“Comin’,” I said, stabbing the rest of the meatloaf and shoving it into my mouth. I glanced at Brooks as I got up, loving the surprised look on his face. “Don’t worry,” I grinned, chewing quickly. “I won’t fuck your boyfriend.”
Brooks didn’t look away. Instead, he just replied, “You couldn’t handle him. Believe me.” Then he picked up his coffee again and leaned back in the booth. “Good luck. Calving is a fuckin’ mess.”
I didn’t bother with a response as I shoved my hat on and followed Rowan out the door.
Chapter 18
Cash
Rowan Walsh drove like a man who’d been called to emergencies his whole life. He was fast but controlled, one hand loose on the wheel, the other braced against the door as he took the county road turns without slowing down enough to make me comfortable.
I held onto the oh-shit handle above the passenger window and didn’t say a word about it.
The Macready place was about fifteen miles outside of town, a modest cattle operation that had seen better decades. I recognized the land as we pulled in through the gate, the rolling pasture broken up by clusters of live oak and a rusted windmill that creaked in the afternoon breeze. I’d ridden this fence line once as a kid, back when old Roy Macready was still alive and running the place himself. That felt like another lifetime.
Rowan had his bag out of the truck bed before the engine had fully quit ticking.
“She’s in the far pen,” called a woman from the porch. Mid-fifties, work-worn, wiping her hands on a rag. She looked at me with the particular suspicion reserved for strangers on private land. “Who’s this?”
“Cash Callahan,” Rowan said, already moving. “He’s my assistant.”
I fell into step beside him, not entirely sure when I’d agreed to be his assistant exactly, but the word had left his mouth with such easy certainty that arguing with it felt pointless.
The heifer was in the corner of a small pen off the main barn, and the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew it was bad. She was a young one, probably first calf, her sides heaving with the kind of exhausted effort that had long since stopped producing results. Her tail was up, her back legs trembling, and she had the glassy, distant look of an animal that had been fighting something for too long.
“How long?” Rowan asked the woman, who’d followed us out.
“Since before sunup,” she said, arms crossed. “I gave her as long as I could before I called.”
Rowan set his bag down on the top rail of the fence and stripped off his jacket without ceremony, handing it to me. I took it without thinking. He rolled his sleeve up past his elbow, snapped on a long glove, and climbed into the pen with the quiet, unhurried confidence of a seasoned veterinarian who’d done this a hundred times. He knew that urgency and panic were two different things entirely and was able to keep them separate.
I leaned against the fence rail and watched him work.
He moved around the heifer slowly, talking to her in a low, even voice, his free hand resting on her flank. She shifted, uneasy, but didn’t bolt. He had a way about him that settled animals, some quality in the stillness of his hands or the steadiness of his voice that communicated something beyond words. I recognized it because I’d seen it in good horsemen, the ones who didn’t need to dominate an animal to control it.
I hadn’t expected to find that quality in Rowan of all people.
He crouched behind her, made a quick assessment, and glanced back at me over his shoulder. His dark green eyes were calm, clinical, but there was something else in them too. Something almost like amusement.
“You going to stand there collecting dust,” he said, “or are you going to come hold her head?”
I pushed off the fence rail and climbed into the pen.
The heifer was bigger up close, her sides slick with sweat, her breath coming in short, labored bursts. I positioned myself at her head, getting both hands on her halter and planting my feet the way you do when you expect a fight.
“Talk to her,” Rowan said from behind, his voice low. “Doesn’t matter what you say. Just keep her calm.”
I looked down at the heifer’s wide, rolling eye and felt something in my chest loosen unexpectedly.
“Easy,” I said, my voice dropping into the same slow Texas drawl I used with horses back when I still had horses worth talking to. I hadn’t had to use that voice in years. “Easy, girl. Nobody’s tryin’ to hurt you. You’re doin’ fine.”
She shuddered but stayed put.
From behind me came the sounds of Rowan working, quiet and methodical. I didn’t look back. I kept my eyes on the heifer and kept talking, low and steady, stringing together whatever words came to mind. The afternoon sun was cutting sideways across the pen, warm on the back of my neck, and somewhere in the distance a meadowlark sang like nothing was amiss.
“Calf’s malpresented,” Rowan said. “One leg’s folded back. I need to reposition it before she can push.”
“Can you do it?”
