Читать книгу The Texan's Second Chance - Allie Pleiter - Страница 13

Chapter Four

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 was determined to outshine Gunner. Dad and Cole took to each other right away, as you can imagine. My role in the company got downgraded over and over again, and pretty soon it wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall. I wasn’t that keen on spending my life playing second fiddle to Cole. When Gunner and Ellie came to me and asked about working at Blue Thorn, I saw it as a chance to make my own mark.”

“How does your dad feel about that?”

Witt shifted his weight. “Let’s just say it’s not everyone’s favorite topic of conversation. I don’t think we’ll see him lining up at the food truck, that’s for sure. My guess is that he’s waiting for it to fail and for me to come back with my tail between my legs. I reckon he thinks the whole thing is a silly fad for gullible city folk, and that it’ll never amount to a real business.”

“That’s not true,” she shot back. Witt liked the defiance in her voice. She really was the best person for the job. God sure had sent him exactly what he needed—even if it was nothing like he’d expected—with Jana Powers, hadn’t He?

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “I think the one truck is just the beginning. I think Blue Thorn could be the best thing to ever happen to Martins Gap. It was, once, and I hope we make it that way again.”

Jana sat back. “That’s a lot to heap on a butcher shop, a yarn shop and a burger truck.”

“Well,” Witt replied as he looked out over the pasture, “nobody said we were gonna do it the easy way.”

* * *

Friday morning, Jana held up the truck’s smart phone, the message typed in and ready to go. “Are you ready?”

Witt actually looked as anxious as she was. “As ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve got sixteen people lined up ready to pass it along the minute it goes out.”

Jana bit her lip. “I’ve got seventeen.”

Jose piped in from the computer tablet mounted the truck’s back wall. “And we’ve got a total of twenty people following our page so far.”

“That’s...” Jana fought the urge to count on her fingers—math had never been her specialty.

“Fifty-three people ready to spread the word,” Witt finished for her. “Not much, but it’s a start. Do it.”

Jana held her breath, shot up a wordless plea to the Lord, and pressed Post. She imagined the message Blue Thorn #Burgers 7th & Brazos 11:30 winging its way through cyberspace to the small band of people they’d recruited to resend the truck’s daily location out across several social media outlets.

After the photo shoot, Witt had arranged for Blue Thorn Burgers’s social media addresses to be painted beside the truck’s side counter window. Jana had come up with the idea to have the information printed right on the yellow napkins. If everything worked the way it was supposed to, the internet “word of mouth” would build their customer base—if they could deliver on a great eating experience to those who showed up today. They’d arrive at the stated destination in enough time to throw the counter windows open at 11:30 and serve whoever was waiting.

If anyone was waiting at all.

The whole thing made Jana’s stomach churn with a mixture of energizing excitement and paralyzing fear.

Witt caught her expression. “It’ll work,” he said, as if he could hear the unspoken doubts clanging around her brain. “You’re ready.”

“I know I’m ready,” Jose said, flexing his biceps. “Vamanos. Bring it on.”

Witt slid behind the wheel. “Bring it on indeed.” With that, he twisted the keys in the ignition and the truck roared to life.

The ten-minute drive to the intersection they’d chosen felt like it took ten hours. Jana mentally ran through preparations and menu items, praying for...she didn’t really know what. People to be there? People to like the food? No mishaps? Not to run out of food? All of the above? It was as if her brain could concoct so many scenarios requiring God’s immediate intervention, she didn’t know which to form into prayers. She finally settled on “Just be there,” breathing it in and out, letting it shape her focus as the truck turned the final corners.

Witt let out a low whistle. Was that good or bad?

Before the truck came to a stop, she launched up out of her seat to peer at the intersection through the truck’s wide front windshield. The joyous sight of two dozen people pointing and waving sent a surge of relief through her body. Hungry, excited people. Waiting for her food. There wasn’t a better sight in all the world.

“It worked.” Witt exhaled. For all his confidence, his tone held the same relief she felt. “Customers.” He looked back over his shoulder as he pulled the truck into position, his eyes glowing as bright as the truck’s paint job. “So, Chef, you ready to feed some people?”

She had already turned on the grill. “Am I ever. You ready, Jose?”

Jose grinned as he started unloading condiments from the cabinet. “Yes, Chef!”

The next two hours flew by in seconds. Witt worked the cash register, feeding her tickets with orders. Her brain slid easily into the place where cooking became everything—where the sizzle of the meat met the warming bread under her hands and she orchestrated the movement of ingredients into place. There was nothing like this, no other place or activity that seeped so deeply into her soul and made her feel larger than life, vibrant, physically tingling from excitement and purpose.

The truck broiled from the grill heat and the strong fall sunshine. The little fans set up around the truck tried in vain to keep the air moving. She should have been miserable, hot and sweaty as she was, but Jana never noticed the heat. Only when she slid the last meal—a set of three “sliders” she’d relented and added to the menu at Witt’s insistence—across the counter, did she recognize her body’s exhaustion. It wasn’t the bad, emptied-out kind of weary, however. Instead, it was a satisfying, used-up kind of tired. The sensation of giving all she had to give in the one place she knew she was meant to be.

Jana leaned against the back counters, her headband soaked, her chef’s coat spattered and sticking to her arms. “Wow.” She laughed, downright giddy at the thought of so many happy mouths fed. “It worked.”

Witt slid the cash register drawer closed, practically slumping over it himself. “It did.” He was sweaty, too—and smiling and laughing, clearly as pleased with how their first “announced appearance” had gone. His eyes held a playful challenge as he asked, “We sold out of sliders, didn’t we?”

“That was the last one,” she admitted. He’d been right; she could craft a basic trio of the smaller burgers without feeling like she’d given in to some trendy fad.

Jana waited for him to crow, I told you so, but instead he merely offered her a warm smile and wiped his forehead with a sleeve. “I knew you could do it.”

It proved the perfect thing to say. Suddenly the long negotiations over whether to offer the sliders melted away, and she saw a glimpse of what she had hoped to find all along: a partnership. There was a long moment where they simply looked at each other, both soaked and exuberant, each a bit stunned that the whole thing had gone as well as it had. This was the last step, the truck’s final test before they went into the full swing of daily operations next week. Blue Thorn Burgers was here. They had done it. Jana wanted to dance in the tiny truck corridor, to fling herself into a group hug with Witt and Jose, and to fall into an exhausted heap against the coolness of the refrigerator, all at once. Instead, she just stood there, alternately glancing at Witt and closing her eyes, laughing softly as she tried to get her hair back up off her neck.

Jose, who’d been ping-ponging his glance back and forth between his two bosses, finally threw up his hands. “Is anyone gonna check the feed?”

He grabbed the truck’s tablet from its bracket on the wall and swiped through the menu until he found the Blue Thorn Burgers social media page. “We’re up to eighty-five followers on Twitter, a hundred and twenty-six on Instagram. People have posted three videos, and there are sixty-two mentions on Facebook. And twenty-one...wait, now twenty-two five-star reviews on Yelp!”

Witt gave a whoop worthy of a rodeo cowboy. Jose high-fived Jana with a string of Spanish exultations, and Jana felt her chest glow in gratitude. She’d worked at restaurants before, but here, now, was the first true public applause for specifically and exclusively her cooking. For her as a chef. She’d been so afraid to be “known,” to be out in the public eye for so many years, that she’d forgotten how gratifying the spotlight could feel.

Thank You, she prayed silently, her hand falling to cover her thumping heart. Thank You.

She opened her eyes to see Witt staring at her. The gratitude, the jubilant satisfaction that sparkled within her, was there in his eyes, as well. After all, he had as much at stake today as she did. “Thank you,” she said, thinking the pair of common words entirely insufficient.

“My pleasure,” he said. He held her eyes for one long moment more before sending a smirk Jose’s way. “Hang on tight. I’m thinking it only goes up from here.”