Restless Rancher Read online

  “We’ll go room by room, sorting. Everything comes out of the house for now. You will oversee the men, directing them as to what category every item falls under. From what I’ve seen, there are bills and papers interspersed throughout the house. Let’s gather that all together. I’ll go through it and determine what we need and what can go. If you don’t mind, I’ll start in the kitchen. I’ll set up a couple tarps in back and keep things you’ll need and donate what you don’t. Sound good?”

  “Yeah. I’m not that great a cook. I imagine you’ll do a better job setting up the kitchen. The fridge needs to be replaced, but I did clean it out, so it’s not that bad. The microwave doesn’t work. I mostly use the toaster oven. I think my grandfather had a massive fire in the oven. Only one burner works on the ancient stove.”

  “Roxy and I spoke about some of the needed renovations. We’ll gut the kitchen. I’ve got cabinet and countertop guys scheduled for the day after next. Electricians and plumbers will be here with the kitchen guys. I’ve got a contractor lined up who will oversee the repairs and painting. We have two full days to empty the house before they get here, so I need you to sort quickly. If you’re not sure about an item, put it in the keep pile. We can go through it out here later.”

  Austin gulped his cooling coffee, needing the caffeine to get through this day. Hungover and feeling the weight of being on the cusp of a new and better life, he needed to finally step up and take charge. The daunting task ahead would take more than muscle. He needed to get past his sentimentality and do the job.

  He needed a safe, clean place to live. He’d wanted to tackle this project for months. Now was the time to get it done so he could move on to getting the stables, barn, and land ready for business.

  His skinny ass wouldn’t survive another winter in the barn. Even the thought of it made his body shiver.

  He didn’t like the idea of taking money from Roxy, but if he could get the place in shape, start working the ranch, he’d put all his blood, sweat, and tears into making it a success so he could pay her back every cent.

  Sonya held up the empty bottle of whiskey he’d left on the porch. “Ready to get started?”

  Austin took the bottle, walked over to the recycle bin, and pitched the bottle into the back corner, smashing it to bits of flying glass.

  Something inside him shifted. For the first time in a long time, he let himself believe everything would be different now. He didn’t need to drink away the pain because he had a purpose and a goal that he could actually achieve. He could make a go of this place. He could prove his father wrong.

  Chapter Five

  Sonya left Austin staring at shattered glass. She hoped it symbolized the break of the hold booze had on him. She grabbed two garbage bins and headed to the back door that opened into the kitchen. Despite the worn and neglected look of the house, it reminded her of the cottage she shared with her sisters. The wide porch offered a view of the beautiful land and arching trees shading the house. Right now, the dusty yard offered up more weeds than wildflowers, but with some new plantings, it could be bright and welcoming. The perfect spot to sit after a long day on the ranch, enjoy a beer and quiet contemplation of all that had been accomplished and needed to be done the next day.

  She should order some rocking chairs and a small table.

  Maybe she could pot some pretty flowers and line the steps. Their sweet scent would drift on the wind through the screen door and into the house that would be a cozy retreat when she finished with it.

  She stopped just outside the back door and stared at the chipped and weathered siding on the wall. Enthusiasm turned to disappointment. This wasn’t her house. Not her home.

  She didn’t have a place of her own.

  She didn’t really belong anywhere.

  The loneliness she carried with her stopped up her throat and made it ache.

  Yes, she and her sisters had their cottage at the Wild Rose Ranch, but that had been more Roxy’s place. She’d taken Sonya, Adria, and Juliana into her home when their mothers started working at the Ranch. It had been a good place to finish growing up. Better than living with her mother’s pimps and boyfriends who promised her mother everything and gave her nothing but hell.

  Fear had been her constant companion.

  The Ranch had been the first place Sonya ever felt safe. The Madam, Big Mama, took care of Sonya’s mother, June. No one beat her anymore. No one used her. No one forced her to do things she didn’t want to do.

  Her mother lived a happy life at the Wild Rose Ranch. She didn’t have to think about the past anymore.

  As for Sonya, she thought about the past and future far too much. Analyzing things from every angle kept her stuck in a loop, anxious, and unsettled.

  When Roxy asked her to quit her job and work for her, Sonya had nearly given herself an ulcer weighing her options and fretting over giving up a steady salary and a career with a real future. She’d worked so hard to earn her degree and become a respected accountant.

  Numbers made sense to her. Everything lined up.

  People, the things they did, their capacity to hurt others and inflict such cruelties, boggled her mind.

  Doing the books for Roxy for the Wild Rose Ranch didn’t take much more than what she did at her job. But taking on this project with Austin, starting a business and running it, that had been outside her wheelhouse.

  Roxy begged her to help. Sonya balked, but then the accounting firm passed her up for a promotion that would have set her up to become a partner. They gave it to Dave, the guy who came to Sonya all the time for help. And stupid her, she’d done the nice thing and helped him—right into the position that should have been hers.

  Roxy always told her Sonya played things too safe. Coming from Roxy, who never did anything that might make people think she was like their prostitute mothers, that was saying something.

  After Roxy’s father died, she’d changed her whole life and moved here to Montana with only a hope and a prayer that things would turn out fine working on her father’s ranch and raising a teenage sister. When the town found out Roxy owned the Wild Rose Ranch, they hadn’t been kind or welcoming. But Roxy found her place, the home she always wanted, and a man who loved and accepted her.

  That took courage.

  Sonya agreed to the job, the move, accepted the challenge of getting this ranch up and running and working with a man she knew nothing about, except he’d fallen on hard times and into a bottle.

  Not very promising.

  But Sonya didn’t give up and she didn’t let obstacles get in her way.

  She had a job to do and she’d get it done even if Austin stayed drunk and stupid while she did it.

  This may not be her house, her business, or the future she wanted but couldn’t define anyway, but she’d get to it and figure out what came next when the job was done. Maybe it was time to step out of her safe world and take a chance on something new.

  She never expected to start with this project. She wrinkled her nose as the stench of rot and filth wafted out the back door. Ten feet away, it hit her in the face like a wave. She’d made the coffee this morning, but feared drinking any of it. Who knew what kind of germs and toxins were in the air in this place. She had no idea how Austin could stand it, but he’d been scraping by for months.

  No one should live like this.

  And with that depressing thought in mind, she pulled on her respirator, set the two trash bins side by side at the back door, and walked into the horror that should be the heart of the home. Looking around at the sheer volume of stuff, she vowed she’d restore this kitchen if it was the last thing she ever did.

  She started at the door, pulling newspapers, bottles, cans, and empty cereal and food boxes from the counter and tossing them into the recycle can. Trash, like the broken can opener, disgusting food containers, the dead mouse she found in a drawer of beer bottle caps, and the eight, nine, ten . . . no, eleven boxes of expired graham crackers stuffed into the pots and pans cupboard, went int
o the other bin.

  She filled them quickly, dragging them again and again around the house to the front and emptying them in the Dumpsters. Each trip gave her a glimpse into how things were going with Austin in the rest of the house. The Dumpsters filled quickly. The tarps held items in reasonably good shape to donate and keep. Surprisingly, the pile to donate grew faster than the keep.

  After dumping her last load in the recycle bin, she pulled off her mask and sucked in some much-needed cool clean air.

  “Why three new packs of glass Christmas ornaments? There’s no place to put a fucking tree in the house.” The anger and frustration laced with disbelief in Austin’s voice made her smile. He set the silver, green, and red balls on top of a laundry basket filled with plastic hangers. “There are six new photo frames and thirteen pairs of reader glasses so far. Why?”

  “Why the drawer filled with coupons he clipped but never used? The oldest one I found expired in 1971 for Folgers instant coffee.”

  “Who the hell drinks that stuff?”

  “Not him. Based on the progression from bottom to top of the piles, I’d say he started out a Maxwell House drinker, went through a Yuban phase, then recently started drinking Seattle’s Best. He started with the Portside Blend, but abandoned a third used bag inside one of the hundred rocky road containers I tossed and discovered he was a Very Vanilla kind of guy.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Nope. Your grandfather turned in his manly black coffee for a sweet vanilla treat in the morning.”

  Austin planted his hands on his hips, hung his head, and laughed. Before it tinged with hysteria, he sucked in a ragged breath and stared up at the sky. “I really don’t understand.”

  “Stop trying to understand the crazy in that place and look at what that man really cared about.” She held her hand out to the keep pile. “Pictures of, I presume, your grandmother and mother. I’ll bet the frames were for that stack of photos. Empty hangers. A pile of men’s clothes, but not women’s. Maybe it hurt too much to see his dead wife’s clothes hanging in the closet. A pristine set of china is stashed in a cupboard in the kitchen with a million wadded-up paper towels. I guess to keep them safe. The family of mice I discovered living in them didn’t get the message that those dishes meant a lot to your grandfather. So much so, he tried to protect them from getting broken or damaged by what he’d done in the rest of the house. I found the silverware secure in a wood case stashed in the pullout drawer under the oven. All by itself.”

  “My grandmother used those dishes at every birthday, holiday, and special occasion.”

  “Look past the arbitrary stuff and you’ll see what really mattered to your grandfather.” She waved him to follow her around back.

  Like her, he stepped over the piles of dishes, kitchen utensils, cups, and glasses she’d sorted out of the mess to the piles of pictures she’d left on the steps. She picked up the colorful stack of construction papers and handed them to Austin.

  “I imagine he kept every drawing you ever doodled for him.”

  Austin sat on the step and sorted through the fifty or more crayon drawings of horses, cowboys, and houses with bright yellow suns and fat trees with stick figure people. Some just Austin and his grandpa. A few with Grandma included. Others Austin with his mom and dad. A plane with Austin waving out a window.

  “I wanted to be a fireman.” Austin held up the bright red fire truck on yellow construction paper.

  She smiled down at it. “I like the purple puppy and green kitten one the best.”

  He pulled it out of the stack. “My father wouldn’t let me have a pet. I loved coming here to Grandpa’s ranch. I played for hours with Rumble the cat and Copper, the German shepherd my grandfather adopted, just so I could play with him when I was here.” Austin shuffled to a picture of a white, brown, and black pony. “He taught me how to ride Bandit.” A grin tugged at Austin’s lips as he stared at the picture. “He used to get out of his stall and raid the grain bin. My grandfather said he was just as naughty and up to mischief as me.”

  “I believe it.” Something about the boyish glint in his eyes made her want to ruffle his hair. She held back. They didn’t know each other that well. They’d barely spoken today after she woke him up in a not-so-nice way. Still, she felt something for him and the memories of this place and his grandfather that meant so much to him.

  She had no such memories. From what her mother told her of her grandfather, she was better off never meeting him.

  She set aside her baggage about her fucked-up family and asked, “Uh, why Rumble for the cat?”

  “Purred as loud as thunder. He’d curl up with me at night and that purr would put me out like a light.” Austin glanced up at her. “Did you have any pets growing up?”

  “I fed the mouse who hid behind our refrigerator for a week when I was like four or five.”

  “Why only a week? Did he run away?”

  “No. My mother’s pimp threw his knife and stabbed him. He flicked the mouse off it out the door and into the gutter. No more pets.”

  Roxy had her horses at the ranch. Sonya was a proficient rider. She’d competed alongside her sisters and won. But she’d never forgotten the lesson about the mouse. The horses were Roxy’s, not hers. Loving them meant she’d have to leave them because where Roxy went, so did her beloved horses.

  Austin stared at her, stunned.

  Not exactly the happy memories he had of puppies, kittens, and ponies. He grew up with money, privilege, and possibility.

  She started her life in poverty, believing that nothing in her life would ever change because challenge was met by force to suppress and control. Thanks to a hand up by Big Mama and the Wild Rose Ranch, she learned that opportunity could change your life if you were willing to work hard. And she had, because no one handed her anything.

  Despite the state of the ranch, he’d been given a piece of land worth a lot of money. He wanted to keep it, but if he had to sell, he’d have the means to do anything he wanted.

  “Your life’s not that bad.” She walked up the steps and back into the kitchen.

  Sharing personal stories wasn’t really her strong suit. Better to stick to business. She wasn’t here to be Austin’s best friend. Her job was to keep her eye on the money and get this place up and running. Not that she knew all that much about buying horses and cattle. She’d leave the purchases to Austin so long as he stayed on budget.

  But that was for later. Right now, she needed to tackle the rest of the kitchen and the piles of stuff clogging the archway into the living room. The men she’d hired worked diligently trying to clear out the space. They’d made a good-sized dent from the front door into the room toward the hallway. Eventually, the small path leading into the kitchen would open up. And now, with doors and windows open, the overwhelming smell had dissipated.

  She stood in the 60 percent cleared kitchen, her feet sticking to the dingy cream-and-gold-plaid linoleum that cracked with every shift of her weight because it was so brittle, and tried to picture what it would look like all cleaned up.

  If they widened the casing into the living room, they could add an island and stools, open up the space and make it more practical. They could . . .

  Wait. Not they. As much as she loved the idea of turning this cesspool into a warm and welcoming home, the minute she finished the task she’d be out of here.

  Roxy offered to let her stay with her and Noah. No thanks. As happy as she was for her sister, she didn’t want to intrude on the lovebirds. Her short stay with them last month showed her how happy Roxy was and how empty Sonya’s life felt.

  She’d lived with Roxy, Adria, and Juliana since she was thirteen. When Roxy moved out, Sonya resented that she’d broken up their quartet, but that just masked the fact that Sonya wondered how long she’d cling to her sisters and the only safe place she’d ever had in her life before venturing out and finding the life she wanted for herself.

  She thought she needed the degree and the job, the stabilit
y they both offered, but deep down she wanted what she’d never had. A real family. A chance to make memories with someone special and a life for her children that she’d only dreamed about during her own lonely and sometimes ugly childhood.

  She didn’t understand how anyone, Austin’s father included, could turn their back on their child and not do everything in their power to give them a good life.

  “Hey, sweetheart, you okay?”

  Sonya snapped out of her head and focused on Austin standing in the narrow opening between the kitchen and living room still crammed with crap.

  “You’ve been standing in that spot for, like, three minutes.”

  She lifted one foot, then the other, showing Austin how her hiking boots stuck to the floor. “It’s easy to get stuck in this place.”

  Austin stared down at her feet. “I didn’t remember the color of the floor. Seeing it now, that funky yellow, I wish I could forget again.” At least he’d found some humor to help ease his frustration with the state of this place.

  “Not to worry, the floors are being redone.” She looked around at the massive job still left to do. “As soon as we uncover the floors.”

  Austin ran his gloved hand over the back of his neck. “I, uh, didn’t get a chance this morning to say thanks for coming to help.”

  “So you forgive me for pouring a bucket of water on you?”

  Austin held back a smile. “Probably the only way to wake my ass up. And I’m sure it cut the stench. It’s hard to make myself walk in here and use the shower. It’s usually me and the hose by the barn sometime during the day.”

  Sad. “You smelled a hell of a lot better than this place.”

  His eyes clouded with pain and regret.

  “In a few days, this will be a memory, Austin. I may not be your go-to girl for the ranching part of this partnership, but I can clean up this mess and turn the house into somewhere you not only want to sleep but show off.”

  “I never expected Roxy to fix the house beyond cleaning it out. I can work on the repairs and painting and stuff a little at a time once I’ve got the ranch up and running.”