by Cat Johnson
Her perfectly shaped eyebrows rose. “Open for what?”
Justus and Dakota both let out snickers. Bonner shot them a look before turning back to Casey. “Open means they’re not pregnant.” He put it in the simplest terms he could since she was a city girl and all.
“Oh.” Impossibly, her brows shot higher. And did her cheeks turn a bit pink? “And, um, how do you determine that?”
Now, even Bonner couldn’t control his smile. “It’s probably best if we wait and not tell you that right now.”
“Why not?” A deep frown creased Casey brow. Tough city girl didn’t like being told no. Bonner tucked that information away for later.
Justus snickered. “Because you’re still eating.”
The two younger men chuckled as Mrs. Jones came through the doorway carrying a bowl and a mug. “Don’t scare her away on the first day.”
She put the steaming bowl in front of Jake, who scowled down at it. “Oatmeal again?”
“You know what the doctor said. Oatmeal and decaf coffee, and I don’t want to hear anything more about it.” Mrs. Jones spun on her heel and was gone, back to the kitchen.
The minute she cleared the doorway, Jake reached out and snagged Bonner’s mug.
“Hey!” Bonner frowned.
“Here. Take mine.” Jake slid his own mug of decaf toward him, as if it would replace the coffee he’d stolen. “I’ll eat this wallpaper paste she feeds me, but I refuse to give up real coffee. You gonna turn me in?” Jake’s snowy white brow rose.
Bonner laughed. “No, sir.”
“Good boy.” Jake’s gaze perused the table. “Hand me a piece of bacon too. Quick, before she comes back.”
With a glance at the kitchen door to make sure the coast was clear, Bonner shook his head and did as asked. “Don’t blame me when you fall over dead one day.”
“I’ll outlive you boys. Just wait and see.” Jake winked at Casey.
She smiled. “I’m starting to envy you all your life here.”
Jake paused with the spoon of oatmeal in mid-air. “Oh, really? And why is that, Miss Harrington?”
“It seems like much more fun working here than in the offices in New York.”
Jake laughed. “Come back to me a week from now. We’ll see if you still think so.”
She cocked a brow, making her look like a vixen. And Bonner really needed to stop looking at her like that. He wasn’t into torturing himself. Wanting something he couldn’t have would be just that. Torture. Besides, who’s to say she’d even look twice at him. What would a city girl want with an old ranch hand like him?
“Is that a challenge, Mr. Maverick?”
“Could be. You up to it?” Jake pursed his lips.
Bonner shook his head and watched them square off against each other. Casey and Jake couldn’t be more different, yet it seemed they had one thing in common because the old man never could resist a challenge.
“Of course I’m up for it. I’m a New Yorker.”
“That’s what I’m worried about, darlin’.”
Her expression wavered and for the first time today, Casey didn’t ooze cool confidence. Instead, she looked a little worried.
This little visit was proving to be more interesting than Bonner had imagined, in so many ways.
* * * *
“So, they run the cows into a squeeze chute one at a time.” Bonner stood next to her in the cold morning air.
“Okay.” Casey watched as the two young cowboys accompanied by a barking Misty, the cattle dog, did as Bonner described, herding a cow between the metal rails.
“Then the vet feels her uterus to see if she’s been bred and is carrying.”
As the vet lubed his arm from hand to shoulder, Casey began to figure out the purpose of the extremely long plastic glove he’d put on. Her eyes opened wide. No, he couldn’t possibly…but then he did. The vet lifted the cow’s tail and then his entire arm disappeared inside the cow’s butt, who, immobilized in the chute, didn’t have a whole lot it could do about it.
Casey cringed. “Wow.”
Beside her, Bonner laughed. “We need to know which cows aren’t bred. Rectal palpitation isn’t as reliable as blood tests or ultrasounds, but it’s the quickest and cheapest way to separate the cows that are bred from the ones that aren’t.”
“I guess so.” She swallowed hard as the first victim was released from the chute and the next one was subjected to the vet’s inspection.
Jeez, couldn’t they all just pee on a stick and see if it turned pink? That seemed a hell of a lot easier than this, for everyone involved. As the vet did his thing the cow let out a short moo of protest. A shudder ran through Casey and she didn’t think it was from the cold air.
Glancing over, she noticed Bonner smirk. Casey turned her attention to him—a much more pleasant sight than what was happening behind the metal rails of the chute.
Damn, he was hot. Even though most of his sentences contained only a handful of single syllable words, they were delivered in a low, slow way that made her insides heat. After all these years, it seemed she still hadn’t gotten over her cowboy obsession. It was well ingrained by her eight-year-old self’s unquenched desire for Cowboy Cody. It didn’t help that the man next to her looked uncannily like him, right down to the intense blue eyes beneath the brim of the white hat. The exact eyes that were focused on her now.
He expected her to fail at this ranching stuff, for her to run crying back to the city. She could tell that just by the ever-present smirk and the way he watched her. That was not going to happen. Casey Harrington didn’t give up.
On the other hand, she might well be fired if she didn’t prove herself to Jake Maverick. She knew she could do this job. She just had to make sure he knew that too. And if not blinking an eye at this insane cow rectum inspection was what Bonner Blue Boyd needed to make a favorable report to Mr. Maverick, then so be it.
She folded her arms and leaned back against the fence, settling in for a long haul. “So, how many are there to test?”
“Couple hundred.”
Her eyes opened wide. “A couple hundred? This is going to take all day.” The shock of that shook her resolve to handle whatever Bonner and the Maverick ranch threw at her.
“Yup.” The man of few words was observing her reaction again. Fine. Let him. She forced herself to look unfazed.
“Blue! You gonna help us or what?” Justus was out of breath as he yelled over. It was his job to slam the gate shut behind the cow once it was in the chute. He, Dakota and the dog were scrambling to keep up with the veterinarian, who seemed to be able to check the cows as fast as the cowboys could herd them into the chute.
“You two can handle this just fine on your own.” Bonner leaned back against the fence next to her and crossed his arms.
Justus made a face but didn’t argue. The kid had other things to worry about since the barking dog was running a cow right at him. That might have helped with his compliance.
Casey watched with a grin. “You enjoy bossing them around, don’t you?”
“No.” Bonner glanced at her with a frown. “Young cowboys are like young horses. They need a strong hand. I was no different at that age. We’re all cut from the same piece of leather.”
That was one hell of a good line. She could use that in the Maverick marketing. She wasn’t sure exactly how but she would. Somehow. Somewhere. Casey pulled out her smart phone and opened the note application. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.
“What are you doing?” A crease knit above Bonner’s ice blue eyes.
“Writing that down.”
“Writing what down?”
“What you said. About being cut from the same piece of leather.” She glanced up at him again and was tempted to laugh at how deep the furrow between his brows had grown.
“Why?” His frown turned into more of a scowl.
“Because I’d like to refer back to it for my marketing plan. Lines like that, right out of a cowboy’s mouth, will lend flavor. B
elievability. Buyers will love it. Besides, you heard Mr. Maverick. He’s concerned I’m from the city. I have to prove to him I can market a western corporation or I could very well find myself on the unemployment line.”
Bonner shook his head. “He wouldn’t have hired you if he didn’t think you could do the job.”
Wow. Phone still in her hand, Casey turned her full attention to Bonner. “Thank you. It means a lot to hear you say that.”
“It’s the truth. From what I’ve seen so far, you’ll be fine.” Bonner shrugged and gazed at the action as the cowboys continued to herd the cows to the vet.
Casey had received lots of compliments from many men throughout her career. Some sincere, some pure flattery and bullshit, but none of them had made her want to jump the man, not like Bonner’s plainly spoken words just had. Her heartbeat sped.
She realized they were in the midst of an awkward silence as he glanced back at her, and she tried to talk her woman parts out of inviting Bonner’s man parts over to play. Damn, she felt like a horny teenager again, only the object of her attention was no boy. He was all grown up and all man.
Trying to get control of her libido, she scrambled for a safe topic. She glanced down at her phone. No signal. “I just wish I had some kind of connection. I can get one, maybe two bars on my cell phone if I lean it against the window of my bedroom, otherwise, it’s pretty much worthless. My tablet’s not picking up a signal. I feel cut off from everything I need to do my job. Do you have cell service out here?”
“Here? Don’t know. Never checked.” He pulled out his phone and glanced at the readout. “Nope.”
“No? Aren’t you worried?”
“’Bout what?”
“What if one of you gets hurt?” Casey’s mind spun with the possibilities, one more horrid than the other. What if they were on horseback, far from the ranch, farther from help, with no cell phone signal and no vehicle to take them to the hospital?
He shrugged. “There’re usually the three of us working together. If one gets hurt, one will go for help and the other can stay to tend to him.”
“But…to have no means of communication.” She’d panicked the one time her phone’s battery had gone dead, and she was in a taxi in midtown Manhattan at the time.
Bonner glanced at her and shook his head. “You city folk are too dependent on your gadgets. Ranchers a hundred years ago didn’t have cell phones. Hell, most ranch hands twenty years ago didn’t.”
Feeling a bit insulted by the city folk comment, even if she did wonder sometimes if she was becoming obsessed with technology, Casey planted her hands on her hips. He couldn’t possibly be as complacent about this as he pretended. “Then why do you have a cell phone?”
“They were giving them away for free when you signed up.” He shrugged. “Works just fine in the bunkhouse. It’s useful sometimes.”
“Oh really, like when?”
“Well, last year I was at a stock auction and I saw this little black and white Shetland pony. The old man had just had a new great-grand-baby, so I called to ask if he wanted me to pick it up for him to give as a baby gift.”
The old man. Casey laughed. “There is just so much about that sentence that sounded insane to me I can’t even begin to tell you.”
This guy was the real deal, all right. Horseman. Cattleman. Cowboy. Lover? Mm, wouldn’t that be nice.
“Why? What’s strange about it?” Bonner turned toward Casey, an expression of confusion on his face.
“First, you talk about buying a horse like you’re picking up a loaf of bread at the grocery store. But more importantly, a pony? As a baby gift?”
“I was on a horse before I could walk.” Bonner shrugged again, something he seemed to do a lot around her. Apparently her city folk questions left him without answers.
She took him in from the felt of his hat to the leather of his boots. Cowboy to the bone. And boy did she ache to get to know every inch of him better. On a horse before he could walk. That skill at riding horses had to transfer to the bedroom. No? All that hip motion and thigh power.
“Mm. I have no doubt.” The comment came out a bit more sultry-sounding than she’d intended.
Bonner cleared his throat. “Look, Miss Harrington—”
“Call me Casey.”
He let out a huff of a breath. “Miss Casey—“ Not exactly what she’d meant but it certainly had its charm.“—I realize I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know a few things. I know cattle and I know women.”
Her brows shot up. This was cowboy gold. The woman in her wanted to take a step closer to better absorb the cowboy aura of him. While the marketing director in her itched to write it all down, she was too fascinated by what he was saying. She didn’t want to risk distracting him from finishing so she nodded. “Okay.”
“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t mix business with pleasure.” Bonner shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, and believe me…I’d like to.”
As much as he’d like to. Her chest tightened at the knowledge he felt the attraction between them too, even though the rest was not what she’d expected him to say. Though, maybe she should have expected him to hold himself to a high moral standard. The cowboy code and all that.
More surprisingly was Bonner’s ability to read her. She’d been caught daydreaming, imaging him and her naked under her Maverick Western red and black buffalo plaid cashmere sofa throw. This cowboy had not only noticed, but had interpreted her thoughts correctly. It was all very intriguing. His speech may be slow, but his mind was quick as a whip and he sure as hell had her pegged.
Her cheeks heated with a combination of embarrassment and desire. She wasn’t backing down though. She didn’t get where she was in life by giving up easily. “So let me make sure I have this straight. You’re assuming I’m interested in you and you’re turning me down, all in the same sentence?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Huh. Men didn’t turn her down, yet this man was doing just that. Somehow that only made her want him more. She really needed to see a therapist about her addiction to challenges, and cowboys for that matter, but right now she had a man to put in his place. Casey Harrington didn’t give up on anything she wanted. Not in her career, and not with men. She’d just never wanted a man this much. Bonner had no hope of sticking to his code now that Casey was determined to have him.
She tilted her head to one side. “I can assure you, Mr. Boyd—“
“Call me Bonner.”
“Can I call you Blue?” She cocked a brow, already knowing the answer and enjoying his reaction.
He frowned. “No.”
Relishing in the game, Casey smiled and took one step forward. She had to give him credit, he didn’t back up, though he looked like he was torn between grabbing and kissing her, and running for the hills. She wished he’d opt for the former.
“Okay, Bonner, I can assure you of two things. One, I’m the consummate professional when it comes to my career and two…”
Casey paused for effect. It worked. She watched as Bonner swallowed and gazed down at her from much closer than he wanted to be, she was sure.
“And two?” His voice sounded husky.
She was getting to him. That made her soar with a feeling of power. “And two, were you and I ever to get together it wouldn’t break any rules, corporate or personal, in my opinion, but there is a very good chance we could break something else.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “What’s that?”
Casey caught Bonner’s gaze. She made direct eye contact and said, “Most likely that antique bed frame in my room.”
Bonner coughed and finally laughed while shaking his head. “You’re not at all what I expected, Miss Casey.”
“Neither are you, Bonner Boyd.” Casey glanced down and discovered there was a definite bulge within the soft denim of his jeans that hadn’t been there before.
No, he was far more than she’d ever expected to find on the ranch. He was even more
than she’d first assumed when he’d stepped into her headlights last night and she’d had to pry every word out of him.
She’d get this man sooner or later. Evidence proved she’d already won over his cock. Judging by the smile, she was making headway with the rest of him. But right now she decided to play it cool. She turned and followed the action as the two cowboys continued to work their asses off to get the cows into and out of the chute for the vet.
“So, you call Mr. Maverick the old man, do you?” She shot Bonner a look over her shoulder.
He let out a short laugh. “Not to his face.”
“Wise decision.” Casey smiled.
“You ready to try one for yourself?” He cocked his head toward the cow checking operation before them.
Casey didn’t know if he was asking her to help shove them into the tight little railed enclosure, or pull on a glove and anally probe them. Not that it mattered. Both tasks were equally unpleasant and she didn’t know how to do either.
“Sure.” She mustered her courage and turned to face Bonner as he laughed and shook his head. “What, you weren’t serious? Was that just a test? Do I pass?”
“Yeah, you pass.” He grinned.
“Don’t let me stop you from doing your job though. If you need to slap on a glove and some lube, go for it. I’ll be fine here alone.” She waited for his reaction.
“Wouldn’t be the first time, Miss Casey. Believe me, I’ve checked the herd myself in past. The vet’s just a whole lot faster and usually a bit more accurate than I am.” He smirked.
Casey immediately got naughty thoughts regarding Bonner and the industrial-sized tube of lubricant she’d seen the vet with. She glanced sideways and found him watching her. “You know, if you’ve got any other tests for me, I’m up for just about anything.”
Bonner leaned close. “Don’t tease, Miss Casey.” His voice was low and dead serious.
Again he seemed to be able to read her, and all her naughty thoughts. Interesting. Bonner Blue may live by the cowboy code, but he sure wasn’t innocent in that department.