“I can ask the same of you.” She pointed to the sliced beef sandwich he had to hold with two hands.
“But I’m a growing boy,” he protested, the corners of his mouth drawing upward.
“I could never eat an animal.” She shook her head, concentrating on the banquet of tastes that Cari had divinely put together like a five-star chef might.
“Mmm,” he grunted, relishing the sandwich. “I need the protein.”
“We have vegetable proteins,” Dana said archly.
He drew out a bag of blue corn chips and opened it up, setting it on top of the cooler. “These are vegan, too.”
“I share. Would you like some?” She took a triangle, munching on it, pleased with the sea salt on it.
“Only if I’m starving.”
“And you’re not that hungry, huh?”
A throaty chuckle.
“Is Chase vegetarian?”
“No. None of his family is. Cari is the only one. She’s five months’ pregnant. Doc said it is a girl and Cari already told the boss man that their daughter was going to be raised vegetarian”
“Good for her,” Dana said, wiping her fingers on the thigh of her jeans.
“You don’t get much work done eating plants,” he drawled, finishing off the first sandwich and reaching for the second one. This time, he drew out a bag of potato chips, opened it and set it next to her blue corn chips.
Laughing, she said, “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”
“What?”
“Us. Two very different people trying to find peace in the middle?”
He tipped the front of his Stetson up a bit, looking around. “Oh, I think you and me, as different as we might appear to be on the surface, have a lot more in common than we really know.”
Her heart tumbled when he glanced over at her, completely serious. “Are you psychic or something?”
“Me? Nah.” He bit voraciously into the second sandwich.
Staring at him, a warm ripple went through her. “I think,” she began slowly, “that you are not who you seem to be.”
“Is anyone?”
“Yes.”
“Like you, for instance? What you see is what you get?”
“I hope so,” she said, impertinent over the curious, appraising look he gave her. It was as if he really was able to read a person’s mind. He certainly seemed able to penetrate her world and know who she was. Under other circumstances, Dana might have found that disconcerting, but with Colin? He seemed like a safe, quiet harbor to her pressured world right now. Just sitting with him brought her stress levels down. “Aren’t you the same?” she demanded archly.
Shrugging, he said, “The work I did in the army? They called us chameleons.” He gave her a steady look. “We became what we had to be in order to survive, to manipulate or manage a pretty deadly situation.”
She lost her playfulness. “. . . Oh . . .”
“Now, don’t give me that sad-eyed puppy dog look,” he admonished. “I don’t like people feeling sorry for me.”
The silence fell between them, and they each ate their sandwiches, watching a red-tailed hawk flying above them, across the wide-open meadow where they liked to hunt for rodents and snakes. Dana wasn’t sure what to say for a long time. She ate and then would pull a blue chip from the bag. He’d do the same, only it was from his potato chip bag. Finished, she pushed her hands against her jeans.
“I think I need to wash off these paws in the creek,” she said, standing.
Colin nodded. “I’ll be doin’ the same in a few minutes.”
Walking toward the creek, Dana felt a mix of emotions clashing within her. One moment, he was a delightful little boy teasing her. The next, deadly serious and she could see the agony in his blue eyes, as if he said anything, some invisible dam within him was going to break open and he’d have no way of controlling it or his emotions. And yet, she felt comfortable and safe with Colin. And drawn to him, man to her woman. Maybe he was many things to many people. She simply didn’t know. Her life as a farmer limited her in some ways. The people she worked with were literally the salt of the earth: honest, commonsensible, what you saw was what you got.
Squatting down near the edge of the water, she put her hands into it, the coldness snapping and jarring. Was that what Colin was really like on the inside? She’d heard that those who suffered from PTSD were often like two different people. One nice, the other broken and hurting. His look had been haunting and her sensitive intuition told her he’d wanted to say so much more, but something was holding him back.
Pushing to her full height, she flung her hands a little and then dried them off on her jeans. Taking a deep, unsteady breath, Dana sensed that because she was so magnetically drawn to Colin, that one day, he might tell her. But from the look in his narrowed eyes, she wasn’t sure when it might be.
Chapter 3
Colin felt sorry for Dana as they walked up to the main ranch house at Three Bars. They’d arrived at the ranch around three p.m., with Dana following his flatbed in her truck. He could see the fatigue in her eyes, understanding only too well that her world had been upended once again.
It was all good news, of course, but there was a lot going to come down next week, and she didn’t have much of an anchor to hold on to during this chaotic period. He wanted to be that for her, and that surprised him. Since coming home from Afghanistan, he’d been a dark, quiet loner doing his job and doing it well on Three Bars. Because the owner, Chase Bishop, had been a behind-the-lines Marine recon and had also been a victim of PTSD, he understood Colin’s need to work alone, and not in a noisy crowd. He always gave him assignments where he could do just that.
As he drove the flatbed into an equipment area down below the ranch, Dana pulled up. He climbed into her truck, giving her directions to where the main ranch was located. The sun was low in the western sky and he knew it would be dark around seven p.m. He told her how to get over to see Tracy Hartimer, their forewoman who ran the ranch. Once there, he introduced Dana to blond-haired Tracy, who was tall and lean. She took Dana over to the nearby women’s bunking facility, which they called “the barracks.” In no time, she had a very nice four-hundred-square-foot cubical with a bed, TV, desk, dinette table, and stuffed chair. Colin hadn’t been in the women’s bunkhouse, but it was, by far, superior to the men’s bunkhouse. He saw Dana was surprised and pleased.
He brought her suitcases in from the truck and deposited them into her new, temporary home. The men’s bunkhouse was nearby, so it was easy enough for him to walk over there where his truck was parked. He told Dana he’d pick her up near six p.m. Both of them needed a shower and a change of clothes, for sure.
There was a horizontal swath of pale lavender along the western horizon when Colin drove them up to the main ranch house. He parked in the gravel driveway.
“Looks like Logan Anderson and his wife, Leanna, are comin’ for dinner, too,” he said.
“Who are they?”
“They own the largest ranch in the valley. Nice folks. You’ll like them.” He walked around the truck, opening the door for her. Seeing her shock, he said drily, “Bear with me? I’m old-fashioned,” and he held his hand out, which she took, and helped her step down to the ground.