Maisey Yates – A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas (страница 16)
She looked up at Grant. His expression contained neither judgment nor pity, and she didn’t know quite what to do with that. Typically, it was one or the other.
“Aren’t there tenants’ rights to protect you?” he asked.
“Sure,” she answered. “But how am I going to take anyone to court? How am I going to make sure that those rights are enforced? Mostly, it isn’t going to happen.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t seem
“Life is not fair, Grant. Not even close.”
“Yeah, I’m actually familiar with that principle.”
Again, she didn’t ask. It was strange, because he was asking her quite a few questions. More than she had expected a guy like him to ask, certainly. But she could tell the reverse would not be welcome.
“Well, then we understand each other to a degree. I don’t expect life to be fair. And that’s why when I’m given unexpected charity, I don’t kick up a fuss. I’ve had enough of the alternative to know that if something good is going to cross my path, I’m going to take it for however long it lasts.”
“Pretty solid principle to live by,” he said.
“I haven’t got a whole hell ton of principles, but the ones I do have have served me pretty well.” She dipped the long-handled roller into the tray of paint and moved it back and forth a few times, sliding it through the ridge part of the tray to get rid of the excess.
“Anywhere?” she asked.
“Anywhere,” he responded.
While he set up the air compressor, she set about making her mark on the side of the barn. She had thought yesterday’s work was satisfying, but this was somewhere beyond that. It was therapeutic in a way. Bright red strokes over weathered, worn wood. Making something new out of something old. It was more than just cleaning, it was transforming. She and Grant worked in relative silence, nothing but the sound of the air compressor, which blended into white noise and became somewhat meditative as she worked through the lower sections of the barn. They worked until her arms ached, and she was hungry.
“Why don’t we take a lunch break?” Grant asked.
“Sounds good to me.”
He covered her paint roller in plastic, and then the two of them walked back down the trail toward the mess hall. This time, when they walked by one of the covered arena areas, there were horses, and a girl with dark hair was riding one around a set of barrels.
“That’s my sister,” he said. “Jamie.”
McKenna found herself glued to the scene in front of her. She walked over to the fence, draping her arms over the top, and just watched. Grant went to stand next to her, a silent, tall figure at her side. “She’s pretty good, isn’t she?”
“Amazing,” McKenna answered.
“You want to ride sometime?”
She turned her head toward him, her expression contorting into one of shock. “I don’t know how.”
“I can teach you,” he said.
“You could teach me?”
He hesitated. “Or Jamie could.”
She wanted Grant to teach her. And if he had been a different man she might have said that. Hell, they were talking about him teaching her to ride. If it had been a different man she probably would’ve made an innuendo out of it.
But then, if it had been a different man she wouldn’t have felt like it. There was a reason she hadn’t been with anyone in a couple of years. She was sick of all the ridiculous nonsense that came with men. The way that a nice relationship turned into a series of transactions, and then faded out into boredom before the guy abandoned her. There was always hope in the beginning. That was one of the things she hated about herself. She could never quite squash that out. She knew women who could. At the last diner she’d worked at, there had been a whole crew of women on swing shift who had been shiny and sharp like obsidian.
Pretty, but hard.
Every client that wanted something extra with his meal was met with laughter and a cutting jab, and McKenna could hold her own there. But then, they also were all in relationships, and McKenna had recently sworn off them.
She remembered talking to the shift manager, Ruby, about that.
Part of McKenna had envied that. That grim resignation.
Another part of her had been afraid of it.
She wasn’t sure she wanted a life without hope. And she supposed that coming to Gold Valley, and holding out hope there was a right way to tell Hank Dalton that she was probably his daughter, was a testament to that fact. That she wanted hope. That she carried it somewhere inside of her.
But then, if there wasn’t hope at all, she didn’t see the point in walking on.
If what she had so far was representative of what she would have in the future...
Well, she might as well go lie down on that arena dirt next to Jamie Dodge’s next barrel and let her horse trample her to death.
But McKenna didn’t want to be trampled.
She wanted to live for better.
“That would be nice,” she said.
“Yeah, she’s the best, too. She’s starting a job at the Dalton ranch soon, training horses that used to be in the rodeo. The Daltons are, like, rodeo royalty.”
McKenna’s breath felt like it had been sucked from her body.
All that air had been replaced by hunger. A hunger to know more. These details about her family were something she’d had no idea she’d been desperate for.
But she was.
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, trying to sound casual. “Rodeo royalty, huh? What does, um...what does that look like?”
“I’m not totally sure. I don’t know them that well. Wyatt knows them better. He used to ride with the brothers in the rodeo. Hank, though, the father, he’s as famous as a cowboy gets.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Grant said. “Back in the eighties he did some big campaign for cigarettes or something. Famous advertising.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. But I hear he settled down in recent years. I guess you have to eventually.”
“Why is that?”
“He has a reputation. Of course, so do his sons. They’re cowboys and smoke jumpers. So, you can imagine.”
“They get a lot of play? Is that what you’re saying?”
“By all accounts, yes.”
“I mean, firefighting cowboys are pretty compelling, even I have to admit.”
“What does that mean?”
“What does
“That
“I’m not easily compelled by men,” she said.
He gave her a strange look. Like he didn’t know quite what to do with her. Or like she was an alien life form that had dropped down from another planet.