Chapter 2 #2
When I finished dealing with the hands’ grunts and reticent agreements, I turned to him again. He seemed to be lost in his thoughts again, but at least carrying the suitcase was giving him something to do. He looked more focused.
“So, do you have experience with the animals here?”
I should list them to be more thorough, but it would take me the entire afternoon. Besides, we were a rescue for wild animals. We didn’t have the benefit of turning around one big cat or another because it just wasn’t something we’d boarded before.
Some other refuges might be able to sell it with all their fancy words, but it made my blood boil every fucking time.
If we hadn’t had an animal before, we researched the hell out of it to give them the habitat they needed and got in touch with a specialist to train our team of vets and volunteers.
Was it hard? Yeah, but for fuck’s sake, one didn’t work in a fucking refuge because they wanted things easy. It didn’t make any sense.
“Um. Saúl?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The guy had been talking all this time, hadn’t he?
Everyone said I had a way of getting in my head when I got angry.
“Sorry, come again?”
I focused on Swiftheart’s hooves against the arid terrain. It always helped to ground me in the present—and I needed to stay present if I was going to keep up with Cam’s rushed words and the shifts in his intonation whenever he grew more insecure about what he was saying.
It better all be first-day jitters. He wasn’t going to survive a day with the rest of the workers if he didn’t figure out something else soon.
“I worked in a zoo just outside of the city,” he explained.
“I was in charge of all the big cats, and I’ve got the training to deal with other big carnivores.
And I volunteered with the horses at the university hospital while I was studying.
All my certificates are up to date, and your dad talked with my supervisors at the zoo. ”
I grunted. At least he had a decent answer.
Silence settled between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
Well, I had an inkling it was uncomfortable for him because he felt like a live wire about to explode, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to it.
I needed to grab some food, too. When I was working, it was easy to lose sight of that shit, especially now that there was no one to call over because food was ready.
There used to be a chef—usually a student who helped Ma plan the meals and bulk freeze shit.
Now it was just me, and I’d rather use that salary to keep the animals well cared for, or to handle any of the emergencies that popped up from time to time.
It would be depressing as fuck to hire someone to cook just for me, too.
The ranch hands had been given the option, but they had a good system between them, taking turns.
I’d been offered to be part of it, but given how many people had left because I was around?
I preferred the woes of solitude to the risk of losing more of the workforce.
They were all great with the animals. They could be whatever they wanted with me.
“You came straight from the airport?”
“Yeah.” Cam fidgeted with his hands while I took Swiftheart to the smaller stable by the front of the house.
I supposed it would be an impressive sight for someone who hadn’t grown up here—Colonial style, it had been used to house entire families at a time.
A big family could fit comfortably between the two expansive floors, and the attic gave it more height.
“Well, I took a couple of buses here and then I… walked.”
The nearest bus stop was about ten miles away from where he’d been.
Why the fuck hadn’t he called before? There wasn’t any danger in this area, per se, but I could’ve grabbed my truck and picked him up.
Hell, if I’d known he was coming, I would’ve gone to greet him at the airport. The connection was spotty here at the best of times, and he wasn’t the first person to have ever gotten lost for trusting GPS systems that hadn’t updated their data about these parts in the past decade.
“Take a shower, then. I’ll grab some food in the meantime.”
“A shower sounds good.”
I bet.
“Come on, then.”
If I’d wanted or I remembered what it was like to feel proud of this house, I would’ve given him a grand tour that could’ve taken us the better portion of an hour.
I didn’t, so I simply pointed to the rooms on the first floor—living room, dining room, kitchen, a bathroom that I never used because the toilet kept clogging no matter how many times I’d fixed it up, and a sunroom that used to be a library but now I’d repurposed to get some quiet, bonding time with the cubs that couldn’t yet be introduced to the other animals.
The second floor was even more straightforward—a study I either loved or dreaded, depending on my reason for being there, three bedrooms, and three other bathrooms. I hated the long hallways and thought whoever built it didn’t think it through because there must’ve been a more compact style, but hey.
I had a home, and it hadn’t cost me a kidney and a half.
“So… which one is your room?”
“One furthest to the left. That’s the bathroom I use, too.”
Cameron nodded sharply and quickly headed to the right.
I could appreciate someone who respected personal space, so I left him to it and went back downstairs.
I didn’t have a lot of food in the kitchen, but I had had the wits to unfreeze a shepherd’s pie Ma had left behind after one of her biweekly visits.
It was certainly a blessing that her moving away didn’t mean she had abandoned me to my fate.
I didn’t mind cooking—I could even find it relaxing when it was something I’d mastered, like my spinach and cheddar quiche—but the schedule of an animal refuge this size didn’t leave a lot of time—or energy—for it.
Hence why most places had an in-house cook, but I was the stubborn jackass who was going without one.
While the pie reheated in the microwave—no, I couldn’t be arsed to get the oven working—I grabbed an apple from the bowl in the middle of the granite counter, cut it into pieces, and headed back outside to give my mare the treat.
It wasn’t as if Cameron would finish showering—and unpacking—in the two minutes I’d be outside.
If he somehow did, he could figure out how to find me.
It could be a test of sorts, to see how he responded to uncertainty. There was plenty of that to go around these parts.
For better or worse, though, when I headed back to the house, the water was still running upstairs.