*****
Logan lay awake in the early dawn light and watched Honor sleep. Her alarm would go off in about fifteen minutes, and he needed to get up, too, but this was his favorite time of the day, when she was still, the house was quiet, the world hadn’t yet woken, and he could just love her nakedly. Careful not to wake her, he reached over her and turned her alarm off. There were better ways to greet the morning than that.
In his not-so-distant past, waking with a woman in his bed at this time of the day meant he’d overstayed his safe zone and was into stay-the-night territory. How many times in his life had he woken to this light and then, adrenaline charging through his veins, scrambled out of a bed not his own to dive into his clothes and sneak away while a woman was sleeping? Hundreds. Hundreds of nights, maybe hundreds of women—but it was better not to start trying to count that one out.
Bored wives of executives playing cowboy up at the Moondancer had been his specialty. He’d catch their eye in town, while they strolled through the tiny strip of shops in Old Town, or when they ducked into the Jack and asked for some chichi cocktail Reese would grumble about making. He’d flirt—he was a master—and end up in a bed at the Gemstone. He was king of the one-night stands.
Or the women he’d see occasionally, when he was in Boise, like Darnella Compton-Hill. Just as wealthy, bored, and neglected as the trophy wives stuck on vacation in Idaho, but with a double shot of danger, since he knew their husbands. Even did business with a few. He’d enjoyed that rush quite a lot. And so had the women.
Back in his rodeo days, he’d have his pick of a whole herd of buckle bunnies, pert young beauties who followed the riders around like rock-star groupies. Those, he’d fuck in his truck, or just in the stable, stripping their jeans down and bending them over a saddle.
God, what a dick he’d been.
He’d thought himself happy in that life, and comfortable in his skin. At peace with himself. Until he’d met Honor. Almost from the very start, she’d made him feel different—as if she could see all of him, even parts he hadn’t seen himself. Until she’d turned that light on him, and he hadn’t much liked what he’d seen. She’d turned him upside down and shaken all his secrets onto the floor.
She made him want to be a good man—through and through, not just down deep.
How could he help but love her?
“Hey,” she murmured, waking. “What’re you thinking with that crease in your brow?” With a fingertip, she smoothed his thoughtful furrow away.
“Morning. C’mere.” He wrapped his arm around her and drew her to him. With a sweet sigh and a little wiggle, she turned and scooted back, so his body cradled hers.
“Are you having a rough start this morning?”
“No, darlin’. Good thoughts. I love you.”
“I love you right back.” She looked over her shoulder. “But you were far away. It wasn’t bad?”
His thoughts hadn’t been bad at all; they’d been full of his love for her and his contentment with the way his life was working out, the way he was working out. But he had been feeling damn judgmental about who he’d been. She must have picked that up; his woman was an eerily good reader of people.
Still, he didn’t want to share his thoughts. That part of him needed to fade away into the past. She knew his history and didn’t need details. She’d never even thrown his past at him in a fight, so he was not about to bring it between them in a moment like this. He pulled up something else he’d thought a bit about recently. “I was thinking if I should take you on a honeymoon.”
“A trip? To the beach or something?”
“If you want. We could go just about anywhere, and it’d all be new to me. I’ve never been outside North America.” Wanderlust wasn’t something Logan had ever felt. He’d always been happy to be where he was. But Honor’s family had done a lot of traveling when she was growing up.
“A honeymoon. I guess it’s dumb we haven’t talked about it before now. But I don’t know … I don’t think I can leave the office already. I’m just getting it started.”
“We don’t have to go right away.”
She snuggled against his chest, tucking her head under his chin, curling her arms over his. The rising sun slanted through a space in the drapes and forged a path across the bed, warming Logan’s bare shoulder. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the calm sense of settledness he felt. He’d been home all his life, but never as home as he was now that Honor was here with him.
She lifted his hand and brought it to her mouth. Her lips brushed his knuckles as she asked, in a voice slurred with comfort, “Is there somewhere you’d like to go?”
Lost in their serene moment, he’d almost forgotten their topic of conversation. “Not in particular. I already am where I want to be.”
“So am I.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Hey now, Chubby. Where d’you think you’re off to?” Logan and Ranger headed off the errant cow, cutting back and forth, blocking her every effort to get back to the herd. She was a wily one, and Logan grinned as he and his horse worked hard to outwit her. She feinted right and then switched and hoofed it left, almost making her escape. Logan pulled the reins and pressed his heels into Ranger’s sides, and the horse turned like a pirouette and blasted into a full gallop, chasing the heavily pregnant cow, running abreast, overtaking her, forcing her to turn, and turn, until she was running back to the calving shed and didn’t even know it.
This was Logan’s favorite time of the year. Early spring. Calving season. The work was hard and nonstop, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but it was good work. And damn, it was fun—especially on this horseback ranch.
A lot of modern farmers used trucks or four-wheelers to get the ranch work done. It was probably less physically challenging, and maybe it was even faster. But Morgan’s father loved the land itself too much to dig it up with big rubber tires or cloud the bright, fresh air with noisy engines, so they’d always done things here the old-fashioned way.
A lot about the Twisted C was the same as it had been at the turn of the previous century. Back before he’d taken over the running of the Moondancer, Emma’s husband, Wes, had constantly agitated for making improvements and updates to the Cahill way, and Morgan had always shot him down. He was suspicious of innovation. Some of Wes’s ideas had been pretty good, but overall, Logan agreed with his father. Loving this ranch meant taking care of it, giving yourself up to it. Putting your muscle and blood into it. Doing things right, even if right wasn’t easy or fast.
And anyway, there was nothing quite as plain goddamn fun as sorting a herd. Herding work required mental and physical agility, strength, and stamina. With a good cowhorse like Ranger, who understood his work and carried Logan like they were part of the same body, sorting a herd was practically a thrill ride. Add in fair weather like this spring had been, and as far as Logan was concerned, Heaven would be a step down from this.
Spring could look not much different from winter in Idaho, especially this close to the mountains, but this year, the unusually heavy snows of December and January seemed to have blown winter’s wad, and the spring had come in early and unpacked its bags to stay. On this Saturday before Easter, Logan had worked up a real sweat.
On the Twisted C, calving season was about two months long, from about early March, sometimes a little earlier, to about late-April, sometimes a little later. In that time, on this large ranch, new calves were born just about every day; some days, the births seemed to happen nonstop all day. During the whole of those weeks, every hand was working full hours, often overtime, and they brought in a few seasonal hands as well. Every couple of days, they sorted the heavies—the pregnant cows who looked ready to pop—out of the winter pastures and herded them to the calving pasture and shed.
At the calving pasture, hands kept a round-the-clock watch on the heavies. For the most part, cows gave birth on their own and handled the business without much fuss. But there were always problems—breach births; or stillbirths;
or a mama who wasn’t interested in whatever the hell had just dropped out of her, and just walked away from her babe; or a sluggish calf who couldn’t help itself; things like that. Keeping an eye on the calving gave the hands a chance to intervene and fix problems before they lost a valuable animal.
Even Heath got in on the act during calving season. Logan’s brother had turned his back on ranch work early on and followed his own path. He was a blacksmith, with a forge in town. That decision had made for a couple of very tense years in the Cahill house. Their father had felt Heath’s decision as a rejection. A betrayal, even.
For Logan’s part, he hadn’t cared. Heath had always stepped to his own beat, and Logan was just as glad that the ranch was unequivocally his to love. Heath’s lack of interest in ranching had cut down substantially on the brotherly competition. All three siblings would inherit the property someday, but no one contested the truth the Logan would take their father’s place at the head. He would always live in the big house. He and Honor would raise their children in the same rooms he and his brother and sister had been raised.
Thinking of her, Logan pulled Ranger out of the calving pasture, where his last runaway was now docilely munching on grass. Barry ran the gate closed, and Logan trotted Ranger to the main fence. When she had the time, and he was working close enough to the compound, Honor liked to sit on the fence and watch him work. Having that adoring audience added another dimension to his enjoyment of his work. And goddamn, he loved the way she looked here at home. All polished and shiny for work, in sleek skirts and sky-high heels, she was beautiful. But here, in simple jeans and a flannel shirt over a plain white t-shirt, with the Frye boots and Stetson hat he’d bought her, she was perfect.
She stood up on a fence rail as he neared, and raised her arms. Logan brought Ranger up close and sidelong. Pushing his hat back, he leaned over, caught her hat in his hand and held it as he wrapped his arm around her. She smiled at him and twisted her arms around his neck.
“Hey, darlin’.” He brushed his nose over her so-soft cheek. She didn’t wear makeup at home, and her sun-sparkled fair hair was twisted into a simple braid over her shoulder. Goddamn. Just goddamn.
“Hey.” She turned her head and found his lips. “You are one sexy cowboy, you know that?”
Before he could answer that with a suggestion that she hop on up and they ride off to take a break somewhere private, the receiver in his ear—not everything on the Twisted C was old-fashioned—chimed, and he tapped it with a gloved hand. “Yeah.”
He knew there was trouble before the caller responded—he could hear the herd calling out its worry, and one strident call in particular.
“It’s Colby, boss. We got a dam dropping out in the main pasture. It doesn’t look good. She’s in serious distress, and the herd is getting antsy.”
They’d missed a heavy, then. It happened a few times every year; they judged when it was time to sort a pregnant cow by eyeballing her and deciding how close she was. Sometimes, a heavy got sorted who was just carrying a big calf—or, rarely, twins—and hung out in the calving pasture for weeks before she dropped. Sometimes, a cow didn’t look big enough to be ready, but was.
If a cow calved out on the range, it wasn’t necessarily a crisis. It was a lot of work, because getting mama and baby herded to the calving shed after the fact, when mama was in full protection mode, was not an easy task. But most times, everything was okay, and the herd was, as a whole, pretty good about watching out for babies.
But there was some small percentage of calf loss every year, and a cow calving in distress out on the range was a risk of losing both of them.
“I’m on my way,” Logan told Colby and ended the connection. He kissed Honor quickly. “I gotta go, darlin’.”
“Everything okay?”
“Got a baby coming out on the range. I’ll be out there a couple hours. Do me a favor and let Dad know?” This was the first year Logan’s father hadn’t saddled up even once during calving season. In fact, he hadn’t actually worked the ranch since last summer. At eighty-five years old, he was finally slowing down.
“Can I come?”
Honor was a solid rider, but not yet an intuitive one, and Hank, the lazy old teddy bear he had her riding, would probably have a heart attack at a gallop. Besides, he wasn’t saddled, and Logan needed to go. “Sorry. I need to go fast, and I might need the room on my saddle. I’ll be back fast as I can. Tell Dad, though.”
“I will.”
He kissed her again before he rode off, because he couldn’t resist.
*****
Logan had helped scores of cows give birth over the years, but since his nephew Matthew had been born last February, he had a whole new, weird association with the process. Gabe had given birth unexpectedly, and noisily, at home. Heath had delivered his own son, and Logan had had the grave misfortune of walking in at the moment of its occurrence, and seeing far, far too much. He’d been both horrified and awed.
Putting his arm up a cow’s goods, as he was now, to grab hold of a stuck calf’s legs was one thing. Seeing his brother put his hands in his wife and help their child out—well, that was … something else. And now, he couldn’t help but think of the latter as he did the former.
Frankly, this was another good reason to have left Honor back at the compound. It might tarnish his sexy cowboy mystique a bit if she saw him shoulder-deep in cow twat.
The cow in question raised her head and screamed at him, then let her head flop to the ground, hitting so hard Logan felt the shake under his knees.
“Easy, mama, I know. I know. Hold on for me.”
The herd around them lowed with concern. With the help of Chessie, Colby and Mac held them off from getting too close. Inside that uneven arc were just Logan and the cow—and the calf who didn’t want to come out.
“I can’t get the right grip,” he called out, hoping to be heard above the cattle cacophony. He eased his arm out. “I need the chain and the puller.”
“Got it!” Mac, on his horse, trotted to Ranger and got the gear off Logan’s saddle.
Freed from Logan’s assault, the cow tried to roll up and get her legs under her, but Logan leaned on her rump with his gloved arm and dissuaded her. “Hold on, mama. Not done yet.”
Another contraction nailed her, and she screamed again, this time in obvious agony. Shit, they were going to lose her if he couldn’t get this calf. Lose them both.
Mac brought him the obstetric chain and the calf puller. Logan took the chain and went back in. She screamed again, but this time she didn’t fight. She was losing her strength. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he crooned, trying to soothe her as he fished around and got the chain around the calf’s hooves. Then he gripped the chain and made it taut. On the next contraction, he gave it a steady pull. Pull, pull, until the contraction was over.
“Come on, you little bastard, get out here,” he muttered. “One more, mama. Let’s try one more.” On the next contraction he pulled again, and finally, the calf moved toward him.
A third contraction, and its legs were clear. A fourth, and they had a baby. A huge baby.
“Holy jeeps,” Colby gasped. “That’s got to be a bull. What do you think, ninety? A hundred?”
Most calves were about sixty-five or seventy pounds. This one was much bigger, and yeah, at that size, was almost certainly a bull. “Maybe. How’d we miss her?” Logan broke the sack and pulled it clear, exposing a solid white face. Then he stood and backed off. It was time for mama to take over.
“She didn’t look big,” Mac answered. “He musta been curled up way in her ribs or somethin’.”
“Come on, mama, come on.” The cow lay on the new spring grass, breathing heavily. The calf lay on the remnants of its sac. He hadn’t taken his first breath yet. It was his mama’s job to wake him up.
“Shit.” Logan dropped to his knees by the calf and started rubbing his face and head, his chest, his belly. Yes, he was a bull. A great big boy. “Check the dam,” he called out with
out taking his attention from the calf.
“I’m on her,” Colby answered. “I think we’re losing her.” After a few seconds, just as the calf finally took a weak, uncertain breath, Colby added, “Boss, look.”
Logan looked and saw the bright, fresh blood running from the cow, coiling down the cord that was still attached to them both. Not birth blood. Her calf had torn her up inside. “Fuck! Fuck!” He sat back and thought. “Goddammit. Okay. You guys take Chessie and draw the herd away. You’ll hear when it’s time to come back. I need to get this calf to the shed, so I’ll need you to clean up here. Get the carcass to the compound. I’ll call Job.”
“Got it, boss,” Mac said from his mount.
Colby, kneeling by the suffering dam, looked at him. Colby was a new hand, hired on that fall; this was his first calving season. “You’re puttin’ her down?”
“She’s bleeding out. We can let her go slowly, in pain and freaking out the herd, or I can take her quick and end her suffering. Get the herd off. They don’t like gunfire, and we don’t need a damn stampede. Go.”
The calf before him lay too still, but breathing. Logan knelt there, rubbing him, blowing on his face, keeping him going, until the herd was far enough off that he wouldn’t get crushed by panicky hooves when he fired his rifle into the cow’s head.
Then he stood, stripped off the obstetric sleeve, went to Ranger, released the rifle from his saddle, and returned to the cow. She lay still, her breathing labored, each exhale dying on a fragile moan. Her eye watched him and seemed to know. “I know, mama. It’s gonna be okay.” He aimed and fired a single shot. Her chugging side went still.
He put his rifle back and went to the calf. He cut the umbilical cord, tied it off, and picked him up. The baby was loose as a bag of bones. “I’m not losing you, too, buddy, so hold the fuck on.”
He hoisted him onto the saddle and rode back to the calving shed.
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 30