Chapter Seventeen
“SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING IS that you stay here in Baker City because there’s always a chance that you’ll be covered in cow loogies.” I nod as I use the only remaining non-disgusting towel to remove crud from my hair. I’m sitting in the front seat of the truck and we’re headed back to the ranch. “Yeah. I can see why you don’t move away. Who’d want to miss that?”
“Don’t try and lie and say that you’re not happy as a pig in mud right now.” Ian’s poo-eating grin is almost unbearable. Almost.
I look over my shoulder at our back seat passenger. “I’m not saying anything about anything.” The little black heifer is blinking her eyes, looking at me. It’s like she knows she goobered on me and it somehow connects us. We’ve bonded on an elemental level. Maternal feelings I’ve never had before well up in me.
For a cow.
I must be crazy.
I turn to look out the windshield so I won’t get suckered into anything dangerous. “So where to now?”
“We’ve got to get her back to the barn. Bottle feed her.”
“Are you serious?” I look at him to see if he’s laughing at me. “Why not just leave her out there with her mother?” I saw all those other babies out there. Seems like it wasn’t too dangerous. They looked happy.
“I can’t be sure the mother’s going to take care of her or that one of the other cows will adopt her, and she’s too little to fend for herself.”
I look back again at the beautiful long eyelashes that are just starting to show as the goop around them dries. “You mean … she might die? After all we did to wake her up?”
“Nah, we won’t let her die.” He pats me on the leg. “Don’t worry. She’ll be fine.”
I give up trying to ignore her and stare at her the rest of the way back to the ranch. She really is pretty beautiful, especially as she dries out. Her fur is all black except for a small white star shape on her forehead.
Ian parks the truck next to a big barn and slides her out of the back seat, taking her in his arms and bringing her inside. There’s a stall with some straw in it, and he lies her down there, taking the ropes off her legs that he said were necessary to keep her from trying to stand up in the truck. He closes us inside with her.
“Go ahead, little Candy, try and stand up now. You can do it.” He nudges her with his boot as he steps back.
“Candy?”
He looks at me and grins. “Yeah. Pretty cute, right?”
“You named a cow after me?”
He shrugs. “You mad at me for it?”
My emotions are a whirlwind. This is completely crazy. I can’t tell if he means it as an insult or a compliment but I feel like crying with happiness.
In the end, the little cow baby standing up and wobbling around on her spindly legs wins me over. “No, I’m not mad.” I cannot wipe the smile off my face.
Ian leaves me there to ogle her. She appears unsteady for a while but then she starts acting like an expert cow. It doesn’t take long before she looks like she’s ready to try running. Cows are way more coordinated than humans, apparently.
“Here,” Ian says, bumping me on the arm with a big white plastic thing that has a giant brown nipple on it. “Give her some of this.”
I stare at it and then him. He doesn’t look like he’s messing with me. “Seriously?”
“Yep. It’s all on you. Feed her and she lives. Don’t and she dies.”
My jaw drops open. “Harsh!”
“That’s life on the ranch.” He leaves me there holding the bottle.
I look at Candy and she looks at me.
“You want some of this?” I ask her.
She takes a couple steps in my direction and stops. I take one towards her and stop, holding it out.
She touches her nose on the end of it and bumps it. I almost drop it.
I giggle. “Hey. Easy, little girl. Don’t be so pushy.”
She walks closer and I hold onto the bottle with two hands. “Easy does it,” I say.
A big tongue comes out and swipes at it.
Wow. That’s a long tongue.
I hold it steady, ready for anything. I hope she’s not going to loogie on me again, but if she decides to I’ll probably let her. I’m her momma now.
She opens her mouth, takes the end of it, and then it’s a tug-of-war between us. She slurps and sucks and goobers all over the place as she drinks every last drop. I feel so proud, like I’m the one doing everything.
When she’s done, she dances around in the straw, even kicking up her back legs a little, only falling twice. She couldn’t possibly be any cuter. I cannot stop staring at her. I wonder if they’ll let me sleep out here with her tonight. I probably should. Don’t babies need to eat every couple hours?
“You ready to head out again?” Ian’s hanging over the top of the stall door, looking at me.
It takes a few seconds for me to get my head out of the clouds. “Huh … what? Out? Out where?”
“I’ve got to go do a headcount. If you’d rather stay …”
The idea of having Ian leave my side is unacceptable. Candy is sweet, but Ian is … sweeter. Plus he might need me to do CPR again. “Could there be more babies out there?”
“Possibly. You never know.”
I jump to my feet. “I’ll come.” I pause in the doorway. “See you later, Candy. Take a nap while I’m gone.”
I nearly melt when she turns a few circles and flops down in the straw.
Ian chuckles as we leave the barn.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I say, feeling self conscious. I try to toss my hair over my shoulder, and it’s then that I realize I still have cow goo stuck in it. Oh, how far I’ve fallen. If the girls at the salon could see me right now, they’d take pictures, Facebook them, and never let me forget it.
“I’m not laughing,” he says.
I look over and see the smile on his face. “What’s that grin all about then?”
“Nothin’.” He gets in the truck and leaves me to open my own door.
I sigh, knowing that there are things about Ian that are pretty much hopeless, but that one of them is not the fact that he’s a hunter. He can’t possibly enjoy killing animals … not when he gets so much joy bringing them to life. This makes me way happier than I have a right to be.