Jesse
The end of winter had a rhythm all its own on the ranch.
Slow, relentless—feed, water, checks, repairs.
Things that couldn’t wait just because the season was turning.
I had a list in my head before I reached the door, and Boone was first. I needed to lay hands on him, run a brush over his coat, tack him up properly.
Then, I’d ride out to check the calves from last night, see for myself how they’d settled once the cold eased.
I’d managed to avoid Lucas as much as possible since the radio incident, even a week later, but sometimes I couldn’t avoid him, and every damn time we crossed paths, something sparked inside me.
Anger, frustration, and, worst of all, attraction.
He was everywhere I needed to be, and it was messing with my routines.
Hell, he’d even taken to going to the barn with the horses and taking photos of the cats.
Who even did that?
I didn’t trust him.
But at least with the radio thing, and the hands looking out for the cute idiot, I trusted myself to keep him safe while he was here.
I found him asking Jake questions a few days ago, but, like me, Jake was a man of few words, and now, he, too, was avoiding Lucas.
Not so much everyone else, because they didn’t know he was here to sell the place from under them.
Today at breakfast had been yet another day when Lucas was trying to talk to my hands, and I had no real way of stepping in.
Lucas had taken his tray and deliberately dropped onto the bench beside Miguel, close enough that he had to shift his boots back under the table, and right in front of me.
He smiled as if he belonged there, and that was the problem.
It looks real, and I don’t want him to belong if it means I’ll have to let him go.
What? Where had that come from?
“Jesse,” he said and inclined his head. “And you’re Miguel, right?”
He glanced at me; the nervous young man who’d started working here a few years ago—Walter’s final hire—was clearly uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“Stop messing with the team,” I warned Lucas, who raised a single eyebrow and ignored me.
“So, Miguel,” Lucas said, easy as anything, elbows on the table. “How long have you been working here?”
Miguel glanced at me again, then back at Lucas. “Uh. Five years.”
“That long?” Lucas whistled. “Guess you’ve seen everything, then.”
“I guess.” He shuffled along the bench a little, but he was hemmed in, and I was giving this exactly thirty seconds before I yanked Lucas out of the way. Miguel didn’t need to be questioned.
Lucas laughed, warm and quick, and leaned a little closer, all friendly smiles.
He had a nice smile that reached his eyes, but all I could see was him using manipulation to get information on things I refused to explain, like the cattle, the acreage, and the technical side of running a ranch. “Okay, important question.”
Miguel stiffened. “About cattle?”
“Nope.” Lucas tilted his head, studying him openly. “Your hair is so thick and pretty. What’s your routine?”
There was a beat of silence. Miguel blushed, then blinked. Once. Twice. “My… what?”
“Your hair,” Lucas repeated patiently. “It’s ridiculous. Like, shampoo-commercial good. You using some fancy stuff?”
Miguel was alarmed now. “I don’t—I just—I wash it?”
Lucas grinned. “Wow. So, you’re just naturally blessed.” His gaze flicked up and down Miguel’s face. “And your skin. Seriously.”
Miguel went red all the way down his neck. “I don’t have to do anything for my skin.”
Lucas kept on smiling at Miguel, who now resembled a deer frozen in the headlights, fork hovering uselessly over his plate. “Well, whatever you’re doing—or not doing—it’s working.”
“I need to uhm…”
“I mean,” Lucas went on, apparently unstoppable now. “I saw you wearing eyeliner that first day at breakfast. And gloss.”
Miguel’s ears went scarlet. “I—I don’t—”
“I like L’Oréal,” Lucas said brightly, as if this explained everything. “But honestly? Whatever you’re doing beats anything I’ve got in my bathroom.”
Miguel stared at the table like it might open up and swallow him. “I just like sometimes to… makeup,” he muttered. “It’s just… my face.”
“Miguel, will you make sure to check the newborn calves down by the south fence? I want eyes on the red heifer and her calf.”
He looked so relieved. “Sure thing, boss.”
Lucas had no choice but to move as Miguel picked up the bacon on his plate and ate it in one mouthful, then eased out. As soon as it was just Lucas and me, I couldn’t hold back.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?” Lucas said.
“That.” I jerked my chin toward the door Miguel had disappeared through. “Leave the kid alone. He’s a good kid, and you were messing with him.”
Lucas’s eyes widened, real surprise this time. “I wasn’t messing with him.” He frowned, as if he was trying to understand how we’d landed here. “I was talking to him. Trying to find common ground.”
“By backing him into a corner and commenting on his face?”
“I was complimenting him,” Lucas shot back. “You know—something normal people do.”
“He was going redder by the second.”
“Probably because no one ever says anything nice to him,” Lucas said, quieter now. “A man has every right to know he looks good, that he’s pretty. So, I told him, and that’s not a bad thing.”
I stared at him. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Lucas leaned back against the bench, arms folded, studying me the way he studied everything. “You think I did it on purpose to embarrass him?”
“I think,” I said flatly, “people like you don’t do anything by accident.”
For a second, something flickered across his face—gone too fast to name. Then, his mouth tilted, slow and deliberate. “Or maybe,” he said, “I’m just better at talking to people than you are.”
I stood, palms flat on the table, close enough now that he had to look up at me.
“Just leave everyone alone,” I said. “You’re here to do your six months. Sit around. Do nothing. You don’t need to poke at people, and you sure as hell don’t get to mess with my team.”
Lucas didn’t answer right away. His smile was gone now, wiped clean, replaced with something harder and more assessing. He held my gaze, as if he were weighing the words, testing how much truth there was in them—and how much it would cost him to push back.
“Your team,” he repeated quietly.
“Yes,” I said.
He raised that damn eyebrow again. “Three-quarters mine.” Then, softer—too soft—he added, “Six months is long enough for me to learn everything about what I’m selling, Cowboy. I’ve never been very good at staying in my lane.”
Then, he went back to his burned toast as if nothing had happened, knife scraping butter, attention deliberately elsewhere.
It made me furious. Irritated in a way that had nowhere good to go.
He’d drawn the line, stepped over it, then sat back as though he hadn’t just rattled the whole damn table.
I wasn’t distracted. Not by the way his shoulders relaxed as if he’d won something.
Not by the single curl that refused to stay put and kept falling over his left eye.
I wanted to push it back.
I wanted to thump him.
I wanted to make him leave.
And worse than any of that—I wanted…
Fuck.
God knows what I wanted.