Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63469 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 317(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Had the restaurant not taken off like it did, everything would have been shit. The fact that it had, though, the realization that I was part of a whole new family and didn’t have to bother with my old one no more, that was my salvation.
“What are you doing?”
I realized I had not moved from the time Stef had put the platter in my hands. He was squinting at me.
“Sorry,” I grumbled, stepping around him to head toward the kitchen and out the back door to the picnic tables.
He moved fast, getting around in front of me. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re letting Rand use me for a cattle drive, Stef.”
“A baby drive, not a real one.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And this way you can bond with Rand and reconnect with Zach.”
I scowled. “I ain’t fixin’ to do shit but drive them cattle.”
“You could try and put forth a little effort.”
“Pardon?” I said, my voice sharper than intended.
His eye roll told me I wasn’t scaring him at all. “Just take the bacon out, and don’t give any to the dog, no matter what.”
That made no sense. “No matter what?”
“She’ll try and tell you she’s starving to death and that only bacon will save her. These are silly, torturous lies.”
He was weird and that was certain. “She’s only a dog, Stef.”
“That’s what she’d like you to believe.”
Snorting out a laugh, I brushed by him and left the house through the kitchen door, Bella trailing after me. I stopped quickly, gave her a slice, and then continued on, walking around the side of the house to the picnic tables set out under the huge English oak. Normally the tree provided an amazing amount of shade and the temperature could be counted on to be several degrees cooler beneath the canopy, but at the moment, so early in the morning, it was simply cold everywhere. Rand’s men yelled greetings as I put the platter down, and people reached for it, adding bacon to the eggs, biscuits and gravy, grits, hash browns, fried green tomatoes, and country ham already set on the tables. There were pitchers of orange juice and pots of coffee. It looked like a special occasion, but it wasn’t. The hands ate together daily at the bunkhouse, and every Sunday Rand and Stef had breakfast here for everyone who lived on the ranch. It was a family on the Red, and while I appreciated that, I had my own. Finally.
I turned to go back to my truck but was yelled at to stop. Pivoting around, I found Rand Holloway himself standing there, arms crossed, scowling at me, looking big and somewhat scary with the extra four inches of height he had on me.
“And where are you scuttlin’ off to?”
His word choices were always demeaning. Scuttling. Like I was some kind of insect. “To my truck,” I said shortly.
“Eat first, then go to the truck.”
Always ordering me around. “I’m fine,” I assured him, leaving him there.
As I walked, I looked up at the hills and saw the silhouettes of the wind turbines. Between those and the solar panels on all the houses on the ranch, the Red Diamond was completely self-sufficient, no longer dependent on the county grid for electricity. I didn’t know the difference between a windmill, a wind pump, or a wind turbine, but Rand did. And of course since I had to know, I had asked him what if it rained every day for a month and the solar power went kaput, and what if his pinwheels couldn’t spin? What were they going to do then?
Apparently, energy could be stored, and more importantly, he was working on having some equipment put in that would use the waste from the stockyards—meaning crap—and turning it into methane gas that would aid the wind power he already had at his disposal. I didn’t know how it worked or what went into the setup for that, and I didn’t ask. Rand was always thinking, and he had Stef to do the cost analysis and basically help him make whatever dream he had into a reality. They made a great team and made me long for a partner of my own.
“I thought you didn’t drive stock anymore.”
My day was getting worse, and it hadn’t even really started yet. First Rand, and now, somewhere behind me, talking, giving me shit so goddamn early, was Mac Gentry.
And honestly, his smoke-and-gravel voice, sultry and sexy at the same time, would have gone right to my dick if he wasn’t the biggest asshole I knew aside from Rand.
“Glenn?”
I ignored him, continued on to my truck, got out my duffel, pulled on my shearling-lined denim jacket, put my phone in the glove compartment, and closed the door. I knew I didn’t have to worry about the truck while I was gone. On the Red everything was safe.