for the door, she grabbed a jug of iced tea.
“We’ve got a good week and a half of this if it doesn’t rain,” she heard Aggie say as she stepped out the door. “Think you can hang on that long?”
“Sure,” Kate answered. As long as she didn’t have to spend all of it with Dusty.
The combine slowed and came to a stop as Kate reached the edge of the field where she’d left the diesel tank earlier before going in to fix the sandwiches. She waited as Dusty set the machine to idle and climbed down.
“I need to fuel up,” he told her, eyeing the pile of sandwiches in her hand.
She handed him the plate and bag of chips and set the jug on the ground. “You go ahead and eat, and I’ll fill the combine.”
She had turned toward the tank when he grabbed her arm. “I can fill it,” he told her, his eyes hard.
Pulling away, she tried to steady her suddenly thumping heart. “It’s my job.”
“Not by a long shot.” He handed the food to her. “Do you think I don’t know what my duties are as combine driver?” he asked, softening his voice with a smile. “And I won’t waste away. Not after that dinner today.”
Kate didn’t move while Dusty put the diesel hose into the fuel opening of the combine, switched on the tank motor, and turned to her. “When you’re the combine driver, you get to fuel it, okay?”
She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his decision, that as the owner’s niece, she could decide who did what. But that meant engaging him in a conversation about things that really weren’t his business.
When he’d finished refueling, Dusty accepted the sandwich she gave him and took a bite, looking as if he was lost in thought. “Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, motioning to the plate balanced on the truck hood.
Kate shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t finish your dinner either,” he pointed out. His gaze slid down her body and back up again. “And you sure don’t need to be on a diet.”
Kate’s body did a slow burn, and she did her best to explain it away to herself as a flash of anger. But she knew that wasn’t completely true. No matter how much she didn’t want to be attracted to him, she was. But only a little.
“Clayborne women tend to be small,” she said, wishing she could disappear.
“I’ve noticed.”
Unable to vanish and needing to change the subject to anything else, she decided to try a topic that might hold his attention and keep him talking about himself. Better him than me, she thought. “I hear you were a champion bull rider.”
His eyes narrowed. “I am a champion bull rider.”
Kate shrugged, trying to shake off his intense gaze. “Sorry I got it wrong. Any reason why you’re helping us, instead of riding bulls right now?”
“I’m recuperating from some injuries and waiting for a release from my doctor.”
“What kind of injuries?” It wasn’t that it mattered or that she cared. And it wasn’t because she didn’t want to return to the house. There was plenty of work waiting for her there, but she was curious and it would wait.
He gave her a sideways glance, and then stared off at something in the distance. “The usual. Ribs, shoulder, head. Nothing I haven’t had before.”
“And in the meantime you decided to cut wheat for the Clayborne ladies?”
“Whatever comes up,” he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
“Then you weren’t necessarily looking to help with harvest, just needed something to do. Don’t you make plans?”
He turned to look at her. “Sure I have plans. I ride bulls.”
“That’s it?” She couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t have some kind of plan with a goal for the future. As with most professional athletes and especially one with the kinds of injuries bull riders dealt with, rodeo couldn’t be all there was. “What do you do when you’re not riding bulls? Off season?”
He studied her, his expression puzzled. “Why all the questions?”
Fearing he might think she had some special interest in him, she thought it best to back off a little. “I just wondered, that’s all. Most people plan for the future.”
“Some might.”
“But you don’t?”
His gaze was hard and determined. And stubborn. “My future is my present. Riding bulls.”
“No plans for family? Retirement?” she asked, unable to stop herself.
Taking another sandwich, he looked back at her with a smile. “Retirement when it happens, but I don’t expect it to be soon. Family never.”
She had to bite down on her lip to keep from asking why family wasn’t in his plans. She was pretty sure she knew the answer. When she was still in high school, she’d heard about his marriage and the subsequent end of it. She shouldn’t have asked. It was really none of her business.
And he might just start asking her the same kind of questions. If she wasn’t willing to discuss her own life, why should she expect him to share his?
She looked up to find him staring at her, and her breath caught deep in her chest. Hands trembling, she snatched a plastic bag out of her pocket and began stuffing it with sandwiches. Closing it, she handed it to him.
“I need to get this load taken,” she said in a rush.
“What’s your hurry?” he asked as she scrambled into the truck and started the engine.
She didn’t miss the humor in his eyes and realized she was coming too darned close to making a fool of herself. As she drove the load of wheat to the grain elevator in Desperation, she scolded herself for her interest and for letting him see that he made any impression at all on her. She also reminded herself that he would only be around for a few weeks. After that, he would be gone, and life would be back to normal. Or as normal as it could be, while she searched for a plan to keep Aunt Aggie from leasing the land.
THE SOUND OF RAIN hitting the windows before the sun rose on Thursday morning put Dusty in a black mood. He had expected rain at some point, but the timing was bad. Just when he was enjoying his work, harvest would now come to a grinding halt for several days. He had always hated idle time and was usually either competing in a rodeo or on his way to the next one. During the few times there were neither, he accepted offers from friends to stay with them, and he always helped with chores or whatever was needed.
Not only would he miss the work at the Claybornes’, but he would miss Kate. She had steered clear of him for the past two days, and he guessed it was because of her questions and his answers to them. He didn’t often talk about his personal life, but she had been so straightforward, he hadn’t been able to keep from answering. There was something so different about her that he was intrigued enough to find out just
