Chapter

Heath hated weeding. He had hated it as a boy, working in his mother's garden and he hated it now. When he had first envisioned life as a Barkley, weeding a garden hadn't entered into the picture. However, he had not yet met Nick Barkley and was unaware that Nick firmly felt that foreman should not assign tasks to ranch hands they weren't ready to do themselves.

And since Nick also felt every hand should be able to do every job on the ranch-within reason-that meant every hand took a turn working in the garden, which meant Nick took a turn working in the garden and by extension, meant Heath took a turn working in the garden. Heath sometimes wondered how he'd gone from one of the poorest families in the valley to one of the richest families in the valley and he was still pulling weeds.

To add to this, the Barkley's ate some of the strangest food he'd ever seen. The first time Audra's prized asparagus dish was presented, it took enormous self-control for him to scoop what looked like a neat row of dead grass snakes on his plate. Mother's favorite, Brussel Sprouts, were another vegetable he had never seen before, and when the serving bowl was handed to him, he had stared blankly at what resembled nothing so much as the decapitated heads of luckless garden gnomes.

Jarrod's favorite, cauliflower, at least didn't remind him in appearance of anything he wouldn't normally eat; he just flat out didn't like it. However, a lifetime of being grateful for any food that was offered insured that he would doggedly swallow whatever was placed in front of him as long as it was edible, and the family remained blessedly unaware that at many an evening meal Heath would stoically chew away at what was offered while internally, he crossly wondered why the Barkley's couldn't just eat greens like everyone else.

However, the Barkley's did not just eat greens, hence the family garden, hence the need to have it weeded, fertilized and watered and hence the need for every hand on the ranch to know how to care for the plants. And care they did because the vegetables seemed to require more pampering than roses. Particularly Jarrod's beloved cauliflower, which required an exact shade of light, and a precise temperature, and specific amount of water and daily examination for and removal of cabbage worms and and and and and.

Cauliflower required more cossetting and tender loving care than a colicky foal, in Heath's opinion. He wasn't the only either; every hand on the ranch despised the cauliflower patch and the absurd level of work it required. In the time it took to care for the cauliflower patch, Mother's brussell sprouts, Audra's asparagus, Silas' tomatoes, potatoes, carrots and squash and Nick's green beans and black eyed peas could all be watered, weeded, fertilized and even harvested for the day.

Lately a new burden had been added to gardening: a pond full of lovely, limpid fish that made graceful swirls through the water and died if you so much as looked at them funny. They were to serve as training to learn how to 'farm fish' courtesy of an idea of Jarrod's he had introduced at a family business meeting.

Heath had known something up the moment Jarrod walked into the room, not only because of the small tray of food he was carrying, but because he had faintly manic glint in his eye. Heath recognized that look immediately because it was the same one Nick got whenever he had a new idea he was wildly enthusiastic about; and no matter how much the two would deny it, they quite alike in the way they became passionately enthusiastic about a project and talked about it with a sort of burning intensity. Jarrod just hid it better than Nick; he buried it under facts and figures, but the intensity was still there.

(Heath had wondered at first why he hadn't inherited that particular Barkley trait until Mother stood up one evening and started talking about an idea to import and breed angora rabbits and he had been startled to see that same look in her eyes. That's when he realized it was a trait inherited from Victoria, not Thomas Barkley and felt a mixture of faint relief and mild disappointment. )

Jarrod's idea had been a hard sell from the start.

"Ladies," He said, passing around the tray that had a number of small, fragile little crackers loaded with round, gelatinous clumps of what Heath glumly labeled as "more Barkley food. "Oh, Brothers of mine! Meet the next product from the Barkley family!"

"What is it?" Nick demanded suspiciously.

"It's cavier!" Audra said with delight, while Heath cautiously loaded the cracker on his tongue.

"What's cavier?" Nick asked Jarrod.

"Fish eggs."

Only years of self-control kept Heath from spewing the hors d'oeuvre across the room.

"Well try it!" Jarrod urged.

"No."

"It's great!"

"No."

"Caviar is a delicacy!"

"They're fish eggs and they belong in a fish."

"Caviar has been eaten in European courts for hundreds of years as a delicacy."

"Then I have some prime real estate in the desert to sell to European courts because that's not a delicacy it's a bunch of fish eggs and fish eggs belong in a fish."

Heath listened to the argument growing increasingly queasy. He felt like the fish eggs had hatched in his stomach and were flip flopping around in the throes of death.

"…don't care about the Europeans. If we're going to sell fish eggs as food, why not empty out the whole fish and sell the guts as food too!"

Heath couldn't take anymore. He bolted from the room, found a quiet bush outside and emptied his caviar, his dinner and anything else he'd eaten during the day, all the while quietly apologizing to his Mama for wasting food.

He came back to find the argument in still full swing, with Nick standing immovably in one spot, arms crossed and jaw set as Jarrod hurled his favorite adjectives.

"….Most stubborn, hard-headed, closed minded-"

Heath could feel a headache coming on and he flopped into a chair across from Mother who, he noticed was shading her brow wearily as if she was nurturing the same headache he was.

The argument had continued for another fifteen minutes before a compromise of sorts was grudgingly worked out: a pond would be dug and they would try "farming" fish on a small scale for a year or so to see if such a thing was even feasible.

The pond had been greeted by the hands with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, who saw little point in digging ponds and feeding fish that weren't ever going to be big enough to eat.

Heath ponded these things while he morosely loaded up on the tools needed for his round of gardening duty. And since he was co-foreman as it were, he needed to do so with outward enthusiasm even though he was inwardly wishing there was a way out of it. Because it was one thing to garden, weed and care for sensible vegetables, it was entirely another thing to spend so much time over vegetables that he couldn't help privately thinking of as girly pretend vegetables.

His contemplation of the day's upcoming misery was interrupted when Jarrod's new hire showed up as promised, albeit a day late. McColl had him by the collar at arm's length and the reek of stale beer as well as the bloodshot eyes, explained the delay. Heath was unimpressed.

Nick too, judging by his expression and Heath gave a preparatory wince, expecting Nick to rip Jarrod's hire up one side and down the other. To Heath's astonishment, Nick simply told Heath to join the wranglers, he'd be along in an hour or so and then took the man-also at an arm's length-around the side of the barn instead of throwing him on a horse like Heath expected.

When Nick joined up at the herd an hour or so later, he was conspicuously alone, and immediately got to work on the herd. It wasn't until lunch rolled around that Heath got a chance to ask where the new hand was.

"Special assignment." Nick said shortly.

"Special assignment? What do you mean 'special assignment'?" Heath asked.

"Just that," Nick said unhelpfully.

"You're not going to train him to be a wrangler?"

Nick snorted. "Like we have time for that. Nope, he's going to work in the garden mostly"

"Just the garden?" This was new. No one worked only the garden.

"Not the whole garden," Nick said. "Just Jarrod's plants."

Heath munched thoughtfully on his bread for a minute,

"That might take up a lot of his time, but not all of it. Won't he have any other chores?"

"Yep." Nick said. "He's responsible for Jarrod's horse and tack and the fish pond as well."

Heath stared at Nick. "So he's only going to work on Jarrod's…" He groped for a description.

"Projects." Nick supplied helpfully. "Right."

"Who's going to be following up on him?"

"Ciego will double check on Jingo every day. Other than that-" Nick shrugged indifferently.

"Nick, what are you up to?" Heath asked bluntly.

'Look, I told Jarrod we didn't have time to babysit his new hire, and I'm not having the rest of this ranch dragged down by some lay about. If this guy is as wonderful as Jarrod says, then his projects will go swimmingly. If he's what I suspect he is, the only one that will have to chase after him to get the work done and done properly is the one who demanded we hired him."

Heath was torn. Part of him understood and was dazzled by this decision of Nicks. Jarrod never believed that his hires were a problem because Nick made certain they weren't, something that could take excessive effort and time on Heath and Nicks part. And Heath was as tired as Nick was of Jarrod's habit of dropping a client in their lap with a blithe expectation that they would rehabilitate the man.

Have this man work solely on Jarrod's things, Jarrod's plants, Jarrod's equipment-then if this was a bad decision, Jarrod was going to have to acknowledge it and take care of it himself. It was brilliant.

On the other hand, Nick was essentially washing his hands of part of the ranch. This was wildly unlike him and it wasn't a decision that the Nick of six months ago would have made. Heath wondered if it was a sign of Nick's decreasing interest in the ranch. It was no longer Nick's sole obsession and Heath wasn't sure that was good