LITMIR.BIZ

      LIFTING THE OMELET from the skillet, Stephanie served the cat and then began making breakfast for Johnny. He’d finished with Black Jack and she’d called him in before he started work on the other two horses.

      He sat at the table, though he’d offered to help cook. She kept looking at him, his dark hair slicked back and his face freshly shaved. With his strange gray-green eyes, he seemed to take in everything.

      She put the omelet in front of him and sat down to finish her coffee and toast.

      “Not hungry?” he asked.

      “I don’t normally eat breakfast,” she said, “but Familiar let me know he was ready for something.”

      “Smart cat.” Johnny glanced at the shelf where she kept her cookbooks and several framed photographs. “Is that your husband?” he asked, indicating a picture of Stephanie and a handsome man on a beach.

      Stephanie didn’t have to look at the photo to know what it was. It had been taken only weeks before she moved to South Dakota. She and Rory had been at Gulf Shores, Alabama, a last fling in the Southern sun before moving north. It was the last weekend Rory had been alive.

      “My fiancé,” she said. “He died in a plane crash.” Normally that put the kibosh on further conversation.

      “I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “You two look so happy. When was the crash?”

      She almost told him to mind his own business, but she stopped herself. “About four months ago. He ran a charter airline business out of New Orleans. His plane went down somewhere in the Darien Jungle.”

      Johnny stopped eating. “That must be terrible for you.”

      To her surprise, she found her eyes clouding with tears. “Rory was a good man. We were going to run this business together.”

      “He was giving up his charter business?”

      She nodded. “He loved flying, but he could have kept one plane and done a part-time business here. Mostly, though, we wanted to focus on the horses.”

      “So he was a trainer, too.”

      Stephanie smiled. “Not really. But he wanted to learn. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? To want to learn a different way of relating to an animal.”

      “If more folks were willing to open their minds, it would be a different world,” Johnny said. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I should get to work, but first…” He picked up his plate and went to the sink, where he ran the hot water and began washing up.

      “That’s not necessary,” Stephanie said.

      “Probably not. But you cooked, so I’ll clean up. It’s not a fifty-fifty distribution of work, but it’s more fair than your doing it all.”

      She leaned back in her chair and sipped her coffee, watching him as he efficiently tidied the kitchen. He knew his way around housework, which was more than surprising for a cowboy.

      “How long do you expect to be in these parts?” she asked.

      Johnny didn’t turn around. He rinsed a plate and set it in the drainer. “I’d thought a couple of weeks, but I’m in no hurry to leave. Nobody is expecting me anywhere down the line.”

      “That’s good to know,” she said. Winter was coming. While the ranch work was hard enough in the summer heat, the winter was going to be long and cold and even more difficult. “Maybe, if things work out, you’d want to stay around here.”

      “Let’s get to the end of the first two weeks. After that, if you like the way I work, we can negotiate a salary.”

      “Perfect.” She stood and took her coffee cup to the sink. “When you finish Dolly and Stinger, let me know. We’ll saddle up and check the fence line on the north pasture.”

      He grinned. “Sounds like a good plan. I haven’t done range work in a long time.”

      “You’ll get plenty of chances around here,” she said.