Chapter 4

She polished off the baked salmon and asparagus he’d cooked for her. There was definitely a chef behind that dark beard because the food was wonderful. She reached for her third hot roll, which he’d baked fresh just before leaving for the wedding. The outsides were firm, but they were still soft inside, and delicious.

“I’m going to get fat if you feed me like this,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

“You won’t get fat,” he said. “The way you’ll be working you can eat like that three times a day and still won’t gain an ounce. Not of fat, anyway. You might get heavier, but it will all be muscle.”

The next day she knew he was right about not gaining any weight. By supper she was so sore she felt like an old woman, shuffling along.

She’d had to use the salve again before going to bed the night before, just so she could get to sleep. Now her still-raw thighs seemed like mere discomfort, compared to her arms, abs, and rib muscles.

They’d worked with hay most of the day. He had traded beef for hay to another rancher in the area. That rancher had paid the youth group from a church in town to bale the hay.

They’d used an old baler that spit out rectangular small bales tied with wire. Since most of the workers came from farming or ranching families, he hadn’t had to supervise them.

There were hundreds of the dusty bales on the top floor of the barn and Bob wanted to rearrange them so they’d be pre-positioned when it came time to feed the stock during the winter. That meant moving them from the side where they’d been originally stacked to surround the opening that led to the stable below, as well as stacking them in front of the big door on the end of the loft so they could be tumbled out into the truck he’d use to feed the cattle, which didn’t get to stay in a nice, cozy barn when the cold winds and snow blew.

Each bale only weighed thirty or forty pounds, and her initial thoughts were that this would just be a healthy workout. By the time she’d lugged a hundred of them across the hay-strewn floor of the loft and then grunted them up onto the new stack, she felt like her arms were going to fall off. It wasn’t the kind of endomorphic workout she was used to. Her back was killing her and the last thing she felt was the pain between her legs.

By the time they broke for lunch and she hobbled to the house, she groaned, “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“You’ll be fine,” he said. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “Your body will get used to it. Pretty soon you’ll be able to do something like that all day and still feel like wrangling cows.”

“No way,” she moaned. “I can hardly walk. I feel pain in muscles I didn’t even know I had.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “After lunch I’ll fix you up.”

“I can’t be fixed,” she complained.

“Nonsense. I promise you’ll feel like new when I get done with you.”

“How?”

“Never you mind about that,” he said. “You just get something in your belly. You need fuel to keep running on.”

“I’ll never run again,” she moaned. “I wasted money on those shoes.”

“City folk,” snorted Bob. “You’re all soft and weak. But I’m going to change that, at least in your case. Now, eat.”

Twenty minutes later she leaned back.

“I’m full,” she said. “I need a nap.”

“There are no naps on a working ranch,” said Bob. “What you need is a massage, to loosen up your muscles and work the lactic acid out of them.”

“I don’t see any masseuses around,” said Mandy.

“You don’t need more than one,” said Bob.

“I don’t see a masseuse around,” said Mandy, patiently.

“What about me?” asked Bob, sounding falsely injured.

“I’m not sure I want the beast’s hands on me,” said Mandy. She didn’t actually mean that, which surprised her, but she felt like it had to be said.

“I am pure of heart,” said Bob. “You will come to no harm in my care.”

“No man is pure of heart,” said Mandy, who wondered why she was being so uncooperative.

She knew a massage would feel good right now.

“Nothing will happen without your express consent, then,” he said, not arguing about her slur against men. “And it’s not like you’ll be naked or anything.”

“Of course I won’t be naked,” she said, stiffly.

“Just a T shirt and those shorts I loaned you,” he said. “I should be able to get to everything I need to.”

“I don’t know,” she mused.

“I’ll be using the salve,” he offered.

She quit being pernicious. She knew a massage would be good for her. And she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to get through the afternoon unless she did something.

“Okay, but if you cross the line I’ll hurt you,” she warned.

“Do you know jiu-jitsu or some such thing?”

“I know where your balls are,” she growled.

“My balls will not be used in this massage,” he said, grinning.

“They better not be,” she said.

“Go get ready. We have more work to do.”

“You’re not Bob Cobb. You’re Simon Legree,” she moaned.

“I’ll take it easy on you this afternoon,” he said. “The tack in the tack room needs to be oiled. You can sit down for most of that.”

That’s how Mandy ended up lying on her bed, clad only in a T shirt and running shorts, with Uncle Bob standing over her.

“Chemistry” is a term used frequently to describe attraction between the sexes.

It’s a mystical concept in the sense that science can’t predict when it will exist or which people it will exist between. Of course men are commonly believed to have “chemistry” with any woman. The old phrase, “If she’s ugly, put a flag over her face and fuck her for Old Glory” is a crass example of that. The fact is, that’s not true at all, at least not with most men. Men have likes and dislikes, just like women, and the one thing everybody agrees on is that dislikes prevent or reduce chemistry. Examples of that are men who like big-breasted women and others who prefer a woman with very small ones.

Science has hypothesized that chemistry is based on evolution, wherein a man chooses a woman he thinks will be a good mother for his children while he’s out hunting mastodons.

Women, they say, choose a mate with broad shoulders and muscles that will make his children strong, good mastodon hunters when they mature.

As anyone will tell you, though, it’s more complicated than that, especially in a world where ‘mastodon’ hunting is a very rare situational need.

The fact is, when you ask two people what attracted them to each other, they very often can’t tell you. A woman might say, “He was funny and intelligent,” but Netflix is brimming over with intelligent comedians, available anytime you want a laugh. A man might say, “She was a stone fox,” but there are literally millions of those around. Why did he choose this particular one? Beautiful women end up with and truly love ugly (and sometimes much older) men. Successful businessmen often have and truly love plain wives.

Then there is the phenomenon of having had previous partners or lovers. It’s impossible to forget them and inevitable that, when you are “in the market” to find a new one, comparisons are made. The fact you aren’t with your previous partner or lover (barring their death) means the bond didn’t survive whatever travail there was in the relationship, but there will always be memories of that person that one would call “good.” If the new candidate doesn’t match up to the old one in some intangible ways, then he, or she, doesn’t have much of a chance. More importantly, if the new candidate has some of the same negative character traits as the old one, then there’s almost no chance of a pairing.

Mandy had been married twice and almost married a third time. She was no blushing, innocent girl. She’d been up and down some bumpy streets and her heart bore the scars of relationships that didn’t last.

Granted, her breakup with Matt had been amicable. They were still friends, in fact. Subliminally, though, her femininity had taken a hit. Even though a psychologist would call it bunk, she couldn’t help but think on some level that she wasn’t woman enough to keep him. Her short life with Steve had been everything she could hope for, other than the fact that he was gone so much of the time before he was gone forever. But he’d made it abundantly clear she was all woman, as far as he was concerned, and desirable in the extreme.

Then there was Ryan, and her insecurities were back. Her self-image took another hit. She wasn’t even woman enough for him to want to take his meds, and he chose five years of almost literally Spartan conditions rather than being with her.

She didn’t think about all this consciously, but it was there, bubbling beneath the surface, like a mild acid that was slowly corroding her self-confidence.

At least until she came to the ranch.

She had done amazing things she’d never have dreamed she could do. Just standing next to the horse that first time had made her feel small and insignificant. That it let her climb up on its back had been incredible. That it went where she wanted it to go was even more strange. It would have been fun, had she not been terrified. But she did it. The next time had been better, but she’d ended up so sore she couldn’t walk normally. Now, the horse came to her and nickered when she walked into the corral. Her butt was better and the skin on her thighs was no longer angry and red looking.

She had lifted heavy bales - hundreds of them! And she had restacked them, climbing up on tiers of other bales, dragging the recalcitrant dead weight with her. She had helped rebuild a carburetor, of all things.

She actually knew what a jet was and what it was supposed to do. Her hands had gotten filthy, but she hadn’t cared. She had talents and potential she’d never dreamed of before.

A major part of all this was Bob, of course. He was patient and easy-going. He worked at least twice as hard as she did and didn’t complain or groan once. She felt like a ten-year-old next to him. At the same time, being around him had restored her self-confidence in being a woman. It was impossible to be around Bob Cobb and not feel attractive, even when your hair was a mess, your boots were filthy, and your hands covered with muck. His eyes told her he liked looking at her. His manner made it clear he recognized her gender on a regular basis. He didn’t quite ogle her, but at the same time when she felt his eyes on her, she felt like a girl who bought a bikini, not realizing how very small it was until she wore it to the pool.

As for Bob as a man ... that was complicated. He was older, old enough to be her uncle, but she couldn’t think of him that way.

First of all if she thought “Uncle” in front of his name, she also thought “Ryan.” And he didn’t act old. He was strong as a bull and energetic in a way that made her feel even more exhausted than she really was.

She’d become accustomed to his face pretty quickly and now the beard didn’t look strange. She’d seen other men with beards, of course, but in Bob’s case he seemed to have a beard that had a face hidden within it rather than a visage decorated with facial hair.

He wasn’t a potential mate. That she did think of on a conscious level. But she liked being around him. He was a man she could relax around, even if his eyes were so intrusive sometimes. Even then he wasn’t pushy in any way. The impression she got was that he just liked looking at her, so that’s what he did. It wasn’t any more complicated than that.

Or hadn’t been. Now that burly, bushy man was hovering over her and his two callused hands were mauling the flesh on her right arm.

He squeezed and twisted and stroked in a way that felt like it should be tearing her skin off, but all it did was feel amazing. How he could be so forceful and yet so gentle was a mystery.

But it was a mystery she didn’t have time to think about at present. Right now all she wanted to do was lie there and soak up all the relief he offered.

Mandy had only had one professional massage in her life. Matt had taken her to a spa one time and they both got the works. It had taken three hours but they’d been side by side the whole time, able to talk.

The people working on them had seemed remote, only pairs of hands that had done nice things. She’d felt refreshed and happy when it was finished and then they’d gone to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

The comparison between that and what was happening to her now was laughable. Of course there was no Matt present with her, chatting away, but even if he had been there she wouldn’t have been able to pay any attention to what he was nattering on about. The only thing she could think about was the feel of Bob’s hands on her body. She could feel individual fingers as her skin came alive under his manipulations.

It was that way when he switched arms, walking around to the other side of the bed. And it was that way when he started on her legs. When he worked over her foot she almost cried out at how good it felt.

She did in fact, as his manipulations caused dopamine to be produced in her brain, let out little moans of contentment, though she wasn’t aware she did that.

Even when his hands slid up inside the legs of her shorts she didn’t rouse from her lassitude.

His fingertips moved to the bottom of her bubble butt, but that was all. When he worked the insides of her thighs, which had so recently been raw and sore, his rough hands felt wonderful.

He skipped over her shorts to work on her back and sides. Now she did groan with conscious thought as her complaining muscles got the relief they craved. Particularly her trapezius and dorsi muscles needed work, because they’d been strained by all that lifting and dragging. Then his hands went to the small of her back and she uttered, “Oh fuck,” before she could consciously decide to say it. She didn’t know the muscles there were called erector spinae. All she knew was that if he continued that she might have an orgasm.

It was her conscious thought of “orgasm” that lifted her out of the pool of happiness his hands were causing. It was the wrong word, but she couldn’t think of any other word that fit what she felt when his hands got there.

“I’m not molesting you,” he said, his voice startling her, “but you need this.”

His hands slid under the waistband of her shorts and suddenly those squeezing, mauling fingers were pawing her ass. Except it didn’t feel like she was being pawed. If anything she wanted to tell him to keep doing it. She blinked, confused by that feeling, but then decided there wasn’t anything sexual about what he was doing, or how it felt. It just felt good. Her butt had been aching for days, and this felt fantastic.

She decided to say nothing and just enjoy it. Her sense of security returned when his fingers didn’t stray into her butt crack ... or beyond. When he pulled his hands out of her shorts she sighed.

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The City Girl Blues

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