“Was that your housekeeper?” Jenny asked, scuffing her sneakers in the dust as she poked along behind him.

“Yes.”

“How come you didn’t introduce us?”

“No time for that now,” he said briskly. “You have a job to do. You’ll meet Maritza at lunch. She’ll be bringing it out to us.”

“We’re going to eat in the barn?”

Harlan hid a grin at her horrified tone. “No, I expect we’ll be out checking fences by then.”

She scowled at him. “I thought you were rich. Don’t you have anybody else working this place? I can’t do everything, you know. I’m just a kid.”

“Trust me, you won’t even be scratching the surface. And yes, there are other people working the ranch. Quite a few people, in fact. They report to my son. They’re off with the cattle or working the fields where we have grain growing.” He shot her a sly look. “You had any experience driving a tractor?”

“The sum total of my entire driving experience was in your truck yesterday,” she admitted, then shrugged. “You want to trust me with a tractor after that, it’s your problem.”

He grinned. “You have a point. We’ll stick to horses for the time being.”

He led her into the barn, which stabled half a dozen horses he kept purely for pleasure riding. Jenny eyed them all warily from the doorway.

“Come on, gal, get in here,” he ordered. “Let me introduce you.”

“Isn’t it kind of sick to be introducing me to a bunch of horses, when you didn’t even let me say hello to the housekeeper?”

“You’ll get to know Maritza soon enough. As for these horses, from now on they’re going to be your responsibility. I want you getting off on the right foot with them.” He pulled cubes of sugar from his pocket. “You can start off by offering them these. That’ll get you in their good graces quick enough. Let’s start over here with Misty. She’s a sweetie.”

Jenny accepted the sugar cubes but she stopped well shy of Misty’s stall. “Why is she bobbing her head up and down like that?”

“She wants some of that sugar.”

Jenny held out all of it. “Here. She can have it.”

“Not like that,” he corrected, “unless you want her to nip off a few fingers at the same time.”

He showed her how to hold out her hand, palm flat, the sugar cube in the middle. Misty took the sugar eagerly. He grinned as Jenny’s wary expression eased. “Was that so bad?”

“I guess not,” she said, though she still didn’t sound entirely convinced.