Dodge and I stood alone amid heaps of sawdust and tiny sticks. Raking for hours was in the near future. My to-do list runneth over. He sat down on the remaining half of the old oak, removed his hat, and wiped his face with a limp bandana from his back pocket. I joined him as my mind danced around how to be firm but polite. “It is broken?” He gestured to my arm with his sodden bandana.
“Hairline.” The goats were out in their pasture, blatting softly as they enjoyed the sun on their backs. “Gotta wear this for a few weeks. Guess you all showed up at the right time.”
He smiled, and I could see why Ollie had been attracted to him. He was a good-looking man. Smart too. College degree in medicine and all that. I’d barely squeaked through high school, so I was impressed.
“I like to think that fate has plans for all of us if we just open ourselves up to the whimsy of kismet.”
“Right, well, I’m not well-versed in providence and all that, but I do know that I’d be in a fucking mess if you boys weren’t here to help.”
He chuckled. “You can look at it that way or you could say that if not for us being here and buying goats, you’d not have been out herding said goats and gotten struck by that limb.”
I shot him a look. “There is that angle, but I’m trying to be nice here.” That made him laugh harder. “Anyway, the thing is, I appreciate you stepping in to help the ranch. And investing in it as you are. I am capable of paying my own bills, though.”
“I figured you’d be twisted up about that, but you don’t have to be. You being injured on this property falls under what we should have covered with the homeowners’ insurance if you weren’t part of the household.” He shot me a glance with keen brown-green eyes. “Since you don’t have health insurance, you’re not covered, and that expense comes to the ranch. As part owner, it’s up to me, and the others, to chip in to cover any expense that the ranch incurs. Which is why I asked Hanley to inform the billing department to send your bills here so they can be figured into the expenses due.”
He’d lost me when he’d brought up homeowners, which thankfully we did have, but I wasn’t about to make a claim for tree cleanup when I could do it myself and save a rate increase.
“Still, it feels like charity. Ford and Bella don’t have the kind of cash required to cover my dumb ass anyway, so why not let me pay my own way? I do appreciate the kindness, though.”
He huffed out a sigh. “Okay, if you feel that strongly about it, then I’ll hand the bill to you when it comes. Speaking of Ford and Bella…”
