or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
His heart squeezed at the fact that he’d never again be able to talk to his grandfather, the man who’d been so much more than a grandparent to him. Dale Bryant had been the only father he’d ever known.
As if Duke could read Austin’s thoughts, he lifted his head and bumped it against Austin’s hand.
“You miss him, too, don’t you?”
Duke let out a sad-sounding snort as if to give an affirmative answer.
Austin rubbed his hand along Duke’s neck. “We’ll go out for a ride tomorrow, boy.” He let his hand drop away and made his way down the narrow path between wooden crates and old ranch equipment to reach the ladder.
But when he reached it, the crumbling wooden rungs made it obvious that he wasn’t going to be using it to clean and fix the gutters. “Damn it.”
“Something wrong?”
He spun toward the entrance to see Ella’s petite form backlit by the strong sunlight outside.
“Useless ladder.” He pointed toward where it hung on an old metal hook.
“I have one you can borrow. No need to get another if you’re not keeping the place.”
His instinct was to decline. Though when he stopped to think about it, that didn’t make sense. What did make sense was not buying a ladder that he’d be using for only a few days, one that he couldn’t transport in his car anyway.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“No problem.” She held up something. “I found this and a bunch of other toys. I thought maybe they were yours when you were a kid and, well, you might want to keep them?”
It took him a moment to figure out that she was holding the engine to the wooden train set he’d had as a young boy. He hadn’t even seen that in probably twenty years. For a split second, he thought maybe... He shook his head. “No. Like I said, there’s nothing here I want. If you find things you can’t use, I’m happy to pay you to haul them away. Or leave them and I’ll have a trash crew come in and get the rest.”
She glanced at the toy in her hand, and he’d swear he saw a flicker of sadness in her expression. Maybe she was just one of those people who got attached to things. He wasn’t. Things had to be useful, a means to an end. There was no other reason to have them.
And yet there was some strange part of him that wanted to keep the train engine simply because she evidently wanted him to for some reason. Crazy.
“Okay,” Ella finally said. “I’ll bring the ladder with me tomorrow unless you need it sooner. I could take a small load of stuff home then come back with it.”
“No, that’s not necessary. There are plenty of other things I can do without it.” And he’d rather she make a fast dent in the piles before they decided to multiply when he had his back turned.
She gave a quick nod then headed out of the barn.
He sighed and realized the only thing that was going to give him any sort of relief from his frustration was a ride out across the ranch. He knew that from years of experience.
Well, that’s not all that could give you relief.
Jeez, the woman had been on his property only half an hour at most and he was already having sexual thoughts about her.
You’re only human. A man.
Yeah, but he wasn’t an animal. And Ella Garcia was definitely not the type of woman for him. Her excitement over getting to possess piles of junk, as if she’d won the kid lottery on Christmas morning, told him that much.
Needing a lot of fresh air and wide-open sky, preferably far away from the temptation of the woman currently carrying a big box out to her truck, he moved toward the tack room. Once he retrieved his grandfather’s saddle, he walked over to Duke’s stall. “Change of plans, boy.”
Maybe somewhere out on his grandparents’ acreage he’d find a sense of calm and his common sense.
* * *
ELLA SHOVED A box of vintage lace doilies into the back of her truck, already imagining the beautiful lampshades she could make from them. As she raised her hand to wipe sweat from her forehead for what had to be the thousandth time since she’d arrived at the Bryant ranch, the muscles in her arms screamed at her. She was sweaty, dirty, aching and needed a Coke approximately the size of the Blue Falls water tower, but she was going to cram as much stuff into her truck as possible. The quicker she emptied the house, the better. She didn’t want to risk Austin changing his mind, thinking it was taking her too long. It would be a crime for all these items to end up at the dump.
She just wished she could clone herself a couple of times to make the work go faster. So would having Austin’s help, but then that’s what he’d “hired” her for, right? Plus, he’d disappeared on his grandfather’s horse a few hours ago. The moment she’d seen him astride the horse, riding off across the pasture, she’d nearly tripped over her feet again. That certainly was a dangerous and annoying effect for a guy to have on a girl. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to face-plant in the driveway and not be able to tell him why. She’d have to claim supreme klutziness or something.
If she’d thought he looked like a movie star cowboy earlier, him astride a horse with the wide, blue sky as a backdrop had only increased that impression tenfold. If he’d been wearing a cowboy hat and boots, it was possible she would have just drooled herself into dehydration.
Despite the lack of traditional cowboy attire, there had been something so totally right about the sight of him astride that horse, like he belonged here in this place.
Why she thought that, she had no idea. After all, she didn’t have a lot of experience with deep connections to a place. Growing up in a military family came with a certain rootlessness. Only since moving to Blue Falls had she started to feel a real connection to a slice of the world. According to the friends she’d made here, it was one of those small towns where people enjoyed growing up and many liked to stay.
Except, evidently, Austin Bryant. When he’d shown her around the place and asked about how long it would take her to empty all the buildings, he’d been fighting a barely contained fidgetiness. It was as if he thought the place was going to cause him to break out in a rash if he stayed too long. And though Dale Bryant had been a nice guy, it seemed his grandson couldn’t be rid of anything that reminded him of his grandparents fast enough.
With another swipe at the sweat beading on her forehead, she headed back into the house.
By the time she was wedging the last possible thing—an old sewing box filled with lots of notions—into her truck, she was so tired and hot that if there were a flowing creek nearby she’d just lie down in it, clothes and all.
As if the universe were offering her the next best thing, she spotted a water spigot between the house and the barn. Like a desert traveler heading toward a mirage, she crossed to the spigot and turned it on. She stuck her entire head underneath the flow of water, and it felt so good that she had to resist the urge to stay underneath it until she ran the water source dry.
She did extend the top half of her body under the flow, soaking her T-shirt
