to the barn. Rubin actually walked a little ahead, and he began to have a conversation with Colt that I couldn’t make out.
From where I stood, it looked like the salesman type of conversation, where one person tries to find out what is expected of him in order to impress another person, and then becomes that thing. If so, he was barking up the wrong tree with Colt.
I turned as we got to the barn and looked at the family. Walter and Lucien seemed ready to get started, but the olive-skinned girls had their lips pursed and scrunched up as they looked around. Their heels were digging into the ground, and on more than one occasion, they pulled them up, making a suction sound as they dislodged from the mud. I smiled wide and held my arms out to invite them inside. Colt followed my lead and did the same on the other side.
“Here we are,” I said, my eyes sliding through them, but pausing for an extra second on Jane. “Welcome to Montgomery Dude Ranch.”
Chapter 10
Jane
“I told you girls to be more sensible with the clothing you packed,” Daddy said as he walked past us on the way down to the barn.
“I thought since it was our first day here, there would be a welcoming reception of some kind,” I said. “I didn’t think they would just immediately throw us into walking around out here.”
He laughed as if he thought I was trying to be funny and wasn’t genuinely distressed about how this was already turning out. “I told you from the beginning this wasn’t going to be like any other vacation you’ve ever taken. As soon as I told you that each of us was only allowed to bring a bag of belongings we could carry along on a horse, you probably should have known that meant there wasn’t going to be a lot of opportunity to be fancy.”
I thought back to the pairs of jeans I set aside in order to fit in the type of clothing I could wear without my skin crawling. At the time, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of any sort of tour or vacation experience that wouldn’t start with a welcoming gathering of some kind.
The only comparison I had were the trips we had taken through Europe and Africa when I was younger. Dad decided to choose all-inclusive tour companies rather than attempting these trips on our own. It meant we didn’t have to try to figure out things by ourselves and could just relax and enjoy the experience. And every single one of those had always started with a mixer or dinner where we met the tour guide and were welcomed to our destination.
Apparently, that concept was totally foreign to the men of Montgomery Ranch. No sooner had we stepped out of the car than they expected us to jump in. Right now, that included walking into a huge barn. I looked at Cecilia and both of our noses wrinkled up.
“It smells horrible,” I said.
“Do you think they even notice anymore?” Cecilia asked. “I mean, after they’ve been around it for so long, maybe they don’t even realize how foul it smells. Like when you burn that candle all day and you keep checking on it because you can’t smell it anymore.”
“I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. There’s a little bit of a difference between fresh linen and dirt mixed with various forms of animal.”
“Maybe that means even more that they wouldn’t be able to smell it anymore,” she said.
“You’re right, self-preservation,” I said.
I took another step forward and my heel sank down into the soft earth. I let out a frustrated cry and grabbed onto my sister to stop from tumbling all the way down onto the ground.
“You okay?” she asked.
I sighed and brushed my hair back away from my face. “I’m fine. That would just be par for the course for this place, wouldn’t it? I’m already out here in the middle of nowhere with this smell I’m pretty sure is never going to leave my nose. I might as well get my damn shoe stuck in the ground and end up sprawled out with my ass hanging out of my skirt.”
“Think of it this way,” she said, reaching down to brush some wayward dirt off her own shoe. “If you did end up like that, maybe Sawyer would be the one to help you up.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that thought. I didn’t