Читать книгу Night Hawk онлайн | страница 3
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KAI TRIED TO get her heart to stop pounding so hard in her chest. She sat in her Ford pickup in front of the Triple H Ranch, rubbing her damp palms against her jeans. This was the twentieth ranch she’d traveled to in order to apply for a job as a mechanic and wrangler. She’d been to six ranches in South Dakota, ten in Montana, two in Idaho, and now Wyoming ranches didn’t look like they were hiring, either. Worse, she was a fine mechanic due to her US Army time as an Apache helicopter repairer, but the listless economy was stopping any new hires. Plus, she was a woman and the ranch owners just rolled their eyes when she said she was a mechanic.
Kai could fix anything. You name it, she could handle it. She knew being a woman brought prejudice to the table. And ranchers tended to be conservative, old guard and even outright Neanderthal in their view of women. She’d had one rancher nearly fall off his chair in his office laughing hysterically when she said she was a mechanic.
Hell, it was tough enough getting out of the military after enlisting at age eighteen and separating from the Army at twenty-eight because of downsizing. She thought her job rating would make it easy to get hired. In the military, women did so-called men’s work, and no one thought anything about it. But they sure did out in the civilian world, she was discovering.
Kai wiped the dampness off the top of her lip, taking a quick glance around the ranch. There was an opening for a mechanic and wrangler. She was a perfect fit for it. The owner, Talon Holt, was the contact. Would he laugh her out of his office, too?
Money was tight. Kai didn’t have enough left, after buying the tools she’d need and her wrangling gear, to try to rent an apartment in Jackson Hole—if she got the job. She’d already cased the town, looked through the rentals in the newspaper and found exorbitant demands for a small one-bedroom apartment. It was sticker shock. Yes, she had savings. Yes, she could pay that kind of highway robbery, but she was counting on a bunkhouse where she could live, instead, until she got her feet under her. Her goal was to eventually buy a house.