Star Bright

  Out in the hallway, Rainie had glimpsed several closed doors. Venturing forth, she opened three of them to investigate, discovering grain, tack, and medicine rooms. On the fourth try, she found what she sought: a storage area filled with boxes. She found three empty containers that were large enough to suit the purpose. Armed for battle, she returned to the office to make war on Parker’s paperwork. The first skirmish was to remove everything from the file drawers so she could use the vacated space to categorize his records. Later, when she had accomplished some semblance of order, she would file the receipts and invoices under company headings, putting everything at her fingertips.

  Within minutes, she grew so absorbed in her task that she lost track of time. She’d filed one-third of the loose papers that she’d dumped into one of the boxes when a thump came at the door. When she went to investigate, Parker pushed into the room, his arms laden with take-out cartons.

  “Lunchtime,” he informed her.

  “Oh!” Rainie brushed her palms clean on her skirt. Though she’d had the office to herself for only a few hours, his sudden presence felt intrusive. She wished he’d just go away and leave her alone. “I brought a sack lunch. Normally I eat while I work.”

  “Not around here, you won’t. You have an hour and a half designated for breaks each day, and I expect you to use every second. You can eat, take a walk, or play games on the computer. I don’t care how you spend your free time, but I’m a firm believer in takin’ breaks. You can keep your sack lunch in the fridge and have it for dinner.” He sauntered toward her desk. “You like Chinese, don’t you?”

  For two years, Rainie had barely been able to breathe without asking Peter’s permission, so now she resented anyone who tried to boss her around. It seemed to her that she should be able to spend her breaks working if she wished. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet recovered enough from the brutality of her marriage to argue the point. “I, um . . . Chinese is all right, I guess.”

  “All right?” He posed the question with feigned amazement as he set the cartons on her desk blotter. “Darlin’, that’s damned near a sacrilege. I’ve got pork and chicken chow mein, Szechuan beef, Mandarin beef, chicken fried rice, beef and broccoli, and snow peas with water chestnuts. Surely, with a selection like that, there’s somethin’ in there that you think is better than just all right.”

  Rainie hadn’t really looked at the cartons until now. He’d ordered enough to feed an entire army. “Who all’s coming?”

  “You, me, and two forks.” He started toward the coffee room but stopped dead when he came to the boxes, now filled with the contents of his file cabinets. “Holy hell, how will I ever find anything?” When he saw the look on her face, he chuckled. “Just kiddin’. You’ve taken on quite a chore.”

  In Rainie’s opinion, that was putting it mildly, but she refrained from saying so. Speaking her mind was yet another freedom she’d been denied during her time with Peter.

  Boots thumping on the hardwood floor, Parker returned a moment later with a roll of paper towels, two plates, and a fork for each of them. It still amazed her how he seemed to dominate a room. Hooking a toe under the pedestal of his chair, he rolled it to her desk.

  “Don’t be shy,” he urged as he arranged the plates. “I order takeout for lunch a lot, and I’ll feel uncomfortable eatin’ if you don’t join me.”

  Rainie reluctantly sat down across from him. He tore off two sections of paper towel and thrust one at her. She placed it on her lap as she watched him pile food on his plate. When he realized she was staring, he paused with his fork poked into a carton to give her a questioning look.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . . well, such a lot of food.”

  He went back to serving himself. “I work hard. It takes a lot of calories to keep my weight up. I start my day with a half pound of bacon, three eggs, a small bag of hash browns, and three pieces of toast with butter and jelly. For morning break, I have two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. By noon, I’m starving.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I burn it off.” He pushed a couple of the cartons toward her. “You’d better dish up before it’s all gone.”

  Rainie giggled, an involuntary sound that burst forth and became a muffled snort when she tried to stifle it.

  Parker glanced up at her again. “You got a problem with how I eat?”

  “No!” she rushed to assure him. “No, no, not at all. I just can’t believe you can consume so much and not gain weight. I’d be as big as a house.”

  He gave her a measuring look. “No offense intended, but you could stand to put on a couple of pounds.”

  “I’ve lost some weight recently.” Rainie realized what she’d just said and wanted to call back the words. Issuing him an engraved invitation to ask questions about her personal life was not in her game plan.

  Instead of pressing her for more information, he surprised her by crossing himself and silently blessing his meal. Then, between bites of food, he asked, “So how’s it goin’ in here? You wantin’ to quit yet?”

  He was paying her too well for her to consider quitting, but that seemed an inappropriate thing to say. “I’ve made some headway.” She glanced at the mess she had unearthed. “It’s going to take me a while to get things organized, though.”

  “No worries. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I wish I could tell you that I’ll clean up my act, but chances are, I won’t. I keep a tidy underwear drawer, I never leave dishes in the sink, and I can’t stand a messy house. That’s about as good as it gets.”

  Rainie had no desire to hear about his underwear drawer. Striving to keep him focused on the business at hand, she replied, “My initial plan is to get all the paperwork in alphabetical order. When that’s done, I’ll create company folders so everything will be at my fingertips when you need it. But it is going to be time-consuming.”

  “I’m not settin’ any deadlines.” He tucked back into his meal with unabashed enthusiasm. The muscles along his jaw bunched each time he chewed. “On a ranch, you learn that deadlines only frustrate you. Just when you think you have everything planned out for the day, God, the weather, or Murphy’s Law blows your schedule all to hell.”

  A brief silence fell, and Rainie dreaded what might come next. This morning when she’d arrived, he had acted as if nothing untoward had occurred yesterday, but she would be foolish to believe that he intended to let it go at that. He was surely curious about her past, and sooner or later, he’d start pressing her for answers. She braced herself for a probing question, or another of those penetrating looks that made her feel as easy to read as large print.

  But once again, Parker Harrigan surprised her. Gesturing with his fork, he said, “A rancher’s philosophy is, ‘What doesn’t get done today will wait till tomorrow.’ ” His dimple flashed in a slow grin that tipped up one corner of his firm lips. “You’ll hear different versions of it, of course. My foreman, Toby, will say, ‘Ain’t a lick of work I ever seen that’ll take off runnin’ if I don’t find time to git to it.’ My dad is fond of sayin’ that a chore is like a faithful woman: She’ll always wait for you.” After taking another bite of Mandarin beef and pausing to chew and swallow, he added, “I’m not a procrastinator, don’t get me wrong, and I don’t suffer laziness in any of my employees. But by the same token, I’ve also learned to be laid-back. If I weren’t, I’d go nuts. Every blessed mornin’, I plan the day and hold a crew meetin’ to get everybody lined out. Some days, the chores get done like clockwork. Other days, shit happens, and nothin’ on the work roster gets finished. Say a horse gets sick. Everything else takes a second seat. Everything but the other horses, that is. You learn, in short order, to get the urgent stuff done and do the rest as time allows.”

  “Being an office employee, I’m sure that philosophy will never apply to me,” she inserted.

  “Maybe not,” he agreed, “but then again, maybe so. If I have an emergency out there”—he inclined his head to indicate the arena area—“I may
interrupt your workday by sendin’ you to town for horse medicine or some kind of paraphernalia I need to treat an animal. On a ranch, you never know from one minute to the next what might happen. About a month ago, Montana, one of my prize studs, got a hornet up his nose and went berserk. The walls of those stalls are reinforced nine ways to hell, but he managed to put a rear hoof through the wall anyway, and got his leg stuck up to the hock. Talk about a mess; that was it. I damned near lost a fine animal in that go-’round. By the time I got his leg free, he’d cut himself and was bleedin’ bad. My vet—he’s also my brother-in-law—was out in the field and took forty-five minutes to get here. Trust me when I say everybody within a mile was at a dead run, doin’ whatever needed doin’ to save my horse.” He forked some more food into his mouth and made short work of swallowing it. “Like I said when I hired you, the horses come first. The paperwork won’t up and die on us if you don’t tend to it for a day. An injured stud or a foal with pneumonia won’t be so patient.”

  Rainie had never considered all the mishaps that could befall horses. Now it was easier for her to understand why this man’s office was in such turmoil.

  “It sounds like a demanding line of work. Were you and your siblings born into the business?”

  “We teethed on saddle leather.” He poked a big piece of broccoli in his mouth. “Not really, of course. It’s only a sayin’. But if any kids ever came close to teethin’ on leather, we did. Right after Clint was born, our mom insisted that Dad put new flooring and walls in one of the stalls to create a playpen.”

  “A what?” Rainie had forgotten all about her earlier tension. “She put her baby in a horse stall?”

  “By the time Dad got done with it, it was a pretty fancy horse stall. I know it sounds strange, but it wasn’t really. They converted a birthin’ stall, and they’re quite large. Mom liked to work in the stable with my father, and back then, they couldn’t afford a babysitter, so a confinin’ area for us kids was the only solution. Less than two years after Clint was born, Quincy came along. I came a year later, Zachary two years after me. Life can’t end for a woman just because she has four little boys. It was kind of cool, actually. We had a big space to play in, and she kept tons of toys in there to keep us entertained. When one of us cried, no tellin’ who’d come, sometimes my mom, sometimes Dad, and sometimes one of the hired hands. Hooter—he’s Clint’s foreman now—used to take his breaks in there with us. He got me hooked on chocolate Hostess Cup Cakes—those ones with the cream centers? I still love ’em to this day. And Jerome—he’s Samantha’s foreman now—got me hooked on his Blue Buzzard Ranch Chili. Do you think he’ll give me the recipe, though? Hell, no. He’s gonna take that recipe with him to the grave.”

  Rainie was quickly coming to realize that Parker loved to talk. He also had a tendency to flit from one subject to another. But she was so fascinated by his stories that she didn’t mind. Her initial uneasiness began to dissipate. If he intended to grill her about her past, he was taking his own sweet time in getting around to it.

  “You gonna eat?” he suddenly asked. “The food will get cold.”

  “Oh.” Rainie dished herself up a small portion of the chicken fried rice and a few snow peas. “Mmm,” she murmured appreciatively after taking a bite. “So, Hooter and Jerome have been with your family for a long time?”

  “Long before Clint was a twinkle in my father’s eye. In fact, all of my dad’s original crew is still with us, some still workin’ at his place, some workin’ for us kids. When each of us branched out on our own, we inherited one of his most trusted hired hands as a foreman. He wanted us to stand on our own two feet, but he didn’t want us to be without an adviser. I got Toby, one of the best horsemen you’ll ever encounter. He’s the fellow you saw that first day, comin’ up to the house to tell me you had arrived.”

  Rainie recalled the paunchy, slow-moving man she’d seen. She took a bite of chicken fried rice. “He’s still able to work with horses?”

  “Don’t let his looks deceive you. The old codger can move like greased lightnin’ when the notion strikes him. He’s like a second father to me.” He flashed her one of those heart-stopping grins. “That’s fittin’, I guess. He’s my godfather. When I was a kid, he made me recite my catechism while we did stable chores together. I learned the Apostles’ Creed at the business end of a pitchfork.”

  “It must be nice to have so many people in your life that you’ve known since childhood.”

  “It is nice,” he agreed. “I sort of take it for granted, though. It’s how I grew up. My dad started out poorer than a church mouse, with only this spread as an asset. He was dumber than a rope about quarter horses and had to count on the knowledge of others to get his start. Later, when he became successful, he never forgot the people who’d helped him get there. He treats ’em like family, and in turn, they’re as loyal as family. If this place went tits-up tomorrow, Toby would stand by me to the end.”

  Having experience with only the corporate world, Rainie was more accustomed to a dog-eat-dog mentality. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Around here, it’s the norm,” he said with a laugh. “Not to say I don’t have new employees who’d leave in a blink. But mostly I try to hire people I think will stay on, and then it becomes my aim to make it so good for them here that they’ll never consider quittin’.”

  Rainie remembered his refusal to pay her less than what he felt was fair.

  “Bein’ a good boss is one of the things that my dad drilled into all of us. ‘When the clover’s high, share the pink,’ he says. And he’s not just blowin’ smoke. Right after I got off on my own, I felt rich, havin’ the workin’ capital he gave me in my bank account. And trust me when I say spendin’ it wisely didn’t come naturally to me. That was somethin’ I had to learn. First crack out of the bag, I bought myself a brand-new Ford pickup, tricked out like you wouldn’t believe. I was so damned proud of that truck. When my dad saw it, the first thing he asked me was, ‘When did you last give your hired hands a raise?’ Truth was, I hadn’t given anyone a raise yet, not even Toby. Dad let me know in no uncertain terms that takin’ care of my employees came first. New rigs and luxuries for me always had to come second. I felt guilty every time I looked at that damned truck until I was able to give Toby and all the others an increase in wages.”

  “You’re very fond of him, aren’t you? Your father, I mean.”

  Cheek bulging, he nodded. “More than fond of him. My dad is—” He broke off and wiped his mouth with the paper towel. “Well, he’s indescribable, one of the best men I’ve ever known.” Sighing with satisfaction, he tossed the napkin on his plate and rocked back on the chair. “Enough about me. I’ve talked your ear off. What’s your father like?”

  Here they came, the personal questions she’d been dreading. Only he’d caught her off guard, and Rainie couldn’t think how to dodge the query. She decided that giving him tidbits of information would do no real harm. “My father passed away when I was seventeen.”

  His expression went suddenly solemn. “Ouch. That’s mighty young to be losin’ your dad. It must have been really hard on your mom.”

  “She was no longer with us when he died. We lost her to ovarian cancer when I was twelve.”

  “So you were left all alone at seventeen?” His dark eyes filled with appalled incredulity. “Shit. That must have been rough.”

  Most people tried to console Rainie with platitudes when they heard about her parents’ deaths, but Parker said nothing more. Instead he stared at the desktop as if he couldn’t conceive what it must have been like for her. His silence touched Rainie in a way that artfully phrased condolences never had.

  “It was lonely,” she heard herself say. “It still is. After my mom died, my father became my whole world. Though he loved me and tried to go on because of me, I don’t think he ever got over losing her. They were—” She broke off. Her parents’ relationship was difficult to describe. “I don’t know. What they had was special.”

  “In
other words, they were truly in love,” he supplied softly.

  Rainie gave him a questioning look. It struck her as an odd thing for a rough and rugged man like Parker Harrigan to say.

  “It was the same for my folks,” he explained with a smile. “Nowadays, a lot of people think all that crap is only for storybooks, but even though I was young, I can still remember how it felt in a room when my mom and dad were together. It took him years to get over her death.”

  “Daddy never got over losing my mother. I can’t remember now when he started drinking, only that one day I realized he was drinking way too much. The alcohol eventually destroyed his health. The last thing he said to me as he lay dying was that he was sorry.” It occurred to Rainie that she was sharing more than tidbits of information with Parker Harrigan, but somehow she couldn’t stop the words from coming. “He was in such pain that I was relieved when it was over, but at the same time, I wished he wouldn’t leave me.”

  He nodded. “When we lose a loved one, our feelin’s can get as tangled as line wire. Who’d you live with after he died?”

  “I was in my senior year of high school, and he had enough left in the bank to arrange for the housekeeper to stay with me until I graduated and the house could be sold. The proceeds from the sale went into a trust fund to cover my college education, and I began my freshman year the following September.” Rainie fiddled nervously with a button on her blouse. “I actually do have an undergraduate degree in accounting. That much wasn’t a lie.”

  “As long as you can do the work, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the degree. Why couldn’t you live with someone in the family after he died? Surely you had an aunt or uncle or grandparents.”