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Okay, so maybe he did still have a little ways to go…
“Yes, Brendan. The boy cows are bulls.”
“Are you going to take back your compliment now?” he said with a self-deprecating grimace.
“No. You can keep it.”
“Very gracious of you.”
“We haven’t had a bull for a while. We used IVF to get the cows pregnant.”
He blinked at her. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” He looked appalled.
“Better success rate at actually getting them pregnant. And you don’t have to deal with a rowdy bull for the rest of the year.”
Brendan sighed, as if he were coming to terms with a dark truth about the universe, and pulled out his phone to start adding to his notes.
“Calving season,” he muttered as he started typing. Nicole couldn’t help but watch him almost fondly. He really was trying so hard to nail all of this. She no longer worried that he’d hurt the cattle, even by accident. He cared about them too much to allow that.
“So does the vet come out here and help with each birth?”
Nicole barked out a laugh. “Uh, no, bud. I doubt even you could afford to have a livestock vet hanging around all day just in case something happened. They only get called out if something goes very badly wrong.”
“Like what?”
Nicole tried not to take too much pleasure in the fact that Brendan was now going slightly green around the gills. He was trying hard, yes, but he was still very much a city boy at heart, and Nicole couldn’t help but be entertained sometimes.
“The thing we’re most likely going to have to deal with,” she said, trying not to spook him too much, “is a calf getting stuck, you know, while it’s on its way out.”
His mouth was slightly agape, like he was watching a slow-motion car crash. “And how do you fix it?”
“Grab onto the calf’s feet and pull real hard.”
Brendan stared at her in silence, eyes wide, and Nicole had to force herself not to laugh.
“Nicole, that ishorrifying,” he said.
She shrugged. “Hey, I was born into this way of life; I didn’t have a choice in the matter. You, however, are here of your own volition, my friend.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, typing more notes into his phone. “That’s on me, I guess. Thank God you’ll be here to help with that. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well, after that my contract here ends,” Nicole said, toying with the thought of it. She regretted trying to sabotage Brendan, there was no denying it, but it had failed anyway, so what did it matter? All it meant now was that she needed to start thinking of what her next step was going to be. She still had no idea.
Brendan was no longer paying attention to his notes, looking carefully at Nicole instead. He looked almost sad.
“Well,” he said, all of his good humor gone, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, I suppose.”
He got up suddenly and left, leaving her alone at the table to finish her lunch and ponder what that turn in his mood had been about.
CHAPTER13
BRENDAN
Brendan still wasn’t entirely confident in the creamery. It was simple, really; boil the milk, bottle the milk, and then the milk was ready to be sold. But it was food preparation, at the end of the day, and the amount of sanitization and prep they had to do was all a bit overwhelming. He worried that he’d mess up and accidentally get someone poisoned.
