“Nothing wrong with now.” To prove it, he shut the door behind her. “Want a beer?”
“No, I’m good.”
He crossed back to the table, picked up a remote, and switched off the old black-and-white movie on the TV.
It was a small, efficient space, holding the kitchen and living areas, which had been spruced up nice enough by her mother. The bedroom rayed off the kitchen with a bathroom so tiny she wondered how he managed to shower without banging his elbows and knees.
“You going to sit?”
“I really hate to interrupt your dinner.”
“You won’t if you sit and talk while I eat it. Take off your coat. The stove keeps it warm enough.”
The little potbelly in the corner did its job, Bodine thought, tossing her coat on the back of the living room chair.
She sat across from him at the square two-seater table. “You cook?”
He cut a bite from a fried-up rib eye. “Enough to get by. I could’ve had dinner in the bunkhouse, but I had some things I wanted to get done.”
A folder sat beside him, closed now.
“Just in the neighborhood?” he asked her.
“As it happens. I like this neighborhood.”
“Me, too.”
“You didn’t get in touch to tell me LaFoy was no damn good, so I hired him.”
“You said to get in touch if he was no damn good, and he didn’t strike me that way. He’s good with the horses, knows his way around, appears to listen when you talk to him, and got on fine with everybody else when we toured around. We had a couple come by just to look at the horses with their preschooler. He was polite and personable. I figured that did the trick, though I wouldn’t say he’s sharp as an average tack.”
“Well, I had the same take, so that’s good enough.” She sat back, sighed. “Here’s the thing, Skinner. It seems Abe’s not coming back until spring. He’s worried about Edda, wants to keep her from doing much for a while, so he’s taking her to spend time with family here and there, to keep her occupied.”
Listening, Callen sawed off more steak. “Sounds like a good idea, considering.”
“We talked about you going back and forth, filling in, filling in more come January, but that’s not going to work now.”
“You need to plug that hole all the way.”
“I do. Dad and Chase both say if you want to switch over to the resort for the winter, that’s fine with them. If you want, you and I can talk about salary, as you’d move off the ranch books officially and onto the resort’s until Abe comes back. If you don’t want that, as you came here to work the ranch’s horses, that’s fine, too. If that’s the case, I’d just like you to keep filling in until I can hire somebody to plug that hole.”
He scooped up some mashed potatoes, washed them down with beer. Said, “Hmm.”
“I’ve been doing the scheduling for that area and for housekeeping since Edda got sick. I can pull from the staff I have to fill the housekeeping position, but I can’t pull from the BAC and Equestrian Center for a horse manager. Even if Maddie wasn’t pregnant, she’s not a manager. Not yet anyway. And I don’t think she much wants to be. So I’d have to go outside for it. I can do that if you don’t want to take it on.”
He ate some, thought some. “Can you lay out the details? Salary, yeah, but duties, responsibilities, what kind of autonomy’s involved if it’s official? Temporary, but official.”
“Absolutely.” It set her mind at ease he’d ask rather than jump to either yes or no. “If you give me your e-mail address, I can send it all to you. In writing.”
“You can have my e-mail.” He rattled it off. “But if you don’t have every detail inside that head of yours I’ll eat my hat. And I like wearing it.”
She considered a moment. “Beer in there?” She wagged a thumb at the refrigerator, then waved him down before he could stand to get it for her.
She pulled out a Moosehead, popped the top in the open mouth of the bull bottle opener on the wall. And took a long sip.
“I like beer.” She took another pull. “I like wine fine, but, boy, there’s nothing like a cold beer.”
She sat, and ran through the job description, the duties, the responsibilities, the expectations, who reported to whom, the liabilities, the resort policies.
It was a long list. She paused, drank more beer.
“Are you sure you don’t want this in an e-mail?”
“I’ve got it. Most of it makes sense.”
She intended to send the e-mail anyway.
When she named the salary, he ate more steak, mulled it over.
“Seems fair enough.”
“Good. Do you want to take some time to think about it?”
“Just want to clear it with Sam and Chase.”
“I told you they’d cleared it already.”
“You did. But you didn’t hire me on here, they did. I’d like to get their go-ahead in person. Since I expect they’ll give it, just as you said, I don’t need any time. I’ll take you up on it. Though it causes me some hardship for a few months.”
“Hardship? How?”
Taking a pull of his beer, he gave her a long study over the bottle, gray eyes assessing. “Well, it’s a tricky business to make a move on you when you’re my boss. Sister and daughter of my bosses, tricky enough, but doable. Straight-up boss, that’s something that’ll take some figuring out.”
She eyed him over her own beer. “We’ve both got too much to do for you to be putting any moves on me—or for me to have to dance around them.”
“Never too much to do for that.” He gave her an amused and considering study. “How good a dancer are you?”
“I’m very light and quick on my feet, Skinner. And I really need this to work, so don’t complicate it.”
“It’s not my fault you grew up so damn pretty. How about this: You and me make a date. First of May, that’s a good day. Spring’s come around, and you won’t be my boss anymore. I’ll take you dancing, Bodine.”
The fire crackled in the old potbelly, a reminder of heat and flame.
“You know, Callen, if you’d given me that flirtatious look and that smooth talk when I was twelve going on thirteen, my heart would’ve just stumbled right out of my chest. I had such a crush on you.”
Now his grin didn’t flash. The smile came slow and silky. “Is that so?”
“Oh my, yes. You with your skinny build, half-wild ways, and broody eyes were the object of my desperate affection and awakening hormones for weeks. Maybe even a few months, though at the time it seemed like years.”
She gestured with her beer. “The fact that you and Chase considered me a nuisance at best only added to the secret longing.”
“I expect we were mean to you half the time.”
“No, I can’t say you were. You crushed my adolescent heart with mild disdain, which is just how boys of fourteen and fifteen look on girls of twelve. And like a girl of twelve with a first crush, I got over it.”
“I had more than a couple moments of interest in your direction when you hit about fifteen.”