waited for Alonso to lecture her on the evils of alcohol consumption, which sadly she was all too familiar with. Instead, he said, “Pull your truck over here and I’ll hook it up to the trailer, then you drive and I’ll cut the bales and drop them where you tell me to.”
She wanted to refuse his help but swallowed her pride. Once Alonso hitched the trailer to the pickup, he walked up to the driver’s-side window. “Blow the horn when you want me to toss a bale.”
She handed him the wire cutters and work gloves she kept in the truck. After he climbed onto the trailer, she drove off, slowing down when she left the dirt road and entered the pasture. She honked every ten yards. Halfway through her route the bison came over a ridge. After Alonso threw the last bale onto the ground she put the truck into Park and got out.
He hopped off the trailer. “I’ve never seen bison up close. They’re pretty impressive animals.”
“My great-grandfather raised cattle. It was my grandfather who switched to bison after he lost an entire herd to disease.” She smiled. “Have you ever eaten bison meat?”
“Nope.”
“We sell our bison to gourmet food markets, but once in a while a dude ranch will ask to buy one of the animals to keep as a pet. Tourists get a kick out of seeing them.”
“How many do you have?”
“My grandfather kept a herd of three hundred then my father decreased it to two hundred, and right now I have a hundred and fifty.” She’d had to sell thirty head to cover the back taxes. Once the ranch was in better financial shape, she intended to grow the herd again.
“Ready when you are.” He got in on the passenger side and the musky scent of male sweat and faded cologne filled the cab. She turned the truck around and drove back through the pasture. “I would have been doing this in the dark tonight if you hadn’t offered to help.”
“You don’t have any ranch hands working for you?”
“I can’t afford to pay one. If Luke would stay out of trouble and do his share of the chores, we’d manage fine.”
“Luke mentioned both your parents are gone.”
Gone sounded temporary, not permanent like dead. Maybe that was how soldiers viewed fatalities in the Army. His comrades never died—they were just gone. “Our father passed away in a horseback-riding accident and Luke’s mother died in a car crash.”
“Must be rough, handling all this on your own.”
“It’s been challenging.” She parked next to the barn. “You should stay for supper.” Hannah decided it would be best if she and Luke had a buffer between them for a while—otherwise they might say something they’d regret. “There’s a cot in the storage room in the barn. You can sleep in there tonight, then leave in the morning.”
Luke would love it if Alonso hung around and did the rest of his chores for him. But that wasn’t why Hannah had extended the invite. She hadn’t been involved with anyone since Seth, and Alonso reminded her of how lonely she was for male attention.
“I could use a good night’s sleep and a warm meal.”
She opened her mouth to ask where he was headed then changed her mind. Come morning Alonso would gone.
* * *
“MY SISTER SAID you’re staying the night.”
“I’ll head out in the morning at first light.”
“You don’t have to clean the horse stalls.”
“Someone has to do it.” Alonso tossed a clump of soiled hay toward the wheelbarrow.
Luke climbed the ladder to the loft and sat, legs dangling above Alonso’s head. Obviously the kid would rather watch than help. No wonder Hannah was miffed at her brother.
“Where will you go when you leave here?” Luke asked.
“I’m not sure. I don’t have any place in mind.” He pointed to the wheelbarrow. “Lend me a hand, will you?”
“And do what?”
Alonso set the pitchfork aside and dragged a hay bale over to a stall, then dropped the wire cutters on top of it. “Spread clean hay in the stalls I’ve already cleaned.”
Luke took his time climbing down from the loft. “A marine recruiter came to our school at the beginning of the year,” he said, tugging on a pair of work gloves. “He made his job sound like fun. Is it?”
“I wouldn’t use the word fun to describe my experience.”
“Where were you stationed?”
“I spent a month at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, before shipping out to Afghanistan.”
“Did any of your friends get killed in Afghanistan?”
Man, the kid was nosy. The doctors and nurses at the hospital tiptoed around the subject and pretended he’d spent time on an exotic island, not in a war-ravaged country. “Three of my friends were killed over there.”
And the hell of it was Alonso had just saved their lives after a roadside bomb had taken out their Humvee. No one expected them to get blown to pieces in the recovery room when an Afghan medic-in-training detonated a bomb strapped to his chest.
“I thought the war was over.”
“It is, but there are still crazies running loose in the country.” Alonso didn’t want to talk about his military experience. “You almost done with that stall?”
“Yeah.”
“Grab another bale and finish this one.”
Luke did as he was told. “You got a girlfriend?”
“Don’t have time for one.” That was what he told his coworkers, but after everything he’d been through, he decided nothing good lasts, so it made no sense wasting his energy on a serious relationship.
“Don’t you like girls?”
“I like girls fine.” He chuckled. “You always so nosy?”
“I guess. It’s just that this place is boring.”
“What do you do to keep busy?”
“Not much. My sister doesn’t like my friends.”
Alonso’s mother hadn’t approved of his school friends but she hadn’t understood that a brainiac kid didn’t stand a chance in hell of surviving in the barrio if he didn’t have buddies to defend him. Alonso’s best friends had made sure he hadn’t been picked on or targeted by gangs.
In the end it had been Cruz’s rebellious behavior that had got all three kicked out of school and enrolled in a special program to earn their GED. To this day Alonso believed he’d never have become a doctor if he hadn’t had the support of their teacher, Maria Alvarez—now Fitzgerald. Things had worked
