“You don’t fuck around with anything,” said Daughtry. “Much less human emotion and basic decency.”
“Your opinion is noted, you marshmallow,” she said.
“Would you like some coffee?” Penny asked, her voice soft and feathery, and Arizona felt ridiculously irritated by it.
“Put some metal in your voice, Penny,” she said. “I know you’re not still scared of me.”
“Nobody wants their head bitten off by you,” said Daughtry. “Maybe take it back a peg or two, all right?”
“I don’t have to take it back any pegs,” said Arizona. “I don’t owe you anything. Least of all a smile.”
“You’re like a damned badger,” Justice said. “Except badgers might be safer to cuddle.”
“Fuck off,” she said, pouring her own cup of coffee into a travel mug and stomping from the kitchen. Immediately after she did that she felt...regret.
She did that. Let her mouth run off with her and then felt...gross right after.
She didn’t like to have conversations about herself, she didn’t like to get caught up in discussions about the past. And she had woken up thinking about things she didn’t like.
She didn’t know why she was so awful sometimes.
She stomped out into the blue pre-dawn air and got into her truck. She started the engine and sat for a minute, her hands wrapped around the coffee mug. She let the liquid warm her through.
She didn’t know why it was so hard. She didn’t know.
And she was jittery because she was going to see Micah. No. She was not going to see Micah. She was going to let the foreman handle it—meaning Landry—and she was going to leave it alone. So she decided to busy herself in the back pasture where she knew no one else would be, but where there were holes to fix in the fence. It was the perfect place for quiet busywork.
And so when she ran into Daniel, she was shocked.
The sun was getting to be in the middle of the sky, and the kid was covered in dirt. Sweaty from a day of working hard.
“What are you doing all the way out here?”
“My dad told me to check the fence lines,” he said, breathing hard, and she wondered if the kid had walked all the way over here.
“We’ve been working since four thirty.”
“Well, now that is a violation of child labor laws. Have you had lunch?”
“No,” he said. “I’m good. Dad said that it if I wanted to work the ranch, I had to be tough. I have to work on the same schedule as everyone else.”
“Well,” she said slowly. “Sure. But...”
And she didn’t know why she felt any compassion for this kid. For the scrappy boy who was like a gangly man who hadn’t grown into his testosterone yet. Except God knew their parents had never taken any softness or pity on them. While in many ways they had turned into functional humans, she didn’t think that they were all that emotionally conversant.
Her behavior this morning was exhibit A in that.
Part of her—a part she hadn’t known existed—just wanted better for this kid.
“Come on back to the house with me. I’m going to put together some food. And you can help me. That’ll be part of your workday.”
“That doesn’t sound like ranch hand business.”
She put her hands on her hips and stared the kid down. “Do I look like a cook to you? Or do I look like a ranch hand?”
“Well...”
His eyes flickered over her body, and his cheeks turned scarlet. Lord help her.
“I’m a ranch hand,” she said. “And you, kid, need to take a break or you’re not going to be able to get any functional work done. And I don’t want to hear any whining about it.”
“Yeah. All right.”
“You can ride back with me.”
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.”
She got into the cab of the truck with the kid and drove him back to the farmhouse.
And the one thing she was grateful for was that even though she had run into Daniel, she hadn’t seen his father anywhere.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MICAH COULDN’T FIND Daniel anywhere, and he was starting to get worried—which manifested itself as irritation. He had texted him three or four times and hadn’t gotten a response. And finally, he lost his temper and called.
“What?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Working. Like you said.”
“Where?”
“At the ranch house.”
He cursed and hung the phone up, then started to drive over to the ranch house.
He didn’t know what was up. And he hoped that the kid wasn’t making a nuisance out of himself. Yeah, he was being hard on him. He was running him maybe a little more ragged than was strictly necessary, but the thing was, Daniel didn’t understand life.
He had it rough with his mom, it was true, but more or less, Micah had worked as hard as he could to give him a childhood, and the kid didn’t understand that he was supposed to sit back and let things be easy. He didn’t understand struggle. Not really. And he shouldn’t be in any hurry to rush into one. Micah had no intention of hanging out here for the next thirty days. His plan was to get the kid so sick of work by the end of three days that they would be on the road back to Texas. His ranch could run on its own for a bit, but he certainly didn’t intend to leave it for thirty days.
That said, he was not going to tell the kid that he was trying to get out of this. Nor was he going to openly welch on the promise in any way. One thing he knew about Daniel was that he didn’t have the stability that he should be able to count on. And that was all Lacey’s fault.
Well. You’re the one that dated her and had a kid with her...
Sure. Maybe. But he had done the best he could to offer stability, and he still was.
Where the hell had she been? She hadn’t even known or cared where Daniel was.
He rolled up to the farmhouse, and thought of Arizona as she’d been yesterday. He thought of her often. A part of a simpler life, a simpler time. And yet, right now, nothing felt...simple. Or easy. He pulled up to the house and walked up the front porch. He’d been here before, though it had been a long time ago. He’d shared beers with her brothers, talked about different things. In some ways, he felt like he was living in a flashback, except... Except, of course, his son was behind that door.
And when the door opened, it was Arizona who answered, wearing one of her tight T-shirts that drew his attention... Well.