Stranded Ranch : A Sweet Cowboy Romance (A Pride and Pranks Romance)

Chapter 3

The wind and snow pelted our faces as I led our guest toward the empty corral next to my grandpa’s prized stock of Piedmontese cows, which he kept close to the house to keep an eye on. Dusty humored me by following behind, waiting for me to open the gate. He had the assured movements of a man who had been here often. He knew what he was doing and where everything was, but he let me lead. I held the gate open for him as he backed his ginormous truck and trailer to the entrance of the corral. He jumped out and swung the door open, nudging and prodding his cattle to exit the trailer. When each of the cows were safely locked in the corral, he lifted a hay bale out of the back of his truck and carried it to the manger, cut the string with a knife and began kicking the hay toward the hungry cattle. Let me paint a more vivid picture—he lifted the fifty-pound hay bale like it was a tiny, baby sack of flour.

Even in the freezing, nearly blinding snowstorm, I stared after him. What was it about seeing a man engage in physical labor that was so attractive? The cowboy hat? It definitely gave him a few extra points. I couldn’t see any muscles bulging because of his coat, but they were there. I knew they were. Blinking, I realized I was looking at him in the way my younger sister Julia used to, and I forced my body to take action.

“I’ll go open up your room and turn your heater on.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond before I turned and strode toward the first cabin. In front of our farmhouse, close to the road, sat a row of four small wooden, one-room cabins that served as motel rooms for weary guests making the trek across the long state of Wyoming hauling cattle.

I stood before cabin number one, closest to the house and corrals, and pulled the master key from Grandpa’s office out of my pocket. The door swung open easily and I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. I groped around for a light switch and flipped it on. A lone lamp sitting on the nightstand next to the queen-sized bed illuminated the darkness with a hazy yellow glow. There was a small desk across from the bed which held a TV. On the other side of the bed was a small vanity with a door leading into a bathroom. The air smelled musty as if it had been locked up for quite some time. Grandpa said he rarely had overnight guests at the motel during the worst parts of winter, so there was a good chance that it hadn’t been aired out since last fall. I walked toward the vanity area and found another light, turning it on. This time it was a florescent light and helped to brighten the place considerably.

I could see my breath so I busied myself turning the heater on. I desperately wanted to leave the door open to air out the smell but decided against creating a snowdrift inside his room. Glancing at the bed again, I tried to imagine Dusty’s frame on the queen size mattress. Were queen-size beds always this short? The room itself brought back a few memories. As children, my sister and I would help Grandma clean the rooms when they had been vacated. It was one of my favorite parts of visiting the ranch. Without a doubt, somebody usually left something behind and if they didn’t call to claim it within three days, Grandma would let us have it. It became a treasure hunt of sorts with Julia and me. We had found sunglasses, earrings, necklaces, a few handkerchiefs, pocket knives, and the occasional item Grandma would gasp at, yank out of my hand and throw away, red-faced, before washing all of our hands.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and bounced up and down for a moment, checking the comfort level. I couldn’t imagine my grandparents spending the money to update the beds too often, but to my surprise, this one felt comfortable with just the right amount of spring.

It was at that exact moment, as I was checking his bed for spring level, that Dusty chose to open the door. His eyes widened as they swept over me bouncing on his bed. I bolted upward instantly.

My hands flew to my hair, currently splayed out in all directions, and tucked an imaginary piece behind my ear as I smiled. “Hey. That was fast. I was just checking…” My words came out in a tumble off my tongue, desperately wanting to prove the normalcy of doing the bounce check on the hot guy’s motel bed, but the words left me as fast as they began. I tried again. “I was just checking…”

WHAT, Lucy? What in the devil’s name were you checking??

Dusty had a small smile playing on his lips as he watched me struggle, but did nothing to alleviate the discomfort of the moment. He just let me sit in it—waiting. Again. I had forgotten what a stinker he was.

I breathed a nonchalant laugh. Then more words happened. Fast and without much pause. “Everything looks good. Sorry about the smell. My grandparents don’t have too many guests in the winter. I don’t think they’ve aired it out much since the fall. I turned your heater on, so it should start warming up in a bit.” I took great interest in looking everywhere but at him, giving to all the world a convincing show of me being a concerned motel room manager, even though all I could hear in my brain was the sound of the squeak of the bed when he entered. “There should be plenty of towels. You’re welcome to take a shower as well. ” My eyes bulged. Stop talking about beds and showers. Get out. Get out. Get out.

“Well, let me know if you need anything.” I beamed in his general direction as I attempted to pass by him on the threshold of the doorway he was still standing in. When he didn’t move and my eye-line hit a broad chest, I looked up. His amused green eyes studied mine for a moment. Though he didn’t look anywhere else, my body didn’t seem to know that. Trails of goosebumps lit up all over me as his mouth lifted into a smile.

“Thanks, Lucy.” Heat. So much heat as his low mumble made my stomach simmer. “It’s been good to see you again.”

I smiled, this time more normal. “You too.”

He turned his body slightly so I could pass by him, my arm brushing against his torso.

“I busted open the water trough and threw a couple of extra bales in for your grandpa’s cows. They should be good till morning.”

I stopped and turned, our bodies close as I grasped the door handle behind me for support. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I know, but I appreciate you letting me stay. It would have been a cold night in my truck.”

My eyes fell to his lips for a second. They flew up just as fast, but he saw it. Why was he as cool as a cucumber while I was a neurotic rodent? I even had the dark eyes and crazy hair to prove it. I stepped out into the blustery wind before turning back. “It’s not a problem. Glad to have you. Have a good night.”

I threw a wave and beelined it toward the safety of the house, mentally flogging myself for every word I’d spoken in the past two minutes.

* * *

Have a good night.

Have a good night.

I had thought those were safe words. Out of all the words I had spewed, those words were the most normal, right?

Wrong.

It was 9 pm. He was stranded here. There was not a stitch of food for him to eat in that room. I doubt he carried much with him in his truck. I fed him cocoa but hadn’t even thought that he might not have eaten dinner. There was nowhere along the Wyoming highway that would have been open with the upcoming storm. I had eaten dinner at 4 pm with my elderly roommates and even my stomach was interested in more food. IT WAS MY JOB TO FEED HIM. But I had basically told him we were done for the night.

If he was the man he seemed, he would never come begging for food. I had to offer it. Which meant I would have to go back outside and invite him back into the house. I hurled myself, face forward onto the couch, banging my forehead against the armrest for good measure.

This was all Dusty’s fault. Why would he be out on the roads with the storm warning? If I had only had some idea he would be coming, I could have prepared my mind for a hot cowboy man guest. But instead, I get blindsided by a grown-up, sexy, Josh Duhamel face with a football player’s body and doe eyes...and cows...and wanting to stay the night.

It was discombobulating.

Also, what was I going to make for dinner? As a strong, independent working woman, I couldn’t care less what he thought of my cooking. I imagined my grandma tinkering at the stovetop making her famous fried chicken and mashed potatoes for her guests. Which honestly sounded divine, but a bit too 1950’s for my taste…and skill level. BUT as an available woman, very much attracted to a man she was inviting to dinner, who may or may not have been on less than three dates in the past two years, I wanted him to like my cooking. The only problem was, I didn’t cook. At all. I was single. Who was I going to cook for? I was a great heater-upper of take-out and the frozen food section of the grocery store. I also loved salads and fresh produce. I got along just fine. But I did have my nieces and nephews stay over at my house on occasion and had been known to whip up some mean pancakes and syrup.

I raced to my grandparents’ freezer and thankfully found it stocked full of frozen bacon. I snagged a package and started thawing it out in the microwave while I fumbled around the kitchen, heart-pounding, trying desperately to recall my pancake recipe that was so good. I flipped through a few of my grandma’s cookbooks but didn’t see anything that remotely resembled my recipe. With my grandpa off of gluten, Grandma must have gotten rid of all her delicious cookbooks rife with wheat. I had no access to the internet to look up a recipe and wasn’t about to go crazy with the one pancake recipe I found from Grandma’s stash, some sort of buckwheat hotcake something or other. And there was no way I was going back up to my grandma’s room to check in on her. She would demand I put together some five-course meal completely beyond my skill level and force me to put on some makeup. Which to be honest…wouldn’t hurt, but he had already seen me as I was and it would be too embarrassing to justify lipstick and blush at this point.

I sighed. I thought about French toast, but having never been around gluten-free food, the bread in my grandma’s freezer terrified me. Surely pancakes couldn’t be hard. Saddle up your bonnet, Lucy May. Time to get homemade.

After twenty minutes or so of puttering around in the kitchen, adding eggs and oil and milk, I reached for the flour container in the cupboard by the stove. I started with a cup and dumped it in, giving everything a good mix. It still felt too runny. As I picked up the cup to dump more flour in, something on the container caught my eye.

Written on a piece of masking tape curled up at the edges, in faded black ink were the words ‘gluten-free flour.’

“Shoot.” I dropped the cup inside the flour as if it might burn me. I wasn’t sure why I felt such a rush to provide this meal to a man who had no idea it was coming, but the hour kept getting later and I didn’t want to look like a fool asking him over for dinner at midnight. My grandma was low on eggs and with the storm coming, I hated to waste the ingredients I’d already used. Shuffling toward her baking cupboard again, I prayed she had some regular flour to make this all okay. I scooted the white and brown sugar canisters out of my way and, lo and behold, a faded plastic ice cream container with a blue lid and handle pushed to the back held the words, ‘fresh ground flour.’

That sounded promising.

Opening the lid, I dumped another cup inside my pancake batter, stirred it up, and added a few dashes of salt, baking powder and baking soda to the mixture.

At last, I had something that resembled pancake batter, although perhaps a bit thicker than normal. Okay, it was very thick. Sludge thick. Maybe a whole cup of extra flour was overkill. The taste wasn’t too bad, though. Hopefully, slathered in syrup it could pass for a decent pancake. Bacon was sizzling on the stove, and I had another pan warming up for the pancakes. The only thing left to do was gain an ounce of courage. I was about to stuff myself back into my coat and boots when I remembered I could call his room from my grandparents’ landline. I rushed into my grandpa’s office and found the sheet of phone numbers laminated and pinned up on a cork board near his phone. Before I could lose my nerve, I dialed the number for his room and forced myself not to hang up.

“Hello?”

“Hey. It’s me. Lucy.”

“Lucy who?” I heard the smile in his voice, which made my face break out into a ridiculous grin.

“Better be careful, this is the Lucy that’s about to offer you food.”

“Is this the Lucy that’s kind of short? Really pretty? I’m listening.”

My heart took off like a freight train as elation bubbled up inside of me. How long had it been since a man had flirted with me? He wasn’t even in the same room and my skin felt all blotchy and hot and bothered.

“I…um.” More awkward pause while all thoughts in my head vanished. He just called me pretty and, at the moment, I looked like Sasquatch’s twin sister.

He chuckled, quiet and deep, easing me out of my head. “What were you thinking for food?”

“I’ve got bacon cooking and I”m about to put some pancakes on.”

“For future reference, all you have to say is bacon and I’ll be right over.”

I bit back a smile. “You really are like a stray cat.”

“You have no idea. On my way.”

I hung up the phone and stared at it for ten whole seconds, heart pounding. Then I took the stairs five at a time and flung myself into the bathroom. If my calculations were correct, it would take him about one minute to pull on his boots and coat and make his way to the house. I intended to make good use of the forty-five seconds I had left. It was too late to change out of my gray oversized sweatpants and sweatshirt, but I sure as heck was going to do damage control on my face and hair. I gasped when I saw my face in the mirror. A raccoon indeed. The snow that had beat against my face had caused the eyeliner from yesterday to leave a smudge of darkness under my eyes. The top knot of hair on the crown of my head had black chunks shooting every which way. I pulled out my makeup remover pads and erased the dark circles, touching up with a few strokes of mascara. I pulled my hair out of the bun to gauge what I was working with. It was bent and crinkled and shot out in so many crazy directions from hours in the same twisted position that I had no choice but to put it back up in the bun. It was still pretty messy but now had more of a cool, influencer vibe as opposed to a wild dog in a tornado. It seemed counter-productive to brush my teeth when I was just going to shove my mouth full of sugar-laden carbs, so I didn’t, but I did throw on a few swipes of deodorant.

The knock at the door ended my clean-up time. I made my way down the stairs, my heart beating erratically, suddenly wondering why I hadn’t just let him starve in his room.