Home On The Ranch

“I’m not staying on the ranch.” He said it quickly, with the same tone she could imagine him using if she’d accused him of sleeping in a pigsty.

“Okey-dokey,” she said.

Austin ran his hand back over his hair. The movement drew attention to his rather nice arm. She wondered what else was hiding underneath his navy blue T-shirt.

“Sorry,” he said as he closed the distance between them. “Didn’t mean to snap at you. Just got a lot on my mind.” He peeked inside the paper bag and whistled.

“Yeah, it’s big.”

He glanced over to where she’d made her way through about half of hers. “You can eat that whole thing?”

“Every delectable bite.” She smiled, and when he offered a bit of a smile back, she dang near melted and slid off the tailgate.

If that wasn’t bad enough, when he took a bite of his cinnamon roll then licked at some of the icing at the edge of his mouth, she was pretty sure she spontaneously got pregnant.

Before she embarrassed herself so much she’d have to move out of Texas, she hopped down to the ground and wrapped up the rest of her cinnamon roll for later, when Austin Bryant wasn’t standing in front of her making her want to take a bite out of him instead.

As she rounded the back of the truck to put the bag in the cab, she pointed toward the house. “You can now have fun cleaning the gutters.”

Austin glanced toward where she’d propped the ladder and nodded. “Thanks. I think.”

She laughed a little. “Not looking forward to it?”

“Have you ever known anyone who looked forward to cleaning gutters?”

“Excellent point.”

Not knowing what else to say to keep their limited conversation going, she grabbed her tablet from the glove compartment and nodded toward the front porch. “Well, I better get busy, too.”

As she walked toward the house, she thought how it was a good thing Verona Charles wasn’t anywhere nearby. Because one look at Ella’s face would be all the encouragement the older woman needed to go full-on matchmaker, no matter the fact that Austin was clearing out, not moving in.

She took another big swig of her coffee to fight off the fatigue brought on by too little sleep the night before. And, honestly, several nights before that. Tonight wasn’t looking as if it was going to be any different. But sacrifices had to be made if she wanted to build her business, move into a bigger space where she could store her finds, have an area to spread out and work, and eventually have a storefront.

Not wanting to get any more behind on her inventory tracking than she already was thanks to the load from the day before, she set up her tablet on the kitchen table and started listing everything as she went through it. Logging everything before she carried it out to the truck slowed her down, but she knew from experience that if she allowed herself to get too behind she ended up overwhelmed. She probably didn’t have the best tracking system in the world, but it worked for her.

She was in the midst of inputting a box of vintage sewing patterns, already imagining decoupaging them onto tables and chairs and old sewing machine cabinets, when the unholiest racket came from outside. Fearing Austin had fallen off the ladder, she jumped up and ran out the front door.

By the time she rounded the corner of the house, he was halfway down the ladder with his hand to his forehead. The gutter hung by only one end, the opposite end nearly scraping the ground as it swung like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. She spotted the telltale red of blood around the edge of Austin’s fingers.

“It hit you in the head?”

“Yeah.” He growled the response, sounding as if he’d love to add a few choice curses after his single-word answer.

“Here, let me see,” she said, taking a few steps toward him.

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t be stubborn.”

He glanced up at her, raising the eyebrow on the undamaged side of his face. “Little bossy, aren’t you?”

She waved away his description. “Just practical. Now come on.” She motioned for him to follow her, and was sort of surprised when he actually did.

But when she headed inside, he stopped halfway up the front steps. Not wanting his unwillingness to go inside to prevent her from tending his wound, she motioned for him to sit on the steps. “I’ll be right back.”

She made for the bathroom, which was cluttered but not as crammed full as the rest of the house. After locating a clean washcloth, some hydrogen peroxide and an assortment of other first-aid supplies, she hurried back outside to find Austin with his feet on the second step and lying back on the porch. For a moment, she thought maybe he’d passed out. But he turned his head toward her.

Ella plopped down next to him, sitting cross-legged, and set to work washing away the blood and cleaning the wound. As cuts went, it wasn’t very big. But head lacerations were notorious for bleeding like crazy, making the injured party look like Carrie on prom night.

“I suppose I’ll live?”

The rumble of Austin’s voice so close sent delicious shivers across her skin. Why hadn’t she noticed his voice was so sexy it made her want to hop out of her clothes?

Oh, good grief. All work and no play were making Ella a naughty-minded girl.

“You should be fine as long as you don’t try headbutting any more gutters.”

He sighed and tried to sit up. Not even thinking about her action, she pressed down on his shoulder.

“Hang on. Let the bleeding stop so I can get a bandage on it. When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

“No clue. Probably when I was in school.”

“I’d suggest getting one.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She sighed in exasperation. Now who was being stubborn? “Tell yourself that when you’re spasming so hard you break your bones.”

He looked like he might respond but then seemed to reconsider.

Ella tried not to think about how close her bare leg was to his bare arm as she leaned forward to apply antibiotic cream to the cut. She wasn’t sure if heat was really coming off his body like he was a furnace, or if she was just flushing from the images traipsing through her mind. Things such as Austin back on that ladder but without a shirt and his jeans hanging low on his hips.

She made a frustrated sound without thinking about it.

“What’s wrong?” Austin asked as she affixed the bandage.

“It’s just blasted hot out here. I feel like I’m going to cook.”

The way he was looking up at her certainly wasn’t helping lower her temperature either.

“You do know you live in Texas, right?”

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”

For what felt like an unnaturally long moment, he stared up at her before finally lifting himself to a sitting position and propping his forearms on his legs, letting his hands dangle between his knees.

“Got to admit I’m not used to this anymore,” he said. “Air-conditioning spoils a person.”