Chapter 4
JAKE
I spent the next hour helping Shelby move into her cabin, which was a stone's throw from mine. Standing in front of her car, I stared up at the two small A-frame cabins in front of me. There was about twenty feet of separation between us. I hadn’t considered the proximity a problem at all yesterday, but today, with fresh eyes, the cabins seemed a little close.
I introduced her to Sophie, who hid behind my leg before I sent her to play on the swings.
She had grown shy around new people since we moved.
I was thankful she had taken to Kelsey and Cade’s family so well, as Kelsey would be the one watching her during the days once the dude ranch opened next week.
It felt like I had a million things I should be saying to Shelby as we hauled boxes, but we circled around each other, only making it bearable with jokes and awkward smiles.
It was hard to describe exactly, but she was both less and more of…
a lot of things. I couldn’t get a good read on her.
She was still Shelby, but…this was a version I’d never seen before.
I was determined to get us back on track.
Shelby reached in to grab a large suitcase from her car, but I beat her to it, pushing her hands away to heft it out of the trunk.
“Holy crap, what do you have in here?” I groaned as I pretended to topple under the weight.
“A couple of bodies I didn’t have time to get rid of before coming.”
“You always did have a way with men.”
She shot me a look that made me hide the smile on my face.
“No, I didn’t,” she said as she grabbed a handful of pillows from the backseat.
I made a face as I agreed with her. “No. You didn’t.”
“I hear you went out with Briggs the other night,” I told her as we walked back toward the house, our hands full.
She stopped, her mouth open in surprise. “You heard about that?”
Her response confused me, but she seemed so surprised that I couldn’t help pushing this button. “Yeah, I heard all about it.”
She blinked, still not moving, while I shifted the weight of her suitcase to my other hand.
“What did he say?”
It was the way she kept trying to be nonchalant, all the while sneaking glances at me before looking away again, that had my curiosity piqued. Something had definitely happened. Something she didn’t want me to know about, which cheered me up considerably.
“You know what you did, Shelb. Care to explain yourself?”
She examined me carefully before her eyes narrowed.
“What do you know?”
I shrugged, playing this out. “Just assume I know everything.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me something, then?” Her head was cocked slightly in an I-don’t-believe-you kind of way.
I had nothing. I opened my mouth to try once again, but she beat me to it.
“He didn’t tell you.” She scoffed loudly before she turned and began running toward the front steps. I followed after her, a new bounce in my steps.
“Oh, I heard everything!” I called after her.
“No, you didn’t. You would have made fun of me way before now.”
“It’s never too late to start.”
When she opened the front door, she yanked the suitcase from my hands and backed into her cabin. “They were nice dates, and everything went perfectly, and I didn’t embarrass myself at all.”
I laughed, but before I could stick my foot in the doorway, she closed the door in my face.
“You still owe me a milkshake!” I called after her, giving her door a quick bang before whistling to myself as I strode over to my cabin.
The next night, my old and new boss, Layne Marten, held a campfire at the ranch to officially welcome Shelby and me onto the crew.
The dude ranch would open its doors for the season this coming Monday.
The crew consisted of Carl and Betty Barnes, an older couple in their seventies, who would run the front desk and oversee the guests and bookings.
And Darla Goodwin, who was in charge of the kitchen and food prep.
There were other hired hands and assistants whose names I couldn’t remember just yet.
Layne stood in front of the campfire as everyone spread out across picnic tables and chairs around the fire.
“Thanks for coming, everybody. I know most of us are just here for the gourmet food”—he nodded toward the table of hot dogs to the side of the fire before continuing—“but I still appreciate you coming.”
There were a few chuckles in the crowd. I was sitting on top of a picnic table, with Sophie in my lap.
Logan sat next to me with Tessa sitting below him, between his legs.
Kelsey and Cade were in camp chairs and attempting to keep their twin five-year-old tornados, Luke and Wyatt, out of the fire, and Briggs had settled himself in a folding chair next to Shelby.
The past few days of being here, Cade and Layne had been showing me the ropes of taking care of the animals on the ranch property, as well as the two hundred head of cattle we had spread out all over the mountainside to the west of us.
This required me to be sitting on a horse, roaming the mountainside through sagebrush and pine trees, checking cattle.
Even for me, it had been hard looking like a tough cowboy with the smile dripping off my face, riding Jimmy through the range.
Now, with the dude ranch opening in a couple of days, I’d be in charge of taking the guests out on an excursion once a day and letting them try their hand at feeding and taking care of the cattle.
“Every week will be the same,” Layne said.
“New guests arrive every Monday. We won’t have any scheduled excursions that day.
But Tuesday through Friday, the guests will have opportunities to help with chores, do trail rides, fly fishing, rope and riding lessons, skeet shooting competitions…
and whatever else Jake dreams up. Heaven help us all. ”
The group laughed and darted glances at me in agreement. I only smiled and nodded my head.
“And just so you newbies know,” Layne continued, looking at Shelby and me, “the lodge provides breakfast and lunch. For dinners, guests will all be getting vouchers to use for The Grub Shack in town. Saturday morning, they pack up and move out. Housekeeping will be here by Saturday afternoon to clean all the rooms.”
He pointed at Shelby. “Your job is to take pictures of everything you can on the ranch. My kids are telling me the website needs an update with better pictures.”
Tessa leaned forward. “We were also thinking that it might be a good idea for Shelby to go on lots of excursions with Jake too.” Tessa darted a glance at Kelsey before adding.
“I mean, I know she was planning on doing a few, but I think we should take advantage of her being here and get a lot of pictures to use over the years.”
Layne looked at Shelby. “Does that work for you? Or do you have a healthy fear of Jake and the things he’s capable of, like the rest of us?”
Shelby smiled. “I can handle him. It would be good for Jake to learn a thing or two about fishing while I’m here.”
I laughed in good humor but was too busy watching Kelsey’s and Tessa’s pointed looks to have any comeback. But my awareness was heightened.
Layne went on, but for a minute, I stared around the fire at all these people around me.
It was hard to believe that I was back in Eugene.
After working for Layne throughout high school, the Marten home became a refuge.
Logan and Cade were like brothers to me.
I had been lucky to be on the receiving end of Layne Marten’s phone call while living in Washington, stuck in a job at a factory I hated, just trying to keep Sophie and myself afloat.
He could have asked me to pick rocks for him all summer, and I would have come running.
It almost felt like he’d created this job specifically for me, and if that were true, I hoped I never knew because I would probably cry like a baby.
After a dinner of hot dogs, salad, and s’mores, the kids wandered toward the small playground, the excited squeals and laughter on the swings and old metal merry-go-round providing the perfect backdrop for a group meeting.
After another bout of teasing and visiting, Layne and his wife, Peggy, headed home.
The sun had set, leaving a streak of purple and pink clouds stretched near the horizon.
My eyes wandered curiously over to Shelby and Briggs.
It had been obvious that he found her attractive when he saw her tonight.
It was the way he watched her when she was looking somewhere else.
My curiosity was piqued, watching him trying to talk to her but getting interrupted by Kelsey and Tessa.
Bringing up her hair. Her clothes. Glances toward me.
As subtle as a freight train.
They meant well, but I looked away, quietly resenting the way they fawned over Shelby like a newborn kitten.
Shelby had always been pretty. Nothing had changed there. A woman could wear her hair a thousand different ways, put makeup on or take it off, have one eyebrow or two, but underneath it all, that face stayed the same.
She’d been a looker her whole life; she just never believed it.
I was grateful when Sophie made her way back to me, wanting another s’more. By that point, Kelsey and Tessa backed off, and Briggs was once again attempting to flirt with Shelby.
“I can’t decide if I should let you beat me or not in our basketball game tomorrow,” Briggs said, nudging his leg against hers—her bare leg, because her shorts were mid-thigh these days. “What do you think will get me a fourth date?”
The flash of irritation across her face was brief, but I saw it. She laughed off his comment, inching her leg away from his.
“I’m just an old has-been,” she said.
The snort was out of my mouth before I could stop it.
She heard it. “But I can still take down Jake blindfolded.”
I refused to get involved, so I only smiled and took a bite of s’more from my protesting daughter and called it ‘dad tax.’
“So you still play, then?” Briggs asked her.
“A little.”
“Well, anybody can beat Evans. But I might stand a chance if you’re old news.”
“I’m ready anytime,” came her confident reply.
Soon enough, Briggs changed the subject, attempting to flirt with Shelby while she remained completely oblivious to his advances.
Before long, my attention was taken away by Sophie on the playground.
I watched her rush to keep up with one of Cade and Kelsey’s twins.
When she ripped the pint-sized cowboy hat right off of his head and took off, squealing and running toward the slides with him at her heels, I couldn’t help but smile.
Maybe there would be another love story taking place on this ranch in about fifteen years or so.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you.” Kelsey moved her chair closer to mine. She held a sleeping baby in her arms.
“How am I this handsome? It’s all natural.”
My jokes and teasing hadn’t felt up to par lately. Over the last couple of years, it was like I had lost my ability to quick-fire. And now, surrounded by people who knew me, it was like I was just going through the motions, trying to act as normally as possible to ward off any suspicion.
She bit her lip. “So…you can tell me no if you’re not ready, but Cade and I have this friend in Salmon who is super sweet, and really pretty, and she—“
I zoned out. This was where I always zoned out. Miranda hadn’t even been gone for two months before some of her friends had started singling me out. I had some married friends at work always trying to set me up. In my rush to get back to Idaho, I hadn’t thought about it being worse here.
“So what do you think? Do you want her number?”
I didn’t want anybody’s number. I wasn’t going to call her. But I didn’t want Kelsey to feel sorry for me or have any reason to think I wasn’t fine with it all. The old Jake would have been fine.
“Yeah, sure,” I lied. “I don’t know when… Soph and I are still getting settled, and I don’t want—“
She beamed at me. “No, that’s totally fine. Whenever you’re ready, you’ll have her number.”
With great regret, I put her friend’s number in my phone before Kelsey bolted out of her seat to protect the other kids at the playground from her son’s wild swing with a long stick.
“Smile if you want me.”
Brigg’s flirtatious remark to Shelby made its way to my ears.
Shelby, who had been watching the kids at the playground, looked over at Briggs.
“Huh?”
“I said to smile if you want me, and look at you...smiling. I guess we’d better do something about that.”
I huffed out a soft laugh at Shelby’s deer-in-the-headlights look before I attempted to look somewhere else. But like a bad train wreck, it was hard to look away for too long.
Briggs was smiling at Shelby, obviously waiting for her to say something flirty.
Which was incredibly optimistic of him.
Instead, she burst out in nervous laughter while Briggs and I both watched in slow motion as a big glop of spit flew from her mouth and landed on his cheek.
It all went downhill quickly from there. I didn’t even have the chance to laugh, because things just kept happening.
Shelby jumped up from her seat and grabbed a pile of napkins sitting on the table behind him, thrusting them in his face.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified. Suddenly, she looked up at me and sent a distress signal. I sat up in my seat, ready to do…something, but then Briggs was back, grinning up at her.
“It’s not the first time I’ve swapped spit with a girl.”
She stared at him incredulously. “Are you still going after all that?”
He smiled. “I could go all day. It’s pretty entertaining watching your face.”
Her shoulders relaxed just then, and I appreciated Briggs going easy on her.
And then, looking like the Shelby I knew, she leaned forward to give him a big push—the kind she probably imagined was friendlier than it actually was.
Except, his shoulder was not where it was a moment ago.
Briggs had leaned back in his chair, the two front legs of his seat in the air, the rest of his chair leaning on the table just behind him.
The rest happened in slow motion. An entertaining mixture of momentum and gravity.
I was halfway out of my seat when she fell forward, arms flailing wildly before falling face down against his body.
A grunt coming from Briggs was the only sound in my ears.
Suddenly, the chair they were both now occupying began tipping backward, smashing into the table behind them.
Unable to bear the force of their sudden weight, the table buckled beneath them, tipping toward the ground.
Briggs landed first, banging against the metal folding chair, now smashed against the dirt. Shelby landed second, slamming on top of Briggs, where they immediately began getting pelted in the head with bags of buns, hot dogs, and cans of pop sliding off the table.
Gravity for the win.