The ranch was a rough place, most of the workers were men and she’d grown up without much feminine influence in her life. The few women around tended to work just as hard as the guys, and whatever delicate graces they had in their private lives weren’t in evidence while at work. It’s just how things were.
Despite all that, Charlie had developed a decidedly girlish side. She could ride and muck stalls with the best of them, but when she wasn’t working, she did like her pretty clothes and make-up. She wore them for herself and not because she normally cared if anyone else thought she was attractive, but there was something about having feelings for someone that did make dressing up more fun.
There just wasn’t much point in fussing over her appearance when she was going out to work, and she settled for tying a soft pink ribbon around her ponytail and dabbing on some sparkly lip gloss to at least add a splash of color. It was enough to make her feel good and not enough to bring on the teasing when she showed up at the barn for an assignment.
She found herself being sent out to the fields with most of the hands. The haying had started the day before and it was dirty, sweaty work. She hated it, had always hated it, but every bale of grass they cut themselves saved the ranch a little over a hundred bucks and her father had been dead set on taking advantage of that.
After Sam had smacked her down over selling the land, she was no longer positive she was in the right on it, but her feelings on having to do the work hadn’t changed and she felt her mood shifting towards cranky.
Mike was running the swather when she arrived, mowing down row after row of tall grass. They were lucky that most of it could be done with machinery; she couldn’t imagine how people had managed a hundred years back, but it was still an all-hands job and sure enough within minutes Mike cut the power and jumped down so he could crawl under and replace blades that had been broken by rocks. It happened alot, which was why the job was so tedious.
When he emerged with dirt and hay sticking to his damp skin in clumps he caught sight of her and grinned. “Hey, Charlie, why don’t you take over driving?”
It was probably the best of the available jobs and she accepted it happily, hauling herself up into the cab, waiting for the all-clear and then starting it up. The swather crawled along at a few miles an hour and had to be stopped frequently for blade changes, so it was a long day. By the end of it she felt like her bones were vibrating.
She was hot and her hair was plastered to the back of her neck in lank strings. Her skin itched from the dust and grass that had managed to get everywhere, and the first person she saw when she jumped down was Sam walking towards her. So much for trying to put a little polish to her look. Her ribbon had been lost at some point, and the lip gloss had long since worn off.
The fact that he looked equally worn out and bedraggled was small consolation, but after the long day neither of them were really up to socializing or anything else anyway. She just went home and used up a full tank of hot water to soak her sore muscles before tumbling into bed.
The whole week was more of the same. The work was never-ending. She gave up on even the slightest attempts to feel pretty and settled for keeping her hair tightly braided and out of the way, so she had less detritus to comb out of it later. She barely got a glimpse of Sam most days anyway.
Though there was one day that stuck out in her mind. She was tired and had just come back from the fields but didn’t have the energy for the walk back to her house yet. The sun was high and hot on her back as she leaned against a railing and watched a couple of the horses chasing each other around a corral. Sam had come up behind her quietly and she hadn’t seen him until he took a place next to her, arms folded across the top slat.
“Wish I had their energy,” he commented.
“Me too. I’m so tired I might go to sleep right here,” she said, sighing.
He turned to look at her and then was straightening up to wipe a smudge of dirt off her nose. “Here, drink,” he said as he handed her a bottle of water.
It was warm but it still felt good going down. “Thanks, I needed that.”
Frowning, he shook his head at her. “Charlie you can’t go all day in this heat without drinking. From now on you’re taking at least two bottles every time you go out,” he said in a tone that suggested she better not argue about it either.
She grumbled about his bossiness, but the truth was she liked it. She like that he thought to take care of her, even when he was exhausted. And she did obey, without even needing a threat. It was the one bright spot in a very long week.
Multiple fields meant that some were being mowed, while others were being raked, and the earliest to be mowed was the first to be baled after the hay had been given a few days to dry. Each day found her doing a different job in a different field which helped slightly with the boredom, but most of it was backbreaking work. By Friday she was seriously tempted to use her position as owner to skip out. It was only stubbornness and maybe a little bit of a need to make Sam proud of her that kept her trudging out to the field day after day.
She carried water with her without fail and when she would see him, she’d raise the bottle to show him. In return she’d get a smile or a thumbs-up. She looked forward to those brief moments, but they weren’t really enough to fill her need for his attention.
Then the weather stations started to report signs of a massive stormfront rolling their way and the work picked up. It wasn’t going to be a quick overnight storm; this was going to be day after day of rain, maybe for as long as a week, though it was hard to predict with much accuracy this far out. They could only hope they had enough time to finish before it arrived. The hayhadto be baled before it was ruined by excessive rain and that meant ten-hour days for everyone.
It took two weeks. Two weeks of hard labor to strip all the growing fields and get the hay safely baled for the winter and they were barely halfway there. The coming storm was going to make it a tight schedule.
Everyone needed to do their share to make it work and she was determined to pull her weight, but she couldn’t seem to manage without a lot of grumpiness, sniping, and muttering under her breath. She snapped at the hands, she yelled at Sam, and the more her body ached the less patience she had for anyone. It seemed like it was easier for them, and that made her feel guilty because she knew that she was often given the lighter jobs and had no reason to complain.
Excepttheywere used to working full days of physical labor, and she wasn’t. Sure, she’d always pitched in when she was home, but it had been years since she’d been there for haying season, and now she remembered why she hated it. When her attitude seemed to get the best of her, Sam would pull her aside and give her a dressing down. Sometimes there was even the threat of a spanking if she didn’t straighten up.
She ignored it, thinking it was a bluff. Although she had spent a couple nights at his house after the haying started, it had just been cuddling and deep sleep since they were both too tired to initiate anything. She doubted he had the time or energy to discipline her, at least until the fields were bare. Besides, he’d never seemed to settle with the idea of giving her a real punishment.
Until she’d walked right up to him and one of the few women who worked on the ranch, a long-standing hand named June, and started telling the older woman off for some small mistake. Sam gaped, looking at her like she’d lost her mind. June just seemed confused at first, but then she started to look angry. Seeing thunderclouds on the horizon, Sam cut Charlie off.
“Give me a second, June,” he said in a grim tone of voice that made Charlieverynervous. She wondered if he wasn’t changing his mind on the issue right on the spot when he took her by the arm and practically dragged her into the barn. She dug her feet in and he encouraged her with a series of hard smacks to the back of her jeans. She was amazed at how much they stung through the denim, and she hurried ahead towards his office to avoid as many as she could while craning her neck to make sure no one, especially June, was watching.
He slammed the door shut behind them and gave her a glare that had her shaking in her shoes. “Charlie, what the hell got into you? You know you’ve got no business yelling at her. That attitude of yours is making everyone else’s day harder, and I’ve had it! You keep it up and I’ll spank you so hard you’ll be able to boil water by sitting in it!”
The threat made her eyes widen into big round circles, and she had no intention of telling him why she’d gone after June. It was too embarrassing to admit, even to herself, that she’d gotten jealous of the older woman when she’d seen them chatting together. She convinced herself there had been some flaw in June’s work, that she needed correction, because that was far more palatable. “But Sam she wasn’t…”
He cut her off with a steely look and her stomach did a little flip. She was seriously starting to wonder if the threats were a bluff after all.
