The Rancher Meets His Match (The Millers of Morgan Valley #4) - Kate Pearce Page 0,8

here. I’ll call you back.”

“Don’t you dare—”

She ended the call and spent a juvenile moment giving her own phone the finger before slipping it into her pocket.

Blaine Purvis wanted to be the big boss man? Then he could earn his paycheck for once. She was going to sit down with her father and find out exactly what was going on with the once thriving Garcia Ranch her great-grandfather had founded, and try to come up with a way to save it for the next generation.

Chapter Three

“So you just need to proceed carefully, shave off a little at a time, and . . .” Kaiden stopped speaking to stare at his companion. “Wes, are you even listening to me?”

“Sure!” His young apprentice jumped, shoved his phone in the pocket of his jeans, and looked Kaiden right in the eye. “Shave it all off, got it.”

Kaiden held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

“What?” Wes squealed like a motherless calf. “You can’t do that to me! Isn’t it against the law or something?”

“You are supposed to be learning a trade, right? That’s what you signed on for.” Kaiden pointed up at the beams. “We’re in an old building that needs a lot of love and tender care. We cannot afford to make stupid mistakes and bring it down around our ears.”

“I get that.” Wes nodded vigorously. “But what’s it got to do with you taking my phone? It’s my life.”

“If you don’t listen to my instructions because you’re too busy looking at your phone neither of us might live much longer.” Kaiden held Wes’s gaze. “So, what’s it going to be? You hand over your phone and work through till lunchtime when I’ll give it back to you, or you go and tell Beth you’ve been fired?”

“Wow, that’s harsh.” Wes shook his head like he was disappointed in Kaiden. “You know she’ll kill me if I blow this?”

“Not my problem.” After four weeks of working with Wes, Kaiden had just about had it. “If you’re not interested in doing the job, I’ll find someone who is.”

With a huge sigh, Wes handed over his phone.

“Thanks.” Kaiden stowed it safely in his tool belt. “Now, let’s get to this.”

“Do you want me to get some coffee?”

“You’ve only been here for half an hour. You can’t possibly need coffee.” Kaiden walked over to his workbench trailed by Wes.

“I was thinking more for you. You look a bit stressed.”

Kaiden reminded himself that Wes was only eighteen, and that after the upheavals of his childhood he deserved a chance. He concentrated on sorting through the tools and finding the right place on the structural plan.

“You see how this beam is anchored up here on the right?” He pointed it out on the plan and then at the actual beam itself. “We need to make sure that the joint is still secure so that it can hold up some of the weight of the roof.”

“Okay.” Wes squinted up at the roof. “So what do you want me to do? You know I don’t do heights, right?”

“You’ll be two foot off the ground, max,” Kaiden reassured him as he handed over a screwdriver and sandpaper. “Get up there, examine the joint, test gently to see if there is any unstable or soft wood using the tip of the screwdriver, and tell me immediately if there is.”

“Got it.” Wes walked toward the post. He climbed awkwardly up onto the second step of the ladder, pretended to fall and waved his arms around like an idiot before he noticed Kaiden’s measured stare and got to work. “It looks fine.”

“Great, use the sandpaper to clean up the joint, and then you can do exactly the same thing to the other nineteen posts. Put a red tag on anything suspicious so I can check it out.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.” Kaiden concentrated on the plans, reluctant to let Wes see he was fighting a smile at his apprentice’s fake outrage. “That should take you through to lunchtime.”

“When you’ll give me my phone back?”

“If you do a good job.” Kaiden used the calculator on his cell to check his math. “Every post has to be structurally sound, okay? It’s important.”

Wes muttered something under his breath and moved his ladder to the next post. Somewhere, someone was probably enjoying the spectacle of Kaiden having to be the tough, no-fun guy rather than the one making everyone laugh. Like most teenagers, Wes was a strange mixture of overconfidence and immaturity that Kaiden remembered all too well. Sometimes, he