Billionaire In Hiding: The Complete Series (Alpha Billionaire Romance Western Love Story) by Claire Adams

starving again. I could only imagine
how hungry Garrett had been when skipping breakfast all together.
    The
days on the ranch were long and having the ranch hands working so many hours
wasn’t ideal. Sure, a ranch hand job was expected to be long hours. But the
guys on our ranch often worked seven days a week and from five in the morning
to nine at night. It couldn’t be legal, but I suspected my father paid many of
them under the table and most of the men liked it that way. They weren’t
working on our ranch so they could work up in their careers. The men who came
to our ranch were only worried about getting some cash in their pockets and
moving on.
    “Can’t
you feel the crisp air? It’s so much different than normal air. I mean, regular
air, oh … you know what I mean.”
    Garrett
looked at me out of the corner of his eye and started to laugh, I tried to
resist laughing with him but soon we were both laughing. It was fun being up
early; I liked having the world all to myself. I was happy to help my mother
with the meals throughout the day and on that morning I was happy to have
Garrett with me.
    He
was funny and I had found myself thinking about him a lot since we first met.
He seemed so naive to the ways of the ranch, but not necessarily naive to the
ways of the world. The way he held himself and even the way we talked with each
other made me think that Garrett had seen much more in his life than he was
letting on.
    “Normal
air?” he said through his laughter.
    “Oh,
shut up. You know what I meant.”
    “I’ll
keep my eyes out for the normal air later this afternoon,” he teased me.
    There
was no use fighting with him; I had to just laugh. I tended to fumble my words
when I was around a man who intimidated me. It had happened in my office all
the time and I hated it. I always wanted to be a strong woman who couldn’t be
rattled by what was going on around me, but it didn’t work out for me the way I
wanted it to. Instead, I often ended up fumbling for the words I wanted to say
and unable to argue the points I wanted to get across.
    I
had hoped that building my abilities in my workplace would help with my
confidence and therefore help with my ability to stay on point when I was
intimidated. But I had to leave before learning those skills. Then as I stood
in front of the very handsome new ranch hand, I felt just as disorganized as I
had felt in front of a boardroom full of executives.
    Garrett
commanded an energy about him that felt so similar to how my coworkers had
felt. The confidence with which he looked at me had me feeling like I couldn’t
say or do anything right. It was uncomfortable, in a weirdly erotic way.
    “How
are your hands feeling? Do you think you can handle cutting up some
vegetables?” I asked as I grabbed a knife for him.
    We
had bandaged his hands up with some gauze and medical tape and they looked
perfectly capable of helping me. I had notice he was moving them just fine and
seemed to not have any pain at the moment. I suspected he would heal up just
fine in the next couple of days.
    “Show
me how you like it done,” Garrett said in a low sexy voice that rattled me to
the core.
    It
was like he was purposely trying to titillate me. The look in his eyes spelled
out trouble and I had to look away quickly, but not before I caught a deep gaze
from his brilliant blue eyes. Oh, how those eyes seemed to look right through
me. It was as if he read every secret I had with just a simple gaze.
    “Just
cut them in small bits; I’m going to put them in the omelets,” I said as I
handed him a knife and some onions and started cutting them into small pieces.
    “Like
this?” Garrett said as he grabbed the knife with his whole fist and started
moving it roughly over the onion.
    “God
no, you’re going to cut off your fingers.”
    “Like
this,” I said as I moved next to him and put my hand gently over his and guided
him along. “And keep the tips of your fingers tucked under to keep them