The Reluctant Rancher

“How’s the kitten doing?” he asked.

He’d seen Blossom hurry out to the barn several times since that afternoon. Although he’d fed the kitten, even stuck around to scratch her under the chin and talk a bit, Blossom acted as if the cat was in an ICU and needed constant care.

She blushed. “You saw me.”

“She doing all right, in your professional opinion?”

“Fine,” she said. “You did a good job with her stitches.”

“They won’t win her any beauty contests, but they’ll work.”

Blossom hesitated. “We should probably take her to the vet’s anyway,” she said. “I mean I could. Tomorrow. If that’s okay with you.”

“No need,” he said. “Unless it’s an emergency—which this isn’t—or something we can’t treat, we don’t bother the vet. Saves the ranch money, too. But I do have to go into town tomorrow.” Then Logan heard himself say, “You want to go with me? While I’m at the ag store for supplies, you can buy groceries and whatever else you’d like. I know the ranch can seem a lonely place for a woman.”

She didn’t answer at first. He shouldn’t have said anything.

Logan passed her the detergent for the dishwasher.

Maybe he hadn’t made himself clear. She needed to know he wasn’t putting any moves on her, just offering her a ride into Barren.

“About earlier today in the barn—”

“I shouldn’t have kissed your cheek,” she said, then in the next breath, “Yes. I’d like to go to town with you tomorrow.”

His insides unwound. “Okay, then. We’ll leave around nine.”

“I’ll fix breakfast,” she said. “A nice omelet.”

Logan nearly groaned aloud. At the table the mac and cheese, never his favorite, had congealed on his plate. He doubted her version of a Western omelet, which he normally liked, would be either.

“Let me buy you an early lunch instead,” he told her.

CHAPTER FIVE (#u39d010e6-3a19-590a-a0de-a6d8e4da3ca0)

LOGAN LEANED AGAINST the side of his truck and checked his watch again. Blossom was late. Then he glanced up and saw her coming from the barn.

“Sorry,” she said with a little duck of her head and no eye contact.

Ah, he thought. “The kitten.”

It was obvious by now that she’d formed an attachment to the little cat.

“I checked on her when I fed the horses at six,” he said with a smile. “We need to coordinate our schedules.”

Without another word Blossom climbed into the truck. She sat as far away from him as possible, pressed against the passenger door. In the driver’s seat Logan hit the locks, and she startled, almost lifting off her perch.

“Can’t have you falling out into the road,” he said, shifting into gear. They were soon down the long drive and onto the main road, and Logan breathed his usual sigh of relief. The ranch always made him feel as if he were locked up in solitary confinement. It was one reason he’d asked Blossom to join him today. He imagined she might feel the same.

Logan didn’t want to examine the other reason.

Yet as he drove toward town, his gaze kept straying to her. He could still feel that briefest touch of her lips to his face yesterday. To Blossom it had meant nothing, he supposed, no more than a friendly gesture—as if to say she knew how hard Nicky’s surprise visit had been for him—but it had been a while since a woman had touched him even like that.

He ran through an imaginary preflight checklist to refocus his thoughts and tried to keep his eyes on the road instead of on Blossom.

Neither spoke until they were at the edge of town.

“The kitten needs a name,” she said.

He could tell she’d been turning that subject over in her mind the whole way, as if she’d decided it was the only safe topic they might discuss. “Thought we agreed. We don’t name the animals.”

“I bet Sam does.”

“Yeah, well,” he conceded. “But barn cats are different.”

“I know. They don’t always stay around. Maybe they would,” she added, “if they did have names. If they felt a part of the ranch instead of just coming and going.”

Like me, he thought.

Logan glanced at her again—and nearly rear-ended the car in front of him on Main Street. The big flashy SUV likely belonged to a spring tourist who didn’t know it sometimes snowed here even in April or one of the wealthy out-of-towners who’d settled in Barren in one of those monstrous log homes on ten-acre “ranches” that made them feel like true Westerners.

“Are you really talking about the cats?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Philadelphia,” he said, swinging the truck into an angled parking spot that had just opened up halfway down the street. “You left home. For some reason.”

“I wanted to see the world,” she said, but Logan didn’t believe her. According to Blossom herself, she’d already seen plenty of it.

In front of the ag store, he cut the engine. “All right, we’ll save that for later. I’m going in here to order supplies, get some feed. The market’s right across the street. When you’re done with the groceries, I can roll over to pick you up.”

“How long?”

“An hour, maybe? Like a lot of guys I tend to get lost in the aisles, trying out this gadget and that.” His mind should be on getting back to Wichita, not on farm equipment or a woman he had no business even thinking about except, he reminded himself, as an employee.

Or maybe he was just delaying their return to the ranch.

And the isolation that always reminded him of losing the people he loved.

“I might have another errand to do,” she said.

“Take your time.”

* * *

IT TOOK BLOSSOM a while to reach the far end of Main Street, not because the street was that long but because she kept stopping to look in store windows. And to bask in the spring sunshine, letting the still-cool air blow through her hair.

She glanced back toward the agriculture store. Logan had disappeared inside.