Swift and Saddled: A Rebel Blue Ranch Novel

“Of all the battles to fight, you’re going to fight to keep the pink and yellow bathroom tile?” Evan asked. We were standing in the main powder room of the house, and Evan was looking at me with an expression that was somehow both amused and bored.

“Yes,” I said simply. “And I’m going to fight for the powder-blue tile in the primary bedroom en suite too.”

“Of course you are.” Evan sighed.

“Of course I am.” Since I started taking on actual design projects, I’d always done my best to restore rather than demolish when I could. When I started at Rebel Blue, I didn’t know how much we could salvage, considering how long the house had been vacant, but thanks to the Ryders’ maintenance schedule, the elements had largely been kept out of the house. Animals were a different story, even though I thought we had those managed at this point. Now the inside of the house, after our barebones demo, looked great.

I was bummed that we would have to do new floors. The current ones were in bad shape—probably more from having housed generations of a single family than from being abandoned for the last thirty years.

I made a mental note to see if there was any way that we could reuse them. I already knew I had enough wood from the old doors to create two large bookshelves for the living area.

“It’s a miracle there aren’t any leaks under this floor,” Evan said. He was right. After inspection on both this level and the straight-out-of-a-horror-movie basement, we hadn’t found leaks in any of the bathrooms—no mold, no water damage, nothing. There was water damage in the kitchen, though. We had already planned to rip that out completely anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

“And who are we to question a miracle?” I asked.

Evan rolled his eyes. “Your boyfriend is here,” he said. “You better ask him.” I gave Evan the dirtiest look I could muster, which must’ve been a good one because he shrank back from my gaze.

Before I had time to revel in that, I caught a glimpse of Wes coming through the front door, leaving my favorite ball of white fluff outside.

“No dogs inside the active construction site” was a necessary rule, but every time I saw Waylon’s pouty eyes, I wanted to break it.

I knew Wes hadn’t been planning on coming by until the end of the day, so I wondered why he was here. He had his own uniform when he came to the job site, but today, since he wasn’t coming to work, he was still in full cowboy mode, wearing a large work coat and leather chaps.

Damn.

I looked down at my watch. It was already half past four. How the hell did that happen? I needed to look at my notes.There were things that had needed to get done today that hadn’t, and that was going to put us behind.

“Hey, Evan,” Wes said as he made his way toward us. “Ada.” It was annoying how much I liked the sound of my name when it fell from his lips. It always sounded…reverent somehow.

“Hey,” Evan and I said at the same time.

“How was today? Everything go smoothly?” Wes asked. He was looking at me.

“Good,” I responded. “I actually have some questions for you.” I looked back at Evan. “Tell the crew they can head home, but that we need them here at seven instead of eight tomorrow.” Evan nodded. He knew we needed to tear out the ceiling the next day. “Follow me,” I said to Wes, leading him toward the powder room.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Damn him and his stupid cowboy charm. Since when did the word “ma’am” make my cheeks heat? Nothing made my cheeks heat. I wasn’t a blusher.

We walked, and he was a little too close to me, and I reveled in it.

After the whole shower incident and after he agreed to teach me to drive a stick shift, I figured I could stand to be marginally nicer to him. Which had nothing to do with the fact that I thought about him all the time, the fact that he was the best-looking man I’d ever laid eyes on, or the fact that he seemed to be a genuinely good person.

Obviously, it had nothing to do with any of that.

“So,” I started, “I wanted to talk to you about a few of the bathrooms.” We were outside the powder room now. Its door had been removed, so we could see inside. “What would you think about keeping the tile?” I asked. “We would obviously replace the toilet and the sink, and update the paint, but it’s rare to see this type of tile work in such good shape, and I think the more elements we can preserve, the more cohesive our final product is going to be.”

I was nervous while I waited for his answer. I didn’t know why.

“I love it,” he said after a few beats.

“Really?” I asked, kind of shocked. It was usually a fight for me to get someone to agree to keep something that felt dated. Everyone wanted all new, all sleek, all modern, all the time.

“Yeah. I love this tile, and the blue tile in the other bathroom too,” he said, smiling. “As long as the appliances and pipes can be upgraded to handle the demands of guests, I’m all for it.”

“Okay, excellent,” I said. “That was easy.”

“Were you expecting it to be hard?” A million inappropriate jokes came to my mind, but I pushed them down. This was my boss.

“Sometimes it can be,” I said. “Most people prefer shiny new things.”

“Not me,” Weston said. “This place has history. I don’t want it to feel like everyplace else.” I knew that—it was one of the first things he’d said in his initial email to me—but now that I was here at Rebel Blue, and now that I knew the man behind the emails, I understood more deeply what he was looking for.

“While we’re on that subject, I was thinking about furniture. We have enough old doors to make a few bookshelves, and there’s probably a lot of salvageable wood here that we could repurpose. Is there a carpenter in Meadowlark?”

Weston’s eyes were bright. He liked that idea too. “Several,” he responded. “But I think you’ll like Aggie.”

“Can you reach out to her? Or do you want me to?”

“I’ll do it,” Wes said. “Aggie is an old family friend.” Of course she was. “And Gus just convinced her son to come back to Meadowlark, so I don’t think she’ll tell us no.”

“People leave Meadowlark?” I said jokingly, but immediately regretted it. I didn’t want it to come off snobby, but Wes just smiled again.

“Dusty did,” he said. “He’s been a cowboy all around the world.”

“That’s a thing?” I asked. All of this was new to me.

“It’s a thing,” he said. “If anyone but Gus had asked him to come back, I don’t think he would’ve.”

“Why did he ask?” Everything seemed pretty well taken care of at Rebel Blue.

“Gus needs another number two since I’ve got this.” He motioned around him, indicating the house.

“But this won’t last forever,” I said, not intending for my words to have a double meaning, but they did.

“Dusty likes temporary,” Weston said. “He should be here this week. You’ll like him.”

“Oh, really?” I didn’t think Weston knew me enough to know if I’d like the newcomer, or I guess oldcomer.

“He’s like the man version of Teddy.” He shrugged. “And everyone likes Teddy. Except Gus.” Interesting. I pocketed that piece of information to ask Teddy about later. I still hadn’t seen her. She’d sent a few more texts—she’d been busy with her dad but was going to come by on Friday.

“And his mom is the carpenter?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s cool. I’ll talk to her and see if we can take materials to her this week, and we can talk to her then.” There were a lot of “we’s” being flung around today.

I nodded. “That’s great.”

Weston rubbed at the back of his neck, like he was suddenly nervous. “So,” he said, “I drove my truck over here, and I thought you could drive it back to the Big House.”

“Um, yeah,” I said, also feeling suddenly nervous. “I guess we can try.”

“Okay, great. I’ll just meet you outside when you’re ready.”

After most of the crew had left, having agreed to tomorrow’s earlier start, Evan and I came out of the house last. Evan was going back to San Francisco for the weekend, so tomorrow would be his last day on-site this week, and he wanted to brief me on what needed to happen before he came back. I was used to being solo on parts of a project, but not one this large. I was anxious, but I just needed to stick to my plan.

Evan got into his rental car, making sure to throw a pointed look my way as he said, “Have fun, you two.” God, he was unbearable.

I turned to face Wes, remembering his rule. That I needed to look at him while I was talking to him. It was a stupid rule. I was perfectly happy looking anywhere but in his stupidly mesmerizing green eyes. But I was also perfectly happy looking straight into them.

An annoying predicament to be in, honestly.

I started toward the passenger side of Weston’s truck, but he lightly grabbed my elbow and pulled me back toward his chest.

“Driver’s side, sweetheart,” he said.

I blinked slowly, waiting for my brain to rewire itself. “Sorry?” I said.

“You get in the driver’s side. You’re driving us home, remember?” Weston’s voice was amused.

“Right, sorry,” I said, and went toward the driver’s side this time. Weston opened the door for me, and I plopped myself in the driver’s seat. The truck smelled like him.

“Okay, see that pedal on the left?” he asked. I looked down at the third pedal—the clutch, I guessed—and nodded. “Use your left foot to push it all the way down to the floor.”

I did what he said, but I couldn’t get it all the way down. I wasn’t close enough to the pedals—the seat was pushed back for someone who was six foot something, not someone who was five six, maybe five seven on a good day.

“Keep your foot on the clutch,” he said as he put his hand on a metal bar under the driver’s seat—a metal bar he could reach only by putting his arm between my legs.

Was it hot in here?

He pulled the bar up and brought the seat forward a few inches. The fact that he did this with me still sitting there liquefied my insides, and if he kept this shit up, they’d be boiling within seconds. “Okay, now push it down again.” I did, and it went all the way to the floor. “Good. Does that feel okay? Easy to go all the way?”

Keep your jokes to yourself, Ada.

“Y-yeah,” I said, hoping he didn’t notice that my voice sounded slightly breathy.

“And you can reach the stick okay?” At this point, I was really regretting not thinking about all the sex-related puns that could be thrown around when learning to drive a stick shift. I swallowed one and put my right hand on the gearshift knob, not answering but showing. That was easier. “Perfect,” he said, smiling up at me. When I was sitting in the truck, we were nearly the same height, and he was so close, with one of his hands still on the bar under my seat.

I wondered if he realized how close we were—how a few more inches upward, and his hand would be between my legs. The way his tongue ran over his lips told me he did.

Shit, shit, shit. Get it together.

My foot slipped off the clutch, and the sound it made when it popped back up into its original position jolted both of us. Wes blinked a few times before pulling away.

“I’m just gonna…” he said as he used his thumb to motion back. I didn’t know what he was trying to say until he walked around the front of the truck and opened the passenger-side door. Waylon jumped in ahead of him and went to the small back seat.

Right. Got it.

“Okay,” he said. “You ready?”

Absolutely not. “Sure.”

“Put your right foot on the brake. When you start the engine, the clutch needs to be pushed all the way to the floor”—I pushed it in with my left foot—“and the gearshift needs to be in neutral.” He put his hand on top of mine, just as he had done when we drove to town, and moved the gearshift to neutral. “Good.”

“Can we…um…turn some music on?” I asked. I didn’t know if it was the stick shift or Weston that was making me nervous.

“Yes, but you have to turn the truck on first.”

“Oh,” I said sheepishly. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Go ahead, then, turn the key,” he said. “Keep your foot on the clutch, though.” I did what he said, and the engine turned over. My nerves started to creep up my throat. “The steering wheel isn’t going anywhere, Ada.”

I looked at my hands and saw what he meant. The white-knuckle grip I had on the wheel was hard to miss. “Sorry,” I said, and tried to loosen them.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asked. His voice was thoughtful. “It’s okay to be scared when you’re doing something new.” I didn’t answer. I didn’t really feel like diving into my ex-husband at this point, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for Weston.

“Are you still in neutral?” he asked. I nodded. “All right, take your foot off the clutch and the brake.” I did what he said, unsure where he was going with this. “Look at me.” I did. Weston’s green eyes were soft. “You’re probably going to fuck it up. A lot.”

Well, that was reassuring.

“But everyone does. There’s also no safer place to learn how to do this than right here. No one’s around. There are no other cars for you to hit or anything.”

“There are cattle, though,” I said.

“You think I would let you hit a cow?” he asked. That pulled a laugh out of me, and I shook my head. I don’t think either of us could handle the guilt of hitting a cow. “You’re going to kick so much ass.”

“Music?” I asked again now that the car was on. Wes opened the glove compartment and pulled out an aux cord.

“What do you like?”

I thought about it. “James Taylor,” I said. There was nothing more calming than James Taylor, right?

Wes laughed lightly. “I like the way you think.” I watched him scroll through a music app before he hit Shuffle on James Taylor’s greatest hits. “Fire and Rain” started playing, so we were starting off strong.

“All right, James on the radio,” he said, “left foot on the clutch, right foot on the brake, hand on the gearshift.”

I assumed the position. “Remember what I said about the clutch and the gas?”

“Ships in the night,” I said. I had to press on the gas and let off the clutch at the same time.

“All right, then, give it a go.” I put the gearshift into first, and heard Wes murmur, “Good,” and then started to let off the clutch and press the gas.

The truck shook and then went quiet.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“You killed it,” he said. “Which isn’t a good thing in this case. Put it in neutral again and start her back up.” I did what he said. “Now let off the clutch—slowly—and you should be able to feel that sweet spot we talked about.”

“The truck won’t die?”

“Not while you’re in neutral.” Got it. I lifted my foot off the clutch slowly, and there was a point where it felt like there was more give on the clutch. “Did you feel that?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“So when you feel that sweet spot, you’re going to give more on the gas,” he said. “A little give and a little go.”

“Are you”—I looked at him, knowing a smile was working its way up my cheeks—“quoting How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?”

A blush crept up Wes’s cheeks. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he said. I laughed like I did that first night at the bar, and felt my shoulders drop a little. “Does quoting Matthew McConaughey help or hurt?”

“Helps,” I said truthfully. A little give and a little go. I could do that.

“All right, all right, all right,” Wes said with a weird drawl in his voice, and I laughed again.

“Is that your McConaughey?”

“Obviously,” he responded, somewhat deflated.

“That is—quite literally—the worst McConaughey impression I’ve ever heard.” I might have been exaggerating a little bit, but it really was bad. Weston’s jaw dropped, and it was so fucking cute I couldn’t help but laugh some more.

With every exhale, I felt lighter.

“All right, smartass,” he said. “If it’s so bad, I’d like to hear you do better.”

I cleared my throat, not even having the chance to wonder when I became so comfortable with Weston, and wrestled up my best McConaughey: “All right, all right, all right.”

Weston let out a laugh that felt like when you go out to bask in the sun after being in an air-conditioned space for too long. I could feel the warmth seeping into my fingers and toes.

And so I laughed too.

We laughed together, and the more we laughed, the harder it got to stop.

I kept trying to catch my breath, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t long before I felt tears pricking at the sides of my eyes and my stomach started to hurt. When Weston laughed hard, apparently he got one of those weird silent hiccup laughs. He had his head on the dashboard, and his upper body was heaving. He reminded me of a bug, and that made me laugh harder.

And when I snorted a little, Weston hit the dashboard with one of his hands and threw his head back and laughed some more.

This was so fucking stupid, but I couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop.

I thought back to that night at the bar, how he made me smile, and how he’d made me smile every day since—even when I wasn’t kind to him.

He was like the sun. No matter what, he would keep coming up.

I didn’t think that my ears had ever been so far from my shoulders.

“That was so bad,” Weston said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “You are the worst impressionist that has ever lived. I am not kidding.”

“No, you are,” I said.

“At least I know how to drive a manual,” he said with a wink. Christ. I thought the dimples were bad.

“Well, my teacher kind of sucks, so…” I shrugged.

Wes shook his head. “Start the truck, Ada.” He was smiling, and so was I. I felt more relaxed than I had a few minutes ago—like I could actually do this and be okay.

“Neutral, clutch, gas?” I said out loud, looking at Wes.

“You got it.” He nodded, and I started the truck. James Taylor started flowing through the speakers again. I put the truck in first gear and prepared myself to let off the clutch and press on the gas. A little give and a little go.

I started to let the clutch out, and when I got to the spot I’d felt earlier, I pushed on the gas pedal. Probably a little too hard, because the truck lurched forward, jolting all three of us.

But it went. It didn’t die.

“Good,” Weston said. “Get her going, and then we’re going to shift gears, all right?” There was so much going on—so many things to focus on—but the truck was moving.

Holy shit. The truck was moving.

I just nodded.

“Okay, in a few seconds, you’re going to take your foot off the gas, push the clutch in, and move the car into second gear.”

“That’s a lot of things.” I gulped.

“You’ve got this, Ada. Now take your foot off the gas and push the clutch in.” I did. The truck did something that felt like a hiccup. “Second gear, quick.” I moved the gearshift to second and felt it lock. “Gas, sweetheart. Hit the gas now and let the clutch pedal up.” Sweetheart. I didn’t hate it, but I was trying to pretend I hated how much his voice calmed me down.

I did, and the truck lurched again. “Good, Ada. We’re going to stay slow, okay? No faster than twenty-five miles an hour.” I glanced down at the speedometer, which was currently sitting at ten. I felt like I was going at least fifty.

“Do you have it in you to shift again?” he asked, and I nodded. “All right, once we hit twenty miles an hour, I want you to show me what you can do.”

God, he was so gentle—so comforting. He talked to me the way people talk to plants when they want them to grow.

Don’t fuck this up now, Ada. Show him what you can do. I pushed on the gas lightly—glancing down at the speedometer a few times until it hit twenty.

Here we go. Off the gas. I lifted my foot. Clutch. I pushed it in. Shift. I moved the gearshift up to third. Gas, sweetheart. I heard Weston’s voice in my head, since he was silent next to me.

I shifted into third gear, and the truck was still moving, and the Earth was still turning—as far as I could tell.

“What did I say?” Wes said.

“That I was going to kick so much ass?” I responded.

“And I was right,” he said.

“What do I do now?” I asked. I felt like there was so much to do, and I wasn’t currently doing any of it. Right now, driving the truck felt easy?

“We cruise along at a nice and easy twenty miles an hour. We listen to James Taylor sing about a country road, and eventually, we come to a stop.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it. Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Weston started humming along to the music, and I kept driving, trying not to get distracted by the suns—the one in the sky and the one sitting next to me—bathing everything I could see in light.