to work sorting wood and scrap metal. In silence for the most part. By noon, they’d made some serious inroads into the junk behind the barn. Some Cole planned to sell for scrap, sinking the money back into Karl’s place. Most of it went to the dump, with Taylor driving the ton truck, since his knee still wasn’t clutch friendly. It was getting better, though.
His wrist was another story, but he had to use the hand to work. When the doctor had told him not to do anything to jar it for at least a week, he’d nodded as if he intended to follow orders. He had his own way of dealing with injuries. If it hurt, he stopped doing it. If it didn’t, or hurt only a little, he carried on.
He glanced over at Taylor as she turned onto the road leading to the landfill. Today’s load was wood, so they took the fork to the left after entering the facility. She expertly backed up to the oversize receptacle, then beat Cole around the truck to the tailgate, which she opened by hitting it in just the right place with the heel of her hand to pop the latch.
She was better at this farm stuff than she wanted to be. Maybe it was her natural-born efficiency. Maybe she couldn’t help wanting to be the best at whatever she did.
Again, sex came to mind, and again, he shoved the thought aside.
Taylor started tossing wood out of the truck with a vengeance, and Cole stepped forward to help.
“Do any of these have names?” he asked as a split plank sailed past him.
She hurled another broken plank through the air. “I could go through the mean girls in high school.”
Cole pulled a splintered piece of lodge pole free. “Where did you fit in the social hierarchy?”
Taylor stopped and brushed the back of her glove over her forehead. “Are you asking if I was a mean girl?”
“Were you?”
She straightened and drilled him with a hard look that made him feel slightly ashamed, even if he had good reason to ask. He was attempting to distance himself—or better yet, to have her distance herself from him. “I wasn’t mean. I was confident. How about you?”
“Wildly popular.” Right. Cowboy geeks were never wildly popular. He tossed a piece of wood underhanded.
Her gaze never wavered. “I’ll bet you were. And that was an asshole question you asked me.”
Cole didn’t argue with her. It had been. “Just trying to get a handle.”
“By asking if I was mean?”
He bent to pick up another piece of rotten board. “All I was asking is if you were one of the school elite.”
“I don’t think you were.” The words were cool, a statement of fact he couldn’t deny.
“Maybe we should drop this subject.”
She hurled a piece of wood with rather impressive force, making him wonder if his name was on that one. “Yes. Maybe we should.”
Taylor didn’t talk as she drove back to the farm. She focused on the road with an intensity that told Cole that he might have his wish. She might back totally away from him, and all it had taken was his acting like an ass.
Did he regret it?
He told himself no. He needed to focus on his livelihood. And what if Karl was the old-fashioned sort who didn’t like his tenant screwing around with his granddaughter?
Not likely, but there was always a possibility.
After returning to the farm, they broke for lunch, heading off to their respective abodes. Cole made himself a sandwich, leaning back against his counter to eat as he wondered how the afternoon would play out. Until he’d asked about her place in high school society, there’d been a sense of something simmering just below the surface, ready to break out.
Hopefully he’d taken care of that.
Taylor was already sorting through debris when he walked around the barn, pulling a glove onto his good hand. He dived in, pulling bent rebar out of a stack of pipe and metal rails. They worked for most of the afternoon with next to no conversation.
It was not a comfortable silence.
Taylor worked methodically, seemingly lost in thought, but the few times they’d reached for the same piece of debris, she’d pulled her hand back as if not wanting to chance touching him.
And since that was what he wanted, it made no sense that he was so stupidly aware of her. Taylor was a hard worker. She may not like farmwork, she may still believe that clearing the boneyard was busywork, but she was now committed to the task.
And maybe he’d made his point about working her ass off. Did he really want to spend time like this, working next to a woman he would be better off avoiding? There were things they could each do alone.
The stack of pipe shifted, and Taylor let out a yelp as the fingers of her glove got trapped. She yanked her hand free of her glove, which dangled from where it was caught between two pieces of rusting metal.
“Son of a—”
“Are you okay?”
Taylor frowned at him before working her glove free. “Fine.” She rubbed her thumb over her forefinger, which must have gotten pinched, then slipped the glove back on and went to work again.
Cole moved farther away. Working next to her was driving him kind of crazy—because he wasn’t being honest about this whole situation.
Maybe he needed to say, “Hey, what should we do about this mutual attraction that won’t be good for either of us?” Then Taylor could come up with some parameters and goals and they could deal. Together.
Yeah, right.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he stepped down off the pile of debris he was sorting through to answer.
“Hey, Jance. What’s up?” Nothing bad, he hoped, but Jancey didn’t usually call to shoot the breeze.
“I just wanted to touch base.”
“Yeah?” he asked gently, staring off over his fields as he held the phone to his ear, yet totally aware of the woman still working behind him.
“Yeah.” She fell into silence, and he waited. “I was wondering…since you’ve left and stuff…do you feel differently about the ranch?”
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Oh…I’ve just been thinking a lot. Now that I’m about to leave the place.”
“I love the ranch. I don’t think anything will change that.” He paced away from the debris piles toward the barn. If he was going to have to talk his sister down, he wanted to do it in private.
“So you’d never sell. Right?”
He made a sputtering noise. “No.” He’d never sell because Miranda would somehow end up with the entire place, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. And because it was his and Jancey’s birthright. Their family settled
