go after the scrap wood.”
“Are we only organizing? Or are we also sorting and discarding?”
“Sorting and discarding.” He waited to see whether they needed to write a formal plan of action, delineating objectives before embarking on the cleanup, but Taylor seemed satisfied with a verbal.
“You’re not really up for this, are you?” And was he horrible for rather enjoying her discomfort?
“A deal is a deal,” she said stiffly. She looked down at her pretty painted nails. “I need gloves.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his extra pair and handed them to her.
“Thank you.”
They walked around the barn to where Karl had stacked debris for the past thirty years on top of the debris he’d inherited from his father.
“You know what a T-post looks like?”
“A ‘T’?”
“Just checking,” he said. “After insulting you with the Angus cow incident—”
“I did an oral report on cattle in the fifth grade. I have good recall.”
“No report on fence posts?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
He dug into the jumble of fence posts and grabbed a bent T-post. After fighting it for a few seconds, he managed to free it from its buddies and hold it up. “It’s these ones with the spade on the end. If you find a bent one, we’ll chuck it into the back of the truck.” Which he did, one-handed. “If it’s straight, we’ll stack them here.”
“Got it.” She stepped onto the junk at the edge of the debris, and her foot slipped. Cole reached out and caught her arm with his good hand, steadying her. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Up to date on tetanus?”
“If I say no, I guess that means you can’t work my ass off.” She shot him a hopeful glance.
“And then you’ll have to move.”
She gave a mock sigh. “Totally up to date.” She reached down for a T-post tangled in wire and a mishmash of other bent posts. It didn’t move. She let go to choose another, which also refused to budge. “You?”
“Likewise.” Handling as much rusty wire as he did while fixing fences, he couldn’t afford not to be up to date.
Taylor propped her hands on her hips and surveyed the tangled mess with a deep frown.
This was going to take all day if Taylor kept grabbing posts and letting go of them. “Look, if you find a post that’s—”
Taylor made a dismissive gesture, then reached down, grabbed the end of a post and pulled. When it didn’t give, she started shaking it up and down and then twisting it sideways until finally she yanked it free, almost falling over backward in the process.
“Way to work out your aggressions,” Cole muttered.
She ignored him and tossed the post toward the bed of the truck as he had. It hit the side with a clang and landed on the gravel. Cole gave her a look.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll do better next time.”
“Or maybe you think if you beat up my truck that you’ll get put on another detail?”
“Show me the dent,” she said.
Okay. She had a point. The truck was so dented from years of work that it would be almost impossible to find the new ding.
Cole tipped back his hat. “I’m getting the idea you really hate this.”
“I hate busywork.” She lifted her chin at him, clearly challenging him to deny that was what they were doing. “This yard has been here since I was a kid. No one has ever done anything but add to it. Why are we sorting it?”
“I promised your grandfather.”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “So this isn’t something you cooked up to make me miserable?”
“I didn’t cook it up,” he said, without addressing the “make her miserable” part. He didn’t really want her to be miserable…but he didn’t mind seeing her get her hands dirty. “If you don’t want to work, you can move. You agreed to farm labor.”
“I’m not going to move.”
“Then I guess you have to adapt.”
She gave him a long look that he couldn’t even come close to reading. Then she gave a small nod. “Good idea.”
“How’s that?” Cole asked automatically.
She reached down for another post. Cole stood back, not wanting an elbow to the lip, but this time she lifted and twisted and eventually worked it free of the pile without doing either of them any damage.
She held up the post. “Johnson.”
Cole stared at her. “You’re naming the posts?”
“I’m working out my aggressions, as you suggested. Johnson always made me ask for information I needed twice. Or three times. Power game.” She heaved the post toward the pickup, where it landed square in the middle of the bed with a rattling bang. “Take that, Johnson.”
“Good aim this time,” Cole muttered. “Who’s next?”
Taylor grabbed another post and didn’t bother pulling, but instead twisted. And twisted some more. “Melanie. Didn’t do her job. Talked about me behind my back. Still…” yank “with…” twist “…the company…” A few seconds later, Melanie joined Johnson.
Cole tipped his hat back. “Anyone else?”
Taylor propped her gloved hands on her hips and pursed her lips as she considered the roster in her head. “One more.” She took hold of a gnarly rusted post, twisted, yanked, pulled, tripped and fell backward on her ass. She got back up, took another crack at the post, then eventually worked it free. Perspiration beaded on her forehead. “Erickson.”
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“My supervisor, who encouraged me to believe I was irreplaceable and that I should continue to work eighty-hour weeks.” She heaved the post. It hit the bed of the truck on end and ricocheted out, landing on the ground. She climbed off the pile and retrieved Erickson.
“He always was a slippery dude, but I thought he was on my side.” She threw the post back into the truck.
“Do you maybe want to bend him a little?” Cole asked, gesturing to where the post now lay.
She met his eyes, wiping her glove over her forehead, leaving a rusty smear. “You have no idea,” she said grimly.
He
