Kennedy asked, “What should I do?”

“If you can spare the time from studying, you can help Erin. Then crack open the books.”

“Okay. I can do that,” Kennedy said.

Erin was relieved to know Kennedy meant to stay with her. She prided herself on her expertise with vehicles, but she’d never handled ranch equipment.

An hour later, Erin decided that ranching wasn’t for sissies. She’d never worked so hard. Her back, butt, and legs hurt. Blisters had also popped up on her hands. She consoled herself with the thought that she was working her muscles in a different way than she usually did. Another bright spot was that this kind of labor would probably eliminate the need for her gym membership. She could probably even quit running and doing planks every morning.

Kennedy noticed her hands. “Damn it, you’ve got blisters.”

He disappeared while Erin continued wielding the pitchfork. When he returned, he handed her a pair of oversize leather gloves. “Wear protection from now on. Slade is paranoid about blisters. On a ranch, they get infected. Visits to the ER for work-related injuries jack up his insurance rates. I have student coverage now, which is cheaper, but he still raises hell if he sees me working without gloves.”

* * *

After finishing the paddocks, Erin had just enough time to grab a shower and talk with Uncle Slade before she walked over to the bunkhouse. Her back and butt were killing her, but she pasted on a smile as she entered the building and then promptly forgot her aches and pains. She’d never seen four men milling around in a kitchen. It was apparently Wyatt’s night to cook, because he stood at the stove while the other men repeatedly bumped into each other trying to unload the dishwasher.

“That dad-blasted machine don’t work!” Tex complained. “This pot ain’t clean!”

“That’s because it wasn’t scrubbed out before it was put in the rack,” Kennedy retorted. “You’re the only one who doesn’t prewash, so it’s probably your fault.”

“I’ll be damned,” Tex blustered. “Don’t make no sense at all to wash dishes twice. Like I don’t got better things to do?”

“Now you have to wash it twice anyway,” Kennedy pointed out.

“It’ll be snowin’ in hell when you see me washin’ anything twice! It’s sterile. You told me that’s why we have to use that newfangled contraption, cuz it gets rid of all the germs.”

“I don’t want to eat dried-up old food!” Kennedy protested. “That pot is nasty. You have to wash it.”

“You been sniffin’ after that girl so much that you ain’t been here for supper half the time, anyhow!”

Tex held the pot as if he were thinking about bonking Kennedy over the head with it, and Erin began to feel nervous. She glanced at Wyatt, wondering why he didn’t intervene before an actual fight erupted. He seemed unconcerned about the commotion. Then she remembered he couldn’t hear, and the combatants were behind him. No wonder he always seemed so calm and unruffled. He missed out on a lot of the unpleasant stuff.