Half a Ranch, page 7
"What were you saying?" She'd somehow lost track of his words, just as he launched into his instructions.
"Just load the floppy with the year you want to look at."
Quickly he brought up the year corresponding to the ledger book she'd been looking at.
He showed her how to use the arrow keys to move around the screen. Once she got used to the green and black monitor, she didn't believe she'd have any problems.
"You think you have it?" Bret asked.
She almost asked him to explain again, just so she could hear his voice, feel his breath in her ear, and enjoy the touch of his arms against her own. "I can handle it."
"I'll be back late this evening, but if you need something, Sharon may be able to track me down on the radio."
"Fine."
He nodded, grabbed his hat, and headed outside looking for all the world as if he'd been granted a reprieve from prison. Was he fleeing the paperwork? Or her?
She turned back to the finances.
The ledgers were remarkably complete. Bret had attached copies of all of the checks the ranch had paid, or received, his signature boldly scrawled across the bottom of both the paid checks and the deposit slips for incoming revenue.
Everything appeared to be in order just as Bret had indicated. If anything, he was underpaying himself. Even Mindy knew that a ranch foreman would earn more than the average hand, yet Bret got less. The ranch had made comfortable profits through the first eight years that Bret had managed it. Frustratingly, she couldn't tell what had happened next. Neither the ledgers nor diskettes for the past year were in their place.
She searched through the cubbyholes in the old desk, but found no more floppies. She attempted to search the hard disk but found that the ancient computer didn't even have one. This clunker had been old when she'd visited the ranch a decade earlier.
Clearly Bret had to have deliberately neglected to provide her with the most current, and most critical, information. Now that was interesting.
Mindy pushed herself away from the desk and turned off the computer. Bret had invited her to look at the finances, then managed to ensure that she couldn't. Maybe he thought she'd lose patience before getting to the newest reports, the reports that showed what had happened after her aunt got too sick to supervise him. If so, he had a surprise coming.
One thing for sure. His jeans had been too tight to hide any of those huge floppy disks. Unless he'd taken them out earlier, they had to be somewhere in the house.
Mindy stepped into the hall. Banging noises from the kitchen told her Sharon was fully occupied. Which meant she was on her own.
Mindy reached for Bret's door.
A shiny brass deadbolt held his door shut. She rattled the door anyway, hoping that he might have forgotten to lock it that morning. No such luck. Why would anyone put that kind of lock on an interior door?
Chapter 5
Mindy closed her bedroom door and leaned against the wall enjoying the tactile sensation of cold plaster against her skin and the soft sounds of George the cat playing with whatever toy he had found.
Nothing was going right. Maybe she should just leave, letting Bret take whatever he wanted. So what if he cheated her out of her half of the ranch? Compared to where she was a month ago, she hadn't lost anything.
Or had she? She wasn't naive enough to believe her reaction to Bret was entirely one of anger and frustration.
A faint metallic click interrupted her thoughts before she could go totally maudlin on herself. She stepped over to see what trouble George had gotten into.
Her cat had uncovered a small ring hanging from a recess behind the fireplace.
"What did you find there, kitty?" Mindy moved George out of the way and grasped the ring. To her surprise, though, it seemed firmly attached. An entire section of fireplace moved about an inch, then stuck.
She thought back. Hadn't Sharon mentioned something about a secret passage between the master bedroom and Bret's room? She'd laughed off the idea at the time. But what else could this be?
If she needed a sign, this was it. She would use the passage to get a look at those ledger books, which surely must be hidden in Bret's locked room. Since he hadn't discovered the passage himself, Bret'd never guess how she got hold of the information.
The thought of getting ahead of Bret excited Mindy more than she thought appropriate, but then again, sneaking into a man's bedroom certainly wasn't appropriate either. Her heart raced at the idea.
Mindy tugged on the ring again, but the false wall squawked loudly. She'd have to get some sort of oil to lubricate it before going further.
Sharon headed Mindy off on the way to the pantry, asking her to peel some potatoes and chop some onions, but finally Mindy made it back to her room, a carefully secreted bottle of peanut oil in her possession.
A couple of generous applications of the lubricant solved the squeaky-hinges problem, and Mindy opened the door wide enough to squeeze through and climbed into the narrow passageway.
Within a few feet, the passageway grew dim but, fortunately, it appeared completely straight with no turn-offs. Mindy ran her hand along the unfinished joists that lined the passage, keeping her other hand in front of her.
To her surprise, she didn't run into any cobwebs. Perhaps the passage was sealed off to the point where no flies got in and the spiders got bored and went away. An apt metaphor for her current situation, she decided. If she didn't let Bret catch her in his webs, eventually he'd have to yield and give her what was rightfully hers.
Her arm abruptly banged up against a dead end. When she stopped, she noticed a faint glow in front of her.
Although Bret's room was shuttered and dark, it was lighter than the passageway. Apparently the tunnel ended in a two-way mirror because Mindy found if she strained, she could actually see into his room.
Fortunately, the only visible sign of Bret was a neatly folded pile of clothes. If the past few days were any guide, she'd have hours before he returned.
Still, no point in wasting time. She pushed on the mirror for a moment, but it didn't give an inch. After a few anxious seconds of searching, she found a small hook that held the mirror in place.
It released with the slightest click. She'd be in and out before anyone could know the difference.
Bret's room seemed to have soaked up some part of his essence. Although Mindy had fully intended to dart in and out, instead she stood there for a few moments, drinking it in. Japanese prints decorated the walls and handcrafted wood carvings and a few leather bound classics lined a bookshelf. The strangely pleasant smell she had come to associate with Bret lingered in the room like a ghost.
Bret's neatly made bed, a single pillow at the top, showed no signs of being disturbed. She looked under the pillow, finding nothing.
She threw the pillow back on the bed, then, bending to an irrational urge, patted it carefully back into place.
The large mahogany bureau dominated one wall, so she tackled it next.
In her mind, Mindy conjured up an image of the missing ledger book buried under neatly folded leather g-strings. The truth proved more mundane. No book and no g-strings. A mix of white and paisley boxer shorts and multi-colored socks shared the top drawer.
She slammed the drawer shut and opened the next. T-shirts and thermal underwear. Hot as it was, she couldn't imagine that it ever got cold enough in Texas to require long underwear, but Bret's looked utilitarian. Maybe he wore them skiing.
The entire bottom drawer was filled with trophies, silver and gold medals, and fancy belt buckles. Each proclaimed Bret winner of a bull riding events in cities from San Francisco to Bangor Maine. Her knowledge of rodeo was limited, but she did know that they didn't give prizes like that for good looks. Once, at least, Bret had worked hard at something, tried to make something of himself. Why had he given it up?
Maybe attention from rodeo groupies had distracted him and persuaded him to seek an easier fortune? Still, shouldn't a gigolo have his medals hanging around the house to remind Lucy what a hot number she'd caught?
A faint noise caught Mindy's attention and she whirled around. Had George followed her? She couldn't see him.
She closed the drawer and scanned the room. Only two doors appeared to be viable locations for the hidden diskettes. One, judging from the old lock on the handle, led to a bathroom; the other evidently was a closet.
Mindy couldn't visualize Bret hiding ledger books in the bathroom: she tried the closet.
A strong scent of leather greeted her as she entered the closet. The dim light was enough for her to spot the cord that hung from a bare lightbulb and she gave it a tug, filling the small space with light.
Four pair of boots, one pair of black dress shoes, and two pair of running shoes all sat in alcoves. Something about the neat arrangement troubled her, but it took a repeat of the earlier sound to resolve the problem.
Every one of the alcoves was filled. Either Bret had bought another pair of boots, or he was somewhere in the room.
She yanked the cord to turn off the closet light and peered out the partially opened closet door. If Bret found her, he'd never believe that she merely wanted to find the most recent ledger book.
As she watched, Bret strode, naked, from the bathroom.
She told herself that she couldn't afford to avert her eyes. She had to know when he returned to the bathroom so she could make a dash for the passageway. Still, she didn't know if she could have looked away even without that excuse.
Clothed, Bret had seemed the essence of male. Naked, he was even more so. The setting sun cast long stripes of light through the closed shutters, alternately highlighting and hiding his hard muscles. The thick dusting of hair covering his chest tapering off to leave his hard, muscled, abdomen nearly bare. Fortunately, he turned away from her before she had too much time to dwell on what she saw below that hard stomach.
His back formed a perfect V, tapering down from broad shoulders to a narrow waist. Even his buttocks, white against the dark tan of covered the rest of his body throbbed with hard muscle.
****
Bret tried to ignore the pain. It didn't help.
Rationally, he couldn't blame it on Mindy. He'd been the careless one, not her. It was his problem he'd let a woman distract him when he should have been working.
Ultimately, of course, it didn't matter who he blamed. The barbed wire hadn't cared why he was careless or why he'd grabbed it with no more protection than his leather gloves. The sharp barbs had ripped through the glove as easily as it had his flesh underneath.
He pressed the bloody rag more tightly against his hand, trying to stop the bleeding. The last thing he needed now was more medical bills.
A sharply drawn intake of breath could have been his own. Could have, but wasn't.
He grabbed a towel from his bed and wrapped it around his waist, then turned toward his closet. Had Mindy's cat snuck into his room?
He affected a scowl, something made far easier by the pain in his hand, and threw open the closet door.
Mindy, who evidently had been holding the doorknob from the inside, tumbled out.
What the hell?
"I suppose you have some explanation for this?" He couldn't imagine what excuse she could come up with, but he knew she'd come up with something that made sense to her peculiar mind. Trying to guess what it might be helped keep his mind off the pain.
"Uh--" Mindy waved her hand ineffectually in his direction and stared at him, but no more words came out.
He looked in the direction of her gaze. He'd tied the towel around his waist so he was decent. Evidently Mindy was so insulted by the sight of a male body that this protection wasn't enough for her.
"Sorry I'm not dressed to your satisfaction. Somehow I thought I'd be safe in my own room. Now what are you doing here?"
"What happened to you?" she finally managed to squeak.
"I got careless."
"Let me take a look at that hand." Without waiting for his response, she grabbed it.
Her soft touch felt good, but not good enough to distract him from his questions.
She started to pull back the rag but a spurt of blood dissuaded her from that. "This looks bad. We'd better see a doctor, get you some stiches."
"Doctor, hell. It'll be all right."
Mindy muttered something and pressed the rag against his hand. It felt a lot better when she did it than when he had.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"I said, 'typical man.'"
"I don't want to waste a lot of money on unnecessary medical care, so I'm being a typical man?" It wasn't easy staying mad at her when she stroked his hand, but he gave it an effort. What business did she have telling him how to lead his life?
"Did you put anything on those cuts?"
"I wanted to stop the bleeding first."
"Here. Let me help." Without waiting for an answer, she led him to his bathroom.
As he walked, the towel began to slip. With a frantic grab, he caught the pesky thing, holding it in front of him.
Mindy's glare indicated that she thought he was trying to flash her or something. He needed both hands to get the meager covering around him again, but she wouldn't let go of his injured arm.
"I'll do it," she said, her voice hard and controlled. Without releasing her grip on his wound, she grabbed the end of the towel and pulled it around him.
With a minimum of fumbling between his left hand and her right hand, they managed to get his towel tied back around his waist. Her fingertips running over the skin covering his lower abdomen excited him. Things could get embarrassing. And were.
"Do you have any medical supplies?"
"Look behind the mirror."
Mindy stared at him for a moment, her face a picture of shock and surprise. "You mean--oh. The bathroom mirror."
"What did you think I was talking about?"
"Nothing. I'm just bothered by blood."
He didn't believe that line. Before he could pursue the issue, however, Mindy opened the medicine cabinet, nodded curtly in satisfaction, then grabbed a bottle of iodine.
"This might hurt a bit."
The understatement of the year. She poured the chemical directly over the rag he'd used to stop the flow of blood. It burned worse than any acid, far worse than the pain from the wound.
"Are you all right?"
"Wonderful. I like pain."
"You men are so stupid that sometimes I wonder how our species manages to survive."
Maybe she was trying to distract him from his pain by getting him mad. Her touch was far more distracting, and a whole lot more pleasant.
"I'm going to take off this cloth now and take a look," Mindy told him.
For just a moment, he thought she meant the towel. His mind really was in the gutter. "I can manage."
"You couldn't manage to tie a towel around your waist. I'm sure you'd do great with bandaging."
He'd done fine before she had come in and grabbed his hand. Still, no point in turning down her assistance.
"I appreciate your help."
"Bret, I think you just said something nice. Is the pain getting to you?"
"I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. I've got some butterfly bandages in the second drawer."
She opened the drawer, then stopped.
His eyes followed hers. The bandage box sat directly next to a box of condoms. "It's the box on the right," he told her.
"I know that."
He couldn't understand why an ancient and unopened box of condoms should offend her, but Mindy's voice made her disapproval clear. Was he supposed to be a Monk?
The iodine made the hand look even worse than it really was. Pressure had slowed the flow of blood to a slow seep, but the cuts were deep. He'd have a few more scars to add to his collection.
"You're pretty banged up."
Her eyes, he noticed, had shifted away from his hands to the rest of his body.
"It's a miracle anyone in the rodeo survives. Especially bull riders. Pure idiocy."
"So why did you do it?"
Why had he done it? Because he had been an idiot, he supposed. He'd needed the money to help his mother and then to send his younger brothers to school, and he hadn't been able to earn enough as a ranch hand. "I guess you just get caught up in the thing. You win a few events and make some money and all of a sudden you think you can do it again. Like any sixteen year old I thought I was immortal."
"The kids I teach are younger than that, but they think the same way."
She pulled open a butterfly bandage packet with her teeth and laid the strip to the deepest of the cuts. Moments later, she applied two more bandages.
"You'd better take it easy for a couple of days," she told him. "I'll go into town and get some Neosporin. It hurts a lot less than iodine."
He gave her a half-grin. "Second shelf."
"Oh." The tube of ointment was clearly visible, directly next to the iodine. "I was a little distracted."
He supposed her choice of medicine had been a good thing. That towel routine had pushed his self-control to the limit and a man just doesn't have a lot of control over one particular body function. The pain of the iodine had put an end to that. Still, she'd done a capable job of patching him up.
"You're a good caregiver," he said grudgingly.
"Polite again. Maybe you should get hurt more often."
"Believe me, I do."
That wiped the start of a smile off her lips. Smart, Bret.
"Do you think you can get yourself dressed?"
"What if I can't?"
Mindy blushed through her tan. "I guess I'll have to get one of the cowboys in here to help you with your trousers, won't I?"
With that, she turned, walked to his door, unfastened the bolts, and walked out.
Bret stared after her for a moment, then stepped over to the closet where Mindy had been hiding. If the bolts locking his door were still fastened, how had she gotten in?
He pushed his boots out of the way and pulled up the false floor. The safe looked untouched.
Moments later, after checking inside, he gave a sigh of relief. Cowboys expect to get paid and like to get paid in cash. If Mindy'd taken the payroll, the ranch would be finished right then.
