Page 52 of Overprotective Cowboy

Nate didn’t respond, but Ted didn’t want to go back into his own thoughts. There were simply too many of them, and he couldn’t sort through them well enough to know which ones he should worry about and which ones he shouldn’t.

“Are you excited to get married?”

“Yes,” Nate said. “I’d get married tomorrow, if Ginger would do it.” He glanced at Ted. “But she wants everyone there. Her parents. Her sisters and her brother. All of that.”

“You don’t sound happy about that either.”

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Of course her family should be there, but she doesn’t seem to be that close to them in the first place. Just pick a date and tell them. If they can come, great. If not, well, we’ll save them some cake. You know?” He glanced at Ted. “I’m trying to be neutral about it. Let her do what she wants. But she doesn’t want that either.”

“What does she want?”

“She wants me to voice my opinion. Says I have a say.” Nate shook his head. “It’s not really true, because when I tell her what I think, she just argues back with me.” He clicked at his horse as it tried to stall and get a bite of the sweet grass along the side of the road. “It’s fine. We’re fine. Planning a wedding and running a ranch is a lot of work all at once.” Nate tossed a smile at Ted. “How are you and Emma?”

“Okay,” Ted said, his voice pitching up a little bit.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“She’s got secrets,” Ted said. “She doesn’t want to tell me.”

“Ah, I see.”

They continued down the road, and Ted was impressed with himself that he hadn’t fallen off his horse yet. In fact, he made it all the way back to the stable without even slipping in the saddle.

“You did great,” Nate said with a smile. “You want to go out to the marshes with me? I need to check a couple of cabins that were used this week.”

“Sure.”

After they’d brushed down their horses and watered them, they turned them out into the pasture and went to the equipment shed. Ted’s blue heelers were never far from him, and two of them even jumped up onto the back seat of the ATV.

“Oh, you want to go for a ride?” He grinned at them, and caught the key Nate threw to him. “I guess you can.” He swung his leg over the seat of the ATV, and the dogs adjusted themselves so they were balanced.

He followed Nate, who’d fired up a side-by-side, down the road, his friend going much faster than Ted felt comfortable going. He hadn’t driven a vehicle in a very long time, and certainly not one with two dogs on the back of it.

He pulled up to the cabins several seconds after Nate, who’d already gone inside. He came out with a trash bag in one hand and a wad of sheets in the other. Ted realized in that moment that Nate was doing housekeeping for these cabins.

“Get over here and make yourself useful,” Nate said with a grin, and Ted killed the engine on the ATV. He took the clean sheets inside and started making the bed while Nate replaced the trashcan liners and swept the floor. He started the dishwasher as Ted marveled that this cabin at least a mile from anything else in the world even had a dishwasher.

After Ted had run a duster over everything and Nate had scrubbed the bathroom, they went back outside, only to go to another cabin to do the same thing all over again. They repeated it two more times, and Ted found himself on a part of the ranch he’d never visited before.

Ginger claimed this ranch wasn’t nearly as big as some others out there, but to Ted, it felt massive. He’d spent most of his time in the stables and working with the horses, except for earlier in the week when he’d gone out to the pond to help clean up the carnage caused by the blooming algae.

Bill had been working on a solution to neutralize the water to stop the algae from spreading, and they’d put a fence around the pond so no animals would drink from it again.

His phone rang while he was running the duster over the windowsill, and Ted pulled it out to look at it. “It’s Martin,” he said, dropping the duster in favor of swiping on the call. “Hey, Martin.” He looked at Nate, who barely glanced at him and kept working.

“What does Wednesday look like for you?” Martin asked.

“It’s fine.”

“I believe you said afternoons are good. say, four o’clock?”

“Sure.”

“Great,” Martin said. “I’ll be at the homestead at four. See you then, Ted.”

“Yep.” Ted hung up, suddenly more nervous than before. This was a new step for him along this journey. He’d never met with a parole officer before, and he wasn’t sure how it would go.

He’d met with Ginger every day for the first week, and after that, she’d only checked in with him once a week. On Monday, he’d start his fourth week on the ranch, and as Ted got back to work in the cabin, he realized how much he liked the ranch.

---