Making Room for the Rancher

by Christy Jeffries

  “And you’re not allowed to have any pets in your own apartment?” Connor was now eyeing the very shaggy dog who was currently stretched out on its back in front of his cowboy boots, exposing its matted belly for a rub. In that revealing position, it was easy to see that the dog was in fact male.

  Sure, they probably could keep the animal since she did own the building and the living quarters were separate from the commercial area. However, if Dahlia didn’t draw a line somewhere, they’d have every dog and cat for miles around sheltered at Big Millie’s.

  Today, it was time to draw that line again. Her daughter had a way of bringing home strays, Dahlia thought as she studied the newcomer who had bent down again to rub the dog’s belly. If she gave in now, she’d likely have two unwanted strays on her hands.

  She sighed. “Even if my neighbor didn’t make a big stink about it, we just don’t have the room for another animal. A sweet pup like this needs room to wander and explore. He’d probably do great out on a ranch. A place with plenty of land and an owner who needs the company...”

  She let her suggestion hang in the air, but Connor immediately shook his head. “Nice try, but I’m not in the market for a fluffy white ball of mischief.”

  “That’s weird. I thought you wanted him.” Dahlia tried a different tactic. If Amelia were here, she would’ve fluttered her eyelashes several times in confusion. Her daughter couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting an animal—or ten. “You followed him from your ranch all the way to the street.”

  “Yeah, I was trying to see if he had a collar or needed help.”

  There it was. His admission that he’d gone after the animal first. Finders keepers and all that.

  “That must be why he’s already so attached to you.” Okay, so maybe she was laying it on a little too thick. But the dog seemed to be in agreement with Dahlia’s assessment because it chose that exact moment to stick out its small pink tongue and lick Connor’s hand. She could tell by the softening of Connor’s lower lip into a near smile that he was already a goner.

  Feeling relieved, Dahlia knelt down to scratch the tangled and dirty fur between the mutt’s ears. Unfortunately, her lowered position put her face only a few inches from his, and that rip current of awareness shot through her again. He must’ve felt it too because his hand froze just before it could graze hers.

  His hazel eyes locked onto hers and Dahlia couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to. His voice was deep and low as he lifted one side of his mouth. “Fine, I’ll help. Just so we’re clear, though, I’m only doing this because I promised Amelia I would. I have no intention of actually taking on a responsibility that belongs to someone else.”

  “Of course.” Dahlia immediately stood back up, not entirely sure he was only referring to the dog. “Dr. Roman has a microchip scanner at her office over on Frontier Avenue. I’m sure she can help you find the owner.”

  “Dr. Roman, huh?” He easily scooped the dog into his arms as he rose to his full height. “Why do I get the feeling that you and Amelia are used to passing off stray animals to unsuspecting strangers?”

  “Who else would we pass them off to?” She walked behind the bar, needing to put some distance between them. “Everyone else in town knows better than to get within a twenty-foot radius of my daughter when she’s got an animal in her sights.”

  Plus, if Connor wanted to be a real rancher, he needed to get used to caring for all types of animals. Really, she was doing the good-looking city boy a favor. Maybe giving the man a little bit of responsibility of his own would teach him not to offer up his unwelcome opinions about Dahlia’s responsibilities.

  And if she could keep him from interfering in her personal business, then it would be a hell of a lot easier for her to stop thinking about his.

  Chapter Three

  “Let me guess.” Dr. Roman chuckled to herself after Connor had explained to the vet how the scruffy white pooch ended up in his care. “Amelia Deacon was the little girl who talked you into adopting a stray?”

  So Deacon was their last name. Connor tucked that tidbit of information into his mental file in case he needed it later on. “I’m guessing you know Amelia and her mom?”

  “Yeah, my oldest son went to school with Dahlia and Finn.” The veterinarian removed her reading glasses from the top of her black corkscrew curls, setting them on her nose before turning most of her attention to the new patient. “That family sends me more business than I can handle.”

  Finn. Another name, another breadcrumb. Connor collected clues the way Amelia Deacon apparently collected stray animals. Only he didn’t know where this particular trail would lead or why he was on it in the first place. He had his hands full with getting the Rocking D running again. He shouldn’t be out chasing after dogs or single moms. No matter how beautiful they were.

  The single mom, not the dog.

  The scared mutt was anything but beautiful, and smelled even worse than he looked. He watched the vet make soothing noises as she examined the little ball of white and mud-stained fur crouched low on the stainless-steel table. Connor was going to have to pay the car rental company an extra cleaning fee just to get rid of the stench from the short drive over here from Big Millie’s. And if they ever found the owner, he was also going to have a serious talk with whoever had neglected the most basic of their pet responsibilities. This scrappy little guy deserved better than whoever had let him get this bad.

  When Dr. Roman finished her exam, she pulled a small treat out of the pocket of her lab coat and fed it to the dog. “I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary, but one of my vet techs is going to need to get him cleaned up a little before we can be sure. His hair is so matted our microchip scanner might have missed something.”

  Connor had never been a big spender and rarely took paid leave, which meant he still had a few paychecks coming his way before his official discharge paperwork got finalized. Unfortunately, he needed most of that money to get the ranch operational again. He had no idea how much this vet bill was going to cost.

  Growing up, his mom had never let him have a pet because she’d said they were too expensive and too much work. Was it more or less than what the military paid for the horses in their Calvary units? During his first day of training at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, one of the instructors told them how much the hay and grain alone cost, and Connor had almost fallen out of his saddle.

  “Don’t worry,” Dr. Roman said, probably seeing the color drain from his face as he tried to add up how much money this would set him back. “Dahlia will want me to bill her for the exam and grooming and any necessary medications.”

  Having a single mom covering the cost didn’t sit well with Connor. Especially because owning a saloon in a small Wyoming cattle town—no matter how authentically refurbished Big Millie’s was—probably didn’t generate a huge amount of extra cash. “No, I’ll pay for whatever the dog needs.”

  * * *

  Connor seriously regretted those words two hours later.

  He’d gone to breakfast, the hardware store and the grocery store before returning to Dr. Roman’s clinic to pay the final bill—which, thankfully, was a lot less than what it would have cost for a horse. The receptionist had him sign some papers and was swiping his credit card when the vet tech handed him a leash attached to a clean, freshly trimmed white dog that looked nothing like the dingy mutt he’d dropped off.

  “What am I supposed to do with him?” Connor asked, staring at the colorfully striped bandanna jauntily tied around the dog’s neck.

  The man whose purple scrubs matched his dyed Mohawk gave him a sideways look. “Take him home, bro. Feed him. Play with him. Go on walks with him. You know? All the normal things people do with their pets?”

  “But he’s not my pet,” Connor tried to explain as the receptionist handed him his credit card receipt. “Isn’t there a shelter or a humane society or someth
ing that could take him?”

  “Bro. You signed the form and paid the bill, so that kinda does mean he’s your pet now. Or at least your responsibility. If you want to—” the tech lowered his voice and spelled out the next word, “—R-E-L-I-N-Q-U-I-S-H him, the nearest shelter is in Pinedale. About an hour away.”

  Connor, though, had a trunk full of frozen dinners and rocky road ice cream he had no intention of wasting. And that was how, less than twenty-four hours after arriving in Teton Ridge, he ended up with a little white dog riding shotgun in his sporty convertible, both of them appearing about as citified and uncowboy-like as they could get. If he wanted any of the other ranchers in town to take him seriously, his next order of business would be to find the keys to the old Chevrolet truck he’d seen in the barn this morning.

  How had one attractive woman and one little girl so thoroughly put a wrench in his carefully constructed plans? And how had he let them? His old man had always said that when Remingtons found “the one” they knew it. That was why his dad was always so determined to come back to his wife and son time and again and promise to change. But it didn’t explain why his mom had kept taking Steve back.

  In fact, Connor’s disappointing experiences with his father had made him reluctant to form attachments, emotional or physical. As an adult, he’d been trained to get a job done and move on to the next. So settling down on the Rocking D, investing in the property and his future, was already putting the unfamiliar concept of permanency in his mind.

  Then he’d met Amelia, who was open and honest and had such pure intentions, Connor already knew he’d be unable to tell the child no. His reaction to her mom, though, was a whole other thing. Not that he believed his dad’s claims of his genetic ability to know when he’d met “the one.” Hell, Connor learned early on not to believe most of his father’s outlandish claims.

  Still.

  There was something intriguing about Dahlia, and if he had more downtime on his hands, he might have looked for answers.

  He meant to take the dog to the shelter in Pinedale the following day, but then one thing after the next happened and he was too busy to do much of anything that first week on the ranch.

  First, he had to find a nearby auto parts store to get a replacement battery and a new fuel pump before he could even get to work on the truck. Then Tomas Ochoa, who owned the ranch just north of him, paid him a call about the broken fence between their properties. Connor offered to pay half the costs and Tomas offered to have his son and a school buddy help with the labor so they could get the railing in place before calving season. The teens did such a great job, Connor hired them to come over the following weekend and help him rebuild the corral.

  One of his great-aunt Connie’s friends from the community church showed up with a casserole and the name of a local woman who did some housekeeping. While Connor had learned how to make hospital corners on his bunk in boot camp, having someone do a deep clean on the house while he saw to everything else that needed fixing on the ranch might be worth the expense.

  The delivery guy from the hardware store gave him the names of some local ranch hands who might be looking for some extra work, but Connor still didn’t have horses, let alone the money to pay someone else to care for them. One of the sheriff’s deputies, not Dahlia’s brother, saw him grabbing dinner to go at Biscuit Betty’s one night and invited him to the rec center to join a game of pickup basketball if he ever found the time.

  Everyone he met was warm and welcoming and they all asked about the white pup, who by now wouldn’t leave Connor’s side, following him around as if his pockets were full of Dr. Roman’s dog treats. When he explained how he’d ended up with the stray, everyone would laugh and make a reference to Dahlia Deacon and her daughter. He’d yet to come across anyone who didn’t know them. But any time Connor would ask about the woman—no matter how casually—the trail would go cold and the townspeople would essentially close ranks and not say another word about her.

  Having moved from place to place all his life, Connor was accustomed to feeling like the new kid on the block. However, this small town was different from any of the heavily populated neighborhoods he’d lived in growing up. The inhabitants of Teton Ridge were as nosy as he’d expected, but also extremely friendly (except for Mr. Burnworth at the bakery who never threw an extra muffin in the bag for the dog like his generous sister and co-owner did). Everyone was free with words of advice and recommendations, but they were also strangely protective. There was no way to blend in, nor was there a way to keep his head down and mind his own business. He stood out everywhere he went.

  Which was why two weeks later, when he was at Fredrickson’s Feed and Grain pricing galvanized steel troughs and controlled aeration storage bins for hay oats, he was approached by yet another new face.

  An older gentleman with a bushy gray mustache and a set of wiry eyebrows shooting out below the brim of his straw cowboy hat moseyed up beside Connor. The man’s shiny belt buckle might’ve been a rodeo prize at one point, but it was hard to tell since his barrel chest and rounded belly shadowed the waistband of his jeans.

  “Are you that kid who inherited Connie Daniels’s old place?”

  Connor was thirty-two and a decorated military veteran. But even he knew that when a bristly old cowboy called you kid, you didn’t correct him. Especially when Connor was shaking his work-roughened hand, which had a grip likely earned from decades of wrestling steers. “Yes, sir. I’m Connor Remington.”

  “Name’s Rider. I remember your dad, Steve. Used to get himself in pretty deep with those Saturday night poker games over at Big Millie’s. I was there the night he lost the Rocking D’s prize longhorn while holding nothin’ but a pair of nines. Ol’ Connie finally put her boot down after that.” Rider made a tsking sound, but before Connor could offer his standard apology for his father’s lack of control around whiskey and card games—the older man went on. “I heard you were looking to breed some Morgan horses on your great-aunt’s ranch.”

  Yep, there was no such thing as minding one’s business in Teton Ridge. Not that Connor had anything to keep private. In fact, with his own memories of his old man already fading, it might be pretty informative to befriend the people around here who could give him a bit more insight into Steve Remington, and more importantly, his great-aunt Connie. “Yes, sir. That’s my plan.”

  Rider crossed his arms over his massive chest and planted his boots a few feet apart, as though he was going to be standing there awhile. “What are you starting with?”

  Connor told Rider about the three-year-old untried stallion he’d bought at an auction in Cody after he’d returned his rental car to Jackson last week. The stud would be delivered in a few days and Connor was in a hurry to make sure the small stables were ready. The conversation shot off from there and the two men stood in the aisle for a good twenty minutes or so discussing the safety of in-hand breeding versus pasture breeding as well as MHC proteins playing a role in genetic differences and horse compatibility.

  When the old cowboy seemed convinced that Connor actually knew what he was talking about, Rider said, “I have a couple of mares that’ll need to be covered at the end of the month. Why don’t you bring your new stallion to my ranch? We can see how he does with the ladies, and if any of them take a liking to him, we can work out the stud fees.”

  Connor’s chest suddenly didn’t feel so heavy. It was the break he didn’t know he’d been hoping for. He’d planned to invest in a few broodmares himself, but he also needed extra cash to pump into the infrastructure at the Rocking D while he waited for his investment to produce several—or hopefully more—foals.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Connor again shook the man’s hand. “Where is your ranch?”

  Rider’s wiry eyebrows dipped low and he took off his cowboy hat to scratch the steel bristly hair underneath. “A few miles down the road from yours?”

  Connor had the feeling t
hat the older cowboy expected him to know every single ranch and cowpoke in Ridgecrest County. Sure, he’d heard of some of the bigger outfits nearby, like the Twin Kings and Fallow’s Crossing, but it wasn’t as though Connor’d had a ton of downtime to figure out who worked where yet. He’d rather remain quiet than ask an obvious question. Or worse, make a wrong assumption.

  A few seconds of silence hovered between them before Rider finally replaced his hat. “By the way, I know the sins of the father don’t always pass to the sins of the son. But just in case you’re lookin’ for a good poker game, you won’t find that at Big Millie’s anymore. My niece runs a respectable establishment nowadays.”

  Connor’s ears shot to attention and his pulse spiked. “So Dahlia is your niece?”

  “That’s right.” One side of Rider’s gray mustache hitched upward. “I heard you’d been askin’ about her around town.”

  Okay, so apparently Connor’s horse breeding plan wasn’t the only thing folks in Teton Ridge were talking about. He hoped his gulp wasn’t noticeable. “I don’t suppose you’d buy the excuse that I was just being neighborly?”

  “Ha!” The old man’s laugh was loud enough to draw the attention of several customers and Freddie Fredrickson behind the register. “If I had an acre of property for every young buck who wanted to be neighborly with my nieces, I’d have the biggest spread in Wyoming.”

  A woman wearing denim overalls and a cap embroidered with the words Crazy Chicken Lady made a sniggering sound as she pushed her cart full of organic scratch grains past them.

  “Sir, with all due respect, Dahlia Deacon seems like a perfectly nice lady and a great mom. And yes, I can see how many men would be interested in getting to know her better. But I assure you, all of my energy is focused on getting the Rocking D up and running. I don’t have time to be pursuing anyone, let alone someone who so clearly doesn’t want to be pursued.”