Chapter Thirteen #2
He stopped the truck and hopped out of the cab. “I’ll only be a few minutes. I want to check the computer on one of the balers. I had it serviced last week, and I want to see if it’s reading the bale pressure correctly.”
“Can I get out too?” Malika asked.
“You can if you like. Watch out for the tractors.”
The incredulous look she gave him made him smile.
The tractors were too big and noisy to miss, but she was a city girl, and city people weren’t always aware of how fast the newer models could travel.
If the driver was in a hurry, or distracted, he might not be watching out for women standing in places they shouldn’t be.
She’d borrowed coveralls and steel-toed boots from his mother. He’d dug out an old ball cap to help keep the dust and hayseed out of her hair, and the sun from her eyes. She looked like a cover model on a photo shoot for Back Roads of Montana and not even the least little bit like a ranch hand.
Which meant, in a hayfield full of bored men driving tractors up and down windrows, she’d draw attention. There was nothing he could do about that.
The tractor and baler he’d come to inspect slowed down when it came to the end of the windrow, where he was waiting for it.
Jayce jumped on the step and hauled himself up to the cab by a grab bar.
The driver rolled the cab window down. A blast of cold air from the interior air conditioner smacked Jayce in the face.
Forrest was one of the older ranch hands. He’d been around since Jayce was a toddler, and he sometimes forgot that Jayce was one of the bosses. Or, more likely, he didn’t care.
“I didn’t think it was possible for you to find a woman as pretty as you are, but there she is, standing right there,” Forrest said. A low whistle peeled through his teeth. “Ain’t she a doll. Look at them pretty eyes on her.”
Malika, who had a sixth sense when it came to male attention, especially when it was focused on her, smiled up at them and batted her lashes.
“Yeah. She’s a real doll,” Jayce said.
Despite how cute she looked in those coveralls, though, she was no Barbie.
She was smart, and she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.
If she hadn’t been raised in privilege, then sold to the highest bidder, she could have really done things with her life.
What a shame. Flirting was a form of civil disobedience to her, so why not let her enjoy it?
“How’s the computer working?” he said to Forrest.
Forrest cut the engine. “See for yourself. Take the doll for a ride and check it out.”
“And give you a break so you can take a nap in the shade?” Jayce said, because he knew what Forrest was up to.
The gap left by Forrest’s missing back tooth made an appearance. “Guess we all come out winners.”
“Want to drive the tractor?” Jayce called out to Malika.
“I don’t know how to drive,” she called back.
He’d never known an adult who didn’t know how to drive.
Not having a license to drive, for sure.
This was rural Montana. Some people couldn’t be bothered by taking the test. But most rural Montanans had operated some sort of vehicle by the time they were fourteen, either on back roads or in a field.
“There’s nothing to it,” he said.
The tractor’s cab was roomy, and air-conditioned, and once he set the gears and the cruise control, Malika was happy to steer.
A few moments of observation told him the computer was working just fine, leaving him free to observe other things.
He had the tractor’s speed set so low that they wouldn’t get home before midnight, but there were worse places to be, and worse company to be in.
Driving a tractor was one of the more boring jobs.
Boredom was another word she didn’t appear to understand.
“Why does the bale pressure matter?” she asked, sneaking a peek at the panel.
“Eyes forward. You’ve got to keep the wheels straight.
” He leaned over and adjusted her steering, setting the wheels to either side of the windrow.
“The pressure tells me if the grass is dry enough. If the grass is too green, the bales will ferment in the middle, and not only does that ruin the nutritional value, but there’s also a danger of spontaneous combustion. That’s how barns catch on fire.”
A pair of red-tailed hawks hunted mice. They glided on currents of air in the cloudless sky, pretending indifference, then plummeted to earth without warning, snatching up whatever had been chased out of the windrow by the tractor’s approach.
Malika kept her eyes straight ahead, as instructed, so Jayce didn’t distract her with the hawks and their drama.
His mom wasn’t keen on watching predator and prey dynamics play out in real time, and somehow, he didn’t think a woman who’d compared squirrels to dryads would enjoy seeing mice terrorized, either.
“Why doesn’t your father want your mother to have ferrets?” she asked, out of the blue. “Your mother says he believes they don’t have a practical purpose on a ranch. Or is it really because she didn’t ask for his permission?”
Jayce confessed he had no idea. “He knows they have a practical impact on the environment, even if a small one, and Mom doesn’t need his permission. But he probably would have liked to be asked for his opinion.”
Malika tilted her head and flashed him a quick, sideways glance with enough of her flirt in it to make his pulse quicken. “If she’d asked for his opinion, would she have gotten the ferrets, or would he have made it impossible?”
Her question was tricky. “Better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission? Is that what you mean? Hard to say. Mom gets just about anything she wants, so she likely didn’t even consider talking to him about it.
But she’s tried conservation projects before, and they’ve been failures, so she knows Dad’s opinion on them.
This time, she’s gone one step further and got conservationists involved. ”
Conservationists and ranchers tended to view each other as obstacles, not partners.
Conservationists cared about habitat losses for wildlife, not managing rangeland for livestock.
On the other hand, conservation easements made it possible for ranchers to hang on to land that otherwise might be sold off to developers to pay down debt incurred in lean years.
Thanks to Burning Scrub, the Hansons’ ranch didn’t have those kinds of problems. And neither Burning Scrub nor the Ride No More needed conservationists hanging around, asking questions.
“Will I get to see the ferrets?” Malika asked.
Her enthusiasm amused him. He liked her imagination, too. He didn’t have much of his own, so it was a challenge for him to keep up.
“Would you like to see them?”
“I would love to.”
“Then we’ll go after supper,” he said. “They’re active at sunset, so that’s when we’re most likely to see them.”
She gave him another one of those quick, flirty glances. One that promised him things. One that made him want to laugh, because it was so bold and brazen, but also, to run his hands and his mouth over every inch of her body.
Proving he had more imagination than he’d thought. The tractor drifted to the right, as if she could tell what he was thinking, but she straightened the steering without any help. She was a quick learner.
She’s as curious about you as you are about her.
His mother’s words had stuck with him. They were curious about each other, alright.
But what had stuck with him most was the unsettling knowledge that Malika was little more than a paycheck—to her brother, to her future husband, to Burning Scrub, and to the Ride No More Ranch.
He wasn’t okay with it, either.