“Yep.”
“Come eat. Food’s ready, and we got a long day in the saddle ahead,” he shouted then things got quiet. A few younger goatsrustled about in their pens, but they’d have to wait for a bit longer to be grained and given fresh water, hay, and bedding.
“I have to go, Mom. Baker’s summoning all hands to the table.”
“Alright, honey. I’ll let you go. Love you, my little cowboy. Who would have thought it?”
Not me. Not ever. Not in a million years.
2
Chapter Two
Two long, long, long days later, I was going to see the man who made me woozy.
After bringing the cows in from pasture, we then separated the calves from their mothers. Not an easy job for those little cows didnotwant to leave mama. Still, it had to be done. The calves had to be weaned to give the cows time to recuperate a little then be inseminated. So we put the young steers in one pen after driving them from their own range and the heifer calves in another just in case. It was possible to miss a testicle when banding, which would result in a young, fertile male being with the heifer calves who were too young to breed. So the young steers were kept far away from the young heifers. The steers would be sold next fall after reaching a market weight of about fourteen hundred pounds. The heifers would be bred next year to calve at two years old.
Lots of cows in lots of pens that would requirelotsof feeding throughout the winter and early spring. Farming wasexhausting. Way harder than my construction work, and that had been hard labor. At least we got weekends off. Ranchers and farmers worked seven days a week, no matter the weather or how damn exhausted they were.
Today was vaccinations and worming for the young calves and the goats. Different shots and wormers so lots of caprine handling. The calves would be driven one by one into a small cattle pen while the goats were herded into their own small pens.
Amid all of this, we were going to be moving Dodge and Dahn into Ollie Ahoka’s house. School was starting in two weeks, so the crunch was on for them to get settled in town. Dahn was slightly tiffy about the move. Most kids his age were tiffy. Granny liked to say he was moody as a June day. But I could understand his upset. He’d just started to settle here on the ranch after being yoinked from his life in California. Now he was moving again. Not as far sure, and still in the same school, but his goats had to stay here. So yeah, Dahn was prickly. Dodge and Ollie were thrilled, obviously. We were all happy for them. I worried they were moving too fast, but that was me. Cautious was my middle name. Good thing, too, or Bella and I would have never made it out of New York in one piece.
The ringmaster for this chaos would be Aiden Hennessee, a local large animal veterinarian and the man who made my heart beat out of sync. The vet was tall and whippet lean, with dark eyes, scraggly brown hair and scruff for days. So incredibly sexy, and he knew it. And when he pulled out those tortoiseshell glasses to read over the fine print on medicine bottles, I drooled. How could one man be so damn beautiful? Assured of himself, bold, outgoing. Everything I wasn’t, Aiden was.
In preparation for his arrival, I had all the goat records out, open, and ready for him to place his signature on each entry for each goat treated, what day it was, the time, and the weight and overall health of each animal. People—my brothers—said I wasmore than a little overzealous with my records, but if we wanted to sell any or add to our herd, then records were important. Also, every time Aiden saw them, he complimented me on my bookkeeping. Those kind words always made me hot in the face. So now I was reading over the pages in the looseleaf folder, each one with tattoo numbers and photos of each goat on Bastian Acres Ranch property. Just to make sure everything was in order. I really disliked mayhem. Mom said I was particular. I just thought I was tidy. Things belonged in order so you could find them. When they were in disarray, it made me edgy. That stress made me irritable, which made me want to withdraw from the world. So what some people called obsessive, I called focused.
The honk of a horn grabbed my attention. Closing the folder, I jogged outside the goat barn to see Aiden’s arrival. He pulled up in his large white pickup, parked beside Baker’s beat-to-shit farm truck, and sat there for a moment doing something on his phone. His hair fell into his face, but he didn’t seem to notice it dangling down to brush his whiskery cheeks. My dreams were filled with his soulful eyes and scruffy chin. I waited in the doorway of the goat barn, anxiously plucking at the rivets on my denim jacket. Waiting was hard. What was he doing? Shouldn’t he be getting out of his truck to come see the goats? Was he texting a man about a date? Shit.
He glanced up to catch me staring. He flashed me a smile that turned my breakfast to goop. My gut tightened, my skin got itchy, and I felt a telltale rush of blood to my dick. Turning from him, I ran back inside to get the folder. This way I could hide my boner.
“Morning, Ford,” he called as he exited the truck. Long, long legs in worn jeans. Slim torso in a pink tee that read REAL MEN ARE FEMINISTS. Work boots he would remove to slide his big feet into waterproof boots. “You and your goats ready for me?”
God, yes. I was ready for him. I was so ready for him, I was afraid I’d blow a nut just watching him reach into the space behind his front seat to pull out some dark green overalls. The wind blew in my face—a cold wind that did little to cool me off. That would take a hand job and a cold shower.
“Yes,” I finally coughed out, pressing the folder to my crotch to hide my erection.
“I figured. You’re always ready. Not like Baker, who’s always dicking around,” he teased then toed off his boots to pull his overalls over his sock feet. His hair shifted forward as he toyed with the ties around his ankles. My fingers longed to comb it back from his face. Was it possible to come just by watching a man pull on ugly rubber boots? He straightened, caught me gawking, and gave me a wink. Shit. Fuck. Close to bolting, I made myself stay put so I would not look like an idiot.
“I heard that,” Baker growled as he came around the side of the goat barn covered in mud, sweat, and cow shit.
“Good. I was hoping you would,” Aiden fired back and zipped up his overalls with flair. Granny exited the house with Bella, both coated in flour. Baking day was today. Bella would be a champion baker soon, and I wasn’t going to complain. “Mrs. B, Bella, lovely day. Are you two ladies making those cherry tarts that won you a blue ribbon at the fair this year?”
“We might be,” Granny replied with a wide grin. “Bella won the ribbon for the tarts. I won for my pickled beets and for my lemon-buttermilk pound cake. Beat Felisha Buckman’s strawberry peach pound cake for the third time.”
“Your lemon-buttermilk pound cake is food for the gods,” Aiden called over the hood of his truck.
“You’re a silver-tongued devil, is what you are, Aiden Hennessee.” Granny giggled like a schoolgirl. Bella laughed along with them, her emerald gaze moving from me to Aiden then back to me. She gave her head a small jerk. I shook mine. Iwasn’t going to run up to Aiden and make a fool of myself. I’d say something stupid. I always did. “When you’re done here for the day, you come inside, and we’ll get you something to eat. Same for you boys,” Granny tacked on when she saw Dodge and Linc appear in the side yard looking just as grimy as Baker. “But you all wash up good at the hose first. Any of you track calf shit into my house is getting a spoon to his backside.”
“She’ll do it too. Ask me how I know,” Baker commented before Aiden joined him and the others to disappear from view. Damn it. I’d wanted to show him my folder. Later. We could do that later. Now it was time to catch muddy calves in a shitty muddy pen. What a glamorous life we led. Not.
***
It took a long time to run fifty-two calves through a chute.
They were not happy about being wormed or vaccinated. The mama cows were not happy about losing their babies. The day was filled with bawling cattle. And pooh. Lots of pooh. Seriously, cows shit a lot. Sure, they eat a lot and so that all has to exit in due time, but they’re just such messy shitters.
Now the goats were tidy poopers. Little berries didn’t splatter up on your legs when they hit the ground. I much preferred goats. So I was super proud to lay my binder out on top of my grain bins for Aiden to read. He was very tidy, like me, having changed his overalls before entering the goat barn. Some diseases could be transmitted from cattle to small ruminants, so we were always careful. Standing beside him, I noted he was about the same height as me. His profile was easy to admire.
