Shane Royal stood in the kitchen, the pan of scrambled eggs in front of him almost done. He switched off the heat to the burner just as his next younger brother, Dylan, entered. Whistling. Always whistling.
The sound had annoyed Shane growing up too, but their mother had loved it. She’d told Dylan he should go to Hollywood and be the voice of a bird in animated movies. “That’s how good he is,” she used to say.
Probably still would if Shane ever saw her.
“Mornin’,” his brother said, pausing long enough in his twittering to speak.
“Eggs are done,” Shane announced. “Did you see Austin?”
“He’s moving a little slow this morning,” Dylan said. He set two pieces of toast in the toaster and scooped some eggs onto a plate. Shane always set out plates and utensils, the way his momma always had.
“I’ll check on him.” Shane left Dylan in the kitchen to check on the youngest Royal brother, who’d suffered some broken ribs last summer. Sometimes he still had some pain from the accident, though the doctors claimed his bones had healed.
“Ribs move,” Dr. Thelonius had said. “Sometimes they’ll shift around and cause some discomfort.”
So basically Austin had to live with the pain whenever it came. Shane hadn’t been happy about that, but just like most things in his life, there was little he could do about it.
“Hey, bud,” he said as he climbed up to the loft Dylan and Austin shared. His brother winced as he tried to lift his arm to put on a gray T-shirt. Shane held a soft spot for Austin, as he’d only been sixteen when their father had left, and Shane had taken him under his wing when things at home had fallen apart.
“Let me.” He strode to the bed and lifted the shirt over Austin’s head.
“I need something easy today,” he said, his voice strained. Shane never was sure if it was because Austin was in a lot of pain, or if he was embarrassed he was injured and couldn’t do as much as he used to be able to do. Probably both.
“I’ve got our monthly meeting this morning,” Shane said. “So you just stay here until I can get you on something easy.”
“I can do the feeding.”
“All right, then.” Shane helped him slip his feet into his boots and steadied him as he stood until he found his balance. “I made eggs.”
“You always make eggs.”
“Old habits die hard.” And Shane would know, as he thrived on ritual and routine. If he could count on things to be the same each day, he didn’t have to think about the changes his life had undergone fifteen years ago.
He should be over it anyway.
But he wasn’t.
How did one get over his father abandoning his ranch, his sons, his wife, everything he’d spent his life to build? Not only that, but his momma hadn’t known the ranch was half a million dollars in debt. So Shane’s father had left them that too.
Shane disliked days that started out with him thinking about his father. He pushed the man he hadn’t spoken to or seen in a decade and a half from his mind and helped his brother get breakfast before heading next door for the monthly management meeting.
He’d been foreman on his family’s ranch for exactly one month before his father had left, and Shane was grateful for another opportunity now, even though he was only co-foreman. Kurt had been leading this ranch for fifteen years, but he had a new baby on the way and didn’t want the eighty-hour weeks.
Shane did. Hard physical work kept his anger at bay, and exhaustion kept the ghosts of his past inside the glass boxes where he’d put them.
Now that May had moved in, curtains hung on the wall and flowers sat on the dining room table. Kurt picked them up and moved them to the kitchen counter, and May slipped out the back door saying, “C’mon, Patches. This is boring ranch stuff.”
“Hey, Shane.” Kurt glanced in his direction and picked up a plate of baked goods, courtesy of his wife, no doubt. “Chocolate chocolate-chip muffins. Come get one.” He set the plate on the table along with a pile of napkins.
Shane plucked a muffin from the plate and took his seat on the right end of the table. Dwayne and Felicity entered the cabin, chatting to each other, and a flurry of activity followed as they got muffins and napkins and started asking Kurt questions about May, the pregnancy, if he wanted a girl or a boy.
Shane didn’t want to talk about the pleasantries of life. He had very little in his life that was actually pleasant, but he’d been trying not to begrudge people who seemed to have found some way to be happy.
“How was the weekend, Shane?” Dwayne asked as he sat across from him.
“Fine and dandy.” Shane put on a tight smile for the boss.
“What’d you do with your day off?”
“Went out to the North End Zone cabin.” It was one of his favorite places in the whole world, and he was grateful for even a few hours of solitude, with only his horse and the Texas breeze to talk with.
He loved his brothers. He did. But sometimes he simply needed some time to himself, to remember who he was, and to remind himself not to be so angry all the time.
Kurt sat at the head of the table, and Felicity passed out red folders to start the meeting. “This is our schedule for the month. We’ve got Levi and Heather requesting harvesting help in their orchards, and the farrier coming in for five weeks, and a new rotation of men going through the immunization clinic.”
Dwayne said something, to which Kurt responded. But Shane couldn’t think past “the farrier coming in for five weeks.”
The farrier.
Robin Cook.
The last woman who’d caught Shane’s eye. The last woman who’d broken his heart. All right, so maybe that was an exaggeration. She wouldn’t even go out with him. So she’d humiliated him.
And yet, his pulse seemed to thrum beneath his skin, and Shane couldn’t believe excitement pounded through his bloodstream with every beat of his heart.
“So I’ll need someone to oversee Robin,” Dwayne said. “She’s bringin’ her tiny house, and we’ve got a new cement pad for it on the west side of the homestead. She’ll park over there too, and she’ll re-shoe and take care of all of our horses for the next five weeks.”
Felicity wrote something, and Shane’s mind spun.
Kurt said something about Minnie’s hooves, but Shane didn’t much care about Kurt’s horse.
“I’ll oversee Robin,” he blurted, drawing everyone’s attention.
Dwayne blinked and nodded, waving at Felicity, who wrote something else in her red folder. She looked up at Shane when she finished, but she hadn’t been here three years ago when Robin had shunned him, so surely she didn’t know.
Dwayne had been. Kurt too. Neither of them said anything, and the meeting continued. Shane forced himself to pay attention, but it sure was hard knowing that the beautiful, blonde, hazel-eyed Robin Cook would be at the ranch in only a few hours.
* * *
Shane lifted his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Robin was late, and the summer heat annoyed Shane almost as much as someone who didn’t respect another person’s time.
His throat felt packed with sand, and he was about to go around to the back porch of the homestead, where Dwayne kept a refrigerator full of water, soda, and energy drinks, when he heard the low, diesel grumble of a very large truck.
Robin’s very large truck.
He spun back to find the white behemoth turning underneath the ranch sign. His pulse quickened, though he told it not to. With as much confidence as he could infuse in his stride he crossed the cement pad where he’d been waiting and moved past the long storage shed on the side of Dwayne’s yard.
He lifted his hand to get her attention and she handled the truck with the ease of someone who drove large vehicles on the daily. Which, of course, she obviously did.
Surprise filled him as the tiny house came into view. In the past, Robin had stayed with a family in town, or on another ranch, as she worked the ranches in the surrounding areas. But this blue-sided tiny house was a new addition. The huge truck it took to tow it was too, though she’d always preferred trucks. Maybe just not one quite this large. She looked like a doll behind the wheel. A beautiful, blonde doll. Shane shook his head, his fantasies already running away with him and the woman hadn’t even gotten out of the car yet.
The tiny house sported clean windows in white frames, with a white front door, and white trim along the roof. The wheels didn’t look big enough or strong enough to support the house, but they moved as she inched around and forward, and then started backing up.
Shane stepped back onto the cement pad where the house would sit, sure the tires would pop when she bumped them from the dirt ground up to the harder surface.
The house creaked and groaned, but the wheels made the transition otherwise. He kept waving her back, then motioned to the right when she started to move diagonally.
He held up his hand for her to stop, then jogged forward to where her elbow lagged out the driver’s side window. He wouldn’t allow himself to look straight at her, so he gestured back the way he’d come, toward the cement pad, as he spoke. “Hey, which way do you want this? The front door toward the shed, or toward the range?”
She turned toward him, and Shane couldn’t help the magnetic pull she exerted over him, and he swiveled his head to look fully at her. Her hazel eyes hadn’t changed, and her long lashes framed them beautifully. Shane pulled in a breath of the super-heated summer air, and he fought the urge to cough.
“Hey, Shane,” she said, her easy smile almost blinding him.
“Hey, Robin.” His smile flitted across his face, crinkling his eyes, and it felt good. Better than he’d felt in a while, actually.
“The house is fine like that. I do need several feet by the front door for the steps.”
Shane glanced back at the cement pad. “You should pull forward and put it further back to the right then. I’ll guide you.”
She flipped the truck into gear and eased forward while Shane re-positioned himself. When she started backing up again, he waved her in like he was air traffic control or something. But Shane had no idea how long she’d had the house, and maybe she hadn’t done of lot of maneuvering with it.
His heel touched the end of the cement pad, and he held up his hand for her to stop. She didn’t. “Ho!” he called, holding up both hands in the universal stop now! gesture.
Robin kept on coming, and Shane scrambled out of the way. His ankle twisted, and his cowboy boot buckled, and down he went. Adrenaline and fear shot through him as the edge of her tiny house came straight at his face now.
And it suddenly wasn’t quite so tiny.
