Running Blind Read online

  And here at the ranch, she was relaxed, and every day she could feel herself settling in more. Never mind that Zeke was a never-ending irritant, an itch she refused to let herself scratch—she liked the job, she liked most of the men, she liked having her own little suite to herself. There was nothing extra special about the two rooms, but they were downright luxurious compared to some of the places she’d lived in while she was on the run. And come to think of it, there was something a little special about them, because they’d been remodeled out of love. Sure, it was love for the perfect Libby, but Carlin was still benefiting from that care and consideration.

  “The list is on the table,” she said as she placed the last stack of clean, white dishes in the cupboard. “Look it over and see if I’ve forgotten anything.”

  Carlin immediately headed down the hallway, toward her rooms, and after a couple of beats Spencer called after her. “Broccoli? Do we really have to have broccoli?”

  She laughed easily, something she could do these days. “Yes!”

  Observation—and the recently discovered Food Network, which she’d been watching regularly lately—had taught her that when it came to food and men, keeping it simple was the best strategy. Zeke and his ranch hands would gladly live on meat and potatoes, so she made sure to provide plenty of both. However, she also felt it was her duty as cook—and as the lone woman in the group—to sneak a vegetable onto the menu now and then. If she covered the veggies in cheese or disguised them in some other sort of sauce, she could usually slip something green past the guys a couple of days a week.

  In her room she grabbed her jacket, cap, and sunglasses, in preparation for the trip. She’d stop by The Pie Hole while she was in town, say hello to Kat, and pick up the pies she’d ordered. Pie sometimes improved Zeke’s mood … temporarily. There probably wasn’t enough pie in the state of Wyoming to turn him into a bearable human being. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of disgruntlement. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t care. Having him that way was easier on her own state of well-being.

  If he spoke to her, it was usually to growl something that she might or might not bother to interpret. He was pretty much leaving her alone these days, but when he came home at night he was, well, grumpy. Spencer said getting ready for the October market was stressful, and once that was done everyone would be in a better mood. A few of the hands would leave the ranch soon, and come back when calving season arrived. Some would go home; a couple of them rodeoed. Walt, Kenneth, and Micah—the foreman and the two married hands—were year-round employees. Even Spencer went home for a week or two, though he came back before the others, he said. He liked it here. This ranch felt more like home to him than his family home.

  Carlin wondered what Spencer’s family was like, if it was an entire enclave of Pollyannas. Spencer was Zeke’s opposite in personality. He smiled, made jokes, and dealt with the handicap of an out-of-commission arm as if it were truly no big deal. Maybe he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was the kind of man who would go out of his way to help a friend, something she deeply appreciated. He had certainly gone out of his way to make her feel welcome here.

  They’d spent a lot of time together since she’d arrived here on the ranch. He couldn’t do much in the way of physical labor since his accident, but he’d been great about helping her learn her way around the house and answering the gajillion questions she had about the way things were done. Because he’d cooked for the crowd himself, before his injury, he knew where the spices were stored, what the guys liked to drink, and what foods they hated (vegetable lasagna topped the list). He also shared Zeke’s view that the previous housekeeper—the apparently perfect and angelic Libby—had made the best chocolate cake ever. Damn, sometimes she thought she could really get a hate on for this Libby person. Well, not really, because she didn’t know her. But she could definitely feel jealous of Libby’s prowess in the kitchen.

  What with Libby and her chocolate cake, and Kat’s gift with pies, and the disaster with the white cake, Carlin knew it was a waste of time to try anything fancy in the dessert department. She picked up pies from The Pie Hole when she went to town to buy groceries, and she bought lots of ice cream. Who didn’t like ice cream? Brownies made from a mix were also popular, and easy. One of these days she was going to try the white cake again, but she kept finding reasons not to. Failure was never pleasant, and abject failure was humiliating. Kat had told her she’d probably just overmixed the batter, but Carlin didn’t see how that could turn what should’ve been cake into an inedible spongelike substance. She did find a recipe for corn bread cake that—surprise—didn’t have a lick of cornmeal in it, and it had turned out really well, but it was a sheet cake and somehow that didn’t count. Layer cakes, the bastards, were what counted.

  Spencer had adapted to the sling that immobilized his left arm well, and probably could’ve continued to work as a ranch hand in some capacity, but Zeke had insisted that he help her until he was healed. She wondered: was it a job meant to make things easy on the young hand, or did Zeke trust her so little that he wanted someone he did trust to keep an eye on her? There had been a time when she would’ve been insulted, but she now understood lack of trust all too well.

  As they drove down the long and winding road—no joke—that eventually led to the road that led to the road that led to Battle Ridge, Carlin glanced at Spencer and asked—not for the first time in the past couple of weeks—“When are you going to tell me exactly how you hurt your shoulder?”

  His cheeks went red. He was barely twenty-one, all but a baby. “That’s not something a man wants to tell a woman, Miss Carly. It was bad. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I know it has something to do with collecting bull semen,” she said. “I just can’t quite get the picture in my head …”

  “Ma’am, you don’t want that picture in your head,” he said earnestly. “I don’t either, but since I was there I don’t have a choice. I’m just glad it’s my left shoulder and not the right one. I’d have a heck of a time doing anything if I couldn’t use my right arm.”

  She didn’t think the nine-year difference in their ages made her a ma’am, but it was a habit she hadn’t been able to break him of. She was either ma’am or Miss Carly, not just to him but to every man on the ranch … except Zeke.

  She’d even done some research on the library computer, and knew there were several ways to collect bull semen. Some of the methods seemed almost cruel to her, but apparently the bull didn’t usually mind being electrically jacked off.

  “Usually” being the operative word here, since obviously with Spencer’s last attempt something had gone wrong.

  “I have a question for you,” Spencer said. He pointed at her hat and sunglasses, which were sitting on the seat between them. “Why is it that every time you go into town you put on a disguise? It’s almost like you’re a movie star or a singer going inflagrante.”

  Carlin bit back a laugh. It would be rude, and she didn’t want to make Spencer feel stupid. He did have a habit of using the wrong word, now and then. “Incognito,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Not inflagrante. Incognito.”

  “Well, whatever the right word is, why?”

  Kat and Zeke were the only two who knew part of her story; as far as she was concerned, no one else needed to know a single detail, and they knew only because she had to be paid in cash. The more people who were in on her secret, the less safe she’d feel. For a while she’d let her guard down in Battle Ridge, and not taken the precaution of sunglasses and hat, though she’d always made sure her TEC jacket was with her. But since that heart-stopping moment in the grocery store … damn it, she was going to have to let that go, sooner rather than later. Learn from it, and let it go. But maybe not right now. Maybe the next trip.

  But Spencer had asked, and he’d keep asking, so she tried to come up with a girly-girl answer that would throw him off track. “I can never get my hair to behave like I want it to, yo