Page 57 of Roping Her Alien Ranchers

The sun hung a little lower now, the day far from young but hours from done. The ranch stretched around us, its familiar shape changed, not just by the aliens’ handiwork, but also by my resolve to never let Derek get under my skin again.

Like Sunflower Hills, I wasn’t perfect, not totally fixed, but... I was different. Would this feeling stay tomorrow? I knew from experience that life could shift in seconds, yet it all felt so miraculously unexpected.

Cosmically unexpected, I corrected, staring at the aliens.

“Thank you for everything you’ve already done,” I said, my voice stronger than before. “For the first time in ages, I feel like tomorrow won’t be so bad.”

They smiled at me, human mouths lifting. Their eyes warmed, silvery sheens gleaming. I felt something shift and settle into place: a certainty that whatever happened next, I wasn’t facing it alone.

19

TAMMY

I wanted to wash Derek’s visit from my brain. Yet every time I tried to mentally shower, that asshole stepped right into the water with me.

Derek's truck had disappeared down my driveway hours ago, but the aftertaste of his visit lingered. I sat on my now level porch steps, arms wrapped around my knees, watching as the setting sun painted the landscape in riotous hues. The beer bottle was still tipped over behind me on the porch, its spilled contents long dry.

Watching my property at the end of the day wasn’t like before though, when the golden light spilled over the derelict buildings and the fences I couldn’t afford to fix. The aliens had repaired so much in the short time since they’d crash-landed. Even the still somewhat shabby parts looked like hope made visible. My gaze roved over everything, and my entire body ached.

This was a fleeting beauty. Barely two weeks from foreclosure, still one bad month from becoming another Derek Morgan acquisition. If only the bank could see it like this, bathed in glorious light, the transformation in progress. A little longer, and a little more cash. That’s all I needed. Sunflower Hills could look like something out of a country living magazine if the universe would just give me a break.

Hasn’t it already? My brain pulsed. Didn’t that break ruin your supply barn?

A fresh wave of melancholy washed over me. For all the alien help, for all their technological wonders and inexplicable abilities, Derek's visit had sucked me right back into the headspace I’d had before leaving him.

Feeling like a decorative, useless ornament meant to hang on his arm and look pretty.

God, he'd always had that effect, reducing me to the sum of my failures with just a few carefully chosen words and that practiced, pitying smile. I seemed to wilt inside whenever he gave me that sort of “sounds loving but is actually cruel” brand of attention.

"You're playing house on borrowed time." His voice echoed in my head, the drawl thicker in memory than it had been in person. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to physically push the thought away.

The sunset deepened, pink and purple tendrils fingering through the remaining blue sky. Even as my chest ached with uncertainty, the view soothed me. This was my ranch. It may be failing, soon foreclosing, parts of it still a mess, but it was mine. For now.

Movement in the distance called my attention, pulling me away from quickly worsening thoughts.

The alien trio had spread out across the property after dinner, each returning to their self-appointed tasks. Kalith tinkered with their UFO. Cyro was in the stables observing the horses—he’d found a book on Jane Goodall in the house and now insisted he could assimilate with the equines. And Vantor was reinforcing the perimeter for the third time, or maybe fourth time.

I stood up, deciding to head inside for a much-needed glass of anything alcoholic. Just as my hand touched the screen door, my nose caught wind of a scent that didn’t belong. At first, I thought it was just coming from something Kalith was doing. Maybe welding some strange galactic alloy inside the ship. But as my gaze searched the land, skimming over my truck, the stables, the well that was now working better than ever, I saw something that made my pulse quicken and my heart free-fall into my belly.

Smoke.

A flicker of unmistakable orange licking upward that did not belong among the sunset colors.

Fire.

The pasture next to the stable paddock was on fire.

The dry grass there, too poor for grazing, was aflame.

My heartbeat stuttered, then slammed against my ribs as the flames leapt up the side of the gate between the two cordoned areas. In the split second before I moved, I registered everything with crystal clarity. It wouldn’t take long for that fire to spread to the greener pasture. For it to get nearer and nearer the stables. The stables. Where the horses were. Where Cyro was. Where my future might truly go up in smoke. Shit, I’d never bought new fire extinguishers. There was one in almost every building, but they were ancient. A decade old. They wouldn’t work. God! They wouldn’t work! How could I let something so important fall to the wayside?

"Fire!" I screamed, already moving, my feet pounding against the hard-packed, rock littered earth as I sprinted across the yard. "Help! Fire!"

The horses must have sensed the danger now. I heard them braying and whinnying in panic. Cyro shouted, but I couldn’t make out his words. I kept running, thighs burning, lungs searing, mind imagining the worst outcome.

"I'm coming!" I screamed to them, as if they could understand, as if my voice could protect them from the hungry orange tongues licking up the fence posts and now spilling across to the other side of the barrier. “Don’t be scared!”

The fire moved impossibly fast, a trail of fire snaking across the grass as if someone had dumped kerosene across the pasture. It was getting dangerously close to the side of the stables.