Page 47 of White Collar Rancher

Is my shower that bad?

There’d been a nervous tickle in her laugh. Not at all. But who wants to spend a lot of time cleaning?

You.

Well…not a lot of time. Scraping soap residue isn’t my favorite task.

Yeah, he’d wondered if she’d cleaned his shower a few times.

“Don’t worry about the laundry,” he shouted from the mudroom as he stepped into his boots. It wasn’t a big deal. But after Gabrielle’s call he couldn’t let it go. She’d started with innocuous stuff, too. First buying an expensive watch when he’d used his phone for all his electronic needs. Then commenting on the neighborhood he’d moved to after leaving the dorms. He should’ve recognized the behavior after dating Maisy. Her comments about who he hung out with and the way he drove were more than personality quirks. But then, that was the only relationship he’d known.

“It’s no problem,” she called back.

His jaw tightened. She wasn’t an idle woman, but now that he looked, her touch was everywhere. Last night, she’d been in his closet to hang her clothing up so it wouldn’t wrinkle in her overnight bag. Did leggings even wrinkle? And she’d hung up the suits he’d dumped in the corner. She’d oohed and awed over the cut and the labels. You’re just getting rid of them?

What does a rancher need with a Tom Ford?

She’d laughed and said, Does one ever need a Tom Ford?

His gaze drifted to the new laundry detergent she’d gotten. He was using one recommended for babies, but she’d gotten a different brand. The reviews are better.

Staring at the soft pink label, he leaned out of the mudroom. “You can always come shovel when Isaiah’s asleep.”

What had made him say that? Had she shoveled before? Would she even know where to find one? He kept one outside the back door. It had only taken once, wading through thigh-deep drifts to the shed. Now there was always a shovel by the house.

And anyway, she was watching Isaiah so he could push snow. What the fuck had he said that for?

To prove how opposite they were. She was the pampered daughter of a doctor and she would raise equally pampered children. Isaiah already had a tiny little shovel in the barn that was a present from his cousins. As soon as the little guy could walk, he’d be at Justin’s boots, helping on the ranch.

He shook his head. That damn phone call had messed him up. He banged out of the house. A knee-high drift started a few feet from the door, but he stomped through it until he reached the shop that held the tractor. Brigit and Caleb had put the snow attachment on last fall for him. It was gassed and ready to go.

The combination of monotony and strategy moving snow required helped distract him from the woman in the house.

Was he going to start being an ass to drive her away? God, he hoped not. She deserved better treatment. They weren’t serious, but that didn’t mean he didn’t respect the hell out of her. So she looked like an astronaut picking her way across Mars whenever she entered the barn. But he probably looked like a duck in the ocean when he walked through the halls of the clinic.

Was that his issue? Did he want more? Was he afraid to want more in case she laughed him off? The grungy rancher and the prim doctor? He birthed lambs and she birthed babies. Same concept, whole worlds apart.

What if she wanted more but only under certain conditions, the main one being that he change?

He was just fine as he was. This life was the one he wanted. He wasn’t here because he was stuck. He was a rancher by choice.

The main driveway was done. He checked the time on his phone. That watch Gabrielle had talked him into years ago had quit working and was stuffed in a drawer somewhere in his house. He needed to give that away, too.

An hour had gone by. The dogs had grown tired of running around the cleared areas and resigned themselves to the barn. He’d spend another hour with the skid steer getting close to the buildings and Priya’s car. The road was another story. He lived at a dead-end of sorts. The road split into his drive and the other side was where his cousin Aaron lived. It wasn’t an emergency route, and between him and his cousins, they cleared what they could before the county made it this way. Should he start on the road? He had nowhere to go, and there never used to be a reason to rush snow removal. But with Isaiah, he always worried the boy would choke, come down with a freak illness, or—

The freak illness spurred him into action. Not one fleck of snow had been on the ground when Maisy died, but minutes had mattered in her case.

If Priya weren’t here, he couldn’t even entertain the notion unless he had Isaiah strapped in with him. And how he’d do that, he had no idea.

A red tractor ambled down the drive, blowing a line of snow out of its blower attachment. The arc of white fluff from the blower died as Aaron hit the cleared drive.

Justin’s phone rang. Aaron was on the other end. Facing each other like they were going to play chicken, they let the tractors idle.

“Hey,” Aaron said as soon as Justin answered. “Just stopping by to see if you needed a hand. The main road is almost clear.”

“Thanks, man.” Relief pulsed through him. Family saving his ass was becoming such a regular occurrence that he didn’t feel as guilty as he used to. Wasn’t that why he’d moved back? They helped each other, and all their work benefitted the company. He wasn’t an owner in the company like his brother and four cousins were, but they didn’t manipulate him like Gabrielle had. That wasn’t always the case with family operations, but he’d grown up with the guys and trusted all of them.

“I see you have some help anyway.”

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