Cavanaugh Cowboy. Marie Ferrarella
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were passing at the moment. “You can sleep in there at the end of the day, too.”
The structure wasn’t very much to look at, he thought as they made their way to the open range. “Was that the bunkhouse?”
“You guessed it. It’s closer than the hotel,” she told him drily. “I’ll introduce you to Rawlings and Warren—they should be working on the fencing by now—and then you can get started. Dinner’s at six—unless the job runs over. It’s served in the main house,” she told him, then in case he wondered about the logistics, she explained, “There’s no kitchen in the bunkhouse.”
He figured as much. “Understood.
“You got work gloves?” she asked as the question suddenly occurred to her.
“No.” He’d noticed a general store in town. He could always get a pair there.
Rae frowned slightly.
“It figures.” And, even though she was driving, she paused to take a closer look at his hands. Taking one of his hands in hers, she gave it a cursory glance. “No gloves,” she repeated. “Your hands are softer than Miss Joan’s. Let me guess, you’ve never done any physical labor before.”
“I have,” Sully contradicted. He didn’t care for the woman’s way of passing quick judgments. “I just didn’t think to bring any gloves when I packed.”
“Left in a hurry?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question she didn’t expect him to answer. “Well, we’ll see if we can find you a pair. Wouldn’t want you to mess up those soft hands of yours any more than you really have to.”
Foreman or not, he had had just about enough of the woman’s goading attitude. “Just show me the area that you want me to fix and I’ll worry about my hands.”
She drove to a section of the fence that was clearly in disrepair. It appeared to be about a hairbreadth away from falling over.
Sully noticed the frown on her face was growing more pronounced the closer they came to their destination.
“Something wrong?” he finally asked the woman.
“Yes, there’s something wrong,” she snapped, although this time it didn’t sound as if her annoyance was directed at him or his question. “There should be two people over here.”
She pulled up abruptly, parking the truck. Getting out, she got up into the back of the flatbed and then turned 360 degrees around, trying to get a wider view.
It didn’t help.
Rae started to climb down from the flatbed and was surprised when Sully suddenly offered her his hand.
At first she started to ignore it, then, blowing out a huff of angry air, she wrapped her hand around his and got down.
“Thanks.” Begrudgingly, she all but bit off the word.
He wondered if she had always been this angry, or if it was something she had developed working out here. Either way, he wondered what she looked like when she smiled.
“I take it your two wranglers are supposed to be here,” he surmised.
“They’re not my wranglers,” she corrected. “And yes, they’re supposed to be here. They’re supposed to be working to fix the damn fence.” She let out an exasperated huff. “I had a bad feeling about those two from the minute each of them first set foot on the ranch. Mr. Harry just got too big a heart.”
Having said that, the foreman looked at Sully accusingly.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said by way of denial. “I only met Miss Joan, and she didn’t really strike me as a pushover.”
“That’s because she’s not—that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a good heart,” Rae quickly interjected in case he was going to comment on that.
“Never said she didn’t,” Sully replied.
Standing next to the truck, she looked around again. There was still no sign of either one of the two men who were supposedly currently involved in earning their keep on the ranch.
This was going to put fixing the fence seriously behind schedule, Rae thought irritably.
“Well, those two had better show up if they know what’s good for them. In the meantime, I need you to get to work before this whole fence falls down.” She paused, assessing the man before her. “You want me to show you what to do?”
Amusement curved his lips. He resisted the temptation to tell her to go ahead and demonstrate. “I think I can handle it.”
“For all our sakes, I hope so,” she told him. “I’m going to take the truck and go back to the bunkhouse.” Surveying the work that had to be done, she wasn’t sure if she was making a mistake. “You sure you’ll be all right if I leave you here?”
“Yeah.” As she started to get back in behind the steering wheel, Sully told her almost conversationally, “But if you happen to see buzzards circling this area, I’d take it as a personal favor if you came back.”
Rae looked at him. “By then it’ll probably be too late,” she answered matter-of-factly.
The next moment, the sound of the truck’s engine starting up pierced the otherwise quiet atmosphere. Two minutes later, she was gone.
Sully looked at the posts that were lined up on the ground beside carefully cut lengths of lumber, a sledgehammer, a shovel and what appeared to be enough boxes of nails to build a small city.
It looked as if he had everything he needed, he thought. Time to earn his keep. Sully picked up the shovel and got started.
* * *
This work was hotter than he’d thought it would be. Sully held out as long as he could, but when rivulets of sweat all but sealed his shirt to his body, he peeled the shirt off and then continued working on the fence bare-chested.
That was the way Rae found him when she returned a little while later.
Her breath involuntarily caught in her throat as she absorbed the sight: the stranger’s body glistening with perspiration, the muscles in his upper arms straining with each movement he made. The man had abdominal muscles that looked as if they had been chiseled out of rock, and for the first time since she was fifteen years old, Rae’s mind suddenly went numb.
The next moment, because there was someone else in the truck with her, she managed to slowly regulate her breathing and collect herself.
“Who’s that?” Jack Rawlings, the passenger in the truck, asked.
“Someone who’s not afraid of work,” she replied, taking no pains to hide her displeasure with her passenger.
Getting out of the truck, she strode up behind Sully. “Maybe you should put that shirt back on, Cavanaugh,” she told him.
Caught off guard, Sully swung around. He looked at Rae and then at the man with her. “You have a dress code out here?” he asked the woman, keeping an innocent expression on his face.
“No, other than making sure you keep your pants on,” she informed him. “But that sun is pretty merciless around this time of day. If you don’t put your shirt back on, you’re probably going to watch your skin start peeling off before evening.”
He shrugged off her so-called concern. “Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty resilient.” Sully looked around the foreman’s shoulder at the man standing just behind her, taking all this. He made an assumption. “I thought you said there were two other men working on the ranch.”
“There were. There are,” Rae said, correcting herself. “But apparently the other one—Warren—decided to take off, at least according to Rawlings here.”
“He did,” the other man, a rather dusty, jowly-looking man who appeared to be somewhere