Chapter Five Savannah
Chapter Five
Savannah
By the time the early-morning sun hits the rickety front porch, my boots are already covered in mud, and my patience is fraying like a cheap rug. I dragged myself out of bed before dawn, trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to turn into Super Rancher and save Red Rock.
Still coming up empty an hour later.
We have a couple of part-time ranch hands that Aunt Marg hired a while back to help keep things running, but I can’t just sit by and watch them work. I learn best by jumping in feetfirst. Besides, the hands also don’t live here, so they’re not around all the time to answer my questions.
If I’m going to figure out a way to make this place profitable, then I need to get deep into the weeds. I already started working on a business plan, but without real knowledge about how a ranch operates, I won’t be able to figure out a way forward for Red Rock.
Sweat drizzles down my back despite the chill in the air. And my hands ache with blisters from yesterday’s failed attempt to fix one of the pasture fences.
Today is day three of me trying to figure out how to be a rancher. Trying . . . very unsuccessfully.
I jimmy the gate latch on the fence in the east pasture, gritting my teeth.
It’s stuck. And when I asked Mikey, one of the ranch hands, what I could do this morning to start things off, he said I should move the cattle from the east to the south pasture.
I figured that would be simple enough, a good way to ease into the day’s work.
I was wrong.
The cattle eye me suspiciously, like they can see right through my poor attempt at faking my way through this chore.
Out here, there’s no such thing as “Fake it till you make it.”
It’s “Do or die trying.”
And I’m damn close to the latter.
After tugging some more, the latch finally gives. I stumble back three steps, nearly landing on my ass. Oh, so graceful. Of course, the hinges are rusty and broken, so I almost lose the door too.
The cattle don’t move.
“Come on,” I say. “Please move. Please let me get something done right before the ranch hands show up.”
I wipe sweat from my brow with the back of my hand and sigh, looking around the place. Everything needs work.
How the hell could Aunt Marg trust me to fix it? And why take it all away from Nash? There didn’t seem to be any static between him and Aunt Marg, so it doesn’t make any sense that she’d cut him out of Red Rock when he did so much for her.
I sigh and bend down to refill a trough, mentally willing the water pump to work today, when I hear the crunch of tires on gravel behind me.
Nash.
My heart jumps. Maybe he’s ready to talk, to be civil. To help me avoid running this place even further into the ground.
If that’s even possible.
He climbs out of his truck, sunglasses covering half his face. But judging by the way his jaw tenses when I jog up to him, it looks like he’s ready for a fight. I’m desperate, so I plaster a bright smile on my face.
“Hey,” I say, slightly breathless. “I really could use your help. Mikey and the guys won’t be here for a while. I’m trying to move the cattle to south pasture, but they won’t—”
“Can’t.” He twists away from me and heads to the flatbed of his truck. “I just came to drop off some tools for you. Just wait for Mikey.”
I eye the box he carries over to the barn. Tools I’ll no doubt need to learn how to use, sooner rather than later if the past few days are any indication. “Nash, can we not do this today? I’m trying. Really trying.”
He turns to look at me. I shift in my boots. I can’t see his eyes, but I can feel the shards of ice hit me from a few feet away. “You wouldn’t have to try so hard if you’d bothered to learn any of this when you still lived here.”
I swallow hard. “That’s not fair. I know I wasn’t here. I know you’re angry. But can you . . . maybe guide me? Even a little?”
He looks away, jaw ticking. And for a split second, I think he might say yes.
But then he shakes his head, and my hopes deflate like a stabbed helium balloon. “You’re on your own, Savvie. I’ve carried this place long enough.”
“Okay, but before you go, can you just show me real quick how to—?”
“Savannah.” He pulls off his sunglasses. “I got a job that I’m late for. You wanna run this ranch? You wanna make it operational? Then use that big business brain of yours to figure it out.”
I recoil like he just poked me with a cattle brand. “I’m trying to figure it out. That’s why I’m asking.”
“No.” He walks to the back of his truck and slams the bed closed. “You’re asking me to do it for you. There’s a difference.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m asking for guidance.”
He laughs, but there’s not even a shred of humor in it. “You wanna talk about fair? I’ve spent years taking care of this place. Then you show up after six damn years and take over everything. You think I deserved to be shafted like that? By the woman I did everything for?”
His tone is like an icy hand clenching my heart. “Nash—”
“You wanna turn this place around? Great. But don’t expect me to hold your hand through it. I had to figure shit out on my own. So can you.”
“We’re going to lose the ranch if you don’t help me,” I blurt out in a panic, the words I’ve been trying to bury somehow managing to slip out.
He stops, his hand on the door handle. He slowly turns back to look at me. “Maybe we will. Maybe Aunt Marg should’ve thought about that before she left it to someone who doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.”
He sticks his sunglasses back on, gets into the truck, and backs away from the barn.
I stand there, throat burning, watching the dust kicked up by his tires settle. He’s angry. Hurting. Bitter. Probably drowning just like me.
But knowing that doesn’t make the ache any easier. It doesn’t ease the guilt or the feeling of abandonment.
Probably the same kind of abandonment he felt when I left him six years earlier.
I turn back to the cattle.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s try this again.”
They still won’t move.
I try everything. Wave my arms, yell, sing. Freaking anything I can think of. But they just stand there, chewing the grass, looking at me like I’m the idiot.
Which I clearly am.
I take in a few deep breaths. I need to calm the hell down. Even I know if you freak out around animals, you disrupt their sense of peace.
I try again, moving slowly around the perimeter, walking behind them and guiding them gently.
A squeal threatens to escape when one cow moves. Then another until they’re all walking toward the gate.
Holy shit. I did it. And all on my own.
I fist-bump the air because it won’t shatter the silence like the loud whoop I really want to let out.
It takes another hour to get the cattle through the gate. Of course, if Nash wasn’t such an obstinate ass, it probably could have been done in fifteen minutes.
I finally close the gate behind them and lean against it with a sigh of relief, exhausted but feeling hella victorious.
Pulling out my phone, I open my ranch-tasks notes from my meeting with Mikey.
Okay, next on my list of daily ranch adventures . . . filling the water troughs, which I was about to do before Nash showed up.
I trudge over to the water pump and twist the handle. The pump sputters.
“Come on . . . come on . . .” I mutter.
I tighten a bolt exactly the way I saw it on a YouTube video last night and twist the handle again. Not carefully enough, though, because another piece blasts off like a rocket. Water spews everywhere, the wild spray soaking me.
“No! Shit! Stop!”
I lunge for the handle, just missing it as my foot slips in the mud. I claw at a fence post to keep myself from face-planting on the soggy ground.
Miraculously, when I twist the handle this time, the water stops pouring from the spout.
“Fantastic,” I choke out, pushing my dripping hair out of my eyes. “Really freaking fantastic.”
I scramble up onto my knees, wrench in hand, twisting and tightening and praying to the gods of plumbing that this nightmare just stops.
“Of course,” I mutter, teeth grinding together. “This is exactly how I wanted my morning to go.”
I’m still wrestling with the pump when something in the corner of my eye flickers. Some movement at the far end of the driveway.
A truck.
My eyes narrow. But it’s not Nash’s.
I blink water out of my eyes, heart slamming into my ribs.
No. Please no.
Not now.
Not like this.
But the truck keeps coming. My pulse stutters.
Because the universe clearly hates me enough to send Blaze Hartman right into the middle of my disaster.
Just fucking perfect.