“It is efficient.”
“Is it?”
His eyes met hers.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she closed the ledger.
“You hired me.”
“Yes.”
“I found your money.”
“Yes.”
“I told you.”
“Yes.”
“So maybe increase my trust score.”
One eyebrow lifted.
“Trust score?”
“I assume there is one.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is now.”
She held up her fingers.
“Where am I?”
He looked serious.
“Six.”
“Out of?”
“Ten.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Only six?”
“You’ve been here seventeen days.”
“I recovered twelve hundred dollars.”
“That earned two points.”
“What were the first four?”
“You arrived.”
“One.”
“You didn’t complain about the room.”
“Two.”
“You ride well.”
“Three.”
“You make decent coffee.”
She stared.
“Coffee earned the same as recovering twelve hundred dollars?”
“Yes.”
The ranch woman shook her head.
“Your system is broken.”
“It’s my system.”
She pointed toward the door.
“Leave my office.”
His mouth curved.
“Your office?”
“Yes.”
“It’s my house.”
“Then stop putting bookkeeping in the dining room.”
He left.
Smiling.
The ranch woman watched him.
That was the first time she admitted something to herself.
She liked him.
Far too much.
Attraction had begun earlier.
Probably the station platform.
But liking was different.
Attraction was physical.
Simple.
Easy to dismiss.
She noticed his hands.
His shoulders.
The way his shirt pulled across his back when he lifted a saddle.
That could be ignored.
Mostly.
But then he brought injured birds into the kitchen because he refused to let the ranch hands shoot them.
He pretended he did not care whether the barn cat slept beside the stove.
He repaired an old widow’s wagon without charging her.
He kept sugar candy in one desk drawer because one of the hands had a little daughter who visited twice each month.
He remembered exactly how the ranch woman took her coffee after hearing it once.
That was harder to ignore.
And the cowboy noticed her.
Much earlier than she realized.
He noticed when she came downstairs with damp hair.
He noticed when she tucked her pencil behind her ear.
He noticed when she removed her boots and walked barefoot through the house late at night.
He noticed her laugh.
He noticed that she always read while eating breakfast if nobody stopped her.
He noticed the scar near her left wrist.
He never asked.
Most of all, he noticed how small she looked beside him.
Not weak.
Never weak.
But physically smaller.
That difference became a problem inside his mind.
He had been careful with people his entire life.
When he was fifteen, he grew faster than everyone else.
By seventeen, he was stronger than grown men.
He broke a ranch hand’s nose during an argument with one punch and carried guilt for years.
He stopped wrestling.
Stopped fighting unless necessary.
Stopped touching people casually.
Women especially.
A woman in town once joked that he could crush someone without noticing.
He remembered the joke more than she probably did.
Then the ranch woman arrived.
She touched him constantly.
Not provocatively at first.
Naturally.
A hand on his forearm when speaking.
Fingers against his shoulder when passing behind him.
One morning she brushed straw from his shirt.
Another time she squeezed past him in the pantry and placed both hands on his chest to steady herself.
The cowboy nearly stopped breathing.
She seemed unaware.