Page 35 of The Banker and the Blue Collar Man

Cameron and Dillon never joined us, though whether Jake had anything to do with that, I didn’t know. We ate mostly in silence, though once Jake pointed to the windows where the clouds were gathering over the foothills like gray lace, sifting over the setting sun. Thick, dancing cobwebs in the air.

“See?” he said. “Rain.”

After we ate and bused our places and stood in the doorway to the dining hall, he said, “Come to the barn. I’ll attend to that cut.”

He had chores to do, and still he was taking time for me.

He led me to the barn and gestured me into the dusty little office. There, he said, “Sit.”

So I sat, as still as an oak tree, while he wiped around the cut with an alcohol swab. I inhaled the faded scent of drugstore aftershave. Looked at the veins in his forearms. Held myself very still as he pressed his fingers gently.

“You still got a bump here,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, proud that my voice was steady.

He put on the two bandages, butterfly ones, and I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know they’d be parallel and at a right angle to the cut. Holding my skin in place so it could heal with the smallest scar possible.

“Give me an hour to get my chores done?” he asked as I stood up.

“Yes,” I said after clearing my throat. His eyebrows dipped as though he were puzzled. “Not a problem. I need to unpack anyway.”

Unpack and calm myself the hell down so I didn’t come across like someone so unsettled by his nearness that it was a little hard to breathe or slow down the blood pulsing all through me, winding through my groin like a whip snake.

He put the first-aid kit in its battered box away, and I went back to bunkhouse four and unpacked like I’d said I was going to do. All the while I gave myself a talking-to.

Where was this going? I didn’t know. Surely he didn’t mean the walk was a date, the way I imagined.

It wasn’t just the way he looked. Tall. Powerful. That strong, hard jaw. Arms that could lift whatever he wanted them to. The way he never smiled.

He was always careful where he walked. Careful with what he said. Mindful. Always watching with his cut-glass hazel eyes.

All he wanted me to do was wait until his chores were done.

All I needed to do was scrape the nervous lather from my skin and behave like a decent human being. I needed to be attentive on this walk.

I was always a good listener, but this man. He would hold himself back. Hold his own wants in reserve. Just like he’d waited for me to sit down before eating a pile of food to give his body the energy it needed to get through each and every day.

I was never the kind to take advantage, and I didn’t want to take advantage now. I did want to find out, well, all kinds of things. What drew me to him was only the half of it. His intentions were the other half.

Beyond that was the pure and powerful desire to treat this man right. He’d mentioned being in foster care, which might or might not have been as bad as living in the family you’d been born into but where you came last, each and every time.

But this wasn’t going to be about me. This walk. Him and me. If I could draw him out, then I could understand what it tookto make him smile. And understand what it would mean when I did.

I met him by the barn an hour later on the dot.

There was sweat on his neck. Hay in his hair. Dirt on his jeans. “I should go clean up,” he said.

“No,” I said. “We’ll miss the bats chasing mosquitoes in the rain.” I gave him a small smile, though I told myself I would not flirt. “We don’t want to miss that. Right?”

“I reckon not,” he said.

The back of his neck flushed, and his eyes danced for a moment between me and the sky. Then he settled his shoulders as though doing his best to be brave while walking into some kind of lion’s den. Which meant I, in this scenario, was the lion.

Did that make him a helpless fawn hiding in the grass?

No, it made him very brave. At least in my eyes.

“Which way?” I asked.