It snorts at me, clearly unamused.
“Alright, I won’t pursue a career in comedy,” I huff, rolling my eyes.
The little pause does help to soothe my nerves, and I turn the brightness of my smile up a few notches before I step around the corner. The first thing I take note of is a young woman with curlygolden hair, her hands gently petting over the face of the heifer she’s standing in front of. She’s cooing something that I assume passes for soothing to a cow, which is probably good, because the sight of the other person in front of me has my smile faltering. It’s not anything about him, exactly. He looks a bit older, with dark hair and a healthy dose of facial hair, his shoulders sturdy and obviously muscled even through the fabric of his shirt.
It’s more the fact that he’s elbow deep in a cow’s ass, pulling the second half of a newborn calf free that socks me into stillness.
Jesus Christ.
This was definitely not the welcome I was expecting.
EVERETT
Ipat over the heifer’s flank as soothingly as I can while being halfway up my arm in her birth canal. She passed the water bag almost half an hour ago, but her calf has one foreleg retained. It’s the same thing that caused her issues last season, and I’m regretting my decision to keep her in the rotation this time.
“How’s it looking back there?” asks Katie, the veterinarian that we’ve been working with since she was still in school. “Her vitals are all stable so far, but I don’t want her stuck for much longer.”
I grunt as I push in a little further, feeling around for the foreleg. The calf’s head is in position, which is good, but it’s never easy finding the right bony little leg when you’re rooting around blindly.
“Think I got it,” I say.
I wrap my fingers around the leg, gently working my way up to make sure it’s not a rear leg. A sigh of relief falls from me when I reach the calf’s shoulder, and I get to work on straightening that leg out. It’s slow work, and I have to be careful I don’t twist anything on the calf or the heifer as I move things around inside. The vibration of the heifer’s uncomfortablelowing goes straight through my whole body, but she relaxes almost instantly when I finally get that leg free.
“Alright, we’re all set,” I say. “Should I give her a minute, or do you want me to pull?”
Katie glances at her watch and considers for a moment before shaking her head.
“Go ahead and pull,” she tells me. “I want to get her into recovery ASAP.”
It’s as I’m pulling that I hear a shocked gasp behind me, but I don’t have time to pay attention when I’ve got an armful of slippery calf taking its damn time breaching the rest of the way. It’s slow going for a moment, but then the calf practically shoots right out, and I just barely manage to catch it before the heifer shakes heartily and steps away.
The amniotic sac is still intact, so as soon as I’m sure that Katie and her students have a handle on the heifer, I kneel down to start tearing the sac open. Time to get this kiddo out in the world.
That’s when I catch sight of her.
There’s a woman standing in the mouth of the barn, staring at us in total horror. She looks like she wants to either scream or throw up.
She’s fuckingstunning.
Even just the glimpse of her I get is enough to take my breath away. Her body is something right out of my dreams, and she has these pretty blue eyes that are blown wide in disgust. It’s a surprisingly good look on her.
I have to tear my eyes off her before I get distracted from what I need to be doing right now. Katie’s got her hands full, and I don’t think the woman in front of me is going to be of much help with this, no matter how pretty she is. If I had three guesses, all of them would land firmly on her never having stepped foot on a ranch before. She’s wearing a fancy little purple suit andheels, and she looks more than half ready to faint at the sight of the calf that I’m currently working free from its amniotic sac.
“How’s ol’ Bessie doing up there?” I ask, trying for humor.
Katie rolls her eyes at me as she works her way through her own examination.
“Cowthildais doing just fine,” she tells me. “Looks and sounds good, but I agree this should be her last baby. I doubt she’d catch again, but she’s getting old, and after how hard she took last season, I think it’s time for her to head to pasture.”
I grunt in agreement, slinging the remnants of the sac off to the side and stepping aside so Katie can take a look over the calf while one of her students logs Cowthilda’s vital signs. As I strip off the shoulder high gloves and toss them over one of the fence posts, I turn to face the marketing woman—or, at least, I’m assuming she’s from the marketing team. No one else would come out here in such a perfectlysensibleponytail.The vanilla perfume I can faintly smell wafting from her is actually rather pleasant, alongside being familiar—it reminds me of the scent my wife wore, before she passed—but I don’t linger on the thought.
I wasn’t sure about this whole marketing idea when Jennifer first brought it up to me, and I’m growing less sure about it by the second.
I’m not quite foolish enough to get in my daughter’s way, though, and she’s been the one spearheading everything. It hasn’t changed anything yet, and frankly I don’t think it’s going to in the long run. Adding to the neverending to-do list that bounces around in my mind every day seems kind of counter-intuitive, especially since I’m only keeping the ranch running by the skin of my teeth right now. Marketing is just another expense and a million more meetings than I ever want to be a part of, which is why Jennifer is in charge of dealing with the… people part of this whole thing.
Which is why I’m so confused about what this woman is doing herenow.
“You from that marketing place?” I ask gruffly, not bothering to hide my frown.
