Ranch Manny - B.A. Tortuga Page 0,3
to laugh somehow.
“Don’t you cuss at me, boy.” Jan moved, though, going to pour a cup of coffee.
“Sorry.” The guy whooshed by them, the scent of horse and earth and leather like a commercial for a cologne or something.
“He said a bad word, Dad-O!” Susannah looked utterly shocked.
“I know, baby girl. Some people aren’t around little ones as much as I am, so they say adult things more.” That worked, right?
“Oh. Are there any colors? I could draw a picture for you.”
Shit. He’d left her drawing stuff in the car. “Uh. I don’t have—” He cut off when Jan plonked down a box of crayons and some coloring sheets printed with pictures of border collies and corgis frolicking over them.
“You are made of win, ma’am. Thank you.” He shot Susannah a look. “What do we say?”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The cowboy hung something on the bulletin board, then stomped back to sit in the booth directly behind them.
“Little late for you, Brent,” Jan said.
“I had to go away before I ripped off heads and sh—uh, did bad things to people.”
Someone had heard their conversation about bad words, he thought. At least the man had the decency to know it was about him. That said a lot.
“How are the kids?”
“Someone wrote all over the hallway, and the baby has a terrible butt rash.”
Trace winced. Oh, he knew all about that. He would try yogurt.
“Lord. You’ll figure it,” Jan murmured, her amusement clear.
“Not funny, old woman. Aren’t you supposed to be getting me a breakfast burrito?”
“With bacon and queso and sausage on the side,” Jan agreed and headed off.
“Dad-O, look at my drawling!”
He nodded, even as he pulled out his phone to look for…something. “It’s good, baby. I like the rhinoceros.”
“It’s a unicerious.”
“Oh! Is that why it’s pink and purple?”
He heard a warm chuckle, which slid right down his back, settling in his lower spine somewhere. That cowboy was something else. Something distracting.
“I wish we had glitters.”
“I bet you do. Turkey girl.”
“Gobble.”
He winked at her, then checked to see if the local newspaper had any ads online. He liked the diner well enough to think about camping out here, maybe, if he could get work and get the car to a garage. There was a campground. He’d seen it on the drive in.
Their food came, and he smiled up at Jan. “Thanks. How’s the campground? Is it decent?”
Jan glanced at Susannah. “It’s safe enough. Showers are clean. Better if you have a trailer, though.”
They didn’t even have a tent, but he could afford one at the Walmart. “Thanks.”
He opened his phone up. He needed to call Nate, ask for a ride and a place to live until he could get to his folks in Denver. His pride wasn’t worth this.
“She’s awful little for that place.” The cowboy didn’t sound any less grumpy after coffee.
“Yogurt,” Trace shot back.
“Pardon?”
“For the rash. Smear it on the baby’s rash. Plain.”
“No ’nilla,” Susannah warned.
“That’s right. Sugar makes the yeast worse.”
“And smells like ’nilla.”
“I can see where that would be weird.” The guy put an arm along the back of the booth seat to turn and look at them. “There’s a little B&B if y’all need a place for the night. Aimee has a room she keeps for emergency visitors. Thirty-five a night, which is about the same as the campground.”
“Thanks.”
“We been at a hotel. I want to go home, Dad-O. Can we please go home?”
“Baby girl…” He didn’t have an answer to that question.
“Dad-O! I want to take my toys out and play with them, not make them stay in the baby car no more.”
“Well, Miss, that’s sad as all get-out. Sorry about the cussing there.”
He could just see the crinkle that smile put around the cowboy’s eye.
“It’s okay. Dad-O does too.”
“We do when we’re having a bad day, for sure.”
“Well, you gonna tell us?” Jan filled coffees for him and the Brent guy. “Skeeter is gone now, so you can talk. No gossip spreader left.”
Brent glanced toward the counter, then nodded. “Curly left the gate open to the big pen. The one where I was holding the steers I was going to sell this week. God knows I love him, Jan, but I can’t even leave him up to the house to do minor stuff. He needs a babysitter, and Bald Harold and I have twice as much work to do now, so…”
Jan sighed and shook her head. “That what the ad for a babysitter-slash-eldercare is for?”
“You know it. I need help, lady. I so do.”
“I can do