Page 13 of The Rancher’s One and Only

But after a year of this life, he was…bored.

She wasn’t boring.

“You can just leave your car here if you like. I’ll bring you back when we’re finished.”

“Oh. All right. I won’t lie. It will be nice to have something other than the MREs.”

“I can’t believe that you were ready to stay out there in a little tent eating dehydrated food.”

She shrugged. “They aren’t bad.”

She followed him to the truck. She opened up the door and climbed inside, and he watched with some amusement. He doubted very many people would call her perky. She didn’t have the demeanor of someone on the pep squad, but there was an enthusiasm to her. Something sort of bright-eyed. She was keen. It was the kind of personality you didn’t see a lot going with kids who ended up in the foster care system.

Enthusiasm, excitement, all those things got bled out of you pretty early. It didn’t mean that those feelings didn’t exist somewhere deep inside of you, but as a survival tactic, he and everyone he knew had learned to tamp down those feelings. To hide them deeply.

Dakota and his art, for example. That was something he just hid away. He didn’t let people know that he wanted to do that because it was the kind of thing that would get the shit kicked out of you. Emotionally, if not physically.

Jax had it easy by comparison. Getting into MMA fighting, into martial arts, that was stuff people didn’t make fun of you for. Though he had a feeling that if they knew the level to which he was into it, they would be scathing. He didn’t just prize the physical part of martial arts.

The spiritual aspect of it mattered to him.

The fact that it centered you. The fact that learning how to fight made it so you didn’t have to fight as often. That it brought you greater control. Meditation, the flow of energy, those were all things that he had learned from his first sensei. The only real father figure in his life.

Yeah, he kept that stuff to himself. All people really wanted to know was how high he could kick. And if he could kick the shit out of them.

Ernestine didn’t possess any of that veneer. There was no wall up. She was just…her. That was another thing kids like him got good at. Reading people. Checking for a lack of authenticity. She was frighteningly authentic. That had been visible to him immediately.

He sort of wanted to cover her up with a blanket so people couldn’t see it. Felt protective of her, which was strange, all things considered. He didn’t know her.

He got into the truck, and started the engine. “It’s about a half-hour drive to town.”

“I know. I’ve been to town. I’ve actually been here for a week or so. I stayed in the motel initially. And then I showed up at the dig site, and Haley was there.”

“Explain that to me.”

“She stole my research. I’ve been painstakingly documenting migratory patterns of animals based on what we know about the era, and the flora and fauna and weather at the time. Coming up with theories as to where I think there was the most activity. Of course, none of that will be confirmed until I actually find fossils and tracks. But I formed such a great theory on where to dig. However, I did leave some of it out.”

“You left some of it out?”

“Yes. I built a map, and I intentionally left some of the information off of it. I’ve suspected for a while that someone was passing information to Haley. Because it seemed like whatever I was researching, she was always a step or so behind me, and she’s very adept at making it look like she might actually be a little ahead of me. But that’s because what she’s very good at is networking. She’s extremely conventionally attractive.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. He didn’t know if he should say that Ernestine was also attractive. Except, while she was, he couldn’t say that it was conventional. She wasn’t stylish, she wasn’t made up, her glasses were large to the point of being comical. There was something unique about her features. Compelling, but she wasn’t someone you’d see working as a ring girl at a fight. And so in that sense, he understood what she was saying. He just didn’t know if it would hurt her feelings if he didn’t jump in on that. But by the time he’d finished with that mental loop, she’d already moved on.

“I think—and I know that this is not feminist to consider—that she might be getting information because she has used physical incentives with one of the men at the museum.”

“Are you suggesting that she’s trading blow jobs for fossil information?”

“Oh. Well. I…” He looked at her, and she had a distinctly strange expression on her face. “I had not thought exactly what the specific physical favors might be. Though it does stand to reason oral sex might be involved.”

He smiled. “There’s a bone joke in there somewhere.”

She frowned. “Is there?”

“Never mind. So you think that this woman got your information, and that’s why she was able to write a grant essentially when you did, and get it. And this is all public land, so she was able to set up her own dig site ahead of you.”

“Yes. And honestly? I can go in there and start digging over the top of her, but there’s no benefit to that. I don’t want to be walking in her discoveries. But I knew that digging on your land would be a little bit trickier because it is private. I knew that it would cost me a bunch of my grant. Still, there’s a reason I held it in reserve. I think this might actually be better.”

He frowned. “So, I don’t know you very well, Dr. Martin, but I suspect that if you thought this was better the whole time you were going to end up here anyway.”