every turn.
But my eyes wouldn’t stay focused on her. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth while I watched the other girl with the dark hair rummage around in the truck. She might have been wildly out of place on the ranch, but she was easily the most gorgeous woman I had ever laid eyes on.
Colt whistled under his breath and leaned over to me. “I never should have agreed to this,” he said. “It’s going to be a helluva week with a broad like that out on the trail.”
“Yeah,” I said distantly. “Maybe.”
When the girls had sufficiently rummaged for their purses, they joined the men and all convened where Colt and I were standing.
“And these are my daughters, Jane and Cecilia,” Walter said.
Jane, the one with the dark brown hair, glanced me up and down with her sunglasses at the end of her nose and then did a sort of half-hearted wave. Cecilia looked between Colt and me and then to her sister for a moment.
“Hi,” she said to me and Colt before pulling out her cell phone and doing something on it.
“Lord have mercy,” Walter said. “Can you breathe for more than ten seconds without those things?”
“No,” Jane and Cecilia said in unison.
“What did you get me into?” Colt said under his breath.
“Well,” I said, clapping my hands loudly. “Like I said, my name is Sawyer, and this is my brother Colt. Welcome to the Montgomery Ranch. If you will follow us down to the barn over on this side of the house, we can saddle up the horses.”
“Wait, what?” Cecilia said. She seemed like she was confused as to what the point of being on the ranch even was, and I looked back to her father for confirmation.
He rolled his eyes.
“The first place we will be going is to the barn, then a short ride to the second barn, where we will be bunking tonight,” I said. “We should get there by noon if we get a move on. Then you all can try your hand at cattle herding.”
“For real?” Rubin said.
“Why the hell did you think I brought us out here?” Walter asked and they both laughed.
Lucien put his arm around his boy and squeezed for a moment. “It’ll be great, son. Get our hands dirty and live like your uncle and I used to years ago.”
“I’m excited,” Rubin said, and I smiled.
“You would be,” Jane said, and I noticed her looking at me again. Then her gorgeous hazel eyes darted back to her phone.
“Well, let’s get a move on,” Colt said. “We still need to saddle the horses and get everything ready.”
“You mean they aren’t already prepared?” Cecilia said, a tone of indignation in her voice.
Colt laughed.
“There’d be no use in having everything done for you,” Walter said. “You need to learn what a real day’s work is like, and you can’t do that if everything is always laid out for you.”
The two girls sighed, looking like they would rather be literally anywhere else in the universe than on the ranch at that moment. I tried to force my eyes away from watching Jane’s smooth neck as the gold necklace she wore glinted in the sunlight. She was slender but toned, and I wondered if she would make it long enough to have a hardworking day in the sun with sweat rolling down that neck and onto her chest.
No, self. Stop that.
I shook my head to get the thoughts out and turned toward the barn. Behind me, I could overhear their hushed conversation while we walked.
“I tried telling you girls,” Walter said.
“Hell, I tried telling you on the plane,” Rubin said.
“We didn’t think you were serious,” Cecilia said.
“Why would I joke about that?” Walter said. “You’ll be fine. A little hard work never killed anyone, and dressing a horse is step number one for the day. I spoiled the hell out of you two when your mother left us, and now it’s high time you got a taste of what the real world is like. I thought giving you everything was me doing my job as your father, but I’m starting to see I went wrong there. I never taught you the value of hard work. This is the chance for you to learn.”
I could hear the pain in his voice when he spoke of the girls’ mother, and they both went quiet. Seeming resigned to their fate, they walked closer to their father, and we made our way across the grounds