7. Meg
CHAPTER 7
MEG
T here’s a point in sleep deprivation where you move beyond tired and get giddy instead, like a little kid who’s hyped up on sugar. Meg had reached that point long ago and was now pretty much delirious. Even if she went and laid down in bed, she felt too wired to even be able to sleep, like an overtired baby. Not to mention, there was the very important fact that she was starving.
As soon as they got back to the house, the new foal already up and about on wobbly legs, Meg headed straight for the kitchen. Straight to the fridge really, more on instinct than from any idea of what she was going to make. In fact, she stared at the contents of the refrigerator with blank eyes for a full two minutes. Then a pair of large hands rested on her shoulders and steered her out of the way.
“I think I’ll be the one cooking,” Nash said gently. His usual stony expression had softened in the early morning light.
“I can cook for myself,” Meg protested. He just raised an eyebrow at her.
“Yeah. Sure, you can. Why don’t you make some coffee instead? That doesn’t involve hot stoves and possible burns.”
“I’m fine,” she sniffed but followed his orders anyway, heading to the coffee machine on the corner of the counter.
“I know,” Nash placated, like she really was a cranky toddler. “Consider it a payment for waking you up in the middle of the night.”
Meg pursed her lips but stopped fighting. He was probably right… Handling a hot stove in her current daze probably wasn’t wise. And hot food sounded perfect right about now.
Meg started up the coffee machine, spooning in liberal amounts of grounds. She knew she was properly exhausted when she started getting impulsive. Impulsive over stupid stuff. Like the thought that she should just eat a teaspoon of the coffee grounds. If you could drink coffee, surely you could eat it too? That was what chocolate was anyway. Wasn’t it? They came from the same bean. Surely just a little nibble wouldn’t hurt; it would at least ease her curiosity.
Luckily, Nash scooted past her to get to the fridge, and she was freed from that spiral of bad ideas. Meg dumped the spoonful of coffee grounds into the machine and decided to keep that particular delirious impulse to herself.
He cracked a half dozen eggs into the skillet, added a colossal amount of bacon to a separate pan and ignited the old-fashioned gas stove. Almost immediately it started to hiss and crackle, and Meg couldn’t think of a better sound in the world.
“I’m assuming that you want some,” Nash drawled, gesturing at the stovetop. Meg had to make a conscious effort not to drool.
“You assumed correctly,” she said and sat down before she was tempted to do anything else stupid. She didn’t need an audience for her sleep-deprived shenanigans, thank you very much.
“My old boss never would have made me food for answering a night call,” she said with a yawn.
“I’m not your boss.”
“Contractually, you are.”
Nash just grunted in a disagreeing sort of way. “So your old boss was ungrateful?”
“Just an idiot in general. In a too-big hat.”
Nash snorted. “So he was clearly compensating for something, then.”
“Oh, definitely.”
He shook his head as he poked the eggs around the skillet.
Despite avoiding Nash at all costs while she’d been here, Meg had still been insatiably curious about how he’d ended up doing all of this. Yesterday she had zero intentions of asking any questions, but now… it seemed safer to edge towards asking personal questions with his back turned and his hands occupied by something else.
“So I have a question…” she started.
“Yeah?”
He sounded happy enough for her to ask, not defensive. His shoulders didn’t hunch up or anything, so Meg went ahead and asked.
“How on earth did you end up running a ranch ?”
He turned a little to look over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised because he definitely hadn’t been expecting that. Then he laughed, one bright note, and for a second it was like the Nash she used to know had come back to life. Meg allowed herself a small smile, but only when he turned his back on her, his attention back on the skillets.
“Long story,” he said, poking at the bacon.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She waited, letting him think, and sure enough he started to tell his “long story.”
“We had an uncle, me and Will, who passed away when I had just turned twenty. None of us had really seen him much. None of the family had. He was pretty much a recluse towards the end. Anyway, he left the place to me and Will.”
“Oh wow,” said Meg. “And how’d the rest of the family take that?”
“Most of them were just kind of baffled,” Nash said, flipping some eggs. “The rest were just relieved that they weren’t the ones saddled with the responsibility of the place. Only a couple were mad that they didn’t get the land so that they could sell it for a profit. But I never liked them anyway, so no losses there.”
From this angle Meg could see a small smile lifting up the corner of Nash’s mouth, the sunlight hitting his cheek through the kitchen window.
“Everyone told us to sell it, live off the money, you know, that sort of thing. But me and Will are a little stubborn.”
“A little?”
He turned his head again and cocked an eyebrow at her. “Yeah. A little . And we were young and invincible, and we could totally take on a whole ranch by ourselves. Besides, neither of us had anything better to do. I was working shifts at the supermarket, just saving money ’cause there wasn’t anywhere to spend it out here. And then I get handed a whole ranch to keep myself busy? I leapt at the chance. Didn’t think anything could go wrong. And Will was excited for the adventure of it all. I guess I was just happy to be pointed in any sort of direction, you know?”
Nash had always been so carefree in school. Meg had always seen it as a positive thing, how he rolled with the punches, not held down by anything concrete. But hearing him talk about being directionless , it sounded sad. And kind of lonely.
“And is Will okay?” Meg asked hesitantly. Because she couldn’t help but notice his absence while she was sitting here listening. Will had always been a little… odd. Prone to believing conspiracy theories, the sort of person that would fall face-first into a pyramid scheme. She couldn’t help but assume the worst…
“He’s fine,” Nash said, and she could see that dimple on the side of his cheek again that meant he was smiling. “We had a few years working here together, and then he met Lucy, and that was the end of that. He was head over heels the second he saw her. They wanted to live together and have a family of their own, and out here wasn’t the place to do it. Town was better for them. Which I get, you know.”
He still sounded sad about it though, as if Will moving on had left him directionless all over again. But then again Meg was probably reading way too much into it. The man before her was as good as a stranger. She needed to stop thinking of the boy she’d known inside and out. Everything was different now. Right? Right. Be practical. Meg just had to be practical . Which was hard when she was this sleep-deprived, but she was just going to have to persevere.
Either way she would have to think about it later because breakfast was ready, and Meg was no longer able to focus on anything but the bacon and eggs in front of her. Nash didn’t even ask how much she wanted. He split the whole thing in two and piled up some plates, dumping one of them in front of Meg. He plopped a bottle of ketchup down in front of her as well.
“Do you still drench everything in ketchup like you’re putting out a fire?” he asked dryly, sitting opposite and digging in.
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing at all.”
How was she supposed to remain practical when he kept remembering her little quirks so many years later?
At least she had a reason to keep quiet for a bit as they both shoveled food into their mouths like they were starving. It was delicious, hot and crispy, with enough grease to leave Meg’s lips shiny. Along with the coffee that she got up and poured for them, she finally started to feel alive again. God, had she really been thinking of eating a spoon of coffee grounds?
Meg’s train of thought ground to a halt when she looked up and found Nash staring at her unashamedly.
“What?” she said.
“Are you all out of questions or something?” he asked, poking his fork into an egg yolk so that it ran over some bacon. “Never known you to be this quiet.”
“Things can change.”
“Yeah, your DNA changed too?”
“I’ve been eating. Can’t talk and eat at the same time.”
“Sure you can.”
“Not in polite company, you can’t.”
“In what universe does this qualify as polite company?”
She coughed out a laugh but didn’t ask anything else. There were too many questions to ask to pick just one. And this was nice . They were being nice to each other. She didn’t want to ask something that verged on too personal and shatter the atmosphere that they’d found themselves in.
“I’ll ask a question,” Nash said.
“Hmm,” Meg hummed noncommittally around a mouthful of bacon.
“This boss with the too-big hat? Is he the reason you came here?”
“He was the final straw,” Meg said honestly. “I made the head office give me a transfer.”
“Made them?”
Meg shrugged. “I’m too good for them to lose. They were falling all over themselves to keep me on the books.”
Nash whistled and took a sip of his coffee. “See. I always knew you were going to be the best there ever was.”
Meg shoveled another bite of food into her mouth so that she didn’t have to respond. If he’d thought she was going to be the greatest, then why did he shove her away all those years ago, like she’d meant nothing? But that was in the past. Meg wasn’t going to delve back into all that nonsense. It was just a flippant remark from Nash, buttering her up. It didn’t mean he had been thinking about her all these years. It didn’t mean anything at all.
“You really love it here,” Meg said. “Even though it’s hard?”
Nash nodded firmly. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“You take excellent care of your animals,” she said truthfully. Nash’s face lit up at that.
“I try,” he said.
“So why are you selling up, then?”
His face fell. Meg felt instantly embarrassed because the answer was glaringly obvious. Money. You could have all the good intentions in the world; if you didn’t have the money to back them up, it was all for nothing.
“Sorry,” she said, and he just shrugged as if he wasn’t offended.
“I gave it my best shot,” he said, making a valiant attempt at sounding chipper and failing miserably.
True , Meg thought. He had given it his best try, but he’d been doing it all alone. He hadn’t had anyone to help.
Well, help is here now. I could help.
How her attitude towards Nash had managed to do a complete one-eighty in less than twenty-four hours, Meg wasn’t quite sure. But she was sure, very sure, that the last thing she wanted to do was rip this place away from him. The thought of ticking off the ranch as nothing more than a suitable asset , for someone like Mitch to run… it made her physically sick.
“I mean, I can always fail your evaluation,” she said. “You know, if you wanted to back out of the sale.”
He gave her a look across the table, waiting for a punchline, some sort of got you moment. But Meg just stared back with a deadpan expression and a shrug.
“I mean,” he said, poking at an egg. “Sure, that sounds great. I don’t want to sell, but I need to. Also, why exactly are you going rogue on your employer?”
“Because working for a major corporation, I’ve come to realize that I hate them. Very much. So say you come up with a magical, last-minute solution to this whole thing… I will happily tell them that the soil is toxic and there are killer bees hiding around every corner.”
Nash rolled his eyes at that. “Because they would believe that excuse?”
“The people who make these decisions aren’t farmers. They’re office people. They have no idea what actually goes on outside.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I come across some sort of miracle.”
He thought she was joking, but Meg knew that she was going to spend every waking moment trying to think of ways to save this place.
So much for ignoring Nash Callahan…