Jenny’s shoulders slumped forward. “Maybe you’re right, but I hate this. I hate feeling like I could have done something more. She didn’t have to die.”
As Jenny spoke, Hank could sense a double meaning behind her words. She wasn’t just speaking about a horse who had died and left a foal behind. Her words could easily be spoken about Trina Stratton, the woman who had died too young and left a grieving daughter behind. Hank could fix broken things on the ranch, but he wasn’t going to be much help fixing Jenny.
Sighing, he went into the house and broke the news to Jo Jo, sending her out to comfort her granddaughter. When he went back to the stable, the women were sitting on the porch swing, their heads close together with a tissue box between them.
Over the next couple of days, Hank was a walking zombie. His normal duties kept him busy from sun up to sun down, but now he was also feeding the foal every few hours through the night. He didn’t want to admit it to Jo Jo, but for once, he really was feeling stretched too thin. When the cows broke through one of the old fence sections, Hank knew he couldn’t keep up with all the demands. He didn’t have time to install new fencing around the entire ranch, even with the supplies Jo Jo had brought in. Before long they would need to hire a second ranch hand.
Without knowing, or perhaps even meaning to, Jenny was one more concern to add to his plate. Sure, she was another body at the ranch, and sometimes even helpful, but there was a sadness that followed her. She had taken Bree’s death far harder than he expected. Whenever he started to get frustrated with the city girl, Hank had to remind himself that he couldn’t judge her grief. Both of his parents were still alive and going strong. He had all of his siblings and three of his four grandparents. He hadn’t dealt with much loss.
Still, he couldn’t shake Jenny’s sad eyes from his mind. He was partly to blame for them, since he was the one who brought her to the stable to see Bree when she was sick. Unfortunately, this was a problem that couldn’t be fixed with boards and a few nails.
Walking to the stables for the umpteenth time to take care of the foal, Hank realized how he could help both the girl and the horse. Changing course, he veered toward the house. As expected, Jenny sat on the porch swing, her nose buried in yet another book. Her books changed through the day, but she didn’t move much other than to eat or sleep.
Hank stomped up the stairs and walked to Jenny’s side, plopping a full bottle of milk down onto her lap. She jumped, startled out of her reading, and fixed her annoyed gaze on Hank.
“Come with me. I need your help.” It was the second time he had said those words to her in less than a week. He could feel her wariness as she looked from the bottle to him.
Not surprisingly, Jenny shook her head. “Nope, nope, nope. I’ve helped enough this week.” She pushed the bottle off her lap and stuck her nose back in the book.
Hank grunted. “Stop that. I’m not kidding. Please come.”
A page turn was all the response he got.
“Little Man is hungry, and I don’t really have time to do all his feedings today.”
That earned a snort from Jenny. “Little Man?” She cocked her head toward the stable. “His mom dies, and the best name you can come up with is . . . Little Man? That’s ridiculous.”
Hank raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a better suggestion?”
“Anything is better than your name. You could call him Toby or Josh or . . . I don’t know . . . Bacon.”
“Bacon?” The tension lifted off Hank’s shoulders as he began to laugh. “Fine. I need your help with Bacon.”
“I was kidding about that.”
“Too late.” He picked up the bottle off the swing and held it out to Jenny. “I was serious about the help bit, though. Will you please come?”
Jenny’s face was a jumble of emotions. She looked back and forth between the bottle and her book, clearly torn. Hank waited, willing his boots to remain firmly planted on the ground even though he was churning with impatience. He had so many jobs to do. If Jenny wasn’t going to help, he would be so far behind schedule that he would have to cut back on something. Finally, with a deep sigh, Jenny stood. She held up a hand for Hank to wait. She disappeared into the house, returning a minute later with her boots on.
Although she walked next to him, Jenny didn’t seem to want to talk. He peered at her out of the corner of his eye, trying not to startle her with any sudden movements. She reminded him of a fledgling bird. If he moved too fast or said the wrong thing, he was afraid she would bolt. Finally, he tilted his head back and looked at the clouds. “It’s been a bit warm this week,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the sun.
Jenny nodded. She stared off in the direction he pointed, a slight lift to her cheeks.
“Looks like we may be due for a storm.” Again, Hank waited for any sort of a reaction from Jenny, but she kept her face straight forward, her expression somber.
Hank put his hand in his pocket. “I wonder if we’ll get much rain.” He turned his attention to the stable, belatedly realizing that the girl next to him was beginning to shake. Cold ice poured down his back. He’d been trying to help, but maybe he was pushing her too quickly. He grabbed his hat in his hands and took a large step, spinning so he could face Jenny.
One hand covered her mouth, and the rest of her face was a splotchy red. Hank’s stomach sank. He reached out and put his hand on her arm, but as he did, she burst out laughing.
“Really, Hank? The weather?”
Hank froze, blinking his eyes slowly while trying to understand what was happening. “You’re not crying?”
“No. I’m laughing at you. Is the weather really the best subject you can come up with to discuss?”
Hank clamped his hat back on his head and turned toward the stable. Insufferable girl. “Was there something more appropriate you think we should be discussing?”
Jenny shook her head, lifting a hand to wipe her eyes. “Why don’t you just tell me how I am supposed to feed a horse?”
In response, Hank opened the door to the stable, watching Jenny’s face as she paused outside. “It’s easy. You’re going to like this job.”
They walked down the center of the aisle; Hank hyperaware of Jenny’s every move. After passing the first few stalls, her steps slowed. She looked up at Hank, her eyes wide.
“I don’t know that I can do this.”
Hank put the bottle in her hands and nudged her forward. He gave a couple of short whistles, and hooves began to scuffle around in the hay. A few seconds later, a dark brown head peered over the door, the nose barely clearing the lower bars. Hank whistled to Bacon again, and the foal whinnied in response.
“See? He’s ready. Bacon just wants a snack.”
A smile lit up Jenny’s face. “He is so cute. And he’s already bigger than the last time I saw him.”
“He’s a strong little guy. You’re going to love taking care of him.” Hank cocked an eyebrow at Jenny. “Are you ready for this?”
She nodded. He opened the door to the stall and led Jenny inside, holding his breath to see what her reaction would be. As she pushed her way past Hank and reached to pat the foal’s nose, he relaxed.
“Do you think I can really handle this? What if I mess up again?”
“Not a chance. I think a city girl is exactly what this job needs.” Hank held the bottle up to Bacon’s mouth, watching the foal slurp the milk as Jenny brushed his long mane. “Yep,” he said. “You are definitely the person for the job.”
Chapter 12
Jenny expected Hank to join her for the first feeding sessions. What she wasn’t prepared for was just how bossy he would be. “Don’t tilt the bottle up so far,” he said, leaning against the wall of the pen. Jenny glared at him.
“I thought I was supposed to be the one taking care of Bacon.” She turned her back on Hank and focused on the hungry little foal, determined to fatten up the baby horse. She waited for the echo of Hank’s boots leaving the stable, then she adjusted the angle of the bo
ttle.
Three hours later, Hank was back. “Are you sure you mixed the formula the right way?” He rested his elbows on the door, watching Bacon guzzle the milk.
Jenny slowly turned to stare at Hank. “One part powder, three parts warm water. Mixing formula isn’t exactly rocket science. I think I’ve got it.” She lifted her cheeks into a fake smile, raising her eyebrows at him.
Hank grunted and opened the tackle trunk, rummaging through the items inside. He grabbed out a coil of rope, turned it back and forth in his hands, and then set it back in the trunk, reaching for something else. When he had examined his third item, Jenny cleared her throat. “Did you need something else?” she asked.
“Nope. Just making sure everything is good here.”
She gestured to the bottle. “Bacon is doing great. He loves his formula, and he likes being brushed. I know it’s a hard concept for you, but this is something I’m actually good at.” In response, Hank grunted and walked out of the barn.
Before long, the bottle was gone. Jenny stepped outside the stall, closing the door behind her. She leaned against the door in Hank’s usual spot and watched as Bacon ran around his enclosure, kicking up hay with his small hooves. The sight of his happiness lifted Jenny’s spirits. He was getting stronger.
When Hank showed up to the barn for the 2:00 am feeding, Jenny was miffed. Why couldn’t he just leave her be? He didn’t need to see that she could barely keep her eyes open. “Yes. I filled the bottle the right way, and I’m holding it at the proper angle,” she told him. She stifled a yawn and turned her focus to Bacon, trying to ignore Hank as he knelt down beside her. He reached for the bottle, but Jenny pushed his hands away.
Hank placed his hand on Jenny’s, sending little shivers through her body. She had tried to forget how embarrassed she had been when he had to drag her away from Bree’s pen. The feel of his arms around her waist was fading, but the strong cowboy next to her was making it hard to forget the feeling. He reached for the bottle once again. “Let me help with this part,” he said. “You should get some sleep.”
She looked into his eyes, a battle of wills raging in her mind. Then she let out a deflated sigh and passed the bottle to his hands. The sound of his voice talking to Bacon followed after her as she left the stable. By the time Jenny reached the house, she could barely keep her eyes open. She pulled out her phone and set her alarm for three hours, and then fell asleep with the sight of Hank tenderly feeding the horse on her mind.
The alarm blaring the next morning caused Jenny to jump out of bed and run to the stables. Although she knew Hank had taken care of Bacon, she couldn’t help but feel guilty that she had left her horse for a feeding. She walked into the stable, half-expecting to see Hank’s profile waiting by the stall. Instead, he was nowhere to be seen. Her goal had been to get rid of Hank, but now that he was gone, she kind of missed seeing that silly smirk of his.
When she unlatched the pen, Bacon eagerly surged to his feet, smacking his lips in anticipation of the bottle. A voice rang out from the hay loft. “He’s been waiting for you.” Jenny grinned at Bacon and then pulled her face down to a frown before turning to look up at Hank.
“Are you going to be here every time I feed my horse?”
“Your horse?” Hank pushed a bale off of the loft, the hay thudding to the ground with a poof of dust. “I don’t remember you having rights to Bacon.”
Jenny shrugged her shoulders and put the bottle to Bacon’s lips. “He likes me best. I’m pretty sure that makes him mine.” The foal gulped the milk down, grunting happily between swallows. She glanced up to see Hank standing in the loft, his hands on his hips. Sun shone from behind him, making the expression on his face impossible to see.
He shook his head back and forth. “You think Bacon likes you best? I’m the one who fed him when Bree died.”
“That doesn’t count,” Jenny replied. “Besides, you didn’t name him. I did. Based on my calculations, that makes him mine.”
The silhouette in the loft shook its head back and forth again. “You really have no idea how ranches run, do you?”
Jenny turned away from Hank with a scowl and focused on the foal in front of her, ignoring his question. Soon, the rhythmic sound of hay bales thudding together filled her ears. Bacon finished his bottle, and Jenny reached for the brush, gently untangling his tail. Although she could feel Hank’s presence in the barn, he didn’t speak to her again. Before long, his boots thudded down the steps and out the door, taking Jenny’s conflicted feelings with him.
The days began to blur together under Jenny’s new schedule. After the first couple days, she told Hank she was ready to take care of all the feedings, even the nightly ones. He said he wasn’t tired, but the bags under his eyes told a different story. Jenny put her hands on her hips and stared him down. “We shouldn’t both be sleep-deprived,” she said.
“Yeah, but I’m used to this sort of a schedule. You aren’t.”
She laughed. “How do you know? Maybe I secretly fed small horses all the time back in Petaluma. They do have horses there, you know.” She bumped against Hank’s hip.
“You win,” he replied. “I don’t have any idea what you did back at home. I hope, for your sake, it wasn’t as exhausting as this.”
“Yeah, sleep deprivation has a completely new meaning here. It’s not even close. The latest nights I ever spent in California were when I went dancing with my friends.”
“I can’t even picture that.”
“What? Dancing? Or me having friends?” Jenny teased. The thought of Hank in his cowboy boots and hat in the middle of a hip dance club was hilarious to her.
“I don’t dance,” he said.
“Well, if we survive this feeding schedule, I’ll have to find somewhere to take you. It’s about time you jumped into my city world.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized just how forward they sounded. Was suggesting a dance club really asking Hank out on a date? Her cheeks filled with heat.
“Yeah, I’m not so sure I’d be a good fit there. I’m good with animals. Not so much with people.”
“I gathered that.”
“Besides, I’d smash your toes with my two left feet. You’d be miserable all night.”
“We’d better pass on the dancing thing.” She tried to ignore the subtle voice in her mind telling her that she just accidentally asked Hank out, and he totally rejected the offer. It wasn’t like they’d have anything in common to talk about, anyway. When Jenny headed home and slid back into her regular life, the ranch would become another memory to add to her collection. “How much longer will we have to keep bottle-feeding Bacon?” she asked.
“He’s still got a few months to go, but he’ll start eating dry food soon. Once he’s tolerating solids, we won’t have to feed him quite so often.”
Jenny yawned. “As crazy as this schedule is, I’m kind of going to miss it when he’s older.” She tilted the bottle into Bacon’s mouth, watching the formula swirl around with a gentle swoosh. He drained the bottle completely before Jenny tugged it away. She turned to look at Hank, startled to see a frown on his face. He sat down on the tackle box.
Jenny walked out of the pen, latching the door closed behind her. “What did I do wrong this time?”
Hank looked up at her, startled. “Why would you ask that? You’re doing great. Bacon is getting strong.”
“Then why do you look like you ate a rotten pickle?” She watched him, waiting for an answer, but Hank studied her eyes instead. His face was serious, without a flicker of the normal spark his eyes usually held.
“Can I ask you something personal?” He spoke softly, but the question made Jenny’s insides squirm. What if he wanted to know something that changed his opinion of her?
A heavy silence covered the barn, the only sound an occasional shuffling from the horse stalls. Jenny took a deep breath and slowly released it. She walked over and sat next to Hank. “Sure. Fire away.”
“What happened with your mom? Is that too pe
rsonal to ask?”
The question hung in the air, a million answers swirling through Jenny’s mind. She had carefully tucked away the memory of her mom, locking away the sadness in a vault that she only pulled open on special occasions like the anniversary of her mom’s death. Most days, Jenny thought of her mom only in passing, a soft memory that brought a smile to her face. Ever since coming to the ranch, it seemed everywhere she looked memories of her mom resurfaced. Then Bree’s death had cracked open the lid to the vault and the pain was still slipping out in unexpected ways.
“I don’t mind you asking. She had a heart attack. One minute, she was chasing me around the yard. The next?” Jenny paused to take a breath, the memory unfolding in her mind. “The next thing I knew, she was laying on the ground. At first, I thought it was just part of our game. I didn’t realize she was hurt.”
Jenny fiddled with the edge of her shirt while she talked. Hank’s body was still beside her, his hat on his lap. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine,” he said.
“It was awful. When Grandma Jo Jo saw us, she began shouting. I thought I was in trouble. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that she must have been yelling for my dad to call the paramedics. The ambulance drove on the grass to get to my mom. I thought they were so naughty.”
“That makes sense. You were, what? Five? That’s not really old enough to understand why they were rushing.” Hank turned his hat over in his hands.
“I don’t even remember getting to the hospital,” Jenny continued. “One minute, we were in the yard, and the next, we were in a large hallway. They were wheeling my mom into a room and hooking her up to all sorts of wires. They let us go in to see her, but she wouldn’t open her eyes. I kept trying to talk to her, but my dad pulled me away. That was the last time I saw her alive.”
A heaviness wrapped around Jenny’s shoulders like a weighted blanket. Hank’s questions had stirred up memories she hadn’t thought about in years. The vault to her heart had broken wide open, and she was sharing more than she expected with the man sitting next to her. She held a hand up to her cheeks, waiting for the familiar flush of embarrassment to flood through, but the heat didn’t come. Somewhere between Bacon’s birth and all the feeding sessions, Hank had become her friend.
Love at Rosecrown Ranch Page 7