by Jennie Marts
She had tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but as she walked away, she heard Cash asking, “Geez, what’s wrong with her?”
“Must be the city in her,” Zack answered. “Not used to the late night and dirty work of a ranch.”
Not used to philandering veterinarians is more like it. Anger seeped into her humiliation, and she stomped to the house, her cowboy boots kicking up little puffs of dust as she walked.
Chapter Five
Zack stood at the kitchen window, gazing toward the Tucker Farm. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and he absently took a sip of coffee as his mind wandered to a set of long legs and a pair of hot pink cowboy boots.
He’d met Charlie Ryan twice now, and each time he’d learned a little something new about her. The first time, he’d considered her a stuck-up snob, but after the night before he realized she was just completely out of her element. She didn’t even know what a gunny sack was, for heaven’s sake.
He had to give her credit, though. She’d been a trooper the night before, doing everything they’d asked. She was obviously trying to help. And she didn’t even flinch when he set that bloody calf in her lap and dripped placenta fluid on her boots. Geez, what was up with those boots anyway? Had the girl not heard of trying to blend in?
Zack pulled out a pan, filled it with water, then set it on the gas stove, turning the lever and igniting the flame underneath.
“What am I doing thinking about her anyway?” he muttered.
He needed to get breakfast made for his daughter, and he had chores to do this morning. Being a single dad could be tough, but the smile on his daughter’s face every morning made it all worth it. He reached for the carton of oatmeal.
He wondered what Charlie was having for breakfast. What did you eat for breakfast in New York? Probably one of those croissants and a fancy latte/espresso deal. Around here, they just had coffee and donuts. If you wanted to get fancy, you might add a little cream or a packet of Sweet’N Low. He shook his head to clear the thoughts of her from his mind.
What did he care what some blond city-girl was eating for breakfast?
Geez, man, get a grip. Thinking about her was a waste of time, and that was one thing he didn’t have to spare. Yeah, she might be pretty and, okay, she had a great laugh and, lord, the thought of that little negligee tucked into a pair of jean shorts had kept him up too late last night thinking about un-tucking it, but let’s be real. There was no point even thinking about her.
She was from the city, and even if she could manage a squalling calf in her lap, he knew she would eventually go back. She would grow tired of small town life and not having a mall or any restaurants or really much of anything, and she would leave. She was a woman. That’s what they were good at. Walking out the door and leaving you behind. No matter how much you wanted them to stay.
Life on a farm was tough, especially for a woman who wore stiletto-heeled boots and carried sixteen lip glosses in her purse. She would grow tired of the early mornings, the back-breaking chores, the constant tending of the animals, and the never-ending financial strain of the demands of a working farm. After a few weeks here, she’d be hopping in her silly little red car and speeding back to her fancy pastries as fast as her high heels could take her.
Best to just put her out of his mind. Get on with his day. Take care of his own family and his own farm. Don’t even open that door.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt just to stop in over there on his way to work. He passed right by Tucked Away on his way into town, and he should probably check on that calf.
…
That’ll have to do for now. Charlie turned off the hair dryer and gave her hair one final fluff.
It was early morning. She hadn’t really been able to fall back into much of a restful sleep, so it was easier to just get up. Her thoughts were full of the experiences she had of watching a new life come into this world under stress and trauma, and of meeting Zack Cooper.
She had replayed each separate moment with him, trying to decipher if he was a good guy who just had a kind nature and was being nice to her, or if he really was just another cheating man who flirted with any available woman. Had she made herself seem available?
Cash had been outwardly flirting with her since she had arrived, but that just felt like fun, and he seemed harmless, like that was how he treated all women. Something about Zack had felt different. She’d been attracted to him right away. Had she given off signals that she was single and desperate? Distracted by her thoughts, she hung her towel on the hook in the bathroom and walked naked into her bedroom in search of some clothes.
“You want some coffee?” Zack asked, walking into the open door of her bedroom, a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Aaahh,” she screamed, trying in a split second to decide if she should act cool and keep walking, as if being naked is totally natural, or if she should dive for her bed, crawl under the covers, and remain there for the rest of the day in mortification.
As if frozen in place, Zack gaped at her for a full second before quickly turning his back to her, slopping a drip of coffee onto the hardwood floor. “Sorry. The door was open.”
She stepped back into the bathroom and grabbed a towel to wrap around herself. “Doesn’t anyone knock around here?”
Zack looked at the floor. She was happy to see a red flush creeping up the back of his neck above the yellow collar of his shirt. “I didn’t expect you to be naked. Why didn’t you shut the door?” Zack asked, as if this were her fault for parading around bare-skinned in her own bedroom.
She would be angry, if she didn’t hear the strangled way he said naked and the deepening blush of his neck. “It’s my room. And I just got out of the shower. I’m not used to having half a town dropping by and letting themselves into my house.”
She realized she was standing with her hand on her towel-covered hip and dropped her arm to appear more natural in her half-naked state. “You can turn around now.”
He turned, and she watched him swallow at the sight of her. She was wrapped in a towel, but the short rectangle of terry-cloth barely covered her bottom. The tight tucking she did caused her breasts to push up and spill over the top of the towel.
She stood still and watched his gaze move from her bare legs up to her long hair, shiny and full from the recent blow drying. Like a physical touch, his look moved over her body with a hungry caress. His lips were slightly parted, and she suddenly wondered what would happen if she dropped the towel, walked up to him, and kissed him on that amazing mouth. He looked at her almost as if he were thinking the same thing.
Stop. What am I thinking? He’s married. What was wrong with her? He was so good-looking, and she was half-naked, but was she that starved for a man’s attention that she was considering seducing a man with a wife and a baby? Was she considering putting herself in the same position as the woman she had just lit a dining room table on fire over?
“Can you close the door and let me get dressed? I’ll be out in a minute.”
Appearing to snap out of it, he reached for the door handle. “Of course, sorry. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“And I’ll take that coffee now, please,” she said loudly, before the door clicked shut.
The baby calf suckled loudly and pulled on the homemade baby bottle Charlie held. Zack had shown her how to mix two scoops of the dry, chalky formula into the correct amount of water in the quart size jar. He pulled a long rubber nipple over the top of the jar and shook it vigorously.
Handing her the makeshift bottle, he carried a clean armful of straw out to where the calf lay nestled against Marjorie’s side. He spread the fresh hay on the ground by the cow’s head, giving both the cow a little snack and her a dry place to sit.
He’d helped to put the calf into her lap, and she laughed out loud at the way the baby cow seemed to know her and nuzzle her arm. The milk mixture smelled faintly like a chocolate malt, and the calf sucked greedily at the bottle she held.
She watched
Zack care tenderly for the mother cow, talking to her softly as he examined her. She was amazed at his practiced skill of tugging and squeezing on the cow’s teats to get a steady stream of milk to spray into the bucket he had wedged under her udder sack.
“It’s important that the calf gets some of her early milk. It’s got colostrum in there, and that’s important for his early development. I’ll pour what I get from her here into that bottle and you can feed it to him, too, if you’re doing okay.”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “This is kind of fun.”
The day was already warm for so early in the morning. She felt better in her choice of jean shorts, a T-shirt, and the white tennies Sophie had picked out for her than in her evening apparel of the night before.
She was surprised that she could sit so close to this large creature and feel no fear. Especially when compared to the terror she’d felt from her bull-stud welcome wagon, Tommy Lee. Maybe it was because Marjorie was lying down, and she’d watched her give birth, but she was comfortable sitting next to the large mama cow and holding her calf in her lap like a big puppy.
She was glad the cow was so close to the barn and would stay in the shade most of the day. “How’s she doing?”
Zack ran his hands along her belly. He looked more official this morning with a stethoscope wrapped around the collar of his yellow polo shirt, the words “Cooper Veterinary Clinic” printed across the right breast pocket. Just the fact that he was wearing a shirt at all added to his professionalism. “She’s doing fine. This is really common during a tough birth. She’ll be up and around before you know it. Could be this afternoon or might be tomorrow.”
Her feelings warred with trying to equate this man who seemed so caring and gentle with her idea of a snake of a cheating husband.
“So, you have a daughter, huh?” she blurted out.
“Yep, she’s my pride and joy. I don’t know what I’d do without her,” he said, that pride evidenced all over his face.
She wanted so badly to ask him about his wife, but she couldn’t seem to form the words.
“How ’bout you?” he asked. “Any kids?”
“Me? No.” She laughed. “No time. I have been married to my career for too long.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve got one now.” Zack nodded to the calf curled up in her lap. He took the bottle from her, and she watched him fill it with the mother’s milk from the bucket. He snapped the nipple back on and handed it back to her.
She took the bottle he held in his outstretched hand and smiled down at the little cow. “I guess.”
“What are you gonna name him?”
“Name him?”
“Yeah. You helped bring him into this world. Your first calving. I think you get the honor of naming this one.”
“Hmmm. Okay.” She held the fresh bottle out to the calf, who snorted and suckled it as if he hadn’t just eaten. “I think I’ll name him Rodney.”
“Rodney? How come?”
“I don’t know. It just suits him.”
Zack laughed. “Well, okay. Rodney it is then. You think you and Rodney are gonna be okay here? I need to get into the clinic.”
“Sure. We’ll be fine.”
“Just rinse that stuff out in the sink in the barn. You’ll have to do this all over again come mid-day and maybe tonight if Marjorie isn’t up and moving around. You can have Buckshot or Cash help you milk her later and get that into Rodney, as well.”
He stood looking down at her as if he had something he wanted to say, then changed his mind and headed for the barn. “Call over to the vet clinic if you need anything or have any questions. I’ll be there all day.”
…
“I think he likes you,” Cash said, later that night as he sat in the barn with Charlie.
“What?” Her head snapped up to look at his face and gauge his meaning.
“The calf.” He nodded at the baby cow sitting in her lap. “I think he likes you.”
She looked down at Rodney, who was currently sucking on a fresh bottle of its mother’s milk. “Oh, of course. Sure. Well, I like him. He is my first pet cow.” She shook her head at her stupidity of thinking he was talking about Zack. Why couldn’t she get that man out of her mind?
“We don’t really call them our pets.” Cash chuckled softly. “Unless you usually have your pets for dinner.”
“Argh. Stop it.” She kicked out at him with her foot. “Nobody is eating Rodney.”
“What do you think we do with the cows we have on this farm? Build dog houses for them and keep them around ’til they die of old age? Our cattle serve us by getting fat so we can sell them or increasing our herd by calving. And some of them, like Tommy Lee, serve us by studding out our heifers and making more little Rodneys.”
“All right, I hear you. Remember, I am still new to all this farming stuff. This last week is the first time I have ever even seen a cow. Or a goat. Or a cowboy.” Or a veterinarian.
“Well, you are doing fine, darlin’,” he drawled. “Farm life has a way of growing on you. It’s never boring. There’s something new to do every day. And you have now been christened with your first calving experience.”
“Yeah. That was exciting.” She rubbed the soft, downy fur on the top of the baby cow’s head. This was the third time she had fed him from the makeshift bottle.
Sophie had come over mid-day to bring her a sandwich and help her with the noon feeding. The young girl was growing on her, and she genuinely enjoyed her company. They had taken care of the calf then spent a few hours in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies.
“I appreciate you spending so much time with me, but don’t you have some girlfriends to hang out with, or aren’t your folks missing you?” Charlie had asked her, spooning a bite of cookie dough into her mouth.
A sad look crossed Sophie’s face, and she was immediately sorry she’d asked. Open mouth, insert foot. “No, my best friend Debbie is spending the summer with her grandparents in Colorado, and no one is really home at my house anyway.”
Curiosity burned in her to ask more about the girl’s home life, but she was from New York. And New Yorkers didn’t pry. “Well, that’s lucky for me then ’cause now I get to spend more time with you,” she said, earning a big smile from Sophie.
Sophie had also brought her a pan of baked macaroni and cheese and had shared a plate with her before taking off across the pasture to her own farm. Charlie had passed her evening by doing the dishes, staring at the blank page of her laptop in hopes of getting a flash of inspiration, and feeling like an idiot for being so excited about it being time to feed the little calf again.
That calf was nuzzling her hand now, his big pink tongue sliding out and leaving a trail of silvery saliva on her arm. She laughed and wiped the slobber on her jean shorts, thankful now that she’d let Sophie talk her into more than one pair.
“Seriously, Cash, I had no idea how traumatic a baby cow birth could be. And that calf-puller thing was useful and horrible, at the same time.” She laughed. “You guys did an amazing job saving this little guy. Speaking of you guys, did you know that Zack, er Dr. Cooper, had a daughter?” Oh my gosh. Nice segue. Could that have been more obvious?
Cash gave her a strange look, as if he couldn’t tell if she was asking a serious question or not. “Of course.”
“Oh, sure. You guys seem like you’ve known each other a long time.”
“We have. We both grew up in Broken Falls. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We played football together in high school. I was the wide receiver, and Zack was the quarterback, of course. He was the typical hometown football hero dating the head cheerleader. Geez, they looked like Barbie and Ken, they were so blond and perfect.”
“And what were you? The town bad boy?” She raised her eyebrows at him, ready to discuss anything except how perfect Dr. Zack and his wife were. “I bet you dated plenty of cheerleaders.”
“I had my share of cheerleaders, but I wouldn’t say I dated any of them,”
he said, a slight trace of bitterness in his voice.
“I bet.”
“How about you, Miss City-girl? Were you a cheerleader or a bad girl?”
“Hmm, probably somewhere in between. But, that’s a story for another time.” She gestured to the baby calf sleeping in her lap, his head resting on her leg. “We should probably get this little dude back to his mother. And I’m exhausted and need to get ready for bed.”
He lifted the sleeping calf from her lap, brushing her thigh as he did. “Need anyone to tuck you in?” The smirk and the easy charmer resurfaced.
“I think I can manage.” She stood and wiped the stray lengths of straw from her rear end.
“Keep it in mind.”
She had plenty to keep in mind as she watched him carry the calf out of the barn. What was it about Wranglers and boots and what they did to a man’s butt? A business suit just didn’t do the same thing as a tight pair of jeans. Another tally to add on the side of things to love about Montana.
…
“What about restaurants? How are you eating?” Elizabeth Ryan’s voice rang out from the speaker on her phone. It lay on the bathroom vanity counter amidst hair products and assorted articles of makeup.
Charlie studied herself in the bathroom mirror. Picking up a tube of eye cream, she was surprised to see that her face seemed to look smoother. She’d had another restful night’s sleep in Gigi’s bed, and the gray shadows under her eyes seemed to be abating. Maybe this Montana air was good for her.
“Mom. I’m eating fine.” She dabbed little bits of cream around her eyes anyway. “They have a couple of little diners in town, but I’m mostly eating here on the farm. Sophie is showing me how to cook.”
Her mother’s peal of laughter rang through the small room. “I’ll bet she is.”
She picked up the compact and dug in her makeup bag for a brush. “Okay, so I’m not making chocolate soufflés or anything, but I helped make a macaroni salad the other day.”