"Hey Leah, wanna go swimming down at the pond? It's so hot, and Adrian has given us the afternoon off I mean if Trisha says it's okay for you to come along. There's a bunch of us going down." It was tough to say no to a swim, the heat in Montana during summer was dry and drained your energy like nothing else.

The past few days I had spent inside, working was a little much to ask of me, but I did what I could. Mostly that consisted of mucking out stalls, hosing down the horses and giving their coat a brush.

The ranch used mostly horses to move stock, so there were a lot of horses to take care of, not to mention Trisha trained and sold surplus horses that the ranch didn't need. At the moment the ranch housed twenty-four horses, which was a lot more then I was expecting. They weren't all housed in one barn but instead in three barns spread around the place, it was a long walk between all three, but at least my legs were getting a workout.

I still hadn't memorised all the horse's names, but a few that were stuck in my mind were Happy Jack, Fat Tony, Butter-Bean and Periwinkle. I considered them all odd names for horses, but the names were so unexpected that they did stay in my mind, the problem was figuring out which horse had which name.

"Hey Trisha, I was wondering if I could go swimming with everyone else down at the pond." Trisha had already laid out the ground rules for working with the horses; then I had to stick around. I still had a few stalls to muck out and water buckets to fill, as soon as Trisha looked at me, I knew my answer.

"Sorry Leah, you know the rules. Sonia gets to go because she's all done for the morning." Even though I felt more than disappointed at the prospect of staying back, I didn't complain as I nodded and went trudging back towards Devyn and the waiting crew. Shaking my head before I even opened my mouth I heard Devyn groan, but I didn't stick around long enough to listen to him complain as I went back into shed two and carried on with my chores.

It was another hour after the group left for the lake that I finished mucking out the stalls and giving the horses drinking water. By that time I was sweating heavily and felt ready to die from heat exhaustion as I walked out of the stable and back towards the house. The group hadn't returned, which I was glad for but was also disappointed that they were probably going to be out there all afternoon.

As the rookie in the horse sheds, I still had to wash down the horses that had been exercised for the day, but there was no way I was doing that on an empty stomach and went straight to the fridge to fill my stomach.

"So I take it that Trisha won't let you go down to the pond?" Devyn's voice was so sudden in the emptiness of the kitchen that it startled me right out of the fridge. Leaning back to peer around the door, I gave him as best a glare as I could manage, but it only made him laugh a little.

"Don't do that! What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were the main driver to take everyone down to the lake?" Even though I tried to sound a little disappointed that Devyn was here and that I had missed out on a half-day swim, I was glad that he was here because it meant that he was going to help me... at least I hope that was what his being here meant.

"Sorry, I figured Trisha wouldn't let you go down because you have the biggest job on the ranch and are pretty new at it. Don't worry, I used to have that job too, and I know how long it takes. So I thought I would stay back and help you out, no one else was particularly interested, so it looks like it's just you and me. What are you making?" Devyn asked as he sat down at the kitchen table, watching what I was doing in the refrigerator. I felt a little self-conscious of the fact that Devyn was sitting behind me, every time I bent into the fridge to retrieve something he could see my ass.

"Nope, I have to finish the horses before I can do anything else. And I'm making sandwiches, do you want one?" The other day I had been so hungry that I had attempted to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a skillet on the stove top. The bread had ended up so charcoal that not even the dogs would eat it, Trisha had warned me off attempting anything else. It didn't worry me that she had warned me off of cooking, I would have burned the house down if I had tried anything more complicated then that. I knew one thing, cooking wasn't as straightforward as it looked.

"How about I make us a few grilled cheese sandwiches? You just go and sit down, and I'll make them," again, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard Devyn, he was a lot closer than he had been two seconds ago. When I whirled around he was standing right behind me, his eyes were not looking at my head, and I levelled an annoyed look at him. It took his eyes a while to travel up to my face, the pink tinge on his cheeks showing his embarrassment as his eyes met mine.

I handed the ingredients over without so much as a word before going to sit on the other side of the breakfast bar to watch Devyn, cook.

"Did your mom teach you how to cook?" Devyn nodded at the question as he put everything down on the counter before going back into the fridge to retrieve a few other things. His answer made me jealous; I so wished my mom had taught me something different than money management. Though she hadn't even shown me that, I was still bad with money, but I could manage it better than most other things in my life.

"Yeah, having as many kids and boys as my parents had my mom only ever made two meals a day so if we wanted to eat, we had to make our lunch. Even though I'm one of the youngest my older brothers too helped teach Fabian and me but it was our mom that taught us how to cook. It just made things easier on her, you know?" I didn't know, being an only child, I was given what I asked for or wanted whenever I wanted it, sometimes I would get things before I had even demanded.

We lapsed into silence as Devyn assembled the grilled cheese sandwiches, I couldn't help but cringe at a few of his combinations. Though every time he glanced up towards me I would smile, the smile would be gone though as soon as he glanced back down at what he was doing.

"You know, you shouldn't fake smile, it makes you look a bit constipated." The statement caught me off guard to the point that I was speechless, not knowing what else to do or say, I began laughing uncontrollably.

Clutching my sides, I leaned over the breakfast bar where I was sat and laughing harder. Devyn was honest; it was hard to find anything wrong with that. Sure he pointed out some weird things from time to time, but he also made them humorous, no one really could stay angry at him, and I couldn't even get annoyed. There I was, doubled over the breakfast bar, laughing as hard as I had any other time I could remember...and I snorted.

The snort was so loud I immediately clamped a hand over my mouth and slowly raised my head to look at Devyn, my eyes wide. But he only stood there with a smile on his face, looking as amused as I had been five minutes ago.

"You should laugh more; the snort was cute too." Now it was my turn to go a little pink. In the past I had been ridiculed for snorting during my laughing fits, that was partly why I never laughed hard or tried to avoid laughing hard. People liked to judge you by your laugh, unfortunately, when I laughed uncontrollably, I snorted, and they weren't always quiet snorts either.

"Snorting is not cute, pigs snort and occasionally I do as well. But it's still not cute, most definitely not cute." I wasn't sure who I was trying to convince more, Devyn or me. He seemed totally unconvinced and went back to building his grilled sandwiches.

"Let's fry these bad boys up and then get back to work; we might catch everyone else down at the lake if we finish early enough." I felt a little bad; it was obvious that Devyn wanted to go swimming but had stayed behind to help me, why hadn't he gone ahead with the group? I wouldn't have minded one bit.

When Devyn put the first sandwich onto the skillet, the smell of melting butter hit my nostrils and had my stomach growling at the prospect of a warm lunch. It didn't matter that the fillings were odd, at that moment I would have eaten anything that Devyn had put in front of me.

We moved over to the table once Devyn had finished cooking, he pointed out which I might like eating more, but I ate every single grilled sandwich he'd made for me. Shamefully I had finished eating before Devyn had, but I turned down what he offered me.

In total, I had devoured four grilled cheese sandwiches in about ten minutes, but we didn't have time to sit around and digest. The dishes were washed and stacked away as soon as we had finished eating and the both of us headed out to the horse barns to finish mucking out stalls.

It had taken me half a day to finish mucking out stalls in the first horse barn, and I had managed to muck out two stalls in the second barn. Now that lunch was over, and I had rested for a while I felt a lot more energised and was ready to finish the horse stalls. Devyn worked in the stall opposite I, in some ways we were racing each other.

Every time that I exited a stall to empty my cart I caught Devyn's eye only to see him work a little faster to catch up. Eventually, though he passed me, by the time I was done Devyn had been waiting for me for a good twenty minutes. Just as I was going to sit down next to him he tutted and stood, "come on, we've got to wash down a few of the horses now. Did anyone show you how to do it?"

I shook my head at the question, Trisha had instructed me on how to wash a horse, but I still hadn't cleaned a single one. Handling horses weren't something I was very confident in, and whenever I approached one, they always looked like they either wanted to bite me or run me down.

"Okay, so you probably know Butter-Bean by now, he has some parasite on his skin that is making his fur drop out. Declan has given a special sort of shampoo that we need to use on him, so why don't you wet him down and I'll go and grab the shampoo?" Devyn made sure to tie Butter-Bean to a post before leaving to get the shampoo; I eyed the horse for a few seconds before approaching with the hose.

As soon as the water hit Butter-Bean, he pulled away and began yanking at the line holding him to the post. I panicked and quickly backed away from him, I wasn't sure if it was Val's horror stories of people being injured by horses or the fact that they were intimidating but I felt highly uncomfortable around horses.

Thankfully Devyn came rushing over and settled him down; I noticed where he took hold of the rope, how he patted Butter-Bean and that he moved slowly and smoothly around the horse. I guess my jerky actions scared him a little.

"He's okay Leah; you just need to move slow with the water. You know how it is when you're all hot and bothered, and you jump into the cold water? Same thing with horses." Frowning a little, I felt more stupid then I had five minutes ago. Of course, horses would be as sensitive to cold water as me.

Devyn went to pick the hose up again and this time worked his way up from Butter-Bean's leg towards his back. The horse was a lot more accepting of the water when done that way, when Devyn held the hose out towards me I took it and went around to the other side.

"Remember, slow and steady, and you'll have a fan in him soon enough." Nodding, I began at his lower leg, rubbing water against him as I worked my way higher and before long I had his entire body wet enough to rub shampoo into him.

"Here, this is how you do it. Try and brush in the direction his fur goes and not against it, he'll try to nip you if you go against his fur." I wasn't so much as focus on what Devyn was saying how he was showing me, his hand on mine was such a distraction. When he stepped closer I think I almost lost it; I could feel one of his knees brush against the back of mine, his arm outlined mine as he continued to go through the motions of showing me how to brush a horse down.

Turning slightly I offered an awkward smile as he caught my eye, for a few short moments we seemed stuck there...that was until someone gave a cat call that made Devyn pull away completely.

"So...yeah, that's how you wash a horse down. I...uhm, I gotta go for a bit." Devyn didn't offer any other excuse as he bolted towards the staff quarters, leaving me to wonder what exactly had just happened and why he had left so quickly.