Crazy Heifer

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Remy grumbled under his breath. “Mal just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “The name thing is odd,” Ace agreed. “But Mal’s always been an asshole. I’m just surprised it took me so long to catch on.”

  “Me, too,” I agreed. “Me, too.”

  Callum moved and lifted the pot for me when I was done, taking it to the large serving bowl he’d pulled out without me even asking.

  I pulled the steaks out from under the broiler and walked the pans straight to the kitchen table where Georgia was already spreading out a couple of potholders for me to place them on.

  Drinks, glasses, silverware, and paper towels were gotten by the rest of the crew, followed by the veggies.

  We all sat down and started eating without another word.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway through my steak that Georgia said, “Can I hire you to cook for us, too?”

  I grinned.

  “No!” Codie said as she came hustling inside. “Swear to God, there better be enough for me or I’m going to kick some ass.”

  “Chill your tits,” Remy said as he pulled her chair out for her. “Ace guarded your steak and your plate with his life. Every time I eyed the piece of steak that looks like it was going to fall off your plate, he growled at me.”

  I rolled my eyes because Remy was exaggerating.

  Colt, however, wasn’t exaggerating when he said, “You should really start cooking more food. This isn’t enough.”

  My brows shot up.

  “What do you mean, it’s not enough?” I asked. “And if you want much more than you’re getting, I’m going to need a bigger kitchen. There just isn’t enough space to cook for more in this particular kitchen.”

  I mean, I could start cooking it at the bakery, but that would be a pain in the ass to transport it back to the Valentine ranch.

  “We could start on the kitchen first if we started to build a new house,” Callum said as he leaned back in his chair and patted his full stomach. “That way we have more accommodations and seating. The bedrooms can get fixed in order of birth.”

  “That’s not fair,” Darby drawled around a mouthful of steak.

  “Life’s not fair, little bitch,” Banks said. “And I’m down with whatever. Honestly, it makes more sense for Ace’s room to get done first, seeing as he’s got Codie now. Callum should be next since he has Desi.”

  “But Desi is staying at the cabin,” Darby argued.

  “She’s staying here until at least eleven at night. She goes to the cabin to sleep only,” Banks continued.

  “That’s true,” Ace said. “Y’all should just move in together already. Spending six hours apart at night seems silly. Especially when it’s only twice a week at that.”

  I flicked my eyes in Callum’s direction to see what he thought on the matter.

  “Desi literally hasn’t even been divorced a year.” Callum yawned. “I’m going to give her a couple more months before I force her to move in.”

  “Force?” I teased, loving that he’d already been thinking about it.

  “Yeah, force,” he continued.

  I stood up and offered what was left of my steak to Remy, who took it greedily.

  Callum’s large hand shot out before I could pass, and he pulled me into his side, his hand covering my ass.

  “Thanks for dinner, baby,” he said. “It was good.”

  He said that every night now, and it still had yet to sink in how good it felt hearing those words roll off his lips.

  I bent down and pressed my lips to his, loving the way his hand tightened on my ass.

  He tasted like sunshine and steak. Two of my most favorite things in the world.

  “Ewwww,” Darby said. “Get a room!”

  I broke away with a laugh and walked my plate to the kitchen sink where I washed it and loaded it into the washer.

  I didn’t bother with the dishes, though. The brothers or Codie would take care of them. I’d tried once before to do them, and only once. I’d gotten yelled at that ‘people who cook don’t clean’ and that was that.

  Before I could head back to Callum, he caught me by my hand and led me into the foyer where he pinned me against the wall and once again placed his mouth over mine.

  I groaned into his mouth as he pulled back just far enough to say, “God, I want to fuck you.”

  “Ummm, Mr. Valentine?” I heard said hesitantly.

  I whipped my head to the side, flushing profusely at the thought that someone had just heard those words come out of Callum’s mouth that were directed at me.

  “Yeah, Reggie?” Callum asked, seemingly unaffected.

  “Uhh, Star Shine had a bit of a setback. She’s back on the ground and refuses to get back up,” Reggie, that I thought probably wasn’t actually named Reggie, said.

  “Fuck.” Callum groaned, pulling me with him back to the kitchen. “I’ll be back.”

  With one last kiss to the cheek, Callum left me standing in the kitchen with his brothers watching on with varying degrees of humor pasted on their faces.

  It was their friends, however, that had no problem voicing their words.

  “So,” Colt said. “Who’s going to bite the dust next? Banks? Darby?”

  Darby immediately started to shake his head. “Nope. I’m going to graduate with my advanced degree first. I get a woman, and she’s going to want me to be tied to her like those two are tied to their women.”

  Georgia shook her head.

  “Nobody is going to want you, dumbass.” Georgia snorted. “You’re too pretty.”

  I looked over at Darby.

  He was pretty. In fact, he was gorgeous. Honestly, I think the reason he grew a beard at all was due in part to the fact that it hid the lower part of his face, and made him seem a little less pretty, if that was even possible.

  He looked like he belonged on billboards and magazines, not in dirty Wranglers and cowboy hats.

  Ignoring the family that was now arguing, I pulled out my trusty Google app and started searching.

  I researched what I was and wasn’t allowed to feed horses, then went to work.

  Chapter 13

  Don’t talk to me, peasant.

  -Desi to Codie

  Desi

  “What’s that?” Callum asked me, looking at the concoction with obvious reluctance.

  I held up my ‘cake’ that looked more like a pile of sludge.

  “So, I did some research while you were out here. And along with dinner prep for tomorrow, I made Star Shine a dinner of champions,” I explained. “You were saying that she was too weak to eat, so I made her a mash of sorts that we can put in her mouth and hopefully she’s able to swallow it.”

  His face warmed.

  “That was nice of you,” he said. “But I honestly think she’s too weak to eat even that.”

  I looked at her and thought much the same.

  “It can’t hurt to try, though,” I said. “Can I get down there with her?”

  Callum was picky about some of the horses that he trained, and I didn’t want to overstep my bounds.

  He swung his arms in a ‘go ahead’ gesture, and I moved toward her.

  She was lying on her side, her head in the straw, and her eyes open but tired.

  Her breathing was labored, and the foal that she’d just delivered was curled up next to her side.

  I smiled at the pretty little thing.

  It was all legs and definitely looked to be the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

  She had a white patch on her nose, and one of her feet was white. But the rest of her was pure brown.

  And she was cute as a button with a fluff of white hair for a mane.

  When I got close, she poked her head up and examined me as I went to her mother’s head.

  Protective.

  I liked that.

  “Can you help me prop her head up on my thighs?” I asked.

  Callum moved Star until
her head was propped up against my thighs. Her head rested in my lap, at an angle that would allow the food I’d made her to flow straight down her throat.

  “Open her mouth for me?” I asked.

  Callum helped me open her mouth, and slowly but surely, I spooned food into her mouth.

  Some of it fell onto my jeans, but a good majority of it slid down her throat.

  She weakly swallowed it and looked to be tolerating it fairly well.

  “There,” I said as I handed Callum the platter. “Let’s see how she tolerates that. If she does good with it, we can give her more in about an hour. Or at least that was what the website I used said.”

  Callum took the platter from me and put the half-eaten concoction into a fridge in the corner of the barn.

  Absently I sat with Star’s head in my lap and stroked her, smoothing her mane away from her eyes as I did.

  I talked to her for what felt like an hour before I couldn’t take it any longer.

  “I have to get up,” I said. “My legs are asleep, and they’re not even tingling anymore.”

  Callum’s lips twitched.

  He’d watched me take care of his horse. All the while, his eyes had watched me.

  Neither of us had said a word to eachother, and when he finally walked over to me and helped me move Star’s head back onto the straw, he was almost smiling.

  “She looks a little better,” he admitted. “Not much, but her eyes are tracking me instead of staring listlessly ahead.”

  That was true.

  She’d looked like she was watching me talk to her the entire time I’d fed her.

  “Let’s hope that it works,” I said, offering him my hands.

  He pulled me to my feet and held me steady as I wiggled my toes.

  “Owww,” I said as circulation began to return to my lower half. “Why does that hurt so bad?”

  He shrugged. “No earthly idea. But it sucks.”

  I leaned even more into him, resting my head on his muscled chest.

  Wrapping my arms around him, I moved my hands until they were pressed underneath his t-shirt that had come untucked at some point in the last hour.

  He’d come in with it tucked in, and now it was completely loose around his hips.

  Which was practically unheard of for him.

  I’d never seen a man tuck his shirt in as much as Callum.

  Not that I was complaining. It gave me ample opportunity to study his Wrangler-covered ass.

  And what a Wrangler-covered ass it was.

  I moved my hands. One going to lay flat on his back, and the other going partially down the backside of his pants to come to a rest on the top curve of his butt.

  He grinned and dropped a kiss onto my mouth.

  “I’m gonna stay here tonight, baby,” he said.

  I frowned. “On the floor?”

  He gestured up with his chin.

  “Hayloft,” he said. “There’s a futon up there.”

  I didn’t like the idea of him staying by himself, so I nodded once.

  “There a bathroom here?” I asked.

  He jerked his chin to the corner of the room next to the fridge.

  “There,” he rumbled.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay with you.”

  His eyes shone as he grinned at me. “Yeah?”

  I nodded once. “Yeah.”

  Letting me go, I went to the bathroom and did my business, coming out about five minutes later with my face freshly washed, and my teeth wiped down with a paper towel.

  It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do for tonight.

  When I got out, a soft whistle had me looking up to find Callum standing in the hayloft.

  His eyes were down on me, and he was gesturing with his chin for me to come up there.

  I looked around for the steps but only found a ladder. “Do I climb up that?”

  He grinned. “Yep.”

  So, I did. And when I got about halfway to the top, he said, “I can see straight down your shirt.”

  I looked down at the tank top that I’d put on that morning, and sure enough, you could see straight down my shirt.

  I shook my head and said, “Well lucky you.”

  He grunted as I made my way to the top. “Lucky me indeed.”

  “Come on, baby,” he urged as he held his hand out for me to take. “Let’s get in bed.”

  I took his hand, and he led me to a rather nice futon.

  “Y’all sleep out here a lot?” I wondered.

  The sheets were even clean.

  “Not really,” he admitted. “I just put new sheets on the bed. We keep them in a tub right there. I’ll have to have Lissa, our housekeeper, come out here and launder these and put them back.”

  “Lissa?” I frowned. “I didn’t know you had a house cleaner.”

  “You thought that all those men and one woman, one woman that’s working full-time, cleans their own house?” he asked with a grin.

  I shrugged and started to unbutton my jeans.

  His eyes went to my waist and stayed there as I slowly unbuttoned them.

  I was in a size smaller than I’d been in the last time he saw me. Not because he hadn’t seen me yesterday, but because this morning I’d carved time out of my busy cake making schedule to go buy some clothes that fit.

  Clothes that he was obviously admiring now that he had time to admire them.

  “You look good,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that all afternoon.”

  I grinned and kicked off the pants, thankful that I’d not gone with the skinny jeans today.

  Not that I looked bad in the skinny jeans, but they took a little while to get on and off, seeing as they were like a second skin when I wore them.

  I sat down on the closest thing to me, which happened to be a bale of hay, and stripped my socks off.

  Once done, I stood up and folded the socks into the pants before placing them on top of the bale of hay.

  “New panties, too?” he asked, sounding closer.

  I looked up to find him making his way toward me.

  “Um, yeah.” I swallowed, loving the way his eyes had darkened. “I bought new everything. New jeans. New underwear. New bras.”

  His eyes went to my shirt. “You have a new bra under there?”

  I grinned.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, taking off the new shirt as well. “But it’s nothing special. Just a sports bra.”

  He grunted something unintelligible and reached for the hem of my shirt, roughly yanking it up and over my head.

  He tossed it down on the ground, and I watched as it floated down to the floor, then slipped even farther down over the balcony railing to come to a rest on the dirty barn floor underneath us.

  “That was a new shirt,” I said. “I just bought it today.”

  He grunted something else then reached for me, bringing me into his hips and dropping his gaze to study the top of the bra.

  “I like it,” he said, tracing the circle that was between my breasts. “What’s this for?”

  I looked down at the cutout of fabric that displayed the V of my breasts, then shrugged. “I think it’s just for decoration. You can’t even see it when I wear any of my workout tanks, so I’m not quite sure if it’s supposed to be just for me, or for everyone.”

  “It better not be for anyone but me,” he admitted gruffly. “It’s hot.”

  I smiled at him, pressing my lower belly against his front.

  That was when I felt the hard-on that was running like a long steel bar down the right side of his Wranglers.

  I pushed back slightly so I could stare down at it with unabashed need.

  “How private is this loft?” I wondered aloud.

  Could we do it up here without getting caught?

  I knew that the bunkhouse was connected to the backside of the barn, but I wasn’t too sure how soundproof everything was or how close we actually were to
the bed area where people were sleeping.

  And seeing as we were in a loft and not a damn room with a closed door, I wanted to be sure.

  Extra, doubly, sure.

  “Private enough that I doubt anyone else will come in here tonight,” he admitted. “But that’s why we’re going to be doing this real quiet-like.”

  “This what?” I teased, knowing exactly what he meant.

  Callum’s lips formed into a small smile as he said, “You know what.”

  I did know what.

  I also knew that I was getting wet, and that I was soaking my panties.

  If I had any hope of wearing them tomorrow, I needed to get them off.

  Pronto.

  “No,” I teased as I shed the rest of my clothes. “I don’t.”

  He grinned and gestured to the shower that I hadn’t seen before. “I’m gonna go in there and shower off all this dust.”

  “You have extra clothes in there?” I wondered.

  “Yep.” He grinned. “Care to join me?”

  There was no hesitation in me at all.

  Seconds after he’d invited me into his shower with him, I was shedding the rest of my clothes and walking into the tiniest shower I’d ever seen.

  “Ummm,” I said as we both squeezed in and Callum shut the door. “Are you sure that this is a good idea? I don’t even think that you’ll be able to wash your feet.”

  “You might be right,” he admitted. “But you’ll drop down onto your knees and help me wash them, right? I can return the favor.”

  My breasts started to shake as my breathing became more ragged at the thought of dropping down to my knees in front of the man.

  “I think I might be able to manage that,” I said. “Now, why didn’t we turn the shower on before we got in here?”

  He pressed his naked body up against mine, his erect cock digging into my soft belly, and said, “Because there are only two settings on this shower. Hell, and hell.”