She had no idea whether she wanted to dig herself out of the mess he brought to her life…
Chapter Sixteen
You sure you’re up for this?”
“I said I wanted to learn, dammit!” She was so tired of being looked at that way. Enough was enough.
Yet two more days had passed. It was coming closer and closer to the visit her father was paying her, and Brielle was failing epically.
“All right. Just remember that you asked for it,” he warned her.
“I can handle whatever you decide to throw at me, Colt.” She was wearing the dang jeans, a T-shirt she wouldn’t be caught out in public in, and the boots. Though she wasn’t going to tell him this, they were becoming more comfortable. That was a relief.
“Here ya go, Princess.”
Brielle looked at him with suspicion when he gave her a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. “What is this for?”
“You want to work? You get to muck out the stalls. It has to be done every single day. Since you and Joe have become chummy, he’s going to teach you what needs to be done.”
“That’s not teaching me anything,” she snapped, emphasizing every word. She knew freaking well that it was a ridiculous thing for her to be doing.
“You said you’d listen to me, that you wanted to learn.”
“I want to learn how to run the ranch, not do the chores.”
“Chores are part of running a ranch.”
She faced him, seething. He wasn’t holding his end up to the bargain, but the stubbornness in her made her decide she was going to do this. No, it didn’t give her what she needed, but maybe if she did this, he would give her what she really needed.
That thought led to the wrong place in her mind, and she quickly moved on, knowing she didn’t want to go there, not with Colt, never again!
When Colt walked away and Joe approached with a tentative smile on his face, Brielle sighed in resignation.
“Have you ever mucked a stall before?” Joe asked her.
At least he wasn’t nearly as rude as Colt.
“No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn,” she told him as he took hold of the wheelbarrow and moved through the horse barn.
“All you have to do is scoop out the messes and then we’ll come in and lay fresh straw.”
Brielle felt a chill go through her body. “What kind of messes?” When she looked down, she said with horror, “I’m scooping poop?”
Joe’s cheeks turned red. She wanted to run in the opposite direction, but she knew this was some sort of test. Yes, it was a waste of time, and yes, she knew Colt was putting her in this position just because he was an ass, but she was going to do this, and do it well.
When she got a good whiff of how the horse manure smelled up close and personal, however, she started thinking this wasn’t something she could do. Her stomach began heaving. Then, an hour later, her back was burning, and her eyes and nose were running. Colt had to have given her the worst possible job there was on the ranch. Joe had done three stalls to her one, and she still wasn’t finished.
Every time she managed to scoop some of the disgusting poop onto her pitchfork, half would fall back off because her arms were shaking so badly. Another half hour passed before Joe declared the stall clean and pointed to the next one.
Nope. This wasn’t happening, not even with her determination to prove Colt wrong about her. This crap was downright demeaning — did he really think he was being funny? She was through with Colt. It was time to hire someone who would listen to her, who wouldn’t make a joke of her requests for honest help.
“I’m done,” she told Joe, wiping her brow with the back of her hand as she lay the pitchfork down and moved toward the door of the barn. Guilt followed her outside, but this wasn’t the life for her. She couldn’t do this. Who in their right mind would choose to live like this, work so hard for so little money?
Her arms felt as if they were on fire, and her lower back ached in a way it had never ached before. She had to get away from this place. In addition to the pain radiating through her body, she was sweating buckets. Reaching up, she pushed back her hair and was disgusted when her hand came away wet.
“That’s it.”
She should go take a hot shower to ease the aches, but she was close to tears and needed to be far away from the house, from the barns, from any chance of running into anyone. That meant she was going to the lake for a swim.
Marching out to the shed, she found a quad bike that already had the key in it. Luckily, she knew how to ride one because her last boyfriend, whom she’d dated while working at the mall in D.C., had found great pleasure in the things. At first she hadn’t been interested in riding, but the freedom of cruising on roads that standard vehicles couldn’t handle, plus the sensation of the wind rushing through her hair, had quickly gotten her addicted to the sport.