“That's a word for it,” Sully grumbled.“Dillon still coming today?”
“Said he'd get to Cobbler Cove around two o'clock if his flight to Bozeman is on time.”
“You want to go up to the house and grab a cup of coffee while we wait for him?”Sully asked.
“I'd rather weigh your cows.”
“I figured.I'll call the cows up to the barn now.”
Dillon Steele arrived at the Foster Ranch at one fifty-eight PM.He climbed out of his vet truck with its big equipment bins in the back.He wore a beat-up canvas jacket and steel-toed boots that came with working on big animals that tended to step on nearby human feet when they were annoyed or in pain.
Dillon took one look at the cows, and said, “Huh.”
“Huh,” Gray agreed.
Sully just shook his head in disgust.
“Show me your data, Gray,” Dillon said.
Gray pulled up his spreadsheet on his tablet.Dillon scrolled through it with the focused attention of a professional.Eventually, Dillon handed the tablet back and said merely, “Let’s pull a sample of amniotic fluid so you can figure out what in tarnation's going on with these giant calves.”
The cow Gray had flagged as the largest one was a solid black Angus named—according to Jenna's records—Snowball.Which sounded suspiciously like a name Jenna's six-year-old son, Bobby, had come up with for the jet black cow.
Snowball turned out to have opinions about the amniocentesis procedure.Strong opinions.In fact, she expressed them at considerable volume, bawling her head off in the chute.
“Easy,” Dillon said, in a calm, silky voice that Gray had heard both veterinarians and bomb disposal technicians use in tense situations.“Easy, girl.Almost done.”
Snowball retorted with a toss of her head and a stomp of her front foot that declared she was notinterestedin being easy.She shifted her bulk sideways with the determined energy of a large animal who had decided she was done cooperating.Gray, who was on her left side providing a combination of reassurance and counterweight, slid backwards as she leaned her full weight against his hands.
“Hold her still,” Dillon murmured.
“I'm trying,” Gray grunted.But at the moment, Snowball outweighed him by approximately eleven hundred pounds, and she knew it.
“Almost there,” Dillon said, and then, “got it.”
Snowball expressed her feelings about the whole process with a final bawl of complaint as Sully released her from the cattle chute.The cow trotted back to the herd and went back to her hay with the regal air of a woman who had made her point.
Dillon looked at the herd and shook his head.“I see a whole lot of C-sections eating hay over there.”
“How many if you had to guess?”Sully asked.
“More than half of them.”
“That's what I was afraid of,” Gray said grimly, and made a note in his spreadsheet.
The next morning, Gray packed the now filled out forms Bonnie had brought to the station in a folder and drove into town.
Sure, he could just mail the forms to the mayor’s office.But Bonnie had gone out of her way to hand deliver them, which hadn’t been easy for her to do.
He wasn’t about to ask her to come back to the fire station to retrieve the completed paperwork.And mailing back the forms seemed too impersonal, poor repayment for all her trouble.
At least, that was what he told himself.But in his heart of hearts, he knew he loved how she lit up when she smiled and how her laughter made him want to make her laugh more often
He arrived at Rose's Diner promptly at eleven-twenty, ordered his usual coffee, and opened his thermal dynamics textbook on the table.He was not watching the door.He was absolutely not watching the door.
By eleven fifty-five and still no sign of Bonnie, he finally accepted that he was watching the door, and that Bonnie wasn't going to come through it today.
He flagged down Rose on her next pass.“Does Bonnie usually come in for lunch on Thursdays?”
