But even this brief interaction was a reminder of her inadequacies. She hadn’t realized lemon trees had thorns until she started cutting them. She should have worn long sleeves and gloves.
She changed the subject. “So, how was your week?”
“The usual: checking fences, moving irrigation pipe, and plotting to overthrow all those who stand in my way.”
“Glad to know I’m in your thoughts.”
He smiled. “You are. Always.”
That was a comfort. Or maybe not. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if he was flirting or gloating.
By mid-December,and still without a foreman’s help, Kate had fallen behind on all but the essential ranch tasks. Finally, her father called to tell her he’d hired Gary Williams, one of his high school friend’s younger brothers, for the job. Her father was very pleased with himself for finding Gary because he’d had a dozen years of experience and could start immediately. Her father had also convinced him to work for half salary with the understanding that after Kate inherited the ranch, the family would give him twenty-five thousand dollars in cattle.
“What if I end up not inheriting the ranch?” Kate asked. It was always a worry. She’d managed—mostly by selling off the weened calves—to keep the ranch in the black, but with them gone, she was doubly dependent on the calves that would be born in the spring. She needed them to replenish her numbers.
“That’s the beauty of this arrangement,” her father said. “Gary has an incentive to work hard to make sure you inherit the ranch. And paying him less will give you an extra cushion of twenty-five thousand. Shouldn’t be hard to keep the ranch profitable now.”
Well, one would hope.
The next day Gary moved into the foreman’s cottage. He was the opposite of Dewayne in manyways. Dewayne had been wiry and clean-shaven. Gary had a bushy mustache, arms like ham hocks, and a belly that hung over the turquoise belt buckle he always wore. He was quick to smile and even quicker to talk. By the time he’d been at Coyote Glenn for a week, Kate knew all about the ranch he’d worked at in Wyoming and the one before that in Nevada. She also knew about his soon to be ex-wife, Darla, and how the woman was taking Gary to the cleaners in their divorce.
More than once, Kate had toend a conversation by reminding him that they both had work to do. It always made her feel awkward to be his sympathetic ear. Details about his ex-wife’s infidelity felt too intimate. And the stories about his glory days in high school, yeah, she didn’t want to hear those either. By January, Kate almost missed Dewayne’s judgmental sullenness.
The other worrisome thing about Gary was that more and more beer cans popped up around the ranch. She found them perched on fence posts, abandoned in the tack room, and resting on haystacks. If the number of forgotten cans was so high, how many was he drinking that he didn’t mislay?
She told herself that Gary’s drinking habits weren’t any of her business, not if they didn’t affect his work. Divorce had to be hard on a man. Her breakup with Landon still weighed on her, and the two of them hadn’t dated that long, let alone been married. Any time she was close to the property line that divided Coyote Glen from the Wyle Away, she paused and looked in that direction as though she might catch sight of Landon riding by.
She hadn’t told anyone at church that Gary was working for her, and whenever there were errands to run in town, she did them. It was easier to keep track of receipts that way, and besides, she’d hired Gary for his expertise with animals so it made sense to leave him with them. Still, she knew news of her foreman would get around. Gary had gone to high school in the area and had a few—as he called them—lady friends who lived in Bisbee. He spent his nights off frequenting Bisbee’s bars with them, and judging from the stories he told Kate, generally acted like a drunken teenager on spring break.
She knew that Landon wouldn’t approve of Gary so it wasn’t really a surprise when Landon strolled up to Kate in the church foyer and said, “I heard you hired Gary Williams. How’s he working out?”
“Oh, I don’t think he works out,” she said, purposely misinterpreting the question. “Ranching keeps him too busy for the gym.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s busy. He has a reputation for partying harder than he works.”
She chewed the inside of her mouth, unsure how much to say about that.
Landon eyes narrowed as he surveyed her. “And I can tell by the way you didn’t jump to his defense that his behavior hasn’t changed.”
Man, Landon could read her better than she’d thought. “What he does after hours is his own concern.” It was all the defense she could offer in Gary’s behalf.
Landon was still scrutinizing her. “As long as itisafter hours.”
Gary’s drinking clearly wasn’t, but he seemed capable of working a cattle chute with a beer in his hand. She doubted he would ever try to work completely drunk. It was too dangerous to be impaired around cattle. The animals seemed to either run away or run straight at you.
Landon lowered his voice. “His work ethic aside, do you feel safe with him there?”
The question struck a note of poignancy inside her, not because she was worried about Gary putting the moves on her—he seemed harmless enough in that regard—but because her safety mattered to Landon. He was worried about her. That meant he still cared about her, didn’t it?
Then again, Landon was the type that would worry about any woman who might be in danger. He was like a knight in shining Levis…who was no longer interested in her.
She sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
He nodded, his gaze firmly on her eyes, and she knew he was trying to discern whether she was being honest or not.
“I lock the doors at night,” she added to reassure him. “And of course Missy would protect me, you know, unless an attacker bribed her with cheese.”
“Just remember, you can call me if you ever don’t feel safe.”