about him except as an employee.
Chapter Five
Adam got in a run before dawn, then arrived at the Silver Creek Ranch just as the sun crested the mountain peaks. He saw activity at the newer barn closest to the house, lights on inside against the gloom, horses out at pasture. It must be crowded in that barn, with the old one destroyed.
He found the ranch office easy enough, and Mr. Thalberg met him inside and offered coffee, muffins, then paperwork. Nate was already hunched over his computer, and he waved a good morning.
Adam was glad for the chance to work, to not twiddle his thumbs or elude another tarot reading. He loved his grandma, but too much togetherness had made him itch for some freedom. But he couldn’t help gnawing over the fact that the Thalbergs surely hired him out of pity because his grandma had put in a word. He was a vet with no job at the moment, with little ranch training. He would probably be a hindrance more than a help, but he was determined to work as hard as he could to prove to Mr. Thalberg that hiring him had been the right decision.
As for his attraction to Brooke, Adam was going to ignore it. The Marines had taught him honor, and that didn’t include chasing after his employer’s daughter—his boss.
Mr. Thalberg told him to head to the shed, the huge metal building where all the big trucks were stored, and that’s where he found Brooke. She was outside the doors, standing on a ladder, head beneath the hood of a massive flatbed truck already stacked with bales of hay for feeding cattle. Some kind of crane was mounted on the flatbed, with what looked like a giant yellow fork attached, probably for picking up hay. Guess he wouldn’t be riding a horse anytime soon, he thought, a little disappointed.
Brooke was layered up in cold-weather gear, from coveralls to at least a couple jackets, and a thick wool cap on her head. And then there were her high, all-weather boots. He looked at those, then dubiously down at his cowboy boots, already sinking into the winter mud.
That’s when she chose to straighten out from beneath the hood, dipstick in her hand. She followed his gaze to his boots and shook her head.
“I thought you might not have the proper gear,” she said. “There’s an old pair of Nate’s boots in the cab, along with some coveralls and a couple hats. That cowboy hat’ll fly right off your head in this wind.”
“Thanks.” He looked past her. “You’ve already loaded the hay.”
She shrugged. “I like to get an early start, especially since this retriever burns oil like crazy, and I have to keep checking it. And the stackyard would be a sinkhole of mud if I wait until the sun hits it. You’ll figure everything out.” Then she ducked back under the hood.
He studied her while she wasn’t looking. He knew there might be men who thought what she did was unfeminine. He wasn’t one of them. He could see the rope of her braid down her back and imagined what it looked like all spread out in chestnut waves around her shoulders.
Uncomfortably aroused, he opened the retriever’s cab door and donned all his gear. By the time he was done, she slammed the hood down and walked swiftly back inside the shed. When she came back out, she got up inside the driver’s side of the cab. He hopped up beside her.
“Where’s Josh?” he asked.
“We drew straws,” she said as she started up the engine. “I lost.” She gave him a dubious glance. “I get to train the greenhorn today, and Josh gets to do some horse doctoring.”
It was going to be an awkward day if her attitude was any indication. She started to drive down the bumpy dirt road, away from the buildings and out onto the rolling pastures enclosed with barbed-wire fence. He couldn’t see grass for the white depth of the snow, and the wind swirled it across the windshield. Brooke drove like she could have done it with her eyes closed.
“We’re feeding the yearlings first, farthest from the house,” she said.
She stopped at a gate and just looked at him, one brown eyebrow lifted. After a second’s incomprehension, he jumped out of the warm cab and into the cold, even more biting out there, where it came off the mountains with no trees or buildings to hinder it. He opened the gate, and after