the way Witt looked at her as she settled onto an ornate wrought iron stool sitting in front of a bright blue drape, but it was almost impossible.
“Va-va-va-voom!” Linda called as she stood behind Mica. “If you can cook as good as you look right now, honey, Blue Thorn Burgers is bound for success.”
“She can,” Witt replied. “And we are.” The resolute tone in his voice sent a little flip through Jana’s stomach that had nothing to do with anxiety.
“Turn the music up a notch,” Mica said, pointing Witt over to the stereo in the corner. “Let’s have some fun.”
She did have fun. Jana surprised even herself by enjoying the whole morning. She laughed, posed, climbed up on the truck, even got a bit goofy by the end as she mugged behind the line of twelve burgers she’d cooked up during the shoot. Jose was singing along with the radio by the end of the shoot, flirting with Linda, who was old enough to be his mother. When they all five of them sat down at the big table in the loft to “eat the props” as Mica had said, it had the feel of a family picnic rather than a dreaded promotional task.
“You were amazing,” Witt exclaimed just before his eyes fell closed in carnivorous bliss as he bit into a burger. “This is amazing,” he said after chewing. “I keep thinking I’ll get used to it, but your burgers are still incredible every time I eat one.”
“A gorgeous woman who makes burgers like these? It won’t be me getting fourteen marriage proposals—you’ll be getting a dozen a day.”
Jana felt her cheeks color. “I doubt that. I’ll settle for regular customers, thanks.”
“Oh, you’ll get ’em,” Mica said, licking stone-ground mustard from the corner of her mouth. “Trust me, they’ll be lining up for these.” She peered at the burger. “I’m eating buffalo? Really?”
“Bison,” Witt replied. “It’s better for you than beef, you know.”
Jose rolled his eyes. “Don’t let him get started. He can go on for hours.”
Everyone laughed. Jana looked around the room and allowed herself the pleasure of seeing her new friends enjoy her cooking. A hope and a future indeed. Look out, Austin. Here we come.
Thursday afternoon, Witt took Jana back out to Martins Gap to see the ranch again. It was fun to watch her take in the spectacular scene that was the Blue Thorn Ranch bison herd out in their pasture. He’d borrowed Gunner’s field truck to take her out into the fields—one simply didn’t stroll out into the open fields to pal around with thousand-pound animals—so she could really see what made the ranch unique. It’s the one thing they hadn’t had time to do when she’d come for the earlier dinner, and being out in the open fields was a whole different experience than sitting around the family ranch house.
“Wow,” she exclaimed, fighting to keep the breeze from sending her hair over her face as they sat in the back of the pickup and watched the herd. “They really are amazing.” He knew Jana was a city girl, but he could tell she caught the splendor of ranch life. It was all over her face as they watched the large brown-furred creatures meander among the tall grasses.
Witt tipped his hat back as he took in the wide horizon. “I could recite paragraphs to you about how the family groups are preserved, or how the harvesting is done in deliberately stress-free ways, and a bunch of other organic industry buzzwords, but I figured this was better. Whenever the business gets to me, I come out here for a few hours and get my head back on straight. Used to do it on my family ranch, too.”
Jana fished a hair elastic out of her jeans pocket and pulled her curls back into a haphazard ponytail. A tiny bit of Witt regretted the confinement—Jana’s hair in the wind was an enthralling thing, tumbling around her face and neck in a most distracting way. On second thought, maybe it was for the best that she’d tied it back. He should be glad her hair always had to be up and controlled in the food truck. When she’d worn it down for some of the more personal shots back in the photo studio, he’d had to force himself to stop staring.
“This isn’t your family ranch?” she asked once the curls were under submission.
He’d wondered when he’d have to explain the course of events that had brought him to Blue Thorn. This seemed as good a place as any to tell the tale. “You know Gunner and Ellie are my cousins. My dad, Grayson Buckton, was Gunner Senior’s younger brother. At one time they both lived on this ranch, back in the days when this was a big cattle operation.”
“Gunner said something about revitalizing the ranch when he brought the bison on. So it used to be a cattle ranch?”
“Yes. And back then, it was twice, maybe three times the size it is now.”
Jana let out a low whistle. “That must have been a sight to see. Like something out of a Hollywood Western.”
“Exactly like that. The Bucktons go back four generations in these parts. Gran could tell you stories from back in the day that sound as if they came straight out of an old movie.”
Gran had taken to Jana right away during that first dinner on the ranch. The 85-year-old matriarch of the family, who still lived on the land with Gunner Jr., welcomed Jana into the Blue Thorn fold with her trademark hospitality. “She seems like quite a woman, your grandmother,” Jana remarked.
“Oh, she is,” Witt agreed. “Strongest woman I know. It tore her up when her boys fought and my dad took his part of the herd and split off to make his own way.” He waved off an insect that buzzed beside him. “Bucktons can be a headstrong, stubborn lot.”
Jana gave him a sideways smile. “Can they? I hadn’t noticed,” she teased. The day of the photo shoot had gone wonderfully, but yesterday not so much. The weather had been hot and humid, and the truck’s close quarters had fermented a spat between them over menu pricing. It was threatening to break out into an open argument when he’d called a truce and announced that they needed a “field trip” out here. The whole disagreement seemed petty now that they were out in the breezy pasture, where the glory of God’s nature put everything in perspective.
“So your dad raises cattle, too?”
There was the sticking point. “And he’s really good at it—to be honest, he was always better at it than his brother. Dad went off to grow Star Beef into one of the largest ranches in the next county while his elder brother, Gunner, stayed on the Blue Thorn and slowly ran it into the ground.” He shot Jana a look. “You can imagine the family arguments that spawned. The tension between the brothers just grew worse and worse. By the time Gunner Senior died, I don’t think he and my dad had said three words to each other in five years. They never reconciled, and I think it breaks Gran’s heart to this day.”
There was a bit of a pause before Witt continued, “Go ahead, ask it.”
“Ask what?” she said, unsuccessfully hiding the question he could see in her eyes.
“Why am I here and not there?”
She looked down at her boots. “I wasn’t sure it was any of my business.”
Witt shifted against the side of the truck and looked out at the herd. “I had always planned to stay. My older sister, Mary, and I ran a lot of the day-to-day operations as Dad stepped back.” He reached for the right words to relay the next part—it still wasn’t easy to tell. “Then Mary married a guy from another huge ranch nearby, and, well, he sort of stepped right into the helm of Star Beef like he owned the place.”
“Ouch,” Jana said softly. “Didn’t your dad have anything to say about that?”
Ouch indeed. Jana had hit on the most painful part of the story. “He had the opposite reaction, actually. Cole is very driven and comes from a powerful family. Cole’s older brother runs his family’s ranch, and I think Cole was as bent on outdoing his brother as Dad